You are not a gadget

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Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget. New York: Knopf.

Contents

"Open culture"

  • "Open culture" is for "freedom ... more for machines than people" (3)
  • "Technology changes people" (4)
  • "Back in the 1980s, when Internet was only available to a small number of pioneers..." (5)
  • "The design of the web as it appears today was not inevitable" (6)
    • Re: Xanadu, General Magic

Recurring examples: MIDI, UNIX

  • Lock-in, standards, ideology, unintended consequences (7)
    • "Lock-in turns thoughts into facts" (9)
  • UNIX, CLI "bad design" for people-based projects (11, 12)
    • Introduction of "files" to Mac OS (13)
  • "Lock-in makes us forget the freedoms we had in the digital past" (14)

Threat of anonymization

  • Pseudo-/ semi- anonymity enables trolling, bad citizenship (16)

Anti-humanist "tribe" (16,17)

  • cybernetic totalists
  • digital maoists (16)
"The ascendant tribe is composed of folks from the open culture/Creative Commons world, the Linux community, folks associated with the artificial intelligence approach to computer science, the web 2.0 people, the anticontext file sharers and remashers, and a variety of others. Their capital is Silicon Valley, but they have power bases all over the world, wherever digital culture is being created. Their favorite blogs include Boing Boing, TechCrunch, and Slashdot, and their embassy in the old country is Wired" (17).

Humanist computer scientists (17)

  • Joseph Weizenbaum
  • Ted Nelson
  • Terry Winograd
  • Alan Kay
  • Bill Buxton
  • Doug Englebart
  • Brian Cantwell Smith
  • Henry Fuchs
  • Ken Perlin
  • Ben Schneiderman
  • Andy Van Dam
  • Randy Pausch
  • David Gelernter

Challenges

"Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit into the template available to you on a social networking site" (21).
"Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out" (21)

The importance of digital politics

"There was an active campaign in the 1980s and the 1990s to promote visual elegance in software. That political movement bore fruit when it influenced engineers at companies like Apple and Microsoft who happened to have a chance to steer the directions software was taking before lock-in made their efforts moot" (22)

Emphasis on the Singularity

  • Discussed mostly beginning on pg 24
  • Assumed to be shared among the group described above.
  • "cybernetic totalism"
  • cyber afterlife replacing notions of heaven

"One book" argument

  • Without authorship and with easy appropriation, we end up with "mush"
    • Or.. "a society with a single book" (46)
  • Wikipedia and Google Books are cited as such projects
    • Supported by an editorial by Kevin Kelly (46)

"Rejection of the idea of quality results in a loss of quality" (48)

  • "A fashionable idea in technical circles is that quantity not only turns into quality at some extreme of scale, but also does so according to principles we already understand" (49)

Responds to Shirky's notion of "cognitive surplus" (49)

  • Shirky, a "hive enthusiast" (49)
  • Shirky's problem is one of comparison
    • Units of time are not easily comparable because each unit of time represents a different degree of attention, preparedness, etc.
    • The utility of a time unit is dependent on its adjacent time units
    • It takes me 30 minutes to get in the "zone" of writing. Therefore, 3 hours of writing time are not available to me without the prior 30-60 minutes of prep time.
  • Shirky's selection of "television watching" as wasted time is also a politically charged choice that reflects a certain social situatedness not shared universally
  • What is recoverable about Shirky's claim?
    • There are some tasks to which a crowd is well suited and others to which it is not
  • Lanier gets this but goes no further (50)
  • Wikipedia, which Shirky argues for, is, to many participants, a project that requires considerable rote attention:
    • Spam-fighting, adjusting style, etc.
    • These are things that CAN happen in little chunks of TV time (perhaps simultaneously)
  • Of course those big chunks of writing are not so simple
    • But we need more evidence than a talk by Shirky to show that this is a widespread opinion among the "ascendent tribe"
    • By what metric do we agree that Shirky is a representative voice?

Human mind more complex than any existing computer design

  • This seems key to Lanier's project
  • That the human mind has not yet (and perhaps never will be) modeled in a computer-based design (51)

Unproven value of the social graph (54)

  • Not sure that this is actually going to make money
  • One explanation for the closed design
    • If you must pick from a list, easier to mine data
    • See the purging of non-standard "likes" from user profiles (TODO need sauce)
  • Lanier speculates that FB strategy is to lull users into "accepting [Beacon] gradually" (55)

More discussions of the weaknesses in the "wisdom of crowds" (56)

  • Oversold
  • Lanier seeks "heroic voices", e.g. in journalism
    • Borrows "signal processing" metaphor from EE/CS
    • Need DSP to manage interaction between crowds and individuals
    • Frozen articles on WP are "low pass filter" against spam, abuse
  • Finds an "odd lack of curiosity" about the limits to crowd wisdom (59)
    • Where is he looking?
    • What about Jodi Dean? Or Jay Rosen?
    • Challenge of earlier intellectual culture that has yet to be fixed by search engines: hard to search interdisciplinarily for consonant criticism
  • Talks about "faith-based schemes" (59)
    • Where? Are these mainly found among industries experiencing crisis?
    • Those industries looking for a magic bullet to save them?
    • Is this a problem among the general user population?

