
Jaron Lanier Interview on What Went Wrong with the Internet - walterbell
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/jaron-lanier-interview-on-what-went-wrong-with-the-internet.html
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pnathan
What he calls "Digital Maoism" is an excellent critique and worth the read.
The _loss of voice_ is a substantial problem; the single voice being
arbitrated by a for-profit cadre is worse.

I've followed his online works off and on for a while - he had some
interesting ideas about coding and adaptive computations about 10+ years ago
that I'd like to see followed up on. He seems to specialize in sort of being a
public critic now (above interview seems to rehash his usual points well) &
advocate for paid everything & DRM.

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walterbell
While the interview articulates several problems in need of solutions, it's
not clear that Netflix-DRM-style TV business models are the answer.

~~~
Animats
It helps to know that Lanier is a part-time musician. He's from the era when
musicians were a Big Deal. It bugs him that now they're just content
generators for Spotify, SFX, and Ticketmaster.

~~~
johnvanommen
He's managed to keep a high profile for a loooong time. I remember reading an
article about him in 1983, about a game he made for the Commodore 64. The
article spent more time talking about Lanier than talking about the game. This
seemed a bit odd, because at that time, programmers frequently weren't even
credited for their work.

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psyc
While reading this article, I imagined an Eternal September writ large across
the whole industry. Maybe in the beginning it was a few idealistic
visionaries, who attracted other idealists who could get behind the vision.
Then it succeeded wildly, and attracted _everyone_ and thus became merely
human. A mix of the worst and the best, and probably in proportion closer to
80/20 than 50/50\. The vision became a game, one that need only be stable, but
not optimal or humanist in its value system.

~~~
smacktoward
I would argue that it's even worse than that. The Eternal September scenario
would at least let us off the hook, morally speaking -- it's not that the
thing we built is bad, it's that _people_ are bad, and so as people piled on
to the thing we built it eventually became just as bad as they are. Which
would be depressing, but at least not blameworthy.

But while people have their faults, I think it's closer to the truth here to
say that we built something that took those bad people and made them worse.
Chasing engagement and clicks, we built systems that rewarded bad behavior,
with the inevitable result that the people who found the most success in our
systems were the ones who behaved the worst. And since everybody wants to be
successful in whatever environment they find themselves in, that drove people
to be _worse than they otherwise would have been_ as they chased after the
same success for themselves.

~~~
cvwright
I think the 2016 election was another Eternal September. Everything feels much
more hostile and obnoxious since about the time of the last US presidential
conventions.

I'm not sure what to call this phenomenon. Eternal 2016? Eternal November?

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adam
If you prefer your Jaron Lanier in audio form, this was a very similar
interview he did for Ezra Klein's podcast:
[https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-
intervie...](https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-interview)

------
jstewartmobile
Probably should have been titled " _What Went Wrong with the Web_ ". Aside
from NAT, the network itself works as well as it ever did. The clusterfuck we
send across it is another story.

~~~
dredmorbius
Layers 8 & 9 are exhibiting troubling symptoms.

~~~
lsh
Thank you
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8)

------
originalsimba
The short-sighted arrogance of the headline really turns me off the article
itself. Nothing "went wrong" with the internet. The internet is fine.

The culture of first world nations however, is completely fubar, has been
since before all of us were born, and will probably continue to be long after
we're all dead. (second and third world nations are also completely broken,
but we expect that.)

It's the same kind of nonsense when people say "We've destroyed the planet!"
No we haven't, we destroyed our own survivability in our own habitat, but the
planet _is fine_, and will shake us all off some day without so much as a
thought about it. The internet is equally indifferent and unaffected by our
stupid capitalism problems.

~~~
pavlov
I'm curious what you mean by "second world nations". The original Cold War
definition was countries aligned with the Soviet Union. What's the second
world today?

~~~
originalsimba
Well, third world countries are nations which are significantly behind the
"First World" nations in terms of social, economic, and political development
or progress. For example, much of the middle east still believes that an
imaginary sky-fairy has given them the authority and permission to murder
women with rocks anytime the men get upset about something, and they think
simply being men gives them the right to rape women. These things basically
makes them cave-men.

So "second world" countries are those which are not quite stone-age savage,
but are still noticably behind.

So an example of a "Second world" nation would be the United Kingdom, which
enjoys many of the modern luxuries of the first world, and much of the social
freedoms and progress, and yet still suffers under a completely irrational
monarchy and lacks essential freedoms such as the right to self defense. As
citizens of the United Kingdom are completely forbidden from keeping arms for
the sole purpose of defense of self, family, and property, they are
essentially servants of the state. Such a nation cannot then be justly
described as "first world", as real first world nations such as the United
States have enjoyed these additional freedoms for many generations now.

If my definition is not "official" then I apologize, nobody ever really
explained the meaning of the phrases to me and my understanding is simply
based on 3 decades of contextual usage. The implication is that there is a
single path of progress which all nations are basically following. The first
world is setting the example, and the rest are following our lead.

