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The Future & Its Enemies A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log Slate rejoins the Web   T A B L E__T A L K Those five fruity flavors are selling like hot cakes! Share your opinion of the new iMac in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk   ____________________ Technology news from Home networking gets a new shock ____________________   R E C E N T L Y Confessions of an online sex columnist By Patrizia DiLucchio Sure, talking about sex is fun. So is telling people what to do (02/12/99) The 21st Challenge No. 18 Results By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau Microsoft antitrust haiku (02/12/99) The scandal domain name game By Patrick J. Shields Viewed through the lens of domain registrations, Monicagate looks tawdry in a whole new way (02/11/99) To catch a thief By Wagner James Au In this new 3-D game, the emphasis is on stealth instead of shooting (02/10/99) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Video killed the Microsoft star: The company's tape demonstrated its own ruthlessness (02/09/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST BOOKS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

THE TOMORROW TRIBE | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - If this sounds a bit black-and-white, it is -- yet Postrel makes such simplicity palatable. "The Future and Its Enemies" is a scintillating manifesto that will inspire and invigorate those ready to hear its message, even as it infuriates those who aren't. Simultaneously clearheaded and effervescent, Postrel's prose is delightful to read. It bubbles with salubrious little maxims, the kind that reignite one's flagging sense of intellectual adventure: "Change and self-transformation are among the truest expressions of our enduring human nature." "Only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out." "Beach volleyball is a technocrat's nightmare." Though she pauses to deal a few ritualistic swats to such standard libertarian scapegoats as compulsory public education and the Food and Drug Administration, Postrel doesn't dwell on them. Instead, her case studies tend to be engagingly wacky. She cites Vidal Sassoon, California doughnut shops, her 7-year-old niece Rachel, Wolfgang Puck's frozen pizzas, online chat rooms and role-playing games as examples of dynamism in practice. The last two examples are particularly telling, for they reflect Postrel's assiduous courtship of the geek set. Make no mistake -- this is the book's raison d'être, and it's responsible for both its peaks and its gulches. Leading the former category is "Fields of Play," a chapter on work as play and vice versa: Postrel has carefully observed computer programmers and noted their example; she's lyrical in her evocation of the high you get when you're up to your elbows in a complex, challenging project. Citing "the psychological need for novelty [that is] a fundamental characteristic of the human species," she crafts a rich, moving defense of open-ended brainwork. Just as striking is her relentless celebration of the Internet as a haven for "local knowledge." She targets technocrats who ignore specialized knowledge in their pursuit of overarching rules, acidly mocking Ross Perot's 1996 assumption that because he'd "spent the last 40 years designing, engineering, testing and implementing complex systems," he'd been effectively training to be president. Coming just a few pages later, her claim that because "computer programs are themselves strings of rules ... programmer[s have] a practical knowledge of rule structures," and thus are equipped to govern the Internet, is rather breathtaking. Yet she sticks to this claim, doggedly ignoring such glaring examples of failed Internet governance as the rising tide of spam, the Net's inability to protect copyrights and the continuing disarray of the domain-name registration process. There are other flaws. Determined to hold the reader's interest at any cost, Postrel foregoes philosophical subtlety. Doesn't everyone have both stasist and dynamist tendencies? Surely even Postrel herself cherishes some certainties; surely there are some institutions she'd like to preserve. Isn't dynamism sometimes a bad thing -- as when it spurs dangerous fads? The tech-stock gold rush exemplifies dynamism at its most pell-mell, and numerous observers fear its consequences. And doesn't stasis have some positive qualities? It could be argued that America's strong sense of tradition provides a necessary foundation for rapid political and economic change. But such questions are far from closed. They will no doubt be taken up at events like Reason's first annual Dynamic Visions Conference, held this past weekend. But more importantly, Postrel's ideas are far too interesting to dismiss with a few caveats. Her dynamist philosophy should provoke discussion for some time to come. SALON | Feb. 16, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - Etelka Lehoczky has written on politics and culture for Salon, Feed and Newsday.