About the Author

Jaron Lanier is a philosopher and computer scientist who has spent his career pushing the transformative power of modern technology to its limits. From coining the term 'Virtual Reality' and creating the world's first immersive avatars to developing cutting-edge medical imaging and surgical techniques, Lanier is one of the premier designers and engineers at work today. Linked with UC Berkeley and Microsoft, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IEEE in 2009.

A musician with a collection of over 700 instruments, he has been recognised by Encyclopedia Britannica (but certainly not Wikipedia) as one of history's 300 or so greatest inventors and named one of the top one hundred public intellectuals in the world by Prospect and Foreign Policy.

Reviews

Lanier has a poet's sensibility and his book reads like a hallucinogenic reverie, full of entertaining haiku-like observations and digressions
*Financial Times*

One of the triumphs of Lanier's intelligent and subtle book is its inspiring portrait of the kind of people that a democratic information economy would produce. His vision implies that if we are allowed to lead absorbing, properly remunerated lives, we will likewise outgrow our addiction to consumerism and technology
*Guardian*

Jaron Lanier is a digital visionary with a difference
*Observer*

Many will be captivated by Mr Lanier's daringly original insights ... You Are Not A Gadget (2010) was a feisty, brilliant, predictive work, and the new volume is just as exciting
*New York Times*

Information can't be free if the digital economy is to thrive, argues this stimulating jeremiad. Noting that the Internet is destroying more jobs than it creates, virtual reality pioneer and cyber-skeptic Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget) foresees a future when automation, robotics, 3-D printers, and computer networks will eliminate every industry from nursing and manufacturing to taxi-driving. The result, he contends, will be a dystopia of mass unemployment, insecurity, and social chaos in which information will be free but no one will be paid except the elite proprietors of the "siren servers"-Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the like-that manipulate our lives. Lanier's extrapolation of current trends to an economy where almost everyone will be judged redundant is incisive and scary. Unfortunately, his proposal for safe-guarding the middle class-micropayments for the supposedly valuable but currently free information that ordinary people feed into the Web, from consumer profiles and friending links-feels as unconvincing and desperate as the cyber-capitalist nostrums he derides. Lanier's main argument spawns fascinating digressions into Aristotle's politics, science-fiction themes, Silicon Valley spirituality, and other byways. Even if his recommended treatment seems inadequate, his diagnosis of our technological maladies is brilliant, troubling, and well worth the price. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.