Two of Jaron Lanier's Ideas

I watched a couple more Jaron Lanier addresses today. His vision and intelligence and humanist optimism is fascinating. He is offers powerful arguments contradicting the openness movement and other dynamics of modern technology development. Here are two of his interesting remarks:

On Privacy

The Facebook model is that your lack of privacy is precisely the product that's being sold to some hypothetical advertising customer who hasn't yet appeared in a giant ritual of human erasure to make computers seem smart.

 My dad and I had an interesting discussion recently in which we wondered if the next big search engine to gain popularity will be one that has a plain, simple, predictable interface (like Google used to have) that promises to collect no data from you or use data collected by other parties to personalize your results. It would retrieve "stupid" search results (no different from anyone else who uses the same keywords). Then the burden of using knowledge to find the ideal search result would be shifted back onto the user instead of the software. People could just get better at using search operators , retain their personal information, and still get the search results they desire.



On Growing Up in the Social Media Era

Kids growing up this way don't complain about it because they don't have anything to compare it to, but they don't have a chance to do the critical forgetting that's part of adult personality formation. That forgetting is essential and it's denied to them.

I definitely see his point that being able to let go of the personality you portrayed in past settings in favor of new, better personality traits is important. It is also more difficult because a legacy of you past actions (imprints of you past personality projections) is stored on your social media networks, even reflected in how your networks are built---what and who you're connected to. The past is more present than ever.


If you want to hear these comments from Lanier himself (and hear them in context), see the video below:
The quotes I pulled out come from the remarks he makes starting at the 37:30 minute mark.