Saturday, July 9, 2011

Prometheus: The New Barbarian Manifesto by Ian Angell

So the New Barbarian Manifesto was about the eternal struggle between the individual and the collective. It was not a work of science fiction or cyberpunk. It was not steeped in Star Wars, Star Trek, Neuromancer, Mad Max or Blade Runner. And even though the Times, the Guardian, and the Independent all called me the ‘Angell of Doom’, the book was not written as an example millenarian doom and gloom.

The ideas underpinning the book were not post-modern, not even modern. They were not twenty first century ideas, not even twentieth century. Some will have gathered that from the title of the book The New Barbarian Manifesto, which was inspired by that much maligned German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whom I claim predicted, one hundred and twenty years, ago the rise of the Information Rich Knowledge workers, and the reaction of their fellows:

“But now there are coming New Barbarians {cynics, experimenters, conquerors}, a union of spiritual superiority with well-being and an excess of strength. … Prometheus was this kind of barbarian.”

From the teaser of Angell's updated version

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