This book provides welcome relief from the unbridled enthusiasm that accompanies much of what passes for discussion of the Internet. If one were to believe high tech companies, the mainstream media, many government officials and not a few academics, the Internet is bringing about a revolutionary transformation that will change the world for the better. It will make us all richer, create genuinely democratic communities, expand educational opportunities, give everyone access to the world's knowledge and entertainment, and envelop the world in a web of instantaneous communication.

Frances Fukuyama preaches the end of history; Frances Cairncross proclaims the end of geography and Alvin Toffler proselytizes the end of politics. Governments bellow in support. The 1999 Speech from the Throne promised Canada will invest what it takes so that by the year 2004 this country will be "the most connected nation in the world."

There is both banality and transcendence in these waves of euphoria. They are banal because we have heard them before -- in the enthusiasm that led people to see the telegraph bringing world peace, the tele-phone creating genuine community, electricity's "Great White Way" leading to the end of crime, radio broadcasting building a world democracy and, of course, television ushering in a global village. But they are also transcendent, signaling a genuine sense of near religious reverence and rapture, what historian David Nye called the technological sublime, which grips the popular imagination and enables it to rise, in the words of his mentor Leo Marx "like froth on a tide of exuberant self-regard sweeping over all misgivings, problems, and contradictions." It is no coincidence that some of the best discussion of the new technology comes from books entitled The Religion of Technology (David Noble) and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace (Margaret Wertheim).

In e.con, Donald Gutstein describes in some detail how the Net is turning out to be something far different from the visions of its enthusiasts. The book starts with the major focus of current Canadian government policy: Connecting Canadians. Ostensibly committed to making Canada the most connected nation in the world, Gutstein describes how it primarily promotes a business agenda, specifically to develop electronic commerce and, more generally, the privatization of education, libraries, training and other social services.

One of the first steps in bringing about this corporate agenda is vesting the government's program in a friendly agency. Gutstein describes how Industry Canada took over much of the policy agenda, including elements that would normally find a home in the Department of Canadian Heritage. For example, Industry Canada oversees the Community Access Program which promotes access to the Internet by providing matching grants to community organizations; it also runs SchoolNet, which promotes the use of the Internet in the classroom. As a result, programs like these with a major social policy orientation contain a very strong focus on business, so that CAP money is used to promote local businesses and SchoolNet money to get businesses into schools.

The agency that traditionally served to regulate the public interest in media and telecommunications, the CRTC, now defines the public interest as whatever commercial media and telecommunications firms want.

Not satisfied with deregulating mass media and telecommunications (leading to the unprecedented concentration of power in these industries), the CRTC bought into the myth that the Internet transcends the ability of mere mortals to make policy, by deciding in 1999 that it will not even try to regulate the Internet. The market, led by private sector run organizations will presumably ensure a place for Canadian content, provide for the public interest and guarantee against abuse.

In addition, the federal government has supported private control over the technology that delivers Internet services. Building the Knowledge-Based Economy, as Industry Canada often likes to call its new technology strategy, does not leave room for the cyberspace equivalent of the CBC or some other public institution.

Gutstein describes how the federal government privatized the national backbone network that delivers electronic services on the Net, taking CA*net, a public organization set up in 1990 and turning it into CANARIE, a private organization led by Bell Canada, which is mainly interested in using the Net for commercial applications.

These applications now include delivering information and education, thereby extending private influence and control over libraries and schools which are invited to join the new agenda, but only when they are willing to co-operate with its commercial imperative.

These developments amount to what Gutstein calls "enclosing the information commons," the modern day equivalent of establishing private property rights in what has historically been viewed as a public resource and the lifeblood of democracy.

He describes changes in copyright, patent, and trademark law that turn knowledge into the intellectual property of national giants such as Rogers, Hollinger, Thomson and Bell Canada, or multinational firms like AOL-Time Warner, AT&T, and Disney-ABC to which Canadian companies are increasingly linked.

Intellectual property policy rarely makes for lively reading. But Gutstein manages to enliven this terrain by providing numerous concrete examples of just what it means to lose a sense of the commons as we adopt the principles of intellectual property.

In the real world, it means national and multinational conglomerates can now require writers, in return for publishing in any major newspaper or magazine, to sign away their rights to the sale of their work in any electronic form, including databases accessible on the Internet.

In the real world of education, it means professors give up the "intellectual property" right to their lectures when they are put online or distributed by video.

In the real world, it means researchers do not get grants unless they agree to demonstrate the commercial applications of their work, or unless they agree to join a strategic team that includes private companies eager to commercialize findings, including all intellectual property generated out of the research process.

Gutstein successfully documents how market-obsessed governments are making it easy to turn the Internet's visionary promise into just another way to make money -- extending the market into schools, libraries and research.

His is a major accomplishment because the scope of the problem is vast and because it means taking on the spin masters in business and government who expect the only reasonable response to their hymns of praise to the new technology is "Amen."

Nevertheless, Gutstein could have done a better job of identifying important tensions, conflicts and opposition that make the process of turning the Information Highway into little more than a toll road to the mall less than inevitable.

There are some important differences within government about the Industry Canada-dominated strategy, important tensions within business (businesses require rules and some worry that the CRTC's abdication may not be good for business) and, perhaps most significantly, many models for alternative uses of the Net. This latter point deserved more than the few pages tacked on at the end of the book.

Moreover -- and this may reflect the sorry state of the publishing industry which now provides almost no editorial help to less than blockbuster authors -- the book contains several errors of fact, spelling and expression. Nevertheless, this is a book worth reading because it challenges the dominant enthusiasm of "dot-com" fever, points to the dangers of using the Net to commercialize education and research, and makes a good case for a strong public presence on the Net enshrined in a much-needed set of basic information rights, foremost among them the right to communicate.

Vincent Mosco is professor of communication at Carleton University. His most recent book is The Political Economy of Communication. He is also writing a book on the Myths of Cyberspace.