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Summary: The Politics of Progress
Review: Books asking us to envision a "new" politics are a dime-a-dozen. Only one of them is worth reading and that is Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies. This book is a sublime expression of the idea that the laissez faire society envisioned by many "conservative" thinkers will lead to far more creativity, diversity, and innovation than could have been created by any policymaker's plan. The medium you are reading this on is proof of it. Years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine the idea of a transparent online marketplace where you could read a compilation of book reviews from both experts and ordinary readers, and if you liked what they had to say, have the book sent to you just by clicking a button. No Washington sage planned out a World Wide Web with sites like Amazon and eBay. It just spontaneously evolved when entrepreneurs began pushing the limits of new technology. The result of this decentralized process is pretty spectacular. This is exactly the point, argues Postrel. The best things in life always emerge in a laissez-faire environment. Though this may seem like common sense, it runs against the prevailing political wisdom, even in this era of supposed fiscal conservatism. "The era of big government" may be over, but Washington's appetite to control your life in new ways is still very much alive. Bill Clinton thinks he can plan out a good life for you through tax incentives for good behavior and public-private initiatives. Anyone well versed in Postrel's ideas knows this is folly. But Clinton's "third way" politics is only one manifestation of a growing reactionary movement to rein in and shape the future to fit some pre-determined mold. This is a movement that encompasses much of the political left, right AND center. Buchananites attacks free trade which bring lower prices and more convenience because it destabilizes the industrial communities of the past. Reactionary environmentalists and assorted leftists argue for small scale economic autarky, insularity, and stagnation for the sake of restoring us to some pristine state of nature (a state of nature in which the air was cleaner, but life expectancy was also a fraction of what it is today). On one hand are the stasists -- from Clinton to Buchanan to Ralph Nader, and on the other are the dynamists who embrace change and innovation, even if they can't control it.
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Summary: Postrel offers a new framework
Review: This book expresses my own political and social ideas and values in the context of current events and issues better than the work of any other writer I've encountered. Postrel has done a very good job in this book of expressing exactly why I find the terms "left" and "right" and "conservative" and "liberal" to be worthless, empty icons. Instead, she finds the labels "stasist" and "dynamist" better descriptions of the real divisions in culture and politics in the current era. If you read only one book about current events and politics this year, make it this one.
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Summary: Here are 5 great pieces of advance praise for this book:
Review: "The best damn nonfiction I've read in years!" --Tom Peters"In this bold and compelling book, Virginia Postrel uses a breathtaking range of examples, from music to software to hairstyling, to argue that progress comes not from a master plan but from courage, experiment...and even playfulness. She makes you look again at what you thought you already knew." --Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings and author of Release 2.0 "Virginia Postrel skewers the pessimists of both the left and right who see technology as the enemy and nostalgia as their friend. Bubbling with enthusiasm, and fortified with examples that run from computers to shampoo, she exposes those whose futile efforts to dictate the future pose the greatest threat to progress and security alike." --Richard Epstein, University of Chicago Law School, author of Simple Rules for a Complex World "Virginia Postrel has a radically old-fashioned view of the future. She believes in progress. She thinks the world we are building, you and I, is a decidedly messy place, that nonetheless is turning out pretty nice. Go ahead. Imagine that." --Joel Garreau, author of Edge City: Life on the New Frontier and The Nine Nations of North America "Showing both an acute eye for the thick textures of social life and a deep understanding of competing strands of current social theory, Virginia Postrel accomplishes here one of the social theorist's hardest tasks: devising new ways to make sense of large amounts of otherwise unconnected, or inexplicable, information about the social and political world....It is a large achievement." --David Post, Temple University Law School, co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute
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Summary: ABSOLUTELY GRIPPING!
Review: There are books about innovation, sure, but Postrel's is one of the best-researched, well-written books you'll find anywhere on the "idea" of progress. She is an advocate ofÊÊdynamism, which "generates progress through trial and error, experiment and feedback." The enemy, says Postrel, is "stasis" thinking, and her book about the battle between these two forces is absolutely gripping.
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Summary: It's a good book, but light on biotech and hence motivation
Review: Postrel's main thesis is "stasism" vs. "dynamism," or central planning or rigid tradition vs. individual choice and free markets. She handles it generally well, with some nice examples. However, she leaves some of the most important probable features of the future neglected. In particular, there is no mention of such topics as life extension and anti-senescence research or cryonics or nanotechnology, which are among the most revolutionary and personally significant likely developments in the first half of the next century. Nanotechnology will probably have a far greater economic effect than a bit of tilt toward or away from stasism. Whether you will die on the traditional schedule, or whether you will greatly extend your life through anti-aging research and cryonics, will have a far greater motivational impact than anything Ms. Postrel discusses. Robert Ettinger
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Summary: Dynamist vs. Stasist
Review: Do you prefer experimentation & feedback or top down planning? Do you see the market as a process for "discovering andsharing knowledge,for trading and expressing value" or as "an impersonal machine crushing personal values"? These are only a few aspects of dynamist life discussed by Virginia Postrel in the most unique and interesting book I have read. Ms. Postrel combines many existing perspectives into one coherent life view that explains a great deal of the divisions of people's politics and overall views on life. Great Book!!!
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Summary: The multi-disciplinary optimistic view of the future.
