Chapter 4: Digital Peasant Chic
-Ruining an Appointment with Destiny
This chapter starts out with the notion that once a new, wide spread technology is introduced into a culture, that jobs and opportunities are created and the population generally sees an increase in social status. However, once the internet started to gain momentum in the early 2000's, the gap between the rich and poor grew wider, and the middle class in America shrank. Historically, in a situation like this, Marxism and Maoism takes hold of the masses that whose lives were not improved by the new technology, and a revolution occurs. However, the internet is unique because it is still applicable to most of the population, and it provides a free forum for the outraged to voice their opinions within the blogosphere. In essence, it imitates progress for all while the middle class remains stagnant in the wake of the rich getting richer.
-Crashing Down Maslow's Pyramid
The Maslow Pyramid is a hierarchy of needs that individuals must acquire, but in a certain order. Once the baser needs are met, then they are motivated to get higher, albeit non-essential things. Base needs include food and shelter, while higher needs are social status and material wealth. In a capitalist society, the working class is lower on the social scale than the aristocrats and artisans, while in a Maoist society, the workers are revered for their sacrifice, so the pyramid looks different in China as opposed to America. For some reason, the internet has also taken the Maoist approach to the hierarchy, making original content and ideas undesirable and unprofitable. The most popular websites on the web are not generators of content, but rather collectors of content from other places. As Lanier puts it, "a blog of blogs is more exalted than a mere blog", because it is not about which place has the original content, but which place puts in the work (or has users that do the work) to get the most content (79). Blogs reflect this theory every time that they link to an outside source or embed pictures and videos. The epitome of this are the sites like Digg and Reddit that almost exclusively host links to other sites with very little user content.
-Morality Needs Technology If It's To Do Any Good/Technological Change is Stressful
Technology is undisputedly the quickest and most permanent way to change the largest amount of people's lives for the better, in the opinion of Lanier. He references how machine driven agriculture opened an avenue out of the slave driven economy of the southern US, but in modern times it is just as likely for technology to make human jobs obsolete with robotics as it is to open up new jobs.
-The Devaluation of Everything
In the case of the internet, the middle class shrank while the extremes grew, in spite of the immense human presence. What this means is that the human element on the internet was devalued; making money on the internet was near-impossible if you weren't big enough to advertise whatever it was you're doing.
- The Only Product That Will Maintain Its Value After The Revolution/Accelerating a Vacuum
Advertising is generally considered the only way to make money on the internet. Those who create and add content to the web have essentially signed a contract saying that they will not be making any money, at least not without the help of advertisers. The hive mind of the internet decided that it is a free space for the sharing of ideas, and not for profit as far as the creators and artists are concerned. The examples of people going on to be rich and famous are few, and Lanier thinks that this is only because the world is still in transition from the old media to the new, where Diablo Cody can be noticed on the internet and given a book deal, and eventually the movie "Juno". In the future, the move from internet to book deal will be essentially worthless as electronic readers become more dominant, finally completing the transition from old to new. In the same way, movies will be devalued as going to the theater and buying physical discs slows down in favor of torrenting or online streaming. Lanier predicts that making the jump from the internet to old media to gain fame and fortune won't be viable in the future.
-Blaming Our Victims
The failing newspaper industry is often blamed on the newspapers themselves, but Lanier doesn't understand how the same bloggers who say 'I told you so' don't have a solution for what the papers should have done to maintain themselves in the transition. Because of their inability to deal with changing media, one blogger, Jon Talton, blames the lack of mainstream media presence for allowing the US to invade Iraq without effective questioning. With the absence of 'real' journalism, the Bush administration only had to answer to a choir of bloggers who essentially negated each other's voices with the endless back and forth that the internet forum provides. Because the internet can hold anyone's opinions as loud as the rest the professional work taking a back seat to the mob voice.
-Peasants and Lords of the Clouds
In this section, Lanier examines what constitutes fame and success on the Youtube level of entertainment. In a world where a five second clip of kittens can get more hits than a professionally done short film, why is someone paying for an editor/director? Quality in the new media is replaced by what the hive mind of the internet likes at the time of posting, so there is no need to hire anyone to work on videos, especially since even the clip of kittens isn't making money for the uploader.
Chapter 5: The City is Built to Music
-How Long is Too Long to Wait?
This chapter is devoted to music online, which was the first industry to take a hit from the new rules of the internet with the Napster incident. The problem is that the virtual world that was created online was very much un-capitalistic, and when that clashes with the real world that is very much for profit, things change on both sides. The music industry changed forever so that it couldn’t depend on record sales for income anymore. But the internet also changed, and Lanier believes that it still changing into a form of slum, and the points he makes are valid. In reality, slums are filled with more advertising than wealthier areas, there can be a mob rule mentality where state laws are invalid, and vigilantism, all of which is found online. Advertising as the sole source of profit online is rampant, the hive mind dictates almost every action that occurs, and the site "4chan" has a reputation for attacking other sites that break the unwritten rules of the internet. The internet is still trying to find its role in the real world.
-Dreams Still Die Hard/ The Search
The internet has proven profitable for online retailers such as Amazon, and convenient for the consumers, but the artist has not had any boost in profits or accessibility. The only way they can make any profit from the current system is if the consumers see their exposure on retailer sites and are encouraged to see them in concert and buy merchandise there. Currently, that is proving to be rare, and it especially doesn't work for filmmakers and artists. Bigger name artists, like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, have released albums for free in the new market, but they can because they already have a large fan base that is going to see them in concert anyway. Up and coming bands can find almost no profit in the new system of music sharing, so starting a musical career on the internet is almost limiting yourself to staying on the internet.
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