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Jaron Lanier

Who Owns The Future? Hardcover – January 1, 1656

by Jaron Lanier (Author)

4.3 603 ratings

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Language

English
Publisher

Allen Lane
Publication date

January 1, 1656
Dimensions

6.38 x 1.34 x 9.45 inches
ISBN-10

1846145228
ISBN-13

978-1846145223
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Allen Lane (January 1, 1656)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846145228
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846145223
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.42 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.34 x 9.45 inches

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4.3 603 ratings

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Jaron Lanier
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Jaron Lanier is known as the father of virtual reality technology and has worked on the interface between computer science and medicine, physics, and neuroscience. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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Dave Kinnear

Competence depends on delayed gratification

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2013

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For the past several years, it seems as though I rarely have any discussion with business executives or consumers that sooner or later doesn't turn to the topic of change and how technology is driving that change. In the longer and more focused conversations, we often wind up sharing views about where things are headed. Usually, we end up being either a bit giddy with exciting possibilities or totally bummed out over the impossibility of keeping up. And then came Jaron Lanier's 2013 book Who Owns the Future?

The question is intriguing to me. Who will own the future? Lanier makes a solid case that we are at a point to change the trajectory of ownership from information moguls, in the form of "Siren Servers," to a vast middle class. His argument, solid though it may be, is not always easy to follow. I found this book made me think deeply about topics and concepts to which I had previously only given light treatment.

In a nutshell, and overly simplified, here is the premise: Anyone and everyone connected to and actively using the web is providing data to the myriad companies they touch electronically. That data is being collected, stored, aggregated and used to sell you back the targeted ads so coveted by the companies selling products and services. We have the computing horse power to track the original source of the information, but we do not. If we did, we could make sure "micro or nano-payments" are made to every individual whose information is used by people all the way up the food chain. Such a system of payment for data would create a more equitable distribution of income from the massive amount of data we're collecting and by doing so, create a vast middle income class that would in turn provide real customer opportunities for companies.

"The information economy that we are currently building doesn't really embrace capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism." - Jaron Lanier

At this point, we are willingly giving up our data without compensation because we are enticed by the "free" use of applications, websites and cloud computing. If we continue on this path, technology of all kinds will continue to destroy more jobs than it creates thus hollowing out an already diminishing middle class. The system is obviously not sustainable. To quote the author; "The cloud is driven by statistics, and even in the worst individual cases of personal ignorance, dullness, idleness, or irrelevance, every person is constantly feeding data into the cloud these days. The value of such information could be treated as genuine, but it is not. Instead, the blindness of our standards of accounting to all that value is gradually breaking capitalism."

Lanier reminds us that we all know, or at least should know, that there is no pure form of capitalism, and we have never really experienced anything other than a regulated capitalism. Therefore, we should not be afraid to "tweak" our system to be sure that we do not allow the continued demised of the middle class or our whole system will fail.

Lanier's is an important book with a timely and serious message. Technologists and business leaders would do well to read this call to change the direction in which we now find ourselves heading. Technology can be seen as creating this challenge as well as being able to mitigate the negative effects. To do so, we must see that we are creating an unsustainable model and make the necessary corrections, difficult as that may be.

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S. Ferguson

`Siren Servers' as the Matrix

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2013

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Jaron Lanier has coined the term `Siren Servers' to describe "an elite computer, or coordinated collection of computers, on a network. It is characterized by narcissism, hyperamplified risk aversion, and extreme information asymmetry. It is the winner of an all-or-nothing contest, and it inflicts smaller all or nothing contests on those who interact with it." Jaron Lanier is a veteran Silicon Valley computer scientist, programmer, a musician, and the father of virtual reality (a term he is credited with popularizing according to wiki). Lanier is author of two recent fascinating insightful books that reveal the Internet as most of us do not know it. The World Wide Web has caught us in its webs woven in brilliance, freedom, communication, hype, subterfuge, and deceit - and yet we don't truly grok the full depth of our own voluntary immersion, complicity and surrender to the new `masters of the universe'.

