Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World

by Tyler Cowen, Patrick Lawlor (Narrator)

How will we live well in a super-networked, information-soaked, yet predictably irrational world? The only way to know is to understand how the way we think is changing.

As economist Tyler Cowen boldly shows in Create Your Own Economy, the way we think now is changing more rapidly than it has in a very long time. Not since the Industrial Revolution has a man-made creation—in this case, the World Wide Web—so greatly influenced the way our minds work and our human potential. Cowen argues brilliantly that we are breaking down cultural information into ever-smaller tidbits, ordering and reordering them in our minds (and our computers) to meet our own specific needs.

Create Your Own Economy explains why the coming world of Web 3.0 is good for us; why social networking sites such as Facebook are so necessary; what's so great about "Tweeting" and texting; how education will get better; and why politics, literature, and philosophy will become richer. This is a revolutionary guide to life in the new world.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Business, Psychology, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Audiobook, Self Help

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tyler Cowen (born January 21, 1962) occupies the Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics as a professor at George Mason University and is co-author, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. He currently writes the "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times and writes for such magazines as The New Republic and The Wilson Quarterly.

Cowen's primary research interest is the economics of culture. He has written books on fame (What Price Fame?), art (In Praise of Commercial Culture), and cultural trade (Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures). In Markets and Cultural Voices, he relays how globalization is changing the world of three Mexican amate painters. Cowen argues that free markets change culture for the better, allowing them to evolve into something more people want. Other books include Public Goods and Market Failures, The Theory of Market Failure, Explorations in the New Monetary Economics, Risk and Business Cycles, Economic Welfare, and New Theories of Market Failure.

Reviews

[David Rubenstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is proof that you cannot judge a book by its title. I thought that, since the book's title contains the word, "economy" and since the author is a behavioral economist, that the book would be about economics, and about the economic decisions that people make. How wrong could I be!

This book is really about the psychological lessons we can learn from people who are autistic. In order to improve our understanding of a disordered world, we should follow the psychological outlook of autistics. That is the essence of the book, in a nutshell.

The author talks a lot about the Internet and information overload. He suggests that really, we have a poorly filtered web of information. I guess that is true.

There are many interesting ideas in this book. However, I just didn't see the rhyme or reason in the book, as chapters branch out into tangents that didn't seem to be held together by a central theme. That is the main reason why I cannot recommend the book. It is directionless; the book seems to suffer from the very thing that he is trying to solve!

[Bob Reed · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should be titled "Why Asperger's Syndrome is an apt analogy for how to cope with the digital economy." It has a LOT of material about Asperger's designed to correct people's preconceived stereotypes that Asperger's is necessarily a bad thing. AS has good sides, and those good sides provide a strategy for how people can cope in a world of blindingly fast change and massive informational overload. Got it. Other than a newfound respect for Asperger's, I didn't get much from the book. To be fair, I didn't read the whole thing (which is hard for me). I read the first third, and the conclusion. The conclusion led me to believe that I didn't miss much by skipping the meat of the book, so I just put it down. But Reed's Rule says that a book is rarely as good as it's first few chapters, and as the conclusion did not provide empirical evidence against Reed's Rule, I left it for other reading pleasures.

[Milad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely difficult book to summarize. If I had to sum it up: the Internet is making us more autistic, and that’s a good thing. Autistics are relatively good at ordering information. Information technology is helping us all do this – our Google Readers order the blogosphere for us, our Facebook news feeds order our social lives for us, etc. In a sense, IT is like a capital good, and we’re using it “create our own economy”—our internal mental production. The IT era is also good for autistics. Cowen borrows from Adam Smith’s argument that division of labor was limited by the development of the market. Marx argued that increasing specialization at pin factories, etc led to alienation. Cowen argues that, alternatively, “neurodiverse” people like autistics, given their distinct cognitive strengths, are better off if they can specialize on what they do best rather than having to be jacks-of-all-trades. Moreover, the Internet has made autistics more socially connected (e.g. Internet groups based on very specific interests).

The chapters are each self-contained essay and they are fairly loosely related. I’d say the following themes run throughout: (1) a revisionist take on autism (2) a culturally optimistic take on the Internet (3) a response to behavioral economists like Thaler / Sunstein (4) an exploration of the liberating potential of “interiority” (Cowen’s word for our internal mental states).

Cowen argues that autism should be conceptualized differently. Instead of thinking about autistics as people with a “disorder” that needs to be “cured,” we should see them instead as just “neurodiverse.” A long list of very successful people have been autistic (Tesla, Spielberg, Nobel laureate economists, possibly Bill Gates, etc.). And their success is partially a product of cognitive strengths associated with autism. Moreover, many negative stereotypes about autistics are wrong. For example, people generally think autistics just don’t care about others, given their problems socially connecting to others. Cowen argues that they just lack cognition about other people’s emotions, but that they often still have compassion.

Cowen links the theme of neurodiversity back to various disciplines with separate chapters on aesthetics, politics, literature, education, and religion. In his chapter in literature, he provides several examples of seemingly autistic characters revered by readers. Sherlock Holmes gets the most focus here, given his obsessive focus on small details, lack of romantic partners, etc. In his chapter on aesthetics, Cowen argues that, though a lot of differences in tastes of art are status-related / social (e.g., I have to listen to country music because my peer group does; I have to hang up expensive pictures to look wealthy), many of these differences are neurological. Autistics, Cowen argues, often have very eccentric tastes in art (e.g. in atonal music that most listeners think is painful to hear) because of having mental processes that order sensory inputs differently. We might look at people who like music that sounds like cacophony to us as people with a “disorder.” Cowen, once again, presents a revisionist view: perhaps it’s our failure to appreciate the beauty in the same sounds that’s the real disorder.

