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Quote by Jaron Lanier

“Something like missionary reductionism has happened to the internet with the rise of web 2.0. The strangeness is being leached away by the mush-making process. Individual web pages as they first appeared in the early 1990S had the flavor of personhood. MySpace preserved some of that flavor, though a process of regularized formatting had begun. Facebook went further, organizing people into multiple-choice identities, while Wikipedia seeks to erase point of view entirely. If a church or government were doing these things, it would feel authoritarian, but when technologists are the culprits, we seem hip, fresh, and inventive. People will accept ideas presented in technological form that would be abhorrent in any other form. It is utterly strange to hear my many old friends in the world of digital culture claim to be the true sons of the Renaissance without realizing that using computers to reduce individual expression is a primitive, retrograde activity, no matter how sophisticated your tools are.”

Quote by Jaron Lanier

Work

You Are Not a Gadget

This book delves into the relationship between technology and human nature, questioning the role of gadgets in shaping our lives and challenging the notion of a gadget-centric society. more

Author

Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier is a writer, musician, and computer scientist. He is renowned for his pioneering work in the field of virtual reality (VR) and is recognized for his critical analysis of network culture in his book 'You Are Not a Gadget'. more

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