Jaron Lanier Who Owns the Future Simon and Schuster (2013)

Hello, Hero......Page 17
Terms......Page 19
First Round......Page 20
The Problem in Brief......Page 22
Put Up or Shut Up......Page 23
Moore’s Law Changes the Way People Are Valued......Page 24
Essential but Worthless......Page 25
The Beach at the Edge of Moore’s Law......Page 27
The Price of Heaven......Page 28
The Problem Is Not the Technology, but the Way We Think About the Technology......Page 29
Progress Is Compulsory......Page 31
Progress Is Never Free of Politics......Page 32
Back to the Beach......Page 33
A Simple Example......Page 34
Big Talk, I Know . . .......Page 36
Do People Deserve to Be Paid if They Aren’t Miserable?......Page 37
The Plot......Page 38
The Cybernetic Tempest......Page 39
Money, God, and the Old Technology of Forgetting......Page 41
The Information Technology of Optimism......Page 43
Are Middle Classes Natural?......Page 48
Two Familiar Distributions......Page 49
Tweaks to Network Design Can Change Distributions of Outcomes......Page 51
Letting Bell Curves Be Bell Curves......Page 53
An Artificial Bell Curve Made of Levees......Page 54
The Senseless Ideal of a Perfectly Pure Market......Page 56
Income Is Different from Wealth......Page 57
The Taste of Politics......Page 58
Drove My Chevy to the Levee but the Levee Was Dry......Page 60
How Is Music like a Mortgage?......Page 61
There Can’t Be Complexity Without Ambiguity......Page 64
A First Pass at a Definition......Page 65
Where Sirens Beckon......Page 67
Our Free Lunch......Page 69
Candy......Page 70
Radiant Risk......Page 71
You Can’t See as Much of the Server as It Can See of You......Page 72
Waiting for Robin Hood......Page 73
From Autocollate to Autocollude......Page 74
Rupture......Page 75
My Little Window......Page 77
From the Supply Chain’s Point of View......Page 78
From the Customer’s Point of View......Page 80
Financial Siren Servers......Page 82
SECOND INTERLUDE (A PARODY): IF LIFE GIVES YOU EULAS, MAKE LEMONADE......Page 86
How This Century Might Unfold, from Two Points of View......Page 88
Will There Be Manufacturing Jobs?......Page 90
Napsterizing the Teamsters......Page 94
Flattening the City on a Hill......Page 97
Factoring the City on a Hill......Page 99
Education in the Abstract Is Not Enough......Page 100
The Robotic Bedpan......Page 102
A Pharma Fable That Might Unfold Later in This Century......Page 105
Your Lack of Privacy Is Someone Else’s Wealth......Page 111
Big Data in Science......Page 113
A Method in Waiting......Page 115
Wise or Feared?......Page 116
The Nature of Big Data Defies Intuition......Page 117
The Problem with Magic......Page 118
Game On......Page 119
The Kicker......Page 120
The Nature of Our Confusion......Page 123
The Most Elite Naïveté......Page 125
Nine Dismal Humors of Futurism, and a Hopeful One......Page 127
Meaning as Nostalgia......Page 130
Can We Handle Our Own Power?......Page 131
The First High-Tech Writer......Page 133
Practical Optimism......Page 134
Markets, Energy Landscapes, and Narcissism......Page 136
The Technology of Ambient Cheating......Page 138
Imaginary Landscapes in the Clouds......Page 139
Markets as Landscapes......Page 142
Experimentalism and Popular Perception......Page 143
Keynes Considered as a Big Data Pioneer......Page 146
The Insanity of the Local/Global Flip......Page 149
Siren Servers Think the World Is All About Them......Page 150
The Endless Conversation About the Heart Cartel......Page 152
The First Musical “Any”......Page 153
Climb Any “Any”......Page 154
The Contest to Be Most Meta......Page 156
Not All Is Chaos......Page 158
The Conservation of Free Will......Page 159
Rewarding and Punishing Network Effects......Page 162
For Every Carrot a Stick......Page 163
Denial of Service......Page 164
Arm’s-Length Blackmail......Page 165
Who’s the Customer and Who Are All Those Other People?......Page 166
Who Orders the Data?......Page 168
The Human Shell Game......Page 170
Since You Asked......Page 172
Why the Networked World Seems Chaotic......Page 173
When Are Siren Servers Monopolies?......Page 174
Free Rise......Page 175
Make Others Pay for Entropy......Page 176
Bills Are Boring......Page 177
Coattails......Page 178
Stories Are Nothing Without Ideas......Page 180
The Global Triumph of Turing’s Humor......Page 183
What Is Experience?......Page 185
Democracy......Page 187
Governments Are Learning the Tricks of Siren Servers......Page 189
