Why The Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization is a digital book/iPad app that develops a new kind of way to navigate a non-fiction argument, to zoom in and out on 3D interactive figures, and to navigate with random-access chapters. This is not an iBook, but instead a new species of book. You can pick up Why The Net Matters on the iTunes Store.

• “Some of the most fascinating books around aren’t books; they’re superbooks — books with so much functionality that they’re sold as apps. Consider David Eagleman’s “Why the Net Matters,” a book about the Internet with photos, animation and even 3D.” – Virginia Heffernan, New York Times Magazine
• “This is an impressive and intriguing work” – Leo Hollis, The Telegraph (UK)
• “I read it in one sitting, engrossed…. This bold restatement of the political and social potential of the web was useful and intelligent in its simplicity.” Chris Meade,BookFutures.
• “A very enjoyable app with Eagleman’s ideas very accessible and engaging.” – Sam Missingham, FutureBook.net
• “Why the Net Matters on the iPad is a breakthrough work, showing the way for generations of digital books to come.  Text has never been so spectacularly illustrated; intellectual argument has never been so fluidly designed.  And Eagleman’s message is as revolutionary as his format: The Internet protects civilization from collapse without even trying."  – Stewart Brand, President, The Long Now Foundation

Why the Net Matters was a finalist for the Digital Book World Innovation Awards.

What’s the book about? Why the Net Matters argues that the advent of the internet sidesteps the dangers that brought down previous civilizations.  If you’d like a taste of the content, here’s a talk I delivered at the Long Now Foundation (For over a week this was the most watched video on fora.tv, and was ranked the #8 technology talk of 2010)

This thesis about the internet started life as a short piece I wrote in Nature in 2006 about the internet and epidemics, and then fleshed out in a short essay on Edge.org and later in WIRED UK.

To participate in discussion about the ideas, please click on Discuss here on in the menu on the left.

Here’s a demonstration of the app in action:

Please click on the links on the left to read excerpts and see screenshots.