http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/ Engadget Comments for Book Review: You Are Not a Gadget http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 12:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
Lord Vader is a gadget.]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
Once in a while, Lord Vader throws a smart and funny comment.

This isn't one of those times.

Sorry, son.]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
My little sister wears your lego likeness around her neck. She's a huge fan]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Here's a review from Lord Vader:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rWsDAcCbY]]>Jul 13th 2010 2:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/]]>Jul 13th 2010 2:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 5:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
There are ads? I don't see any ads.]]>Jul 13th 2010 2:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/That's what hit me. Is it simply advertising for the sake of advertising? or advertizing aggregators, which are also free. Or is it advertising a place where you see more advertisements about other advertisement filled websites? Yes, when everything is free but advertisement publishing, advertisements advertise advertisements! That is almost already happening. Advertisements advertise free ad supported sites. Which came first, the advertisement or the advertisement?]]>Jul 13th 2010 4:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
Which I just advertised for...]]>Jul 13th 2010 4:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
The only way I can think of to get people to live in the way you suggest would be to force them. Which, of course, would destroy the foundations of what you wish to create. The problem of forcing people to do 'good' is that there always has to be enforcers in the equation, and the enforcers always abuse their power. Always. People who think that they would be an exception to that rule are among the most dangerous people on the planet. ]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
The worst bit of Buck Rogers? No one can dance.

Free is incompatible with capitalism and communism and yet both ideologies when implemented tend towards free. There's no profit in free and some are addicted to profit due to an evolutionary need to compete. Give everyone the right to something and they won't be grateful, they won't work for the state. Philanthropy hardly exists because it is incompatible with the evolutionary need to compete.
Something will break; the closer we get to free the more profiteers will do to subvert the system. Advertising at the edges is insignificant due to banner blindness and cool code like AdBlock. Only the people selling and buying advertising believe in it. They have their own ecosystem. The profiteers will use censorship and propaganda hidden in the free stuff to continue control the proles. It could be here where the fight ensues. You can see it toady in these comments and on other blogs like TheRegister where some articles are lambasted by it's audience.

The review/book talks about content being condensed. I'm glad this is Engadget and not Twitter.]]>Jul 14th 2010 5:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 14th 2010 6:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
That is until I looked at the price. $25! Ludicrous.]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
With creative works like music, film and books, there is no such situation. These come from individual creativity, ideas and fabrications of emotion. You can't change or improve on, nor can you quantify the improvements of a person's individual, unique feelings. Altering how a person's feelings are presented would likely end up with something that doesn't properly reflect the person's feelings, or their ability to present them. There isn't a problem to solve; there is no end goal; there is no definition of success or correctness.]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
However, in situations where many people want to work towards a common goal, where a common method is defined and it is possible to tell whether a change brings the community closer or further away from that common goal, it is incredibly effective: this is because it isn't about an individual becoming successful, but a project and its fruit. Additionally, people are willing to pay individuals to work full-time on the project, even where the fruit of the project is given away for free: this can be seen in Linux (Android, Ubuntu, Red Hat etc.), Apache, MySQL and OpenOffice (Oracle) and even Wikipedia (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/en - at one point, a target price of several (eight?) million dollars was set and the wikipedia community met that target in donations). With all these success stories, I find it ludicrous to suggest that open culture directly results in failure.]]>Jul 13th 2010 2:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/"He was Scholar at Large for Microsoft from 2006 to 2009, and Partner Architect there from 2009 forward."
http://www.jaronlanier.com/general.html]]>Jul 13th 2010 2:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
As somebody who used to be a shareware author, I think he's mostly right about that part. (Understand that I now work almost exclusively on open-source software - both at my paid job and, by choice, on my own personal projects.)

It used to be - just about, for relatively few people, but at least in theory - possible to make money writing software that you want to write and that other ordinary people want to use.

Now it's only possible if you are writing the kind of software that *large businesses* want to use and will sponsor you to develop; and you'll probably have to get a job working for one of those large businesses. Want to be your own boss - the independent creative coming up with great ideas and implementing them, like writers or (...at least in the past) musicians? You'll need an independent income.

There are whole categories of software - most of it - that nobody will ever pay for any more (and only a few categories they still will - games, Adobe's design stuff, CAD, high-end music software). And why would they when there are good-enough open source alternatives?

I think open source software is great, which is why I write it. But the interface with a capitalist system (i.e. the fact I need to eat and pay bills) is really sketchy. Fact is that open source has it right - software ought to be free, it costs nothing to duplicate - and the capitalist system has it wrong - there's no way to reward people appropriately for working on that software. But the capitalist system isn't going to change. (Nor is open source.) You can sort of imagine solutions - governments tax ISPs or computer hardware or just increase other taxes a bit, spread that money around software developers according to how much people use their free software - but these aren't flawless nor ever remotely likely to be implemented anywhere, and certainly not in rising hypercapitalist states like China.

