Mr. Lanier expands this thesis further, looking at the implications that digital Maoism or «cybernetic totalism» have for our society at large. Although some of his suggestions for addressing these problems wander into technical thickets the lay reader will find difficult to follow, the bulk of the book is lucid, powerful and persuasive. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in how the Web and the software we use every day are reshaping culture and the marketplace.
Mr. Lanier, a pioneer in the development of virtual reality and a Silicon Valley veteran, is hardly a Luddite, as some of his critics have suggested. Rather he is a digital-world insider who wants to make the case for «a new digital humanism» before software engineers’ design decisions, which he says fundamentally shape users’ behavior, become «frozen into place by a process known as lock-in.» Just as decisions about the dimensions of railroad tracks determined the size and velocity of trains for decades to come, he argues, so choices made about software design now may yield «defining, unchangeable rules» for generations to come.
Facebook went further, organizing people into multiple-choice identities
