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Summary: She's right and she's wrong...
Review: Reg Whitaker's "The End of Privacy" is a fine companion work to "The Future and it's Enemies. While Virginia waxes euphoric over an endless vista of progressive technology bereft of any potential negative consequences, the balanced view is that not everything that glitters is gold or good.The most vivid work I have read is "Transfer-the end of the beginning" by Jerry Furland. Although "Transfer" is a fictional account of a near future world changed by technology, any student of the future will find all three of these authors worth examining.
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Summary: Dynamist from D.C.
Review: Postrel is right on course with her descriptions of stasists and dynamists. She uses clear examples to drive home her point without declaring political scapgoats. She is an equal-opportunity critic which helps build the credibility in her arguments. I would recommend this book to anyone striving for a business or political career. A world with dynamic minds and interactions is a world that begins to reaquire the 19th century definition of liberalism: an individual free from despotic planners and totalitarian control. This book is for free thinkers.
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Summary: Eye-opening
Review: I have never really thought much about politics, the future, and how they're inter-related. This book opened my eyes to the fact that there are people out there who would have us living as peasants or as 1950s suburbanites. That's not for me. It seems that many of the people in power today sway somewhat in that direction and that's scary. Anyway, the book is very easy to read, and it doesn't really seem to mention that most people fall somewhere in between her "stasists" and "dynamists".
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Summary: Change is scary (for some), but inevitable
Review: Two years before all the protests against the World Trade Organization meetings, Virgina Postrel nailed it on the head -- the big battle for political/economical control we all face is unpredictable (disorderly/innovative) change vs. what-we-know (orderly/static) "controlled progress". The sight of West Shore Longshoreman (who make >$100K/year) marching with "Dykes for Action" and EarthFirst! against free-trade and the Schumpeterian forces of economic change blew me away until I remembered this book. I found this an incredible way of looking at serious conflicts in our current world. A very worthwhile read! The substistence farmer who leaves his family home in rural Malaysia for a job in a factory that exports throughout the world actively seeks change and a new future. The reactionary enviromentalist (ignoring the fact that the ecosystem is healthier now than it has been in 150 years!) wants us to return to flint knapping and village-bartering. Oddly enough, "The Big 3" automakers have transformed themselves from protectionist-oriented organizations of stability to change-oriented, outsourcing, global corporations. Immigration and those who benefit from (or threatened by it) is a force of change. So is the Internet. These new ways of interacting and doing business are met with fear, resistence and restrictions by those who want things to stay the same. Postrel goes further identifying a "technocracy" that, supposedly, welcomes change, but believes it needs to be managed for it to be orderly and beneficial for all (All the while seeking to amass and control power in central authorities). The increased political contributions from info-tech companies indicates that we all have our price.
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Summary: The Future and its Enemies
Review: Read this book if you must, but I suggest an immediate antidote; reacquaint yourself with socio biology and the video/book "Connections." Postrel glorifies learning, trial and error and its resulting diversity, but then invents two abstract categories, "stasis" and "dynamism" and crams every example she can think of into those categories.She utilizes evolution as a paradigm but confounds the theory by placing a positive value on dynamism and a negative value on stasis, i.e., dynamism is good evolution, stasis is bad evolution. The concepts in this book are ultimately contradictory.
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Summary: A Dynamic Read
Review: Virginia Postrel turns "left" and "right" into moving up/forward and staying down/still. Her "Stasists" would hold us back from progressing any further, because they want to retain power. While the "Dynamists" push to create new wealth, while reducing the cost to create it. This book is elegantly argued and should be enjoyed by all (even it you also liked Richard Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld).
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Summary: Introduction to Hayek
Review: I think this book provides a lot of interesting anecdotal support for Hayek's ideas on "Spontaneous Order". Reinforcing the idea that it is impossible to sit in room with a bunch of "experts" and design a new government program that will do anything, except waste taxpayer money, better than the free market. This book trashes Democrats and Republicans and reminds me of why I will vote Libertarian again in the next election. I sincerely hope that some of the politicians who run our education system will read this book and decide to try and figure out ways to limit the education monopoly of the government instead of worrying about the non-problem of Microsoft.
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Summary: Do It!
Review: For many thinkers this book will not explore unknown depths but it certainly clarifies what one has assumed. The overlaps and the lapses between political Libertarians, Liberals and Conservatives are made clearer, as is one's perspective on business. The book is a winner.
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Summary: A practicing dynamist, a public school teacher, comments.
Review: As a longtime reader of REASON I am familiar with Postrel's essays. Reading this book continued my admiration of her intellectual and writing skills. I have attempted to live (but never came close to it) what I considered the ideal model of education, "Sommerhill", while teaching in public schools in Southern California. I was dynamist within a huge majority of stasists.My life was seldom easy because I posed a real threat to them. Unfortunately, for me, I saw their inability to share my visions of what could be, as stupidity. Their reactions, their need to keep their world secure, stable, and structured was as much a reflection of their genetics, their physiology, and their shared personal histories as mine was directing me to act as a dynamist. In 1960 I realized that our lock step, three group reading groups and rigid reading structure was not only boring, but killing my sixth graders love for reading. I had 42 in my class and I felt the stasists were more interested in how well I controlled my army than what they were learning. I sent away for and bought with my own money one of the first SRA kits. My chidren's attention, ontask time, and sheer joy was a thing of beauty. After three days the principal came in to find out why parents were excited about their children who couldn't wait to get to school and read. He was so angry he would have fired me on the spot. Instead, since I was a probationary teacher, I was forced to return the kit. Now I know he was just doing what he thought best. He sincerely believed in the methods that I saw weren't working as well as he thought. He ignored much of what was obvious to me because it didn't fit into his neat conception of a closed future. He believed that if you followed the curriculum and the structures as they were laid out by "experts" that each teacher (by teacher proofing the curriculum) would provide each child with what he needed to be a successful and productive citizen. I already had given up on religion, Freud, and many other ideas because they had ALL the answers -just too neat! I saw the world as everchanging and beyond my ability to control except for some limited portions. I wanted to teach my children the basic skills too, but in an environment that taught them to be flexible and courageous. The more I understood the stasists and their fears as well as their visions, I was able to find livable compromises. My classrooms were little oases in which I did things other teachers were either afraid to do or hadn't thought of doing. The conflicts with stasists were continuous, but my children, their parents, and I flourished within the system. Virginia Postrel gives a cohesive philosophy to what people like me are attempting to do. We are the dynamists, and the stasists need us to open windows and doors they either won't or can't see. But we need them to give us the ground, the stable structures from which we can operate. Further, none of us are pure stasists or dynamists. My wife is a stasist. Without her love, her carrying for me and our children, and giving some balance to my wildness and weirdness, I would have gotten fired many times. Stasists and dynamists need each other. This book could help in understanding our differences and similarities.
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Summary: Good book! A different perspective on opponents of change!
Review: A very interesting perspective by Postrel. She casts aside Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal. Coining a new word, stasists, she shows that opponents to change come in many forms, but that they all stand in the way of real human progress. She suggests that if we embrace change while respecting individual liberty, our future is bright indeed!
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