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Synopsis
Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster.
In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century.
In this bold exploration of how civilizations learn, Postrel heralds a fundamental shift in the way we view politics, culture, technology, and society as we face an unknown -- and invigorating -- future.
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Review
Virginia Postrel smashes conventional political boundaries in this libertarian manifesto. World-views should be defined not by how they view the present, she says, but the future. Do they aim to control it, as many conservative reactionaries and liberal planners want to do? Or do they embrace it, even though they can't know what lies ahead? Postrel (editor of Reason magazine) firmly places herself in this latter category--the dynamists, she calls her happy tribe--and urges the rest of us to sign up. The future of economic prosperity, technological progress, and cultural innovation depends upon embracing principles of choice and competition. The downside of this philosophy, Postrel readily notes, is that it doesn't allow us to manage tomorrow by acting today. And that's exactly the point: we shouldn't want to. A future constructed by an infinite number of individual decisions, made privately, is one she believes we should encourage. The Future and Its Enemies is at once intellectually sweeping and reader-friendly; it has the potential to join a pantheon of books about freedom that includes works by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. --John J. Miller
About the Author
Virginia Postrel is the editor of Reason magazine and a columnist for Forbes and its companion technology magazine, Forbes ASAP. Her work also appears in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major publications. She lives in Los Angeles. Her Web site is at www.dynamist.com.
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- Publisher1998
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0028741080
- ISBN 13 9780028741086
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Rating
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The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress
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Hardcover. Condition: UsedVeryGood. Hardcover; light fading, light shelf wear to exterior; otherwise in very good condition with clean text, firm binding. Dust jacket shows light fading, shelf wear, and a small hole at the bottom of the front cover. Seller Inventory # 21430
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