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[ 
Cross posted from The Adelaide Bookshelf ]
My teenage stepson is named David, so I was half expecting a book about an army of teenagers that ransack bedrooms and lay waste pantries.
Instead I am treated to a mind-stretching tour through the collapse of big business and big government ‘Goliaths’ as the countless millions of little ‘Davids’ beat them at everything from business flexibility to aiding the underprivileged.
Along the way I am exposed to the leading thinkers of the day as nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence and futurist philosophers have their ideas discussed and in some cases dissected.
This is not a book for Luddites, for it will give them no comfort. Predictions based on allegedly proven and sound mathematics offer scenarios where by 2050 man-made intelligent machines will self-replicate, self-improve and outstrip us. By 2050 we can expect to be able to free of all known diseases, including aging, should we so choose.
The book starts gently enough. Roberts looks at the new publishing freedom created by the latest web developments, leading to an online environment many are calling ‘Web2.0′ as a reflection of how ‘improved’ it is from the ‘Web1.0′ we are all used to. Pointing out that this ‘new’ internet allows much more self-publishing freedom, grass-roots interactivity and ‘conversation’, Roberts shows how it is the grass-roots levels that are where innovation and change come from, not from ‘top-down’ Goliaths.
He then leads us through the decline and eventual fall of the Goliaths of business and government, as the Davids out-pace, out-think and out-smart them. Profuse with examples, author, scientist and advisor to governments Glenn Reynolds spells out clearly why he believes the role of Government will wind back to encourage and develop more and more Davids; clearly at the expense of the slow-moving monolith corporations.
Along the way, because of the increase in self-employment and work-from-home opportunities the new economy of mass-creation / individual-customisation we are currently just entering will create, local crime will drop, individual satisfaction will increase but all with the caveat that those who are unwilling to embrace the ‘new’ will be left behind.
As the Institute of Future Studies in Copenhagen points out, in the near future there will be two classes of worker: ‘creative’ and ‘non-creative’. As the non-creative work gets ‘farmed out’ to economies with lower costs of production, so there will remain only the creative jobs.
‘Creative’, for them, means the willingness to embrace flexibility, uncertainty and, as Charles Handy says, create portolios of work for themselves; ‘to be self-employed consultants’ is another way of thinking about it.
Reynolds has his own blog, of course — Instapundit.com — but I found the blog curiously unsatisfying after the book. Instead of weighty ideas, the blog just contains links off to material with very little editorial thought or content to accompany these links. Disappointing.
Reynolds is not shy of using examples to back up his viewpoints. Consider, for example, the most recent computer revolution to touch my own life: wireless broadband. By using my laptop, a wireless card and a wireless connection to broadband I can sit with the whole family in the kitchen and still work. I am no longer tied to my home office, squirreled away from the rest of the family and their conversations — I can now partake in family life and get my work done.
This ‘third place’ of working is becoming so popular that coffee bars, restaurants, even churches, are installing wireless broadband connections so that small office/home office (’SOHO’s) operators bring much valued custom to them — even to the point of having meetings there. Reynolds cites one commercial realtor who says such a move away from small offices to coffee shops and restaurants is creating havoc and growing redundancy in the small office market.
As an example of the power of Davids (one of many that Reynolds cites), there was an informal co-operative arrangement between the ferry and small boat operators around the Twin Towers after 9/11. They kept an emergency supply and resupply operation for the emergency workers going for four days before an ‘official’ agency took control. The unofficial Davids used their ferries and small craft, in an operation similar to the small vessel floating armada that outwitted the Germans at Dunkirk in World War II, to bring in and take out water, fuel, food, steel cables, pylons, structural ironworkers, boots, oxygen and oxyacetylene cylinders. It wasn’t just an evacuation: it was a whole alternative logistic system that sprang up out of need and without any ‘assistance’ or intervention from government agencies. An army of Davids who self-organised to meet a need. Reynold’s book is stuffed full of such examples.
Consider, too, how NASA is repositioning itself away from the ‘only’ brains trust that can investigate space travel. Now they finance competitions to get reusable craft into space and the money they are now paying to individual Davids in prizes is small change compared to what they themselves so appallingly squandered, but (and this is the really clever bit) they only pay out for proven technology. Not one tax payer dollar is wasted on experimentation and failure! The cost of failure and experimentation is instead paid by an army of entrepreneurial Davids who, in turn, are not risk averse and catapult the space industry forward at a time when NASA can only snail crawl.
His views on terraforming Mars to enable the establishment of human colonies are fascinating!
And how’s this for an amazing piece of trivia: when your word processor launches, the brief pause before the screen opens involves the equivalent of about two thousand years of pen-and-paper calculation.
The book is a ‘cracker’, as they say in Northern England. As a guide to understanding where business and government are currently heading, and why if they don’t change direction they will go bankrupt, the book is a worthwhile read.
But it is the near-future ideas that make the book compelling — whether you agree such changes are for good or evil, the chances are very real that what you read about in this book will come to pass within the next 40 years (or sooner).
at Dymocks Adelaide and reserve your copy now. Price: AUD$49.95 (+ shipping if appropriate).
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