This will be cover on America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century-Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come, which will be published on May 28, 2013.
Jim Bennett and I went back and forth with our publisher, Encounter, on this cover. We are grateful for their diligent work, and we are very pleased with the final version. Encounter had the original idea of three bands depicting America 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. The original picture for 1.0 was different, but this one works nicely. It shows a farmer plowing with animal muscle power. That is precisely the image that captures the A1.0 era. It was a time of family-scale farms, and it was before the introduction of mechanical power. The second image is of an industrial era auto assembly line. This is the epitome of A2.0. It is mass production, motor power, wage work not independent business ownership, big business, big labor and in the background, big government. It was a great world in many ways, but it is a past that will never come back. Of course, it is impossible to photograph the future, and unless we had the budget to make a “science fiction” picture, the top band, A3.0 could only be a rough approximation. Still, this pictures captures much of the story. It shows an exurban landscape, with a highway but lots of green. We anticipate that there will be much more dispersion of the American people across the landscape, for reasons we describe in the book, especially in Chapter 1: America in 2040. Also, the color scheme shows increasing brightness, indicative of the hopeful future we foresee for America.
Excellent.
I like!
Sgt. Mom — tell your friends!
I do have some small resources – I know of quite a few who would love to hear about this book. Has it hit Amazon yet? Are you soliciting for reviewers?
It is on Amazon. If you click on the picture on the top left of the blog, it takes you to the page.
Yes, I am soliciting for reviewers. If you have ideas, please let me know, via direct email is preferable.
It is probably too late and doesn’t really matter, but my mind would prefer the order of the photos flipped, so the 1.0 is at the top, etc. Just the way my brain works. I have my copy pre-ordered and am very much look forward to reading it.
By the way still no kindle option wtf?
Dan, that cover has been printed already.
You will have to trust me that the blue sky on the top worked better.
The electronic version is coming, so we are promised.
Good deal on both.
Can’t wait to read it.
Totally agree about the exurbs.
The urban creative class movement was mostly about purging families and the middle class, and, ironically, resulted in a critical dearth of creativity.
There’s no shortage of ideas or ambition out there, but there is a lack of vision thanks to the planned straightjacket our culture and economy is in.
So my son should get a job in carpentry?
So my son should get a job in carpentry?
Programming and/or electrical technology.
Homes, cars, appliances, etc are all getting more complex and beyond the reach of typical diy fixit repair work. Pretty soon they’ll all be networked too.
not to quibble to much but the top picture looks like the English landscape.
I don’t think it’s England, but it doesn’t matter. There was one nice one we considered, which was from Norway.
Lex my mailbox anxiously awaits.
Regarding the exurbs, as the real estate market stabilizes, and maybe even bounces back, it will be interesting to see how exurb prices fair in relation to their population center brethren.
My Brother-in-law just bought a huge house east of Riverside. Trust me it’s far, about a 100 miles off the eastern tip of Henry Waxman’s territory. He can do that, as he’s a craftsman who works in his garage and thanks to broadband his wife also works from home. They want nothing to do with the Waxman/Villaragosa mindset and freed himself of it’s influence as much as he can. Capital has a way of doing that.
My point was that A 1.0 was men at work plowing, A 2.0 was men at work on an assembly line, A 3.0 is bucolic suburban houses, reminiscent of A 1.0, with unidentifiable light industry, possibly agricultural. Not programmers working at keyboards. Where’s the work?
We don’t know what the work will be yet, or what it will look like yet. We certainly don’t have a picture of it. Programmers at keyboards may or may not exist. Keyboards in particular may not be much used.
No not just at a computer.
Everywhere – the internet of things
http://readwrite.com/2012/08/31/futurists-cheat-sheet-internet-of-things
little more in depth:
http://blog.makezine.com/2013/04/22/the-internet-of-things-why-does-it-matter/
Where’s the work?
It has been and will continue to be a big adjustment, maybe for generations. People are going to have to get used to the idea of creating and doing things for themselves on a level not seen in a long time.
Grurray, you are getting it. Good links. Thanks. The nature of work will change. When the USA was founded at least 80 of the people lived on farms. They lived in a world where every family was also a business. They did not do wage work, they made stuff at home for their own use and they sold stuff for cash. We may be moving to a similar state of affairs, except globally connected and literally millions of times more productive. We offer a word-picture in our first chapter which is quite conservative actually. When we say A1.0 to A2.0, agrarian to industrial, is the scale of the current ongoing change, we are serious.