The Mason Spirit

Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World

Tyler Cowen, BS Economics ’83, professor of economics

In Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World (Dutton, July 2009), Cowen shows that the way we think now is changing more rapidly than it has in a long time. Not since the Industrial Revolution has a human creation—in this case, the World Wide Web—so greatly influenced the way our minds work and our human potential unfolds. Cowen argues that we are breaking down cultural information into ever-smaller tidbits, ordering and reordering them in our minds (and our computers) to meet our specific needs. The book explains why the coming world of Web 3.0 is good; why social networking sites, such as Facebook, are so necessary; what’s so great about tweeting and texting; how education will get better; and why politics, literature, and philosophy will become richer.