Netocracy: The New Power Elite and Life after Capitalism (Paperback)

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skills, are media-savvy and know how to network, how to distinguish useful information from nonsense, how to overcome "outdated individualism" and how to manipulate the poor old consumtariat.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.

Meanwhile, my "two cow" scenario for netocracy...

NETOCRACY: A netocrat has two cows. He knows a really good place to sell them, and with the money he buys a collection of rare exotic rats. Two years later everyone is into rats, and he has a lucrative business hiring out the rats for reproduction. He sells the business before the dot.rat crash and semi-retires onto the speaker circuit, living between unknown islands in the Pacific and Arctic oceans. A consumer has two cows. He eats them. Rats are advertised to him as the next big thing to eat. He eats them.

The book really gets going in chapter 5. "Who are these netocrats?" they helpfully ask. The authors set out their view of the "totalistic" tradition, characterised as a question in search of an answer. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the Christian Church are their examples of the totalistic tradition. They contrast this with the "mobilistic" tradition, which refers to the writings of Nietzsche, Darwin, Deleuze and Foucault. Suddenly, a ray of light breaks through, around p. 105. Mobilistic philosophy is set "to uncover every attempt to objectify the hierarchies we are subjectively forced to construct in order to make existence comprehensible." More pointers in the same vein follow. "Mobilistic thinkers themselves often appear unfathomable and even ridiculous." "Informational society will, in many important respects, demand greater honesty of its participants."

Human attention is inherently limited - thus it is the ultimate currency. The book predicts that the most valuable networks will be very difficult to penetrate (perhaps, from experience, a bit like venture capitalists and business angels are now). Reputation and trust are vital measurements governing membership of these exclusive elitist networks. But what has happened to equality? The authors come across as condoning elitism - even encouraging it, perhaps in the belief that they will belong to the highest of all networks: that in which the operations of networks are discussed, and where the big decisions about networks are made. Their vision is desperately lacking a clear sense of the wide range of values that exist already, let alone new ones that will exist in the future.

The book time and again identifies a new cultural elite, where the barriers to entry are simply talent. They ask whether that is unfair. Perhaps they don't recognise that one can avoid elitism by recognising different people's values. Despite the elitism, we are left with the rather appealing picture of "eternalists", who function in netocratic society analogously to academics in capitalist society, making common cause with the "consumtariat" (future version of proletariat as consumers). This "eternalism", as well as being attractively named might suit the many people who are in tune with the spirit of the age, but don't want to condone the subjection of yet another differently-defined underclass.

The book as a whole begs many questions. Why does a book espousing all kinds of contrary ideals sell itself on the open, capitalist market? Why does a book which appears to be all about changes in society regress into (or just gets stuck with) the analysis of class struggle? Perhaps the authors have not taken personal values seriously. And where personal values are not fully recognised, it is easy to take assumed class values as their default replacement. But to do this looks sorely mistaken on their own terms. In an information-rich world, it is ever more likely that different values will supersede nationalistic or class values in more and more people. The fact that information is dangerous stuff - that it can change people and their values - is, ironically, tamed in the book.

The authors have neither made their own values clear, which would enable the reader to compensate for the inevitable slant, nor appreciated that there are worthy values, perhaps lying dormant, in everyone. While most would agree that the majority in our society are subject to a continual process a bit like anaesthetisation, by a mass culture of entertainment and consumerism (whose origins are increasingly well understood), the book does not rise to the more positive view that there is something essentially worthy of nurturing and encouragement in every one.