Book review: The Unincorporated Man
It’s quite funny (or sad) when I think about it, but this is one of the few books that I’ve read through and finished in a long time, the last one was probably ‘The Da Vinci Code’. This is not to say that I’m a “light” book reader, quite the opposite, I love reading. However, the books on my shelf are not those of fiction, but non-fiction, hard to plow through factual and technical books. You see I’ve always assumed I didn’t like reading “normal” books, another one of my silly assumptions. Books that I’ve read have pretty much only been related to work, because that’s where I could apply my newly acquired knowledge. I couldn’t possibly learn anything from a normal books. Silly, silly Christoffer.
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The Unincorporated Man is a sort of science-fiction story about a man that discovers he has terminal liver cancer, Justin. It’s important to point out that while the book is set in the future, it’s much, much deeper than a pure science-fiction light sabre type of story, trust me. Moving on. Justin is an incredibly successful business man with heaps of cash. Death is unacceptable and the only way forward is cryogenics, and hope for a cure in the future. A brilliant scientist builds him the life tank he needs and off to the future he goes.
This is where the story really begins and becomes incredibly interesting. The writers have imagined a future where every person born immediately becomes his, or her, own corporation with stocks. This is due to the Grand Collapse, portrayed as our present time, where the entire financial system collapsed under its own weight and because derived monetary value was never attached to reality but to the perceived value. (This really is how our economy works today!)
The government, no longer powerful, gets a mandatory 5% of all your future generated income. Your family gets 20%, the rest are up for grabs. You then start the long journey towards self-majority (>50%), or super-majority (>70%). Age is not longer a problem, we’ve reverse engineered that, and we can easily become either 20 or 70, no difference. Justin, the unincorporated man, faces the biggest challenge of all, being unincorporated in an incorporated world.
The book is very much about exploring social dogmas, and putting them on their edge. Governments with very little power, and where corporations have massive amounts of power. The birth incorporation idea is brilliant and the book carefully explains, through storytelling, the pros and cons of such a future. Being personally involved with your “investments” mean that you’ve got a vested interest in ensuring the well-being of your “assets”. The book explores the consequences of giving up bit by bit of freedom and the impact technology can have when used in the wrong context. Virtual reality becomes so real that people prefer that reality over the real reality, leading to the inevitable Grand Collapse.
It’s a brilliant story, filled with drama, technologically intriguing ideas and most of all highly entertaining from beginning to end. I highly recommend this book.
