Book description
Something went wrong around the start of the 21st century. Individual
creativity began to go out of fashion. Music became an endless
rehashing of the past. Scientists were in danger of no longer
understanding their own research. Indeed, not only was individual
creativity old-fashioned but individuals themselves. The crowd was
wise. Machines, specifically computers, were no longer tools to be
used by human minds - they were better than humans.
Welcome to the world of the digital revolution.
Yet what if, by devaluing individuals, we are deadening creativity,
endlessly rehashing past culture, risking weaker design in engineering
and science, losing democracy, and reducing development - in every
sphere? In You Are Not A Gadget, Jaron Lanier, digital guru,
and inventor of Virtual Reality, delivers a searing manifesto in
support of the human and reflects on the good and bad developments in
design and thought twenty years after the invention of the web.
Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply
felt defence of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to
comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.
Jaron Lanier is a philosopher and computer scientist who has spent
his career pushing the transformative power of modern technology to
its limits. From coining the term 'Virtual Reality' and creating the
world's first immersive avatars to developing cutting-edge medical
imaging and surgical techniques, Lanier is one of the premier
designers and engineers at work today. Linked with UC Berkeley and
Microsoft, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IEEE in
2009.
A musician with a collection of over 700 instruments, he has been
recognised by Encyclopedia Britannica (but certainly not Wikipedia) as
one of history's 300 or sogreatest inventors and named one of the top
one hundred public intellectuals in the world by Prospect and Foreign Policy.
