Who owns the future? / Jaron Lanier.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2013Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover editionDescription: xvi, 396 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 1451654960 (hardcover)
- 9781451654967 (hardcover)
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 303.4833 L287 | Available | 33111007139476 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
THE DAZZLING NEW MASTERWORK FROM THE PROPHET OF SILICON VALLEY
Jaron Lanier is the father of virtual reality and one of the world's most brilliant thinkers. Who Owns the Future? is his visionary reckoning with the most urgent economic and social trend of our age: the poisonous concentration of money and power in our digital networks.
Lanier has predicted how technology will transform our humanity for decades, and his insight has never been more urgently needed. He shows how Siren Servers, which exploit big data and the free sharing of information, led our economy into recession, imperiled personal privacy, and hollowed out the middle class. The networks that define our world--including social media, financial institutions, and intelligence agencies--now threaten to destroy it.
But there is an alternative. In this provocative, poetic, and deeply humane book, Lanier charts a path toward a brighter future: an information economy that rewards ordinary people for what they do and share on the web.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Motivation -- A simple idea -- Money as seen through the one computer scientist's eyes -- The ad hoc construction of mass dignity -- "Siren servers" -- The specter of the perfect investment -- Some pioneering siren servers -- From below: mass unemployment events -- From above: misusing big data to become ridiculous -- Markets and energy landscapes -- Narcissism -- Story lost -- Coercion on autopilot: specialized network effects -- Obscuring the human element -- Story found -- Complaint is not enough -- Clout must underlie rights, if rights are to persist -- First thought, best thought -- The project -- We need to do better than ad hoc levees -- Some first principles -- Who will do what? -- Big business -- How will we earn and spend -- Risk -- Financial identity -- Inclusion -- The interface to reality -- Creepy -- A stab at mitigating creepiness -- The transition -- Leadership.
Evaluates the negative impact of digital network technologies on the economy and particularly the middle class, citing challenges to employment and personal wealth while exploring the potential of a new information economy.