Author Jaron Lanier talks to the AlwaysOn crowd at Stanford this past week about his thinking behind where the Internet is going, where it should be going and why what we think is Open today is more ‘big brother’ than you realize.
“If everything was really open, Google wouldn’t have a reason to exist,” he says. “Both are not operable or separable from each other. You can’t have the Linux model without the Steve Jobs model and vice versa. They need each other.”
He adds, “When industrialization took off, there was a huge anxiety about fear of being obsolete – that is a lot of what motivated Marxism. Re: Obama’s decline in popularity, you’ll also find that fundamentalism is going up as well. If modernity isn’t working, you’ll always see fundamentalism going up as well.”
Not unlike Andrew Keen’s sentiment on the ‘crowd mentality, he suggests that what you really get crowds and crowd mentality is mediocrity. With crowd sourcing comes homogeneousness of the human. He says, “if you ask a crowd to invent something, I see no evident of it happening,” and discounts the examples people bring up again and again: Linux and Wikipedia, although not in a way that suggested that they don’t and haven’t brought value. Below is his talk.
In the following two videos, he takes questions from the audience and from moderators Jamis MacNiven and AlwaysOn founder and producer Tony Perkins.
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored over 90, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity. She is also the founder of the Magdalene Collection, a jewelry line dedicated to women’s unsung voices and stories, and the award-winning author of the bestselling book Magdalene’s Journey
She is founder of Blue Soul Media and co-founder of Blue Soul Earth as well as the producer and host of the award-winning Blue Soul CHATS podcast, that bridges science, technology and spirituality. Renee also founded Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
