You Are Not A Gadget - Lanier, Chapters 9-11

CHAPTER 9

In this chapter, Lanier emphasizes two key points. First, the digital community is largely second-order expression, which is expression in reaction to someone else's creation. Instead of creating a completely new culture, this generation is just variances on past culture: "retro". Second, the new ideas that are breaking through are still products of old media, and are still designed to make money by traditional means.

• Lanier contends that the web was designed with the ideal to give everyone more opportunities and channels to be creative. However, file sharing has decimated the music industry, and all channels of creativity in Web 2.0 are inherently reactionary.
• This will, if continued unchecked, eventually lead to complete musical stasis, since absolutely nothing new will be produced if everything comes from the hive.
• Lanier goes on to talk about his friend, the guy who created the Sims and the new game Spore. He said Spore is a legitimately creative work, and should be treated as such. It's one of the rare originals in this day and age, according to Lanier.
• However, Spore is a computer game that you must pay to play, and the hive can't legally "mash-up" or vary the game and distribute it. Although it's a new idea, it still wasn't produced by the hive and thus isn't an example of a situation where the hive really influenced creativity.

CHAPTER 10

In this chapter, Lanier explores his idea that nothing created in the internet is actually, by definition, "real."

• Lanier argues that for something to be real, it "must be impossible to represent to completion." Paintings are real because it would be impossible to mimic every brushstroke or the smell of the canvas. Music created by playing an instrument is real because the vibrations that are emitted from blowing into a reed or strumming a guitar can't be replicated exactly.
• MIDI files, JPEGs, .avi video files aren't real because they can be duplicated over and over. A "dub" or "house" musician isn't making real music because it's all loops, or the same identical piece, repeated over and over. He/she is only varying other people's real creations, not making something real him/herself.
• Lanier also explains that digital expression can be broken down and mashed up an infinite amount of times immediately after its release. When this is done, according to Lanier, the original "real" creation loses its meaning because it no longer has context.

CHAPTER 11

In this chapter, Lanier's main point is that without a membrane around the creative process, nothing would ever evolve past an indistinguishable mess.

• Lanier begins the chapter with an example from genetics. He said than Earth was created, there were a bunch of genes floating around in a primordial goop. Once groups of genes formed membranes, they began to construct more complicated cells and organisms. Just like genetics, ideas need membranes around them to evolve into better and better things, according to Lanier.
• For this reason, the open source community, while perhaps more tech-savvy, hasn't really developed anything ground-breaking and innovative like closed-off business. The example he gives in Linux, the open source operating system, versus Apple, which is highly secretive of its developments and produces revolutionary products like the iPhone and iPad.
• Much like innovation, knowledge also needs somewhat of a membrane. Wikipedia has become the consolidated source of information on the human race, says Lanier, but since its information is decided by mob rule, sometimes the truth is lost. This isn't true as much with things like math or pop culture, but history and philosophy has come to be learned through exclusively secondary sources.
• Without the context of looking in different places from individual experts for information, eventually context will be totally lost. If everything is learned from Wikipedia (or, what the masses decide is true), there is no context for anything, and everything's meaning and impact is lost.

You are Not a Gadget Part II - Chapters 12-14

In the end of Lanier's book, he begins to spend more time talking about human beings and their relationship to machines and "computationalism." Computationalism is the idea that a human mind works like that of a information processing machine, or a computer. Chapter 12 explains the three standard concepts of computationalism as well as Lanier's more reasonable concept of the word. The first flavor of the concept explains that the concept build up of fragments in the digital cloud will eventually lead to a smart computer, or a cosmic consciousness. The idea stems that if we eventually have enough quantity, there is no need for quality within the cloud. They believe fragments will lose need for context and be able to be interpreted by machines without human input. The second idea is that if a computer can create loops that are much like the human thought process then it contains self awareness. A concept Lanier believes to be interesting, but never leading to an actual leap in technology. Thirdly, Lanier steps back to the idea of the "Turing Test," in which it is said that if an information structure is perceived as a person, then it is a person. Lanier believes it is us however, that dumb ourselves down in order to believe these things - just because someone believes it does not make it true. Then Lanier presents us with his concept of computationalism - Realistic Computationalism. He believes that Humans are the result of billions of years of evolution and social experience. There is no way that we can teach this to a computer. There is also no way that we can teach true realism to a computer, it is just a concept that cannot be represented on paper.

His next chapter is much longer and contains quite a few concepts relating to semantic evolution. He first notes that computers are now able to recognize patterns and this has led to recognition of facial expressions. However, computers will probably never (at least not in our generation) be able to recognize all of the odors that a nose can smell. He says "colors and sounds can be measured with rulers, but odors must be looked up in a dictionary." There are just too many combination of smells for a computer to recognize. Computers also can now interpret language very successfully - not as good as a human interpreter however. It is still important to note that these computers could bridge the language gap between countries, by creating more transparency in the language barrier (something a human translator cannot do with as much widespread success). Lanier also tells us of a study of birds that could possibly show that singing could have preceded language. These birds are able to develop more and more songs while left in a domesticated setting, because life is easier and they have more time to evolve. When left in a non-domesticated setting this is not possible. Finally Lanier explains the idea that an infinite cloud could cause all words to lose meaning. With an infinite number of ways to express something, how do you express it with actual REAL meaning. (He does not believe the cloud will ever become infinite).

In his final chapter, Lanier uses the idea of Virtual Reality to show us really how AWESOME our brain truly is. We are able to control extra limbs on our virtual self and morph into other shapes, even though we do not actually posses the real life skills to do so - we can adapt. This is something that cephalopods have been able to do forever, which is why Lanier is so fascinated with them. However, unlike humans, cephalopods do not have a childhood, they do not have the neoteny that we humans have. Neoteny being the idea that organisms are born at a chronological age, humans being born far from developed as we learn and adapt to the world. Horses on the other hand are born able to stand and pretty much do most "horsely" duties. Computers will never be able to adapt and learn like our brain, therefore the cloud will never be able to do all the humanly things that people believe possible. Lanier wants to show us that in the end, no matter how powerful we make computers, we still need a human brain at the helm.