Who Owns The Future?
A**R
its difficult to read but a must read
if you wanna know the reality of internet of things how they sell everything free( well nothing is free) and how they manipulate human behavior and society for the sake of getting richer with every upload and comment we make this book is the one you are looking for..Lanny has done a great job on unfolding the hidden dirty business behind internet of things... though he himself is a tech guy he advocates of system where everyone can benefit from internet in this era of fakebook.
A**R
Open your eyes
Open your eyes to the future that is here and in your face.A very useful buy for those who want to know what next at all levels.
M**N
This is why politics no longer works
I am... We are... and there has not been a method, since anyone started to remember methods, of uniting the two. Collectively, we have passed, in a short time, through an industrial revolution, parallelled by a revolution in literacy, and then we had an information revolution which is still ongoing, and is reflected in, or perhaps illustrated by, a communications revolution.We are now in a place where we can no longer choose to believe that righteousness and hard work will bring you security and riches. That was never a credible attitude to take, anyway, and was usually used to beat the workshy, socialists, dissenters, the opposition, the poor, etc, over their fast moving heads, until they blessed their boss and his feeding hand.Lannier, a Californian exception, demonstrates here that there are some people who can work around a captivating capitalism, which hypnotises the rest of us, and experience the hope of enlightenment, despite the amoral and bleakly stupid ideology of greed in which we are trapped, and on whose behalf we starve, torture and bomb into submissive smithereens, almost everyone else.On a general level the book is a retatement of the old argument between a Platonic reality and an Aristotelean 'monetarisation' of what 'actually exists', a pragmatist reality. If you think you are a free thinker, think again, but start here.
J**T
A good book on topical issues, weakened by excessive US focus.
This is a very interesting book from Lanier and well worth reading.He gives a very useful account of what is going on in "public" big data, search and social media, which is largely accurateand well informed, and will be useful to anyone who is interested and concerned about these topics. He also gives aworthwhile insight into fashionable thinking among Silicon Valley insiders (he is clearly one, although Silicon Valleyoutsider might be a more appropriate tag).The core of his argument is that people are being fooled into giving up data for which they should by rights be paid, if weare to have a sustainable economic system.He makes his case well, and there is some justice in his point of view.However his analysis has several shortcomings as I see it.It is very American focussed.For example is it really true that the Internet has destroyed more jobs than it has created? I can believe this is true inthe US, but if the internet is a key driver behind globalisation (as I believe), the internet has created tremendouseconomic opportunities in China, India, and increasingly in Africa? With a global market place it appears the market couldno longer bear the former differentials in pay between the US and elsewhere.Lanier is concerned about increasingly differentials in wealth between individuals in the US (especially the very wealthyand the great mass off middle class people), but it is no good pretending there is inherent justice in some countries beingmuch wealthier than others.Lanier correctly points the dangers to democracy the continuance of the current position poses.The analysis is a very useful contribution.However, his proposed solution (essentially better mechanisms for attributing the origins of data, and just rewards for theoriginators) is less convincing. I feel he conveniently ignores how we ended up with the simple web which fails toimplement Ted Nelson's original ideas for the 60's (which would support Lanier's information economy). The necessary twoway linking was just too complicated - if we'd stuck with it we'd still be trying to get it working, whereas Berners Lee's"do it simple do it now" philosophy allowed us to build the web we have today (for better or for worse).I find Lanier's proposed mechanism for moving to a more sustainable information economy implausible, as well as too US focussed. He needs to think about how Baidu and Yandex (two of the four largest internet search engines, but not US based) would integrate with his proposals, even if he could persuade Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and some others to participate in his scheme). And of course whether US and European regulators would allow it.This is not to say there is not some merit in his idea for a better and more sustainable information infrastructure.My final criticism is that the book was a bit rambling in places - perhaps one edit short of a good book?But in the end this book gave me much food for thought, and I'm happy to recommended it.
R**N
this is why I would recommend reading the book today
Interesting views, but told in a fuzzy way, not really formalised enough to my taste. Some concepts are very important, this is why I would recommend reading the book today: the fact that information on the internet is left in feed forward mode, without necessarily a complete history of where it comes from. As opposed to this, wikipedia for instance traces the modifications of an article. Some Scholars have shown that the modifications of wikipedia tell a story about ideas, clans, etc...Jaron Lanier goes into the depth of the Information Society. Everything he says is quite interesting, but he might have structured his facts more, and told them in a more organised way.
H**1
Just awesome, read it now.
This book is awesome and Lanier is a brilliant, lucid and fair thinker. The book opened my eyes to how the business model of the Facebooks and Googles (Lanier’s “Siren Servers”) create a world which hollows out the earnings ability of the people who they depend on... I like his “human centric” alternative which creates levees to enable us to own and earn from our data...Oh, and buy paper books now while we can still afford them!
A**E
Wow, so that's how they turn my data into dollars
A great insight and unlike others Lanier actually offers solutions to the problem.Well written, very clear and an easy read, he has the ability to bring everything down to laymans terms.After reading watch "The social dilemma" on Nfx if you want to know more about your data.
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