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.”
Backwards whiny luddite. I for one welcome the hive. As if the average videoprank is more vapid than the real-life interpersonal joke in your pub down the road.
So poor Joe Schmoe of today has lower expectations of what “he might become as a person”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Can he not drink, fuck , argue and have a good time anymore? has the internet sabotaged even that? No, it hasn’t.
At least these days you can explode all around the globe if your cat is a talented enough piano-player, rather than just boring your unappreciative uncle.
These arguments about how steam-engines/radio/TV/the-internet is going to debase and ruin us all will never stop, will they? What a load of bullcrap. There’s enough “oh-noes-the-future” rants that are worth listening to, such as the stuff about excessive resource exploitation and pollution, but this sociological bullcrap dissing the best thing that has happened in the last 20 years – the glorious internet – deserves to be canned. Thankfully for poor Mr Lanier, the internet has space even for his ill-thought out nonsense.