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A review by yates9
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
4.0
People either love or hate Jaron; while I am one of the rare cases that find him both interesting and intermittently right and wrong about different ideas. This book is a must read for those of us that believe in the perfection of current digital technology, and while Jaron seems to see half-empty glasses, his ideas are challenges that deserve serious consideration.
Overall things are always more complicated than you can convey in a book so I would also not take this book as the last word on the subject, but I would hope that in particular people that dream about technologically enabled perfect futures would take into consideration its strongest critics and address these ideas in their scenarios.
The writing organisation is always a bit difficult to organise, it's an unsystematic critique, that is just a step above being a rant. If Jaron would set his attack in a well organised bottom-up manner, we might find less emotive responses to his critique and more productive engagement with these issues.
Overall things are always more complicated than you can convey in a book so I would also not take this book as the last word on the subject, but I would hope that in particular people that dream about technologically enabled perfect futures would take into consideration its strongest critics and address these ideas in their scenarios.
The writing organisation is always a bit difficult to organise, it's an unsystematic critique, that is just a step above being a rant. If Jaron would set his attack in a well organised bottom-up manner, we might find less emotive responses to his critique and more productive engagement with these issues.