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Title: Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism and Social Revolution by Jim Davis, Thomas Hirschl, Michael Stack ISBN: 1-85984-185-6 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting Collection of Essays
Comment: Very thought inspiring collection of essays that address the social and economic implications of technology. Not very light reading and not very heavy - somewhere in between. May help to have some very elementary economics background. Worth reading if you're interested in understanding what technology may do to capitalism and the workforce.

Rating: 5
Summary: Welcome to the Machine
Comment: This collection of essays examines the historical and current role of technologies- never neutral, but always integral to a dominant class' agenda and planning masked as a reified objectivity - in partially determining the class struggle. Particularly, the ongoing telecommunications, "information" and robotics sectors introduce a qualitatively radical transformation of social relations by appropiating into capital the mind and soul of the workers, rendering us redundant just as the steam engine and electric motor technologies earlier rendered workers' bodies and physical power partially without value. The increasing genocide (for the workers at the low edge of the global hierarchy) and pauperization of various degrees for the rest by the corporate transnational state is made possible for the greedy rulers and technocrats by the degradation of the power of labor in the context of a society approaching total automation and terrabit-per-second panoptic global communications. The maintenance of coercive class relations through such contrived means as "intellectual property rights", the artificial scarcity and thought control induced by such media as cable tv and the dismantling of public services is turning more of us into a new Roman proletariat, with technology serving the role of ancient slaves in marginalizing our vital endeavors. Instead, we're force fed a sad circus of televised slaughters for our patriotic entertainment while the Reagans, Bushes, Clintons and Mc.Cains thank us "for serving". A worthy book which I found full of insights for aggessive resistance against the old masters now beaming in cyber cloth. To their new digital hype, we should be armed with essays like these- along with some physical ammunition, for certain- and give a convincing reply of Non Serviat.

Rating: 5
Summary: Considerably advanced my revolutionary understanding!
Comment: Cutting Edge has considerably advanced my revolutionarly understanding. I intend to read parts of it again & again. My 10 rating should be applied only to parts of this collection of essays. The balance of the book I would rate a 5. I was particularly impressed with chapter 8, The Digital Advantage by Jim Davis & Michael Stack. Warning! Don't read this chapter before bed time. My brain was so stimulated, I had a hard time getting to sleep after I read it. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Great stuff! On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 20! The other chapters that got the a lot of yellow from my hilighter: Introduction, Robots & Capitalism, High-Tech Hype, The Digital Advantage, The Biotechnology Revolution, Structural Unemployment & the Qualitative Transformation of Capitalism, The New Technological Imperative in Africa, and The Birth of a Modern Proletariat by one of my heroes, Nelson Peery. I strongly recommend this book to any thinking person!