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Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life
David Boyle guides us through the next big thing in Western living -- the determined rejection of the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced, in the search for authenticity.
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First published September 1, 2006
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About the author
David Boyle
233 books54 followersDavid Courtney Boyle was a British author and journalist who wrote mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business, and culture. He lived in Steyning in West Sussex.
He conducted an independent review for the Treasury and the Cabinet Office on public demand for choice in public services which reported in 2013. Boyle was a co-founder and policy director of Radix, which he characterized in 2017 as a radical centrist think tank. He was also co-director of the mutual think tank New Weather Institute.
He conducted an independent review for the Treasury and the Cabinet Office on public demand for choice in public services which reported in 2013. Boyle was a co-founder and policy director of Radix, which he characterized in 2017 as a radical centrist think tank. He was also co-director of the mutual think tank New Weather Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 14, 2023
I want to write what this book was about in a succinct and coherent manner but I either I didn’t get it or the author didn’t relay his point in a way that would allow me to provide such a review. I am not sure. And I am reluctant to give a review based on my inability to comprehend the author’s point- that capitalism and technology are responsible for the dissociation of humans and reality, that our “reality” is being augmented to meet the demands of the market and even though we attempt to fight the machine and the quixotic virtual reality we live in, we fail. If this was the argument the author was trying to make, I’m not saying that it is, then he certainly took the scenic route on a rollercoaster to get it.
The author relies on various modern events and phenomena in making the one point- the chapters range in topic from the decentralisation of power in politics, the organic food industry and theme parks. He makes a great point on how the philosophy of utilitarianism is borne from the boom of the study and practice of statistics and then another on how visions of the future were influenced by feminism (very interesting idea that tellings of the future in television and comics showed domestic labour being carried out by machines and food being bought and served from tubes). He goes on to say that globalization has eroded culture and that in trying to maintain culture people have become more conservative and radicalised but also our participation in social activities like watching (western) movies has created the community and culture we so crave… I don’t think that is what we meant, maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, all of these chapters/ideas are related or maybe not but they are all meant to service the one point. That the world we live in is increasingly fake and our interactions with each other and the world are now determined either by machines or some corporate knob trying to sell us the machine.
Another review read that this read like a rant and I have to agree with that. It was a really long rant and somewhere along the way I stopped paying attention and now I am knee deep in a chapter about the effects of industrialism and the benefits of living simply and I am not sure how I got here.
Do you remember when you watched the Matrix for the first time? Yes, something is definitely wrong here and maybe we are in a shared simulation? I think this book inspires the same feelings of paranoia and distrust of the world around us but who is the Architect and how do we kill him? I don’t think that David Boyle was trying to be this reductive, in fact I would argue that with the many examples he uses he was trying to show just how complex of a bind we’re all in. But it just left my head spinning. It’s a lot to comprehend in one book.
The author relies on various modern events and phenomena in making the one point- the chapters range in topic from the decentralisation of power in politics, the organic food industry and theme parks. He makes a great point on how the philosophy of utilitarianism is borne from the boom of the study and practice of statistics and then another on how visions of the future were influenced by feminism (very interesting idea that tellings of the future in television and comics showed domestic labour being carried out by machines and food being bought and served from tubes). He goes on to say that globalization has eroded culture and that in trying to maintain culture people have become more conservative and radicalised but also our participation in social activities like watching (western) movies has created the community and culture we so crave… I don’t think that is what we meant, maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, all of these chapters/ideas are related or maybe not but they are all meant to service the one point. That the world we live in is increasingly fake and our interactions with each other and the world are now determined either by machines or some corporate knob trying to sell us the machine.
Another review read that this read like a rant and I have to agree with that. It was a really long rant and somewhere along the way I stopped paying attention and now I am knee deep in a chapter about the effects of industrialism and the benefits of living simply and I am not sure how I got here.
Do you remember when you watched the Matrix for the first time? Yes, something is definitely wrong here and maybe we are in a shared simulation? I think this book inspires the same feelings of paranoia and distrust of the world around us but who is the Architect and how do we kill him? I don’t think that David Boyle was trying to be this reductive, in fact I would argue that with the many examples he uses he was trying to show just how complex of a bind we’re all in. But it just left my head spinning. It’s a lot to comprehend in one book.
June 14, 2011
You know, I can't really say I really 'liked' this book. Hmm. I wrote something in my notebook on the way to work, so I could remember my thoughts on it. This is what I had to say:
I just wanted to write something down about that book, Authenticity. I wanted write down what I felt about it.
The trouble is that I'm not certain. And I finished it some time ago.
Actually that's a bit of a lie. I do know what I thought about it. And the fact is, I didn't much care for it. I have great difficulty with people saying what's authentic and what's not, that farmers' markets are real and Tesco is not; that theatre or Virginia Woolf or Naomi Klein are real and Godzilla (the remake) and chick-lit and Mr T on the BBC aren't real. They're all real, or not. As real as faux fireplaces or perhaps a brick through a window.
Perhaps I didn't quite feel the author had separated much of the drive for authenticity from (middle class) snobbery or the rise in distrust of science, or the cyclical nostalgia of an increasingly nostalgic population.
But the book has a great plus going for it: its bibliography. It refers to the work of a lot of others that I reckon is largely worth reading. So I'd say, pick it up in your local library, not how much of it feels like a dude in a pub yammering on about authenticity (and I should know as much of the time that guy is me) and note all his sources. They're all secondary and anecdotal, so you're not going to miss anything. And then, boom, boom, boom. All set, good to go.
