ABSTRACT
Up to this point, the book has dealt with the “joyful economy” part of the title in a wide variety of ways. Joy was interpreted as any pleasure—and potential disappointment—drawn from a largely artificial, symbol-driven experience. The artifacts from the three periods discussed in the previous chapters demonstrated the range of ways in which a continuous flow of new joy products has emerged in equally fluid markets. The “rise” part has been less intensely discussed. The metaphor does not make reference to natural objects that rise over a horizon, like the sun or the moon. Nor can it refer to an increase in volume, measured in material units or their monetary equivalent. It might refer to a kind of growth—not the trivially linear growth of numerical indicators, but the more complex growth of life forms in their environments.
