Product Description

The basis of a four-part prime-time BBC series, this volume offers an accessible portrait of modern times, and explores how digital technology, and the Internet in particular, has changed the way we live. The author argues that not only does our generation now have the easiest access to more information than ever before, but more importantly this has changed our attitudes to how we run our lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #760734 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Michael Lewis' The Future Just Happened is for readers who have ever had the sneaking suspicion that the Internet is radically changing the world as you know it. Buckle up--it is. While some people celebrate this and others bemoan it, Lewis has been busy investigating the reasons for this rapid change. Employing the keen recognition of social shifts and the sarcastic wit that readers of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing will be familiar with, Lewis takes us on a quick spin through tomorrow and speculates on what that might mean for today.

Central to Lewis' observations is the idea that the Internet hasn't really caused anything; rather it fills a type of social hole, the most obvious of which, according to Lewis, is a need to alter relations between "insiders" and "outsiders". In The Future Just Happened, Lewis shows how the Internet is the ideal demonstration model for the sociologists who believe that our "selves are merely the masks we wear in response to the social situations in which we find ourselves". It is the place where a New Jersey boy barely into his teens flouts the investment system, making big enough bucks to get the SEC breathing down his back for stock market fraud. Where Markus, a bored adolescent stuck in a dusty desert town and too young to even drive, becomes the number 1 requested legal expert on Askme.com, doling out advice on everything from how to plead to murder charges to how much an Illinois resident can profit from illegal gains before being charged with fraud ($5001. was the figure Markus supplied to this particular cost-benefit analysis query). Where a left-leaning kid of 14 in a depressed town outside Manchester is too poor to take up a partial scholarship to a school for gifted children but who spends all hours (all cheap call-time hours, at least) engaged in "digital socialism", and trying to develop a successor to Gnutella, the notorious file-sharing program that had spawned the new field of Peer to Peer Computing. Lewis burrows deeply into each of these stories and others, pulling out and examining what he notices as a number of key social factors the Internet has contributed to: the redistribution of prestige and authority and the reversal of the social order, the erosive effect on the money culture (both in the democratisation of capital and in the effect of gambling losing its "status as a sin"), the decreased value we place on formal training (or as he puts it "casual thought went well with casual dress") and the increased need for knowledge exchange.

Lewis' observations are piercingly sharp. He can be very funny in his portrayal of the way in which ordinary people are enacting the changes the Internet is facilitating in society, but remains thorough and insightful in his examination of the social consequences of these changes. He notes that Jonathan Lebed, the teenage online investor, had "glimpsed the essential truth of the market--that even people who called themselves professionals were often incapable of independent thought and that most people, though obsessed with money, had little ability to make decisions about it" and then relays the subtly revealing account of mistaken identity during his own interview with the director of the SEC. While his commentary gets a little more dense and theoretical toward the end, Lewis' book is an entertaining, thought-provoking look at life in an Internet-driven world. -- S. Ketchum

Review
One is tempted to be uncharitable and write "pot-boiler" in a discussion of this book by Michael Lewis, the tie-in to a four-part BBC TV series. The publisher's blurb, describing it as a "wonderful exploration of how new technology affects our lives" with specific relevance to the internet, sounds at once both daunting and slightly hackneyed. Lewis sees new technology as a Trojan Horse for subtle social changes that are far more interesting than the hardware itself. His book consists of four long essays: Old versus New, Professional versus Amateur, Here versus There and Tyranny versus Freedom, which may put the general reader on his or her guard. Fortunately Lewis's characteristic light prose style saves the day, his account being redeemed by elements of satire and irony - the absence of which would surely have left a lesser writer floundering in dryness. Those who enjoyed his well-received previous book The New New Thing will recognise the roots of this new work stem from that, and will want to read his new portrait of modern times.

Observer
'...these are absorbing exercises in higher journalism, entertaining and disturbing in equal measure'

Customer Reviews

Interesting read - but nothing special
This book is like the TV series - quite interesting at the time but instantly forgetable. The book is actually a collection of short stories about young people who have used the Internet in unusual ways. Most of the stories are interesting - but some are not! There's a much better book in Michael Lewis than this - he hints at it when he discusses politics, the fall of Communism and the New World Order. But this one is OK - if you want to read a few interesting anecdotes about the Internet. Wait for the paperback.

Lewis really inspires you with the effects of the Internet.
On first glance this book is a bunch of tales about crazy things that have happened on the Internet. Such as the teenager that made $800,000 on stocks by giving stock-buying advice. Or the teenager that gives out legal advice and is bestowed more praise than the 100 certified lawyers that also give advice at a particular newsgroup. But this is not a freak show like Jerry Springer with a shallow 'moral' highlighted - this goes much deeper. It examines each of the cases with a highly intelligent and searching eye, cast much wider that these isolated cases and gives a convincing commentary on what *social* changes are going on, made possible by the Internet. The later chapters are absolutely rivetting as Lewis filters the evidence with a healthy cynism and conservatism, before coming to convincing, but daunting ideas and conclusions of where we are heading. For instance, in this Knowledge Economy, where your brain is your biggest asset (instead of braun in the agricultural revolution, or capital in the industrial revolution), Lewis suggests that our working careers are will be like a professional sports person - ends at 30 when you are too attached to old ideas to innovate. If you saw the TV series and enjoyed that, then the book really gets into a lot more exciting detail and convincing commentary. A fab read cover to cover, even for non-techies.

This one got me thinking...
Thought provoking - even for someone like me who works in the industry. Lewis' views on the Internet world compare to the style of his writing in Liars Poker, where he mixes humour with astute perceptions. A good read - even for the 'outsider' (or should that be 'insider')??