52 Books, Week 24: Horizontal Society

Wait for the movie. Better than urban tribes, worse than the world is flat... The horizontal society is a look at the way modern societies are organized (i.e. Horizontal connections between peers and associates vs. Patriarchial vertical relationships which confer direct authority). He describes contemporary celebrity culture and other forms of media, speficially how television provides the "illusion of knowning something, while actually pushing actual knowledge further away from the viewer"

Stolen Blurb: Lawrence M. Friedman introduces the idea of the 'Horizontal Society', a society that has been created by mass media, modern forms of transportation, "by modernity itself". He suggests that, through the above mentioned developments, the world and the people in it succumb less and less to the "vertical" constraints that prevailed decades ago (constraints such as the patriarchal society of Masters and peasants, or the traditional role of the father in the family). The Horizontal Society is one in which individuals start on an equal footing.

Why I Read It: Cause my first true love is sociology.

Should You Put it on your list: Feelin' like 50 cent... Eh, not likely