Lanier is not against technology, far from it and he emphasizes the fact that his views are intended to be measured, balanced, and not destructive to the science he excels at and the world he helped give birth to. However as a true insider, he sees excesses, skewed imbalances, delusion and arrogance, along with a great deal of Wizard of Oz deception, which we as users need to be made aware of. As he says, maybe this isn't wrong - but people have the right to know. We should at least be aware. We need to have a deeper look into the hidden secretive `Cloud' realm of Silicon Valley elites. Are we using the Internet, or is the Net using us? "Siren Servers gather data from the network, often without having to pay for it. The data is analyzed using the most powerful, available computers, run by the very best available technical people. The results of the analysis are kept secret, but are used to manipulate the rest of the world to advantage."

"Free, as long as we don't mind being spied on." For as long as most of us having been enjoying the deceptive sensation of freedom we feel when we surf the web, these Siren Servers have been collecting data based on our behavior, the 100s of choices we make every day. Every choice we make, every click may be part of some massive data bank. The fact that Google, Facebook, amazon, and others are doing this stealth data collecting is now common knowledge. What is not so well known is that "the Siren Servers channel much of the productivity of ordinary people into an informal economy of barter and reputation, while concentrating the extracted old-fashioned wealth for themselves." While we are encouraged to do everything for free, and our behavioral data is being collected without our knowledge - the elites with the biggest computers are making vast fortunes off our gullible trance.

The fact that this is an invasion of privacy is only part of the hidden humiliation. The collapse of our markets, western economies, and the middle class can also be traced to these Siren Servers. In the world of high finance, Siren Servers are the tool used the quants, who play in the rarified air of hedge funds and of high-frequency trading. Lanier says, "The world of financial servers and quants is even more secretive than corporate empires like Wal-Mart or Google." These elite operations are using "stupendous correlative algorithms" to crunch the data from the Internet overnight, and this data was used to make money, but only for the elite rich and "fairly reliably."

As Lanier puts it, "there was a high-tech network scheme at play that seemed to concentrate wealth while at the same time causing volatility and trauma for ordinary people, particularly taxpayers who often ended up paying for a bailout." No individual investor can compete with these Siren Servers, no matter how smart or lucky. In NYC, I knew a Russian quant who explained to me that the requirement for investors allowed into his quant fund was $5 million USDs. I assume that amount was for them considered disposable income. The vast amounts of money involved in these quant funds influences, moves, and skews the market for the ordinary `little' investors.

Jaron Lanier says that Siren Servers give their owners a "superior information position" and a financial advantage. The biggest computers and those who own them win! Siren Servers have changed everything from the middle class disappearing, financial QE chaos, and the wealth transference to the 1%. This change has influenced who qualifies to get a mortgage to buy a home, our insurance policies, and medical plans that affect our health -- and not for the better. The agencies know everything about you before you apply. Lanier has ideas for solutions in his books.

A rather bizarre deification of the machine appears to be fashionable as praise is given to the "automatic, evolutionary processes of the computing cloud" while the "capabilities of the individual, rational mind" are underplayed. And, "it is even more fashionable to praise the success of business based on dominant servers, even though the very success of these businesses is based precisely in reducing the degree of evolutionary competition in a market." What kind of economy can exist when only the 1% will be able to buy anything? The system is consuming itself.

The Matrix & the Sanskrit Texts: My focus is metaphysics and I have written about the Matrix film from the understanding of the Sanskrit texts, which contain the idea that the matrix is the mechanism by which the universe is generated. The Matrix, which means womb, is termed Prakriti in Sanskrit and is described philosophically at length as Samkhya in the ancient Sanskrit texts, in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita, which is the essence of all the other Sanskrit texts. The Matrix film was in fact based on the Upanishads. Recently I was writing a series of articles on `Free Will' in the Bhagavad Gita and I began to realize how these Siren Servers are like projections of the Matrix. Even more impressive was the comparison to an verse in the Bhagavad Gita XVIII.61 that states: "The Lord of all beings abides in the Heart, causing all beings to wander, to move (to revolve), [as if] fixed, attached to, mounted on a machine, by the power of Illusion (maya)." The Sanskrit for this machine we are involuntarily mounted on is yantrarudhani.

The profoundly deep concept of the Sanskrit yantrudhani has always fascinated me. Somehow over the years again and again I find myself thinking about this machine that the text says we are fixed 'mounted' on. I often connect this invisible cosmic machine-mechanism that enfolds us in the temporal illusory hologram, to the famous enigmatic Sri Yantra, which one can meditate on and never quite grasp. One consequence of Enlightenment is the realization that Life is an eternally repeating mechanical performance, made up of unending fantastic cycles of time, that nevertheless become familiar and tiresome. Sages have observed that when we become aware of the repetitious and mechanical nature of life, we lose interest. The mystery has been solved. Are we appalled and bored by a life that is totally predictable?

