12 Jun

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)