11-26-95. Washrag: "Seeking the Government That Governs Best." Book review. What Comes Next: The End of Big Government And the New Paradigm Ahead By James P. Pinkerton Hyperion. 404 pp. $24.95 In Pinkerton's account, bureaucracy survives today only because no one has yet developed a coherent replacement model." Instead we have deluded ourselves into thinking that periodic upgrading of what Pinkerton calls the "Bureaucratic Operating System" (BOS) -- in the same way that computer software is upgraded -- will enable us to avoid the gloomy prospect of life in the "Cyber Future," his term for the horrific predicament of extreme inequality and hypercrime to which we are headed. At one point Pinkerton suggests that a parallel for Bill Clinton may be found in Mikhail Gorbachev. Both leaders "shrank from genuine perestroika" after their peoples had come to the realization that the system itself was the problem. Displaying a sure grasp of popular culture, technology and political history, Pinkerton writes engagingly and insightfully about the defects and malfunctionings of the American bureaucratic state. His refreshing analyses of the flaws in bureaucratic thinking are among the best that we have on the subject and, surely, the wittiest. BOS_nya (7 kb)