Trolling, lulz (60)

  • Anonymity in UI leads to trolling (62)
  • "drive-by anonymity"
  • "Costs of anonymity"
    • High in SL, thus less trolling
    • Low in YouTube comments, thus more trolling
  • "Ideology of violation" (65)
    • e.g. publicity of exploits, for fame
    • In the name of the opposing FUD and "security through obscurity"

Why design drive-by Anonymity? (68)

  • Lanier asks why USENET had drive-by anonymity
    • All participants were in govt/academia/industry
    • It could have been done
  • The reason it wasn't was because of their elite positioning
  • Same reason that people in certain communities leave doors unlocked or kids' toys in the yard overnight == trust
  • These were safe spaces because the only riff raff were the undergrads who came on board every autumn

"There is only one hive" (70)

  • Lamenting the stress on young people managing their online profiles
"It breaks my heart when I talk to energized young people who idolize the icons of the new digital ideology, like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and free/open/Creative Commons mashups" (70).
  • Yet, Lanier, almost as an afterthought, discusses the positive experiences he has on an oud forum (71)
    • Evidently, there is more than one hive and he is part of a sub-hive
    • One he hesitates to mention for fear that it will be "ruined" from "too much attention" (71)
    • Why does this chapter not speculate, investigate, and celebrate his positive experience on the oud forum rather than dwell on the most visible services?

On free culture economics

"Open" or "free" culture represent "dangerous financial schemes (77)

  • Why willfully ignoring the well-documented distinction between "free" and "open"?
"A blog of blogs is more exalted than a mere blog" (79)
  • CITATION NEEDED ??

"Digital maoism" (77)

  • Lamenting the shrinking middle class
  • Rewards "one preferred hierarchy of digital metaness" in which mashups are superior to sources
  • But "blog of blogs" is NOT valued in my experience?
    • Perhaps valued by advertisers or VCs? Cheap to run, lots of SEO?
    • But who reads them??
    • This is evidence of a certain social myopia

On wealth and morality

  • Only expanded wealth enables large-scale moral conduct (80)
    • Not religious belief?
  • But expanding technology (and therefore wealth) makes some labor obsolete
  • Observe: decline of middle class, concentration of wealth [in the US] (81)

End of the open culture "rainbow" is "advertising" (82)

  • "No one dares to mash up ads" (??????????????)
  • Lanier asks, if cloud works, shouldn't advertising be unnecessary?
    • Missing the broader picture of advertising as branding, sponsorship, integration, convergence

"A few success stories" (83)

  • Diablo Cody
  • But were there ever MORE than a few?
    • Aren't they now simply more visible?

On blaming victims (84)

  • We blame victims (big media companies) when they fail to adapt because
    • they were "given notice", aka the internet is coming (84)
  • But now there are "more bloggers .. fewer Woodwards and Bernsteins" (85)
    • Isn't this "great men" situation just another aspect of internet as visibility engine? (85)

Takeaways

  • Irresponsible to "kill" newspapers, etc.
  • And to blame them for failing to adapt
  • Without also offering avenues for adapting/surviving
  • True, perhaps, if...
    • Journalism because of its role in democracy (see McChesney arg for govt intervention)
    • But music biz? Not a pretty picture there?
  • Isn't Lanier arguing that the industries are coextensive with the popular culture that they exploit?
    • If the music industry dies, popular music is gonna be fine. It was before and it will continue to be.
    • Why does he have faith that the pop music industries of the 20th c. were a reasonable avenue to a creative middle class?
    • Isn't their failure evidence that it was an experiment? A temporary state of affairs that no longer works?

Unspoken assumption throughout discussion of the creative economy

  • That progress is professional, sustainable "mental" jobs (86)
    • Musician, artist, filmmaker, investigative journalist
  • Has this ever existed in the past?
  • Are we, perhaps, closer now than ever before?
  • Has the internet closed off a formerly working system or
    • Has it destroyed structures of obscurity that allowed a handful of privileged participants to believe that they had succeeded within a meritocracy?
    • Not an either/or. Internet may enable both?
  • What kind of subject position is required to write that "creative people" are the "new peasants"? Isn't this offensive?

