Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction to dynamism (libertarianism)...
Review: I read this book several years ago. I've continued to follow (loosely) Ms. Postrel's career. She now has a webpage where she writes nearly every day on current events, www.dynamist.com.
In my opinion, she does make a better essayist than a novelist. Her articles in the NYT, WSJ, Forbes, etc., are clearer than her sometimes tangential book. But in a good way, she presents a big-picture view of the future in this book, that social conservatives, liberal leftists, and other "statists" could really use a dose of.
Rating: 
Summary: shallow but peppy, a facile dichotomy
Review: Postrel has stumbled across a formula for non-fiction success -- seize upon an oversimplistic dichotomy, and write as if this is a key that unlocks tremendous understanding. The nature of reality is that it includes both dynamism (change) and stasis (order). It is merely silly, not profound, to emphasize one aspect of this dialectic. The title is similarly misleading -- no one is opposed to the future! Whether you want to live in a future of rampant genetic engineering is another matter entirely, a question of what sort of future. Postrel, editor of Reason, the libertarian magazine, and a columnist for Forbes (The Capitalist Tool), tries to mask her ideology in the book but it comes through loud and clear. For instance, she attacks Benjamin Barber (98), who has the temerity to question corporate globalization. But if you read Barber, you know that he is not against globalization per se, but is FOR democratic decisionmaking, which currently does not exist at the global level. (Barber has his own oversimplistic dichotomy -- "jihad versus McWorld"...) Postrel confuses herself with her own categories. Having grouped together everybody that's not a right-thinking dynamist and called them "stasists," (notice the similarity to "statists," the opposite of libertarian), Postrel says "their unity is misleading" because they can't agree among themselves (26). Well of course not! There is no "stasist" movement except the one that Postrel has concocted, and so no one is misled by "their unity" other than Postrel. I can say this, though, I am in favor of change! Good change, of course, not just change for the sake of change. Notice that Postrel could have named her preferred category "progressive" as opposed to "reactionary," the meaning is nearly identical to her "dynamism/stasism" labels, but the problem for her is that to be Progressive is associated historically with the reform-oriented Left, not the trickle-down Right! [For a much more thoughtful treatment of the changing nature of ideology in the post-Cold War world, see Anthony Giddens' "Beyond Left and Right."]
Rating:
Summary: This book is a near-breakthrough for tech and politics
Review: This is a book that could have been great. The concept is compelling: a storm is brewing at a distance between those who embrace change, embrace technology and innovation, whom she calls dynamists, and those who fear change, believe it's corrosive on our way of life, and, like the Unabomber, want to stifle technological innovation and revert us all back to an agrarian, self-sufficient society, in effect. An eclectic mix of political factions -- the Pat Buchanan anti-free-traders, the Al Gore environmentalists, the Ralph Nader anti-industrialists, Bill Bennett cultural conservatives, the Hillary Clinton technocrats (who want to fiddle with everything to make it "better", Theodore Kaczynski luddites, and others are awkwardly but inevitably coalescing into a new party or faction that will oppose/is opposing the free development of technology and the like, ostensibly to protect consumers and in their minds, to protect a "status quo" standard of living or way of live, that in their mind is superior to whatever may lie
ahead. In contrast, a separate cast of political factions -- Milton Friedman freemarketeers, "genomic" liberals (who want free rein in biotech research), Harry Browne libertarians, Cher social-liberal types, militant Timothy McVeigh federalists, the Howard Schultz entrepreneurs, investment bankers, and others. Weird bedfellows, to be sure. But recent protests at
WTO conferences, acts of sabotage by Earth Liberation Front cells, the popularity of isolationist rhetoric by Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan here and counterparts abroad are symptomatic of an escalating tension driven by the accelerating adoption of technology worldwide. Things are moving fast, and not everyone
is comfortable. The author argues that dynamism, the label she gives the pro-technology/pro-progress faction, is innate in each of us: we crave learning, and trial and error is part of learning, and technology is a logical result of trial and error, starting
with early man's need to make stone tools all the way to a young engineer's need today to build a better ultralight aircraft. Much of what we do is utilitarian, but the author makes a forceful argument that play, or challenging ourselves
just for the sake of challenging ourselves, is innate in each of us and thus argues that the dynamic path, not the stasist (status quo/anti-progress) path,
is our natural destiny. The implications for all of this are profound, and it will be fascinating to watch existing centers of power grapple with this issue as the transition to the "new order" oriented around this issue will be awkward and contentious, but I would agree the day is inevitable
when this issue will be front and center. My main, and significant, problem with this book is the quality of the writing: it meanders, could be more forceful, seems unclear in its purpose at times, and misses many opportunities to make earth-shattering points. For this reason, it's not a super-page-turner, but rather is something that can be power-read without missing important pieces of learning.
Rating: 
Summary: A must read for anyone interested in our future
Review: Virginia Postrel sets a high standard for herself with her title, but her work lives up to its name. She addresses the question of what has driven the human race forward throughout history, and what will be required to improve the human condition in the future. Her separation of dynamists, those who advocate finding new solutions through creativity and competition, and stasists, those who either want to keep everything as it is now (reactionaries) or who want the future to unfold according to their conception of 'one best way,' (technocrats) provides an excellent paradigm for viewing today's political conflicts. Using an array of questions about the future ranging from human cloning and stem cell research to zoning laws and terrorism, Postrel's work takes the reader through the conflicts between dynamism and stasism and establishes 'ground rules' for dynamism that allow humanity to find the best solutions to the problems of today while preparing us to face the problems of the future. Well written, and with clear and varied examples, The Future and its Enemies is easy to read and understand. More importantly, it illustrates the fundamental conflict that faces us every day, whether in the halls of Congress, or in the war against terrorism. Anyone who follows politics or who is interested in the forward march of humanity would be well-advised to read this book carefully.