Basically, nothing we can do about it, but yes open-source and the impression that software ought to be free are great for the public and also work pretty well for software that delivers solutions to major businesses. But the results are not great for independent developers.

To put all this another way, yes I'm sore I have to work a day job. :)
]]>Jul 13th 2010 8:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://opendesktop.org/content/show.php?content=119563 - he's created a Plasma script and released it under the GPL that reads his (proprietary?) wallpaper clock format. Because this is accessible from the Add Widgets-->Get New Widget dialogue directly, as well as being one of the highest-ranking widgets there, it is easily accessible to users. Then, he restricts access to some of his wallpaper clocks to registered users, who also get a few extra goodies (http://www.vladstudio.com/register/). There are other various ways - some twitter clients, for example, add the developer's/company's Twitter account to your list of followers and use that to publish sponsored links etc., but that's close enough to advertising that I didn't bother to include it.]]>Jul 13th 2010 8:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
I also used to write shareware. Nothing sucks like seeing thousands or tens of thousands of downloads, and hardly any purchases.
I finally gave up and started writing code just for myself, or BSD licensed.

Haven't read the book yet - plan to buy it.]]>Jul 14th 2010 12:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
In fact, what we have had for a long time now is a world in which it is difficult to be any kind of creative type, period. All that the open-source culture of the web does is give people who would otherwise most likely not be making any money off their creations and who would in all likelihood go off and lead a life of being an office drone or what have you, the chance to at least make some kind of impact and find appreciation, across physical boundaries.

The ability to "make it big" has not changed much. But the ability to make some kind of impact, potentially even associated with a small revenue stream, has increased IMHO.]]>Jul 13th 2010 1:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 10:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 1:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 3:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 13th 2010 5:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
Your friends at engadget accuse you of being a Luddite and then assign you the task of trolling Twitter for something of value (http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/who-should-i-follow-gaming-edition-part-one/)? Are they trying to torture you?]]>Jul 13th 2010 3:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/Jul 16th 2010 6:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
]]>Jul 13th 2010 3:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
Examples: "Teenagers, Lanier contends, are the most affected, as they manage homogenized identities on social networking sites rather than cultivate an original idea of who they are."

That's what we are, copying machines. In culture, in art, in music, in biology... everything we do is built on top of the old and the previously copied subject.

He comes across as sort of FUDish, "them teenager whippersnappers copying and aggregating, not like we used to do, we were originals!" Nonsense.

"Lanier describes as 'mashup' culture -- where nothing is quite a whole work but rather snippets of things remixed together -- leads to aggregation of aggregators such as FriendFeed, where it's hard to tell the source of a work, idea, or quote, and where there is barely any context, if any at all."

To that I say, Lanier ol' boy, lighten up. This is the way it has always been and now it's only easier for the masses to join in at the table to ctrl+c/ctrl+p... and that's good.]]>Jul 13th 2010 3:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/After watching the video I laughed at his blatant inability to exercise at least a bit of intellectual honesty when asked "what good has come from the FLOSS movement"... his answer is ridiculous: "nothing." That's absurd.

The first things that came out of his mouth should be obvious when pointing to his motivation: "a fountain of wealth & opportunity."

Now if his motivations are all about monetary profit and climbing the corporate ladder of success than maybe he should have picked a different field of devotion. The Internet will be a success when it's spread further to all of humanity and we can all join in *collective* sharing and learning. There is *great* opportunity with this, but maybe not in his specifically narrow bourgeois system. (and THAT is good).]]>Jul 13th 2010 4:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
I haven't read the book (either, presumably) but I have to say, "A-freaking-men!" Originality, originality, give me a break. I was raised with classical violin lessons, got my first degree in music composition, so the example I would give is, if it weren't for Handel and Telemann, would Mozart have written the music he wrote? (No.) or if it wasn't for Mozart or Haydn, would Beethoven have written the music he wrote? (No.)

"Creativity" is taking what came before one step further, that's all. Tools change, social constructs change, but people still express themselves with what they have, and that won't change, even with them durned liburtarians on the interblags.]]>Jul 14th 2010 9:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
Care to recommend any other recent philosophical takes on technology?]]>Jul 13th 2010 3:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
I enjoyed the review. Also, it may just be my reading comprehension at this point in the morning, but "Because of this, the final section of You Are Not a Gadget...where Lanier is least convincing, seemingly because the future which he has just outlined is indeed so very bleak" might be missing a verb.

]]>Jul 14th 2010 7:05AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/13/book-review-you-are-not-a-gadget/
10,000 or whatever years of civilization and it's only been in the last 100 or so where 'content creators' have been allowed wealth and prestige.

Why so many think that actors, artists and thinkers have some role that needs to be put on a pedestal in society and worshiped I will never understand.

]]>Jul 14th 2010 4:51PM