The End of Big, Nicco Mele
The End of Big, Nicco Mele
2 Rating(s)
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The End of Big
How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath

Author: Nicco Mele

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Unabridged: 9 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/23/2013


Synopsis

Radical connectivity—our ability to connect instantly, constantly, and globally—is altering the exercise of power with dramatic speed and reshaping our biggest institutions. Governments, corporations, centers of knowledge, and expertise are eroding before the power of the individual. In some cases this is a positive development, but as Mele reveals, the promise of the Internet comes with a troubling downside. He asks: How do we trust information when journalists are replaced by bloggers, phone videos, and tweets? Will the collapse of two-party government bring us qualified leaders or demagogues and special-interest-controlled politicians? When web-based micro-businesses can out-compete major corporations, who enforces basic regulations—product safety, privacy protection, fraud, and tax collection?

Unless we exercise deliberate moral choice over the design and use of technologies, Mele contends, we doom ourselves to a future that tramples human values, renders social structures chaotic, and destroys rather than enhances freedom. Both hopeful and alarming, thought-provoking and passionately-argued, The End of Big is an important book about our present—and our future.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Alex

Nicco effectively synthesizes the changes going on in every aspect of society into a strong narrative of our times. Digital technologies, enabling "radical connectivity," are destabilizing, disrupting, or simply changing every aspect of the modern world, that is for sure. Ultimately I really enjoyed......more

Goodreads review by Desiree

I enjoyed most of this book. In a world where large corporations seem to rule, it was refreshing to read about the little guy who is thriving. A lot of the book was about the political system and the military, otherwise I probably would have given this one five stars! Howard Dean's rise was rehashed......more

He tells a story which makes sense of what's happening!......more

Goodreads review by Daniel

The End of Big by Nicco MeleIf Thomas Friedman's thesis in his 2005 The World Is Flat is that globalization has led to a flatter playing field, then The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath tells author Nicco Mele's vision that the ultimate tool of that equalization is the intern......more

Goodreads review by Tara

Well, I wasn't expecting that... This year I've read an array of mediocre books in internet studies, often demonizing 'the young people' and 'social media.' Then I opened Nicco Mele's The end of big. As with many books in this genre, 'the internet' is a threat to - well - civilization. However there......more