Rating:
Summary: A modern classic
Review: This book ought to be recognized by future generations as a groundbreaking work of social criticism and philosophy. Postrel's dialectical analysis mostly glimmers, though she becomes achingly redundant toward the end of the book. Most importantly, Postrel has provided solid ground for more powerful minds in multiple disciplines to analyze the conflict she describes.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, intellectual, anti-Luddite
Review: Postrel expounds onthe virtues and inevitablity of creative destruction and decries the knee-jerk effort to hold on to old, tried and established ways -- statism. The future is ours to determine. Much of what we "know" isn't even true today and will likely be less relevant tomorrow. Lessons learned from having our assumptions challenged are perhaps the hardest lessons of all. This is a good book for students trying to make sense of a changing world.
Rating: 
Summary: Important ideas - verbose format
Review: This book is at times very good and others quite monotonous. I must laud Mrs. Postrel for her insightful and truly revolutionary look at the dynamism of how we relate to the future and try to deal with its uncertainties. Although she does try to be somewhat even handed with the views of her "technocratic" villains, much of the text reads like a political manifesto with distinct examples of why "Dynamism" works and "Technocracy" doesn't within a pseudo-analytical framework. I don't feel that what was included herein provides enough information for a complete book, however. Any English professor would have written atop it in red pen "good ideas but be more brief and concise". The point she makes, however is very poignant and I agree with quite a bit and it does flush itself out in many of the examples. I wish she had either made it a pointedly direct pamphlet manifesto, or a truly journalistic look at the broad spectrum of how people, society and government approach the future. All in all she is a brilliant social critic and I look forward to seeing more from her.
Rating:
Summary: Re-examination of the political spectrum
Review: This is Postrel's attempt at redefining the political spectrum. No longer should politics and public policy be seen through the prism of Left vs. Right. Instead, it should be seen as those in favor of free-spirited creativity, play, progress, and a better future as opposed to those in favor of a static past/present that never existed and who fear new technology and creative processes.
Rating:
Summary: Postrel punches through an obstacle to human progress
Review: Postrel does indeed break important new ground here, offering a new way of looking at the political/cultural spectrum that is quietly revolutionary in its own limited but perfectly adequate context. Her opposing poles of "stasism" and "dynamism" shed light on a vital distinction utterly missing from contemporary cultural analyses, which typically ignore or shrug off as inexplicable such seemingly bizarre alliances as that of Pat Buchanan with Ralph Nader. It's a distinction that touches on psychology as much as politics & culture, with the valuable potential for illuminating one's own reflexive reactions - should they ever intrude - as well as those of others. As such, "The Future and Its Enemies" provides another invaluable tool for checking one's own premises in evaluating what is new, and particularly, what has only yet been proposed. True, in logic Postrel's stasism-dynamism dichotomy does not satisfy the requirement of mutual exclusivity in classification, i.e., "each type must exclude all the members of the other." But in context it doesn't need to - this is not a treatise on the fundamental, essential attributes of man, rather an examination of a set of very general - yet powerful - overarching attitudes that inform people on what are often fundamental questions. "The Future and Its Enemies" is timely - no, long overdue - and holds the potential to motivate the people of the 21st Century to embrace the uncertainty inherent in the future rather than to cower from it. To paraphrase economist George Reisman in his treatise "Capitalism", the 21st Century ought to be one in which humanity achieves its logical migration into space, not a reversion to the intellectual and material squalor of Medievalism. Which it is to be, depends upon the view each of us has of the unknown encompassed in "the future." Postrel has done a brilliant job of hammering out a heretofore-unseen facet of the human intellect.
Rating:
Summary: An inspiring defense of progress
Review: This book introduces a new class of political distinction that's much more useful than the old left/right dichotomy. Rather than the random grab-bag of ideas held by either the left or right, she posits "stasis" versus "dynamism": trying to micro-control everything from the economy to the entertainment industry, versus letting people decide for themselves what's best for them. Postrel shows that a free society is much more efficient in meeting people's needs than a planned one because centralized decision-makers can never have enough knowledge to make proper decisions for everyone in every situation. Her illustrations of this basic concept include examples of everything from hi-tech to how squirrels store nuts. A few reviewers have decried her "black-and-white" portrayal of the political spectrum. "People aren't just one or the other." My first response to that is that we use the left/right distinction all the time, and the "stasis vs. dynamism" distinction is much less arbitrary. Second, she's clearly not saying that any given person is either one or the other, with no middle ground. The kind of people who are so quick to point out that people don't fit into neat categories are usually people who have just discovered this truth themselves, so they figure that everyone else also needs to have this truth pointed out to them. The truth is that most adults had reached this understanding long ago, and they assume a certain level of maturity in the reader--one that understands gray areas without needing them to be explicitly pointed out. This is an exciting book. It's about how complex systems work, and it inspires a truly optimistic worldview that's solidly based in reality. It's playful, it appeals to the best in human nature, and it renews your faith in humanity. What more could you ask for?
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