The Weightless World: Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy

By Diane Coyle

Book Overview

A call to develop a new politics for the age of the digital economy -- when currency and goods literally have no weight. The Weightless World is the first book to map an economic world that has been turned upside down by digital technology and global business. How will our careers, businesses, and governments change in a world where bytes are the only currency and where the goods that shape our lives--global financial transactions, computer code, and cyberspace commerce--literally have no weight? Addressing such problems as economic inequity and unemployment, Diane Coyle calls on individuals and governments to develop a new politics of weightlessness so that the economic benefits can be shared fairly. She proposes the creation of a radical center as the way to a new era of human creativity and economic prosperity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262032597
• ISBN13: 9780262032599
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 0.8" x 6.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Good Read!

U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan originated using "weightless" to describe computer-powered information technology. Diane Coyle employs his metaphor to explain that the European world is afflicted with unemployment and insecurity because of the evolution from industrial output to weightlessness. Her view of the new technology's international economic impact is distinctly European/British. She paints her strategy for managing the digital economy with a colorful but broad brush: better education, international ethical standards, governmental flexibility, liberalism. Her writing features quirky phrases, challenging sentence structure, and a few British spellings. Coyle includes surprising anecdotes and sparkling quotes from diverse sources - a valuable lexicon for further reading. We [...] recommend this book to those with an eclectic, liberal, literate, European view of the difference between the U.S. economic experience and that of the rest of the world. Such a reader will be delighted here.

An interesting read about the future

An interesting read about the future, provocative optimism, and predictive anticipation for the future. Academic researchers will, however, find a missing link---that to theory. But, for the most part, well worth a quick read. The author shows the trees in a world where too many of us care about the trees.