Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Nietzsche + Surowiecki = Twilight of the Superman
Since the glorious Patricia Highsmith bio, I've read Nietzsche's "autobiography," Ecce Homo, and James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How CollectiveWisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. The first of these is largely unmemorable, just like Nietzsche's other books, in fact. His writing is always stilted and obtuse or, where a meaning can be clearly deciphered, wrong. Only one passage stuck out, namely, where he describes how he sensed the impending arrival of a herd of cows before actually seeing them by the softening of his own thoughts. Which was nice. Temple Grandin would approve.
The Surowiecki book, on the other hand, is another stunner, one of the few books I've read that justifies the hype it's received. If you want a better defence of democracy, or of anarchism, which is really just genuine political democracy plus genuine industrial democracy (okay, so I simplify), you'll be hard put to find it except maybe in the writings of Kropotkin. Bill, you'll hate it, of course, because technocrats get short shrift and all Marxists are really technocrats, but everyone else will find it most enlightening, I am sure. I've noticed that some business magazines are hyping the book as a defence of free-trade ideas (others are ignoring it altogether because of its arguments for workplace democracy), but Surowiecki doesn't actually do this; he only explains how Adam Smith's theories of an ideal marketplace play out in reality, i.e. unsuccessfully.
Next on my list is Stiff, by Mary Roach, which I'm looking forward to. It's about the various uses that human cadavers are put to. Chapter one describes how 40 cosmetic surgeons attending a refresher course practiced their techniques on 40 human heads lined up in a row, placed in aluminium baking trays. If you're thinking of donating your body to science, you might want to specify 'not for cosmetic purposes.' Not unless you want your skin and cheek fat to be harvested and used for penile extensions. You never know where you might end up.
The Surowiecki book, on the other hand, is another stunner, one of the few books I've read that justifies the hype it's received. If you want a better defence of democracy, or of anarchism, which is really just genuine political democracy plus genuine industrial democracy (okay, so I simplify), you'll be hard put to find it except maybe in the writings of Kropotkin. Bill, you'll hate it, of course, because technocrats get short shrift and all Marxists are really technocrats, but everyone else will find it most enlightening, I am sure. I've noticed that some business magazines are hyping the book as a defence of free-trade ideas (others are ignoring it altogether because of its arguments for workplace democracy), but Surowiecki doesn't actually do this; he only explains how Adam Smith's theories of an ideal marketplace play out in reality, i.e. unsuccessfully.
Next on my list is Stiff, by Mary Roach, which I'm looking forward to. It's about the various uses that human cadavers are put to. Chapter one describes how 40 cosmetic surgeons attending a refresher course practiced their techniques on 40 human heads lined up in a row, placed in aluminium baking trays. If you're thinking of donating your body to science, you might want to specify 'not for cosmetic purposes.' Not unless you want your skin and cheek fat to be harvested and used for penile extensions. You never know where you might end up.