This metaphysical observation leads me back to the Siren Servers which intend, it seems, to corral all of us into predictable repetitive clone-like behaviour and patterns of consumption that benefit the ruling tyrants, the rich and the technocrats who serve them. When our highly complicated thought processes are entrapped in only specific areas of the brain, Lanier asks, where will individuality come from? From Jaron Lanier's 2010 book, 'you are not a gadget': "When it comes to people, we technologists...don't understand the brain well enough to comprehend phenomena like education or friendship on a scientific basis. So when we deploy a computer model...in a way that has an effect on real lives...When we ask people to live their lives through our models, we are potentially reducing life itself. How can we ever know what we might be losing?"

The over use of computers and addiction to surfing the Net has been shown to actually alter the human brain physically. From `The Shallows, What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains' by Nicholas Carr: "The Net's cacophony of stimuli short circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our mind from thinking deeply or creatively. ...Heavy use has neurological consequences. ...as the time we spend hopping across links, crowds out the time we devote to quiet reflection and contemplation, the [brain] circuits that support those old intellectual functions and pursuits weaken and begin to break apart. The brain recycles the disused neurons and synapses..."

Rapid-fire Meditation? One wonders how this kind of entrainment by the machine will damage our capacity to meditate. Surely the rapid-fire experience of zooming around the Internet, reading dozens of articles in the most superficial way, perhaps only the first paragraph if that, is the extreme antithesis of the state of consciousness one hopes to achieve in meditation. This `redirection of our mental resources' and `making judgements that are imperceptible to us' as Nicholas Carr says, have been shown to `impede comprehension and retention'. Carr quotes the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, who back in the 1950s said: "...the looming tide of [the] technological could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle and beguile man that calculative [quantitative] thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking." The frenzy of quantity over quality, jumping from one focus to the next, using only a small part of the brain may destroy our capacity for quiet contemplation and meditation. The state of a calm and attentive mind cultivated in silence is not only the source of all genuine creativity and innovation, but also the only Door out of the temporal illusory holographic webs we have bound ourselves within.

How much of what we surf on the Net do we actually learn and absorb - and how much is mere titillation, escape and addiction. Where is our Free Will in formats generated by one-size-fits-all software. Are these new masters of the universe, who we are in fact allowing to transform the very way our brains operate -- are they true masters of their own consciousness. Generic formats that gather our personal information exist and are used not for our benefit, but to manipulate us without our knowledge.

The quantification of human behaviour? As Jaron Lanier says, "Yes it's free - as long as we allow them to spy on us." What kind of freedom is that? Perhaps in this phase of our current Kali Yuga, the yantrarudhani has been projected externally into the hologram as these Siren Servers by our own lost and confused consciousness. The Kali Yuga is the Age of Conflict and Confusion. Rene Guenon's "Reign of Quantity" has descended into new depths. Have we created a new sort of Labyrinth to escape from, one literally and physically etched into our own brain?

Jason Lanier from his book `you are not a gadget': "It's crazy not to worry that, with millions of people connected through a medium that sometimes brings out their worst tendencies, massive fascist-style mobs could rise up suddenly." Will the next generation be more likely to "succumb to pack dynamics" because they have grown up with "crowd aggregation, as is the current fad." The Siren Servers make it easier than ever for tyrants to herd the crowd, manipulating masses, shoals of people who never met, on paths leading to the abyss.

A godlike overview: When I am reading Jaron Lanier, I feel like I am reading about a world so far removed from me that it seems to be another planet. And yet I am well aware that this remote arcane, rather monastic realm has taken over, and has to some degree in stealth, become the new pervasive form of power, controlling and encompassing our lives -- a new form of the Matrix. Silicon Valley is the new true-believer priestcraft, disconnected from the rest of us, in arrogant narcissism, the new 'masters' of the universe.

