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.

Historical Evidence and a Big Idea

I heard Jaron Lanier demonstrate the effectiveness of expounding a thesis with a historical example. I'm still thinking about the actual ramifications of his thesis here, but because he used the metaphor he did, I have a better chance of understanding it and accepting at least parts of it. (I bolded the middle sentence.)

"Language started out as what we call a multi-modal phenomenon in the brain where the control of the throat and the lungs and this creation of sound and hearing tied in with meaning and semantics and this new center of expertise was created in the brain, kind of between areas that were specialized for these other things. It's my opinion that something like that is waiting to be enjoyed within the brain is waiting to be enjoyed for somatic* intelligence...My suspicion is that this capacity is already there but underutilized...This is, I think the big picture of user interface research. User-interface is not just about decreasing hassle and increasing pleasure. It's a voyage of discovery about who people are and who people can be...The metaphor I'd like to make is to the age of the discovery of continents. But in this case the continents are parts of the brain that are underutilized, or combinations of parts of the brain that are underexplored.What we're doing is we're travelling across the cortex--hopefully with better intent than the conquistadores--and we're discovering new continents of human potential.."

Our Moats (A text based cartoon conceprt)

Anyway, isn't it reasonable to figure out how to do the most good
that we can with the technology that's emerging?

Sure. I'm a practical guy.

Alright then, so you'll listen to my plan?

Are you going to talk about copyright law again?

Sort of...and education reform, and a new era

of participatory government, and---

Well, fine. Just don't be boring.

Technology Debate (Cartoon Concept)

Bibliography In Progress

Here's a beginning bibliography of content related to our project chapters and overall concept:

Education

• "Changing Education with Web 2.0 Tools" a powerpoint by Cindy Wright, an IT specialist with a school district; nothing groundbreaking and a 6/10 for presentation, but makes a good point about educating children for the future and not the past. Oriented toward teachers.

Intellectual Property

• "Creative Commons In the Classroom." A quality powerpointby Jessica Croates.

Government

Open Education Cartoon Concept