Jaron Lanier

A computer-age visionary argues that the Internet has failed to live up to its early promises, sharing cautionary perspectives on the Web 2.0 design concept while optimistically evaluating the Internet as a positive cultural vehicle.

A Manifesto

You are Not a Gadget

Mia Caven

Insightful and true but I think slightly outdated and nothing we haven’t heard before

Diana Platgalve

** spoiler alert **
           Being not very immersed in the technological world, this book was an interesting read and a thought provoker. The author is presenting criticism for the current dominant ideology of the digital world (what he calls) cybernetic totalism. Naming that the current design of the ‘net has failed spiritually and behaviourally. He argues that the whole point of technology is to change the human situation, but we can find ourselves in absurd situation of surveillance, and culture is to become nothing but advertising.

Nick Gracilla

Kolle

Recep Karabicak

Yusuf Ziya Karabicak

Something went wrong around the start of the 21st century. Individual creativity began to go out of fashion. Music became an endless rehashing of the past. Scientists were in danger of no longer understanding their own research. Indeed, not only was individual creativity old-fashioned but individuals themselves. The crowd was wise. Machines, specifically computers, were no longer tools to be used by human minds � they were better than humans. Welcome to the world of the digital revolution. Yet what if, by devaluing individuals, we are deadening creativity, endlessly rehashing past culture, risking weaker design in engineering and science, losing democracy, and reducing development � in every sphere? In You Are Not A Gadget, Jaron Lanier, digital guru, and inventor of Virtual Reality, delivers a searing manifesto in support of the human and reflects on the good and bad developments in design and thought twenty years after the invention of the web. Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defence of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.

You are Not a Gadget A Manifesto

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