Based on a BBC series by the same name, The Future Just Happened is an exploration of I didn’t seem the BBC series on which this was based, but I was captured by the exploration of the way new technologies (primarily in the form of the internet) are changing Western culture.
Lewis ties his discussion to specific cases – from the US SEC vs fifteen-year-old Jonathan Lebed, accused of manipulating stock prices and the market through online trading and recommendations, Lewis looks at what happens when the market is no longer run from within, and questions widely-held beliefs about the stock market.
Starting with another fifteen-year-old, Marcus Arnold, who got more helpful votes on AskMe’s legal advice pages than real lawyers, he asks what happens when the façade of professionals “owning” arcane knowledge is shattered, then looks at the concept of ownership by exploring shareware and freeware, before discussing Marillion, a fading ‘80’s band who used their fan base and the Internet to fund a new recording career, the first group of its kind to dictate contract terms to a recording company rather than the other way around.
Lewis then examines shifts in advertising caused by the inaccuracy of black boxes for viewing figures, the impact of TiVo, and the development of real-time feedback response programs.
Finally he explores some of the wider influences of Internet technology – from the small Irish town of Ennis, which won a competition to become the Information Age Town (every resident got a computer and Internet access), although nobody in the town knew until after they won what the Internet was, to computer phenom Danny Hillis’s Clock of the Long Now (designed to measure time for a millennia).
The Future Just Happened is almost five years old, and somewhat dated already, which only goes to support his position about the speed of change, and the adaptability of young users. Part of this book were interesting, others fascinating, and all in all I found it worthwhile, though not groundbreaking. – Alex
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