I posted a link to a book review on “You are Not a Gadget” a couple of weeks ago. There’s more. For once, I think the comment section of the Globe and Mail got it right. Jaron Lanier comes across as an alarmist. The overwhelming good of the Internet and technology in general far outweighs the wrongs (that can probably, with hard work, be righted or better controlled). Boston is rainy and windy.

From the Globe and Mail,

Lanier argues that the Web has created a “hive” mentality that emphasizes the crowd over the individual, and is changing what it means to be a person. “Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks, and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communications has demeaned interpersonal interaction.” Having grown up digital, “a new generation has come of age with a reduced expectation of what a person can be, and of who each person might become.”

Saskia Sassen is a fantastic speaker. She’s hitting on a few points that are important to me, particularly the “immobile can also make globalities.” Branching Kenyan youth into the international struggle for change can engage the masses in pro-active change instead of violent upheaval. The field of International Development needs to better consider the role of ICT in building these global networks NMC has been talking about. How do people use information at their disposal now? How can we support, improve and learn from this process?

Enrich your presentation – with some knee-jerk comments and reactions from the crowd by integrating social media. To be fair, Twitter keeps the questions short and sweet and allows the audience to read what other people are thinking, perhaps sparking smart thought tangents. However, I can’t help but wonder if “tweeting” is easier than actually thinking about and reflecting on an issue (yet leaves you with the same satisfaction of being intellectually involved on some level).

A slice from the minds of those who “get” the social-power-potential of the Internet. Ethan Zuckerman has kindly produced a series of blog posts outlining each speech:

1. His own article, The Cloud and Useful Illusions

2. Juliana Rotich, The Cloud and Environmental Change

3. Pablo Flores, Education and the Cloud

4. Teddy Ruge, the Online African Diaspora

5. Kristen Taylor, the Food Pornographer

6. Xiao Qiang and Evgeny Morozov with dueling views of digital activism

7. Hamid Tehrani, a nuanced view of social media in Iran

8. David Sasaki, the brave new world of the cloud

While I am still trying to grasp at this concept of cloud intelligence, I cannot help but remind myself that this type of interaction has its limits. Its use is primarily in introduction and in networking, but in terms of developing the substance on which human society changes, I think we will always have to stay in a physical, face-to-face environment – for the better.

And, Zuckerman ensures we keep reality in check:

But just because the tendency to choose a smaller world is a basic human frailty doesn’t mean we should accept it. The infrastructures that hold us together bind us, inextricably. Our problems are global ones – pandemic, global warming, terrorism – and so are our solutions. If we can imagine healing and bettering the world, we are imagining connecting with people across the globe to build solutions and find different ways of living.

The Cloud encourages us to imagine a world where infrastructure doesn’t matter, where ideas and solutions can come from anyone and anywhere. Perhaps this is the useful illusion that frees us from old ways of thinking, lets us embrace solutions that come from halfway around that world, that we might have rejected had we known its provenance.

I fear that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll discover that the flow of ideas through the Cloud isn’t as frictionless and global as we might hope. The steep, sheer barriers of language render much of what’s posted online incomprehensible to us, the Chinese blog posts and the Spanish-language videos. On a polyglot internet, there’s more to read everyday, but less each of us, individually can understand. We’ve made great strides in making it possible for everyone to write online, releasing our words into the Cloud, but we’ve done far less work ensuring that we can read and understand what each other has to say.

And a final reality:

The Cloud is a prophecy. It’s a beautiful dream of the future where we find ways to connect every corner of the world. It asks us to overcome the challenges of language, to break out of our usual orbits and familiar flocks and discover new, global, connected solutions to new, global, connected problems. We need to imagine this future so we can build it. But we must remember what we’re imagining and what’s real. We must continually challenge ourselves and not merely embrace and celebrate a useful illusion.