The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
by Matt Mason

The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
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Book Summary Information

Author: Matt Mason
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-01-08
ISBN: 1416532188
Number of pages: 313
Publisher: Free Press

Book Reviews of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

Book Review: Dissappointingly devoid of meaningful content.
Summary: 1 Stars

I think, if it had stuck to the brief it claimed to have on the front cover, I would have loved this book. But it didn't at all. This book has it's interesting moments, but it is effectively a chance for a former pirate DJ to try to convince you of three things. (I) Pirate radio is awesome. (II) DJ's are gods of the modern era. (III) Any and all significant cultural advances accomplished since the 60s are solely the result of music's influence.
Now, your mileage may vary on how useful any of those statements are, but I can't stand radio in any form, and DJ's typically make me want to punch someone, which means that the 3rd statement is the only one that could have any truck with me. Sadly, the book very much puts the cart before the horse. It is probable there's interchange, but for the author's purposes we're to consider EVERYTHING in terms of music. Then there's the way he uses Pirate in the book, it becomes a generalist term that applies to almost all innovators, which kind of misses the point of WHY piracy is an issue.
The books real gift is in teaching music trivia, and providing some form of introduction to Hip-hop as big business, but here he hardly does anything new, and he mostly hides behind pretentious words to make out that everything has meaning. Fashion is even glorified as emblematic of what our culture should be like. For someone who is on the surface offering a counter-culture account of the changes going on in the world and what the future will be, he doesn't actually attack much of the mainstream.
His only other really interesting assertion is that new youth-cultures can't form presently due to the instant spotlight effect that corporates give to anything with any promise in the constant quest for marketing. I'd just like to say, this is one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard. It seems fairly evident to me that the reason we aren't getting new large scale youth movements is that the Internet has made most movements small and decentralized, and because WOW is just so awesomesauce that most people don't bother anymore.

Summary of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

It started with punk. Hip-hop, rave, graffiti, and gaming took it to another level, and now modern technology has made the ideas and innovations of youth culture increasingly intimate and increasingly global at the same time.

In The Pirate's Dilemma, VICE magazine's Matt Mason -- poised to become the Malcolm Gladwell of the iPod Generation -- brings the exuberance of a passionate music fan and the technological savvy of an IT wizard to the task of sorting through the changes brought about by the interface of pop culture and innovation. He charts the rise of various youth movements -- from pirate radio to remix culture -- and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society. Mason brings a passion and a breadth of intelligence to questions such as the following: How did a male model who messed with disco records in the 1970s influence the way Boeing designs airplanes? Who was the nun who invented dance music, and how is her influence undermining capitalism as we know it? Did three high school kids who remixed Nazis into Smurfs in the 1980s change the future of the video game industry? Can hip-hop really bring about world peace? Each chapter crystallizes the idea behind one of these fringe movements and shows how it combined with technology to subvert old hierarchies and empower the individual.

With great wit and insight -- and a cast of characters that includes such icons as the Ramones, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Russell Simmons, and 50 Cent -- Mason uncovers the trends that have transformed countercultural scenes into burgeoning global industries and movements, ultimately changing our way of life.

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