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Title: Next: The Future Just Happened by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0-393-32352-8 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.94 (86 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Outsiders rule!
Comment: This is an excellent book that rationally examines the Internet and the social change it has invoked. Rather than just bemoan and whine about the impact, Lewis has bothered to investigate the reasons for the myriad changes. His book should be required reading for sociology and business classes. He has a sarcastic wit yet keen insight into the radical shifts that have taken place, and he speculates on what the future might bring.
Central to Lewis's observations is the idea that the Internet has altered the relationship between the "insiders" and the "outsiders": between those who formerly controlled information and its flow to their benefit i.e., those who try to define what that information is, and those who have always been denied access to that power and information because of youth, lack of formal education, or lack of capital.
In Next, Lewis shows how the Internet is the ideal model for sociologists who believe that our "selves are merely the masks we wear in response to the social situations in which we find ourselves." On the Internet, a boy barely in his teens flouts the investment system, making big enough bucks to get the SEC breathing down his neck for stock market fraud. What really makes them mad is that he has beaten them at their own game. When being accused of "manipulating" stock prices, he throws their logic back at them, asserting that that's the whole point of the stock market, that without manipulation, there would be no stock market. He watched stocks being hyped by professionals at the behest of companies and to the benefit of their own portfolios, in a world where companies cared more about their stock's value than the products they produced. A Blomberg study revealed that amateur predictions were twice as likely to be correct than those of stock analyst professionals.
Markus, a bored adolescent, too young to drive, became one of the most respected legal advisors on Askme.com. His legal expertise came from watching myriads of legal television shows and from searching out the answers on the Internet. Ironically, his information appears to have been correct, and even the head of the American Bar Association admitted that most legal counsel is simply a matter of dispensing appropriate information. The story of how Askme.com got started is in itself instructive. It was designed by a software company to permit corporations to create an intranet that provided the capability for anyone to ask a question and anyone else in the corporation to provide an answer. Thus the information flow would change from the traditional top down pyramid model to a more pancake-shaped environment where information moved horizontally. It could be a bit unsettling for some people to see a vice-president get assistance from an assembly line worker, but the results were much more profitable companies, so the software became quite popular. The only concern prospective customers had was whether a product could withstand heavy usage, so the designers created Askme.com, a public site where people could ask questions of others. It became so popular that it was getting 10 million hits per day, and experts were vying for top rankings from those they assisted. Markus was so accommodating and his information so reliable that he was once asked by a "client" to provide the defense in court. Fortunately, his mother wouldn't drive him to court, but he supplied legal briefs and other legal documents that were accepted. The pyramid flattening to a pancake has become a metaphor for all that is happening around us.
Gnutella, the famous peer-to-peer software, is also examined as an example of the new relationships that have arisen from the ubiquitous nature of the Internet. It, too, demonstrates how the social order has been reversed and prestige redistributed. The corrosive effect of money, the lessening of gambling as sinful, and the devaluation of formal training in the exchange of knowledge ("casual thought went well with casual dress,") are additional side effects.
Lewis writes so smoothly. His observations are often funny as he describes people's behavior and familial interactions. The Internet has provided a window through which even youngsters, like the teenage investor, can "glimpse the essential truth of the market -- that even people who call themselves professionals were often incapable of independent thought and that most people , though obsessed with money, had little ability to make decisions about it." It's also clear from his examples, most illuminatingly the interviews with the SEC and the parents, that most adults have no idea what's happening around them, and that these youngsters are becoming proficient at the same tools available to the "experts." Lewis's observations, in my experience, are valid, but whether they are entirely due to the Internet is problematic. Certainly, anyone can set him/herself up as a consultant merely by making speculative announcements publicly and then charging huge fees regardless of whether the information is appropriate, valid, or even false. We are surrounded by silly, self-esteem-building, "creativity" workshops that are singularly lacking in content and substance. We are told that all we need do is have a little passion for something in order to be successful. Competence has little to do with anything any more.
I remember a call from a father inebriatingly asking why it was necessary for his son to take certain courses - Shakespeare was one of them - that the father and the boy deemed to be unnecessary since his son was already making so much money in the stock market. My explanation that one of the roles of a multi-faceted education was to create a compassionate and informed citizenry fell on stony ground. Clearly, the only value this family had was monetary.
Keep your eye on the outsiders.
Rating: 4
Summary: Starts out slow, but picks up the pace soon enough
Comment: Michael Lewis describes how the internet revolution has allowed teenagers to influence the stock market, the music industry, and even the interpretation of law itself. Lewis investigated various sites on the internet, and then interviewed the people responsible for the material. Lewis discovered that by masking their identities, teenagers are able to do pretty much anything they want. Fifteen year old Jonathon Lebed manipulates the investment system, making about $800,000. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) forces Jonathon to hand over some but not all of his profits, proving that even the government cannot do anything about the number of kids who are overtaking the business world. The next kid that Lewis interviewed is also a fifteen year old boy, Marcus Arnold from Perris California. Marcus disguises himself as an attorney, offering free legal advice to whoever needed it. Even after revealing his true identity Marcus ends up #1 on AskMe.Com. Finally Lewis interviews a fourteen year old British boy a follower of the creator of Gnutella, a web-based file sharing program. Lewis also reveals that it was a mastermind nineteen year old who was responsible for the worldwide file sharing system, Napster.
It is always interesting to find out that kids have the power to change the world. Although this book was a bit of a slow read at first, it soon picked up its pace.
I recommend this book to everyone, especially teenagers. Also if you're a big internet fan, this book might inspire you to do who knows what.
Rating: 4
Summary: Next the future just happend
Comment: :
The book shows how ones life can be affected by the Stock Market. Jonathan Lebed is 14-year-old boy who is accused of Stock Market fraud. Lewis shows Jonathan in a family setting just to depict the stress the stock market could cause on a small town family. One of the main point that Lewis is showing in presented when he writes, "the point is even a fourteen-year-old boy could see how it worked-why some guy working for free out of a basement in Jackson, Missouri was more reliable than the most highly paid analyst on Wall street"(pg.57). The problem was not that Jonathan did what he did but that fact that he was so young an inexperienced.
By reading this book it further my knowledge on how misleading the Stock Market could be when I agree to invest my income I will be more cautious.
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Title: The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140296468 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 08 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Money Culture by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140173188 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Losers: The Road to Everyplace but the White House by MICHAEL LEWIS ISBN: 0679768092 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0393057658 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 10 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140143459 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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