Digital Futures: The Untested "Third Way"

This interview with Jaron Lanier, author of "You Are Not a Gadget" asks deep and controversial questions about the accepted "nature" of the Internet and how decisions made at its inception have become ingrained and continue to shape its function and potential. That is, decisions made that essentially reward the gate keepers and facilitators of the system but don't materially reward users who add "their hearts and minds" to the Internet, and how this has limited the growth of the middle class. Therefore, the job losses resulting from automation and globalism are not being sufficiently replaced by the enormous amount of work done each day on the Internet, which offers more psychological (status, creative satisfaction) than financial rewards.

"But in this case we have this idea that we put all this stuff out there and what we get back are intangible or abstract benefits of reputation, or ego-boosting. Since we're used to that bargain, we're impoverished compared to the world that could have been and should have been when the Internet was initially conceived. The world that would create a strengthened middle class through what people do, by monetizing more and more instead of less and less. It's possible that that world could have never come about, but that was never tested. If we are absolutely convinced that this third way is impossible, and that we have to choose between "The Matrix" or Marx, if those are our only two choices, it makes the future dismal, and so I hope that a third way is possible..."

The full text of this important and controversial interview here