VIP computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier has penned a recently published, well-debated, frequently criticized and simultaneously praised tome entitled You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.
Culled primarily from previous written articles and his own online commentary, the scientist/musician Lanier challenges Baby boomer luddites and their post 2.0 techno-geek grand children to weigh their infatuation with computers, the Internet and social media against the humanistic good that he believes should be derived from the conscientious use of technology.
Some of Lanier’s critics—and there are many these days—say that his book is not a manifesto in the truest sense, but a biased rant against technology. In fact Mike Masnick of the techie blog Tech Dirt goes so far as to call the 50-year old Lanier “old and crotchety” for espousing rational skepticism about mash-ups, Twitter, Wikipedia, Open Source, Linux, Face Book, Myspace and the Hive Mind. But the technology that receives Lanier’s philosophical left hook is Google and Wikipedia. But like any good counter puncher they have responded in kind—at an earlier time of course. In 2001 in an interview with the Guardian newspaper Lanier contends that computational technology’s primary purpose is only to “enhance human life and opportunity” not to worship it. Lanier has also emphatically stated that people “are far too in love with computers.”
Although the book is intended for a wide range of readers even the most byte-driven critic will be impressed by Lanier’s ability to speak cogently to computer enthusiast and non-enthusiast alike. As a librarian I consider myself fairly well-read and culturally aware but words and euphemisms like Digital Maoism, numinous neoteny, noosphere and realistic computationalism sent me in search of both Websters New Collegiate Dictionary and C.T. Onion’s Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. I later discovered “numinous” means “divine” or “supernatural” and “neoteny” means “retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species.”
Lanier’s tome might not be for everybody but if you are inclined to chat on Facebook, love your I-Phone or I-Pad, like to think and debate highly complex subject matter, or are just downright curious about everything you might want to pick up You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Otherwise just go online and just read the pro and con issues.
