Linear thinking and linear pursuits are out. Chaos is in. Older people can’t
cope with the discontinuities of the present world, speeding ever faster aboard
the technological juggernaut, let alone the world that the net-surfing, fractal
future will bring. But “kids”, as Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Children of
Chaos (HarperCollins, £12.99, ISBN 0 00 255626) relentlessly calls them,
can accept and adapt, seeing the underlying patterns in apparent confusion. The
only hope for adults is to learn from these “advance scouts”. The case is argued
headlong. Hold the book in one hand, your hat with the other. Now available in
Britain, but published in the US as Playing the Future (reviewed 25 July
1995).
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