Speed Read - You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto

Joseph Clift

This article summarises "You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto" by Jaron Lanier. The book argues that recent online developments have been destructive in many ways.

Speed Read - You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto - Speed Read

Jaron Lanier, Knopf (2010) (view on Amazon)

Jaron Lanier is a US computer scientist and philosopher. Currently Interdisciplinary Scholar-in-Residence at UC Berkeley, he is famed for coining the term 'virtual reality'.

This short polemic decries the way the internet has changed over the past decade or so.

Lanier focusses on the growth of cloud computing, elsewhere referred to as the hive, the noosphere, "open culture" and Web 2.0. Unlike many of his technologist peers, he regards this trend as destructive and dehumanising.

"The central mistake of recent digital culture is to chop up...

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