Product Description: Douglas Rushkoff's latest salvo on complacent media culture, set in 2008, features Jamie Cohen, a young hacker who, like the biblical Joseph, suffers betrayal and then penance (via the talk-show circuit) before joining forces with a venture capitalist determined to turn everyone into mindless consumers. Meanwhile, Jamie's former pals have developed a way to kill the Web's - and the stock market's - profit-making capacities. A dazzling satire of 1990s dot-com mania, this McLuhanesque cultural critique establishes a new publishing precedent: it is the first "open-source" ebook, annotated by online readers. This first print edition includes the best of their footnotes chosen by the author.
Great book by a great author ^ I first learned about this book through Yahoo! Internet Life, when they still published the darn thing, and they printed a chapter in the magazine from the book along with information on how to contribute. Never got around to creating any footnotes, but I did buy a copy as soon as I remembered it's existence.
Unfortunately, the copy I got at the bookstore was missing some pages. I emailed the author and he responded that it was a known problem, and offered to email me PDFs of the pages I was missing. Preferring a full book, I went back to the bookstore, had them order 5 more copies, and traded when the new ones came.
Enough of that, though. This is a fantastic book that, in the words of another reviewer, may blow your mind. I pick it up and read it again probably once a year or so, and will be searching for it shortly to do so. The manuscript format was genius and perfect for this story.
for business-starter-uppers trapped in their own IPO ^ A clever presentation (the novel as a found document from the distant future) sets an interesting tone for this bit of near-future speculative fiction. Overall, a pretty decent read with an excellent cautionary tale at its heart. Worth the read, especially if you're an aspiring author looking for an example of some "different" way of presenting your text.
plug-in ^ "EXIT STRATEGY, the body encoder that the technojunkie was debugged to the human body pill paradise apparatus of this abolition world plug-in, to send back out cruel emulator of hyperreal HIV=scanner form era respiration-byte." - Kenji Siratori, author of Blood Electric
new way to live the modern life ^ So everything is a game? If we don't think it is, if we take it too seriously we are going to end up being bulls or Jamie. But if we play it as a game, we will have fun? Then if we play the game, we have to understand the rules of the game. If we don't know that it is a game, we live in it, do we become "bad" charactors--bulls, or do we become "Jamie"--the painfully concious person? I think Rushkoff is telling the reader to play, engage, and get out. Engage, play, win or lose, get out.
Pleasant Surprise ^ You can tell Rushkoff is a greenhorn novelist, as the plot falters at points. You often get the feeling that he's trying a bit too hard, but the care that he put into the novel just seeps through to cover up in technical failings. I love the human face Rushkoff puts on the dot.com mentalities of the late 90's. I was just waiting to piss on this book (it was given to me by a friend that usally has taste of that sort), but it was at least moderately enjoyable all the way through and absolutely outstanding a great deal of the time as well. PLUS, Dzama's illustrations are just great. Only thing I wish it that there were more of them.
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