Toward a creative middle class (86)

VERY IMPORTANT info, again stuffed in a sidebar at the end of a chapter (86)

  • First, what Lanier is talking about sounds a lot like Florida's creative class, sought after to "revitalize" cities
  • Second, he writes that "what free really means [is that creative professionals] cloak themselves in stodgy institutions [such as the academy]"
  • He argues that the history of this class of people goes something like this:
    • Pan handling
    • Patronage
    • Commercial economy
  • And that this process has been one of progress
    • Does not (thankfully) believe in commercialization as a corruption
  • But rather states that "it's unlikely that patrons would have given us Vladimir Nabokov, the Beatles, or Stanley Kubrick" (86)
    • That's nice, but the "long tail" (for all its weaknesses (TODO)) has provided numerous examples of beloved artists who were forsaken by the industry, only to be re-discovered in an age of abundantly networked fandom
      • Simple examples: Sleep, R. Stevie Moore, Troll 2
  • More discussion of middle class is on (93)
    • "People who are perhaps most screwed ... "

More specifically addressing music and musicians (87-)

  • ""Open culture" revels in bizarre, exaggerated perceptions of the evils of record companies" (87, 88)
    • But record companies have a history of exploitation, racism
  • "If we choose to pry culture away from capitalism while the rest of life is still capitalistic, ..."
    • Is this the argument that free culture advocates? No. In fact, FC enables new ways to participate in markets
    • Is the "rest of life still capitalistic"? No. (see Hyde, the Gift?)
    • Can "culture" and "capitalism" be extracted? No. Capitalism IS culture. Finance, markets, etc. are not distinct from "culture."
  • Is online culture a "slum"?
    • The only group for whom "slumming it" is a reasonable term are groups of privilege.
    • This is really interesting provocation, but ultimately reveals class-based distinction. Mulholland Drive is "good" cinema, YouTube vlogs are "slumming it" cinema?
  • People making replicable digital objects and expecting scarcity results are "losers" in this new economy (89)
    • OK but convince us why these careers are worth protecting?
  • Lanier argues that the following groups thrive:
    • Oldies, aggregators, TV soundtracks, "vanity"/rich people projects, kids in a van (89)
    • Again, is this diff from before?

More on internet economy

  • Help desk as cottage industry, India and "non routine services" (94)
  • Network/ cloud mgmt as control, success (95)
"[Media] heavyweights were pushing back against [...] the Silicon Valley assertion that "content" from identifiable humans would no longer matter, and that the chattering of the crowd with itself was a better business bet than paying people to make movies, books, and music" (97-98)
  • THIS IS NOT a free culture argument
  • This is the kind of exploitation that many of us hope to stop
  • This is also the kind of exploitation that is typical of the big media industries
    • Documented at length in countless books on copyright and popular culture

"The lucky few ... will own [the cloud]" (99)

  • This is not luck, same old elites
  • If anything, this is a weakness of SFC (look at our board of dirs and strongest chapters!)

Algorithm, recommendation engine, removes "risks of creativity" (99)

  • What risks? Financial risks?
  • Is popular culture at risk?

Speculating on alternative economics

  • Assumption: "opposing poles of old media and open culture" (100)
    • This is not supported. Are they opposed
  • Recalling Nelson's proposed cloud: Xanadu
    • Single resource-identifier but authors retain control
  • Hopes to reward individuals, not cloud owners
  • "genuine universal system" (101)
  • "creativity is the only scarcity" (103)
    • Specific understanding of "creativity" as re: "originality"
  • Are "creativity and expression" ever paid? When, where?
    • Need more examples here (103)

"Demonetized" industries

  • Lanier argues that free culture is about "demonetized" industries
  • This is not an attractive outcome for people who don't have trust funds or similar outside financial support
    • In fact, money is one of the critical goals of many of these projects
    • That's what Silicon Valley is about
    • It's not a hippie "stealth socialist" project until everyone is already rich
"This [drive to demonetization] begs the question of how a person who is volunteering for the hive all day long will earn rent money" (104)
  • The answer is plain but conventionally unspoken: they don't

Digital currency

  • Yes, it's already digital
  • "universal simple system" of payment (105)
    • Google/FB/amazon/ebay would LOVE this! They've been trying!
    • They want to mine yr purchases for data
  • "Natural role of government" (105)
    • Yes, but global? Sounds colonial?
    • Are we going to get government-issued debit/ID cards?
    • Don't need a tin hat and shortwave radio to raise an eyebrow at this idea
  • Could the ISPs handle the transactions? (106)
    • "details would be tricky"

Other ideas

"Telegigging" (108)

  • Remote performances shared by virtual audience
  • Could performers negotiate this on their own? Or mediated by service provider?

