Wed 5/29/13 7:24pm # | tweet this
Wow... that went south fast. I've been reading Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier. The first half of the book is very very good. Then the second half of the book is completely worthless even as an intellectual exercise. It's like the guy who wrote the second half of the book didn't even read the guy who wrote the first half.
The book basically has two halves, the first half of the book looks at our digital landscape and networks in general and digitally in specific and explains where we are, how they work and how we got here. You'll read the first half and you'll have your eyes opened on a bunch of things-- you'll want to give up your participation in humanity and slit your wrists because it's so depressing, but it's very well thought and written, and as to the wrist slitting, honest truth can do that to you.
The second half of the book, the prescriptive or solution part, envisions some entirely different world populated by what I can only imagine are people from a different planet than those described in the first part of the book. There are so many inconsistencies with logic and human nature in the second half, and so many fanciful leaps of faith and suspensions of disbelief required to read the second half that I mostly had to start skimming it after a couple chapters in and then had to more or less give up entirely because the "Humanistic economy" he describes in the back half seems to belie no knowledge of the Humanistic reality he accurately describes in the front half.
As much as the first half of the book bummed me out in a good way. The back half of the book just bums me out for having it in the same container as the first half.
I do highly recommend the first half of the book. Just do yourself a huge favor and drop the book like a hot potato after the end of Chapter 17. The back half is just that bad.
Who Owns the Future
Wow... that went south fast. I've been reading Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier. The first half of the book is very very good. Then the second half of the book is completely worthless even as an intellectual exercise. It's like the guy who wrote the second half of the book didn't even read the guy who wrote the first half.
The book basically has two halves, the first half of the book looks at our digital landscape and networks in general and digitally in specific and explains where we are, how they work and how we got here. You'll read the first half and you'll have your eyes opened on a bunch of things-- you'll want to give up your participation in humanity and slit your wrists because it's so depressing, but it's very well thought and written, and as to the wrist slitting, honest truth can do that to you.
The second half of the book, the prescriptive or solution part, envisions some entirely different world populated by what I can only imagine are people from a different planet than those described in the first part of the book. There are so many inconsistencies with logic and human nature in the second half, and so many fanciful leaps of faith and suspensions of disbelief required to read the second half that I mostly had to start skimming it after a couple chapters in and then had to more or less give up entirely because the "Humanistic economy" he describes in the back half seems to belie no knowledge of the Humanistic reality he accurately describes in the front half.
As much as the first half of the book bummed me out in a good way. The back half of the book just bums me out for having it in the same container as the first half.
I do highly recommend the first half of the book. Just do yourself a huge favor and drop the book like a hot potato after the end of Chapter 17. The back half is just that bad.
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