In the politics chapter, Cowen argues that we have a lot to learn from autistics. People often won’t change their views even when presented with empirical evidence refuting them, people tend to see politics in us v. them tribal terms and fall for simple narratives (e.g. oil prices are high because Republicans love oil companies! The terrorists are winning because the Democrats hate America!). Cowen argues that autistics process political information more dispassionately, are less easily seduced by stories, and are more cosmopolitan (perhaps because they were never particularly integrated with their own cities and countries). Moreover, he notes that an autistic cognitive style is especially suited for understanding universally applicable rules that are part of an abstract Hayekian order. Cowen notes that the most prosperous nations – the US, UK, New Zealand, etc – are committed to the rule of law. In cultures where tribalism and kinship are more important (e.g. personal ties are especially valued in Russia), the rule of law is absent and politics is consequently dysfunctional. In other words, Russian politics is insufficiently autistic.

Cowen’s chapter on education is a case that education is an attempt to make us more autistic. In light of the fact that most education doesn’t make us more productive (did those high school Latin translations help you on the job?), some economists argue that employers pay a premium for the educated because an education signals intelligence, etc. In other words, it just proves to people the attributes we already have. In Cowen’s view, this is partially correct. However, he argues that a lot of education is “acculturation.” If someone becomes a Mormon, their self-image will change and they will consequently be less likely to drink, etc. Likewise, education is an acculturation process where schools try to make us better at focusing, mentally ordering, etc. (in other words, making us more autistic).

The biggest challenge Cowen presents to the benefits of an autistic cognitive style is Buddhist teaching. Buddhism is suspicious of complex forms of mental ordering (hence, the value of “om”) and emphasizes neuroplasticity (the manipulation of the human mind). Cowen concedes that mental ordering can be taken too far (e.g. financial economist Fischer Black catalogued and alphabetized records of every convo he had). However, he ultimately concludes that Buddhism is insufficiently appreciative of neurodiversity: mental ordering is fun for some people; there are many paths to liberation; the brain isn’t infinitely plastic.

Beyond all the material on neurodiversity, the book also presents an optimistic take on the Internet. Many cultural pessimists say that small bits (blogs, Wikipedia, short articles) are shifting our focus away from books, etc and killing our attention span. Moreover, they argue that social media is a poor substitute for real friendships, degrading convo into LOLs and smiley faces. Cowen makes some obvious points in response. Blogs, news articles, etc are often part of a long-running story we are following. So in this sense our attention span hasn’t suffered. Likewise, with social networking media, we can better keep in touch with old friends. The “Google is making us stupid” line is especially misguided in light of the Flynn Effect – IQs are rising over time.

Cowen uses some econ to shed light on the modern world. The Alchian-Allen theorem states that as fixed costs increase, we will replace consumption of a low-quality good with consumption of a high-quality substitute. The reverse is true when fixed costs go down. So, think of this way: if going to the theater was very costly (say, traveling by horse and buggy for days), you’d only go to the best / longest shows (not a 5 minute event). Now, since accessing a YouTube clip is virtually costless, we’re consuming a higher share of very small bits. That being said, as Cowen puts it, “modern culture is like marriage in all its glory.” If we’re in a long-distance relationship, it’s not worth traveling cross country to get a peck on the cheek and watch TV. When we make the cross country trip, we’ll have passionate sex, go on a romantic adventure somewhere, etc. Marriage, however, is marked by a lower relative share of those grand events. To the outside world, the pecks on the cheek, washing dishes, etc that come with marriage are not particularly meaningful. However, we take these “small bits” to create a personal blend that has meaning for us. Likewise, to the external observer, Gchat convos, YouTube clips, Wikipedia articles and blog posts we read, etc don’t seem particular meaningful. However, we use these small bits to create meaning and our “own economy.”

Put differently, the value we place on things depends on the “frames” we put on them. This borrows from the behavioral economics literature. However, Cowen’s takeaway is different. Many behavioral economists look at our framing effects in the lab (e.g., we’ll say a wine tastes better if an “expert” tells us how great it is before we drink it, we perceive equivalent losses/ gains differently depending on whether they’re framed as losses or gains, etc) and argue we should “nudge” people away from them. Cowen notes that, unlike in the lab, we choose our frames in the real world. And, without these frames, our lives wouldn’t have meaning.

Cowen does point to a danger of being too easily seduced by stories – framing things in terms of simple narratives often means we strip out vital details (the ones autistics retain) and can be self-destructive (a story that housing prices will never go down will doom my mortgage-backed assets). And politicians / advertisers send us many misleading narratives. However, once again, Cowen notes that IT is mitigating the potentially destructive impact of framing effects: “if you’re trying to addict me to drinking expensive bottles of red wine, such a habit now has some especially cheap competition, again as can be found on the web.”

The book pushes the “create your own economy” theme of interiority to its limits. Cowen takes Nozick’s experience machine example and argues that, at some margin, we’d want to plug in (contra Nozick). Nozick was a handsome, rich, powerful intellectual in Cambridge, so he didn’t want to plug in. If you were suffering from malnutrition in a war zone, you might want to plug in. Cowen puts it this way: we are all typically deluded by loads of stories that frame our internal economy. Instead of Nozick’s binary choice of “plug into blissful fantasy or stay in reality,” Cowen’s formulation is more like “how delusional do you want to be?” Given that many non-autistics do not want autistics' disconnection from stories, a lot of us really highly value delusion apparently.

