You are not a Gadget
a book by Jaron Lanier
SOFTWARE EXPRESSES IDEAS about everything from the nature of a musical note tothe nature of person hood. Software is also subject to an exceptionally rigid process of “lock-in.” Therefore, ideas (in the present era, when human affairs are increasingly software driven) have become more subject to lock-in than in previous eras. Most of the ideas that have been locked in so far are not so bad, but some of the so-called web 2.0 ideas are stinkers, so we ought to reject them while we still can. Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he. PUBLILIUS SYRUS
You are not a gadget
PART ONE
- What is a Person?
- Missing Persons
- An Apocalypse of Self-Abdication
- The Noosphere Is Just Another Name for Everyone‟s Inner Troll
PART TWO
- What Will Money Be?
- Digital Peasant Chic
- The City Is Built to Music
- The Lords of the Clouds Renounce Free Will in Order to Become Infinitely Lucky
- The Prospects for Humanistic Cloud Economics
- Three Possible Future Directions
PART THREE
- The Unbearable Thinness of Flatness
- Retropolis
- Digital Creativity Eludes Flat Places
- All Hail the Membrane
PART FOUR
- Making The Best of Bits
- I Am a Contrarian Loop
- One Story of How Semantics Might Have Evolved
PART FIVE
- Future Humors
- Home at Last (My Love Affair with Bachelardian Neoteny)
