What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web?

[ZahZoo]

Very interesting read from one of the developers of Web 2.0...

I found his take on how the information age making everything free is killing the middle class. He also foresees a social catastrophe in the works due to anonymous socializing via the net. Then turns some interesting insight into how the net is fostering mob rule similar to Russian Pograms and how it's evolving into the lynch mob potential which he helped create into this digital barbarism.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ideas-innovations/What-Turned-Jaron-Lanier-Against-the-Web-183832741.html?c=y&page=1

[vandeleur]

Interesting read, in truth no one knows where this stuff is taking society .
Probably like most things a little bit bad a little bit good depending on your take on things .

[ZahZoo]

Well it sure reshaped the whole music and entertainment industry from top to bottom both physically and economically on a global scale. It wasn't that long ago these things were just shared over time around the tribal campfire.

The most interesting and fast paced change though is how social culture is changing so rapidly. We are interacting with so many more people for so much more time than previously in close to real time.

I do know that studies are showing physiological changes in the human brain when it comes to storing short term and long term memories. Used to be you'd have study and learn for long periods of time to gain in-depth knowledge on a given subject. Now rather than building that library in your head... you are storing web locations in long term memory and passing deeper knowledge off to short term memory. then that's shifting rapidly too... rather than going back to the book to find an answer... you don't even need to remember where the book is... google it.

That's pretty significant... especially when you consider intellectual value based on experience and education.

[vandeleur]

All interesting points, these egg heads who banged out the inter webble had no idea that social implications it would have.
Though when I think of it that is what we do we change to external stimuli , what we create or change impacts on us in ways we don't think about as we rush to impliment them .

As for the knowledge retention/access ive always defended the internet against the luddites because free access to knowledge was an important thing in any society .
Its only a 100 ish years ago certain sections of society couldnt properly read ,write and afford books or have universal access to education , and the net allows these counties with more repressive govt's access to more accurate information ( if they can work out how to by pass all the blocks).

Pity this access is used for facebook and the army lol

Intersting question would be with the difficulty in policing these things , what would happen if somene invented some web application that was clearly adictive/dangerous how would society deal with it getting out of control .