The book closes with Fermi’s Paradox and Drake’s Equation: even under very conservative estimates, extraterrestrial life is likely. (ME: really???) Why don’t we communicate with them? Perhaps they’ve taken interiority so far that they see no need to be exhibitionists with big buildings and communication; perhaps they’re whole existence is internal.

My Take:
I don’t know anything about autism, so I can’t assess his claims about it. But I wonder about his reconstruction of the term. I have a friend with a remarkable and obsessive memory with basketball statistics. In other words, he has an autistic cognitive style. Yet, he’s highly socially functional. If we define him as “autistic” given his strengths, it means that autistics with real medical problems are no longer singled out for treatment. I understand Cowen’s tolerance-related reasons for doing this. But, I think there are medical reasons for making these distinctions – just as we’d call someone with one arm or someone blind “disabled.” [I’m NOT saying this definition means we owe them any less respect.] Moreover, his attempt to link every topic back to autism seems forced at times.

Also, I’m not convinced by his economics of education analysis. The acculturation thesis seems right at early ages. However, isn’t our self-image pretty set by age 20? It’s hard to see an acculturation rationale for most college and grad school. Bryan Caplan’s signaling model is more convincing here.

As for his chapters on the Internet, it’s refreshing to hear a culturally optimistic take on the Internet (in many ways, this book is like an IT oriented sequel to his “In Praise of Commercial Culture”). I can sympathize with a lot of his praise for the Internet. I’ve learned more macroeconomics from blogs than in college. And social media has strengthened my friendship with old friends in other cities. That being said, Facebook / Gchat / Wikipedia / the blogosphere have also destroyed my productivity on various days. As Cowen notes, stories can be addictive, and hence destructive. Likewise, blogs and Facebook can be addictive and a threat to our sovereignty. I think Cowen’s view is partially shaped by his superhuman ability to read everything on the Internet while remaining ultra-productive.

Beneath the diverse analysis here, Cowen’s Austrian roots come out. This book is marked by its radical subjectivism (it was an old Misesian axiom that all value is subjective). To the outside observer, our GChat convos, Facebook news feed, RSS blog roll, pecks on the cheek with our spouses, etc look inconsequential. But, in our head, we’ve created an “economy” where that all has a lot of value. Likewise, to the outside world, the autistic man’s love of atonal music is bizarre. But, in his head, there’s massive beauty there that we can’t see.

The book’s methodological approach to economics is also very subtly Austrian. Cowen takes mainstream economics to task for focusing only on human behavior and paying insufficient attention to what people believe and how their minds work. This is an old theme from Mises – to understand economics, Martians can’t just watch people coming and going from Grand Central at 8 and 5 and deduce accordingly. We have to understand their psychological motivations to make human action intelligible. Cowen cites Adam Smith (see the Theory of Moral Sentiments), Hayek, and his Harvard mentor Thomas Schelling as the original behavioral economists. Cowen celebrates contemporary behavioral economists’ attempt to break down the artificial wall between psychology and economics.

In summary: Cowen doesn’t always fill in all the gaps for his readers. And the topics are only loosely connected, so this is a very difficult work to read. That being said, I found it fruitful and conceptualize inner mental existence completely differently after working through this. Also, for MarginalRev fans, this book has very little overlap with his blog. Moreover, I’d argue this book is, even more than his others, a testament to his unparalleled intellectual range. The book shifts from Kant’s metaphysics to Hume on aesthetics to an analysis of Herman Hesse to some old school game theory to psychology / neurology, etc. This is something that could've only been produced through a lifetime of obsessive learning (with an autistic cognitive style) and daily conversations / debates with other geniuses like Robin Hanson.

[Matt Berkowitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book hasn’t aged terribly well. Written as social media was ramping up its dominance in our personal lives and in the news, and as a mass migration to the internet was taking place as a source of information, Tyler doesn’t really have much novel to offer in this book.

He starts off, perhaps strangely, by discussing how many aspects of autism spectrum disorder are beneficial in our internet age—namely, systematizing, attention to detail, directness, near-obsessive focus, etc. Perhaps this was a more novel observation in 2010, but it strikes me as painfully obvious and not terribly interesting and useful in 2024.

Tyler then goes into how social media like Twitter differs from earlier IM services, e-mail and phone calls, explaining some of the nuanced differences in a way that only Tyler can articulate. One observation (hypothesis?) did ring as quite novel to me: “The web is strengthening the aspects of your identity that are fact-based and easy to spell out in very direct language” (p. 75), implying that less tangible, less articulable aspects of us are being subverted by the more overt, easy-to-pin down aspects.

Tyler than meanders for a bit about how certain Buddhist teachings are somewhat antithetical to the benefits of systematizing, yet are also consistent in the sense that they balance out the systematizing ethos. I can’t say I got much out of this.

We are then treated to strangely placed chapters about why we should be suspicious of stories, why fiction can be alluring (he goes on forever about the presumed autism of the Sherlock Holmes character), and beauty/aesthetics that seem quite detached from the (poorly-developed) premise of the book.

I love Tyler, but this book just didn’t seem focused or coherent. It is all over the place. And even though the reader is often treated to unique observations about society/life/culture in Tyler’s inimitable fashion, I was left scratching my head about what it is I really gained from the book.

