24 Hours in Cyberspace

Smolan, who created the popular ""Day in the Life"" photo-essay series, and Erwitt, project director of the series, led a team of 150 photojournalists who fanned out across the world on February 8, 1996, to document how the Internet and online communication are changing people's lives. This striking collage is full of remarkable human-interest stories, complemented by more than 200 interesting, sometimes stunning photographs. We see a global village emerging: students in Michigan virtually work alongside archeologists in Egypt as they excavate a fourth-century Coptic monastery; an Inuit boy who travels across Canada's tundra by dogsled sends digital pictures of his life to children around the world; exiled Tibetans and Mexican Zapatista guerrillas seek political support or medical assistance via the Internet. Stories include those of an electronically reconstructed 14-acre AIDS quilt cybermemorial and a Virginia man on death row for a murder he claims he did not commit, who is lobbying for a new trial on a Web page created by a Boston law student. Essays by Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, examine the Internet as a democratic medium, a market space for businesses, a vital link to medical care, a tool for seeing the planet in new ways. An accompanying CD-ROM contains the entire ""24 Hours in Cyberspace"" Web site. 200,000 first printing; $500,000 ad/promo; first serial to U.S. News & World Report; author tour. (Nov.)