A world I do know a bit about is finance and economics, which I have taught myself for years now. These Siren Servers are responsible for the creation of the shadowy world of quants, derivatives and sliced CDOs (collateralized debt obligations). Replacing the intelligence of individuals with algorithms is the source of what has recently impoverished and destroyed the American middle class - as Jaron Lanier fully understands. Lanier also says Siren Servers will not go away, they allow the elite few to access too much power, a quantitative power that is real and produces results however flawed. Such results have made billions for those who crave power and have little regard, in fact real disdain for the common man - us.

Jaron Lanier: "To the owner of the Siren Server, it can seem as though that server has a godlike overview of events not only on the network, but also in the world at large. This is the fantasy of being able to accomplish global optimization. It is an illusion."

The Hive Mind: Observe the behavior of shoals in the sea, social media, and lemmings. Is it wise to surrender completely our individuality to the whims of the hive mind? Does the crowd group always make the best right decision? In his book, 'Crowds and Power' the Noble Prize winner Elias Canetti (1905-94) observed that "...the deep urge of the crowd to maintain itself in the acute stage; not to disintegrate; to remain a crowd. This feeling is sometimes so strong that people prefer to perish together with open eyes, rather than acknowledge defeat and thus experience the disintegration of their own crowd."

From Doris Lessing (1919-2013), also a Nobel Prize winner, "But it is my belief that it is always the individual, in the long run, who will set the tone, provide the real development of society. ... Looking back, I see what a great influence an individual may have, even an apparently obscure person, living a small, quiet life. It is individuals who change societies, give birth to ideas, who standing against the tides of opinion, change them. ... Everything that has ever happened to me has taught me to value the individual, the person who cultivates and preserves his or her own way of thinking, who stands out against group thinking, group pressures." ['Prisons We Choose to Live Inside' 1987]

Algorithmic technology as the new 'religion' so ardently being pushed on us by the true-believer priestcraft is not about giving us greater freedom. Rather it is the same age-old racket, priests selling indulgences, hype in new clothing that benefits the elite, the powerful and the rich. Unless and until a robot can be endowed with a chakra system, it will be the permanent slave of its programmer. No matter how killer-cool the apps, the robot is doomed to a shelf life of repetition - with the Door to Enlightenment, Moksha and release slammed tight shut. Siren Servers to me are the Borg-like aspect of the Matrix, a sort of heartless ultimate quantification of human behavior - remote, ruthless and often blindly destructive.

Who owns the future? The Siren Servers -- and evidently, in the hands of greedy tyrants and their arrogant technocrats. Is that what we want? Is mindless surfing the Internet in clueless ignorance worth an even deeper bondage. At the very least we need to become aware of how we are being used and deceived. Jaron Lanier says it doesn't have to be this way.

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Anuj Kumar

its difficult to read but a must read

Reviewed in India on June 22, 2019

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if you wanna know the reality of internet of things how they sell everything free( well nothing is free) and how they manipulate human behavior and society for the sake of getting richer with every upload and comment we make this book is the one you are looking for..Lanny has done a great job on unfolding the hidden dirty business behind internet of things... though he himself is a tech guy he advocates of system where everyone can benefit from internet in this era of fakebook.

acheteur

Plus étroit que son titre, mais intéressant quand même.

Reviewed in France on April 5, 2017

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Oubliez le titre grandiloquent. La pépite de ce livre réside dans la proposition très simple que les entreprises qui collectent nos données nous paient pour cette collecte. Outre l'évidente justice de cette proposition, Lanier affirme que c'est une décision urgente face au chômage de masse qui se dessine. Pour ma part, je ne peux que lui donner raison.

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schwab

Must read!

Reviewed in Spain on February 7, 2016

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This analysis is a clear example of a deep dive into assumptions we take for granted but which we have to research to change a dangerous practice ! How to maintain a human based high tech!

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A. D. Thibeault

A Brief Summary and Review

Reviewed in Canada on May 29, 2013

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*A full executive summary of this book is available at newbooksinbrief dot com.

The main argument: Not so long ago the Internet was seen as the next great economic engine. The optimism was never higher than at the peak of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, of course; but even after the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, many believed that this was but the growing pains of an emerging industry, and that in the long run the Internet would yet provide the foundation for a new and improved information economy.

Since that time, it is certainly the case that the Internet has spawned a few major successes (such as Google, Amazon, eBay and now Facebook), as well as a host of hopefuls (such as Twitter, Kickstarter, Pinterest and Instagram). However, it cannot be said that the economy has enjoyed a great boost since the Internet exploded. On the contrary, the economy has, at best, stagnated--and it currently shows no signs of escaping its slump. So what went wrong?