[Abhi V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cowen's preoccupations constantly re-emerge: in this, an extended focus on what he regards as the 'autistic' style of mind, an idea which is so apparently malleable that it made me feel like I had autism (I really do not think that I do, I have always thought that I am intuitive and exactly non-literal)--in the way that reading horoscopes has this effect: the concepts of capacious, and you get so much information in absolute terms that sticks, so many resources to spin the narrative. People tell me I do but it seems like they're misusing the concept; I think I would somewhat like to.... But the power of 'neurodivergence': C. comes back to this constantly. An interesting reflection on Sherlock Holmes and Hesse. What C. says about modern times is obviously true--as the world is increasingly virtual, the concrete, explicit thinking in humans grows in power, prestige. (This makes me feel an immense sadness at cultural loss.

This 'economistic' way of thinking--where (1) value is marginal and relative to other values, the result of functions so as to be at least two-dimensional and (2) you're ultimately detached from any particular structure of value, unstubborn in your attachments as it were, willing to make trades for some kind of value over others--this is one of the big things I truly learned from him. And it's something you do best learn from the kinds of sanguine, slightly tasteless style of economists--something that they're right about. The kind of mistake I'm likely to make is to reify my taste and intuition, to get used to trusting it so much that I trust it always. Anyway, it's everywhere where Cowen writes, but it's here found in his insistence that different cognitive styles are better suited to changing systems of political economy. (1)--that the literally minded are better suited to modern times, as they virtualize themselves, and of course I am using that term in a weighty and specific way--but I mean: are built in literal virtual (computer or otherwise formal, explicit systems)--or even bureaucratic ones, but I want it to echo this somewhat incomprehensible Baudrilardian use--anyway, (1) can be accepted as a simple fact. But (2) is much harder for me--I want to say: we are losing something, and what we gain is somehow an illusion... (it's the kind of thing we would be able to defend in words that we are gaining--appealing to the concrete--it's a reflection of a lack of self-confidene... not only that.

I've before mentioned Cowen's strange writng stlye--I guess I won't reiterate.... People who are really intelligent, especially those who have been exposed to Nietzsche, who can appreciate vitality--or people who do so instinctively--into whom culture hasn't penetrated--: They are focused on a kind of self-creation. The internal consisency of Cowen's books make me think of that, their frames, their repetitions: but then, you only get a sliver of that from MR or from his podcasts--he has the confidence (the ever-so-slight arrogance) to let all of these speak for themselves. But his different strands, and that he pursues each of them in its ken and well, distinct themes: I associate this with a kind of self-creation. The smartest person I know was the person--another "big idea" I learned--who showed me the importance of having intellectual heroes--following 'charismatic' thinkers--which is ultimately the only way to be intellectual (you have to take advantage of the ways that humans evolved to know things--emotionally, socially, historically, causally, by archetype, by example, intermixing social concepts and objective ones*). Cowen supplements this with his emphasis on autobiography and hisoricization... and his competence in formal models without his pretension to reify them... how comfortable he is saying: outside of their ordinary bounds (the bounds they were made for), they don't make sense (speaking of some economic metric or another).

*When this isn't true, you have to ask yourself: is the criterion I'm using to disconfirm it itself an abstraction? I more and more have respect for the kind of folksy, even invalid, reasoning I associate with historians, because they are so mired in facts that even their theories are made of them--and this is ultmately the only way of dealing with things. Things too clean, elegant--how could they possibly be true? That's not what the truth looks like--except in purely virtual systems... and frustration with the pedantry of true deductive scrutiny, which is ultimately suited to nothing but mathematics (not even clarification).

I think there are a bunch of others things--I can't remember them....

[Jessie Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't any easy read for me, but I know it was a good read because I thought a lot about it while I wasn't reading. It also made me think that I and everyone around me was autistic, so I know the content sunk it.

I'll let my highlights speak for themselves (ps - first book I read on my Kindle! Awesome!)

A recent study showed that parents of autistic children were less likely to socialize and that those same parents were also less likely to make eye contact and more likely to read other people’s intentions by watching their mouths rather than their eyes, a common autistic trait.Read more at location 544


The general point is this: When access is easy, we tend to favor the short, the sweet, and the bitty. When access is difficult, we tend to look for large-scale productions, extravaganzas, and masterpieces.Read more at location 622


If you use Google to look something up in two seconds, rather than spending five minutes searching through an encyclopedia, that doesn’t mean you are less patient. In fact you’ll have more time for some of your longer-term endeavors, whether it be writing a treatise, cultivating your garden, or creating your own economy.Read more at location 762

But he missed how people can construct wisdom—and long-term dramatic interest in their own self-education—from accumulating, collecting, and ordering small bits of information.Read more at location 771

If our searching is sometimes frantic or pulled in many directions, that is precisely because we care about some long-running stories so much. It could be said, a bit paradoxically, that we are impatient to return to our chosen programs of patience.Read more at location 778

The question is not whether you know the classics but whether you are capable of assembling your own blend of small cultural bits. When viewed in this light, today’s young people are very culturally literate indeed and in fact they are very often the cultural leaders and creators.Read more at location 844

Culture has in some ways become uglier because that is how the self-assembly of small bits looks to the outside observer. But when it comes to the interior dimension, contemporary culture has become happier and more satisfying. And, ultimately, it has become nobler as well and more appreciative of the big-picture virtues of human life.Read more at location 891

Micro-blogging recognizes that the ordinary fabric of daily life—the small bits of existence—is a big part of “what’s new.” Rather than being impersonal, it brings people together.Read more at location 1054

Facebook, by organizing your friends in a new and fun way, actually influences your friendships. Not just because those people are easier to contact, or for other practical reasons, but because they take on greater importance in your mind. When you “friend someone” (that is Facebook lingo for asking to connect to their page as a “friend”) you then expect the relationship to be a more intimate one than it had been and so this expectation is affirmed by both parties. You are more likely to think of that person as your friend, and indeed you are more likely to think of yourself as a friendly person.Read more at location 1118