('that we still have such a long way to go is one of the reasons it's so
amazing we haven't nuked ourselves to extinction yet :)')

~~~
dang
This breaks the site guidelines. We don't want ideological, religious, or
national flamewar on HN.

Could you please read
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and not post like this again?

~~~
originalsimba
I apologize for that, I do try to keep my comments in line... however..

Do we not have an _obligation_ as participants in this world society to speak
up about horrors? Inaction leads to more suffering. If the discussion is only
happening on HN, how can we justify our inaction to ourselves in the name of
adhering to some arbitrary guidelines? "First they came for the..."

I understand why the guidelines exist. I even agree with them, mostly.
However, I don't see the harm in tolerating necessary discussions about social
awareness. _This is where the adult conversations are happening. They aren 't
happening anywhere else._ I am genuinely afraid of the social consequences of
this policy.

Also, there is some confusion regarding where the violation occurs. Was it my
original comment? Because I don't see a violation in my original comment. The
comment you replied to was simply trying to clarify my statements for someone
who asked for a clarification. Is clarification a violation? If so, this looks
like "thought-crime" right? I would be grateful if you can clarify this for
me.

~~~
dang
The problem is that, like flames, they consume everything if you let them.
Therefore we can't let them.

Hacker News is just one kind of website, not every kind. To survive, it needs
to stay focused on its mandate, the gratification of intellectual curiosity
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).
We've learned a lot over the years about what serves that spirit vs. what
kills it. Comments like what you've been posting are among the most toxic to
it. I'm sure there are many other places where they'd be fine, but here
they're off topic, and encourage worse.

People frequently want to use HN for other things, such as political and
ideological battle, but that would soon kill the site. Are those matters
important? Yes they are. But does a forum dedicated to other, less important
things, also have a right to exist? Yes it does.

In terms of the comment I replied to, you crossed into religious flamewar,
national flamewar, and ideological battle, all of which are things we don't
want here. For this kind of discussion, you need to find another website, or
perhaps create one. There is room for many more communities online.

~~~
originalsimba
I understand everything you're saying and you aren't going to get an argument
from me on these points, however I still think there is a dangerous social
concern here. HN isn't obligated to save the world, but there's an opportunity
for improvement of this model isn't there?

The current system of hell-banning repeat offenders doesn't actually prevent
the savvier users from seeing their content. Instead of that, what if comments
could be split into two sections, threads about social ramifications and
similar humanitarian concerns, and threads about intellectual curiosities and
technology specific discussions?

Users could opt-in/out of each type of conversation, perhaps the social
threads could be opt-out by default.

I understand what the site is trying to do. I also understand that there
aren't really "other websites", because as I said this is where the real adult
conversations are happening. HN is the only legitimate major source of news on
the planet today in 2018, thanks in no small part to community participation.
Everywhere else is garbage news and flame-wars as you've stated. I don't think
"flame-wars" are a product of having grown up conversations about important
topics, they're a product of having a lot of non-grown-ups participating in
grown-up conversations. The up/down voting system does a great job already of
filtering worthwhile content, it should not also be necessary to censor
people.

_this_ conversation is, in my humble opinion, extremely interesting. What is
the social responsibility of a website like HN which starts small but grows
into something much larger? Look at what happened with Facebook when they
ignored their social responsibilities in favor of their preferred direction.
That's a conversation which should probably be had. And if we're being honest,
and let's be honest, the best way to have it would be an Ask HN, and you and I
both know that'd be flagged right away. My concern is: history has repeatedly
taught us the severe consequences of that.

This seems like one of those situations where everyone knows it's broken and
everyone wants it to be better, but strict adherence to "regulations" prevents
otherwise free-willed people from doing what they know should be done. And
then after the inevitable tragedies that result, people look back in hindsight
thinking "why were we such fools". Often in the form of hollywood
dramatizations ;)

I appreciate you taking time to hear me out, anyway.

------
petermcneeley
"So you wanna be both a socialist and a libertarian at the same time, and it’s
absurd." "But in fact, we’re in a period of time of extreme concentration of
wealth and power, and it’s precisely around those who run the biggest
computers. So the truth and the effect is just the opposite of what the
rhetoric is and the immediate experience." "My feeling is that if the theory
is correct that we got into this by trying to be socialist and libertarian at
the same time, and getting the worst of both worlds, then we have to choose."
"The other option is to monetize it (facebook). And that’s the one that I’m
personally more interested in. And what that would look like is, we’d ask
those who can afford to — which would be a lot of people in the world,
certainly most people in the West — to start paying for it. And then we’d also
pay people who provide data into it that’s exceptionally valuable to the
network, and it would become a source of economic growth. And we would outlaw
advertising on it. There would no longer be third parties paying to influence
you."

Sounds like Jaron has Chosen poorly.

