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Jaron Lanier on the Semi-Closed Internet
Will Wilkinson writes "Jaron Lanier's recent essay, The Gory Antigora: Illusions of Capitalism and Computers, kicks off a discussion of 'Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead?' at the Cato Institute's new blogazine, Cato Unbound. In Lanier's essay today, find out how the 'brittleness' of software has kept the Internet from realizing its potential as 'a cross between Adam Smith and Albert Einstein; the Invisible Hand accelerating toward the speed of light.' Also, find out why, upon meeting Richard Stallman, Lanier's reaction was: 'An open version of UNIX! Yuk!'"
I agree. The author holds on to old theories about marketplaces and interactivity and completely forgets that the web and instant global communications are opening up new ways to do previously unthought of tasks.
To point at the ways previous successes worked and try to see them in the future is a bad idea. The reality is that we won't know what is succesful in the future because we don't know what previously unlinked services or products might work better together.
Now my reply is as confusing as the article, sheesh.
Not much new here, especially if you look at this from a history of technology perspective. The same comments about "lock in" (a.k.a., capitalism is evil) apply to telephones, electricity, and the water wheel. Bottom line: Humans continue to get stuff done whether there is "lock in" or not.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I'm confused.
Dumbasses didn't put clicky links on their image. Why not? So that you can dig, dig, dig and find the long winded articles?
Maybe they haven't figured out the internet as well as they think. Blogs with 5000 word essays tend to be a pain in my ass. I'm barely literate. How much do they expect slitscan to read?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I remember Jaron Lanier from the 1990s when he gained some fame from his pronouncements about virtual reality. Perhaps I'm ignorant of his real accomplishments, but Lanier, like Paris Hilton, seems to be famous as a result of self promotion, rather than anything he has achieved. In the world of pundits it appears that it is quite possible to create yourself from thin air (or perhaps hot air). Unless I'm simply ignorant of Lanier's accomplishments, why should we listen to anything he has to say?
There isn't much in TFA except a nice point about how we should be able to "browse" video games in the way we browse through books or newspapers. Which does, in fact, make me wonder why stores don't allow you to rent a copy of a game, bring it back and decide whether or not to buy it. I've been doing that for years, but never with one store.
Because people will either:
1) Copy the video game at home and return it saying they don't want it, thus having the game without paying for it.
2) Play the game, beat it, return it, having "used" all the content without paying for it.
For the most part, I understand #1 is the main reason stores no longer allow returning opened games. As for trying out the games, isn't that what playable Demos are for? Such as the Unreal Tournament 2K4 demo?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
"Also, find out why, upon meeting Richard Stallman, Lanier's reaction was: 'An open version of UNIX! Yuk!'" Richard Stallman has spent decades creating software used by millions of people. Jaron Lanier has created ummm...what again?
The unfortunate Internet has only one peer when it comes to obfuscation due to an inundation of excessive punditry, and that peer is religion.
Translation - I've got nothing very interesting to say, but just look at the words I'm saying it with!!! Ain't I hip?
I'd be more scathing if it weren't for a nagging suspicion that the author is just taking the piss.
Now my reply is as confusing as the article, sheesh.
Let me try to deconfuse your theory.
1) We don't know what will hapen with the internet.
2) Pointing to what happened with other older technologies does not always apply to newer technologies.
3) We don't have new ideas yet to revolutionize the world or we would have tried them already.
4) We're still learning what we can do with this thing, partly we're seeing what we can do online that we can already do offline, partly we're trying to see what we can do that no one has ever done before.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
We aren't to the point of virtual citizenship, but we may be in the middle of a trend toward borderless loyalty. People are becoming less loyal to the nation-state and more loyal to ideas and movements (religions, software models, companies, professions). I hope that the trend doesn't result in a single world government before the individual borderless movements get powerful enough to keep one in check.
Untraceable electronic currency doesn't have any chance: the people issuing the currency want to know where it is. It's enough that numbers are inherently abstract, though. It will always be necessary to launder your funds if you want their movement kept discrete.
As far as the conciousness expansion of free information goes, that too is the wrong question. (Some) people will always choose to be blissfully ignorant about (some) things, and you can't force them to learn. The network makes it easy to find information, but it's always going to be more like fishing than a floodlight. People have to want the information you have.
In general, it's too soon for Utopia but the world is getting newer all the time.
sigs, as if you care.
This entire essay is bunk; every paragraph the author brings up a point that can quickly be refuted.
Interesting then, that you've done exactly that for exactly none of the points in question. Actually refuting the points would be adding content and having a discussion. Instead of doing that, you're basically flinging poo. I wonder if this sort of behavior is what was meant by "excessive punditry." Ironic.
Whoa, smart!
Actually, you're spot on. I do believe that the Internet is the best form of anarchocapitalism that we've ever seen and I hope to see it instill some faith in voluntary cooperation (ie, capitalism) over time.
Everyone I know who has done business online has been screwed once. They had no real recourse through legal means, and in the end the guy who ripped people off went out of business. The great thing about the de-regulated economy online is that the costs are lower, so in the rare occasion that you do get ripped off you are still ahead once you factor in the taxes you'd have paid (that are supposed to be used to protect you).
"Find out why, upon meeting Richard Stallman, Lanier's reaction was: 'An open version of UNIX! Yuk!'"
