- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Reuters; 1 edition (7 May 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1903684293
- ISBN-13: 978-1903684290
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 16.7 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 184,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
"Read it for the reason business information company Reuters published it: to understand why power in your workplace and your world isn't where you thought."New Scientist
"Contains interesting insights (into the growing likelihood of populist violence among the displaced and dispossessed.)" New Statesman
"An extraordinary book." Computer Weekly
"Digging deeper and wider than any previous effort into what the information revolution truly means, Netocracy is the must-read for anybody even remotely interested in what those kids out there are actually doing to us all with their gadgets. It's a bigger, more dramatic and very different change from what we had expected. Netocracy is the unsurpassable how and when of this whole revolution." Kjell A. Nordström and Jonas Ridderstrale, authors of Funky Business – talent makes capital dance.
"He's seen the future. A renaissance man of many talents, Bard is either a genius or a madman. You decide" The Times Magazine, July 2003
"Alexander Bard, author of 80 hit singles in Scandinavia, is a record producer, Internet mogul, philosophy enthusiast, and much more." FTDynamo, Euro-Gurus
"Netocracy is a fresh take on the information revolution. Bard and Soderqvist's concepts are clear and meticulously explained...the book is a brave account of the challenges ahead." Mail & Guardian Online (South Africa)
Computer Weekly, July 2002
An extraordinary book.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
As we wrote in the Introduction to the original edition of this book, it is about time that someone got a firm grip on the most difficult and important issues arising when a new form of information technology is breaking through on all fronts: What will happen to the state? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
As we wrote in the Introduction to the original edition of this book, it is about time that someone got a firm grip on the most difficult and important issues arising when a new form of information technology is breaking through on all fronts: What will happen to the state? Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful
I don't often give a book 5 stars but this book is a classic. It's one of those rare non-fiction (?) books that you can't put down. I genuinely looked forward to my next instalment each time I stopped. It's very ambitious - covering the history of the world, political systems, and philosophy - but this gives it great pace. The authors' psycho-babble is a little irritating and their analysis is simplistic (capitalism is meant to just wither away without a wimper) - but what an analysis! The authors certainly have the courage of their convictions and clearly describe the future as they see it. This book deserves to be read by every serious person.
14 of 19 people found the following review helpful
This book is seriously disappointing.
I share the authors' frustration at the levels of public debate about the so-called digital future - much of it, as they say, characterised by "ignorance and childishness". Like them, I am tired of "the intoxicated optimists" and "the gloomy pessimists". Current developments in information technology and, in particular, their impact on society are of great importance. They merit the disciplined analysis that the blurb suggests the book will provide: "Digging deeper and wider than any previous effort into what the information revolution really means..." But it fails to deliver what it promises.
What we get instead is a book that is itself ignorant in its review of the historical antecedents of modern society and childish in its treatment of how information technology is changing the world: long on assertion but short on analysis, and curiously obsessed with class war and status. Perhaps I should have been warned by the title: "Netocracy" - rather too often, strange made-up words (and this book is stuffed with them) herald woolly thinking. But when, only a few pages into the Introduction, up came the dreaded "paradigm shift", I suspected trouble. And I got it.
The book's central and simplistic assertion is this: just as the feudal system, where the aristocracy had power over the peasants, was ousted (in a paradigm shift) by the capitalist system where the bourgeoisie had power over the proletariat, so (in another paradigm shift) the capitalist system is today being ousted by the "informationalist" system where the "netocracy" has power over the "consumtariat". And, surprise, we are told that the new elite, the "netocrats", are those who, rather like our authors, have good communication and social skills, are media-savvy and know how to network, how to distinguish useful information from nonsense, how to overcome "outdated individualism" and how to manipulate the poor old consumtariat.
Media-focused networkers undoubtedly have great influence in Western society. And it may well be growing. But, if they are as muddled as are the authors of this book, the assertion that they are becoming the new power elite is a serious case of wishful thinking. Dream on.
10 of 15 people found the following review helpful
If you read 'Netocracy' as a means of conserving your current worldview - as academic nerds and business boys alike tend to do when approaching a new book - and just get a few tips out of it how to improve your own odds at survival in the competitive career market, well, then you're in for a big surprise! The pillage approach to literature doesn't work here, since 'Netocracy' is philosophy on its most vital and fundamental level, while always remaining impressively accessible. Preconceptions don't work here, and have to go, to get at what this book is all about. For example: The new is not new in the classic sense, it's a new ordering of the old, and it's exactly because of this that it's so hard to understand both the new AND its newness. Still, understanding this newness is what one must do if one is to understand the future and make something sensible out of it. My warning is: The minute you think you've outsmarted these Scandinavian philosophers is when they start laughing back at you and you're forced to admit you've been fooled again (although you've simultaneously reached a deeper level of understanding, which is of course the proper payoff for you reading it!). 'Netocracy' explains why September 11 happened (the relationship between trends and contratrends), it explains why accountants and cops aren't getting away with the stuff they used to get away with (transparency), why the Internet is all about diminshing profits and increased efficiency, rather than a pot of gold for those business boys whose worldview it blows to pieces in its first three chapters. What ultimately surprises me is what this book is doing in the business and finance section of bookstores: Another smart undercover strategy from the authors and/or the publishers? Normally 'Netocracy' would be an international bestseller for Routledge or Verso next to the likes of Slavoj Zizek. But has a book ever been a better and more surprising and world-altering read for the business community? I doubt it. And that's why it well deserves its five stars. Watch those business suits change within days for zen meditation costumes. A new old zen meditation costume, of course. Zen was always there, but not in the places where you'd expect it. And THAT is the true new!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
pseudo-intellectual disappointment
I found that the contents of this book didn't even begin to deliver the message as on the flyleaf and from other reviews. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2004 by Keith Appleyard
Pseudo-intellectual claptrap
The book grossly misrepresents and trivialises many good thinkers/theories/models (both those supporting and detracting from its theses). Read more
Published on 9 July 2002 by "marcpienaar"
Good questions, but answers beg more
5 stars for the questions and issues raised, about the future of society in the new age of global networks of information, but at most 3 for the answers, which lack depth,... Read more
Published on 5 Jun 2002 by A. Simon Grant
the sharpest take on the new world order
Essentially, an exploration of what comes after capitalism. A hugely ambitious and thought-provoking book, Netocracy is the first genuine attempt to pull together the big issues... Read more
Published on 16 May 2002 by marcuspparker@aol.com
unique revelation
The Swedish version of this book really hit a nerve and generated intense debate. Some of the neologisms immediately found their way into, for example, the parliament. Read more
Published on 18 April 2002
The first major work of philosophy of the 21st century.
We have heard about a forthcoming paradigm shift and the arrival of the information society for almost 40 years, but, ironically, nobody has been able to explain what all the fuss... Read more
Published on 7 April 2002
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