You Are Not A Gadget - Response 7

Graduation is quickly approaching and the pressure to find a job is intensifying.  I have focused all my time and energy on getting an entry-level position in the social media arena and am hoping to pursue a career working for a progressive Internet company.  The way I see it, the Internet has positively changed business transactions, customer service, and the way we, as ‘users,’ develop and foster relationships.  I see the Web as a world of interconnectivity, yet author Jaron Lanier is telling me otherwise.  After reading his book You Are Not A Gadget, I feel as though everything I once thought and believed was thrown out the window.  He criticizes the Internet and its effects on humanism entirely.

As someone who’s fascinated with the development of the Internet and beyond intrigued with the idea of Web 2.0 and the transition into a web-based society, I thought the book was difficult to read as Lanier criticized the new digital era and everything I once thought was positively revolutionizing.  According to Lanier, people have completely abandoned humanism and adopted robotic-like personality traits, where digital powerhouses mold our likes, wants and needs.  He feels that the introduction of the Internet has encouraged individuals to conform to the online environment that was created, thus forcing society to behave mob-like.

“When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful.   People already tend to defer to computers, blaming themselves when a digital gadget or service is hard to use.”

Lanier claims that we as humans are not giving ourselves enough credit, and that we rely on the system, the gadget, also known as the Internet, too much.  He thinks that the computer “under values humans,” claiming that as computers become more and more rich of information, that people will become more and more obsolete.  In sum, technology changes people.

Search Engines such as Google and Wikipedia give people the ability to access an unlimited amount of information.  Ideally, we could filter these search engines to only produce information of worth and value, but unfortunately that is not always the case.  According to Lanier, artificial intelligence does not exist, thus it is impossible to create a computer to think exactly like a human would.  Therefore, we dumb ourselves down to accommodate what Lanier refers to as pseudo engines (Google, Wikipedia, Amazon etc).

Lanier later points out that an informationally-free world may sound good at first, but if you look more closely you may find that having everything immediately accessible creates a "mediocre mush."  People lose their identities.

“It is astonishing how much of the chatter online is driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media and that is now being destroyed by the net.  Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases, and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn.  There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stick.”

According to Lanier, America is losing their creative middle class.  He thinks that our online culture is STILL fixated on the world as we once had it before and that we’ve resorted to crowd-sourcing.

As I previously mentioned, I don’t necessarily agree with the claims he’s making, I believe quite the opposite in fact.  As far as I’m concerned, the Internet has opened up society to a world of endless possibilities in terms of creativity.  We have the ability to expose ourselves to a myriad of cultural phenomenons and the way I see it, we can benefit from those that came before us.  On the contrary, Lanier thinks the Internet has hindered the ability to be original.

“Some of the youngest brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were in fact of nature.”

I can’t help but think of my parents when reading Lanier’s book.  My mom, fascinated by social media on one hand, is equally as agitated by it on the other.  She grew up in the pre-digital generation, before computers, before the Internet, and never acclimated herself appropriately.  It’s like trying to teach a child how to read.  My mom, proud of how she grew up without the crutch of the computer, might agree with Lamier out of pure spite.  Who knows.  All I know is that, greatness has in fact stemmed from the Web, despite what Lanier may believe.

 

I did in general like Lanier’s book.  It definitely made me think.  It stretched my mind.  And more importantly it required me to use more analytical thinking with regards to the digital online world.  I do realize that the Internet is not perfect and that there are MANY hindrances in fact, not to mention dangers as result of limitless accessibility.  However, I can’t help but see the positives out weigh the negatives.