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What Turned VR Pioneer Jaron Lanier Against the Web
i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "Details of Jaron Lanier's crusade against Web 2.0 continue in an article at Smithsonian Magazine. The article expands upon Lanier's criticism of Web 2.0. It's an interesting read, with Lanier suggesting we are outsourcing ourselves into insignificant advertising-fodder and making an audacious connection between techno-utopianism, the rise of the machines and the Great Recession. From the article: 'As far back as the turn of the century, he singled out one standout aspect of the new web culture—the acceptance, the welcoming of anonymous commenters on websites—as a danger to political discourse and the polity itself. At the time, this objection seemed a bit extreme. But he saw anonymity as a poison seed. The way it didn’t hide, but, in fact, brandished the ugliness of human nature beneath the anonymous screen-name masks. An enabling and foreshadowing of mob rule, not a growth of democracy, but an accretion of tribalism. ... 'This is the thing that continues to scare me. You see in history the capacity of people to congeal—like social lasers of cruelty. That capacity is constant. ... We have economic fear combined with everybody joined together on these instant twitchy social networks which are designed to create mass action. What does it sound like to you? It sounds to me like the prequel to potential social catastrophe. I’d rather take the risk of being wrong than not be talking about that.'"
If he hates Web 2.0, I hate to be the one to tell him he's not going to feel any better about Web 3.0. This "sell yourself as the product" (either on purpose or out of blindness and ignorance) mentality isn't going anywhere, and it's not going to get any better until privacy becomes important to the masses again.
Lanier is under the impression that he, and others on his behalf, somehow obtained, or already had, the right not to be offended.
Not so.
I'll go back to completely ignoring him now.
I’d rather take the risk of being wrong than not be talking about that.'"
OK, you're wrong. One aspect of the raw, awfulness that is anonymous internet commentary is far more important than polite reasoned discourse. It represents the true feelings of the participants, unhindered by social inhibitions and cultural conditioning. It is digital drunkenness, and like drunkenness, often reveals ugly facts about human nature, which remain facts, nonetheless.
Perhaps you prefer the sweet simpering smiles of courtesy. I do not. I would rather know who and what people really are. Reality rules. Fantasy is for fools.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
While it has taken some time, the internet has evolved defenses to many of these social problems.
Adblock is so effective that advertisers want it outlawed. Spam Assassin cuts down on hideous amounts of junk mail, and Microsoft is offering bounties for the heads of spammers. Encryption is evolving at a frightening rate, spurred by overreaching agencies. Darknets are springing up, complete with obfuscated addresses. VPN is now a common term among the laymen.
The only people getting cut out are the technically illiterate, and their numbers are dwindling each day.
Yes, it shouldn't be like this, but realize, its adaptations are a direct result of our interactions with it; it's a mirror of our society, and it tells us that we have a very dark soul.
I am John Hurt.
Lanier seems to cavalierly disregard the potential for being locked up simply for expressing the truth in open discourse.
I wonder if he, in his wisdom, foresaw a time where government agents or Islamic assassins appear at one's door step simply for expressing an opinion.
I can't imagine someone with even a modicum of historical hindsight would dismiss this so easily.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
We can only be honest when we're anonymous. That *is* our real self. It's when we have to be out in the open that we hide behind bullshit politeness and "civility" (aka "We both bullshit each other rather than being honest").
People should be required to use full names and titles. After all, the opinion of a professor is much more worthy than that of a manual worker.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
â"the acceptance, the welcoming of anonymous commenters on websitesâ"as a danger to political discourse and the polity itself.
Anonymity is not optional in a free society. If we all had to put our names on our ballots, if cash were outlawed and everyone had to pay by credit card with their name on it, if we truly became the transparent surveillance society tech pundits keep pointing to as the future, then democracy is dead. Anonymity is the one thing that can change the status quo -- it allows expression of ideas, themes, and alternatives to it without retribution or revenge being brought down on the speaker. Without anonymity, the government can simply disappear anyone who disagrees. Corporations can lock out political and social undesireables from key markets. When you make speaking out against the establishment impossible without painting a big target on your ass, you've killed democracy. It simply cannot survive without it.
