| Review of: |
Net Loss: internet prophets, private profits, and the costs to community by Nathan Newman
Penn State University Press, University Park PA, 2002
Pages: 421. $25.00 |
| Reviewed By: |
Andrew Chadwick |
| Reviewed in: |
Political Studies Review |
| Date accepted online: |
04/03/2004 |
| Published in print: |
Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 196-301 |
North America
Nathan Newman's book is something of an achievement. He has made a very good job of 'bringing the state back in' to our understanding of Silicon Valley and its role in the development of the internet. Most of the literature in this field, with notable exceptions such as Manuel Castells's Information Age Trilogy, suffers from an overdose of hype or a slavish focus on technical innovation. Instead, Newman tries to intertwine the technological, social, geographical and political factors which explain Silicon Valley's prominence in the global technology market, at the same time as laying bare what he sees as its overwhelmingly negative effect on California's regional economy and political structures. Dispelling the cyberlibertarian myth that the net developed in isolation from the state, Newman takes as his starting point a less glamorous but more convincing approach: state intervention of one kind or another - whether it was for the purposes of the military, the development of America's scientific research infrastructure, or spurring on the 'new economy' - has always played a role in funding, regulating and steering the net. Although the book focuses mainly on northern California, it also has interesting things to say about the ways in which modern economic 'powerhouse' regions such as the Valley can increasingly inject themselves into global networks of overlapping political and economic elite groups, effectively floating free of those local and regional economic contexts which, ironically, sustained them in the early days. As such regions become enmeshed in global markets, elites in the tech sector are able to take advantage of a new networked world of professionals, while those in the 'wrong' sectors, such as poorly paid agricultural workers, become passive observers. This is a wide-ranging and detailed book, written in an engaging and readable style. It also features a surprisingly optimistic conclusion about the potential of the net to empower grass-roots movements and local communities.
