Next: The Future Just Happened (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "One day some social historian will look back with wonder on the havoc wreaked by the Internet..." (more)
Key Phrases: Jonathan Lebed, Wall Street, Justin Frankel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you've ever had the sneaking (and perhaps depressing) suspicion that the Internet is radically changing the world as you know it, buck up. No wait, buckle up--it is. While some people celebrate this and others bemoan it, Michael Lewis has been busy investigating the reasons for this rapid change. Employing the sarcastic wit and keen recognition of social shifts that readers of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing will recognize, Lewis takes us on a quick spin through today and speculates on what it might mean for tomorrow.

Central to Lewis's observations is the idea that the Internet hasn't really caused anything; rather it fills a type of social hole, the most obvious of which is a need to alter relations between "insiders" and "outsiders." In Next, Lewis shows how the Internet is the ideal model for sociologists who believe that our "selves are merely the masks we wear in response to the social situations in which we find ourselves." It is the place where a New Jersey boy barely into his teens flouts the investment system, making big enough bucks to get the SEC breathing down his neck for stock market fraud. Where Markus, a bored adolescent stuck in a dusty desert town and too young to even drive, becomes the most-requested legal expert on Askme.com, doling out advice on everything from how to plead to murder charges to how much an Illinois resident can profit from illegal gains before being charged with fraud ($5,001 was the figure Markus supplied to this particular cost-benefit query). Where a left-leaning kid of 14 in a depressed town outside Manchester is too poor to take up a partial scholarship to a school for gifted children, but who spends all hours (all cheap call-time hours, at least) engaged in "digital socialism," trying to develop a successor to Gnutella, the notorious file-sharing program that had spawned the new field of peer-to-peer computing. Lewis burrows deeply into each of these stories and others, examining social phenomena that the Internet has contributed to: the redistribution of prestige and authority and the reversal of the social order; the erosive effect on the money culture (both in the democratization of capital and in the effect of gambling losing its "status as a sin"); the decreased value we place on formal training (or as he puts it "casual thought went well with casual dress"); and the increased need for knowledge exchange.

Lewis's observations are piercingly sharp. He can be very funny in portraying ordinary people's behavior, but remains thorough and insightful in his examination of the social consequences. He notes that Jonathan Lebed, the teenage online investor, had "glimpsed the essential truth of the market--that even people who called themselves professionals were often incapable of independent thought and that most people, though obsessed with money, had little ability to make decisions about it." While Lewis's commentary gets a little more dense and theoretical toward the end, Next is an entertaining, thought-provoking look at life in an Internet-driven world. --S. Ketchum

From Publishers Weekly

utting an engaging and irreverent spin on yesterday's news, Lewis (Liar's Poker; The New, New Thing) declares that power and prestige are up for grabs in this look at how the Internet has changed the way we live and work. Probing how Web-enabled players have exploited the fuzzy boundary between reality and perception, he visits three teenagers who have assumed startling roles: Jonathan Lebed, the 15-year-old New Jersey high school student who made headlines when he netted $800,000 as a day trader and became the youngest person ever accused of stock-market fraud by the SEC; Markus Arnold, the 15-year-old son of immigrants from Belize who edged out numerous seasoned lawyers to become the number three legal expert on AskMe.com; and Daniel Sheldon, a British 14-year-old ringleader in the music-file-sharing movement. Putting himself on the line, Lewis is freshest in his reportage, though he doesn't pierce the deeper cultural questions raised by the kids' behavior. As a financial reporter tracing the development of innovative industries like black box interactive television and interactive political polling from their beginnings as Internet brainstorms, Lewis reminds readers that the twin American instincts to democratize and commercialize intertwine on the Internet, and can only lead to new business. In the past, Lewis implies, industry insiders would simply have shut out eager upstarts, yet today insiders, like AOL Time Warner, allow themselves "to be attacked in order to later co-opt their most ferocious attackers and their best ideas." (July 30)Forecast: Lewis's track record, a major media campaign and a 12-city author tour through techie outposts will make this hard to ignore. As a breezy summer read, it's fun enough, but those looking for profound business insights will be disappointed.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1st edition (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393020371
• ISBN-13: 978-0393020373
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (96 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #850,260 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book on the Social Implications of the Internet, July 24, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Old elites beware! Your time is up! Become the new elite today! That's the message of this intriguing, fascinating, and thought-provoking look at what's already happened on the Internet.

I not only thought that this is the best book about the social effects of the Internet, I also think it is by far Michael Lewis's best work.

This book deserves many more than five stars as a result.

The original idea was simple. There are all of these people making a big splash on the Internet as individuals. Let's go meet them in person and find out what's really going on. Believe me, it's different from what you read in the newspapers or saw on television. With the aid of a researching crew from the BBC, Mr. Lewis found that the cutting edge of the Internet revolution was going on with 11-14 year olds. Soon, it will probably drift lower in age.

Because the Internet lets you play on a equal footing and assume any identity you choose, youngsters with guts and quick minds can take on major roles. Usually, their parents have no clue until adults or major authority figures start arriving on their doorstep challenging what the youngster is doing or seeking personal advice.

The core of the book revolves around the stories of Jonathan Lebed who used chat room commentaries to help drive his $8,000 stake into over $800,000 in less than three years, Marcus in Perris, California who became Askme.com's leading criminal law expert based on his watching of court TV shows, and Justin Frankel who became an important developer of Gnutella for filesharing while having trouble getting an education in school.

