Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age by Steven Johnson (PDF)

Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now, Farsighted, and Extra LifeCombining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good For You, New York Times bestselling author Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview — influenced by the success and interconnectedness of the Internet, by peer networks, but not dependent on high-tech solutions — that breaks with the conventional categories of liberal or conservative, public vs. private thinking. With his acclaimed gift for multi-disciplinary storytelling and big idea books, Johnson explores this new vision of progress through a series of fascinating narratives: from the “miracle on the Hudson” to the planning of the French railway system; from the battle against malnutrition in Vietnam to a mysterious outbreak of strange smells in downtown Manhattan; from underground music video artists to the invention of the Internet itself. At a time when the conventional wisdom holds that the political system is hopelessly gridlocked with old ideas, Future Perfect makes the timely and inspiring case that progress is still possible, and that innovative strategies are on the rise. This is a hopeful, affirmative outlook for the future, from one of the most brilliant and inspiring visionaries of contemporary culture.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Imagine gardens of roses located in every country or territory in the world. Then, imagine you are a bumble bee.You can go sample any rose anywhere in the world. There is no law that restricts you.The catch? The only sense you have to detect a rose remains for sampling (i.e. the bloom has not been lopped off by a dead header and which is not occupied by one of your fellows bees) is a built-in antenna.There is no collective hive. Information can be found in small congregations of bees, and individual bumble bees that…well…fly to his or her idiosyncratic drummer. You cannot fly to all these locations—your bumble bee body and wings have a finite capacity to fly. If you were able, you would spend most of your life searching for information or the bushes would have stopped blooming. No life-sustaining nectar either way. Poof! You land on the sidewalk and the local cat has a new play toy.How and where does your antenna get usable information—information that is accurate, timely, and adjusted to your needs as a bumble bee in search of nectar, rather than information for a spider in search of insects for its next meal, or bushes that have been so fumigated that the nectar is not to your liking?Future Perfect attempts to provide a methodology for answering this question. In Johnson’s book, peer progressives are the bumble bees. Each bee has information that is useful to another bee—the question is which bee?If there was a collective hive, it would be a LeGrand Star. These frameworks are hub and spoke and if turned vertical are the hierarchical structures found in a lot of everyday life.Peer-to-peer networks (bee-to-bee) also exist in almost every facet of life:** in government’s relations with other governments and citizens through apps and other modes of a citizen giving their opinion or reporting a problem, participatory budgeting, proxy or delegate voting, law enforcement car tag readers ,medical research and insurance exchanges;** in journalism through the proliferation of blogs and on-line media resources,** in the Internet through Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook (limited to the extent that it is a hierarchical company),blogs, websites, and other forms of social media and open source applications;** in incentives through Kickstarter, Open Government Initiative, on-line competitions for the next development of the novel application, software, machine or item;** in the corporate world through innovative styles of management employed by Whole Foods, New Balance, Starbucks, and Georgia PowerI bought Future Perfect thinking it would be more technically substantive, like Hello Avatar. The section of Kickstarter and like crowd funding sources was exciting as the virtual game reality in Hello Avatar.Other than a bit on the soap box politically, which is natural given Johnson being a political junkie, I had no substantive complaints about the subject matter.I would have liked to have seen Johnson’s take on peer progressive networks in healthcare, and the environmental causes as well as a more nuanced view of education networks. It would be interesting to read a subsequent edition of Future Progress.

⭐I very much enjoyed reading Johnson’s musings on the promise of peer networks and emergent forms of connection. I especially liked the perspective that this growing peer philosophy is neither Big Government nor Big Corporation, nor does it fit neatly into either of our dominate political platforms. It is indeed something altogether different. This aspect of the book was inspiring and refreshing.However, despite his appeals that this “peer” revolution is not simply net-utopianism, the majority of Johnson’s examples of peer-networked success were drawn from web related projects. If, however, we are learning from the Internet as a model as he says, maybe the dearth of non-web examples in Future Perfect suggests they are still emerging and evolving.Additionally I really wished he had included a chapter on energy. There was almost no mention of climate change in this brief book. While tackling some “pressing” problems such as election finance reform, democracy, business, and education, Johnson overlooks one of the most centralized (non-distributed) platforms in our country: our energy grid. Energy seems like hanging fruit for this book, and its a disappointment to read 20 pages about KickStarter instead…

⭐The author has collected a narrative of use cases based off peer-to-peer network that highlights benefits of a non centralized model system.These cases include a French train system, 311, Kickstarter and others.

