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The father of virtual reality takes web 2.0 to task
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist extraordinaire, musician and the father of virtual technology, refuses to get caught up in the relentless march of progress, without stepping back and questioning what we're up to.
Lanier has written You Are Not A Gadget, designed as a manifesto to challenge the progress of the internet from within. In the book, published today by Allen Lane, Lanier questions the premises and assumptions of web 2.0. He writes: 'Something like missionary reductionism has happened to the internet with the rise of web 2.0.'
He asks questions such as: does fixing your personality via Facebook affect development? Does following Amazon recommendations push us more towards being a member of a demographic and away from being an individual? Does Wikipedia seek to assert a universal truth when there should be multiple points of view avaliable? And do anonymous comments encourage mob behaviour?
Lanier campaigns for a fundamental change in the internet, seeing the trend of freesumerism as destructive, pop culture and music focussing more on mash-ups than creating something new and people adapting their intelligence to confirm how impressive computers are.
You Are Not A Gadget looks into a future where creativity could be the defining factor between humans and machines: 'in a virtual world of infinite abundance, only creativity could ever be in short supply - thereby ensuring that creativity would become the most valuable thing.'
But the book isn't wholly critical. Lanier suggests new ways of payments that would see all creators of content rewarded and ways of behaving online that would see individuals triumph over the hive mind.
