{"id":934,"date":"2006-06-12T20:40:03","date_gmt":"2006-06-13T00:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=934"},"modified":"2006-06-18T16:49:39","modified_gmt":"2006-06-18T20:49:39","slug":"a-dangerous-illusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=934","title":{"rendered":"A Dangerous Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s an excellent essay by Jaron Lanier titled <a href=\"http:\/\/edge.org\/3rd_culture\/lanier06\/lanier06_index.html\">&#8220;Digital Maoism&#8221; (Link)<\/a> that&#8217;s very much worth taking the time to read if you&#8217;re all into the internet and social software and Web 2.0 technology {and even if you&#8217;re not}. Lanier&#8217;s attitude very much reflects my own &#8211; from the manner in which something like Wikipedia functions and how it&#8217;s been so quickly adopted to the the slow-to-develop business models for content creators and the aggregation of anything posted on the net sans context to the whole idea that collectivism has all the answers to society&#8217;s problems.  It&#8217;s good to have such an eloquent individual address the concerns I share.<\/p>\n<p>He covers a lot of territory and raises some issues the pro-collectivites are probably going to dismiss. But I&#8217;m with Lanier. The pragmatic view is to expect a collective of users to: a) do what you don&#8217;t expect and b) do what you shouldn&#8217;t <em>have<\/em> to expect. Right now I&#8217;m already expecting a lot of pretty stupid stuff. It&#8217;s the even <em>more<\/em> stupid, unexpected stuff that should have us all being a bit more wary about how all this is starting to play out.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve not yet read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edge.org\/discourse\/digital_maoism.html\">responses to his essay (Link)<\/a>, but they should prove interesting. Some I expect will be well-formed. Others I expect to be drivel. I <em>have<\/em> seen a list of some of the names on the list; their participation &#8211; in my mind &#8211; proves some of Lanier&#8217;s points. After all, who gave these people a soapbox on which to respond, and what qualifies <em>their<\/em> opinion over anyone else&#8217;s? Oh wait. Wouldn&#8217;t that be the lowest-common denominator collective that bestows on them a kind of real-life\/net-life celebrity? Right. I&#8217;ll buy my own drum, thank you.<\/p>\n<p>(Okay, I had to peek. Love this. I didn&#8217;t know <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=889\">unqualified teenager&#8217;s editing<\/a> the Wikipedia were &#8220;the interactive media elite&#8221;. Too funny.)<\/p>\n<p>via the <a href=\"http:\/\/neoglam.com\/?p=51\">neoglam blog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s an excellent essay by Jaron Lanier titled &#8220;Digital Maoism&#8221; (Link) that&#8217;s very much worth taking the time to read if you&#8217;re all into the internet and social software and Web 2.0 technology {and even if you&#8217;re not}. Lanier&#8217;s attitude &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=934\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}