Whose Brave New World?: The Information Highway and the New Economy

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

In recent years, many of us have become uneasily aware that we no longer
count as real people to our political leaders but rather are viewed as
numbers in databases. Heather Menzies, an Ottawa writer and professor,
insists that this sorry situation can be turned around if we can renew a
purposeful public debate.

In Whose Brave New World? (an updating and reshaping of the arguments
found in her 1989 book, Fastforward and Out of Control), she tackles
head-on the implications of what she calls “the systems language and
its objectifying grammar.” The result is a strong and well-argued
attack on new patterns of power and control that suggests ways to put
people, not simply numbers, back into the debate.

Part 1 of the book sets out the problems arising from 20 years of
restructuring the corporate economy into one based on global systems;
this restructuring involved a massive deskilling and demeaning of work,
and established computerized control in work and society. Part 2
provides detailed evidence, while Part 3 locates the way forward through
local dialogue and action. “We are the movement. We are the
information highway and the new economy,” states Menzies.

Whose Brave New World? deserves a careful reading.