Like Nicholas Carr, Jaron Lanier takes a sceptical look at the 'negative' effects of usage of technology in our daily life. In short, Lanier, a virtual-reality pioneer, disses the Web 2.0, share-everything culture.
Highlights from this interesting book:
Three interrelated concerns that other Net pessimists have articulated in the past:
1. Loss of individuality & concerns about “mob” behavior: These words will mostly be read by nonpersons–automatons or numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals.
2. Dangers of anonymity: Reactions will repeatedly degenerate into mindless chains of anonymous insults and inarticulate controversies.
3. “Sharecropper” concern that a small handful of capitalists are getting rich off the backs of free labor: Ultimately these words will contribute to the fortunes of those few who have been able to position themselves as lords of the computing clouds.
Emphasizing the crowd, means de-emphasizing individual humans . . . and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad moblike behaviors.
At the very least current Web arrangements encourage a shallow, lemming-like conformity of judgment.
The lords of the cloud: Google and Facebook restrict their users, creating online environments in which true individuality is curtailed in favor of the extraction of marketing data and other intelligence.
The rallying cry "information wants to be free" has resulted in a devaluing of original creative work, with movies and television and music endlessly pirated, file-swapped and otherwise tossed around like so much expendable junk.
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups.
The idea of technological lock-in. As media formats might get locked in with use by the majority, concepts and ideas can be equally locked-in. Take the concept of files on the computers. That we are no longer free to experiment with the way information is stored in a computer system because this has been locked in.
The distinction between first-order expression and derivative expression is lost on true believers of the hive.
First-order expression is when someone presents a whole, a work that integrates its own worldview and aesthetic. It is something entirely new in the world. Second-order expression is made of fragmentary reactions to first-order expression. A movie like Blade Runner is first order expression, as was the novel that inspired it, but a mashup in which a scene from the movie is accompanied by the anonymous masher’s favorite song in not in the same league.(p. 122)
[From the Great Books Series. Also see The Success Manual - Encyclopedia of Advice, which contains summaries of 100+ Most useful books.]
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