The Six Minute Book Summary of Tyler Cowen?s Create Your Own Economy

Executive Summary

Create Your Own Economy was a very interesting book to say the least. In this era of our lives we are in very bad economic times, which are getting better, but at a slow pace. We all need ways to find a path to a better life in these hard economic times, and it is especially important today to stay sane as human beings. When the economy is doing badly, people turn to less expensive pleasures. How we learn to do more things with less shape American lives and teach us not to be so materialistic. In down times today people tend to go to the gym more, eat at fast food restaurants less, and do more things to self-improve themselves and their education. The whole point of the book is this; rather than bowing down to a recession, there are many things we can do to empower ourselves and create a better environment. We can use Facebook, twitter, and even our iPhones and iPods to organize our lives. We can turn to old heroes such as Sherlock Holmes to help us through these hard time s. We can see the world and the people in it for which they are the beauty they possess, and therefore reorganize our thoughts to make a better like in this ever so changing world. This book gives us all the options and opportunities to change the world around us. It is also about the power of us as individuals to change our cognitive thoughts and ways to make the world a better place for us and the people in it. Whether or not we have the ways of the economy on our side, we can still strive to change it and make it better. This is what is meant by creating your own economy. Any way that we can change or reorganize the world around us and our inner thoughts and emotions to make it a better place for us to live.

The Ten Things Managers Need to Know fromCreate Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World

1. Our own economy is a regulated and ordered list of the wide deep information flows that are increasingly important to the economy.

2. If more people in the world would adopt more ways of autistic thinking, we would all have a more prosperous life.

3 Organizing information is a path to many of the best reward in life and the path to creating your own economy.

4. Having an autistic mind set is a powerful way to understand the whole world around us in a not so biased way.

5. Because of the internet and different sources of information, mental ordering has become very cheap and effective and thus has become a very powerful social force.

6. In todays world, people do not care about large amount of information. Instead we like to consume large amounts of small bits of information so we can get more things at once. As managers we need to pay close attention to this fact when it comes to marketing your business or new products.

7. If we as human beings can come to terms with creating our own economy, we will be better suited to appreciating the world around us and creating beauty in this rapidly changing culture.

8. The cost of access tends to influence our interior lives. As managers we need to make things easier for people to consume in order to be successful in the business world.

9. As managers, we need to realize the power of the web and the importance of social networking and see it as ways to get our products out there in short bits of information. Our attention is held more today by the web than any other aspect of advertising.

10. Media has become a big part of mixing our personal cultural blends. This helps us to experience and express ourselves and builds the richness of our lives. As managers we need to use media more than ever these days to make our products and business seen and available.

Full Summary of Create your own Economy

The notion of ordering information is something that is a joy to many people in their everyday lives.(Cowen) Whether it be organizing books on a shelf or situating the ways our spoons are organized in the utensil drawer of our kitchen. We all have ways that we organize our lives. Many people my age use Facebook, MySpace, twitter, and even blogs to organize their ideals and stay connected with friends on an everyday basis. We organize our friends, events, and even photos in any manner that we wish. This is a huge part of society today. We are all in favor about organizing our information.(Cowen) It is what makes our everyday lives click. Every day more fun and enjoyment and contemplation is produced out of the ways we organize our information.(Cowen) The web and its programs are changing society and the economy around us today.

By this is ever changing technological world around us, we can learn ways of hidden creativity by comparing the ways that autistic people function. Much of the same ways that autistic people perform their everyday functions is much of the same ways we go about organizing our everyday lives. In order to understand what we can learn from autistics, we must first clear our minds of the biases that the world has on autistics. Autism is often connected to human tragedy, but as a world we are ignorant to the significant cognitive strengths that they are born with. All of society sees autistics as having a series of handicaps and disorders.(Cowen) We are letting our understanding of some very real human beings be determined by scientific studies and research.(Cowen) Most of our biases also come from the news and stories we see on YouTube and CNN of autistic kids in society. We see ourselves as owing them some privilege to be in a spotlight that many non-autistics get to be in in t heir everyday lives. Whether it may stem from competing in certain sports, or being the center of attention in anything, we see it as a handicap and feel we have to give them some part of life that allows them to be in the center of attention. On the other side of the spectrum, autistics are striving people who learn all sorts of things in better ways that many normal human beings do. They know many joys, and experience tragedys large and small(Cowen) as we do on an everyday basis. Autistics have many great cognitive strengths and thoughts and can remember certain things about a person that we would never dream of remembering. It is almost like they have their own library in their minds to store certain things that they are infatuated with and like to organize. They are very good at perceiving, processing, and ordering information, especially in specialized or preferred areas of interest. Some of the most important and influential people of todays time and in history are aut istic or self-described Aspergers. Each one of these individuals have the same dignity and skills as do non-autistics, but different ways of perceiving the small bits of information they take in. If we could all drop our wall of ignorance and see autistic people as successful human beings, we could all have a better outlook on life. An even more important fact is this; if we, human beings, in this ever so damaged world, could adopt some of the same cognitive strengths and features that autistics have, we would all have a more sustainable life.

