How the Web unleashes unknown intelligences

Watch Tyler Cowen talk about his new book to Will Wilkinson. The book’s title, Create Your Own Economy, sounds like just another self-help business pamphlet. But you’ll see Cowen isn’t talking about business or money at all — at least not directly. His subjects are autism, “neurodiversity,” Adam Smith’s division of labor, and the Internet’s ability to match more people with their highly specific talents and passions. Far from the latest trope that “Google [or the Web] is making us stupid,” Cowen argues the the Web helps a vast variety of previously undiscovered intelligences, or “neuro profiles,” flourish.