Fascinating book ...

[blamebrampton]

I really like the sound of the book discussed in this article, has anyone read it?

 

vashtan , I think you in particular would like it. An excerpt:

Lanier, who is a scholar-in residence at the University of California and a partner architect with Microsoft, also noticed a disturbing tendency among the champions of the internet's "open culture" to humiliate and attack those who had lost out in the online revolution - the musicians, artists, journalists and others.

These and a dozen other observations led Lanier to conclude that something had gone terribly wrong: that we had reached a point where the network was being exalted as far more important than any individual. It is a thesis he explores in his book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.

 

Comments

[potteresque_ire]

I browsed it very quickly (Trying to rush some editing. AHHHHH!!!). Look interesting indeed! I may try to find a copy in my school library.

My quick question is: did he write a whole thesis to explain how he ended up being a troll???? :DDDDDDDDDDD

Oops. My bitch is showing. *pulls down skirt and wiggles a bit*

*Huggles you like a sweet, warm pie*

[romaine24.livejournal.com]

Haven't read this book but have read others and heard him talk. I have a background in Virtual Reality and that is where he had a big impact in the 90s.

I would also find it interesting to read as I see current technology as a great equalizer. Very little is getting hidden anymore and many who didn't have a voice before do now.

So it might go on my list of To Get. Thanks for sharing.

[raitala.livejournal.com]

Strange coincidence! I've been watching this four-part BBC documentary on the internet by Dr Aleks Krotoski the last few weeks. It's been pretty good, charting its development and looking at the two sides of the coin. The hippy, utopian/libertarian ideals behind it being all free and unregulated and the upsides and downsides to how things have worked out in practice - political expression, commercial domination etc.

I can remember talking with my dad when we first got connected to the internet back in 1996 or something. I was asking what information was on there and he was trying to explain that it was all content put up by anyone who wanted to. I remember just not being able to comprehend at that point how content generated by just people could have any value whatsoever ;)

Things are certainly pretty choppy now. If people decided they don't want/aren't prepared to pay people who professionally dedicate their lives to writing, to music or to art we will all be the poorer. I love fanfic and fanart and certainly some professionally produced stuff is pretty mediocre, but the best novelists, artists, journalists are streets ahead of amateurs and I don't want to loose that.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Wow, you live in my head. *stares*

It also appears to deal with the "virtual mob culture" as I like to call it, which appears to pertain to the pirates. Where "sharing" is a positive value and the artist and his/her needs are sacrificed for the "positive feelings" of the masses.

(Which then feeds into the victim complex of some artists).

I'll go grab it, hoping it won't make me (even more) angry.