We dont always appreciate or recognize intelligence when it appears in unusual or non-traditional ways.(Cowen) If we understand the fact of creating our own economy, we will better appreciate the beauty in todays rapidly changing culture. Modern culture today, and even in the olden days is somewhat like marriage. It always has its ups and downs. As decades go by and times change, so does culture. What was socially acceptable attire in the seventies is looked at as odd today. Even when we see someone dressed in some way other than ourselves we frown at the fact. Music that was accepted by many people and a whole culture, much like our parents, is accepted by a select few today. Contemporary styles have changed and so have our ways of viewing things. Culture today is becoming more and more like a marriage. We are trading in peak experiences of our lives for a better daily state of mind.(Cowen) We organize our music in short bits, and everything we do in our everyday lives int o short bits of information instead of a large story. Our culture today is a self-assembly of small bits.(Cowen) This change is a broader trend of production and value and how it is becoming increasingly interior to our minds. If we can come to understand the beauty of our ever changing culture, our lives will surely change. We will all be better as individuals. If we accept this culture change and see the beauty of it, we will all live healthier lives.

How we decide to communicate is a fundamental choice in the creation of the most prosperous economy that our lives can provide.(Cowen) Our new cultural lives arent just about TV, music, websites, and text messages and how it is changing our lives. We also have new media for expressing ourselves and building the rich culture of our lives. New communications media such as instant messaging, cell phone texting, Facebook, and blogging is for the emotional part of our culture. These things help us to create a better inner economy by allowing us to relate to each other and bond with each other in ways that werent prevalent in earlier cultures. Our intense ordering of information, no matter in what way we decide to do it, is about human communication. This reflects the autistic insight that most of us have, but fail to realize. As a culture, we are now turning away from sending e-mails or long memos to co-workers. We are using IM and Facebook to send our messages in small bits. No t that it is so hard to send an e-mail, or maybe we think that it is. Our rich culture today prefers small bits of information. Whether it be sending and IM instead of an e-mail to a co-worker or organizing our favorite friends on Facebook in ways that we can view then in the easiest way possible. Our culture of small bits makes us happier in tough economic times and allows us to get more information at once, leading to a happier and proficient life.

We also create our own economy from our education and how we strive to become higher educated. Not saying that you need a higher education to enjoy your inner life, but it may help. Most people, who have higher educations typically make more money, therefore have more ways to create a better inner economy. For most people a large part of your cultural identity and world view is shaped by what you are doing, the identity of your peers, and your external atmosphere.(Cowen) So if you are educated to a higher degree, it is in part a self-commitment to being a more productive person. It provides you with a peer group, image, and more skills than the average person. By being part of a higher education, you are putting yourself on the other side of the social divide, therefore creating a greater inner economy. Our education also leads us to be more autistic in terms of the ways we learn. Most of us need the influence of a leader and a classroom of more intelligent people than ours elves to enforce a better focus of academics.

Now that we are becoming smarter and more educated, we are seeing a shift between the balance of power between the consumer and salesperson.(Cowen) The quality of our interior pleasures does not need expensive and radical things to satisfy us, so majority of us are turning toward cheap entertainments for our pleasures. Because of the high rise of interiority, we are saving more money and turning to more stories to help us mold our own inner economics. We do not buy shoes or music just to say we have them, we are buying them as an image and an associated story about ourselves. It is our culture, our way of life, and our economies related to the stories that make us who we are. We also read stories to help us find heroes that we can relate to in this disordered world. We read books to relate to people have the same cognitive thoughts and struggles as we do. We look toward fictional and non-fictional heroes to give us important and revolutionary cultural ideas to help us get t hrough our un prosperous world.

Understanding the beauty of objects is something valuable that we all want in our economies. We often achieve new insights into beauty by trying on the perspectives of other people.(Cowen) If we can bring ourselves to see the difference in taste we should wonder where it comes from and try to see the other side of the spectrum, not see it was weird or uncommon. Individuals can learn cognitive skills and perspectives of others, but we also need to see that there is something of beauty and appreciation. If I listen to rap on a daily basis, I am most likely going to look at Mozart and boring and unusual. But, if I can take the time to appreciate the beauty and skill that has been put into the creation of the composition, I can see it in a whole new perspective. This makes the world all the more beautiful. We can open our minds and create a richer inner economy of appreciating things of more than an unusual composition for say.

