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.'"

Comments

Anonymous Coward ....

[PPH]

... of the last century wore a white sheet and burned crosses in people's yards.

Its one thing to stand up, identify yourself and state your beliefs. Its quite another to make statements that you are not willing to stand behind for fear of being ostracized.

The valid case for anonymity, publishing some information that threatened those in power, used to have a solution. Members of the press would offer their reputations as a proxy for that of the whistle blower. They would vet the information (albeit sometimes imperfectly) and put it into the public domain under their by-line. But this function has been eroded in the Internet age. between the Patriot Act and "think of the children", there are very few people left who have the authority to stand up against the information gathering and surveillance tools of the establishment. Perhaps we need to repair this situation rather than just handing every jerk wad the tools to absolute anonymity.