The award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is an annual ceremonial culmination of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The award is – it says the statute – each “a personality” honored “has contributed mainly in great mass of their activities in the fields of literature, science and art to achieve the idea of peace.” Since the idea of peace is an idea with great capacity, not encounters any free program a winner with unanimous consent. As was announced in this year was Jaron Lanier just that personality befördere peace energetic and award-worthy, it rustled in the German forest of leaves mainly benevolent, in some electronic channels but it buzzed warningly.
A picture puzzle?
The one underlined the statement of the Foundation Council, the Association of German Book Trade honored with the Peace Prize, “a pioneer in the digital world”, which has recognized the risks this world “for the free way of life of every human being harbors.” In the grounds is the latest book Lanier, which appeared a few months ago in German translation (by Hoffmann und Campe), as “appeal” praised “Who owns the future?” – As exhortation, “vigilant against oppression, abuse and monitoring to be and the digital world to specify structures that respect the rights of the individual and promote the democratic participation of all. ” The other, however, the critical voices saw and see in the decoration of the American computer scientist, musician, entrepreneur and author of at least a misunderstanding, if not one – with the idea of peace probably not readily compatible – “declaration of war”; a “declaration of war”, more specifically, to the followers of swarm intelligence and the Open Source movement and diligent Wikipedians, especially to those so that it use the internet apparently on their way to free way of life and democratic participation.
As now this? Jaron Lanier is something like a picture puzzle, in which the others just see this one and the opposite? – The image that one can make of him, tilts less easily when it is considered equally, that Lanier both the powerful data Kraken such as Facebook and Google is suspicious and the anonymous collectives which the sector of cooperative software tinkering or in romp sphere of encyclopedic knowledge accumulation. Does both Lanier an inveterate individualist, the economic and political concentrations of power as much bother as leveling and anonymous Vergemeinschaftungen, for which he has brought the curse words “digital Maoism” and “cybernetic totalitarianism” in circulation.
Inspired seems the Collectors of unusual musical instruments to be of a kind aesthetics of genius: creativity can only come there for breakthrough where individuals have sufficient scope to develop freely and where their individual manuscripts remained visible even in cooperative projects. Where – as in Wikipedia – is not the case, Lanier, would gain a sterile writing style and anti-innovative mainstream views the upper hand. His double polemical Pointe against the friends of free and open source software, which of course he did not condemn in toto, he has formulated repeated: do not be obviously been so creative that they invented the iPhone; and they had in their generosity ultimately supplied the working data Kraken. “From Linux always follows Google,” Lanier writes in his new book.
This Kraken, which had emerged as the winner of a “all-or-nothing competition” glad at Lanier “Siren Server”. Those who follow the call of the sirens, translating them into data that are worth money, but of which so far can not be silvered, to which they return. Therefore Lanier wants to equip the ordinary network users with a law that is to be expected: All data that can be drawn from what one is doing on the net, win, then belonged to him and likely only for a fee (an automatically taking place, “Nano Payment”) be used. Google would have to pay something to those who use its search engine and other services when the company because their property – their individual data – for money, saying advertising revenue makes. Whether siren server, the overwhelming nodes, losing in this way the network of networks to influence, is debatable. Want to smash corporations Lanier, who has been with Microsoft Research, certainly not; but the geek who seems he has remained, – sobered, but still happy future – hope for a redistribution of power in the Internet. He hopes, therefore, that people take their fate into their own hands, in a corporate hand that belonged to the right for creative hand as the left in the best of all brave new worlds.
The price of a such a ‘humanistic information economy “would be like Jaron Lanier candidly admits that” the economy ubiquitous “would be – and the production and consumption in the network constantly,” a small Ticker »mitliefe which indicated the well-established value. The enervated the “humanistic softie,” as he characterizes himself, indeed, but he sees no other alternative to feeding the siren server – not, unfortunately, also it really obvious an information ecology that could provide a radical reduction of the digital footprints. In the event that one day all people willy-nilly periods as a data distributor in its own thing its network existence, Lanier holds not very sharp contours humanism ready yet another hope. The author speaks of the Cells then we are facing “spiritual challenge [. . ,.] Not to lose touch with that core of experience that does not fit in the digitalizeable aspects of reality. “
This seems a little odd, finally Lanier is one of the protagonists of the” Virtual Reality ». However, he wants what can be done quite cumbersome data with helmet, goggles data and data glove – or could – be understood as consciousness expansion and enhancement of the assets, are home to sensitive in the world. “Transhumanist” pipe dreams of a life beyond the carnal existence – into the net uploaded brain content – are not Lanier’s thing. In this kind redemption longings he recognizes a variant of the “cybernetic totalitarianism”. He wants to appear to be happy to live sensually in space and time. But Jaron Lanier is haunted by a fabulous vision of the “transhuman” one aspect has – or should we say, a “sub-human”? At the end of his book published four years ago, “You Are Not a Gadget” (German Suhrkamp) appear on the cephalopods, including octopus, squid and cuttlefish. They seem to embody what it means “virtual reality.”
irony of history?
The ability of these creatures to change their shape and color, and to adapt to changing environments, he associated with the idea of a “postsymbolischen communication” among people who seem to be something other than just facial expressions and gestures that accompany speech: a direct, “fluent-specific” exchange, which would be mediated by not symbols. That the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers calculated a cephalopod who wants to let the spoken and written language behind the peace laurel puts on his head, devoid, as one of the critics wrote, not the irony (www.merkur-blog.de/author/florian -cramer). – As a matter of fact. But who knows what will mean in ten, twenty years, the word “book”?
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