The Triumph of the Flexible Society: The Connectivity Revolution and Resistance to Change (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780275981280)

Hinds takes offers a fresh perspective on the social, political, and economic disturbances now affecting our world. This book looks at those disturbances not as separate problems, but rather as the coherent symptoms of a deep technological revolution that is changing the shape of society on the scale of the Industrial Revolution: the Connectivity Revolution, the basis of the New Economy. Analyzing the resistance to change that erupted violently in response to that last major economic upheaval, Hinds shows how Communism, Nazism, and fundamentalism owe their triumphs not to the prevalence of poverty or oppression but to the rigidity of societies threatened by profound social changes prompted by rapid technological progress. Demonstrating that their rigidity was caused by the same kind of state intervention in the economy that is now being proposed to stop globalization, he argues persuasively that only a horizontal, flexible society can smoothly manage change in such a way that the pain of transformation--and therefore, the risk of giving birth to new varieties of destructive regimes--is minimized.

Author: Manuel Hinds
ISBN-10: 0275981282
ISBN-13: 9780275981280
Publisher: Praeger
Language: English
Published: 11/30/2003
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 9.56h x 6.54w x 0.87d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2004 pg. 2092