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The New Geography
Books like this one make one nostalgic for the days when publishing ignored the Net or published urgent tomes about addicted children, hackers and online predators.
This book is a mess. The only way to describe it is cyber-BS. It's not at all clear what it's even about, but Kotkin seems to be making the point that the digital economy is creating a new kind of social geography in which place has become important. (Wasn't it important before?) Individuals and businesses can scan the country to find places most desirable to them, freed from old ties to materials and cheap labor. This, says Plotkin, has triggered a vast upheaval, good news for communities that excel at creativity, education, trade and culture, bad news for everybody else.
"In geographic terms," writes Kotkin, a fellow at Pepperdine University, "the impact of the new economy has been devastating to a broad array of places. As commodity prices have dried up, rural communities that depend on ranching, lumbering, fishing and farming have continued to lose population. Similiarily, in urban areas the decline of traditional bulwarks of the economy such as ship-building, auto manufacturing, and textiles, as well as the relocation of large corporations, has afflicted once-robust urban districts with the equivalent of a wasting disease that gains strength as it weakens its victim."
The new economy promotes class as well as geographic divisions, he writes, and suggest the possibility of a growing geographic separation, with rich and poor, educated and noneducated increasingly segregated within particular areas. The growing threat of technologically-sparked "locational choice," warns Kotkin, is a Balkanization of populations. "Valhallas and nerdistans grow largely on the basis of migration of the skilled and well educated, while the cities and increasingly the midopolises absorb the flotsam and jetsam of the emerging postindustrial society."
Bring back the online-predator books! Yes, for sure, hi-tech environments are growing more rapidly than industrial ones, as the information-based new economy spreads rapidly throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world. And it's true that government and political systems seems to take little responsibility for making sure this prosperity is equitably distributed. But this isn't even remotely new, nor is it uniquely tied to the Digital Age. It's the Darwinian core of capitalism, which works beautifuly for lots of people, and badly for others. One could as easily (and foolishly) argue that the digital revolution will definitely empower poor individuals and communities to join in the booming new economy, no matter where they are located.
Kotkin's prescription for troubled or declining places: "Communities that wish to avoid this fate will be those that commit themselves to facing these problems with imagination and a sense of commitment." He adds: "Whether in the reform of education or the encouragement of enterprise or the creation of new public infrastructures, healthy twenty-first-century communities will be those that can develop a sense of common purpose."
Whew. Now that we all know what to do, it should be simple to manage the Digital Revolution more equitably. All we need is a common purpose. You have to wonder of Kotkin has ever been to a local school board meeting, let alone an online discussion group.
In his notion, communities that want to do well will band together in common purpose. But what of those that don't bother? Or whose leadership is too corrupt, short-sighted or apathetic? Economic booms have always been spread unevenly, since people ultimately are free to move and live where they want, those with more money and opportunity freer than those with neither. And people who can will always gravitate towards opportunity, leaving behind those who can't. Grapes of Wrath told this story a lot better.
Kotkin argues that as people and advanced industries hunt the globe for locations, they will not necessarily seek out those places that are the biggest, the cheapest, or the most well favored by location. Instead, they will seek out a new kind of geography, one that appeals to their sense of values and to their hearts, "and it is there that the successful communities of the digital age will be found." This is cyber-jabberwocky. People and industries would be insane to do otherwise. But this book's geography is pretty muddled. It takes you nowhere. Kotkin's new geography is not digital, but is instead made of gas and vapors.
Usually, it seems foolish to criticize a book, a waste of everybody's time. If it's no good, why bother to review it at all? But New Geography is so self-importan,t ponderous and opaque that it suggests that publishing has simply lurched from one silly extreme to another. Here's to the new geography of the middle ground.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
Katz reads book
Katz genuinely feels like it's Cyber-Jabberwocky
Katz gets sinking feeling that this is how his work is perceived
Katz pans book to try to distance himself.
The observant reader may speculate that I, the writer of this, may have the same hangup. Could be!
Similiarily, in urban areas the decline of traditional bulwarks of the economy such as ship-building,auto manufacturing, and textiles, as well as the relocation of large corporations, has afflicted once-robust urban districts with the equivalent of a wasting disease that gains strength as it weakens its victim."
Why didn't he write a book entitled, "Pointing out the Obvious". He could have also included cow herding and blacksmithing in the list of depleting industry.
What ever happened to being rewarded for doing well, just because you made alot or all of your fortune using electronic means does not make you a criminal, or a bad person, it makes you smart. Will it be such a tragedy if the author makes millions off this book that was written on a word processor, printed on computer controlled presses and published/sold on the internet?
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Jon Katz's new book(The new Media: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape) is so bad it will make you pine for all those volumes on trolls and hackers.
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share and enjoy
People don't need to move around the world seeking out new physical locations. One of the good things about the net is the way that cultures are blended together, and people share new ideas (when they're not buying crap from Amazon.com, of course. :) ). If I had a net connection in Namibia, I would be able to communicate with the same people that I would have access to in the US.
The net is helping to blur some of the national boundaries that exist. It empowers those who know how to use it. If anything, the culture and geography shift is going to be based on whether someone is a luser or whether they're net-savvy.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.