Rating: 
Summary: Adequate
Review: Must confess I was a bit disappointed. Not as well written as Lewis's previous book. (Hey Don Mitchell...you get paid for that review?) Yes, some interesting points, but I didn't find Next to be that enlighting. Sorry
Rating:
Summary: Heavy breathing
Review: "Next" is an exercise in technoeuphoria---the Internet changes everything and the kids are leading the way. In trying to make his point, Lewis takes anecdotes and individual examples and claims that they present the whole picture. It really seems that he has not got outside the reality distortion field that helped to create the Internet bubble that has burst with such devastating effects. The technology, of course, is here to stay but it may be more evolutionary in its impact at this point than revolutionary.Jon Katz, a technophile who writes for Slashdot, would seem to agree that Lewis has gone over the top in this one. In his recent review of the book in the Wall Street Journal, Katz writes: "Partway through "Next," I grew uncomfortable with Mr. Lewis's familiar absolutist fervor. The popular media have always tended to portray digital culture in binary terms of alarm (pornographers, hackers, thieves) or of hype (everything will change forever). Mr. Lewis seems to be falling into the latter trap. For all his skill and confidence, he's bought into the heavy breathing about technology and its impact on society."
Rating: 
Summary: Internet's not merely faster flow on information
Review: As insightful as he always be, Mike has another should-be-classic. This time on the impact of internet on the traditional socio-economic structure. Throughout the book, Mike keeps on emphasizing that internet has created a world everyone has equal right and more importantly, questioning whether there should be so-called "conventional superiors" in the society. It's a book that can trigger many worthwhile afterthoughts. I highly recommend this book to everyone that use the internet.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and Thought-Provoking
Review: This is the most funny and thought-provoking book I have read in years. No where else can you learn more about the social effects of the Internet. Michael Lewis is in better touch with the Internet revolution than anybody else I know. This is his best piece yet. The stories he tells of Jonathan Lebed and Marcus Arnold are absolutely amazing and fasinating.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book on the Social Implications of the Internet
Review: Old elites beware! Your time is up! Become the new elite today! That's the message of this intriguing, fascinating, and thought-provoking look at what's already happened on the Internet. I not only thought that this is the best book about the social effects of the Internet, I also think it is by far Michael Lewis's best work. This book deserves many more than five stars as a result. The original idea was simple. There are all of these people making a big splash on the Internet as individuals. Let's go meet them in person and find out what's really going on. Believe me, it's different from what you read in the newspapers or saw on television. With the aid of a researching crew from the BBC, Mr. Lewis found that the cutting edge of the Internet revolution was going on with 11-14 year olds. Soon, it will probably drift lower in age. Because the Internet lets you play on a equal footing and assume any identity you choose, youngsters with guts and quick minds can take on major roles. Usually, their parents have no clue until adults or major authority figures start arriving on their doorstep challenging what the youngster is doing or seeking personal advice. The core of the book revolves around the stories of Jonathan Lebed who used chat room commentaries to help drive his $8,000 stake into over $800,000 in less than three years, Marcus in Perris, California who became Askme.com's leading criminal law expert based on his watching of court TV shows, and Justin Frankel who became an important developer of Gnutella for filesharing while having trouble getting an education in school. Mr. Lewis makes the point that these youngsters weren't doing anything that their elders don't do in other forums. Yet the established authorities deeply resented and challenged them. Mr. Lewis suggests that the old elites "get a life." Their day is over. He uses the analogy of his father's refusal to adapt his law practice to the methods of personal injury lawyers using billboards and television ads to show this is how the existing elites always respond . . . by condemning and trying to ignore the new. At the same time, Mr. Lewis raises several important questions that will stay with you. After having been king of the hill for your 15 minutes of fame at 15, how will you feel about the rest of your life as an also-ran? His portrayal of Danny Hillis's project to create the 10,000 year clock captures that point very well. He also lampoons Bill Joy's arguments that the Unabomber had it right that we (the existing elites) need to constrain technology. The basic point is that economic and social effectiveness will rest on the foundation of how effective you can be rather than who you are, what degrees you have, what age you are, or who you know. In other words, the Internet has added another degree of leveling to our society. Surely, that's good. I'm a little more optimistic than Mr. Lewis about the implications. I think that many people will find the lower barriers to entry provide them the chance to develop themselves more than would otherwise happen. What they learn as youngsters can be used in new ways on broader canvases later in life. For example, Jonathan will probably become a great marketing guru. Marcus has the seeds of a marvelous counselor, attorney, or columnist in him. Justin will probably create masterful new software structures that will make sharing easier and more effective. Those are potentially beautiful futures for these young men. Child prodigies have always been with us. The lessons for those based in the Internet will be the same as for those who did it in music or the motion pictures. You have to keep developing yourself, have sound values, and prepare for an adult role that you enjoy and are good at. I do feel for the parents of these young people. They are the ones with the big challenge! After you finish enjoying this wonderful book, I suggest that you think about where you can pursue lifelong interests on the Internet! You can go back to being 11 again, too! Log on and have a ball!
