James F. "Jim" Moore

The best (and most fun!) book yet to critique the idea of a single superpower.  Heavily aimed at George W. Bush’s version of the rogue meme, but also goes after the same strain of ideas in the Clinton administration and in organizations like the International Monetary Fund.

Prestowitz is a conservative with deep credentials. This book is based on interviews with leaders around the world, as well as Prestowitz’ own analysis.  He is a superb explainer and demystifier of power and world affairs, in the traditional paradigm. He provides facts and insider accounts that are very valuable if you want to know how the top-down, militarist, arrogant power system operates–and fails.

Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions, by Clyde Prestowitz.  (Basic Books, 2003)

Thanks, Chutney!  In a previous blog I suggested that there is a fourth level in cyberspace, above the infrastructure, service (“constitutional”), and application levels. Chutney suggests calling the top level the “civic” rather than my more prosaic “institutional”.  I think he is right–”civic” has all the right connotations of community, civility, public service, and so on. So the four levels are the infrastructure (e.g. telcos), the service (ISPs, services, operating systems), the application (browsers, blogs, RSS and other standards) and the civic level (online communities, networks of bloggers, wired enterprises, etc.).

Here is my own previous post, amended:  I think cyberspace has four big levels, not just three, where the fight to keep cyberspace open and free is being joined.  At the infrastructure level we fight monopoly telcos and software companies and we strive for open networks and spectrum.  At the “constitutional” level friends like Larry Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain hammer away at maintaining basic freedoms.  And at the application level you and others create blogging sotware and the whole meta-domain of community formation tools, as well as the standards to allow this rich ecosystem of technology to continue to co-evolve.  These tools and standards provide a dramatically effective environment for individual and community empowerment.  And finally, the action is really heating up at the – what shall we call it? – the level of establishing new social inventions and societies that challenge the old order institutions of the meat world.  Perhaps we could call this the “civic level” as suggested by Chutney.