The writing style is scholarly but not stiff. It's rigorous but rigor mortis has not set in. The reader is enlightened by anecdotes - e.g. about the personal experiences of the author on the internet (Page 37), and by links to real-world events - e.g. to the Columbine School murders (Page 247). The lore of online life is also included, from the online relationship between the producers of La Femme Nikita to their fans (Pages 176-177) to the cyberrape case of Mr. Bungle (Pages 230-232). The text is further enlivened by jokes (I particularly like the Marge Simpson emoticon (Page 18). There are even cartoon captions - "On the internet, they don't know you're a dog" (Page 88) and puns - "the waist is a terrible thing to mind" (Page 151).
The book is well supported by footnotes - 211 in 264 pages. Footnotes serve two basic functions - to make side comments (which can be useful but would distract from the story-line of the argument if included in the text) and to indicate sources. I would have preferred if the second function had been served by some other referencing system - e.g. authors in brackets with the full reference in an alphabetical list at the end. Such a reference/bibliography would be a valuable source for scholars in this exciting, emerging domain. Sources that I wanted to follow up could not be found again (where was that reference to Sherry Turkle?) or could be found again only by going to the index (for example, a reference to Don Tapscott).
By the way, the use of Christian names in an academic publication is most welcome. Students are less awed by work done by Sherry and Don than by S. Turkle and D. Tapscott (as was the convention when I was writing textbooks). I'm pleased also to see references to electronic as well as paper sources. Here conventions have not yet been established but certainly consistency is necessary. Only some such sources contain the date (an important feature considering the volatility of the net, an issue well covered in the book) and the dating system is not entirely consistent (23 May, 1999 on Page 248 and 1998, Mar 10 on Page 249).
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