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Book Reviews: Next - The Future Just Happened by Michael Lewis

In this book, Michael Lewis explores how the Internet has encouraged changes in the way people live their lives. While he doesn’t view the Internet as causing revolutionary change, he does see it as a tool that facilitates certain trends already in progress. These trends include the flattening of hierarchies, the development of closer relationships between insiders and outsides, and the increased influence of younger and younger individuals in technological areas.

Lewis spends considerable time describing three particular teenagers who represent different instances of trends exaggerated by the availability of Internet access. The first is Jonathan Lebed, a New Jersey teenager who was fined by the SEC for “manipulating” the stock market. The second is Marcus Arnold, a Southern California teenager who became the top-rated legal advisor on a website called AskMe.com, consulted by thousands of adults. The third is Daniel Sheldon, a British teenager who became a leader in the peer-to-peer computing movement, and advocates the notion that all intellectual property should be free. Lewis spends considerable time interviewing these youths, with a goal of understanding how they became revolutionaries, and what trends they exemplify that were already in place in society (e.g. the democratization of the stock market, the fall of lawyers and other professional from their elite pedestals, and the loss of copyright protection that follows from digital media). For all three teenagers, the Internet allowed them to use masks to reinvent themselves, and challenge figures of central authority. A British rock band, Marrillion, is another example.

The book is a little bit fragmented. The two last sections are about how the Internet is changing the traditional models of television advertising and polling, and about the backlash against technology by certain technology pioneers, while interesting, are very distinct from the first two sections. Overall, however, the use of stories about and interviews with real people make this book a fun and interesting read. Lewis has a knack for making the reader think about the larger issues, without laying down the law about what the reader “should” be thinking.

If you would like to buy this book, just click on the following link to open a new window and go directly to Next on Amazon’s website. FabTime is an Amazon affiliate.