How we need to remake the internet | Jaron Lanier

In the early days of digital culture, Jaron Lanier helped craft a vision for the internet as public commons where humanity could share its knowledge — but even then, this vision was haunted by the dark side of how it could turn out: with personal devices that control our lives, monitor our data and feed us stimuli. (Sound familiar?) In this visionary talk, Lanier reflects on a "globally tragic, astoundingly ridiculous mistake" companies like Google and Facebook made at the foundation of digital culture — and how we can undo it. "We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them," he says.

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58 Comments on How we need to remake the internet | Jaron Lanier

    • Noah Bailey
      Sooo, you haven’t had time to watch it yourself and you’re being critical of someone’s opinion of it?
      Hahaha

    • Thumds down for the lecturer being baked possibly?
      I could tell he was in less than ten seconds (from my, ummm, training).

    • Yes, peer to peer decentralized internet is the prize. It is full of problems, especially in the face of powerful adversaries. even something as simple as updating software version has dozens of vulnerabilities when trying to apply it to a decentralized network.

    • +Dsonophorus Well, the centralized way of dealing with that is to lock down everything. Decentralized relies on strength in numbers (Tor, blockchain etc.). Additionally, one promotes closed source corporate empires that decide how they want to handle your data which you basically give away the moment you sign up, and the other promotes collaboration of individuals and mutual consideration.

      If everyone in the world switches to Tor right now, it will be realistically impossible to break privacy, as the “powerful adversaries” will never have the necessary resources to overpower the system. As it stands agencies can install enough nodes that there’s a very high chance that the route to your destination is always revealed as you are hopping through their controlled machines.

      But the point isn’t that we need to think of everything that can go wrong. If you build a global network of trust that promotes collaboration, people will want to support and evolve it just like nature uses evolution to build beautiful systems.

      In some parts of the world people don’t lock their doors a) because there are no doors/locks and b) there is nothing that you need a lock to protect.

  1. Surprise, the gentry like Bill Gates realized they could enclose the commons and no one would fight him. Nothing new under the sun. People need to realize that the internet should be common, not controlled by people like Google and Facebook; and our ability to access the internet should be common, and not controlled by people like Microsoft and Apple.

    • I think you confuse control and create. When you create you get to dictate how it works.

      They do not control. They dictate how their creation behaves.

    • Rude comments are one thing, but you guys are nuts as well. Obesity is not a disease nor genetic (at least in most cases), it’s a life style choice, and not a healthy one. You probably wouldn’t defend a guy that stood on stage smoking 3 packs of cigarettes in one talk, or being drunk, or cutting his arms with a razor. In short, people that hurt their health overly much. He’s so fat he apparently can’t stand up for 15 minutes to give a talk. I skimmed through his wiki page and didn’t find a clue that it’s a medical condition.

      I don’t have a problem with overweight people, but people that are so unhealthy they can’t even stand up for a couple of minutes should be looked at the same way like heavy drug addicts or alcoholics: not bad people, but people with a problem. People that need our help. Not people that we should encourage to continue doing what they’re doing and thus setting bad examples for the next generation.

      I’m not saying rude comments are okay because he’s obese, but it’s also not okay to play this down to nothing. There’s a line between being overweight and health-impacting slow self-destruction.

    • PP Hyjynx I didn’t say it was. But it certainly means he’s earned his right to talk on stage. People slagging him off because of his weight and acting like he’s a randomer are dumb. That’s all. And I disagree, AI will be a part of the future.

    • @EnCey2 You don’t know him or the context his situation/life, you are making assumptions and judging him based on those assumptions. Why are you making the inference that he’s sitting because he’s overweight? You don’t know. Don’t act like you do know.

  2. Stop judging him for the way he looks. We all have imperfections… Stop doing this, he said a really smart thing, but everyone is trying to make jokes about the way he looks. Im sure u all that are doing this are uglier than this guy. But at least he’s smart. Not like u.

    • Adolf Hitler True people have to realize that it’s the words that you hear he’s giving you knowledge that your brain is listening to that you like it doesn’t matter who the person is there has been many actual evil people in history who have said some pretty amazing things and if the words of someone evil could cure the world would you not want to cure the world just because of that person being evil of course not you didn’t raise the words in a make them your own

  3. If people can just get past the looks, he’s actually making some valid points. The funny thing is, we wouldn’t be here today without the existence of open source communities. The entire infrastructure of these mega corporations is run on open source code.

    It gets tricky when you try to monetize content because people will try to game one another and resort to dirty behavioral manipulations to get you more hooked on their product. I don’t believe subscription-based services is the solution either, although it’s a step in the right direction. We can’t reach homeostasis if someone always tries to get ahead by charging less or offering more lucrative features. You have to take money out of the picture completely.

    • FabledDan Do you think govt subsidies for micropayments could help? I think it could definitely help online newspapers, especially when everyone uses Adblocker.

    • I think giving content creators compensation is unavoidable and necessary. I don’t have an issue with subscription or “pay what you want” models. I just don’t see how it can avoid the pitfalls of making banal but addictive/manipulative content so they can reach a wider audience and get more profit. If people are paid by governments to produce content and they do it because they love it, that would be great but greedy people will always undermine the community and that’s the crux of the issue. If you haven’t read it, check the essay “Meditations on Moloch”, specifically the fish farming story on how one greedy person can trigger a cycle of self destruction.

  4. The main problem I have with paying for everything on the internet, is that I already pay an ISP just to access it. It’s almost like having to pay just to enter a store, let alone purchase something.

    • Crowe That’s why we need publicly owned municipal and state fiber optic networks. ISPs have regional monopolies/oligopolies in many places and refuse to upgrade their networks to preserve profits. We should have gigabit speeds in every home by now based off the huge bills we pay. If S Korea can do it, so can we. Also, instead of making the individual pay for everything, I’d like to see the gov’t subsidize micropayments so that there would be less ads and better online journalism. The postal system was heavily subsidized (and still is) in the early decades of our nation because the govt knew it would rapidly increase economic activity. We should do the same for the internet, because after all that’s basically what it is, a digital post office.

    • Yeah ! As if i had to pay for gaz after i bought a car.

      What would be the point of buying a car if i had to pay for gaz to enjoy it.

  5. The comment section just reflects our social system: Everyone is critisizing about him, not looking like the stereotype of a man. Is that going to enhance your life tomorrow? The way a person looks? No. But you know what will? The fact that he explained, how we can change the manipulative behaviour modification! Push the replay button and this time just listen to this informative talk he just gave. An amazing and individual discourse by the way!

    • Yeeeeaaaaaa…… Everyone in the comment section is doing that…… >_>

      There are actually more comments like yours trying to point out how much “hate” there is in the comment section than comments that are just trying to poke at him for his looks. Unless you count those that just mention that he looks and sounds a bit baked, but I would say that is a different thing.

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