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Jaron Lanier Rants Against the World of Web 2.0
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.'"
basically one big [social/research/collaboration] networking site...just as it was meant to be??
I have been on the net since late 70's/early 80s (though intermittent until late 80's). It is changing. SO WHAT? The problem is that you have somebody that works for MS gripping about Google and their associates again. Nothing worse than an illegally acquired/held monopoly that grips about a naturally acquired/held monopoly that can be EASILY toppled. THe only real issue is that MS is not trying to develop new ideas. They are working to topple "the Google" and make sure that only they control the net.
"If someone thinks about reading it, I want to get paid!!"
Fixed that for you.
it just could be that nobody is interested in what he has to say?
He's right. In an alternative world, no-one would read his words at all, which would be much better. How far we've fallen.
In the early days when roads were invented, they were winding romantic sand paths through lush forests, over hills and through valleys, following the path of the creek.
Now, 6-lane highways cut through mountains - but hey, they can get you from A to B in less than no time.
If you like to make an original website, this is still possible. You CAN still have your own site, do all the html yourself. Alternatively, you can also spend less than 10 minutes to get your blog online, or less than 15 to have a photo album online.
Thing is - where the masses previously had no websites, they now have a facebook account... which is equally empty as no website at all. But internet did not lose anything - it just didn't gain anything either.
This guy got his reputation from our technology - now he goes around insulting the people who read his gushings.
misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers
It sounds like he has become altogether too precious about his own opinions and superiority (in his own mind, at least) and forgets that every printed word he's ever made money from has gone through exactly the same process of being edited, distributed and read (and possibly mis-understood - but isn't that HIS failure, not the reader's?) as the electronic texts he is so critical of.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I did not RTFA, and I will not RTFA. My spidey sense tells me what is in it (and in the book, which I will also not R) - a needlessly long piece of prose which can be summarized as : Get off my virtual lawn. and Gee, everything was so much better when I was young.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Jaron whines a lot. I think that's his main contribution to technology.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
"We should effectively keep only one copy of each cultural expression--as with a book or song--and pay the author of that expression a small, affordable amount whenever it's accessed."
I should pay my plumber every time I flush, forever. And, I should pay some carpenter every time I go up or down "their" stairs. Its not fair that they don't have a perpetual revenue stream from work they did in the past.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You know, when you criticize someone who has cited atonalism, Gershwin, and jazz for being anti-intellectual and prejudiced, I think you have a major persecution complex and you really need to look up what "projection" means as a psychological term.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Clifford Stoll
Remember him? And his book Silicon Snake Oil from the mid-90s about the evils of the new Internet.
What does he do now? Makes weird bottles. Wow.
Yesterday my boss was pissed because his new Mac laptop with Snow Leopard wouldn't work with his old Laserjet 1020. A few minutes on Google and I found the solution.
I remember what it was like finding tech info in the 80s. A nightmare. For example, I wanted some tech books on CANDE, WFL, and ALGOL that a Burrough's mainframe that my university used and was told by the publisher that they'll only ship if I proved I was an employee of a firm that owned one.
Keep your romance about the past to yourself. Adapt or die I say.
He rants, but one wonders how many human people he would have expected to read his words in a world before the Web, where he wouldn't get free publicity on Slashdot by spouting anti-techno rants.
Disclaimer: I also didn't read. And unless some other poster here convinces me it's worthwhile, I probably won't.
by only reading the summary and not the article itself, you are simply proving the article's statement that most posts will not be read by more than a few people true.
The Printing press made READING accessible to everyone (eventually), "web2.0" or whatever is making WRITING accessible to everyone, it is a giant leap, but unfortunately leads to a lot of crap published, like the article linked in parent.
Back in the early 20th century, the classical world of music didn't know where to go, which is what led to atrocities like atonalism and serial music. I love nearly all kinds of music, but 12 tone rows really try my patience.
That's probably because the stuff you've heard that uses 12-tone rows sucks. Try Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, and just listen to it, don't try to read any of the analysis about pitch classes or what rows he used or any of that nonsense. The accusation is partially true, though. There was a period of about 30 years where some academic composers were trying to create mathematically perfect music. They failed utterly, and produced a lot of unlistenable junk, a lot of it sounding completely random.
