BOOKS: NERD WITHIN

If it's true, as they say, that a year on the Internet equals seven in the real world, then Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace (Simon & Schuster; 288 pages; $25) by John Seabrook might have been an epic. Thank goodness it isn't. A travelogue for the literate geek in all of us, Deeper is packed with useful nuggets of info and insight, but its real virtue lies in what it puts aside: the sweeping Olympian perspective adopted by most "wired" writers.

Instead, Seabrook (a New Yorker writer and scion of the Seabrook frozen-food family) keeps his feet firmly planted in...