Electronic Data Interchange is basically a system by which one business exchanges electronic documents with another. EDI has been around for a long time, but mainly in proprietary environments. For example, a big automaker like GM might have a custom software application connected to its suppliers by a private network, that allowed them to electronically file purchase orders, invoices, and such. Naturally the Internet will make EDI even more prevalent, most EDI applications shifting to a more open system. Documents that are now sent over proprietary networks can now simply be encoded as a MIME type, and sent via e-mail.
Internet advertising is covered very briefly, as is the field of information search on the Web.
Digital copyrights, software agents, Internet protocols, digital video, broadband telecommunications, mobile and wireless computing, and structured documents all merit a chapter apiece in this hefty tome. To sum up, there is a lot of good information here, but you sure do have to slog through a lot of pages to get to the good stuff. The writing style is very verbose, and somewhat dry, and the writers often go into great detail about subjects only very marginally related to electronic commerce. The huge size and scope of this book is actually its weakest point. There's meat here for those who aren't afraid to wade through an academic avalanche of text, but be advised that this is no bedtime story.