The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information [Paperback]

Alan Liu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0226486990 | ISBN-13: 978-0226486994 | Edition: 1

Knowledge work is now the reigning business paradigm and affects even the world of higher education. But what perspective can the knowledge of the humanities and arts contribute to a world of knowledge work whose primary mission is business? And what is the role of information technology as both the servant of the knowledge economy and the medium of a new technological cool? In The Laws of Cool, Alan Liu reflects on these questions as he considers the emergence of new information technologies and their profound influence on the forms and practices of knowledge.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Knowledge work is now the reigning business paradigm and affects even the world of higher education. But what perspective can the knowledge of the humanities and arts contribute to a world of knowledge work whose primary mission is business? And what is the role of information technology as both the servant of the knowledge economy and the medium of a new technological cool? In The Laws of Cool, Alan Liu reflects on these questions as he considers the emergence of new information technologies and their profound influence on the forms and practices of knowledge.

About the Author

Alan Liu is a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Wordsworth: the Sense of History and the developer of The Voices of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu), one of the earliest and most active humanities portals on the Web. His major online initiatives also include Romantic Chronology and Palinurus: The Academy and the Corporation-Teaching the Humanities in a Restructured World.

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226486990
• ISBN-13: 978-0226486994
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,153,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how to resist business ideology, May 14, 2005

By 

R. Wiecki (Madison, Wis.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Paperback)

In this book, Liu makes a persuasive argument that knowledge workers can resist the dominant postcapitalist business ideology from the inside by developing an "ethos of the unknown." The argument is dense, both philosophically and historically, but the book provides one of the best summaries available of the development of knowledge work and its relation to "cool."

This survey is framed by a larger argument, however, which seeks to establish a place for the arts and humanities in the information age. Liu argues that together they can establish a historically grounded aesthetic sense to serve as a counterweight to the capitalist drive for innovation at any cost that ignores the past and its human costs.

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Cool, April 23, 2009

By 

Quynce (Morgantown, West Virginia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Paperback)

Repetitive, vague, and more style than substance. I had to read this as part of my PhD in literature, so perhaps I more bitter than it warrants. Still, I've read a lot of new media crit., I did not find it stimulating or useful.

13 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disorganized insight, November 10, 2004

By 

A. Hyde (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Paperback)

Full of striking observations but ultimately too disorganized and inconclusive to do justice to the question of the place of humanistic knowledge in a culture of knowledge that is "cool," technical, and purposive.