Jaron Lanier Rants Against the World of Web 2.0 231
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.'"
Isn't It... (Score:2, Insightful)
Quit the whining (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I only read the summary... (Score:2, Insightful)
"If someone thinks about reading it, I want to get paid!!"
Fixed that for you.
maybe.... (Score:4, Insightful)
it just could be that nobody is interested in what he has to say?
He's right (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Insulting the people who made him (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Isn't It... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not going to read it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Whine (Score:3, Insightful)
Jaron whines a lot. I think that's his main contribution to technology.
Re:Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Have you never seen a Roman road? They're every bit as straight and direct as anything we make today.
Re:Worse than DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Regarding his comments on music (Score:3, Insightful)
Reminds me of Clifford Stoll (Score:5, Insightful)
Clifford Stoll [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score:2, Insightful)
Romans didn't invent roads.
Re:Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think his bigger issue is that nobody is doing that anymore, so it is becoming impossible to find such things. Maybe he has weird taste or memory distortion, though, because my memory of personal web pages from the 90s is of horrible marquee text, blink text, animated gifs, and black backgrounds without hundreds of different colors in the text.
"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."
Actually, it did lose something: openness. Facebook is closed off to anyone without a Facebook account, which is definitely a change from the way things used to be done. Sure, there were places that you had to log in to in order to participate during the 90s, but I have trouble remembering websites that required a login just to see what users had posted.
How many would have read, w/o the web? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I only read the summary... (Score:1, Insightful)
The New Printing Press (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regarding his comments on music (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Worse than DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score:2, Insightful)
These posts are a good example (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regarding his comments on music (Score:1, Insightful)
Since when is throwing buzzwords (and names) around considered intellectual?
Back in my day... (Score:1, Insightful)
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
Re:Whining about folk-art webpages... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I have to wonder what you are posting that has you so worried about individual people seeing it. Look, I am with you on privacy being important, but why focus on individuals? Facebook does not hide your information from the large organizations that really have the power to invade your privacy.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, information wants to be free and I shouldn't put it on the internet if I dont want all to see it."
Pretty much; why would you post something online, with no encryption whatsoever, if you wanted to keep it between you and your friends? Also, why, if this is personal information between you and your friends, would you need to use the global Internet at all? Do you not see your friends in person? Are you and your friends incapable of using email?
Really, the whole situation sounds bizarre from where I sit. You have this information that you believe should remain between you and your friends, so you post it on a massive, global network and rely on a massively popular, international website with hundreds of millions of users and a history of failing to respect privacy, to ensure that the data is only accessible by your friends. Yeah, I know Facebook is popular and trendy and whatnot, but I really cannot see why you would post information on Facebook that you did not want to spread beyond a close circle of friends.
"Well, guess what--I dont want everybody to see it, I only want people I invite to see it. If I can't use the internet for that purpose, what can I use?"
Well, you could do what I do: show your pictures off to your friends when they are sitting next to your computer, talk to them in person, and engage in non-electronic social interactions. For friends in far away places, there is email, IM, telephone, etc., none of which runs the risk of some "random jackass" stumbling across your conversation (unless the jackass is trying to eavesdrop, but do you really think Facebook is going to protect you from such people?).
Re:Jaron Lanier gives me the creeps (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can someone summarize this? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Insulting the people who made him (Score:3, Insightful)
Our as in "the people". Technology belongs to the people, and don't let any corporate shill tell you otherwise.
the irony (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Can someone summarize this? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:How many would have read, w/o the web? (Score:3, Insightful)
I did read, and there's a slight difference between his point and what you think his point is. He's actually against Web 2.0, not the web in general. According to the article, his point is basically that the modern Internet has taken the interesting parts of the early Internet away and left it sort of homogenized. Remixes have taken the place of new creations, basically. I kind of agree with him. I occasionally get "sick of the Internet" and after reading this article, I understand that it's more like I'm getting sick of the way the Internet is right now. Anyway, hopefully this piqued your interest and you skim the article. As for the book, it's probably filled with ideas you've heard elsewhere explained better. At least, that's what the author of the article indicates.
[citations needed] (Score:3, Insightful)