At the same time, in most musical eras, a lot of unlistenable junk was written and played. It didn't last until the present-day, though, because it was unlistenable junk. The stuff that has lasted this long has done so mostly because they were the best of the best, and I think it's fair to say that the best of the best of 20th century stuff will be with us a very long time as well. Stravinsky's Rites of Spring and Copland's Appalachian Spring are both going to be with us for a very very long time, just like Beethoven's 5th is still very much a part of our culture.
(In the interests of disclosure: I studied composition with a student of Arnold Schoenberg, so I'm a bit biased towards 12-tone music)
I am officially gone from
Maybe we need to go back to art's roots - a patron system. Except instead of a single rich guy to be your patron, you could have a legion of adoring fans who are all willing to give you $1 to finance your next album. Once it's finished, the music is released into the public domain.
If you were a decent act I don't think you'd have too much trouble getting fans to donate. And when you lost your touch you'd be retired.
The article is a Slate review of a collection (book) of writings by Lanier. The review concludes in a non-sympathetic view of Lanier's thinking. In other words, if anyone on /. had bothered reading the article, their (by comparison) lame posts would not have been neccessary. Ironically, this is exactly the point Lanier is making. No one is reading the real words, no one is making real friends; it is all an artificial world constructed for advertising/marketing.
Way to go slashdotters.
Since when is throwing buzzwords (and names) around considered intellectual?
Having read the article, not the book, it looks like a classic "Good Old Days" rant. Yes, the internet is not what it was in the early 90s when this guy was at his peak. Things change, and as time passes, things change faster. So it is now possible for one person to go from the leading edge to the trailing edge by early middle age - which this guy seems to have done.
OK, most web pages are read only by the author's friends and Google. But then web pages follow Sturgeon's Law (90% or everything is crap) in overdrive. Much of the web is crap. It is now, and it was then. Back then it was much smaller, and we weeded out the crap for ourselves; now we have Google to assist. The web is much bigger - but who is to be the self appointed censor to weed it down to its "right size" filled with only "the good stuff"? And you can ignore Web 2.0 if you want to - just disable javascript in your browser. But actually, quite a lot of that stuff is good
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Ad hominem, but correct. It doesn't happen often, so savour it, folks :)
Jaron Lanier is full of shit and it's not even new shit. He's been on about the evils of the hive mind for a years now, but hey, I guess it pays the bills.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
I wouldn't call them unique to the internet. Paper journalists bemoaned the TV news as a bite-size summary of real news, and then as a torrent of summary when 24-hour news networks rolled around.
In fact, weren't there plenty of people complaining about the growth of first the printing press and then mass-production novels and comic strips? Writers of all stripes seem to have a notion of the 'sanctity of information'... or at least the authority of their opinion.
The irony here is that this thread is a perfect example of what Lanier's been talking about. A group of people with self-reinforcing attitudes making pronouncements based not on the actual book, but on a review of the book. Actually, I bet most of these "opinions"--since who can be bothered to read an entire review, let alone the book--aren't even informed by reading the review. I'm sure there are lots of valid criticisms to the book, but Lanier has you all dead to rights as far as the intellectual seriousness of this "debate" goes.
You bring up an interesting point about journalism, but I read TFA and don't think what Lanier laments is about former gatekeepers of information losing their monopoly on a captive audience, but rather about elitism. The Internet has long ago become a kind of Walmart experience, where everything is for sale and moving through the place is like clawing your way through masses of slow, fat, trailer trash. Just look at Slashdot. We have right in front of us the perfect example of a suffocating mass of mediocrity absolutely drowning out any intelligence or uniqueness. If I don't come across an entry on the front page before it's reached a couple hundred comments, I don't even bother venturing in. I think what he's bemoaning is that the Internet has been utterly swamped by commoners. Masses of common hucksters trying to make a buck at every turn off masses of common idiots who want their uninspired and unoriginal thoughts heard at every turn.
He does make a small point about stuff just being copied. Too often these days when I search for information I get 1000 hits containing the exact same text, or 1000 sites that all link to the same original article. Hyperlinks are a great concept until you wind up with nothing but a digital mobius strip of links. I find this a lot when chasing down ideological talking points. It usually just leads to a rat's nest of articles with "they said" or "experts say" all pointing at one another, but any actual data by "they" or the "experts" supporting the original claim is nowhere to be found.