Will Instapundit Become an Instant Best-Seller?

This transformation, Reynolds says, takes many forms. One is disintermediation, which is a popular business buzz word for the removal of the layers of filters or bureaucracy between creators and users, the populace and their leaders, and between people and storehouses of information. Another is the shift from vertical pathways of power to horizontal webs of knowledge distribution and organization. And a third is virtualization (I write this proudly, having helped coin the modern use of the term), in which new communications networks (wireless, podcasting, cellular) and organizational structures allow for much more fluid definitions of work and play, home and office, employment and entrepreneurship, and company and team.

So compelling is Reynolds' argument that, when he quibbles or equivocates -- as when he suggests that there will still be a place for newspapers in this new world -- you conclude that he doesn't really believe it himself, but is just showing good manners.

I cannot think of a better book for the average reader to understand just how the Web and other digital technologies are reversing the polarities of modern society -- restoring many features of daily life lost with the Industrial Revolution, while at the same time inventing powerful new cultural institutions. And for those of us who make careers out of watching this transformation, no book to date so well summarizes all of the diverse trends in a single narrative.

Some Distinct Failures

If "Army of Davids" succeeds brilliantly, it also fails frustratingly. For 150 pages, Reynolds tells his tale cleverly, cogently and convincingly.

And then he inexplicably goes sideways into extended musings on nanotechnology, life extension, and the so-called technological "singularity" championed by Ray Kurzweil. As anyone who reads Instapundit knows, these are pet interests of Reynolds, and he is quite knowledgeable about each of them. But, with the exception perhaps of nanotech, none belongs in a book called "An Army of Davids."

The effect is jarring for two reasons. First, because Reynolds betrays the reader's expectations by jumping from the here and now of our daily lives to speculations about things that will likely not happen in our lifetimes, if ever. And second, because these tangential musings keep Reynolds from drawing out the full implications of the trends he brilliantly describes in the first half of the book.