The Cybergypsies - Softcover

Indra Sinha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684819449 ISBN 13: 9780684819440

Publisher: Scribner, 2000

Synopsis

THE CYBERGYPSIES describes one man's exploration of cyberspace over many years and the folk he meets on the Net, the cybergypsies: virus writers, hackers, witches, sex-peddlars, conmen, net vamps, randy paratroopers posing as girls; the A-bomb blueprints he was offered for sale. He recounts with startling honesty how he nearly lost everything because of his obsession with the Net and how the Net can be as dangerous and destructive as any drug addiction. However, the author also shows how the Internet can be used for positive aims, as he describes how he fought for human rights with desperate appeals for the Kurdish refugees in the wake of the Gulf War and justice for Bhopal's gas victims in campaigns involving Jeffrey Archer and Don McCullin.

About this title

Review:

The story of bad behavior--fanaticism about small debates, gender-disguised "Netsex," the spending of other people's money on vast phone bills--has been told by others. In The Cybergypsies: A True Tale of Lust, War, and Betrayal on the Electronic Frontier, Indra Sinha tells the same story in a British context where the poverty and uncertainty of the Thatcher era made everything that much more intense and obsessive. This is also the story of the near collapse of the author's marriage: he withdrew from his wife or dragged her off to meet Net chums who never showed up--or showed up and never introduced themselves.

These were also the years of his growing political commitment--a highly paid copywriter, Sinha started using his skills for good causes like exposing the use of chemical weapons by Saddam against the Kurds. He writes well about his discomfort with his Net friends' games of expensive verbal sadomasochism in the face of real evil. This is a moving and wise book about a man who loved games and came to feel that he could no longer, in good conscience, play them; there is real pain here, in his rejection of a sort of beauty. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Indra Sinha was born in India and spent his childhood in Bombay and the hills of the Western Ghats. His work of non-fiction, THE CYBERGYPSIES, met with widespread critical acclaim. He lives in Sussex.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684819449
• ISBN 13: 9780684819440
• Binding: Paperback