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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.'"

4 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Beta Tag by Bicx · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The shiny, reflective Beta tag: an all-inclusive license to publish pretty software with zero reliability

  2. why do we care? by circletimessquare · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    this guy hasn't been relevant since the early 1990s

    its now the early 2010s

    2010s!

    holy crap... monday morning, january 4th, 20fucking10

    a new decade

    jesus, only now is it sinking in

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  3. Luddite thinking by roqetman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Many people succumb to Luddite thinking as they get older; this is just another example of it. Why these people feel the need to write articles/books about their fear, I don't know... oh, wait, it's for the money.

  4. Re:Worse than DRM by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    My kingdom for some mod points!

    --
    I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit