The historian Daniel Boorstin was scandalized by the fact 
that celebrity in our information age was not due to a person’s 
having done anything but simply to his being known for being 
well known. Professor Parkinson is scandalized that the 
structure of human work now seems to be quite independent of 
any job to be done. As an economist, he reveals the same 
incongruity and comedy, as between the old and the new, that 
Stephen Potter does in his Gamesmanship . Both have revealed 
the hollow mockery of “getting ahead in the world,” in its old 
sense. Neither honest toil nor clever ploy will serve to advance 
the eager executive. The reason is simple. Positional warfare is 
finished, both in private and corporate action. In business, as in 
society, “getting on” may mean getting out. There is no 
“ahead” in a world that is an echo chamber of instantaneous 
celebrity.