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The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence Don Tapscott. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. $24.95.
We are a commercial republic; Alexander Hamilton lost the vote to continue the first federal bank but pronounced the commercial future of our republic. Since I am a citizen of this republic, I dip into books targeted to business audiences. Certain authors rise above the limiting confines of this ghetto - Adam Smith (the living), Peter Drucker, David Halberstam with The Reckoning- most others cannot see beyond the next boardroom. Many are shills for new management strategies or consulting services. Unfortunately, Don Tapscott falls in the latter group.
According to the dust jacket, Tapscott is the president of New Paradigm Learning Corporation, a collection of fashionable words concatenated into a name for a consulting firm specializing in helping companies with the "transition to the digital economy." Many of the citations in the work are to research by New Paradigm and the end of the book has an overt promotion for the consulting services. Though targeted at corporate decision makers, my suspicion is that none of them will read the book. It is really part of New Paradigm's sales pitch to them, an entry in a sales brochure, something to be mentioned during the sales call to demonstrate the foresight and saving promise of New Paradigm.
Tapscott gives us a work forecasting a future risky...