I think Lanier has been spying on our class, but then again when I proposed that I thought our landlords were spying on us, my housemates laughed and called me paranoid, so take my paranoia with a grain of salt. But back to Lanier. As I was reading I Am Not A Gadget I couldn’t help but think that we had talked about a lot of points this book discusses. I don’t know how he did it, clearly a (hot tub) time machine was involved since he wrote this book was written before we started our class. Lanier took many of the issues we discussed in class, identified them in his book, then offered some solutions to them. Obviously the book covers issues we have not discussed (but we might discuss them in the future, so maybe there even more). He probably spied on other classes all around the country in all time periods.
Lanier opens the book with a bit of a negative tone; he talks about technology’s role in everyday life and the relationship of technology and the human condition (hence the title). He says, "The deep meaning of personhood is being reduced by illusions of bits. Since people will be inexorably connecting to one another through computers from here on out, we must find an alternative.” As grim as this may sound, he does offer some light at the end of the tunnel with a list of things to do to still maintain your human qualities while using technology. Memorize this, or you will be lost to technology!! (JK).
From Lanier’s First Chapter
• "Every save-the-world cause has a list of suggestions for “what each of us can do”: bike to work, recycle, and so on."
• "If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don’t yet realize that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.”
• "Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won’t fit into the template available to you on a social networking site”
• "Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view."
• "Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out."
• "If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine."
I realize we didn’t discuss technological takeover in class, but we have discussed the integral role of technology, web 2.0, and certain websites like Snopes (my new favorite site), College ACB (my least favorite site), YouTube (which is in everyone’s top 10 favorite sites), etc.
Trolls, Lanier identifies them as, “an anonymous person who is abusive in an online environment." I just googled the term for nostalgia sake (remember those weird dolls with the neon hair, don’t deny it, you had one), but Wikipedia has a similar definition of troll. Clearly Troll doesn’t have a positive connotation, so it makes me happy to learn that internet bullies are widely associated with the repugnant. We all know the internet offers us vast tools to seek and dispense information, but as we discussed in class, some of that information can be hurtful, and too often unnecessary.
A common thread throughout the book, and through out our class, is the freedom of information. We can read digital publications of newspapers at no cost, we can download music for free (well, Prof Littau doesn’t), but there are many places to get free music, both legally and illegally. Lanier was seriously spying on our class, when he wrote about the struggle of journalists, musicians, artists, and filmmakers struggle to make a living in the web 2.0 era. But being in a room full of Journalism majors (Mr. Flowe aside), we are constantly worrying about our job future. I feel like Lanier took our concerns, mulled them over, and tried to offer solutions, but his “fixes” are tailored to the music industry
• "The giant musical act from the old days of the record business, grabbing a few headlines by posting music for free downloading:”
• "The aggregator: A handful of musicians run websites that aggregate the music of hundreds or thousands of others. There are a few services that offer themed streaming music, for instance."
• "The jingle/sound track/TV composer: You can still make money from getting music placed in a setting that hasn’t been destroyed by file sharing yet. Some examples are movie and TV sound tracks, commercial jingles, and so on”
• “The vanity career” (I didn’t completely understand this one, but I think it’s just people pretending to be musicians, aka Rebecca Black)
• "Kids in a van: You will make barely any money, but you can crash on couches and dine with fans you meet through the web. This is a good era for that kind of musical adventure."
Later Lanier also makes up some words (which are definitely from the future). These silly sounding words are actually solutions to a doomed future where all information is free and everyone is in the poorhouse. His first solution: Telegigging (sounds like a 22nd century dance move to me), This is Lanier’s explanation, "If canned content becomes a harder product to sell in the internet era, the return of live performance—in a new technological context—might be the starting point for new kinds of successful business plans." On a small level Lanier proposes “telepresent performances”, where small productions are holographed into homes. On a larger level Lanier proposes, “…"big stars and big-budget virtual sets, and big production values in every way, were harnessed to create a simulated world that home participants could enter in large numbers. This would be something like a cross between Second Life and teleimmersion”
His next solution is the songle (are you starting to believe he traveled to the future and brought these words back yet?). He proposes that ordinary object house songs rather than iPods or computers "Songles would provide a physical approach to creating artificial scarcity.” And how does it work? "You might wear a special necklace songle to a party, and music enabled by the necklace would come on automatically after you arrived, emanating from the entertainment system that is already providing the party with music. The necklace communicates with the entertainment system in order to make this happen. The musical mix at an event might be determined by the sum of the songles worn by everyone who shows up."
Also, I’m pretty sure Lanier “incepted” professor Littau. I am paranoid, maybe, but I could be right. Professor Littau is always talking about the importance of linking back to the original article, website, picture, etc. And Lanier discusses the grandfather of linking, Ted Nelson. Lanier credits Nelson with inventing the idea of linking back, and even proposes a world where people would make money on the content they create, because no copies would exist, only links. So, people would always see the original, and by them viewing it, the creator would turn a profit. Lanier says that in Nelson’s world there would be no copyright protection needed (there goes Media Laws and Ethics as a core class of the Journalism dept). I know the idea of linking is very important, but how cool would it be to say you know someone who was incepted?
Everything boils down to the fact that Lanier is a trickster, but I like him. He starts out sinister. He talks about how we are locked into technology that may not be efficient, but everyone has it so we’re locked in, and he’s spot on. My friend had a blackberry, hated that people could tell when she had read their bbms, changed to a droid, realized she was missing the conversation between all her friends happening on a bbm thread, and had to switch back. He identifies the theory that the development each new generation of machine is faster than that of the one before it, and that soon the development will become so fast that machines will become so intelligent they will make decisions (like Watson, or the computer developed by Deep Blue that beat the world’s best chess player). But, he also highlights the benefits of technology, like expanded lifespan.
As an interesting side note, Lanier does not discuss his development of time travel. Very suspicious I’d say.
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