Wednesday, February 2, 2011

[O454.Ebook] Ebook Free Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher

Ebook Free Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher

You can finely include the soft documents Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher to the device or every computer hardware in your workplace or house. It will certainly aid you to still continue reading Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher each time you have downtime. This is why, reading this Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher does not give you problems. It will certainly give you essential resources for you which want to begin writing, discussing the comparable book Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher are different book field.

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher



Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher

Ebook Free Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher

Checking out a book Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher is kind of easy task to do each time you want. Even reviewing whenever you desire, this activity will not interrupt your various other tasks; lots of people frequently check out the publications Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher when they are having the leisure. What concerning you? Exactly what do you do when having the downtime? Do not you invest for worthless points? This is why you have to obtain guide Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher and also attempt to have reading practice. Reviewing this publication Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher will not make you ineffective. It will offer a lot more advantages.

If you desire actually obtain the book Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher to refer now, you need to follow this page always. Why? Remember that you need the Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher source that will provide you appropriate expectation, don't you? By seeing this internet site, you have begun to make new deal to consistently be updated. It is the first thing you can start to get all profit from remaining in a website with this Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher and other collections.

From now, discovering the completed site that markets the finished publications will be lots of, yet we are the trusted site to see. Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher with easy web link, simple download, and also finished book collections become our excellent solutions to get. You could discover and also make use of the advantages of selecting this Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher as everything you do. Life is consistently developing as well as you need some new book Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher to be recommendation consistently.

If you still need a lot more publications Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher as recommendations, visiting look the title and theme in this website is available. You will find more lots publications Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher in numerous self-controls. You could additionally as quickly as feasible to check out the book that is currently downloaded and install. Open it as well as save Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher in your disk or device. It will certainly relieve you wherever you require the book soft data to check out. This Ego: The Game Of Life, By Frank Schirrmacher soft file to review can be reference for everyone to boost the ability as well as ability.

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher

Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War, a new Cold War is being waged in our societies. During the Cold War a theoretical model of man was developed by economists and the military, an egotistical being interested only in his own benefit and in duping his opponents to achieve his ends: a modern homo oeconomicus. After his career in the Cold War ended, he was not scrapped but adapted to the needs of the twenty-first century. He became the ringmaster of a new era of information capitalism. He sought to read, control and influence thoughts; to predict, price and eliminate risks. Today stock-market trading is guided by him. He uses computer algorithms and Big Data to build up detailed pictures of our preferences and then suggest and sell goods to us. The model has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are no longer the masters of our own fate. The Game of Life runs without us.

Schirrmacher traces the progress of this extreme rationalization of social life from the Cold War games of the 1950s Rand Corporation to the stock-market trading techniques that brought about the financial crash of 2008, showing how these developments were interwoven with the rise of game theory, rational choice theory and neoliberal economics. The state and politics increasingly submitted themselves to the logic of computerized game theory and an economistic view of the world, evading real decision-making in the process. In this brave new world individuals, alone in front of their computers, may think they are constructing a reality of their own choosing, but in fact they are being manipulated all along by others who are setting the rules of the game.

This international bestseller by one of Germany?s most distinguished journalists is a powerful indictment of a way of thinking that has become pervasive and threatens to undermine not only parliaments and constitutions but also the sovereignty of the individual to be the person he or she wants to be.

  • Sales Rank: #2956431 in Books
  • Published on: 2015-11-09
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 9.30" h x 1.00" w x 6.40" l, .0 pounds
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 260 pages

Review

"Frank Schirrmacher convincingly shows connections among such ostensibly disparate issues as the language of the Cold War and that of the trading floor, as he demonstrates how algorithms and statistical models have become the overwhelmingly dominant means we use to understand the brain, the market, the state and nature. In the end the human person becomes defined as a problem, because unable to be reduced to calculation in this way. This critique of contemporary egoism from the editor of Germany?s leading liberal conservative newspaper makes chilling but highly thought-provoking reading."
Colin Crouch, University of Warwick

"This book reads like a sociological thriller."
Ulrich Beck, Die Welt

"A piece of cultural criticism in the very best sense: a diagnosis, prognosis and cure all in one for our technologically induced egoism."
Der Tagesspiegel

"This book is an urgently needed appeal for us to rethink what we understand by economic rationality."
Handelsblatt

