Synopses & Reviews
Ian Angell, dubbed "the Angell of Doom" by The (London) Times, lays out his manifesto for the New Barbarians who will lead the economic elite into a Brave New World over the next two decades. He rejects the long-held view of information technology as our benign liberator from mundane work. Instead, he regards it as the seed for a new society, in which the winners in the knowledge economy will construct their own "smart regions" founded on libertarian principles and enlightened self-interest. The losers, however, face a bleak future. The three evils of religion, ethnicity and socialism will prey on the economic insecurity of the masses, as transnational businesses roam the globe in search of ever cheaper labour. If this scenario seems unlikely, look now at the life prisoners in US jails who operate telesales services for major US companies. Angell predicts that IT, far from creating the path to Utopia, will spell poverty for the many and self-governing opulence for the few. Only those individuals with the knowledge, talent and power to guide this social revolution will prosper, liberated from taxation, while semi-skilled and unskilled labour become commodities, and the billion disenfranchised production workers worldwide compete on price against more efficient robots.
Review
""The New Barbarian Manifesto is a highly readable, hugely enjoyable hi-tech version of The Decline of the West."" -- Guardian
Synopsis
Ian Angell, dubbed ""the Angell of Doom"" by The (London) Times, lays out his manifesto for the New Barbarians who will lead the economic elite into a Brave New World over the next two decades. He rejects the long-held view of information technology as our benign liberator from mundane work. Instead, he regards it as the seed for a new society, in which the winners in the knowledge economy will construct their own ""smart regions"" founded on libertarian principles and enlightened self-interest.
Description
IT was once welcomed as a liberator and genie that would free us from enslavement to mundane chores and the daily grind. Instead, Ian Angell says it is breeding a new society of `barbarians` in which the winner takes all. He claims that the world after the information revolution will be one in which a gifted few control corporations that move factories around the planet in search of the lowest wages -- it is already happening, as prisoners, serving life sentences in the US operate telesales services for major American Airlines. Angell`s view is apocalyptic -- poverty for the many and self-governing opulence for the elite few. These privileged few, who can afford to be stateless, will not have to pay taxes in any state. Society will split into the elite and the masses. Society as we know it will break down. Only those with the knowledge and the power to guide the information revolution will prosper, leaving the manual labor to stateless production workers or more efficient robots.
About the Author
Angell is Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics. He is a controversial figure whose radical views have earned him a great deal of media attention.
Table of Contents
`It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times`; Information Superhighway in Cyberspace; The New Barbarians: Globalization and Localization; Where Do we Work? Do we Work?; Knkowledge Workers versus Service Workers; Who Do we Work for? And What is Work Anyway?; Limits to Taxation; The End of Liberal Democracy?; An Age of Rage; Corrupting the Old Order; Attitudes towards Crime; New Rituals Old; Altruism: Who Cares?; The Making of a New Barbarian; Mutation of the Nation-State; The Flight of the Information Rich; Winning Through: A Strategy for Survival/Succeess.