For instance some Wikipedia editors and fans are “Mergists,” who believe that shorter articles should generally be merged into longer ones. In fact the very discussion of Mergism has now been merged into the Wikipedia entry on Deletionism and Inclusionism, quite possibly to the extreme nerdy delight of the person who did the merging.Read more at location 1319

A person who does not in some way order his mental and emotional existence perhaps has not much of an existence at all.Read more at location 1393

So again, most of us need the influence of the leader, the crowd, and the face time to enforce focus on the academic material. Or to go back to my original contention, education is using social influences to encourage autistic cognitive skills.Read more at location 1546

The Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa wrote: “The buyers of useless things are wiser than is commonly supposed—they buy little dreams.”Read more at location 1590

In other words, human perceptions are all-important for understanding how incentives translate into outcomes. Unless you know how people think the world works, you can’t predict their behavior very well.Read more at location 1616

Most behavioral studies look at human psychology at a single point in time, such as how psychology might affect the pricing of mutual funds or the placement of the milk in a supermarket (it’s almost always in the back, to spur impulse purchases of candy and soda as you walk to get your dairy).Read more at location 1657

Traditional economics is usually about acquiring things and thus overcoming scarcity, but a lot of human behavior is about creating artificial scarcity and then choosing a quest.Read more at location 1665

In a mental universe with no story-based hierarchical principles, you’re a hungry and ravenous being trying to own or consume as many commodities or bits of information as possible. In a story-based view, in contrast, very often you already have more bits than you know what to do with. We whittle away at the thicket of information and organize some bits in the form of narratives, even if that means we end up with fewer bits overall. In this vision of how we create mental value,Read more at location 1702

In this vision of how we create mental value,the economic problem is again what to toss away—and how to order what is left—and not just what to acquire.Read more at location 1703

In any case, for most people a successful story, like a successful celebrity, must be socially salient. A salient story, quite simply, is one that is memorable, emotionally resonant, and can be explained easily to most other people.Read more at location 1715

For Nozick the rejection of the experience machine establishes a few philosophical points. First, we want to be certain kinds of persons, not just receptacles of happiness. Second, we value the truth or the authenticity of an experience. Third, hedonism cannot be the only or primary valueRead more at location 1887

Adrian put it most succinctly: “[H]is mind was a great store-house of assimilated knowledge in a series of time-proof compartments.”Read more at location 2102

“He is happiest who advances more gradually to greatness.”Read more at location 2225

Smith wrote down many observations about sympathy but he doesn’t seem to show an intuitive understanding of which points are brilliant insights and which are ordinary observations shared by every man on the street.Read more at location 2232

Smith is not interested in sympathy alone but rather he also stresses how interactions with strangers bring about more objective forms of behavior and move society toward a greater emphasis on rules. Parents for instance are too indulgent with their children and most people behave too loosely with their friends. It is only with some amount of distance that we develop objectivity and most of all it is strangers who help us develop self-command and an objective sense of the virtuous.Read more at location 2237

The world has become so wealthy and so diverse that some composers make music that appeals to people only with a very particular and very refine sense of musical appreciation. That’s the best way to think about much of the music—and other art forms—that you may hate.Read more at location 2450

Most cultural criticism is staggering in how much it begs the question of what is the appropriate middle ground.Read more at location 2457

Much of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason outlined his account of the categories and rules that the mind contributes to reality in this “synthetic” fashion.Read more at location 2661

the mixing of populations lowers the cost of being unusual.Read more at location 2801

[Zak · Rating 3 out of 5]

As seen from all the same goodreads reviews on this book, it turns out this isn't really about the economy, behavioural economics, etc. Instead this is a book about autism and its parallels with the direction of travel the internet is taking in many surprising ways.

Excellent at revealing the lazy assumptions made about autism (including in the scientific literature), particulalry that it is intrinsically and solely a defect of sorts. Tyler shows how the various aspects of autism map closely on to the 'information economy'. Whether it is the characterisation and ordering of information (blog sites, wikipedia, etc.) or the ability to focus intently on a particular topic (specific websites, blogs, twitter communities, etc.) the internet has been moving to promote areas that have been previously vilified in those with autism. I Also really enjoyed/challenged by the chapter on stories and their limits.

My main issue was with the naiveity of some of the pronouncements on the benevolence of the interent and modern culture. Tyler seems to think that we can focus more and cover a broader range because of twitter and other sites, that instant messaging is super efficient and that beauty is becoming more prevalent. I may be temperamentally more inclined to agree with someone like Nicholas Carr (the shallows) or Cal Newport (Deep work) that the internet is bad and we should all cry about it/burn it. The reality I'm sure is inbetween these two positions but it's nice to read someone more optimistic about the inclusiveness and effectiveness of the internet.

[Stephen Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprising, delightful, straightforward.

Love the ending! Reads like a volley of essays all exploring different facets of modern media (iPod, the internet, modern culture) through the lens of autism-brain, and with a good sprinkling of TC’s signature economics tidbits.

Although it was written in the iPod's fleeting moment in the sun, if you replace the word "ipod" with "phone", most of what Tyler said still applies, but MORE!

