Who Owns the Future?
by Jaron Lanier · first published 2013
60% recommend40% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Free online services let data-hoarding siren servers capture value and shrink the middle class. The argument proposes micropayments for data as a remedy, offering an economic critique of tech monopolies and AI.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Jaron Lanier is the father of virtual reality and one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers. Who Owns the Future? is his visionary reckoning with the most urgent economic and social trend of our age: the poisonous concentration of money and power in our digital networks. Lanier has predicted how technology will transform our humanity for decades, and his insight has never been more urgently needed. He shows how Siren Servers, which exploit big data and the free sharing of information, led our economy into recession, imperiled personal privacy, and hollowed out the middle class. The network
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…the cause is very much chasing RSUSs or w/e while not realizing the crazy dystopian governance layer our products are stitching together. Tech-native starting points that address this heads on: - “who owns the future,” Jaron Lanier, father of VR - “True Names,” the version with essays at the beginning, Vernor Vinge - Anything out of the cypherpunks, to include early bitcoin docs. You can disagree with the tech and…
on “Ask HN: Are we building a tech dystopia?” ↗…time) outcomes that came very true today even beyond the usual Neuromancer/Cryptonomicon/Sci-Fi mappings, yet there isn't much discussion on it (like this thread). edit - would check out Jaron Lanier, 'who owns the future,' for a pretty modern take that discusses the above well and he has tech bonafides. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_Culture_Research_Un... [1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tiqqun-the-cyberneti...
on “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45” ↗I find lists like this and Sivers.org/book very useful for finding new reading material, some good ones I've read this year (in no particular order); Who owns the future - Jaron Lanier Canoeing the Congo - Phil Harwood Margaret Thatcher - The Authorized Biography Venture Deals - Brad Feld / Jason Mendelson 1000 Ultimate Experiences - Lonely Planet
on “The Best Books I Read in 2013” ↗Google is a siren server. Read Who Owns the Future? by Lanier Jaron.. About the seo spam. It has always been like this. The difference. Is that today. Google also wants to take over all the content you're interested in, be even more powerful, and steal…
on “Google is kind of bad now? (Rather than finding answers it ranks SEO spam)” ↗I typed out an email and thought I'd just leave it here as it answers your question: Hi, I was thinking about something like this after reading Jaron Lanier's Who Owns the Future (which I recommend simply for his view on how a capitalist economy could subsist on micropayments, if you haven't read it). The world needs something like this, if only because the concept of post-payment,…
on “Tip any song or musician with Bitcoin” ↗> Then again, while I absolutely love doing work with big data, I've been having a bit of an "existential crisis" since the NSA leaks Book recommendation: "Who owns the future" by Jaron Lanier.
on “Spark: Open Source Superstar Rewrites Future of Big Data” ↗Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns The Future" is worth reading on this subject too, fwiw.
on “The Internet is destroying work” ↗> You've just found Google's business model ! This is essentially correct. Google makes money via providing access to content created by other's. Try "Who Owns the Future" by Jaron Lanier. It's an interesting read.
on “Google Treks” ↗…Robert Greene is one I mentioned in another post. I don't want to say its life changing but its extremely good and it's the closest thing I've found to a self help book that isn't full of fluff. Edit "Who owns the future" by Jarron Lanier was good too.
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2013?” ↗I would recommend Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns The Future?"; the short version is, we're so hooked on free or quasi-free goods and services (which includes Amazon), that capturing and privatizing market data has become the default business model, a process that…
on “The End of Asymmetric Information” ↗…micro-payments entirely is short-sighted. As for your original question, the reason a lot of people think that micro-payments are something that people want is probably because of Jaron Lanier's book, Who Owns the Future. It's a good read.
on “Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later” ↗The author does not articulate his critique very well beyond claiming that the VC get disproportionate return compared to land and labor. A much better critique is Jaron Lanier's Who Owns the Future. There he argues that the problem is when companies create monopolies that shrink the overall economy (Instagram vs Kodak, Facebook vs publishing in general). The startup then provides the public with…
on “Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest” ↗I recommend Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future" for more on this subject; the takeaway is that an ecosystem that defaults to free is a recipe for the digital feudalism that now makes up most of the tech world, as only the largest companies can manage…
on “The web's original sin” ↗…wealth inequality and reduced privacy/sovereignty, because it turned the Internet into a big modem. I’ll take a look at Weaving the Web; thank you for the recommendation. To you, I commend Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future.
on “Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award” ↗Interesting topic for sure and I hold very similar views. I have a book recommendation that might gauge your interest. "Who owns the future" by Jaron Lanier. He touches on many topics throughout the book and has several talks on Youtube including ones at Microsoft research. Touches on Siren Servers which collate big data and used for not…
on “Ask HN: How has BigTech not gotten better than WallStreet at predicting markets?” ↗