Living Dangerously - Issue 38

You can see why the Interneta Nostra studies Debord. The perspective that he gives is deep and rich. Compare Debord with his intellectual heir, Clayton Christensen -- with Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) and with his theory of disruptive products. When you study Debord against Christensen, you see how far we've fallen in a deep appreciation for what works and what doesn't. Both men are on the side of the upstarts, the rebels who strive to cripple the established way of working. But Debord's views have a strong critical edge and social component.

Christensen is all about feeding the market and the spectacle, rather than getting distance from them. So how will we ever get anything better? The difference between Debord and Christensen is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug: Lightning bugs just don't give you that old "dotcom feeling" anymore.

Harriet Rubin (Hrubin@aol.com) is the author of The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women (Doubleday, 1997) and Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambition (Harpercollins, 1999).