Jaron Lanier, Cyber Philosopher of Choice

Actually, _Ten Reasons for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now_ was not my first encounter with Jaron Lanier's work.

I heard a passing reference to his _You Are Not a Gadget_ (on Cal Newport's podcast) and it intrigued me enough to follow up and read it.

It's rare that a book really blows my mind with genuinely new ideas. This one did.

Some of it was down to my vast ignorance about all matters computing. Like, I couldn't even fathom that there was ever any way of structuring information other than "files." I'm still not quite clear what the alternative is, but it's exciting that there is one.

Also, I had no idea about the scalability problems of software. Or how many very human decisions get encoded but look scientific, technical, and objective. Or how chance experiments accidentally become the foundation for everything (like MIDI music) and distort everything forever after.

Long term, though, two huge things stayed with me about _Gadget_ that I have continued to ponder ever since.

The first is Lanier's observation about how often we humans dehumanize ourselves in order to make our tech look good. I have been so provoked and intrigued by this idea that I devoted a whole issue of my quarterly newsletter to it... so if you are willing to skip over the web, here's a link to it.

https://www.sarahhinlickywilson.com/campaigns/view-campaign/rsdKIUnU6PvhxR1pW1B_uunAkrcKkspRg87tHj1prAcYYk3dOzd-0uJatBodkcKkdGgXjJ5AJnGSiRKIf_-z7fOrt3jGBhvH

The other point was the wholescale wealth transfer going on with the web. Lanier put paid to the idea that the "thousand true fans" model advocated by Kevin Kelly was going to work, at least with the way things were at present. At the time of writing, he couldn't find even one artist making a decent living. The web had stolen all the scarcity and therefore all the value from artists' work.

It's actually this area that I will be spending the most time on in future posts, in keeping with my project to think more intelligently and less ideologically / moralistically / grandstandingly about economics than theologians usually do. For which purpose I'll also spend more time with Lanier's later book, _Who Owns the Future?_, and look at what Web3 may or may not do to help.

But back to Web2: although all the facts necessary for a wakeup call were there in _Gadget_, the point didn't yet penetrate my skull. It was only when I learned about _Ten Reasons_ and decided to read it that the penny dropped (an apt metaphor!).

The funny thing is, at the time of reading I had blocked the feed on my FB account, only posted on FB routine links to my blog and podcast, and had only "flag-planting" accounts on other social media sites--I didn't even use them. So I figured that I'd enjoy the book for its own sake but it wouldn't change what I was doing.

Wrong _again_!!!

In fact, within a week of reading I deleted my barely-used FB account (including the "business" version I'd made only a month or so before by the oily strategy of "messaging" all my thousands of "friends"). I didn't want out only for my own mental health, but for everyone else's, and ultimately not to feed the beast anymore.

Since then I've gone on to delete even my flag-planting accounts. I put up a notice on my personal website that I have no social media accounts at all; anything claiming to be me is a fraud. It's that simple.

That was in early 2021. I had about 2 months of FOMO and ever since then have been joyfully over it.

And yet, that was only the beginning of the wake-up call.