Sometimes the truth is painful

[essentialsaltes]

Interesting interview with virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier in Smithsonian“I’d been an early advocate of making information free ... I’d had a career as a professional musician and what I started to see is that once we made information free, it wasn’t that we consigned all the big stars to the bread lines. Instead, it was the middle-class

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

Absolutely.

Unemployed professional musicians make the best trolls. I should know.

[ian_tiberius]

While certain of his criticisms have some merit, others are damn stupid.

Take this one:

"[With machine translation] you’re producing this result that looks magical but in the meantime, the original translators aren’t paid for their work-their work was just appropriated. So by taking value off the books, you’re actually shrinking the economy."

This is true, in much the same way that user-operated elevators, refrigerators, and stocking frames put elevator operators, ice men, and textile workers out of work and shrank the economy. The only difference is that middle-and-upper-class people like Lanier thought it would never happen to them, only to menial workers, and when it starts happening to them or to their friends, they go Chicken Little. Another example

[essentialsaltes]

I admit he's not a poster boy for clear thinking, but I think you're uncharitably interpreting some of what he says.

"Instead, it was the middle-class people who were consigned to the bread lines."
But what Lanier takes away from this is apparently that automation is bad.

What I take away is not that he's complaining about automation, but rather about filesharing of music: "I’d been an early advocate of making information free ... what I started to see is that once we made information free, it wasn’t that we consigned all the big stars to the bread lines. Instead, it was the middle-class people [in the music industry] who were consigned to the bread lines."

[ian_tiberius]

I quoted that paragraph because I wanted to use his "studio manager with cancer" line as a jumping-off point - he blames filesharing, and while that may be accurate in this instance, I think it's missing the forest for the trees. If unemployed people can't get health care, let's address the health care issue directly rather than pretending the problem is that people sometimes lose their jobs.

I should not have conflated that with his other arguments where he seems to disapprove of technology and automation in general - his attack on Google Translate for putting human translators out of work, for example. I disagree with that, but for different reasons (already covered above, so I won't reiterate.)

As I say, not all of his arguments are crazy. But some of his arguments are so ridiculous that I am disinclined to take him seriously as a spokesman for anything, especially when there are plenty of people who can advocate more cogently against filesharing or on-line anonymity. The fact that he was once on one side of an issue, and is