Who Owns the Future? by Lanier, Jaron -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Prelude

Hello, Hero Terms

PART ONE

First Round 1. Motivation The Problem in Brief Put Up or Shut Up Moore’s Law Changes the Way People Are Valued Essential but Worthless The Beach at the Edge of Moore’s Law The Price of Heaven The Problem Is Not the Technology, but the Way We Think About the Technology Saving the Winners from Themselves Progress Is Compulsory Progress Is Never Free of Politics Back to the Beach 2. A Simple Idea Just Blurt the Idea Out A Simple Example Big Talk, I Know . . . FIRST INTERLUDE: ANCIENT ANTICIPATION OF THE SINGULARITY Aristotle Frets Do People Deserve to Be Paid if They Aren’t Miserable? The Plot

PART TWO

The Cybernetic Tempest 3. Money as Seen Through One Computer Scientist’s Eyes Money, God, and the Old Technology of Forgetting The Information Technology of Optimism 4. The Ad Hoc Construction of Mass Dignity Are Middle Classes Natural? Two Familiar Distributions Tweaks to Network Design Can Change Distributions of Outcomes Letting Bell Curves Be Bell Curves Star Systems Starve Themselves; Bell Curves Renew Themselves An Artificial Bell Curve Made of Levees The Senseless Ideal of a Perfectly Pure Market Income Is Different from Wealth The Taste of Politics Drove My Chevy to the Levee but the Levee Was Dry How Is Music like a Mortgage? 5. “Siren Servers” There Can’t Be Complexity Without Ambiguity A First Pass at a Definition Where Sirens Beckon 6. The Specter of the Perfect Investment Our Free Lunch Candy Radiant Risk You Can’t See as Much of the Server as It Can See of You Waiting for Robin Hood From Autocollate to Autocollude Rupture 7. Some Pioneering Siren Servers My Little Window Wal-Mart Considered as Software From the Supply Chain’s Point of View From the Customer’s Point of View Financial Siren Servers SECOND INTERLUDE (A PARODY): IF LIFE GIVES YOU EULAS, MAKE LEMONADE

PART THREE

How This Century Might Unfold, from Two Points of View 8. From Below: Mass Unemployment Events Will There Be Manufacturing Jobs? Napsterizing the Teamsters Flattening the City on a Hill Factoring the City on a Hill Education in the Abstract Is Not Enough The Robotic Bedpan A Pharma Fable That Might Unfold Later in This Century 9. From Above: Misusing Big Data to Become Ridiculous Three Nerds Walk into a Bar . . . Your Lack of Privacy Is Someone Else’s Wealth Big Data in Science A Method in Waiting Wise or Feared? The Nature of Big Data Defies Intuition The Problem with Magic Game On The Kicker The Nature of Our Confusion The Most Elite Naïveté THIRD INTERLUDE: MODERNITY CONCEIVES THE FUTURE Mapping Out Where the Conversation Can Go Nine Dismal Humors of Futurism, and a Hopeful One Meaning as Nostalgia Can We Handle Our Own Power? The First High-Tech Writer Meaning in Struggle Practical Optimism

PART FOUR

Markets, Energy Landscapes, and Narcissism 10. Markets and Energy Landscapes The Technology of Ambient Cheating Imaginary Landscapes in the Clouds Markets as Landscapes Experimentalism and Popular Perception Keynes Considered as a Big Data Pioneer 11. Narcissism The Insanity of the Local/Global Flip Siren Servers Think the World Is All About Them FOURTH INTERLUDE: LIMITS ARE FOR MUGGLES The Endless Conversation About the Heart Cartel The Deadly Risk of Not Being a Shapeshifter The First Musical “Any” Climb Any “Any”

PART FIVE

The Contest to Be Most Meta 12. Story Lost Not All Is Chaos The Conservation of Free Will 13. Coercion on Autopilot: Specialized Network Effects Rewarding and Punishing Network Effects For Every Carrot a Stick Denial of Service Arm’s-Length Blackmail Who’s the Customer and Who Are All Those Other People? 14. Obscuring the Human Element Noticing the New Order Who Orders the Data? The Human Shell Game 15. Story Found The First Act Is Autocatalytic Since You Asked Why the Networked World Seems Chaotic When Are Siren Servers Monopolies? Free Rise Make Others Pay for Entropy Bills Are Boring Coattails The Closing Act Stories Are Nothing Without Ideas FIFTH INTERLUDE: THE WISE OLD MAN IN THE CLOUDS The Limits of Emergence as an Explanation The Global Triumph of Turing’s Humor Digital and Pre-digital Theocracy What Is Experience?

