5 ms·

> a return to 1.0 ideals of information-sharing Jaron Lanier often makes the point that the goals of free information didn't turn out quite the way they intend

by platz 8y ago

> a return to 1.0 ideals of information-sharing Jaron Lanier often makes the point that the goals of free information didn't turn out quite the way they intended > The internet was built on a socialist model that everything should be free and accessible to all. But it also celebrated visionary tech entrepreneurs who made it big with their world-changing ideas. “How do you celebrate entrepreneurship when everything is free?” he mused. Tech companies looked to advertising to fund their operations, and that’s where all the corruption began. Ads powered by algorithms that perform behavior-modification on it's subjects is the only model left when all that "information" is free. > A monetized information economy will create a strong middle class out of information sharing—and a strong middle class must be able to outspend the elite tip of an economy for democracy to endure,” https://qz.com/1249955/jaron-lanier-at-ted-2018-to-fix-the-internet-we-have-to-start-paying-for-google-and-facebook/ https://qz.com/1249955/jaron-lanier-at-ted-2018-to-fix-the-i... https://qz.com/87795/free-information-as-great-as-it-sounds-will-enslave-us-all/ https://qz.com/87795/free-information-as-great-as-it-sounds-...

pjc50 8y ago
Certainly, but we know what the likely alternatives were at the time: telco walled gardens (Minitel) or dialup services (AOL). I maintain that building the internet without an integrated billing system was its most impressively radical choice. If a telco had been involved they'd have built the billing first then worked out what limited range of services they felt like selling, on which they would try to keep as much of the margin as possible rather than letting third parties profit. The economy of monetized information would be much smaller, since you would need to "buy in"; no Wikipedia, no Stackexchange, no free courses, no free software, no free maps. > A monetized information economy will create a strong middle class This very much depends on whether information is a form of labour or a form of capital. What's the information equivalent of "r > g"?
- platz 8y ago
  > The economy of monetized information would be much smaller There is plenty of evidence that that is not a guaranteed outcome: > HBO and Netflix’s paid subscription models have resulted in “peak TV.” Micropayments might be a way to allow everyone to participate. > Lanier suggested exploring other business models as well, including a scenario where individuals would be compensated for uploading quality content.
  - Pokepokalypse 8y ago
    > Micropayments might be a way to allow everyone to participate. . . . only if the scale of that "micro" is truly "micro" in relation to our "micro" incomes, as consumers.
dingaling 8y ago
That looks like a bit of a strawman. It wasn't that stuff on Web 1.0 was meant to be 'free' per a 'socialist model'. It was just sharing information and was completely orthogonal to concepts of money or value. When you sit down next to someone on a train and start a conversation you don't start by saying 'the following exchange of words is free of cost'. Cost doesn't even come into it. It's not socialist, capitalist or pineapple. It's just words.
- platz 8y ago
  The signifier "socialist" in jaron's quote is almost completely superfluous, and can easily be dropped without loosing anything from his main argument, so I wouldn't fixate on that. The point is that if "information is free", then it severely restricts the kinds of business models startups and entrepreneurs need to survive. > When you sit down next to someone on a train and start a conversation I don't think Jaron is trying to say you need to pay someone to have a conversation on a train. That is more like a strawman. The content that you provide on a social media platform, which lives on a central, proprietary, for-profit company's server, is a bit different.

by platz 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago

Certainly, but we know what the likely alternatives were at the time: telco walled gardens (Minitel) or dialup services (AOL). I maintain that building the internet without an integrated billing system was its most impressively radical choice. If a telco had been involved they'd have built the billing first then worked out what limited range of services they felt like selling, on which they would try to keep as much of the margin as possible rather than letting third parties profit. The economy of monetized information would be much smaller, since you would need to "buy in"; no Wikipedia, no Stackexchange, no free courses, no free software, no free maps. > A monetized information economy will create a strong middle class This very much depends on whether information is a form of labour or a form of capital. What's the information equivalent of "r > g"?

platz 8y ago
> The economy of monetized information would be much smaller There is plenty of evidence that that is not a guaranteed outcome: > HBO and Netflix’s paid subscription models have resulted in “peak TV.” Micropayments might be a way to allow everyone to participate. > Lanier suggested exploring other business models as well, including a scenario where individuals would be compensated for uploading quality content.
- Pokepokalypse 8y ago
  > Micropayments might be a way to allow everyone to participate. . . . only if the scale of that "micro" is truly "micro" in relation to our "micro" incomes, as consumers.

dingaling 8y ago

That looks like a bit of a strawman. It wasn't that stuff on Web 1.0 was meant to be 'free' per a 'socialist model'. It was just sharing information and was completely orthogonal to concepts of money or value. When you sit down next to someone on a train and start a conversation you don't start by saying 'the following exchange of words is free of cost'. Cost doesn't even come into it. It's not socialist, capitalist or pineapple. It's just words.

platz 8y ago
The signifier "socialist" in jaron's quote is almost completely superfluous, and can easily be dropped without loosing anything from his main argument, so I wouldn't fixate on that. The point is that if "information is free", then it severely restricts the kinds of business models startups and entrepreneurs need to survive. > When you sit down next to someone on a train and start a conversation I don't think Jaron is trying to say you need to pay someone to have a conversation on a train. That is more like a strawman. The content that you provide on a social media platform, which lives on a central, proprietary, for-profit company's server, is a bit different.