You Are Not A Gadget

I'm currently reading Jaron Lanier's stimulating book, which considers some of the negative effects of the on-line media explosion, as well as the positive ones.

Lanier is a pioneer in computing, virtual reality and also a musician. While acknowledging the Web's enormous potential for empowering both individual creativity and global collaboration, he reflects on the shallowness of much Web 2.0 cyberculture - fragmented, anonymously trollish, a derivative mash-up in which the crafted personal statement is devalued.

He's also concerned about the effect of file-sharing which not only undermines the finances and long-term health of the cultural industries, but , in his view, devalues cultural production. He feels there is a danger that we 're becoming locked into a kind of digital totalitarianism, by confusing data with the persons that produce it.

You can read a section from the book, which sums up one of his key ideas here, as a pdf. He's also interviewed on American radio here.