Will the end of 'big' result in greater freedom, or social chaos? This is a vital forecast on the fundamental shift in power wrought by the Internet.
Seemingly innocuous technologies are unsettling the balance of power by putting it in the hands of the masses. What will a world without 'big' mean for all of us? In The End of Big, internet pioneer and Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Nicco Mele draws on nearly twenty years of experience to explore the consequences of revolutionary technology.
Our ability to connect instantly, constantly and globally is altering the exercise of power with dramatic speed. Governments, corporations, centres of knowledge and expertise are eroding before the power of the individual. It can be good in some cases, but as Mele reveals, the promise of the internet comes with a troubling downside.
Unless we exercise deliberate moral choice over the design and use of technologies, Mele says, we doom ourselves to a future that tramples human values, renders social structures chaotic and destroys rather than enhances freedom.
Both hopeful and alarming, thought-provoking and passionately argued, The End of Big is an important book about our present – and our future.
