You Are Not A Gadget Summary

From the beginning of the millennial generation until today, the internet has changed from being a resource for exclusive groups, to a resource for the public, and finally, a central medium humans use for expression. In fact, the internet and its host of platforms (such as MySpace, Facebook, and Youtube) have become such widely used media for expression, that in many ways, individual voice is becoming a thing of the past. Instead, individual data is becoming our future. These same large organizations that the internet is centered around use the data they collect from actual people in order to target those same people later, so they can profit off of their interests and habits. It seems that a common theme between both of these problems is not

This idea is coined in the term “noosphere” by Jaron Lanier in his book, You are Not a Gadget. He defines this as the “supposed global brain formed by the sum of all the human brains connected through the internet” (Lanier 45). However, this idea can create results more negative than one might imagine. As Lanier puts it, “a continuation of the present trend will make us like…North Korea, a society with a single book” (Lanier 46). He is afraid that, as a society, we will simply turn into a simplistic whole—not striving for self-expression and individualism, but instead focusing on being one giant mass. Through this, the entire concept of what it means to be human will have, in a way, faded. This concept of losing individualism through the internet is not only a mere prediction of the future, but also a theme that has been occurring on the internet across the life span of the millennial generation. A clear example of this is seen in observing the trends of social media. In the year 2005, the majority of the internet’s social media usage was concentrated on a website called MySpace. Here, people were able to customize their profiles to any level they

To do this, there must be some way to pay those who post their creative content on the internet for access to view it, instead of paying companies like Facebook to use their services with our privacy. Although this solution noble, it is simply not feasible. Denise Caruso, in Deep Lab, also mentions in relation to the data gathering of big companies that “code is code. They used it to invade. We’ll use it to subvert the invasion” (Caruso, 107). This solution is not really one at all, because simply saying that code will save us from a loss of individualism and privacy is too vague to have any meaning. A solution to using advertisement as the sole method for profit, for example, can be seen in the work of Luis von Ahn, another professor at Carnegie Mellon University, like Caruso. He created a business model which offers “education to millions” while paying for its debts using the intelligence it has given its own users. Duolingo is an application that teaches someone a language, and then has them translate pieces of texts from Wikipedia or news articles in return. This business model educates people, makes profit, and also globalizes the availability of information on the internet, all at the same time. Through this sustainable model, Ahn has been able to create a