"In this new book, Frank Schirrmacher once again shows an extraordinary understanding of the volatility of our times, bringing into focus the widespread discontent felt in many sections of society."
Tages-Anzeiger

About the Author
Frank Schirrmacher (1959-2014) was a journalist, essayist and Editor-in-Chief at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Most helpful customer reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
It's a John Nash world out there
By David Wineberg
Ego: The Game of Life in inflammatory. Extraordinarily so. On nearly every other page there is an inflammatory statement to challenge the reader. It is relentless and effective. Right in the preface, Schirrmacher says in the game of life, you have to accept the idea that “the universe has singled you out to be its personal enemy.” It is not possible for me to put down a book that begins this way. And it does not disappoint.

At its core is Schirrmacher’s premise that rational choice theory and game theory are now running society. And that they were developed by a certified paranoid schizophrenic – John Nash. Nash could not countenance people acting selflessly. Fraternity and solidarity made no sense to Nash, who dismissed them as factors. It was all about self interest, and nothing else mattered. Nash is aided and abetted by economists who invented homo economicus, the evil twin of every human, who only acts selfishly to maximize returns. Plugged into faulty, incomplete models, the results have been unparalleled disasters, producing “impossible” failures and repeated once in a million year setbacks.

We are now players in John Nash’s game, the game of life. Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook all build assumptions about us. They take us in new directions whether we want to go or not. Google Adwords uses an algorithm reputed to be the most advanced in the world, more sophisticated than any military app, which also models everyone and every action on Nash’s paranoia. Every internet search is an ad auction that adds to the knowledgebase. They are same as the algorithms used by hedge funds and real time traders, pumping millions of trades around the clock. Finance and the internet are merging to dominate everything.

This reductive analysis is as good as any out there, and better than most. But the primary impact from the book is in the challenging statements that pop up continually. Some are Schirrmacher’s and some are from other people, but they all have the same disturbing quality:

-The Cold War simply moved to Wall Street.
-After the end of the Cold War, a new cold war is opening up in the heart of societies.
-Economists invented homo economicus and convinced the world that it was natural law.
-Wall Street has reinvented the alchemist, turning worthless paper into real money at will.
-Derivatives went from zero in the 1970s to $1.2 quadrillion: 20 times more than the GNP of the world.
-In the 50s, stocks were held an average of four years. In 2010 it was two months. In 2014 it was 22 seconds.
-The most imperialistic economic theory was obviously Marxism.
-Everywhere today it is a binary question of exclusion or inclusion. You are with us or against us, you are worthy or not, you are in or you’re out.
-Individuals are being fashioned by the machinery of an unrestrained information market.
-What if the system didn’t reflect our “preferences”, but actively shaped them?
-The Philosopher’s Stone was not a stone but a fluid: pure liquidity
-Information is not the precursor of knowledge, but the tool of salesmen.
-Twenty years’ experience is really one year of experience repeated twenty times.
-Computers, from stock exchange terminals to PCs are merely tools that imitate the capabilities of the autistic.

He lays the blame for the financial crisis squarely on the shoulders of John Nash and those who leverage him. The perverse result is the twisted, unequal society we have today. Schirrmacher died in 2014 at the age of 54. It’s unfortunate he is not around to collect the reactions to The Game of Life, and tell us how right he was.

David Wineberg

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
The author hates self as he has no self-respect to do even basic research?
By I'm no expert, yet...
It would be nice if author had enough ego/self-respect to do basic research.

A lot of readers may react this way:

His conception of what rationality and self-interest mean in economics, psychology, and Aristotelian philosophy is equivalent to someone making assumptions about the meaning instead of actually understanding how the term is used in those subjects.

The dead giveaway is e.g. his ridiculous misrepresentations of game theory or the work of Ayn Rand.

Note to author: Reading the actual works or using GOOGLE is a good thing. What is going on in Germany that this is even considered a respectable work by reviewers?

See all 2 customer reviews...

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher PDF
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher EPub
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher Doc
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher iBooks
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher rtf
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher Mobipocket
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher Kindle

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher PDF

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher PDF

Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher PDF
Ego: The Game of Life, by Frank Schirrmacher PDF

No comments:

Post a Comment