Books: Next
by rrusczyk, Sep 14, 2008, 2:14 AM
Next by Michael Lewis
I've read a few other books by Michael Lewis. The book that launched his career was Liars' Poker, which was my first required reading when I started at Shaw. (Actually, my only required reading. On day 2, my boss pushed all my other reading aside and put me on a high-priority project, but that's a fun story for another day.) More recently, I enjoyed Blindside and Moneyball. This book is a bit older, from just after the dot-com implosion in 2000-01. This book was meant as an argument that the internet really is all that and a bag of chips, stock market crash or not.
His arguments started mainly from some very engaging anecdotes about what would-be marginal players (teenagers in a couple cases) accomplished on the internet, in some cases because they were anonymous. These anecdotes were very interesting, but Lewis's broad sweeping futurology generalizations from them were shaky, at best. (To be fair, he apologized pretty profusely in the Afterword for his more ridiculous forays in this area.)
When reading books like this, I almost always start wondering if there's something bigger we should be doing with AoPS (and if you think of something, please share!). Through the first 150 pages, two of the biggest themes Lewis pressed was that the internet allowed people to circumvent traditional credentials and distribution channels. I'm embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until page 150 that I realized that he was talking about AoPS. Here we are, a group of people who cannot teach in public schools and don't have the higher degrees to write textbooks, and we're running a school and writing books used by many of the best students in the country. Granted, the latter happened even before the internet with the original AoPS books, but the scale at which we're able to do it now is entirely due to the internet. And it's pretty cool. (That said, even though my livelihood depends on the internet, I don't find the internet nearly as socially revolutionary as most futurologists do. Electricity, railroads, cars, the telephone, and television are all higher on the list in my book.)
I won't dive into the details of the anecdotes, but I will note that I was amazed that someone could write a whole book about the internet and it revolutionizing society in 2001 without ever writing the word "Google". I guess this just anecdotally supports his view that implementations of technology and their importance are changing more and more quickly. But it does cast some doubt on his futurology skills, for sure.
I've read a few other books by Michael Lewis. The book that launched his career was Liars' Poker, which was my first required reading when I started at Shaw. (Actually, my only required reading. On day 2, my boss pushed all my other reading aside and put me on a high-priority project, but that's a fun story for another day.) More recently, I enjoyed Blindside and Moneyball. This book is a bit older, from just after the dot-com implosion in 2000-01. This book was meant as an argument that the internet really is all that and a bag of chips, stock market crash or not.
His arguments started mainly from some very engaging anecdotes about what would-be marginal players (teenagers in a couple cases) accomplished on the internet, in some cases because they were anonymous. These anecdotes were very interesting, but Lewis's broad sweeping futurology generalizations from them were shaky, at best. (To be fair, he apologized pretty profusely in the Afterword for his more ridiculous forays in this area.)
When reading books like this, I almost always start wondering if there's something bigger we should be doing with AoPS (and if you think of something, please share!). Through the first 150 pages, two of the biggest themes Lewis pressed was that the internet allowed people to circumvent traditional credentials and distribution channels. I'm embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until page 150 that I realized that he was talking about AoPS. Here we are, a group of people who cannot teach in public schools and don't have the higher degrees to write textbooks, and we're running a school and writing books used by many of the best students in the country. Granted, the latter happened even before the internet with the original AoPS books, but the scale at which we're able to do it now is entirely due to the internet. And it's pretty cool. (That said, even though my livelihood depends on the internet, I don't find the internet nearly as socially revolutionary as most futurologists do. Electricity, railroads, cars, the telephone, and television are all higher on the list in my book.)
I won't dive into the details of the anecdotes, but I will note that I was amazed that someone could write a whole book about the internet and it revolutionizing society in 2001 without ever writing the word "Google". I guess this just anecdotally supports his view that implementations of technology and their importance are changing more and more quickly. But it does cast some doubt on his futurology skills, for sure.
February 2012
January 2012