According to Silicon Valley luminary Jarion Lanier, the problem is not so much with the Internet per se, but with how it has been set up, and how the major Internet companies themselves are organized. To begin with, major Internet companies tend to form monopolies, or near-monopolies, and on a global scale (mainly because Internet networks are able to reach a global audience and undercut local players, but also because these networks are more valuable to their users as they grow larger [for instance, it is most convenient to just join Facebook to connect with friends because this is the platform that most people, for whatever reason, have come to use--it just simplifies things]). The formation of monopolies and near monopolies destroys competition, of course, which compromises economic growth.

Even more important than this, though, is that Internet megaliths employ relatively few people, and have very little overhead (thus they simply don't contribute much back to the economy). You see, the business plan of most successful Internet companies is to offer a particular service for free (such as Internet search efficiency with Google, or social connecting with Facebook, or business connecting with LinkedIn, or an auction platform with eBay, or music and video files on a sharing site etc). The framework of the platform is provided by the company, but the content of the service is provided by the users and/or the general public (indexable websites on Google, Facebook pages on Facebook, LinkedIn profiles on LinkedIn, auction items on eBay, and music and video files on sharing sites etc.). The site attracts users with the prospect of a free and useful service, and the site itself makes revenue through selling advertising space. Oftentimes, the company collects information from its users through its activities on the platform, and uses this information to help target them with ads (among other things) and/or sells this information to third parties so these third parties can use it themselves. (Lanier calls companies that operate in this way Siren Servers--the term applies to any company or organization that uses data streams to garner wealth and power.)

As we can see, then, a big part of the value of these Internet companies comes from their users' content and information--as well as the content of third parties whose material is being shared no end. Now, if these users and content providers were being paid fairly for their contributions (according to how much value they bring to the Internet companies, and other Siren Servers, who use it), we could surely expect a major economic boost as a result. Instead, the users and content providers are paid nothing for their contributions (or at most a fraction of what their contributions represent). The end result of this is that wealth is concentrated at the top--in the hands of the major Internet companies and other Siren Servers--and the economy as a whole suffers (since few jobs are created to allow the wealth to trickle down).

And that's just the beginning. The fact is that more and more things are being digitized as we move forward (for instance, driving is being digitized through driverless cars, education lessons are being digitized through being recorded on digital equipment, and even physical objects are being digitized through 3D printing). As things become digitized they become capable of being shared over the Internet for next to nothing. This will inevitably mean the further erosion of productive jobs (and whole industries--such as has already occurred in the music and video industries).

Ultimately, the only wealth-generating endeavor left will be the Internet platforms that share all of this information--or provide other free services. Of course, with nothing productive left to advertise, their revenues will fall off as well, so even they won't be making any money. For Lanier, this is the fate we can expect unless we change the game we are currently playing.

The long short of it is that we must find a way to pay people adequately for the information and content they contribute to the information economy. Lanier argues this means reorganizing the Internet in such a way that informational transactions are monetized--such that the users of information are charged and the providers are paid for each transaction. It is not going to be easy to reorganize the Internet in this way-not only technically, but also because we have all become accustomed to using the Internet the way it is (and we like getting things for `free').

Ultimately, though, we will have no choice, for our current course is leading us to an economy that is dominated by wealth at the top--and eventually no wealth for anyone. At some point, this state of affairs must lead to a revolt and/or a complete breakdown.

Lanier's book is a sprawling affair occasioned with numerous fairly bizarre flights of fancy (I didn't mind this so much since Lanier is fairly interesting, and has a unique perspective), but the core ideas here are very intriguing and worthy of serious consideration. The problem with Lanier's solution at this point is that the economy has not yet slumped enough in order to convince us that Lanier's theory must be true, and that radical solutions are needed (and Lanier's solution is radical). Nevertheless, should events continue to play out as Lanier foresees, his solution may well become attractive at some point. A full executive summary of the book is available at newbooksinbrief dot com; a podcast discussion of the book will be available soon.

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alessandro legnani

illuminante

Reviewed in Italy on August 2, 2014

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Da leggere. E poi smettere di usare Facebook. Perché fare arricchire gli altri con i nostri lavori like a gratis ?

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