Review: This book is in the tradition of a third way that takes the best of conservative and liberal viewpoints to present an optimistic, open-ended view of how long, happy, and productive life can be. The prerequisite is understanding, tolerance, and voluntary social institutions. This is the end state--the politics is how to get to there from the very imperfect here.
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Summary: A brilliant apology
Review: Change causes anxiety in some, and so rapid change is for them absolutely terrifying. The author though is a self-professed "dynamist", and embraces change with a passion. Dynamism, as she defines it, is a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition. It shuns stability and control in favor of evolution and learning. With this book she has written a brilliant polemic that tackles the opponents of change straight on, but she does so with a spirit of calmness and rationality that is quite uncommon in many books of late. Her optimism and keen intelligence are quite refreshing, and much can be learned from a perusal of this book. "Life is full of surprises", she says, and this motivates her to argue for and embrace the future, a future that will be brought about by inquisitive individuals who are confident of their abilities and not afraid to experiment. For these individuals, to be still is an anathema, but to be out of equilibrium is sheer delight. Change for them is a breath of fresh air and stasis is always stale. To hold to the past is an abomination, to sprint into the future is pure exhilaration. To create new ideas, to build new inventions, to put into concrete form the abstractions of the mind, these signify the creed of the dynamists. Anchorites for science and technology, they are constantly looking forward, never back.
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Summary: Hayek for Everyone!
Review: It has become fashionable as of late to argue for cultural stasis. The green left, for instance, argues that nature is best and any 'progres' away from the natural should be silenced. Similarly, the conservative right warns that culture and social structure should remain in the '50's and that the new 'consumerism' is threatening cultural 'stability.' Both groups, and others like them, have their own vision of the 'best way' for society to be. To varying degrees, these groups want to save the people from the 'wrong' future by technocratic planning and regulation that allows for the 'right' future - their future.
Virginia Postrel opposes ideas of a planned future based on any model of the 'one best way.' She argues in this book that the best way for the future to happen is sponteneously. Instead of regulating industries, mores, and ideas, we should let people and companies be as free as possible to experiment with new ideas and innnovations, and through trial and error, let THEM decide what they like and do not. A future planned in advance through regulation and government controls leads to stagnation and fewer options. An open future leads to vibrancy, ingenuity, and increased options.
These ideas, of course, are not new. Those familiiar with economists like Hayek, Sowell, and Friedman will recongize them instantly. These and other economists argued (iconoclastically) that planned societies (or planned markets) not only ciphen off people's inborn urge to try new things and experiment, but lead to social and economic stand-stills.
Postrel's book alternates well between theory and practice. She offers scores of examples illustrating why regulations on markets tends to stifle valuable innovation, and why deregulation tends to lead to better and better technologies (while allowing consumers to sort the good from the bad instead of being dictated to from on high). From the ingenuity made possible by deregulation of airlines, to the remarkable progress (and sponteneous order) that the internet (unhampered by regulation) has offered, Postrel brings theory home by illustrating its practical effects.
My favorite chapter is "Creating Nature," focused particularly on the biotech industry and "its enemies." It is also the chapter most relevant to me. While writing a grad paper on biotech, I read many of the works noted (and deftly criticized) by Postrel - by the likes of Leon Kass, Bill McKibben, and Jeremy Rifkin. These rather anti-technology luddites sincerely argue that the days before technology were better and that if we were as smart as they, we would realize it too. As Postrel notes, they are unashamedly snobbish, often deriding the general public for valuing the better life afforded by technology and the bugbear of 'consumerism.' Postrel eloquently explores all of this, highlighting the problems endemic to such thought.
The only two criticisms I can offer of the book are these: First, Postrel seems so intent on grilling the luddites that she might err in the opposite direction and exhibit TOO MUCH faith in change for change's sake (she uses the phrase "faith in progres" quite a bit). Unfortunately, this makes her come off as having the same level of unquestioning zeal that she spots in her opposition. Second, the book is unabashedly libertarian. While this is not a problem for me (I am one too) she never quite comes clean about it. This may strike some readers as a tad covert.
All in all though, this is an excellent read. The chapters are organized so as to minimize repitition, the research is varied and well done, and her arguments are extremely tight. For those not afraid of progress, or those curious about those that are, this is a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Silliness
Review:
This is a quick read, in part because it is a series of essays that are loosely connected. It is a reasoned attack on both government regulation and imposed technical standards. To the extent that it seems to deny the value of any standards, any oversight, any structure, it is unreasonable.
Indeed, while I whole-heartedly agreed that government regulation has gotten completely out of control, I am much more concerned about corporate corruption (Enron simply being the latest case), and so I would say this book is valuable and worth reading but it is missing the bridge chapter to "what next?" However, I like the book and I recommend it. Its value was driven home to me by an unrelated anecdote, the tales from South Korea of my data recovery expert. Bottom line: they are so far ahead of the United States, with 92% wireless penetration in urban areas, and free-flowing video and television on every hand-held communications-computing device, in part because they have not screwed up the bandwidth allocations and reservations as badly as we have. I was especially inspired by the thought that we should no longer reserve entire swaths of bandwidth for the exclusive use of the military or other government functions--let them learn how to operate in the real world rather than their artificial construct of reserved preference. The book is well footnoted but the index is marginal--largely an index of names rather than ideas.
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