Mr. Lewis makes the point that these youngsters weren't doing anything that their elders don't do in other forums. Yet the established authorities deeply resented and challenged them. Mr. Lewis suggests that the old elites "get a life." Their day is over. He uses the analogy of his father's refusal to adapt his law practice to the methods of personal injury lawyers using billboards and television ads to show this is how the existing elites always respond . . . by condemning and trying to ignore the new.

At the same time, Mr. Lewis raises several important questions that will stay with you. After having been king of the hill for your 15 minutes of fame at 15, how will you feel about the rest of your life as an also-ran? His portrayal of Danny Hillis's project to create the 10,000 year clock captures that point very well. He also lampoons Bill Joy's arguments that the Unabomber had it right that we (the existing elites) need to constrain technology.

The basic point is that economic and social effectiveness will rest on the foundation of how effective you can be rather than who you are, what degrees you have, what age you are, or who you know. In other words, the Internet has added another degree of leveling to our society. Surely, that's good.

I'm a little more optimistic than Mr. Lewis about the implications. I think that many people will find the lower barriers to entry provide them the chance to develop themselves more than would otherwise happen. What they learn as youngsters can be used in new ways on broader canvases later in life. For example, Jonathan will probably become a great marketing guru. Marcus has the seeds of a marvelous counselor, attorney, or columnist in him. Justin will probably create masterful new software structures that will make sharing easier and more effective. Those are potentially beautiful futures for these young men.

Child prodigies have always been with us. The lessons for those based in the Internet will be the same as for those who did it in music or the motion pictures. You have to keep developing yourself, have sound values, and prepare for an adult role that you enjoy and are good at. I do feel for the parents of these young people. They are the ones with the big challenge!

After you finish enjoying this wonderful book, I suggest that you think about where you can pursue lifelong interests on the Internet! You can go back to being 11 again, too!

Log on and have a ball!

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Heavy breathing, July 28, 2001

By A Customer

"Next" is an exercise in technoeuphoria---the Internet changes everything and the kids are leading the way. In trying to make his point, Lewis takes anecdotes and individual examples and claims that they present the whole picture. It really seems that he has not got outside the reality distortion field that helped to create the Internet bubble that has burst with such devastating effects. The technology, of course, is here to stay but it may be more evolutionary in its impact at this point than revolutionary.

Jon Katz, a technophile who writes for Slashdot, would seem to agree that Lewis has gone over the top in this one. In his recent review of the book in the Wall Street Journal, Katz writes: "Partway through "Next," I grew uncomfortable with Mr. Lewis's familiar absolutist fervor. The popular media have always tended to portray digital culture in binary terms of alarm (pornographers, hackers, thieves) or of hype (everything will change forever). Mr. Lewis seems to be falling into the latter trap. For all his skill and confidence, he's bought into the heavy breathing about technology and its impact on society."

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but fails to bring good connection, February 4, 2002

By	Carl A. Redman (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In "Next: The future just happened," Michael Lewis opens by stating that in the long run the Internet will become invisible and ubiquituous and no one will think of the social effects anymore than they think of the social effects of electricity. This is a rather obvious statement if one thinks about it: the reason that electricity has had zero social effect on me is because it has been a part of every facet of my life for my entire life. This is the idea that Lewis sets out to explore through stories that he has investigated. The stories are quite interesting, but are not interestng enough to make this book worth the read.

The first chapter, entitled "The Financial Revolt," tells the fascinating story of Jonathan Lebed in great detail. The story stretches for the entire eighty-page chapter and relays the inside scoop on the 15-year old kid that made $800,000 by going into chat rooms and giving financial advice. Lewis's analysis of the Lebed story is that stock prices respond to the public's perspective. Lewis also hints at what might be the future of the stock market: millions of small investors plugging becoming in essence professional analysts, generating little explosions of unreality in every corner of the capital markets. But Lewis fails to further explore this idea, providing many pages of story, but no bang to back it up.

The book follows the pattern of the first chapter: a long, very detailed, interesting story with very little analysis. But the book is only four chapters, so really you're only getting four stories. Marcus Arnold and his rise in legal advice on AskMe.com is discussed in chapter two, Lewis's point being that if one reduces the law to information then anyone can supply it. Sounds like Will Hunting's claim that anyone can get an education with a library card and $1.35 in late fees. In chapter three, kid-whiz Daniel Sheldon and file sharing application Gnutella are explored. Lewis's major point through these three stories and chapters is that the Internet undermined all the old sources of insider power: control of distribution channels, intellectual property, and information. Chapter 4 is about the effect of TiVo and Knowledge Networks on opinion surveys and advertising. This is the least interesting chapter and Lewis is at his lowest in analysis.

In the final chapter, Lewis explains that he has interviewed and explored many more people and stories, but selected only a few to tell that fairly represented the whole. Perhaps Lewis should have just told all of the stories in brief, because then the reader would have been left with a bunch of stories to draw conclusions from, instead of just four or five like there are now. Lewis closes his book with a quote from Leded: "I feel that it is very important to focus on the future right now." Lewis's closing remarks are icing on the cake for the breakdown and in depth explanation he misses throughout the book.