Peer2Politics

Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, The Collaborative Commons and the Eclipse of Capitalism, offers what might be termed a third vision of the future. He offers neither a Panglossian utopia nor a "doom and gloom" dystopia. Rather, he offers a serious extrapolations to a possible future built around several widely observed trends that have not previously been connected by those who are tracking them. Most of the major themes are mentioned in the title and subtitle: Declining marginal costs approaching zero constitute the latest development in the creative destruction of capitalism. The many different evocations of the commons in our time point to a future characterized by a civil society of nonprofit organization and "collaborative commons."

Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, is at times thrilling, at times encyclopedic, and at times possibly hyperbolic. It is very well-written, it touches on an incredibly wide variety of modern topics, it builds on an exhaustive set of references, and most importantly it makes you think seriously about the future. You cannot possibly read this book without pausing at least a half a dozen times to ponder. There were parts of the book that presented me with completely new facts, claims, technologies, and predictions. For example, I hadn't considered the prospect of nearly zero marginal cost energy production. I don't know that I have as much confidence as Rifkin in that prospect coming true in the near future. But to contemplate the possibility and its implications alone was exhilarating. Similarly, I found fascinating his claim that "what makes the great infrastructure revolutions transformational is the convergence of new communications media with new energy regimes." I will be thinking a lot about this in my own work.