PART SIX

Democracy 16. Complaint Is Not Enough Governments Are Learning the Tricks of Siren Servers Alienating the Global Village Electoral Siren Servers Maybe the Way We Complain Is Part of the Problem 17. Clout Must Underlie Rights, if Rights Are to Persist Melodramas Are Tenacious Emphasizing the Middle Class Is in the Interests of Everyone A Better Peak Waiting to Be Discovered SIXTH INTERLUDE: THE POCKET PROTECTOR IN THE SAFFRON ROBE The Most Ancient Marketing Monks and Nerds (or, Chip Monks) It’s All About I “Abundance” Evolves Childhood and Apocalypse

PART SEVEN

Ted Nelson 18. First Thought, Best Thought First Thought Best Thought The Right to Mash-up Is Not the Same as the Right to Copy Two-Way Links Why Isn’t Ted Better Known?

PART EIGHT

The Dirty Pictures (or, Nuts and Bolts: What a Humanistic Alternative Might Be Like) 19. The Project You Can’t Tweet This A Less Ambitious Approach to Be Discouraged A Sustainable Information Economy A Better Beach 20. We Need to Do Better than Ad Hoc Levees Keep It Smooth Not Enough Money Grows on Trees 21. Some First Principles Provenance Commercial Symmetry Only First-Class Citizens Eschewing Zombie Siren Servers Only First-Class Identity 22. Who Will Do What? Biological Realism The Psychology of Deserving But Will There Be Enough Value from People? A Question That Really Isn’t That Hard to Answer Nothing More to Offer? To the Dead Their Due 23. Big Business What Will Big Companies Do? The Role of Advertising 24. How Will We Earn and Spend? When Will Decisions Be Made? Dynamic Value Earning a Little Money by Living Well or Interestingly 25. Risk The Cost of Risk Risk Never Really Goes Away Puddle, Lake, or Ocean? 26. Financial Identity Economic Avatars Economic Avatars as an Improvement on the Forgetfulness of Cash Interpersonal Economic Symmetry Through Theatrics Economic Network Neutrality Symmetry as a Disincentive to Game the System Faith and Credit Tax 27. Inclusion The Lower Half of the Curve The Lowly Tail of the Curve Wealth and Civility 28. The Interface to Reality How Great Are Our Powers? Waiting for Technology Waiting for Politics What Can We Do About Big Data and the Reality Problem? Carbon Copies Ruin Carbon Credits How Fighting “Fraud” Might Also Fight “Scams” Feeding the Frenetic Mind of the Networked Person It’s All in the Timing The Treachery of Toys 29. Creepy Three Pervasive Creepy Conundrums A Hacker’s Paradise Creepiness Thrives on the Quest for Utopia Once Upon a Time I Hoped to Wish Paranoia Away The ’Net Is Watching Some Good Reasons to Be Tracked by the Cloud The Creepiness Is Not in the Tech, but in the Power We Grant to Siren Servers Maslow’s Pyramid of Blackmail The Weird Logic of Extreme Creepiness 30. A Stab at Mitigating Creepiness Commercial Rights Scale Online Where Civil Rights Don’t Commercial Rights Are Actionable The Ideal Price of Information Equals the Minimization of Creepiness Individual Players Will Also Be Motivated to Set Prices to Minimize Creepiness SEVENTH INTERLUDE: LIMITS ARE FOR MORTALS From Social Network to Immortality Supernatural Temptations in Tech Culture Just for the Record, Why I Make Fun of the University Will the Control of Death Be a Conversation or a Conflagration? The Two Tiers of Immortality Planned for This Century

PART NINE

Transition 31. The Transition Can There Be a Digital Golden Rule? The Miracle’s Gauntlet Avatars and Credit The Price of Antenimbosia 32. Leadership Audition for the Lead A Thousand Geeks Startups Traditional Governments, Central Banks, etc. Multiplicities of Siren Servers Facebook or Similar Confederacies of Just a Few Giant Siren Servers EIGHTH INTERLUDE: THE FATE OF BOOKS Books Inspire Maniacal Scheming An Author’s Experience of a Book It’s Not About Paper Versus eBooks The Book as Silicon Valley Would Have It What Is It About a Book That Is Worth Saving? Conclusion: What Is to Be Remembered? All This, Just for the Whiff of Possibility The Economics of the Future Is User Interface Design The Tease of the Tease Know Your Poison Is There a Test for Whether an Information Economy Is Humanistic? Back to the Beach

Appendix: First Appearances of Key Terms Acknowledgments About Jaron Lanier Notes Index

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