Some reviews of Next speak of it as “dated,” but this is a misleading description. Of course, some of the stories Lewis tells here—about TiVo or Gnutella, for instance—were more edgy when the book was published in 2001. But, as with Walden, the issues remain, regardless of the age of the vehicle. In that book, Thoreau tells his readers, “What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new." This is Lewis’s theme: the ways in which the Internet blurs the distinctions between older, established authorities and snotnosed upstarts. His unapologetic sympathy with the latter may seem like Monday-morning quarterbacking, but it makes for an enthusiastic voice.

Next is a collection of set-pieces in which Lewis explores the ways that the knowledge market—a place previously controlled by insiders—has, because of the Internet, been threatened by outsiders. If that sounds dull, the book is not. Lewis opens with the story of Jonathan Lebed, the first minor ever charged with stock market fraud, whose simple curiosity about the numbers that crawled across the bottom of the CNBC screen prompted him to begin online trading and doing it so well that he was brought in for questioning by the SEC. Like other insiders (or “incumbents”) in Next, the SEC is presented as a gang if buffoons, unable to even describe just what Lebed did wrong other than “manipulate the market.” Lebed’s point—that everyone involved in the market “manipulates” it, which is what makes it a market in the first place—is lost on the SEC but not the reader. Other stories, such as the one concerning Marcus Arnold, a fifteen-year-old who became a legal expert on the Internet and, in the process, enraged thousands of lawyers, present similar figures. (I was about to write “similar heroes,” but stopped, since Lewis never paints these people as particularly brave or brazen; instead, they are simply young people using what seems to be common sense and computers to achieve some desired result.)

One of Lewis’s most memorable phrases is “pyramids and pancakes.” In some traditionally arranged organizations, information flows from those at the top of a pyramid down to those at the bottom. What the Internet fosters is a state of information sharing more like a pancake, where expertise is more evenly distributed among more people. The ways in which he examines this phenomenon through items such as television advertising makes for an engaging read. Next is never mind-blowing, nor will it make you pause and look up for a moment to think That is unreal. But you’ll find it engaging and certainly be impressed by Lewis’s thesis about youth and age, fringes and centers, pyramids and pancakes.






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With the coming of the internet, the outsiders (computer geeks) became the insiders, while the insiders (corporate America) were either left behind or scrambling to get a piece of the action. The author illustrates with profiles of teens who used the internet to get around the system. There is 15-year-old Jonathan Lebed who made over a million in online trading by impacting share prices with his posted opinions. Marcus Arnold, 15, dispensed legal advice on a law website and became a sought-after voice. Daniel Sheldon, 14, worked to improve Gnutella software for all simply for the glory and his interest.

This is an excellent book that rationally examines the Internet and the social change it has invoked. Rather than just bemoan and whine about the impact, Lewis has bothered to investigate the reasons for the myriad changes. His book should be required reading for sociology and business classes. He has a sarcastic wit yet keen insight into the radical shifts that have taken place, and he speculates on what the future might bring.

Central to Lewis's observations is the idea that the Internet has altered the relationship between the "insiders" and the "outsiders": between those who formerly controlled information and its flow to their benefit i.e., those who try to define what that information is, and those who have always been denied access to that power and information because of youth, lack of formal education, or lack of capital.

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." On the Internet, a boy barely in his teens flouts the investment system, making big enough bucks to get the SEC breathing down his neck for stock market fraud. What really makes them mad is that he has beaten them at their own game. When being accused of "manipulating" stock prices, he throws their logic back at them, asserting that that's the whole point of the stock market, that without manipulation, there would be no stock market. He watched stocks being hyped by professionals at the behest of companies and to the benefit of their own portfolios, in a world where companies cared more about their stock's value than the products they produced. A Blomberg study revealed that amateur predictions were twice as likely to be correct than those of stock analyst professionals.

Markus, a bored adolescent, too young to drive, became one of the most respected legal advisors on Askme.com. His legal expertise came from watching myriads of legal television shows and from searching out the answers on the Internet. Ironically, his information appears to have been correct, and even the head of the American Bar Association admitted that most legal counsel is simply a matter of dispensing appropriate information. The story of how Askme.com got started is in itself instructive. It was designed by a software company to permit corporations to create an intranet that provided the capability for anyone to ask a question and anyone else in the corporation to provide an answer. Thus the information flow would change from the traditional top down pyramid model to a more pancake-shaped environment where information moved horizontally. It could be a bit unsettling for some people to see a vice-president get assistance from an assembly line worker, but the results were much more profitable companies, so the software became quite popular. The only concern prospective customers had was whether a product could withstand heavy usage, so the designers created Askme.com, a public site where people could ask questions of others. It became so popular that it was getting 10 million hits per day, and experts were vying for top rankings from those they assisted. Markus was so accommodating and his information so reliable that he was once asked by a "client" to provide the defense in court. Fortunately, his mother wouldn't drive him to court, but he supplied legal briefs and other legal documents that were accepted. The pyramid flattening to a pancake has become a metaphor for all that is happening around us.

Gnutella, the famous peer-to-peer software, is also examined as an example of the new relationships that have arisen from the ubiquitous nature of the Internet. It, too, demonstrates how the social order has been reversed and prestige redistributed. The corrosive effect of money, the lessening of gambling as sinful, and the devaluation of formal training in the exchange of knowledge ("casual thought went well with casual dress,") are additional side effects.

Lewis writes so smoothly. His observations are often funny as he describes people's behavior and familial interactions. The Internet has provided a window through which even youngsters, like the teenage investor, can "glimpse the essential truth of the market -- that even people who call themselves professionals were often incapable of independent thought and that most people , though obsessed with money, had little ability to make decisions about it." It's also clear from his examples, most illuminatingly the interviews with the SEC and the parents, that most adults have no idea what's happening around them, and that these youngsters are becoming proficient at the same tools available to the "experts." Lewis's observations, in my experience, are valid, but whether they are entirely due to the Internet is problematic. Certainly, anyone can set him/herself up as a consultant merely by making speculative announcements publicly and then charging huge fees regardless of whether the information is appropriate, valid, or even false. We are surrounded by silly, self-esteem-building, "creativity" workshops that are singularly lacking in content and substance. We are told that all we need do is have a little passion for something in order to be successful. Competence has little to do with anything any more.

I remember a call from a father inebriatingly asking why it was necessary for his son to take certain courses - Shakespeare was one of them - that the father and the boy deemed to be unnecessary since his son was already making so much money in the stock market. My explanation that one of the roles of a multi-faceted education was to create a compassionate and informed citizenry fell on stony ground. Clearly, the only value this family had was monetary.

Keep your eye on the outsiders. ( )

I listened to this book on the way up to Scott & Stacey's wedding.

It was pretty good.

The 15 year old stock trader who made half a million in the market was a pretty funny and enlightening story. ( )

This book let me feeling vindicated. Yes Yes Yes Yes this is how the world is changing and we are seeing it here in darkest Africa even! Creativity is KING! ( )