Not a Gadget, 1

You Are Not A Gadget considers tech-culture, and “2.0” digital mindsets more than it deals with politics of the Internet. Jaron Lanier did consider the cultural implications of an Internet that is “hogged” by a few (or even a single) hive-fed data dumping grounds (which in my mind leads almost directly to the central battle of net neutrality). He uses Wikipedia as his primary example, and caused me to reflect on my own methods of searching with questions like:

How close are most of the websites I search to Wikipedia itself? In other words, how many iterations of the same content do I bounce between, hosted on aggregators or news-streamers or bloggers? Who is actually generating content? How many unique voices to I come across, and is the number of individually created and operated websites shrinking as people opt for platforms like Facebook or Blogspot?

I haven’t yet digested Lanier’s book fully, and I certainly am skeptical of some of it. However, I am glad I began with You Are Not a Gadget because it lays a socially critical foundation that is familiar to me as an artist, with which I can approach the politics and history of the Internet. Here are some pieces I pulled from the end of the book, which was more engaging than the beginning half in my experience (perhaps I had to settle into it):

Jaron Lanier illustrates the merit of individual websites over an encyclopedia like Wikipedia by comparing what ThinkQuest began to accomplish with mathematics before Wikipedia derailed such ventures. ThinkQuest was

“a contest run by internet pioneers... in which teams of high school students competed for scholarships by designing websites that explained ideas from a variety of academic disciplines, including math... The contestants had to learn how to present ideas as wholes... their work included simulations, interactive games, and other elements that were pretty new to the world.”1

He makes the point that Wikipedia is easier, but rarely offers a unique or inspired encounter with information or ideas.  

“Even in a case where there is an objective truth that is already known, such as a mathematical proof,  Wikipedia distracts the potential for learning how to bring it into the conversation in new ways. Individual voice--the opposite of wikiness--might not matter to mathematical truth, but it is the core of mathematical communication."2

So the question that might connect this to the internet “pipeline” debate today is: will companies like Verizon channel searches through sites like Wikipedia if they begin divvying up bandwidth? Would that, in theory, be easier for them than serving all websites equally? Or will they limit what kinds of search engines are used? In both cases, our access to information will be reduced, and I imagine that people’s desire to publish their own, unique content might dwindle, knowing it wouldn’t be as accessible. 


1 Jaron Lanier You Are Not A Gadget, A Manifesto (New York: Borzoi Books, 2010)146.
2 147