That's it. That's what I said about Mr Boyle's work in a book on the train. Meant to mention, it was published in 2003, long before the crash of 2008, so I suppose his sparkling observations of the time seem a little commonplace just now. Bah. Need to go to bed.
I just wanted to write something down about that book, Authenticity. I wanted write down what I felt about it.
The trouble is that I'm not certain. And I finished it some time ago.
Actually that's a bit of a lie. I do know what I thought about it. And the fact is, I didn't much care for it. I have great difficulty with people saying what's authentic and what's not, that farmers' markets are real and Tesco is not; that theatre or Virginia Woolf or Naomi Klein are real and Godzilla (the remake) and chick-lit and Mr T on the BBC aren't real. They're all real, or not. As real as faux fireplaces or perhaps a brick through a window.
Perhaps I didn't quite feel the author had separated much of the drive for authenticity from (middle class) snobbery or the rise in distrust of science, or the cyclical nostalgia of an increasingly nostalgic population.
But the book has a great plus going for it: its bibliography. It refers to the work of a lot of others that I reckon is largely worth reading. So I'd say, pick it up in your local library, not how much of it feels like a dude in a pub yammering on about authenticity (and I should know as much of the time that guy is me) and note all his sources. They're all secondary and anecdotal, so you're not going to miss anything. And then, boom, boom, boom. All set, good to go.
That's it. That's what I said about Mr Boyle's work in a book on the train. Meant to mention, it was published in 2003, long before the crash of 2008, so I suppose his sparkling observations of the time seem a little commonplace just now. Bah. Need to go to bed.
November 27, 2015
I think I should start writing some notes about the books I've finished.
I started reading this book on my way to Berlin, and in the destination I did look at the city differently. I am still not sure I understood the definitions of "Virtual/fake, Fake real, Virtual real, Authentic" as introduced in a book, but I did start paying more attention to the fact, how artificial a city is. People identifying themselves with the logos on their clothes, going to enormous shopping centers to buy things for the questionable holiday called Christmas and feeding themselves in an "Asian" restaurant without ever noticing the cultural incoherence of the menu and the lack of chopsticks. At the same time, I really didn't need this book to be conscious of this, and would have wanted to read "something deeper" than criticism towards McDonald's.
The author writes about the movement of New Realism, people who no longer consider themselves as "consumers", but are awake, aware and willing to downshift. He writes about the increasing amount of these people and stays optimistic about the future. However the figures presented in the book about the raising popularity of cosmetics and plastic surgeries left me pretty pessimistic.
The book gave me directions to some further readings. I already marked as "to-read" a book called Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. Very last pages introduced me to a Japanese term "wabi-sabi": "wabi means the beauty of simple things. Sabi is the beauty of things that are worn by their use over time." Maybe getting more familiar with such non-Western ideas will offer me more epiphanies.
I started reading this book on my way to Berlin, and in the destination I did look at the city differently. I am still not sure I understood the definitions of "Virtual/fake, Fake real, Virtual real, Authentic" as introduced in a book, but I did start paying more attention to the fact, how artificial a city is. People identifying themselves with the logos on their clothes, going to enormous shopping centers to buy things for the questionable holiday called Christmas and feeding themselves in an "Asian" restaurant without ever noticing the cultural incoherence of the menu and the lack of chopsticks. At the same time, I really didn't need this book to be conscious of this, and would have wanted to read "something deeper" than criticism towards McDonald's.
The author writes about the movement of New Realism, people who no longer consider themselves as "consumers", but are awake, aware and willing to downshift. He writes about the increasing amount of these people and stays optimistic about the future. However the figures presented in the book about the raising popularity of cosmetics and plastic surgeries left me pretty pessimistic.
The book gave me directions to some further readings. I already marked as "to-read" a book called Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. Very last pages introduced me to a Japanese term "wabi-sabi": "wabi means the beauty of simple things. Sabi is the beauty of things that are worn by their use over time." Maybe getting more familiar with such non-Western ideas will offer me more epiphanies.
March 6, 2016
The books starts out with a reference to Seagaia, which is amusing to me as it is near where I currently live. Seagaia, a massive indoor ocean theme park, is located right next to the ocean, where one supposedly would go for a much more authentic experience. It is just about one of the most fake constructions I can think of, and it obviously was felt as such by the author as well. Seagaia has since gone backrupt, as have many other "fake" attractions in Japan since the 1980s (though I feel that in Asia this is likely due more to economics than a desire for things authentic - the topic of the book). After just having returned from a vacation trip to Macau, the massive fake copy of Los Vegas (which is intrinsically fake in itself), this book offers interesting insight. However, if the desire for authenticity is rising in the West, it would appear that that consumer trend will have to wait before having any impact in the East.
January 26, 2009
This is an OK book. Does a nice job at exploring the many different facets of the desire for authenticity and the politics that go along with this. Personally I’d rather get my calls to insurgent and creative life from Vaneigem or someone with a bit more panache and flair.
June 15, 2014
Says a lot of true things, it is weird to read about how inauthentic the world felt even 12ish years ago when this was written, in a world before iPods and Facebook it is kind of a historical document, grin. Interesting key text to lead into reading around the subject more deeply.
July 10, 2008
Brilliant book on how we live out life in both fake and real ways. Fantastic.
September 5, 2016
Superb analysis of what is fake in our lives and the quest for authenticity
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews