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

by Glenn Reynolds

Book Overview

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when large companies and powerful governments reigned supreme over the little guy. But new technologies are empowering individuals like never before, and the Davids of the world-the amateur journalists, musicians, and small businessmen and women-are suddenly making a huge economic and social impact.

In Army of Davids, author Glenn Reynolds, the man behind the immensely popular Instapundit.com,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1595551131
• ISBN13: 9781595551139
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Buy this book...

An Army of Davis provides the reader insight into the future. I was drawn to the book by reading the UT law professor's wonderfully detailed book on space law. This book devotes a chapter to space but it is much more rounded in its approach to technology and society. It was a fun and easy yet worthwhile read. It is my hope that the good law professor will some day soon do a new edition to his space law book, however. In the meanwhile, this book is worth the money and the time.

Fantastic Book

Ignore the trolling reviews from those with obvious political agendas. It's quite clear they haven't actually read the book, but are just lashing out at anything they perceive as "right-wing." Ignorant political chatter aside, this book is incredible. It's well written, easy to read and get caught up in, and has a range of topics rarely found in any single book. Reynolds writes with personal experience about the many things he's done, and brings in experts for the few that he hasn't. In the book he provides a compelling argument for where technology will be taking us that even made a skeptic like me into a believer. Buy it now, you won't regret it.

Futurist Optimism

Thematically, there is nothing particularly new here for any regular readers of Instapundit, though this is a magnificent unification of Reynolds' arguments and comments on personal liberation through technology. For those who do not frequent the blog, this book will be quite a different sort of adventure in the future than is usual: so accustomed I am to panic-mongering and doomsaying with books of this sort (froth-mouthed heralding of global warming, virulent pandemics, all of the "coming storm" offal), that this book and others like it (Ray Kurzweil's Singularity, for instance) are a breath of fresh air. The roles of "Big Business", "Big Media" (including Fox News, my rapacious fellow reviewers), and "Big Government" are reevaluated in the face of currently available technology that distributes power in a dynamic, decentralized order that can potentially revolutionize modern society. This is a future I am captivated by and embrace, thus I heartily recommend this book.

A glimpse into the near future...

The story of David and Goliath has survived the centuries and remains an inspiration to this day. But how exactly did David defeat Goliath? He did so with leverage. More specifically, with the leverage of technology. It was the technology of the slingshot that evened the playing field between the giant warrior Goliath and the undersized peasant boy David. In his new book, An Army Of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths (Nelson Current, 2006), successful blogger Glenn Reynolds (otherwise know as Instapundit) lays out a convincing case for the transformative effect of today's technology and the technologies to come. The publishing ease and worldwide reach of the Internet has put individuals in head to head competition with metropolitan newspapers. Thus, the phenomenon known as "the blogosphere". But are blogs the end of the road or just the beginning? Reynolds portends that new technologies will spread the benefits of a captalist marketplace through the increased freedom and entrepreneurism endemic to emerging technologies. The new landscape will enable individuals and small nible organizations to compete with large bureaucracies and stogy old corporate empires. To a certain extent we've witnessed this effect in the likes of Microsoft taking on IBM and the blogosphere taking on Dan Rather and CBS news. However, Reynolds argues that the future will offer more advantages and greater opportunity for enterprising individuals than ever before. Let's hope he's right, because nothing could be more desirable for the human condition than to witness individuals gaining greater freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility to administer their own affairs as they see fit... Britt Gillette Author of 'The Dittohead's Guide To Adult Beverages' (Regnery Publishing, 2005)