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 enlarge | Creator: Michael Lewis
Publisher: Random House Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.29
You Save: $12.66 (42%)
New (12) Used (11) from $2.18
Avg. Customer Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 1483953
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 5
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.8 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0553714465
Dewey Decimal Number: 650
EAN: 9780553714463
ASIN: 0553714465
Publication Date: July 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Lewis has more noteable works October 17, 2005
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
If you want to read Lewis at his best, get Moneyball or Liar's Poker. Next begins promisingly enough, with interesting vignettes on a teenage daytrader who manipulates markets with his cheerleading postings on internet financial sites and an interesting piece on a junior high kid who builds himself into a legal expert on an anonymous website, armed only with the insights he gleaned from television shows. These stories serve Lewis' premise of how technology will allow the decline of specialization and the democratization of opinion; we're moving towards a society where being properly lettered matters far less than being right. Credentials used to serve as their own validation of opinion and expertise, a self-fulfilling prophecy that begged challenge, but the internet allows anyone to opine, irrespective of their bona fides. As evidenced by the fact that you're reading my review :)
Sadly, the book then heads precipitously downhill with his musings on the future of technology and various other meanderings. It's standard alarmist fare of the "We're mad, this technology must eventually kill all of us" variety. My sense is that Lewis knew he had something more than an essay, but something less than a book when he begin thinking about this project. He opted for the book. The resultant 80-100 pages of filler he tacks on becomes a trial for the reader and dilutes what could have been a lively read.
Lewis is a good guy and interesting writer: look elsewhere for his best work.
 Simultaneously hilarious and insightful October 9, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Michael Lewis has an almost unique talent for providing one with an intuitive feel for a subject while simultaneously making you laugh out loud. I think I learned more about Wall Street from "Liar's Poker" than all the great serious tomes I've read, while at the same time enjoying it as pure farce, and yet I was left with an increased respect for the people and institutions. How is that even possible?
After "Liar's Poker" I needed to read more of Mr. Lewis, but I avoided "Next" for a long time because the internet is my "Wall Street", a place with which I am intimately familiar. Non-technical books on the subject thus tend to annoy me, as I keep picking out nits where I feel the dilettante has gotten something wrong or missed the point.
Boy, did I underestimate Michael Lewis. "Next" is as brilliant as "Liar's Poker", hilarious and incredibly informative. He intuitively captures the significance of the Internet: the way it breaks down all the old silos of expertise and authority and distributes them into the homes of everyone. The best part is probably the description of Jonathan Lebed, the 15-year online trader charged with securities fraud by the SEC...and the complete inability of the SEC to come to grips with the absurdity of the situation.
They're Not Just Playing Computer Games August 14, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Next: The Future Just Happened is about how the internet is changing the world. Lewis profiles Jonathan Lebed, a teenage stock market wizard (the SEC says he was a stock market manipulator -- Lewis isn't so sure); a teenage law expert who has never studied law; a teenager in England who is using Gnutella software as a springboard to, I don't know, take over the world, I guess.
It seems obvious from the first half of the book that teenage boys are using the internet to become rich, powerful, and influential. So maybe all the internet has really done is speed things up by a few decades. But Lewis throws the over-thirties among us a small bone by interviewing an aging rock group that uses the internet to raise money for a tour, an eighty-something woman who participates in WebTV polls, and the creators of TiVo.
The second half of the book is a bit unconvincing. Set-top boxes, big deal. Those teenagers rule the book, and it would seem, the world.
Lewis, as usual, writes an engaging book, it pulls you right in and moves quickly. The Lebed story itself makes the book worth your time.
 Shallow, uninspiring, uninteresting June 26, 2005
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a lecturer of e-commerce, I was looking forward to reading this book on the social implications of the Internet. However, I am most disappointed with the boring and superficial way the subject is explored. The author takes a couple of anecdotical examples to show the concequences in the shift of power that the Internet has brought about. The result is a disjointed treatment of an otherwise most interesting topic. I have nothing good to say about this book - money wasted.
Insightful, well-written analysis May 17, 2005
I've read several bestsellers on the implications of the internet, but found this one a notch above the rest. Whilst others are often totally skewed by commercial and technological aspects, this one went a lot deeper and touched on the Meta changes underlying society. But far from being a grand, generalist thesis, Lewis grounds his observations in real flesh-and-blood stories that are highly readable. His experience as a professional writer shines through on every page.
The only reason I didn't give this five stars was that I feel Lewis missed some fundamental factors in his analysis of the three teenagers whose stories constitute the bulk of the book. I agree with him that children are more likely to leverage new technology because they can adopt and create new personas quicker than adults who carry along years of baggage. But there is, perhaps, an explanation much closer to home. The reason kids can rebel against the "insiders" and push the limits with such dedication and passion is because they are not paying off mortgages and education for their own kids.
Marcus Arnold, (the teenage prodigy legal expert) claimed, with total naivety, that he was handicapped against practising lawyers because he had 6 hours of school every day. Hogwash! The lawyers were handicapped because every hour of their day had to show some revenue return to cover their costs of living.
And when the "outsiders" bemoan the former outsiders who capitulate and sellout their technological ventures to the highest bidding "insiders", it is invariably because they are no longer been funded by Dad, and need to start footing their own bills.
Notwithstanding - this is an excellent book.
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