An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths

In this testament to the power of the little guy, law professor and blogger Reynolds gleefully hails the emergence of a new entrepreneurial class resulting from the democratizing power of technology-the manifestation of his observation that ""a society that's rich and free will have citizens who-entirely on their own-develop a wide range of skills."" Among the skills he cites are citizen terrorist-busters, hackers and average Joe techies who set up phony jihad sites to foil terrorism in the U.S. Others have taken on big media, forcing newspapers and networks into something ""akin to what happened to the Church during the Reformation."" Reynolds shows how technology opened up markets to software companies in Poland and to filmmakers and musicians in Africa. Proclaiming good blogging as a combination of ""rapid response times"" and ""personal voice,"" Reynolds praises the explosion of cyber-self expression, seeing it as yet another way to proliferate information and build knowledge among communities. And while Reynolds may seem naïve in ignoring any potential negatives that could arise from widespread, unmitigated, technology-enabled empowerment and does little to touch upon the ethical implications of the everyman becoming a superman, he brings a contagious sense of optimism to this ""new reality.""