BOS_nya

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   11-26-95. Washrag:

   "Seeking the Government That Governs Best." Book review.

      What Comes Next:
      The End of Big Government And the New Paradigm Ahead
      By James P. Pinkerton
      Hyperion. 404 pp. $24.95

      In Pinkerton's account, bureaucracy survives today only
      because no one has yet developed a coherent replacement
      model." Instead we have deluded ourselves into thinking
      that periodic upgrading of what Pinkerton calls the
      "Bureaucratic Operating System" (BOS) -- in the same way
      that computer software is upgraded -- will enable us to
      avoid the gloomy prospect of life in the "Cyber Future,"
      his term for the horrific predicament of extreme
      inequality and hypercrime to which we are headed.

      At one point Pinkerton suggests that a parallel for Bill
      Clinton may be found in Mikhail Gorbachev. Both leaders
      "shrank from genuine perestroika" after their peoples
      had come to the realization that the system itself was
      the problem.

      Displaying a sure grasp of popular culture, technology
      and political history, Pinkerton writes engagingly and
      insightfully about the defects and malfunctionings of
      the American bureaucratic state. His refreshing analyses
      of the flaws in bureaucratic thinking are among the best
      that we have on the subject and, surely, the wittiest.

   BOS_nya  (7 kb)