Congratulations, Tyler, I'm convinced. And thank you for being the lone voice of optimism in this time of negative Nellies. I would like an update on this book, if you could write a sequel with (only slightly) less emphasis on autism, brain and more emphasis on trying to understand the new phenomena that the media is having on our society. We need more words and frameworks to be able to understand and take advantage of these things.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an odd book! Cowen has a notion that we can all learn something from autistic modes of thinking (namely, putting some kind of "order" on information), and squeezes it until there ain't anything more to squeeze. Reads like a stream of consciousness - some more "ordering" on Cowen's part wouldn't have been amiss. He basically drivels on from one lame topic to the next. Embarrassing.
As others have pointed out, the title has nothing to do with the content.
Addendum: I'll tell you how bad this book is. I reread it (by mistake) four years after posting this review, and didn't once realise I had already read it. It really is that forgettable...

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book conveys more message than the title of the book.

it starts off discussing autism and how it relates to the new world order, a topic i dont think i could appreciate much previously.

each chapter deals with a subtopic that will make you think hard, and re-think - a blend of philosophy and economics. e.g. cost of access, small cultural bits, peak vs steady daily experiences,framing effect, economics of story, beauty, politics and the universe.

the discussion is original and persuasive.

[Gabi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cowen makes the case that living inside your own head can be a pretty good life, especially if you live in a free and prosperous society. Then he makes the case that free and prosperous societies are built by people who are good at living inside their own heads. I liked the bit about the autism conventions, where some participants' name tags clearly read that the holder does not wish to be approached. Those should be available everywhere.

[Suhrob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable quick read, though indeed the title is quite misleading.

Cowen is a very interesting figure - often better in posing interesting questions or picking up curious tidbits, than a careful researcher.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tyler Cowen is famous for his voracious curiosity about anything and everything. He's posted on his blog Marginal Revolutions multiple times per day every day for the past 20 years. His topics range from discussions of music (he likes everything from atonal classical music to Brazilian pop) to food (he hosts another website about ethnic dining and has conducted multiple podcast episodes with Chinese cuisine expert Fuschia Dunlop, among others) to contemporary novels and films (he posts end-of-year lists of his favourites).

Suffice to say, the man is cultured.

He also writes about the economics of everything else: sports, housing regulation, immigration, metasience, artificial intelligence, the ethics of long-run economic growth, and so on. He is truly a fount of curiosity, and no matter which interview with him you choose to listen to or watch it is abundantly clear that his curiosity is genuine and his wide-ranging knowledge is very real.

It's said that the thing that made Einstein great when he was young is also what ruined his reputation as he aged: he was deeply intuitive, which led to his discoveries of relativity and Brownian motion, etc., but he was also deeply protective of his intuitions, which made him simply unable to accept the emerging science of quantum mechanics, which violated his intuitions. The same is true of Cowen. His major asset--his profound curiosity and roving intellect--is also his undoing. Infovore is not what it's advertised as being on the cover. It isn't about information consumption or information economies. It's about autism. But it's also about everything else.

This book reads as though it was written without a plan, as though Cowen sat down to write about whatever tangent was on his mind at the time of writing. Squint as hard as you want, you won't find anything resembling a structure. He jumps constantly from one idea to another, never staying very long with any one of them. There is a main idea that ostensibly runs through the whole thing, but frankly the things he talks about don't flesh out that idea very well. The idea is this: that neurotypicals who want to thrive in the age of the internet should adopt some of the cognitive styles of autistics. These styles manifest themselves as an obsession with ordering information: compiling it, synthesising it, arranging it into lists, and so on. Autistics also have a heightened ability to discern small differences, so that their ability to sort and order is more refined than that of neurotypicals. These two facts help explain why it is so common for people on the spectrum to develop intense and highly detailed interests in very specific things, such as trains and train schedules, analogue watches, or a particular style of music.

Cowen draws a number of insights and conclusions from these two observations. He says that it's good to be passionate about information. That it's good to be able to manipulate ever smaller bits of information. That it's good to be able to perceive beauty where others can't. He says that the ability of autistics to find aesthetic pleasure in plastic spoons, in discordant sounds, in birdsong, in shocking horror movies, and so on, should broaden our idea of what constitutes art.

(I think this was possibly his most interesting insight, but it was underdeveloped. Drawing connections between the strange aesthetics of some autistics and the radical evolution of the idea of art over the course of the 20th century has so much potential. Things that come to mind include musique concrete; the very idea of electronic music, especially as it existed in pre-Kraftwerk classical music, such as in the work of Stockhausen; atonal music; Messiaen's use of birdsong; Marcel Duchamp's readymade art; La Monte Young's drone music; John Cage's aleatoric music; and so on).

Cowen says that, like autists, we should be sceptical of the stories we tell ourselves. That we should try as much as possible to strip our explanations of emotional meaning in order to retain our objectivity. That we should not seek revenge. That we should tolerate divergent aesthetic tastes. That we should rediscover the importance of the rule of law (which is not so important everywhere around the world. But Cowen says nothing about legalism).

These are all good recommendations, but you can see that they're quite haphazard and not obviously related to each other. That's the book in a nutshell. Well-intentioned, but haphazard, meandering, and ultimately unconvincing. I cannot recommend a book to others that even I, a highly curious person, felt was a waste of time.

[Douglass Gaking · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tyler Cowen is one of the top bloggers about economics, and the title of this book makes it sound like it is about economics. However, this book is more of a weird mélange of concepts from assorted fields, including but not centering around economics. Seemingly unrelated ideas are jumbled together to make an awkward case about how the human mind is being reshaped by information technology.

The book's thesis is that technology is leading people to obsessively collect and order information. This is a notorious trait of people on the autism spectrum. Cowen, a self-identified autistic, thinks very positively about autism and doesn't like to see it as a disorder or disability, but simply as a different way of processing information. Cowen argues that technological activities like blogging, social networking, and wikis are making humans think more like autistic people.

