Review: The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

I couldn't finish this book. But I'm going to put it on my "finished" shelf because I don't want to read it again on accident: Rifkin starts out with a super reasonable premise: capitalism is based off a contradiction that will eventually snuff itself out or fundamentally change how it works. In his words, the marginal cost of making lots of things will go to zero. Ok, dude. I got you.

Then he starts getting hippie. Then he starts getting dippie. I call it hippie-dippie nonsense. The world, according to Rifkin, is going to go from capitalism to a collaborative commons, which is apparently where localism Gandhism, and open-source software meet. This "commons" is the same commons that existed pre-enclosure movement, and apparently existed an infinite time before that. Capitalism was an aberrant stage of human development.

But actually, no. Rifkin notes that he has been obsessed with the idea of the commons and its annoyed his wife and it sure annoyed me as well. He doesn't spend enough time discussing what the changes in technology will actually do or mean. The dangers of 3d printing and each individual having access to different technologies isn't discussed. Virtual reality is essentially ignored. "Communications-energy matrix" is a word that he repeats a billion times and never actually defines it. Does he mean Matrix as in "The Matrix" or as in "Rows and columns of numbers useful for describing a system of equations"? Along with that are the words "thermodynamic efficiencies." Like. I know what he is talking about.... but why add "thermodynamic" to "efficiency" which works just fine unless you're going to go into a little bit of detail? Why add that? Why does he keep saying "Internet of Things" without actually describing what it will do?

This book should be called, "Zero Marginal Buzzword: Thank god i didn't buy this book."