Why do some promising ideas take root, and others never bear fruit? In this dazzling big ideas book, award-winning author Gal Beckerman shows how history is made.
Why do some radical ideas make history?
We tend to think of revolutions as loud- frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fuelling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can imagine alternate realities. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that they might soon go extinct.
The Quiet Before is a grand panorama, stretching from the seventeenth-century correspondence that jump-started the scientific revolution to the encrypted apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration. Beckerman shows that defining social movements - from decolonization to feminism - thrive when they are given the time and space to gestate.
Today, we are replacing these productive, private spaces with monolithic platforms. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart and Occupy Wall Street never gain traction? Has Black Lives Matter lived up to its full potential? Beckerman reveals what this new social media ecosystem still needs - from patience to focus - and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again.
Lyrical and profound, The Quiet Before looks to the past to help us imagine a different future.
Why do some promising ideas take root, and others never bear fruit? In this dazzling big ideas book, award-winning author Gal Beckerman shows how history is made.
Why do some radical ideas make history?
We tend to think of revolutions as loud- frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fuelling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can imagine alternate realities. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that they might soon go extinct.
The Quiet Before is a grand panorama, stretching from the seventeenth-century correspondence that jump-started the scientific revolution to the encrypted apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration. Beckerman shows that defining social movements - from decolonization to feminism - thrive when they are given the time and space to gestate.
Today, we are replacing these productive, private spaces with monolithic platforms. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart and Occupy Wall Street never gain traction? Has Black Lives Matter lived up to its full potential? Beckerman reveals what this new social media ecosystem still needs - from patience to focus - and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again.
Lyrical and profound, The Quiet Before looks to the past to help us imagine a different future.
Gal Beckerman is a writer and editor at The New York Times Book Review and a regular contributor to the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal. He has a PhD in media studies from Columbia University and is the author of the award-winning When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone, which was named a best book of the year by the New Yorker and the Washington Post. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.
How does true social change occur? In this brilliant book filled
with insightful analysis and colourful storytelling, Gal Beckerman
shows that new ideas need to incubate through thoughtful
discussions in order to create sustained movements. Today's social
media hothouses, unfortunately, tend to produce flash mobs that
flame out. We need to regain intimate forms of communication if we
want to nurture real transformation. Rarely does a book give you a
new way of looking at social change. This one does.
*Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breakers*
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, but how
do ideas ever get to the point where their time has come? Ideas
have to be conceived, improved, and accepted by people, and we know
little about how this happens. The Quiet Before is a fascinating
and important exploration of how ideas that change the world
incubate and spread.
*Steven Pinker, author of Rationality*
The Quiet Before is that rare book: arresting in its premise,
supported by historical examples, and relevant to right now.
Beckerman takes a close look at the media that led to the 'changed
minds' of past revolutions, then challenges us to approach today's
media with new eyes. How can we make it serve our urgent human
purposes-among these the rethinking of human equality and the
possibility of democracy? I loved it.
*Sherry Turkle, author of The Empathy Diaries*
Both deep and urgent, Beckerman revisits past revolutions from the
perspective of the communication tools that enabled them, providing
insight into how we can better navigate the promise and peril of
the technologies shaping our current moment.
*Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism*
The Quiet Before is a remarkable, engrossing account of the
subterranean routes by which historical change takes place, from
the adoption of universal (male) suffrage to #MeToo, and an
examination of the limitations of social media in achieving real
social transformation. Gal Beckerman writes with lucidity and
grace, folding a formidable amount of research and original
reflection into a compulsively readable narrative. This is a
riveting and timely book, one that should provoke heated Zoom
conversations nationwide.
*Daphne Merkin, author of 22 Minutes of Unconditional
Love*
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