Because Jaron Lanier is an insufferable, pretentious, idiot. That's why.
He has a terminal case of verbal diarrhea!
Cato is infamous for questionable research that politicians have used to support some ridiculous claims. Nothing different from them here.
Yes, the article is full of bunk in every paragraph and then somewhere in it he claims some of it anyway is a farce. If you refer to his bio, there's a clue in there.
"Phenotropics," concerns rejecting traditional protocol-based approaches in favor of statistical and pattern-recognition techniques to bind software components together in order to improve large scale reliability.
The whole "software is brittle" agenda is cleary his own.
SLIGHTLY OT
I was watching a remake of "the music man" with my daughter yesterday and his whole "software is brittle" agenda reminds me of how the main character runs around the small town talking very nonsensically about how the new billiards hall is going to corrupt the citizens. Of course the citizens love controversy, so it becomes a "social problem." The main character has the solution, buy musical equipment from him. Now, if only Jaron would sing he can remake the Music Man... Again!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
A couple of obvious technical ones:
Files have become too fundamental to reconsider.
In fact, there are systems (I believe the IBM z/OS is one, not sure) that don't have file systems, they are instead database-oriented or stream-oriented.
[Unix] is based on the premise that people should interact with computers through a "command line."
Unix is based on the idea that programs should do one thing well, and that it should be easy to wire them together to get the benefit of multiple tools. The fact that the implementations are command-line based is a function of technology. There's no reason a "visual shell" couldn't be substituted for bash/csh/etc.
The article seems to be written by someone who's very fond of hearing his own voice.
And as for a Luddite revolution:
So robots build vast volumes of cheap goods and thus the value of a dollar relative to the cost of goods declines to the point where even the poor can afford automated health care. Or new computers, or HDTVs, and other technology. Except it ignores the stagnant and high cost of necessary goods: energy, food and shelter being the most obvious examples. Even assuming automated food production - robots ploughing the fields - there is only so much land. Maybe building housing will be cheap with robots, but we'll still need to heat or cool it depending on the climate. Providing these basic necessities cannot be automated away because they rely on fixed and limited resources. The best we can do increase the efficiency of utilization, or find a radical and unknown new method for creation.
But - unlike slashdot conventional wisdom in this forum - I thought the essay was well written and highly contemplative. A good read. Thanks Jaron!
If they were previously unthought of, how could there have been an old way to do them?
Anyways, his complaint seems that command-based interfaces treat interaction as a linear sequence of discrete events, with actions normally initiated by the user. You might say they're "turn-based," whereas people don't normally interact with the world that way.
Now, he might or might not have a point. I'd like to hear him propose an alternative.
If there's anything wrong with the article, it's that any single paragraph would yeild more interesting discussion than the whole thing together.
He seems to be extending the command line concept to GUI and hypertext interfaces, which is fine for me, but I dont see him raising any genuinely new UI concepts apart from touching on Virtual Reality.
I wish he would, because we do need new ideas. Basically he seems to be saying that everything is a dialog at the moment (commands and responses). Well OK but anything we develop is going to go that way in any event.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Actually, you're spot on. I do believe that the Internet is the best form of anarchocapitalism that we've ever seen and I hope to see it instill some faith in voluntary cooperation (ie, capitalism) over time.
I'm sorry for picking a nit here, but there is no such thing as "anarchocapitalism" (that is, outside the fevered dreams of the David Freidman cult; see why anarchocapitalism is an oxymoron here), and expecting technology designed to control information to deliver a society without hierarchy is farcical. Of course, that is not the point for the "anarchocapitalist", is it? All they are after is immediate economic freedom for themselves, a kind of supply-side, trickle-down freedom machine whose obvious flaws will be visited on those who are unfortunate enough to not be in on the ground floor when this wonderful world manifests itself from the struggles of all the oppressed millionaires.
Any "freedom" predicated on technology is simply another form of control: if you can turn it off, or point it at someone, then someone, in a play to exert control, inevitably will. Capitalism is inherently hierarchal, and the Internet is, as well. To expect either to change into a truly anarchic state is simply overshooting any real probability; you might as well expect a fish to evolve directly into an antelope.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
When the salesman on TV tells you that it's a once in a life time
oppportunity to buy his slightly used automobile, do you rush
down to his auto lot to check it out ?
The act of talking about issue A and not issue B can be deliberate.
Some people want to talk about bringing democracy to the people,
but don't want to talk about the cost (# of people killed in the process).
It's simple common sense to take into account the speaker's
views and motivations in order to understand what IS said and
what ISN'T being said.
Jaron vision is about as stale as civil war cookies left in a damp basement: the computer science community has been abuzz for several years now with notions of "organic computing" and "autonomic computing", and even those are fads that reflect an obsession with biologically inspired computer science that goes back half a century.
Of course, little has come of it so far: as it turns out, merely applying ideas of biology to computer science does not lead to robust systems. And non-biologists tend to overestimate how good biology actually is--biological systems have high failure rates and lots of trouble spots.
What I can't figure out is whether people like Jaron are simply deluding themselves into thinking that they have come up with a novel vision, or whether they actively scour the world for on-going trends and deliberately plan a strategy to make it appears that it is "their" vision.