Songles (108)

  • Also assumes central repository
  • Unique ID? Privacy trade off?
  • Return to "romance" of music industry
    • But don't I see that in tape / CD-r labels? + paypal
    • Why would I want to limit my audience, circulation?
    • Vinyl + mp3 is a kind of songle

Formal financial expression language (113)

  • Enable people to write instruments in a transparent, LISP-like language
  • Open innovation atop standardized language
  • Maintain some "risk" to this reformed marketplace to keep people interested

Retropolis: Second-order culture

  • Retro appeal = "an anomaly in popular music trends" (121)
    • Is there enough data to have an anomaly?
    • Seems like only considers the 20th c.
    • Popular music, pop music
  • "I long to be made obsolete ... reptition, boredom" (121)
    • Obsession with newness and "obsolecence" is really just hegemony
  • Linux is just UNIX, Wikipedia is just Britannica
    • "Boring"
    • But missing the contextual elements, too much emphasis on the text
    • Leads to a misunderstanding of this history + culture
    • Are these "copies" or are they next-steps? Evolutions? Milemarkers? Or even, final steps??
  • "First order expression" (122)
    • Artificial distinction
    • Examples are extreme: Blade Runner v. a "simplified mash up"
    • Obliterates social context and history of vidding (See: Jenkins, and others?)
  • What about the excitement that comes from finally connecting over an old love?
    • e.g. Metroid fans at CCS
    • Old? Retro? "Mere" nostalgia" or re-viving?
    • Power and importance of community memory, norm-building

On boomers (181-2)

  • Boomers living longer (some of them)
  • Lanier believes this is elongating neotony
    • "Youth" stage lasting longer
    • Thus, juvenile nature of 20-something industry
  • But isn't a valorization of youthfulness a uniquely boomer attribute?
    • The creation of "teen" is a boomer characteristic
    • Perhaps it is the value system of the boomers that continues to enable, and (most importantly) FINANCE infantile/juvenile processes
    • Youthfulness is rewarded as long as it is within the expected value system of the boomers
    • The 60s don't seem linger because they are uniquely great
    • They linger because they continue to be lauded by the people with capital
    • Evidence: young people who are not invested in notions of radical departure, obsolence, progress are alternately criticized and pitied within this very book!
  • Lanier writes about the two sides of "neoteny"
    • The wild-eyed idealism and the bullying
    • But there is a false dichotomy between on and offline behavior
    • Online behaviors are simply more observable, capturable, digital footprints
      • Again - visibility

On "schlock" (122)

  • Anti-popular
  • Doesn't consider the experience of connecting with others through schlock or the difference between America's Home Video and the indie schlock of YouTube
  • What about "our schlock"? Platform, context, ownership
    • YouTube might not be perfect but is it better than NBC?
  • "Only people can make schlock" (123)
    • No, only people can interpret something as "schlock"

On software

On "deliberate obscurity" of net architecture and literacies (124)

  • Part of FLOSS fallacy that anyone can contribute
    • Re call Squeak, that everything opens
  • What if this were integrated into K-12?
    • Literacies: packet-switching, DNS, client/server, markup langs
  • Later, Lanier says that only proprietary software could have made Flash, iPhone, or PageRank algorithm
    • That FLOSS only copies (see "taillights" and 90s MS memo)
    • But is this "conservative" or "liberatory"?
    • Perhaps not in UI but in relationship between user and machine (see literacies above?)

Linux as conservative clone of UNIX (126)

  • Linux brought UNIX to microcomputing
  • Most radical aspect of UNIX : the pipe
    • Not present in either Windows or Mac OS gui
  • Linux is radical popularitzation, democratization of a computing paradigm which was available only to elites for over a decade!

On "gen x" (129)

  • See retropolis

On "individual voice" (147)

  • Wikipedia and SNS "profiles" restrict voice
  • Homepages and independent web projects may have been less slick but had more individual voice
    • Better addressed tough topics
  • Talking also to problem of search results putting WP first
    • "consensus text"
    • Works in many cases but when it fails, it fails disastrously

Working with neurological problems in CS

  • Fourier and Gabor wavelet transforms
    • Brute force solutions to tricky pattern-recognition prbs (161-166)

On the influence of digital tools on music (170)

  • Easier to work with locked tempo in digital tools
    • Thus more music has locked tempo (170)

On Moore's Law (181)

"Not every technology-related process speeds up according to Moore's law" (181)

but also,

"It took less than a decade to get from the Apple II to the Macintosh" (181)

On "postsymbolic communication"

  • Inspired by early VR revelation
    • "I made some money from video games" ... built VR lab (184)
  • 1997 Roger Hanlon cephalopod videos (189)
  • "Postsymbolic communication" will "life users out of the world of symbols" and into "phenotropic" (190-191)
    • Symbols are seen as a limit
    • Rather than a layer of flexibility, playful manipulation
    • One example of post symbolic communication are highly culture-bound (a video game)
      • The other is physiological -- this is a communication of empathies?
    • Isn't symbolic communication essentially a "virtual reality"?
  • Phenotropic (non-symbolic) computing will "escape" protocols" and thus "locked-in ontologies" (191)
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