Framing Questions: You are not a gadget…

Lanier  seems to think the internet is depriving us of individuality and creativity… is it true that we’re slowly being put into safe little boxes… that we let the internet tell us what to do, such as Google’s new instant search which in a way, tries to make our choices for us. Or the fact that people use Facebook because “it’s just so easy and useful” even though some people really don’t like it. We survived before Facebook but now we have to use it, hate it or love it? Is the internet beginning to control our actions, however subtly?

Lanier seems to directly contradict a lot of what Shirky believed in, such as the collective power of the masses. His tone is much more negative. Are experts, and the individual genius, much more important than the power of the masses? Similar to when people say monkeys could write Shakespeare eventually through sheer probability, could the masses create the same work of Einstein? Or is the individual human expert much more productive than the average yes massively produced work of the masses?

Could socialism work with the help of the Internet? Lanier seems to think maybe something along those lines could happen, where information is available for free, through volunteerism, in the future. What is the actual probability of such a thing and do people who have good information really just give it up for free or is everyone out to make a buck?