HesGloomy
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Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - As much as it pains me to say so, we can survive only if we destroy the middle classes of
musicians, journalists, photographers.
strangely worded at times and i don't agree with everything (or even most) of what he is saying but there is some interesting points
and fitting with this class warfare talk currently happening
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_de...
Jaron Lanier is a computer science pioneer who has grown gradually disenchanted with the online world since his early days popularizing the idea of
virtual reality. “Lanier is often described as ‘visionary,’ ” Jennifer Kahn wrote in a 2011 New Yorker profile, “a word that manages to
convey both a capacity for mercurial insight and a lack of practical job skills.”
Raised mostly in Texas and New Mexico by bohemian parents who’d escaped anti-Semitic violence in Europe, he’s been a young disciple of Richard
Feynman, an employee at Atari, a scholar at Columbia, a visiting artist at New York University, and a columnist for Discover magazine. He’s also a
longtime composer and musician, and a collector of antique and archaic instruments, many of them Asian.
His book continues his war on digital utopianism and his assertion of humanist and individualistic values in a hive-mind world. But Lanier still sees
potential in digital technology: He just wants it reoriented away from its main role so far, which involves “spying” on citizens, creating a
winner-take-all society, eroding professions and, in exchange, throwing bonbons to the crowd.
This week sees the publication of “Who Owns the Future?,” which digs into technology, economics and culture in unconventional ways. (How is a
pirated music file like a 21st century mortgage?) Lanier argues that there is little essential difference between Facebook and a digital trading
company, or Amazon and an enormous bank. (“Stanford sometimes seems like one of the Silicon Valley companies.”)
Much of the book looks at the way Internet technology threatens to destroy the middle class by first eroding employment and job security, along with
various “levees” that give the economic middle stability.
“Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company
Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the
new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people.
Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?”
“Future” also looks at the way the creative class – especially musicians, journalists and photographers — has borne the brunt of disruptive
technology.
The new book – which has drawn a rave in the New York Times — has already received a serious challenge from Evgeny Morozov in the Washington Post.
The Internet-skeptic author of “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism” challenges Lanier’s proposed solution
that regular people be rewarded in micropayments when their data enriches a digital network.
But more important than Lanier’s hopes for a cure is his diagnosis of the digital disease. Eccentric as it is, “Future” is one of the best
skeptical books about the online world, alongside Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows,” Robert Levine’s “Free Ride” and Lanier’s own “You
Are Not a Gadget.”
We spoke to the dreadlocked, Berkeley-based author from the road, where he’s on a massive book tour.
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rest of interview in link at top
So: Gary, the Mona Lisa. This is trash.
TRASH. How many tigers or skulls are in this painting?
THE ANSWER IS ZERO, WHICH IS THE garyEST NUMBER OF SKULLS OR TIGERS YOU CAN HAVE IN A PAINTING.
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Mackula
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sounds the goods. 
D O T H E M A T H
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uosbwis.r.jewoy
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that was probably the dumbest shit i've ever seen on salon. wavy patchouli lines coming off this cunt.
why is he separating the internet from every other technological leap that increased efficiency? that's what technology's is, by definition. why does
he think ideology has anything to do with development and investment? why doesn't he acknowledge the recent creation of the middle class as the
long-term anomaly, not its (imagined) destruction? smh
a luddite with dreadlocks who collects ancient musical instruments waxes about how technology is ruining everything. cool parchment bro
[Edited on 14-5-2013 by uosbwis.r.jewoy]
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Ionjaw
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hahahahaha fucking hell uosbwis.r.jewoy you make me laugh, wavy patchouli lines
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nobbus
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Quote: Originally posted by uosbwis.r.jewoy  |
why is he separating the internet from every other technological leap that increased efficiency? that's what technology's is, by definition. why does
he think ideology has anything to do with development and investment? why doesn't he acknowledge the recent creation of the middle class as the
long-term anomaly, not its (imagined) destruction? smh
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did you even read the interview? he addresses those points
"cunts acting like lifes 2D when it is not, it's fucking 4D"
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uosbwis.r.jewoy
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yeah. his answers are nonsensical as fuck.
eg, on why old jobs were replaced with new ones before the internet, "Of course jobs become obsolete. But the only reason that new jobs were created
was because there was a social contract in which a more pleasant, less boring job was still considered a job that you could be paid for."
put the vaporiser down son. old jobs were replaced by new ones because new technologies created new industries and production practices that (luckily
for the average worker) still required human laborr. do you think that henry ford/andrew carnegie/rockefeller/andrew mellon etc gave a fuck about a
social contract? leaders have been trying to increase efficiency since the start of human history. in other animals we call it evolution.
the guy says that he's not a stereotypical lefty but then he goes on and on about how important ideologies are to social progress. throughout history,
technological development's the only thing that's consistently changed society. the interview's some mystical humanist bs that phatchance would
retweet and it's boring as fuck
[Edited on 14-5-2013 by uosbwis.r.jewoy]
[Edited on 14-5-2013 by uosbwis.r.jewoy]
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HesGloomy
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haha
yeah, i understand little of the actual economic function of the middle class to a countries (worlds?) economy and i get that there is a lot wrong
with his arguments on some things
i was more thinking it was interesting in relation to a few other things i had read and that doco PressPausePlay that BLUDGER recommended me and i
watched recently
The idea that certain jobs or industries are having their integrity eroded by the easy access that so many are afforded via digital technology
vs the notion that this spread of access to so many people is empowering and excellent
So: Gary, the Mona Lisa. This is trash.
TRASH. How many tigers or skulls are in this painting?
THE ANSWER IS ZERO, WHICH IS THE garyEST NUMBER OF SKULLS OR TIGERS YOU CAN HAVE IN A PAINTING.
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gerling
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I tried to read this guy's book, here is a reminactment:
Gerling, nodding: Good point, good point.
Pages turn.
Gerling, still: y-e-sss I can see how you're getting there I suppose.
More pages turning.
Gerling, shking head: what the fuck does that even mean? Yeah nah dude.
Pages turn.
Gerling, bemused frowning and the occasional sardonic eyebrow raise: Again, yeah, I see what you're getting at...
Repeat ad nauseam
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Eldy_H
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That was really hard to read. The guy seems all over the place and doesn’t appear to have a solid basis to his overall argument. But some
interesting individual points in there.
Found this article replying the economic details of Lanier’s interview responses, this helps shed some light on the economic holes in his arguments
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/05/15/jaron-lan...
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