On the other side of the spectrum, our view of politics can help to damage our inner economies. A lot of problems in politics stem from human cognition. As a whole we all tend to think we are good instead of bad, we fight when we should just shake hands, and do not realize that we are part of a problem rather than a possible solution.(Cowen) As a world, once again, we need to adopt the thought practices of autistics as a whole. They have cognitive advantages in understanding the benefits of abstract ordered systems. For the most part, what has gone wrong with the world today and politics is our lack of adherence to abstract rules of behavior.(Cowen) A country where people do not want to follow common rules is a country with serious economic and political problems.(Cowen) Autistic insight and cognitive strengths will not solve many political problems, but when combined with other values and judgments, will help influence many political conclusions.(Cowen) Adopting these ways may help us be more willing to cooperate, more willing to admit that we are not always right, and we may be able to stop viewing the world as us versus them. These changes will help dissolve political problems and help us to better create our own richer inner economy.

To conclude, as our interiority becomes richer and more prevalent, the notion of creating our own economy is becoming more obvious to most of us. We are learning to use sources such as the web, books, and news to get the small bits of information that sparks our personalities. By trying to copy the traits of autism, we can ultimately become better human beings. We see the world as filled with beauty and that everyones neurodiversity is unique in some way. Whether we listen to Mozart or nelly, there is a beauty behind the reason we enjoy it and why it was created. As we become more understanding and more open minded to the weird things, we can create a better world around us. When we create an understanding to these things, we get much better at entertaining and educating ourselves. We create our own world and our own economy. We can understand how a different mind can be an interesting one (Cowen) and make our understanding for culture richer and more profound. By opening o ur minds to politics and not always seeing ourselves as right and the other person wrong, we can better appreciate the benefits of law and how it molds our nation as a whole. Interiority is the best road to prosperity, and the way of creating your own economy.(Cowen)

The Video Lounge

The video is basically explaining the whole purpose behind his book. We are in an economy of attention and not money. Also, the need to earn money is not so prevalent because we have everything we need at our disposal.

/watch?v=lyxLlaVQB7I

Personal Insights

Why I think:

I believe the author is pretty brilliant and what he says is completely true. We all have to find ways to make our lives better in down times of the world. We can create our own personal economy in our minds and atmosphere that satisfies our inner being. The part about the author that I do not like is; in these times we find ways to satisfy our inner beings without the importance of money, but our own personal economies in our heads will not put food on the table or provide us a place to sleep at night. This is a big point that I think is missed in this book. He is a professor of economics and I am sure he understands this, but it is almost like he is telling us to live in some fantasy world of cognitive organization and the world will suddenly be a better place.

1. I would have organized my thoughts in a better manner. The book is so scatter brained that I have a hard time understanding what is going on and where it is going as well.

2. I would not have put so much emphasis on autism. It seems like he is infatuated with the cognitive thoughts of autistics. The book needed more recognition on the actual economy itself, not just how adopting the thought processes of autistics could give us a better life.

3. The book never really stated how to survive in the actual economy itself. He basically wants us to live in our own heads and ways of organization to make us happier. I would have tied the two thoughts in together to show how doing one thing could lead to another in the real world economy.

1. Reading this book made me realize the beauty of the world around me. It made me realize that there is a hidden beauty in everything we do as well as other people do. It helps to kind of ease some of the biases I have in my life and have a better outlook.

2. This book made me realize that the simpler things in life can send us on our way to a more prosperous life. It also made me realize that everything we do that brings us joy doesnt have to involve money.

3. One of the most far-fetched things that this book made me realize is that autistic people can be great people to. Also, that more people should adapt their ways of organizing and thinking into some of the same ways that autistic people do.

1. Organizing my thoughts and ways that I do things in a better manner, in ways that suit me better as a person I could be.

2. Opening my mind to new things. Seeing culture and others peoples enjoyment as a beauty for what it is rather than an odd way of doing things.

3. Not relying so much on materialistic things and appreciating the smaller things in my life that can make me happier and more prosperous.

Create Your Own Economyis the Freakonomics of epistemology. Instead of unearthing unusual findings using statistics, Tyler Cowen, a George Mason University economist and blogger at marginalrevolution.com, overturns common conceptions about learning and information-processing by examining the ongoing experiment of the Internet.~ Joseph Lawler

"Only a mind like Tyler Cowen's could weave Facebook, Zen Buddhism, Sherlock Holmes, and so much more into a coherent and compelling argument. Create Your Own Economy will change the way you think about thinking."

-Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind

"Create Your Own Economy will open your mind to thinking differently. The unique thought processes of individuals on the autism spectrum provide a great value to our world. This book will help you to be smart and successful in your own way."

-Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures

"The modern world bombards us with data just begging to be organized, from iPod playlists to digital vacation photos. Tyler Cowen offers an entertaining tour of our information age, pondering implications for how creative we are, how long our attention span is, how our politics work, and the future of our economy."

-Samuel R. Sommers, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Tufts University

Bibliography

Cowen, Tyler (2009) Create your own Economy. The path to prosperity in a disordered world. Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Contact Info: To contact the author of this Summary and Review of Create Your Own Economy, please email

Biography

David C. Wyld () is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at /. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of works he has helped his students to turn into editorially-reviewed publications at the following sites:

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