[ExI] Jaron Lanier's new book, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

[Emlyn]

2010/1/12 Max More <max at maxmore.com>:
> Emlyn: Your long and angry response to the Lanier interview was stimulating.
> Sorry if my posting that distracted you from other tasks and drew you into a
> lengthy broadside...

I was supposed to be cleaning the house, and instead spent many hours
writing that. Thanks :-) Although I'd like to know where my house
cleaning robots are; it's 2010 ffs.

> Although I disagreed with some of what you said in an
> earlier post on a related topic, I found that I agreed with almost
> everything you said in your current response.
>
> The one obvious point on which I disagree is this:
>
>> Why do they only read that? Because mostly we just need a good, impartial
>> summary and Wikipedia does that wonderfully.
>
> I agree that Wikipedia is generally excellent for non-controversial topics.
> But for controversial topics, both my personal experience and reading about
> others' experiences says that it does *not* do a wonderful job of being
> impartial. Cliques of editors can and do exert great control over content,
> making it very difficult for anyone outside their clique to make changes.
> They enjoy the appearance of broad input without the reality. (Different
> editorial policies and incentives might change this, but that's the way it's
> been for years now.)

Yes, that's true. With wikipedia, I personally get most value from
non-controversial topics anyway; I wouldn't go there to understand
contempory US politics, but I might go there to understand the meaning
and history of a term like, say, utilitarianism.

The nice thing though is that it is in no way a monopoly. Wikipedia is
largely arrived at through google searches, and so is the rest of the
web, so if you really disagree with it, you can post endless rebuttals
of its articles, as much as your heart desires. I don't think it gets
any special treatment as far as search rankings go.

>
> Apart from that, yes, Lanier seems both anti-transhumanist, pretty much
> anti-technological progress, and ultimately deeply conservative -- and not
> in any good sense.
>
> Max

The few things I'd read from Lanier previously, I'd quite liked. I'm
disappointed.

I *think* he's a bit of a lefty, politically, but I'm not sure.

If there's any clue that networked humanity is something new under the
sun, politically, socially and economically, it is in the fact that
the left and right hate it with equal vehemence.

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related
http://point7.wordpress.com - ranting
http://emlynoregan.com - main site