Cowen takes a Thomas L. Friedman-like approach to praising the panacea of Internet technology. He also branches out into ideas from economists ranging from the Austrian school to behavioral economists. He connects this wide variety of ideas into a somewhat simplified concept, although not quite effectively. While the construction of the book leaves much to be desired, Cowen presents ideas worth thinking about as we consider what the best ways are of using all the powerful information and technology that is now at our fingertips.

[Cold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cowen attacks the stigma surrounding autism. Instead, he characterises autism as a way of processing information. He points out this detailed oriented approach won't necessarily lead to bad life outcomes. This explains the lack of diagnosed autistic adults; most of them went on to life success. He then sets about building a positive account of autistic information processing. In one chapter he suggests Sherlock Holmes, Adam Smith and Fredrik Hayek all displayed autistic tendencies. Throughout he suggests this mode of thinking is suited to modern, info rich society.

It ends up getting personal when he talks about globalism and culture. Weird foreigners appear foreign, not weird. He points to evidence that autistics are more likely to marry foreigners. He then points to his Russian wife. He is undeniably insightful but annoyingly he rams it in your face all the time.

A Tyler-ism
"Whereas the Stoics sought to understand the psychology of the Roman Empire, exile, and the slave whip, and Smith studied the pin factory, I am looking at Facebook, Google, and the iPod."

[Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cowen argues that we should all strive to have more autistic cognitive traits. That is, separating autism out into its many aspects - to neurodiversity - and highlighting the parts that society encourages and rewards in the modern age.

This is an empathetic work that treats autism with kindness and specificity. We are stepped through how certain cognitive strengths associated with autism help us to communicate better, appreciate music more, and have an impact on the world. The most delightful part of the book is being exposed to a different mental model of the world, and forced to consider strange statements such as 'I view schools as teaching people to be just a bit more autistic in their cognitive skills' or the ties and opposition between meditation and autism.

Cowen's book is quite far-ranging and perhaps 'how to be more autistic' is unmarketable, so we have been left with the title 'The age of the infovore' which is utterly lacking in description for the contents of this book.

[Cam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cowen's blogging and interviewing are better than his books. I find his books (with the exception of Stubborn Attachments) too desultory and his sentences are too long.

That's not to say they aren't worth reading, but I'd recommend more than usual to jump around.

This book is largely an attempt to raise the status of autistic people. The main point being that austists think differently which brings disadvantagesand advantages.

Particular strength of the autistic mode of thinking is organising and classifying things in their preferred areas and being able to focus deeply in these areas. This advantage has particular leverage in the information age which is far moer conducive for orgnaising and categorising.

[Andrew Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of false advertising, since the book is really about reinterpreting the tics of high functioning autism in a new life. I had to knock it one 🌟 down for that: The title doesn't really give a good idea of the content.

The content itself though is fascinating! Cowen writes quickly and without and pretension, just throwing interesting fact after interesting fact at you in support of his central thesis: There are positive traits associated with the autistic style of thinking, organizing, and reflecting, and the modern age is all about capitalizing on those strengths. Sure to be a controversial, thought provoking read.

[Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways, this book is now outdated. Many of the praises heaped on social media by Cowen have been shown to be problematic (cf. Cal Newport). However, the best part of the book was the most surprising. Cowen puts forward a much needed apology for the Autistic community, explaining how culture has tended to view them and why this is both wrong and problematic. He seems to show that we have much to learn from those on the spectrum in the way that we organize our our mental lives. I picked this up on a whim because I haven’t read Cowen in a while. Probably won’t return to this again, but it had its interesting moments.

[Alex Ager · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should start by saying I'm a huge fan of Tyler Cowen's. I value his insights on a wide range of topics. But this book is a bit of a mess.

First, the title is very misleading. The book is not so much about creating your own economy, but rather how many of the traits of autism, such as systematic ordering of information, are beneficial to success in the digital age. The fact that the title doesn't even mention autism is not very true to the book.

His premise was unique and I largely agree with it. However, the problem I had with the book is that it would have probably made for a better article than a book. Stretching the idea out led to Tyler taking the idea in many seemingly unrelated areas. At certain points in the book I would ask myself, what does this have to do with autism or the digital world?

[Frazt Des · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kein Buch mit Tipps für den Umgang mit dem Internet, sondern tatsächlich ein Buch über Autismus oder besser gesagt, über autistische Persönlichkeitszüge. Keine Ahnung, warum Tyler Cowen das nicht auch so bewirbt... Dafür aber wieder sehr insightful, klar durchdacht und mit vielen Anregungen zum weiterdenken/erforschen/entdecken. Wer TC kennt, wird wissen was ich meine... Sagen wir mal so, ich freue mich, mich die nächsten Tage in diverse Internetrabbitholes zu stürzen, sei es klassische, marrokanische atonale Musik oder welche berühmten Philosophen und Wissenschaftler wahrscheinlich Autismus hatten...

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. No surprise as a regular blog reader, but Cowen obscures a lot of his meaning with words and phrases that are not especially clear. The publisher's need to rename the book is an attempt to solve the most glaring instance of this: the concept of "creating your own economy" by way of individually curated interior aesthetic experiences is consistently more obscure than it needs to be throughout the book.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find this book interesting as it mentions how the strengths of the autistic cognitive traits can help us deal with information overload in the digital world. It also discusses politics, literature, religion and music and how we can adopt the traits of ordering to compartmentalize information to make it easier to remember and process. It discusses great people in history who might possibly possess autistic traits. However, the ideas are fragmented and I often get disengaged while reading it.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

REALLY interesting, but odd, book. Cowen's weaves his thoughts about the changes and developments in the modern economy with his thoughts on the cognitive traits he associates with people on the autism spectrum. His point is that autistic tendencies (probably more properly Asperger's traits) bring with them cognitive strengths that may be advantageous in our current economic and societal landscape.

