From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 6d8072e39a003d7b163cb0de53adc823985426dcd45dbdc0b2e23e5ae6a7a026
Message ID: <199511261508.KAA17650@pipe4.nyc.pipeline.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1995-11-26 15:19:21 UTC
Raw Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 23:19:21 +0800
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 23:19:21 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: BOS_nya
Message-ID: <199511261508.KAA17650@pipe4.nyc.pipeline.com>
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11-26-95. Washrag:
"Seeking the Government That Governs Best." Book review.
What Comes Next:
The End of Big Government And the New Paradigm Ahead
By James P. Pinkerton
Hyperion. 404 pp. $24.95
In Pinkerton's account, bureaucracy survives today only
because no one has yet developed a coherent replacement
model." Instead we have deluded ourselves into thinking
that periodic upgrading of what Pinkerton calls the
"Bureaucratic Operating System" (BOS) -- in the same way
that computer software is upgraded -- will enable us to
avoid the gloomy prospect of life in the "Cyber Future,"
his term for the horrific predicament of extreme
inequality and hypercrime to which we are headed.
At one point Pinkerton suggests that a parallel for Bill
Clinton may be found in Mikhail Gorbachev. Both leaders
"shrank from genuine perestroika" after their peoples
had come to the realization that the system itself was
the problem.
Displaying a sure grasp of popular culture, technology
and political history, Pinkerton writes engagingly and
insightfully about the defects and malfunctionings of
the American bureaucratic state. His refreshing analyses
of the flaws in bureaucratic thinking are among the best
that we have on the subject and, surely, the wittiest.
BOS_nya (7 kb)
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