A history of the rise and fall of Sloanist mass production, and a survey of the new economy emerging from the ruins: networked local manufacturing, garage industry, household microenterprises and resilient local economies.

3D Robotics co-founder and bestselling author Chris Anderson takes you to the front lines of a new industrial revolution as today’s entrepreneurs, using open source design and 3-D printing, bring manufacturing to the desktop. In an age of custom-fabricated, do-it-yourself product design and creation, the collective potential of a million garage tinkerers and enthusiasts is about to be unleashed, driving a resurgence of American manufacturing. A generation of “Makers” using the Web’s innovation model will help drive the next big wave in the global economy, as the new technologies of digital design and rapid prototyping gives everyone the power to invent--creating “the long tail of things”.

“This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers.” —New York Times Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff’s landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs—the culture being counter– and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It’s a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and ’70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap’n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.

On 26 May, 2010 Apple Inc. passed Microsoft in valuation as the world's largest technology company. Its consumer electronic products - ranging from computers to mobile phones to portable media devices, not to mention its iTunes, iBook and App Store - have influenced nearly every facet of our lives, and it shows no sign of slowing down. But how did Apple - a company set up in the back room of a house by two friends, and one that always marketed itself as the underdog - become the marketplace leader (and the world's second largest company overall), and is it a good thing to have one company hold so much power? In The Apple Revolution Luke Dormehl shares the inside story of how Apple Inc. came to be; from the formation of the company's philosophies and user-friendly ethos, to the "iPod moment" and global domination, leaving you with a deep understanding of how it was created, why it has flourished, and where it might be going next.

1) An account of the shift from Old Left strategies of postcapitalist transition based on organizational mass and hierarchy, and systemic rupture, to strategies based on horizontal organization and the interstitial construction of counter-institutions. 2) A survey of current projects engaged in building counter-institutions within the interstices of capitalism -- or, in the words of the Wobbly slogan, "building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old."

This book investigates the birth and evolution of craft breweries around the world. Microbrewery, brewpub, artisanal brewery, henceforth craft brewery, are terms referred to a new kind of production in the brewing industry contraposed to the mass production of beer, which has started and diffused in almost all industrialized countries in the last decades. This project provides an explanation of the entrepreneurial dynamics behind these new firms from an economic perspective. The product standardization of large producers, the emergence of a new more sophisticated demand and set of consumers, the effect of contagion, and technology aspects are analyzed as the main determinants behind this ‘revolution’. The worldwide perspective makes the project distinctive, presenting cases from many relevant countries, including the USA, Australia, Japan, China, UK, Belgium, Italy and many other EU countries.

Defenders of the modern state often claim that it's needed to protect us-from terrorists, invaders, bullies, and rapacious corporations. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, for instance, famously argued that the state was a source of "countervailing power" that kept other social institutions in check. But what if those "countervailing" institution-corporations, government agencies and domesticated labor unions-in practice collude more than they "countervail" each other? And what if network communications technology and digital platforms now enable us to take on all those dinosaur hierarchies as equals-and more than equals. In The Desktop Regulatory State, Kevin Carson shows how the power of self-regulation, which people engaged in social cooperation have always possessed, has been amplified and intensifed by changes in consciousness-as people have become aware of their own power and of their ability to care for themselves without the state-and in technology-especially information technology. Drawing as usual on a wide array of insights from diverse disciplines, Carson paints an inspiring, challenging, and optimistic portrait of a humane future without the state, and points provocatively toward the steps we need to take in order to achieve it.

A New York Times Best Seller A full-color, lushly illustrated graphic novel that recounts the many-layered past and present of beer through dynamic pairings of pictures and meticulously researched insight into the history of the world's favorite brew. The History of Beer Comes to Life! We drink it. We love it. But how much do we really know about beer? Starting from around 7000 BC, beer has emerged as a major element driving humankind’s development, a role it has continued to play through today’s craft brewing explosion. With The Comic Book Story of Beer, the first-ever nonfiction graphic novel focused on this most favored beverage, you can follow along from the very beginning, as authors Jonathan Hennessey and Mike Smith team up with illustrator Aaron McConnell to present the key figures, events, and, yes, beers that shaped and frequently made history. No boring, old historical text here, McConnell’s versatile art style—moving from period-accurate renderings to cartoony diagrams to historical caricatures and back—finds an equal and effective partner in the pithy, informative text of Hennessey and Smith presented in captions and word balloons on each page. The end result is a filling mixture of words and pictures sure to please the beer aficionado and comics geek alike.

Argues that the economy can only be improved through major changes that will make it more decentralized and cooperative, including such novel ideas as energy self-sufficiency, interest-free financing, affordable housing, local food systems and more. Original.