Publisher Description
How will we live well in a super-networked, information-soaked, yet predictably irrational world? The only way to know is to understand how the way we think is changing.
As economist Tyler Cowen boldly shows in Create Your Own Economy, the way we think now is changing more rapidly than it has in a very long time. Not since the Industrial Revolution has a man-made creation—in this case, the World Wide Web—so greatly influenced the way our minds work and our human potential. Cowen argues brilliantly that we are breaking down cultural information into ever-smaller tidbits, ordering and reordering them in our minds (and our computers) to meet our own specific needs.
Create Your Own Economy explains why the coming world of Web 3.0 is good for us; why social networking sites such as Facebook are so necessary; what’s so great about “Tweeting” and texting; how education will get better; and why politics, literature, and philosophy will become richer. This is a revolutionary guide to life in the new world.
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“An interesting book that discusses the cognitive traits of autistics and relates them to things like the internet, Facebook, Twitter, the IPod, politics, and other subjects. The idea is that these technologies allow us to impose our own order on things that were previously ordered for us (e.g. MP3 files versus CDs) and the desire to impose order and classification on things are autistic traits. The discussion of the strengths of autistic traits was interesting as well as the discussion about how many influential historical figures such as Adam Smith may have had these traits as well (though Cowen is careful to point out that it is impossible to make a firm diagnosis based just on history). It is a book that covers an unusual, but very interesting, set of topics. Fans of Cowen’s work (which I am one) will enjoy it.”
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Chris (4 out of 5 stars)