Electoral Siren Servers......Page 191
Maybe the Way We Complain Is Part of the Problem......Page 194
Melodramas Are Tenacious......Page 195
Emphasizing the Middle Class Is in the Interests of Everyone......Page 197
A Better Peak Waiting to Be Discovered......Page 198
The Most Ancient Marketing......Page 201
Monks and Nerds (or, Chip Monks)......Page 202
It’s All About I......Page 203
Childhood and Apocalypse......Page 204
Ted Nelson......Page 205
First Thought......Page 207
Best Thought......Page 208
The Right to Mash-up Is Not the Same as the Right to Copy......Page 210
Two-Way Links......Page 212
Why Isn’t Ted Better Known?......Page 213
The Dirty Pictures (or, Nuts and Bolts: What a Humanistic Alternative Might Be Like)......Page 217
A Less Ambitious Approach to Be Discouraged......Page 219
A Sustainable Information Economy......Page 221
A Better Beach......Page 222
Keep It Smooth......Page 224
Not Enough Money Grows on Trees......Page 225
Provenance......Page 229
Commercial Symmetry......Page 230
Only First-Class Citizens......Page 232
Eschewing Zombie Siren Servers......Page 233
Only First-Class Identity......Page 234
Biological Realism......Page 236
The Psychology of Deserving......Page 237
But Will There Be Enough Value from People?......Page 240
A Question That Really Isn’t That Hard to Answer......Page 241
Nothing More to Offer?......Page 243
To the Dead Their Due......Page 245
What Will Big Companies Do?......Page 247
The Role of Advertising......Page 248
When Will Decisions Be Made?......Page 250
Dynamic Value......Page 252
Earning a Little Money by Living Well or Interestingly......Page 254
The Cost of Risk......Page 257
Risk Never Really Goes Away......Page 259
Puddle, Lake, or Ocean?......Page 260
Economic Avatars......Page 261
Economic Avatars as an Improvement on the Forgetfulness of Cash......Page 262
Interpersonal Economic Symmetry Through Theatrics......Page 263
Economic Network Neutrality......Page 264
Symmetry as a Disincentive to Game the System......Page 265
Faith and Credit......Page 266
Tax......Page 267
The Lower Half of the Curve......Page 268
The Lowly Tail of the Curve......Page 269
Wealth and Civility......Page 270
Waiting for Technology Waiting for Politics......Page 271
What Can We Do About Big Data and the Reality Problem?......Page 272
Carbon Copies Ruin Carbon Credits......Page 274
How Fighting “Fraud” Might Also Fight “Scams”......Page 275
It’s All in the Timing......Page 276
The Treachery of Toys......Page 278
Three Pervasive Creepy Conundrums......Page 279
A Hacker’s Paradise......Page 280
Once Upon a Time I Hoped to Wish Paranoia Away......Page 282
The ’Net Is Watching......Page 283
Some Good Reasons to Be Tracked by the Cloud......Page 285
The Creepiness Is Not in the Tech, but in the Power We Grant to Siren Servers......Page 287
Maslow’s Pyramid of Blackmail......Page 288
The Weird Logic of Extreme Creepiness......Page 289
Commercial Rights Scale Online Where Civil Rights Don’t......Page 291
Commercial Rights Are Actionable......Page 292
The Ideal Price of Information Equals the Minimization of Creepiness......Page 295
Individual Players Will Also Be Motivated to Set Prices to Minimize Creepiness......Page 296
From Social Network to Immortality......Page 298
Just for the Record, Why I Make Fun of the University......Page 299
The Two Tiers of Immortality Planned for This Century......Page 300
Transition......Page 302
Can There Be a Digital Golden Rule?......Page 304
The Miracle’s Gauntlet......Page 305
The Price of Antenimbosia......Page 306
A Thousand Geeks......Page 308
Startups......Page 309
Traditional Governments, Central Banks, etc.......Page 311
Multiplicities of Siren Servers......Page 313
Facebook or Similar......Page 314
Confederacies of Just a Few Giant Siren Servers......Page 315
It’s Not About Paper Versus eBooks......Page 318
The Book as Silicon Valley Would Have It......Page 319
What Is It About a Book That Is Worth Saving?......Page 321
All This, Just for the Whiff of Possibility......Page 323
The Economics of the Future Is User Interface Design......Page 324
Know Your Poison......Page 325
Is There a Test for Whether an Information Economy Is Humanistic?......Page 327
Back to the Beach......Page 328
Appendix: First Appearances of Key Terms......Page 330
Acknowledgments......Page 331
About Jaron Lanier......Page 332
Notes......Page 335
Index......Page 339