The Cybergypsies - Taschenbuch

Cybergypsies are hard-core Net travellers. The author describes the people he has met over his 15 years exploring the Net: virus writers, hackers, sex-peddlars, conmen et al. He describes how he nearly lost everything through his obsession, but also shows how the Net can be used for positive aims, such as campaigns for human rights and justice., 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