Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I REALLY wanted to like Lanier's new book, as I liked - and positively reviewed - his previous work, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage). I like and admire several points Lanier made there, but alas, there are simply too many fallacies in this book for Lanier's conclusion to hold. Also, stylistically, the book is poorly laid out, very repetitive, and prone to meandering. First, the positive: as with Lanier's last book, I think he is on the right track in criticizing the insane mantra that "informatoin wants to be free." (First, information isn't sentient enough to want anything, and second, those who produce information often want to be paid because the production isn't costless.) Second, several of Lanier's points about siren servers' ability to lock customers into their particular ecosystem to access content (think Apple's ios, or amazon's cloud for ebooks and mp3 music) are very well taken and need to be taken seriously. Third, as big an "open source" enthusiast, I can see at least some danger in allowing (or encouraging) individuals to create and make available information "for free" (though I don't think the results will be nearly as dire as Lanier predicts). Now, for the negative. First, his argument is premised on the idea that for economies to be healthy, the existence of a middle class is required. I am not an economist, but I know enough economists to know that this is a contentious point and very probably a tautology (the truth seems to be that an economy where products can be geared toward a middle class needs a healthy middle class.) Not that there aren't good reasons to want to see a healthy middle class, but "economies need them" is either not a good reason, or a good reason that requires more argument than Lanier gives. Second, Lanier is certainly no luddite, but his argument is identical to the luddite arguments of the past...the ones which have all proven wrong - that the new technology will simply destroy more jobs than it creates. Why have these arguments proved wrong? Because they are based on the assumption that the current marketplace (and the demand consumers express in it) is what the future economy will just look like, and that our lack of ability to guess at what people may demand in the future (once technology renders some current occupations and products obsolete) means that those possibilities probably don't exist. Take his brief discussion of how technology will destroy, or seriously dent, higher education. He talks about how new technologies that can scale instruction in a way that will render the existing model of higher education largely irrelevant spells doom for the higher education industry.That may be, but if this new education costs less than current education, we must imagine that the money that people WOULD HAVE spent on higher education will go somewhere - either saved (and invested) or spent. Where? We can only imagine. Lanier really does write as if he believes that people will just stop demanding things when present demands become easier to satisfy. Second, he writes that people should be paid when they contribute information to, say, Google, Facebook, etc, because they are providing these companies with valuable information (remember, facebook's users ARE NOT the customers; the businesses that use user's information are.) But, is the fact that they don't receive money payments mean they are not paid? What about Google providing me a free word processor, helpful calendar program, a free website creation service, and other things? Yes, Lanier may have a point that users may not realize exactly what information they are giving up, but I do have to imagine that a great many of them would still see the services "gives" them as a payment, even if they were made aware of exactly how much Google benefits from their information sharing. (Even in cases like Youtube, there must be a reason people are willing to create videos and share them freely; maybe the payment is just the knowledge that others are benefiting.) Simply put: just because money doesn't change hands doesn't mean payment doesn't exist. There are some other flaws in the book, such as Lanier's bizarre talk of how siren servers undermine the idea of free will by creating better and better behavior-prediction software, as if the fact that I can predict what choice you will make means you actually didn't make a choice. (Even if a company can predict what advertisement or price point it would take to 'nudge' you to buy x, that doesn't mean that you had no choice in buying x.) Stylistically, the book is very rambling and somewhat disorganized. It may well be that Lanier's case is much stronger than I am giving credit for and he just wasn't able to properly express it in this book. He is a very smart man indeed, but reading this book was much like reading someone who had so many intricate thoughts (and saw synthesis between just about every field on the planet) that he had difficulty limiting himself to one cogent argument. I skipped or skimmed a good many pages in the book largely because there were tangents and repetitions throughout. As I said, I wanted very much to like this book, and pre-ordered it months ago in anticipation. Unfortunately, there are many bad assumptions and arguments here, and the lack of structure just pushed it over the edge into the "disappointing" category.