Thursday, July 09, 2009
A review of Create Your Own Economy
You can also find the review here. On skimming this book, your first reaction might be bemusement. What does this book have to do with the economy, when the most common theme threading the rather diverse chapters is autism? Only reading through will finally make you realize that the economy Tyler Cowen talks about is not the one defined classically ( and now in its death throes ?), but the one that broadband connectivity and non-rival goods have made possible. The goods we consume are increasingly virtual, indestructible in that they are bits of information, and yet ephemeral in value because of the low latency of cultural communication. Stuff becomes too passe, even retro-chic perhaps, all too soon. Lolcats are so 2008.
How does one cope in this new economy defined by the transaction of small cultural bits like Youtube videos, phatic Facebook status updates, blogs, and tweets? Tyler Cowen suggests that people endowed with autistic cognitive styles, and he self-identifies as one, are well positioned to take advantage of this incarnation of the economy.
Much like his blog Marginal Revolution, which is remarkable in its eclecticism and frequency of updates and perhaps demonstrative of the information ordering abilities of an autistic cognitive style, the book offers a smorgasbord of cultural bits, but these bits also ultimately make for a meaty thought stew. In ten diverse chapters, Cowen flits from a comparison of marriage to modern culture, to an analytical demonstration of Sherlock Holmes's autistic ways. Rather than simply and linearly describing the chapters, I will point to some of the many bits that interested and provoked me into exploring further.
Cowen suggests that "culture has in some ways become uglier because that is how the self-assembly of small bits looks to the outside observer. But when it comes to the interior dimension, contemporary culture has become happier and more satisfying. And ultimately, it has become nobler as well an more appreciative of the big-picture virtues of human life". There's obviously no mathematical derivation of this statement, but it plausibly extracts meaning from the dizzyingly fast changes broadband connectivity have wrought in the last decade. Youtube may have pushed attention spans downwards; The New York Time recently reported on how even porn has had to do away with its already minimal narrative to accommodate the new distribution channel and its consumptive consequences. However, Youtube also allows us to (almost) costlessly glimpse a one-man-band street performer in Croatia or an exceptionally talented Filipino amateur's mashup of the NBA playoffs (look for renhigotrare). At the risk of making this argument uni-dimensional, it is in ways increasing the variance of cultural quality we can experience, while possibly lowering the mean. Is that true? Who knows, the internet just got started with us.
The internet also already is a recognizable if distant cousin of the experience machine postulated by Robert Nozick that Cowen discusses elsewhere. Nozick wondered if we would choose fantasy over reality if this machine delivered fantasies tailored to dovetail into the most deep-seated of our desires. The old blue pill or the red pill question; will we crowd out the real organic world with a dense and enveloping collage of these cultural bits? Cowen's critique is reflected in the 11.5 million World of Warcraft players who log in daily to inhabit a fantasy landscape, slay monsters, and complete magical quests. We are perhaps neurologically diverse enough to allow for every argument and critique to find supporting exemplars. Cowen does suggest this, and possibly comes closest to describing why the book concerns the economy, in stating that "more and more art forms will be directed at pleasing people with unusual neurologies as cultural production becomes more diverse".
Most intriguing of the hypotheses in the book is the "audacious" prediction offered in the last chapter. Disclosing it will be a disservice to you and the author--pick up the book if only for this one--but it does remind me of the short story The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges. In it Borges describes the predicament of Troglodytes who, escaping the inevitability of death that makes us precious and pathetic, become ascetics devoted to the now unparalleled complexity of thought. Cowen offers a related, economic analysis inflected take on the future of the universe itself. ¶ 7:37 AM
How does one cope in this new economy defined by the transaction of small cultural bits like Youtube videos, phatic Facebook status updates, blogs, and tweets? Tyler Cowen suggests that people endowed with autistic cognitive styles, and he self-identifies as one, are well positioned to take advantage of this incarnation of the economy.
Much like his blog Marginal Revolution, which is remarkable in its eclecticism and frequency of updates and perhaps demonstrative of the information ordering abilities of an autistic cognitive style, the book offers a smorgasbord of cultural bits, but these bits also ultimately make for a meaty thought stew. In ten diverse chapters, Cowen flits from a comparison of marriage to modern culture, to an analytical demonstration of Sherlock Holmes's autistic ways. Rather than simply and linearly describing the chapters, I will point to some of the many bits that interested and provoked me into exploring further.
Cowen suggests that "culture has in some ways become uglier because that is how the self-assembly of small bits looks to the outside observer. But when it comes to the interior dimension, contemporary culture has become happier and more satisfying. And ultimately, it has become nobler as well an more appreciative of the big-picture virtues of human life". There's obviously no mathematical derivation of this statement, but it plausibly extracts meaning from the dizzyingly fast changes broadband connectivity have wrought in the last decade. Youtube may have pushed attention spans downwards; The New York Time recently reported on how even porn has had to do away with its already minimal narrative to accommodate the new distribution channel and its consumptive consequences. However, Youtube also allows us to (almost) costlessly glimpse a one-man-band street performer in Croatia or an exceptionally talented Filipino amateur's mashup of the NBA playoffs (look for renhigotrare). At the risk of making this argument uni-dimensional, it is in ways increasing the variance of cultural quality we can experience, while possibly lowering the mean. Is that true? Who knows, the internet just got started with us.
The internet also already is a recognizable if distant cousin of the experience machine postulated by Robert Nozick that Cowen discusses elsewhere. Nozick wondered if we would choose fantasy over reality if this machine delivered fantasies tailored to dovetail into the most deep-seated of our desires. The old blue pill or the red pill question; will we crowd out the real organic world with a dense and enveloping collage of these cultural bits? Cowen's critique is reflected in the 11.5 million World of Warcraft players who log in daily to inhabit a fantasy landscape, slay monsters, and complete magical quests. We are perhaps neurologically diverse enough to allow for every argument and critique to find supporting exemplars. Cowen does suggest this, and possibly comes closest to describing why the book concerns the economy, in stating that "more and more art forms will be directed at pleasing people with unusual neurologies as cultural production becomes more diverse".
Most intriguing of the hypotheses in the book is the "audacious" prediction offered in the last chapter. Disclosing it will be a disservice to you and the author--pick up the book if only for this one--but it does remind me of the short story The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges. In it Borges describes the predicament of Troglodytes who, escaping the inevitability of death that makes us precious and pathetic, become ascetics devoted to the now unparalleled complexity of thought. Cowen offers a related, economic analysis inflected take on the future of the universe itself. ¶ 7:37 AM