Rating:
Summary: I Read the New New Thing
Review: The New New Thing was of the most insightful books I ever read. After reading Michael Lewis's New York Times Magazine article back in February, I have every reason to believe that this will be another 5 star book. With the help of the Internet, Jonathan Lebed, Shawn Fanning, Jesse Ventura, and others, are changing the world as we know it today. This will definitely be the best read of 2001.
Rating: 
Summary: Half of a great book
Review: If you've read anything by Michael Lewis before, you know that he tells a story better than almost anyone. For the first half of this book, he does that--telling his typically enlightening and entertaining tales about teenagers that have rocked the world through the internet. After that, however, the book gets bogged down horribly, as Lewis analyzes the commercial and social implications of TiVo. Page after redundant page of mind-numbing philosophical musings about the evolution of television advertising had me just about falling from my chair. The final chapter was even worse--not just boring but, in my opinion, utterly pointless meanderings about the impact that technology might have on the human race. Buy the book for the first two chapters, which are excellent, but stop after that or you'll regret the time you lost.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars and the Nobel Prize for Economics
Review: NEXT is a two-part book about progress; how it occurs, how it upsets the current status quo, and how it either continues on or is stymied by an establishment that becomes complacent with its earlier triumphs.
The first part describes our rapidly changing world through the "outlaw" actions of young outsiders using new technology in unforeseen ways insiders could never imagine. The second part serves as an interpretation of how this new world is evolving and its implications for our future. About half way through the book the true genius of Lewis becomes evident. Sandwiched between the two segments, and acting as a bridge, is as good (and simple) a description as you will ever see (he puts it in terms and images even the most ardent revolutionary can appreciate) of how capitalism works and has been able to survive all these years. It comes off as a riff on the capitalistic mentality that would do Adam Smith proud, and spin Marx and Lenin around in their graves while putting our mainstream economists to shame.
To quote from pages 135 - 137: "Socialistic impulses will always linger in the air, because they grow directly out of the human experience of capitalism. The neurotic, high-strung relationship between the outside and the inside was the market's new and improved way of dealing with the problem. Socialism hadn't been killed by capitalism. It had been subsumed by it. The market has found a way not only to permit the people who are most threatening to it their rebellious notions, but to also capitalize on them. Gnutella was one example of this; Internet was another...It was dreamed up by an academic with an anticommerical streak named Tim Berners-Lee. It was commercialized by a couple of marginal players in Silicon Valley - Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen - at least one of whom (Clark) was a sworn enemy of the big corporation. Five years later it was a mainstream commercial technology...Just as people needed other people to tell them what they were, ideas needed other ideas to tell them what they meant. That's perhaps one reason that people so explicitly hostile to capitalism were given a longer leash than usual; they posed no fundamental risk. [These] people...linger on the fringe until they dream up something that has great commercial potential. Then some big company swoops in and buys them, or they give birth to the big company themselves. Inside every alienated hacker [read: revolutionary] who thinks he stands for the `good things that ultimately don't matter to most businesses' there is a tycoon struggling to get out. It's not the system he hates. His gripe is with the price the system initially offers him to collaborate. The incentive for the outsider was to attack the inside right up to the moment he was co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider - and this took some getting used to -was to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas...And in the end, those people give birth to the ideas that in turn give birth to fantastic wealth. The only thing capitalism cannot survive is stability. Stability - true stability - is an absence of progress, and a dearth of new wealth."
