A Fascinating Article

This long article has a lot of well thought out ideas and examples of how the web, and software, are changing lives on a large scale. We tend to think of the macro when we work on it daily, Lanier takes us on a structured journey through the big picture effects of what we consider almost mundane concerning software design and the structures that are digital economics.

Read every word. You'll be thinking about this article for quite awhile.

Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » The Gory Antigora: Illusions of Capitalism and Computers: "There is an important Thoreau-like question that inevitably comes up: What's the point? The common illusion that digital bits are free-standing entities, that would exist and remain functional even if there were no people around to use them, is unfortunate. It means that people are denied the epiphany that the edifice of the Net is precisely the generosity and warmth of humanity connecting with itself.

The most technically realistic appraisal of the Internet is also the most humanistic one. The Web is neither an emergent intelligence that transcends humanity, as some (like George Dyson) have claimed, nor a lifeless industrial machine. It is a conduit of expression between people.

This perception seems to me not only beautiful, but necessary. Any idea of the human future based only on amplifying some parameter or other of human capability inevitably leads to disaster or, at best, disappointment."