The internet's free-wheeling and democratic nature, complete with our Anonymous cyber-terrorist groups and our Anonymous Cowards (mostly harmless, sometimes annoying), to cyber-bullies and cyber-other-things-left-unmentioned, is probably a shock to a dreamer like this guy. As a self-described pioneer, he's clearly an idealist. He doesn't see the practical long-term problems, only the ones keeping him from taking whatever his next step is on his ideological journey. For him, he's decided anonymity is the next problem to be kicked out on the way to utopia.
Sir, with respect to your accomplishments, there are no digital utopias anymore than there are real ones. The analogues between our world, here, and the world out there, and your desire to bridge the two, is noble. But you cannot pick and choose ideological values for your new world. All you can be is a humble medium through which social change occurs. All the great inventors of the world know this. When Maxwell was approached by a politician on the usefulness of electricity, he remarked, "One day sir, you will tax it." I'm sure he envisioned homes lit by power 'from the ethers', and buggies that no longer needed horses as he slaved away in his lab, but he kept enough perspective to realize that what he was discovering would one day integrate into the fabric of society in ways even he couldn't imagine... and the idea of free power for humanity, while noble, was less practical in light of the fact (no pun intended) that it would be regulated and taxed. He knew that, before it even existed.
Show some humility, sir. You are not the first, nor will you be the last, to become frustrated that the world you created did not develop at all like you imagined.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
In support of your comment, anonymity is a requirement for free speech. In fact, forcing someone to attach their identity to their speech is "a danger to political discourse and the polity itself" moreso than anonymity. I will deal with assholes on the Internet because I know that requiring them to identify themselves so they can be tried in the court of public shame leads down a very bad road.
The primary victim of "Web 2.0" seems to have been anonymity. We are tracked. Everywhere on the Web. And we have to work much harder than we should not to reveal ourselves...and it's not just our identity, it's our location, our friends, our habits, our pleasures.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
what i got from the article,
he would like us to continue to be enslaved by "social norms" by being punished for brandishing a position that may widely differ from the norm. Being as we are in a "normal" society and are judged for thinking "abnormally", tying anonymity to abnormal behavior is just a way to enforce entrenched behaviors.
i for one applaud Anonymity online.
case: http://allthingsd.com/20121224/china-poised-for-crackdown-on-internet/
He got in early on 3D graphics and had dreadlocks
I know, I know. I met him back when he had his original VR system, with a pair of SGI machines hooked up to 320-line or so goggles and about a second of lag between the head tracker and the video. Turn head, wait 1s for image to stabilize, repeat. Once people figured out that all you could do well in VR was move and shoot, interest declined. Even for gamers. (Autodesk had a big interest in VR at one time; the idea was that you'd be able to do architecture in VR with an intuitive interface. Pick up window, walk to wall, insert window in wall, step back, look at result, slide window to different position... Didn't work out. Without force feedback, manipulation in 3D VR is clumsy.)
Lanier's main complaint seems to be that being a second or third-tier musician doesn't pay well any more. Historically, it never did. The notion of musical stardom came from a brief period in history when duplicating phono records was a very expensive process. There are now somewhere between 5 and 8 million bands on Myspace. (Some of which might not suck.) So being a "musician" isn't a big deal any more.
Interestingly, he's against anonymity, which encourages ranting. But nobody listens to online ranting from anons much any more. Post on Slashdot as Anonymous Coward and you're lucky to get a rating above 0. Post on Wikipedia without logging in, and unless you have something really productive to say, you'll probably be reverted, Rant at people via e-mail and spam filters block you. Grief in a MMORPG, and you get kicked out and have to restart as a noob with low stats. Problem solved. (Mostly.)
Facebook and Google, on the other hand, are against anonymity because it interferes with monetizing data about their users. That's not a good reason.
capacity of people to congeal—like social lasers of cruelty
How many similes and metaphors can this guy pack into 10 words? Let's count...
Simile and metaphor constructs are supposed to help us understand ideas, not make them more obtuse. I think he is trying to make an analogy to the resonance of lasing, but good grief! How many people understand laser physics better than the social dynamics of internet forums?
However I'm not sure I would draw a parallel between The Federalist Papers and the drivel many current anonymous posters write.
That's only because the barrier to entry has dropped so low. There are many pamphlets from the same era which have been lost to history because they were drivel. There would have also been some real gems that never got out there because costs prevented them from being published.
I think the point that Lanier is really missing is that anonymity is not new, just that pen and ink is now nearly free.
But at least you don't stand in jail.