Go back and read that quote again. It's priceless. 357 words that explain an economic mode of thought that has consumed thousands of pages and millions of hours of research, discussion, debate, attack, and defense, while creating the immeasurable wealth we all share in today, one way or the other.
Lewis then follows up (and ends) by expanding his scope to expose the rationale "the establishment" has used throughout history to solidify its place in society after it becomes complacent, diverting its creative energy into protecting the status quo rather than pressing on with the business of progress (read: competition). Using Sun Microsystems former chief engineer Bill Joy's April 2000 Wired Magazine rant giving credence to the Unibomber's fear about the survival of mankind in the age of computers, Lewis explains that it appears the old tech guard, the innovative minds that built the technology of the past 20 years, now realizes it is becoming obsolete at the hands of the new young turks who have taken hold of progress' baton and raced on, leaving them behind.
Here is where I wish Lewis' next offering would be a book about how progress throughout history has occurred in fits and jerks, frequently stymied because "elites" (standfasts) decide that things have advanced enough and it's time to consolidate gains (their gains). The rest of us suffer until the next phase of advancement breaks free of reactionary chains to ignite a new wave of technological progress destined to benefit an even larger consumer base. It is a needed book.
Another thing Lewis doesn't say is that we've been co-opting the machines we've invented ever since the beginning of time. Every machine, to use Marshall McLuhan's phrase, is an extension of ourselves. Just has the hammer and saw are extensions of our hands, so it is that computers are extensions of our brains.
In closing, Lewis does acknowledge the more positive aspects of technology as advocated by Ray Kurzweil ("The Age of Spiritual Machines" - 2000, and "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever" - 2004), implying what we already know: the alternative to NEXT is what has always lurked in stasis - Death. It's what the NEXT NEW NEW THING has always been all about.
As famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist Don Valentine said in an recent interview, "Nothing is revolutionary; it's evolutionary."
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting topic, falls short on coherence
Review: "Next: The Future Just Happened" is a good book, which I think lacks coherence, about the impact of the Internet on society. Lewis makes the case that the Internet's speed of information has caused the pyramidal structure of our traditional hierarchies to consolidate to one that is pancake-like and egalitarian and that change is being driven by people on the fringes challenging the status quo of the system. That is to say that the Internet is changing by way of an outside-in kind of symbiosis. Lewis profiles three teenager boys, who leverage their new access to information for gain/profit:
· Jonathan Lebed, a 14 year old stock market whiz who is accused of manipulating the stock market by the SEC, when he was really doing nothing more than what he saw grown-ups doing on CNBC.
· A law "expert" who has never studied law
· A teenager in England who is using Gnutella software as a springboard to bigger and better things.
Lewis also profiles some "grown-ups", including:
· A washed up one-hit wonder English Rock band that used an Internet presence to rally their fan base to raise money for a tour (and gain leverage with their record company)
· An octogenarian woman, who participates in WebTV polls, and
· The creators of TiVo, which challenged the status quo of the Network Television business model
Lewis sees the Internet as both tool and symptom of social change.
Rating:
Summary: What is NEXT?
Review: This is a book of disjointed short stories about things that happened in the PAST on the Internet. Although some of the stories are mildly interesting, the author doesn't provide any common theme on how these stories give us insight into what is coming NEXT? The author rambles on tangents about the indivuals or their families in the stories for much of the book. This may be a good book if you are totally in the dark about the Internet and Technology revolution
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