Networks Rising
Thinking Together in a Connected World
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Networks Rising
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Narrated by:
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Justin Straight
About this listen
For the second time in human history, we are on the verge of broad new breakthroughs in health, productivity, and personal freedom. And many-to-many networks are the reason. In business, government, and war, information is no longer the privilege of a powerful few. Now everyone knows what anyone knows, and we are applying that diversity of experience and perspective to expand the frontiers of our lives. We are starting to think together.
The age of hierarchical organizations has ended. Social media networks, online forums, and guerrilla broadcasting are connecting us in communities with fewer bureaucratic layers. In swarms, walkouts, strikes, and insurrections, people are sharing experience directly in real time, marching together into the public square, and demanding a greater voice in the new democracy. Networks Rising is the colorful story of unsung technology wizards waving us on, of philosophers struggling to free us from the dictates of church and state, and of sociologists, futurists, and even science fiction writers offering dozens of new schemes for living in a more connected world.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Now in the top 3 best books I've ever read
- By Brian Esserlieu on 05-26-11
By: Eli Pariser
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4 out of 5 stars 109
We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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Shortcut
- How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas
- By: John Pollack
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Analogies are far more complex than their SAT stereotype and lie at the very core of human cognition and creativity. Once we become aware of this, we start seeing them everywhere - in ads, apps, political debates, legal arguments, logos, and euphemisms, to name just a few. At their very best, analogies inspire new ways of thinking, enable invention, and motivate people to action. Unfortunately, not every analogy that rings true is true. That's why, at their worst, analogies can deceive, manipulate, or mislead us into disaster.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Analogies???
- By Frederick on 08-16-15
By: John Pollack
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Death of the Liberal Class
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 387
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 312
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 314
Chris Hedges examines the failure of the liberal class to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues that there are five pillars of the liberal establishment and that each of these institutions has sold out the constituents it represented. In doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large and ultimately the corporate power elite they once served.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Integrity-Can You Tell Me Where It's Gone?
- By Mel on 06-14-12
By: Chris Hedges
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Kingdom of Characters
- The Language Revolution That Made China Modern
- By: Jing Tsu
- Narrated by: Jing Tsu
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Missed important information
- By Ms. on 04-01-22
By: Jing Tsu
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The Square and the Tower
- Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Elliot Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,018
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 878
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Story4 out of 5 stars 871
Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and field marshals. It's about states, armies, and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not his best by a long chalk: Read Steven Pinker.
- By David on 02-05-18
By: Niall Ferguson
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The Death of Truth
- Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 242
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 217
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 212
We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Prescient Account of the Mechanics of Tyranny
- By Brian Price on 07-27-18
By: Michiko Kakutani
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Weapons of Mass Instruction
- A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
- By: John Taylor Gatto
- Narrated by: Michael Puttonen
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 825
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 716
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Story5 out of 5 stars 718
John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I will never see school the same
- By Nicole on 05-21-15
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Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
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Moyers on Democracy
- By: Bill Moyers
- Narrated by: Bill Moyers
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story5 out of 5 stars 30
People know Bill Moyers mostly from his many years of path-breaking journalism on television. But he is also one of America's most sought-after public speakers. His appearances draw sell-out crowds across the country and are among the most reproduced on the Web. Richly insightful, and alive with a fierce, abiding love for our country, Moyers on Democracy is essential listening.
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5 out of 5 stars
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You can't help but think critically
- By Ida F. on 09-29-09
By: Bill Moyers
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Program or Be Programmed
- Ten Commands for a Digital Age
- By: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Story4 out of 5 stars 137
In 10 chapters, composed of 10 "commands", Rushkoff provides cyber enthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate the digital new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping listeners to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age - and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good book, but with some crazy ranting
- By Bjarne on 02-05-15
By: Douglas Rushkoff
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To Save Everything, Click Here
- The Folly of Technological Solutionism
- By: Evgeny Morozov
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4 out of 5 stars 87
In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?
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5 out of 5 stars
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The about face shift in view I've been looking for
- By McKane on 03-18-15
By: Evgeny Morozov
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How Democracy Ends
- By: David Runciman
- Narrated by: David Runciman
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
Since the end of World War II, democracy's sweep across the globe seemed inexorable. Yet today, it seems radically imperiled, even in some of the world's most stable democracies. How bad could things get? In How Democracy Ends, David Runciman argues that we are trapped in outdated 20th-century ideas of democratic failure. By fixating on coups and violence, we are focusing on the wrong threats. Our societies are too affluent, too elderly, and too networked to fall apart as they did in the past. We need new ways of thinking the unthinkable....
By: David Runciman
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What Unites Us
- Reflections on Patriotism
- By: Dan Rather, Elliot Kirschner
- Narrated by: Dan Rather
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,261
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,110
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,103
In a collection of original essays, the venerated television journalist, Dan Rather, celebrates our shared values and what matters most in our great country, and shows us what patriotism looks like. Writing about the institutions that sustain us, such as public libraries, public schools, and national parks; the values that have transformed us, such as the struggle for civil rights; and the drive toward science and innovation that has made the US great, Rather brings his experience on the frontlines of the world's biggest stories, and offers listeners a way forward.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hope. For both sides of the aisle.
- By Leigh A. Barrett on 01-30-18
By: Dan Rather, and others
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Sapiens
- A Brief History of Humankind
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55,980
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 47,839
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47,518
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Should be required reading
- By Blue Zion on 12-22-18
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- R. Kinning
- 10-25-22
A slight against religon
Not what I expected, has little to offer in the science of emerging computer and crypto networks. It is not. What you have is chapters of irrelevant dissertations on how God is a man made construct, and a sophomoric rambling of half told histories. Even the recent histories of computer networks is lacking. Now I feel the need to find another book on networking technologies to bring me something new on the topic.
Not that I am overly religious but the author spends an inordinate amount of time trying to discredit the contributions of religion over the ages. Without any reference to the contrary arguments of classical apologetics he disregards the entire idea of God. I would not be writing if he would not spend so much time on the topic, almost like he is trying to talk himself into his atheistic position.
A better use of your time weeding the garden.
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