Jaron Lanier: You are not a gadget (2010, Alfred A. Knopf)
209 pages
English language
Published Aug. 20, 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The last few chapters and the overall idea are fantastic, but the critical tone is too much and a lot of his points fall flat due to just not being very true and not being backed up except through the occasional anecdote.
It's already amazing. I'm giving it 5 stars just for the ideas it's provoked in the first 20 pages I've read.
requires a reply; i've got considerable notes on this book; i like someone who offers "triangulation" as lanier does; my daughter recommended this to me as sort of a rebuttal to nicholas carr's "big switch". for some time, i've been among the digerati, saying "it's over, we won." thanks to lanier, i can indefinetly postpone that kindle purchase. there are things worth retaining. while he's an analog person -- heck, the whole virtual reality thing is based on voltage, and not bits -- and i'm still digital, i'm quite comfy with his critque of my neighborhood. returnreturnliterarily, his last few chapters are of the and-let-me-get-this-off-my-chest variety. so, they're not up to the sharp invictive of his earlier ones. compared to carr, he gives unix it's larger place in the pantheon, and it's not without a proportionate share of the problems, according to laneir.returnreturnlanier woke me up to how software tends …
requires a reply; i've got considerable notes on this book; i like someone who offers "triangulation" as lanier does; my daughter recommended this to me as sort of a rebuttal to nicholas carr's "big switch". for some time, i've been among the digerati, saying "it's over, we won." thanks to lanier, i can indefinetly postpone that kindle purchase. there are things worth retaining. while he's an analog person -- heck, the whole virtual reality thing is based on voltage, and not bits -- and i'm still digital, i'm quite comfy with his critque of my neighborhood. returnreturnliterarily, his last few chapters are of the and-let-me-get-this-off-my-chest variety. so, they're not up to the sharp invictive of his earlier ones. compared to carr, he gives unix it's larger place in the pantheon, and it's not without a proportionate share of the problems, according to laneir.returnreturnlanier woke me up to how software tends to "lock down" certain decisions. in his case, the midi music format is one of those: "how do keypresses model rich tonality" is his challenge as a music maker. well enough. any bit of software makes choices for us in ways we don't always see. returnreturneven with taleb's black swan, challenging "the bell curve", i still insist any individual's rating must follow the binomial relationship. giving lanier's "gadget, U R ~" a 4.0 doesn't disturb the balance of my ratings.
