You hear it all the time. People complain that they can’t get away from Facebook, Twitter, or even email—that the technology we own ends up owning us, or some similar cliche line about the digital dystopia that is consuming our humanity one bit at a time. I can’t stand these people.
Thankfully there are people like my colleague Tyler Cowen who realize that—despite cultural reflexes that would have us do otherwise—we should embrace these new technologies as means to be more selective about what information we absorb and therefore welcome the increased volume of bytes into our lives. In his new book Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World, he explores technology as a vehicle to help you determine what you really value, not a series of a email-powered torture devices.
To make the material even more interesting, the book uses autism as a touchstone—one the chapters is even entitled “Autistic Politics”—as autism proves to be an effective analogy when talking about ways of absorbing and processing information.
For more about the book, you can visit the site I just finished building—CreateYourOwnEconomy.org—or pick up the book at Barnes & Noble, AbeBooks, or Amazon.com.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.