An Army of Davids
An Army of Davids came in the mail last week, and I just finished it. It's really two books - the first half of the hardcover focuses on the advertised theme of the book - how markets and technology empower ordinary people to to beat big media, big government, and other Goliaths. The second half is a look at the future and technology areas.
Overall, it's a very well-written and approachable book. In reading the first half, I was really struck by the theme that the empowerment of the the individual - the david - has been achieved not by lowering the standards of competitiveness, but instead by placing all the tools that used to be only available to large corporations into the hands of the individual. And that the davids are infinitely more flexible and adaptable than the goliaths have been (as a great recent case in point, witness the recent Fauxtography scandal).
The second half of the book felt like a set of introductions to science fiction novels - giving the near term future history of nanotechnology, AI, space travel, and anti-aging - all in preparation for the coming Singularity.
Read it. Think about how you can take advantage of the technology at your fingertips, now and in the future, to do something which historically, only capital-intensive enterprises could do.
