Reviews

Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems by John Palfrey, Urs Gasser

phoenixs's review

2.0

Although there's some good concepts being presented here, as well as some good background info on the net and how it came to be, most of the book is redundant. The authors start out with a good definition of interoperability and what it means for technology as it continues to develop, but then the rest of the 300 or so pages is just reiteration. I feel the repetitiveness just serves to show that they were padding the text so it could be a considerable length, when really they could've cut it down to about half the text's length and still properly illustrate "the promises and perils." Perhaps this would've been better presented as an informational website and not a book. The authors even give the reader a URL in the conclusion that leads to more scenarios of interop issues and feel puzzled as to why they didn't just include some of the more complex cases instead of recapping the same handful they introduced in the first half of the book.

One last note, for those that grew up with technology, a lot of this book will seem like old news to you. I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone who is well-versed in today's technology, because the concepts presented here seem to be more for people who have little or no knowledge of IT in this day and age.