Rate this book

The End Of Big: How The Internet Makes David The New Goliath (2013)

by Nicco Mele(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1250021863 (ISBN13: 9781250021861)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

St. Martin's Press

review 1: The End of Big is not a book I would have ever picked up on my own. It came highly recommended but I knew from the outset that it wouldn’t move me. Mele laments the End of Big by referring to an American project that I was never fully invested in. Every time he writes about the value of Big politics, government, media, minds, companies, etc. I just rolled my eyes and thought “those big institutions never valued black people.” The big accountability he wants to reestablish has actively enslaved, unemployed, and imprisoned my people since they stole Africans and shipped them across the Atlantic. It’s always a wonder to me how people historicize technology while abstracting all the real ills of history. Everyone writes about the dark side of technology in the sense of... more less accountability and less personal connection, but it’s an excess of privilege that the conversations start and end there. If the Big fill in the blank compromised (at best) and devalued (at worst) your very existence, why would you lament their downfall? I am not intimately enamored by the Big America he describes here so I’m unmoved by the fact that they party system and journalism and Hollywood are having a hard time keeping up with the times. Sure, someone somewhere should be steering the ship, but if the original system was incredibly flawed and a new emergent system is also incredibly flawed I’m not going to lose sleep over it. The only chapter that moved me was the Big Armies chapter where it was made very plain that the US is utterly unprepared for cyberwarfare. UTTERLY. That was scary, but otherwise the whole system can crumble for all I care and we’ll see what emerges from the ashes.
review 2: the book just felt contrived -- taking some ideas that do have a good bit of truth to them (that the Internet is changing the ability of traditional big institutions (political parties, school systems, etc.) to control our lives -- but then taking a very one-sided uncritical view of the world to make it seem like that is all that is going on when in reality those big institutions retain quite a lot of power indeed. It seemed like he was trying to write another "Future Shock" or such but didn't really do it in a balanced way that reflects reality. less

Download links for: The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath

Advertising