About "Digital Phoenix"

New Book Fills The Gap In Information Economy Scholarship

The publication of Bruce Abramson’s Digital Phoenix: Why the Information Economy Collapsed and How It Will Rise Again (MIT Press / May 2005 $34.95) fills a significant gap within a body of literature that has attracted increasing attention and interest over the past five-to-ten years. At its heart, Digital Phoenix is about our transition from an industrial age to an information age, with a particular emphasis on the exciting changes that have already befallen our economy.  It draws upon recent developments in computer and information technology, in intellectual property and antitrust law, and in economics, business, and network theory to tell its story.

Perhaps the first book to grapple with our transition to the information age was Tom Friedman’s The Lexus and The Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999).  Friedman provided readers with a journalist’s observations of globalizations effects, but dwelt little on the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution that he was reporting. 

Larry Lessig was probably the first to address these underpinnings, beginning in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999) and then in The Future of Ideas (Random House, 2001).  These books both describe the relationships among law, technology, and creativity; Code explains how technology is setting creativity free while The Future of Ideas laments that law is constraining creativity.  Lessig expanded upon this latter pessimism in his most recent contribution, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (Penguin, 2004).

Lessig is hardly alone in arguing that intellectual property law is hampering creativity and innovation.  Other excellent and readable treatments include Cass Sunstein, Republic.com (Princeton University Press, 2002); Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright (Prometheus Books, 2001); William Fisher, Promises to Keep (Stanford University Press, 2004); and Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner, Innovation and Its Discontents (Princeton University Press, 2004).

None of these books focused on the information economy.  By way of contrast, the best books about the information economy have paid little attention to law and regulation.  Instead, they have either addressed the financial aspects of the Internet investment bubble or digested studies of technology companies into strategic advice for technology managers and executives.  Robert Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance (Princeton University Press, 2000) and David Cassidy’s Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (HarperCollins, 2002) come immediately to mind as excellent examples of the first group.  Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian’s, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Harvard Business School Press, 1998) and Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) are good examples of the second.

Finally, some excellent books cover individual stories that Digital Phoenix treats as part of an integral whole.  Ken Auletta’s World War 3.0: Microsoft and its Enemies (Random House, 2001), for example, provides a lucid play-by-play of the Microsoft trial.  Steven Weber’s The Success of Open Source (Harvard University Press, 2004) provides perhaps the first solid treatment of open source software directed towards a non-technical audience.  Several authors have related Napster’s challenge to the music business.

Digital Phoenix fills the gaps between these books.  It shows how shortcomings in our intellectual property policies have led to many of the information economy stories that we have seen unfold, including the investment bubble, the Microsoft trial, the emergence of open source, and the battles over P2P file sharing.  It also explains why these stories are harbingers of the greater battles to come:  As technology advances, larger and larger swathes of our economy (and our society) will transition to the information age.  Each new technological innovation will threaten powerful incumbents who will fight to retard this “dangerous new direction” of progress.  These battles will force us to rethink the ways that we motivate innovation, as technologists urge us to deregulate idea markets and aggrieved incumbents clamor for stronger property rights.  Digital Phoenix demonstrates how, if we resolve those conflicts properly, the information economy will rise again—and true to its original promise, make us all rich as consumers and producers, if not as investors.

The MIT Press published Digital Phoenix in May 2005.  Additional information about the book can be found at MIT Press.  Please feel free to contact the author with any substantive questions, or Colleen Lanick at the MIT Press for additional information or to request a review copy. 

Bruce Abramson can be reached at 202-299-4171 and Colleen Lanick can be reached at 617-253-2874.