Makers - Cory Doctorow

A finger-on-the-pulse satire of technology and big business taken to extreme and obscene limits, the future in Cory Doctorow's hugely impressive novel adheres to J.G. Ballard's vision of the future of the next five minutes, but in the case of Doctorow's world of rapidly evolving technology and a ruthlessly efficiently business model to keep up with it, the future itself only has a shelf-life of about five minutes. But don't worry, there's another hot innovation coming right along five minutes behind it.

Recognising that the business model of the past is obsolete and so are many of the old traditional technologies, Makers starts off by seeing Kodak and Duracell having no alternative but to former a merger and lead the way in favour of investment in new technologies. The new CEO for the new Kodacell corporation sets up a New Work initiative, putting power into the hands of hot young inventors, technology geeks with their finger on the pulse of what America really needs – i.e. a constant stream of recycled, expensive, disposable novelty tech-junk as well as providing a more efficient means of storing it – striking when the iron is hot and returns are high, moving on before competitors cut their margins.

The real factor behind the success of the industry is the self-promotion, Suzanne Church blogging their activities as an “imbedded journalist”, feeding the demand for instant gratification, being the first to know, the first to get onto a good thing. Striking out independently in the virtual internet medium after a similar shake-up in the newspaper publishing industry, Suzanne finds the attention and feedback her blog gets gratifying and financially rewarding in terms of advertising revenue, as a journalist, trying to retain her independence and journalistic integrity, but finding that her hype of the New Work deal is unwittingly a major factor in the success of the new Startup boom.

There is no idealisation made of the New Work model however, Doctorow realistically considering how such enterprise, feeding the constant demand for instant gratification - a demand artificially boosted by bloggers, press and web gurus - will inevitably be stifled not so much by competition as competitiveness. As a new business ethic it isn't really new, it's just that the rate of turnover has been exponentially increased, the investors quicker to invest in new ideas, but just as quick to drop them and move on to the next great thing, leaving the resulting mess and remaining funds to be picked over by the lawyers and legislation that really isn't equipped to deal with it.

Doctorow, truly shaping up to be the inheritor of J.G. Ballard as a new prophet for our technological age, envisions credible scenarios and takes the time to consider the fate of real people struggling to be creative and enterprising within it, but also trying to retain a sense of humanity in a world where such attributes are considered a distinct disadvantage. The writing is simply terrific, sparkling with wit, verve, energy and humour, fresh and modern, on top of all the buzzwords and creating a few more that will no doubt find their way into everyday language, such is their relevance to the way we live our lives today. Makers, over the course of the novel takes in a lot of possible futures, all of them worryingly credible, and only just around the corner – or, scarily, they may already even be here. Don't be hanging around.