If Glenn Reynolds' new An Army of Davids reflects what Alvin Toffler would call the coming “prosumer” society, then Toffler’s own Revolutionary Wealth, due out in late April, is about how “prosumption” will radically transform the world’s economy. Chapter Eight of my galley copy begins with this passage, which might ring a few bells to regular readers of the Blogosphere:

The American Airlines 757 was approaching the Rocky Mountains on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles when suddenly passenger Michael Tighe’s arm and head lurched into the aisle. His wife, a nurse, who was sitting alongside him, immediately knew something terrible was about to happen. Tighe’s heart had begun beating erratically, failing to send an adequate blood supply to his brain. Tighe, sixty-two, was at the edge of death when flight personnel appeared with a laptop-sized device.

Attaching electrical leads to his body, they shocked him--once, twice, several times--and literally brought him back to life, making him the first person to be saved in-flight by a defibrillator. It had been installed on the plane only two days earlier.

Like the human heart, societies and economies, too, are subject to premature beats, local tachycardias, fibrillations and flutters, as well as “chaotic” irregularities and paroxysms…