[ShawnL · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. I went in thinking this book would provide some discussion of adult autistics and ways of managing information they encounter. He touched on some on the edges of that, but nothing I found illuminating or helpful. I was also distracted by his constant referencing of internet usage that was more common when the book was written. It made it feel outdated and I’m 10 years too late in encountering this book.

[Cassidy McDonnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although it had some interesting insights and ideas, the book was rather bizarrely disconnected. It oscillated between the rise of the digital age and behavioral insights about those on the autism spectrum and how they function in society. In addition to the seeming randomness and lack of direction, the book did not age overwhelmingly well with the shifts in the roles the internet and social media play in our society since the book was published in 2009.

[Sean Goh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the first half, wasn't expecting the strong focus on autism and autistics and how everyone could learn from them (especially how they process information). The later chapters on politics and beauty were quite meh though.

________________

Recognising the power of autistic learning overturns a lot of stereotypes. Its not recovery from disability, more accurate it is development as the autistic learns to overcome their cognitive disadvantages.

When access is easy, we tend to favour the short, the sweet and the bitty. When access is difficult we tend to look for large-scale productions, extravaganzas and masterpieces. The magnitude of cost of access influences which we preferentially consume.

It can be said that the fundamental currency of the web is not money but rather squibs of pleasure and disappointment. The squibs are one reason why so many people become addicted to email or other web-based activities.

When it comes to the web there is no information overload, only filter failure.

High travel costs (think flying across the world) are a potent enemy of the all-important 'low expectations'. The quest for continual high-quality excitement is not conductive to casual downtime together, and such routines are the glue that binds relationships together in the longer run.

Ode to Instant Messaging: IM is a good way to know somebody, usually better than email. An IM dialogue typically has many more questions than does an email. Furthermore it is rude to not respond immediately, unless you announce that you must break off the exchange. In an IM exchange, you learn very quickly whether and how well the other person can match your pace. It is information "dancing" in a way that the oh-so-slow email never can be. And who doesn't love to dance? Truly good IM conversations are like overlapping polyphonies, with swells and peaks, breaks and moments of great intensity, and also humour. It's one of the best ways of connecting with other people. It's not the corruption of culture, rather it's a cross between the emotional tie of the mambo and the intellectual connection of rapid-fire debate. It's a new canvas on which to paint stories of friendship and sharing, not to mention romance and sex.

If we engage in too much mental ordering, fun though it may be, we can lose sight of 'the whole' and we can lose sight of the path towards greater harmony within ourselves.

Education is in part a self-commitment to being a more productive kind of person. Education is about self-acculturation. Education gives you a peer group, a self-image and also some skills. By choosing many years of education, you are telling yourself that you stand on one side of a social divide rather than the other.

The reality is that most education requires the physical presence of other human beings. The flesh-and-blood instructor motivates students better and the presence of other students in the classroom makes the experience more vivid and memorable. Our proximity to both the leader (professor) and the peers (fellow students) means that we end up more interested, more focused, and more able to succeed in later life. As human beings most of us (but not all of us) are biologically programmed to respond positively to face time with others.

One of the most fundamental truths about the social world is that objective reality does not determine what people believe. Or in the language or economics, expectations are not generally rational. People misperceive reality or people self-deceive to construct a more pleasant reality within own minds.

Traditional economics focuses on the top of the pyramid, how people respond to objective changes (e.g. incentives) But it is insufficient to think in terms of incentive because they are all set and interpreted in a particular context, and that brings in psychology.

Whenever a group has to coordinate around a common idea or plan, there is the potential for the least-common-denominator effect. When deciding on a movie to watch for six people, usually the choice ends up being one no one sees fit to veto.

Media coverage brings similar problems of oversimplification. The tendency is to fit all facts into the format of a story, usually with a memorable protagonist, even when the reality is more complex. The media is good at portraying heroes and villains and conspiracies, while it is bad at giving people an understanding of abstract or unseen social and economic forces.

We should drop many of our presuppositions about 'low-quality' or 'depraved' artistic tastes. When people have tastes that are different from ours, maybe they are perceiving and experiencing something that we do not.

The division of labour provides disproportionate benefits to people with specialised cognitive talents and that includes many people along the autism spectrum.

The more mixed the crowd, and the greater the number of dimensions of achievement and status, the greater the chance that unusual people will find a means of excelling or just surviving and fitting in. The mixing of populations lowers the cost of being unusual. That's why gay people are especially likely to choose the coasts and major cities rather than small towns in the Midwest.
"It is through exchange that diversity becomes a blessing, not a curse." - Jonathan Sacks

[Muriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the ideas are inspiring (create your own economy independent from the macro up and down, by taking advantage of new trends such as information processing), the writing shows its age. Penned in 2009, the author referenced MySpace, raspberry, and so many things that read quaint or removed from the daily worries of 2018.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Best/most realistic description of Asperger's traits as I see them in self-diagnosed people. appreciated the metaphor that social media and smart phones are like a marriage to the internet, with the increased standard boring time, high intensity emotions, not really being able to get away if it's good or bad, etc.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. The title is very misleading. I listen to Tyler's podcast and have read his posts in Marginal Revolution. I was expecting something more about economics, information and technology. In honesty I didn't pass the second chapter when it was clear it was autism and asperasperger. Not even the subtitle suggest what is the main scope of the book