• Did the internet take a wrong turn?

    Jan 19.10 | Technology   

    I recently read Jaron Lanier’s new book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.  It was a gift, and while I hadn’t heard anything about the book, it looked promising.  Lanier is an early internet pioneer counting early work with virtual reality (and coining the term itself) among his accomplishments.  And the basic premise of the book — essentially a contrarian view of the current state of internet culture — is interesting.  A regular practice of challenging common assumptions and examining choices made along the way is healthy.  Unfortunately Mr. Lanier’s arguments are poorly supported, and often based on inconsequential or incorrect assumptions.  I’m not going to recap his whole argument here — check out the linked articles instead.  But here are a couple of points inspired by ideas exposed in the book:

    • The hive mind/crowdsourcing vs. the individual:  Does aggregation of content occur to the detriment of individual effort?  Are we starting to fall victim to group think passed on through the Twitters and YouTubes?  That’s one way of looking at it.  However my experience is that the Internet today offers more opportunities for individual content to find an audience than ever before — you’re reading this, right?
    • Is the free economy hurting indvidual artists, killing the profession of content creation, and lowering our culture to its lowest common denominator?  If you’re in the newspaper, colllege textbook, sheet music or music distribution businesses you’re sure feeling a big pinch.  Yes there is a shift going on, there have been casualties, and it is not clear where this is going.  But there is no returning to the pre-internet golden days.  And new business models will evolve — people are still willing to pay money for content and services that they value — the trick is to figure out what those are.

    Perhaps the bigger question is whether there is anything to really worry about.  In this month’s issue of The Atlantic, How America Can Rise Again raises the point the our country through its history regularly sees doom and gloom just around the next corner in the midst of abundance.  Thomas Jefferson was as sure the country was headed to hell as today’s Fox news pundits.  With the abundant flows of information, outlets for individual expression and rising opportunities for social interaction is there any fundamental problem with the Internet?  Sure there is room for improvement and contrarian views are useful in exploring how these further.

    Book Review: The Computer That Ate the World – Newsweek.com

    Today, the futurist Jaron Lanier warns in his persuasive new manifesto, You Are Not a Gadget, the danger is less that our network of machine intelligence will fail than that it will endure—that Web culture, and its chiliastic faith in the superior wisdom of computers, will triumph.

    Findings – Jaron Lanier Is Rethinking the Open Nature of the Internet – NYTimes.com

    He argues that old — and bad — digital systems tend to get locked in place because it’s too difficult and expensive for everyone to switch to a new one. ..It can sound plausible enough in theory — particularly if your Windows computer has just crashed. In practice, though, better products win out, according to the economists Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis.

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    • Author: Randy

    In my day job I serve as Information Technology Director for the Yale School of Drama. Otherwise I garden, play guitar, build stuff out of wood, take photos, play around with technology and have been blogging since 2003.

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