August 2010
1 post
On Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture
At a time when new technologies, promising ideas, concepts, and emerging online projects seem to pop up from every direction, a time when it seems that you cannot possibly be too networked or informed, Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide seems like an appropriate read for understanding the new space we’ve each come to occupy in producing and consuming media. In a...
July 2010
4 posts
Touch technology and lock-in
In an attempt to bring all of what Lanier had said in his manifesto to a single, graspable idea, the one notion that lingers in my mind is lock in; everything else that he mentions seems to stem from it either directly or indirectly. Although Lanier references the internet in his discussion on juvenilia (chapter 14), I’d like to extend the idea to what has been happening to the smartphone industry...
Do technologists really need this much philosophic...
In chapter 12, ‘I am a contrarian loop,’ Lanier continues to stress the looming danger of human annihilation from the evolving technology which, according to him, is at risk of developing in really, really bad ways. Lanier is saying that the whole point of technology is to change the human situation, so it is absurd for humans to aspire to be inconsequential. Assuming that I understand what he is...
Are Twitter and Wikipedia always credible?
We live in an age where we expect information to be immediately available, but at the same time, our expectations as to the quality of this information are a whole different question. Less than ten seconds after the earthquake that shook the eastern Ontario region two weeks ago took place, I was on the Internet trying to figure out what just happened. There was nothing. Even five to ten minutes...
Who owns the meaning
A while back my friend had shared an interesting experience with me that resurfaced in my mind again after reading Lanier’s chapter 10 concerning digital creativity. Several weekends ago, she went to a Toronto showing of a documentary titled Babies by the French director Thomas Balmès. The film follows four infants from birth throughout the first year of their lives. The babies featured in the...
June 2010
3 posts
Songles
In chapter 8, Lanier continues the discussion about reinstating the monetary value of cultural expression and the potential strategic tactics that can be used to achieve that. What I found particularly interesting is his mention of songles, which he describes as ‘a dongle for a song.’ A dongle creates ‘an artificial scarcity for [the product].’ As an example, Lanier suggests that you might wear a...
On the future of books
The unparalleled advantages of Amazon—and recently Apple has entered this arena, too—is that they have risen to control online book sales in a way that no publisher or even bookstore chain could. To add to the anxiety brought on by the increasing profits in e-book sales, Amazon believes that the digital world may not need any publishers at all. While unfortunate for those in the publishing house...
The One Thing That Will Survive Is...
This week, I’m finding myself getting somewhat excited about Lanier’s manifesto. Not because I necessarily agree with it all, but because it is doubt and partial disagreement that makes the cogs in my head really start turning. Sparking this is Lanier’s argument that advertising is the only one product that can maintain its value as everything else is devalued in the technological revolution....
May 2010
6 posts
Is Facebook still there for its members?
I’ve finishing reading chapter 3 in Lanier’s manifesto, The Noosphere is Just Another Name for Everyone’s Inner Troll, and I’m pleased to say that this chapter poses many, many valid arguments. What spoke to me, particularly, was Lanier’s point about how social networking websites, for example, attempt and often succeed at fitting us into cookie cutter definitions of who we are as individuals; and...
4 tags
On software, the Internet, other big things, and...
In the second chapter of his manifesto, Jaron Lanier calls our attention to the inevitable extinction of physical human intelligence and understanding as these qualities are compensated and accounted for using software design, yet rather unsuccessfully.
So the story begins with Microsoft. For Lanier, it’s what appears to be that pesky-yet-friendly paperclip (or any variation of it) that used to...
Controlling fantasy virtual environments
“‘What is a person?’ If I knew the answer to that, I might be able to program an artificial person in a computer. But I can’t. Being a person is not a pat formula, but a quest, a mystery, a leap of faith.” - Jaron Lanier
I wonder how difficult is it to come up with a concrete answer when we extend this idea even further, into life-simulating virtual environments like...
