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Jaron Lanier Rants Against the World of Web 2.0

Posted by timothy on from the cue-up-disinterested-erudite-analysis dept.

hao3 writes "In his new book, You Are Not A Gadget, former Wired writer Jaron Lanier bemoans what the internet has become. 'It's early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons,' it begins. The words will be 'minced into anatomized search engine keywords,' then 'copied millions of times by some algorithm somewhere designed to send an advertisement,' and then, in a final insult, 'scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers.' Lanier's conclusion: 'Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases.' He goes on to criticise Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, open-source software and what he calls the 'hive mind.'"

11 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Can someone summarize this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I didn't read the article.

    1. Re:Can someone summarize this? by happy_place · · Score: 3, Funny

      You know this is just a stunt to get someone to read his article. Well, we of the internet generation will not be duped so easily!!!

      --
      http://www.beanleafpress.com
    2. Re:Can someone summarize this? by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Funny

      Indeed, if web 2.0 leads to content being scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers then we're way ahead of the curve. Go Slashdot!

      I do wonder how many of his concerns are actually unique to web 2.0, and not common to the social use of the web in general. Maybe I should read it.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    3. Re:Can someone summarize this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      But the title "Web 2.0" is definitely marketer speak. If it were titled by programmers it would be web0.2alpha. Definitely not ready for production use.

      Unless those programmers were the same guys behind KDE 4.0.

    4. Re:Can someone summarize this? by rishistar · · Score: 2, Funny

      I didn't read the article.

      no probs, i put the summary up as a twitter post.

      --
      Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
    5. Re:Can someone summarize this? by SanguineV · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is /., you don't need a bot to tell you they don't match.

    6. Re:Can someone summarize this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You know this is just a stunt to get someone to read his article. Well, we of the internet generation will not be duped so easily!!!

      We on slashdot will probably be duped before lunch.

    7. Re:Can someone summarize this? by antijava · · Score: 2, Funny

      news about stuff that maters: http://www.tomatonews.com/

  2. Is the summary a trick? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are they trying to guilt us into RTFA? I, for one, will carry on commenting on articles I haven't read.

  3. Re:I only read the summary... by hedwards · · Score: 1, Funny

    Robot fears? My grandmother died when a Robot ate her medication you insensitive clod.

  4. Redundant?! by spun · · Score: 2, Funny

    Robots eat old people's medicine for fuel. It's a fact. People who deny this fact may themselves be robots.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton