I tried to explain this book to a colleague before christmas break; how it utterly fashinated me, even though I feel I only understood it partly, and how it had provided me with a new lens with which to see the world.
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It must have caught his interest, cuz when I got back to work we had lunch and he told me he had devoured the book and was working his way through another work by the same authors, Digital Libido, and was enthusiastically urging me to do the same.
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The book, written in 2000, talks about a new paradigm. The transition from capitalism to informationalism in the wake of the internet era and how, like any genuine revolution means that the whole Darwinian system of punishment and rewards are restructured, introducing a new over and underclass.
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The idea of this new system, the Netocracy, was invented in the 90:s is re-invented in this book by contemporary Internet philosophers Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist.
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📝 Before we ran away from strangers that looked strong. Now we engage them and gain mutual benefits.
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📝 The Consumtariat: Consumption rather than production is the role of the new underclass.
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📝 Politicians are selected based on their value as entertainment and what narrative they can fit into. They are elected to to feed the headlines.
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📝 Money will follow attention, not vice versa. The only hard currency on the net is attention.
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📝 Knowledge, contacts and exclusive information replaces capital for the netocrat.
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📝 “Technology plays its own hand”
Take the clock: innocent enough of an artifact. But this infernal little machine, with its introduction of second and minutes, have retrospectively given a whole new meaning to our perception of time.
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📝 “Giving birth is simply not fashionable anymore.”
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⭐️ TAKEAWAY:
Great book to read before reflecting on how to navigate the 3rd decade of the 21st century. Is what you do professionally raising in value or is it losing its value in this new paradigm?
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⚖️ VERDICT:
A must-read and total mindf*ck. Being outdated is one of the strengths of this book. Because now, 20 years after the books release, we can see its predictions manifest in everyday life.
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5/5
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This was the right book at the wrong time for me. I can see myself loving it 10 years ago, when I was had a more gloomy and cynical outlook on life, I can hear myself saying, “This book really gets it”. (It don’t miss those days. 😂)