⭐As an extreme technophile, I am certainly a tad biased in writing this review. However, Johnson’s observations really gave a philosophical underpinning to the movement that the Internet has created. His argument is that the Internet makes information cheaper, which in turn allows “peers” to share data and information, rather than information coming down from a hierarchy. When innovation comes from the edges of the network, rather than the center, then the full power of the network is unleashed. Though detailed analysis and countless examples, he shows how the Internet is making this possible. However, I think he also comes across very balanced. He pulls examples not just from the last 20 years, but also sometimes from centuries ago to illustrate his point. The “peer progressive” mentality was not created by the Internet, but the Internet has enabled it to spread in a way never before possible. The writing and stories were thoroughly captivating as well.

⭐Despite Johnson never using the term ‘New World Order’, he highlights very well some of the scenarios where networking and social technologies have revolutionised how we organise in the face of new challenges. He also sketches out an interesting future we could enter if we continue to embrace some of the best organising principles that he brings from fascinating success stories. ‘Future Perfect’ successfully shows that there is a large current of change possible if we embrace the benefits that could come from seeing and living a new world order.

⭐I liked this book so much that I purchased it AFTER checking it out of the library and reading it. It facilitates hope for the future.

⭐If you enjoyed Emergence then you will definitely enjoy Future Perfect. It leads on directly from the ant colonies of Emergence to the problems facing political systems today, but offers hope and inspiration as to how we can see solutions to those problems. The author again shows us how peer networks of all types can help us regain what has been missing within our hierarchical, command and control systems . I just hope that leaders and entrepreneurs grasp it, fund it and deliver it. Johnson contends that they already are.

⭐Steven Johnson’s recent run of books – The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From – have been so thoroughly well researched, considered and written that he’s set the bar very high. Future Perfect is an interesting read, but doesn’t meet those very high standards.It makes the case for a new kind of political outlook based on the progress that technology has provided, not technological utopia but more grounded. He uses the example of air travel safety to show how life has improved immeasurably thanks to constant iterations of technology.But after a strong opening each chapter becomes less sure of itself, setting up a proposition then using an example of a study to prove it – but sometimes, in my opinion, missing the mark.This is still a good book and an interesting read, but I wouldn’t recommend it as highly as any of his past three.

⭐This book contains some extremely important ideas from the world of peer-organisation of society. The author writes optimistically, drawing from many examples about how the structure he calls a Baran Web is so much better for many reasons (stability, resilience) than the structure he refers to as a Hayek or Legrand Star – the peer progressives, he claims, are appearing in many forms – some political (Occupay/Indignados), some economic (kickstarter), some purely social….Now, while these peer organisations don’t currently complete with the traditional structures (top down, central government stars, or fully decentralised jungles like full on Hayek mythical free market, or real top down global industrial structures like the near monopolies of Apple, Google, etc), in some places they are growing very fast and successfully, plus he doesn’t propose tearing down the government or free market structures – he says that he peer-structures should (and do) grow around the edges to act as more resilient safety nets than either of the incumbent systems – in my words, the new structures are there to “keep the old ones honest” – i.e. if you want government intervention, it should be light touch, minimalist, and should recede when no longer wanted If you want a market, it should be free, information rich, and anti-monopolistic, without perverse incentives, and should be regulated by government, or dismantled by a more efficient peer-network whenever (as recently) it goes astray..As with Steve Pinker’s recent excellent corrective on the real Better Angels of our Nature, this book is subversive and instructive. It is optimistic, as some other reviewers have written, but then those of us who worked on the Internet from the early days had to be optimists for quite a long time in the face of bell head misunderstanding:)There are copious examples here and elsewhere of why this is right.For me, a peer-network still has problems (for example, the dictatorship of the majority, or the undue influence of the charismatic player) but we can work on those problems using the peer net itself, so I buy this, and I recommend you do too:)

⭐The first third of the book contains an interesting and highly readable popularisation of recent scientific texts on the role of networks in social organisation. Unfortunately the last two thirds of the book are filled with highly enthusiastic and uncritical examples of how these network structures might change various fields of society. Mainly these case studies fall short of valid analyses since they create false dichotomies between network structures, market structures and hierarchies. Instead of telling the more differentiated tale that network structures increasingly supplement traditional forms of social organisation the cases push the more sensationalist tale that network structures will replace traditional structures. For more balanced accounts of the phenomenon see for example: Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, Cynthia Stohl

⭐Collective Action in Organizations: Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change (Communication, Society and Politics)

⭐, Andrew Chadwick or Dave Karpf

⭐The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy (Oxford Studies in Digital Politics)

⭐.

⭐A read-in-one-sitting kind of book. Johnson maintains his extraordinarily accessible writer’s voice for this one. This book didn’t rock my world as hard as Everything Bad is Good for You, but it definitely left me feeling inspired. To make the world a better place? Perhaps. To start referring to my political orientation as Peer-Progressive? Absolutely.

⭐The book is good, it describes the new approach to develop solutions focused on networks that run parallel to each other. For my taste it was too oriented to policy making, but a good book never the less.

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