Sociomechanica

I’m in the middle of reading You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier (Author Site, Amazon). I have really mixed feelings about the book so far. In one respect, he talked about how many of the conventions of the past have locked us in to how we operate computers and use the internet. That part is fascinating. Other parts seem Luddite and cantankerous.

But I’m not going to give it a full review until I finish the book. Right now, I want to share a passage with that that I really liked, and drew inspiration from:

Every save-the-world cause has a list of suggestions for “what each of us can do”: bike to work, recycle, and so on.

I can propose such a list related to the problems I’m talking about [the author fears us impersonally connecting via social networks]:

• Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.
• If you put effort into Wikipedia articles, put even more effort into using your personal voice and expression outside of the wiki to help attract people who don’t yet realize that they are interested in the topics you contributed to.
• Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won’t fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.
• Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.
• Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you hear the inner voice that needs to come out.
• If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events, to avoid the creeping danger of believing that objectively described events define you, as they would define a machine.

I think the point he is getting at is that some of the most popular microblogging services right now, like Twitter and Tumblr, don’t give you a chance to really create you own quality content. I’m not decrying their use (in fact, I use both frequently), but I can understand that when I post a link, a funny video, or a song, I’m just reaggregating some already-existing information. I’m not creating.

Another thing the author is concerned about is that when you reduce your personal information to neat pre-determined categories (like in Facebook, how your relationship status is reduced to “Single”, “In a Relationship”, or “It’s Complicated”), you lose your individuality in order to be sortable. I will disagree with this later, but I understand his point. I really do. I can spend hours with Facebook and not be able to fit my entire self within my profile.

Again, while I don’t buy into the whole philosophy of the book (so far), I can take value away from this list. I encourage you to try one of these bullets. I’m working on a blog post, for example, that will fit under point #5. You’ll feel good, your audience will appreciate it, and you will contribute to the value of the noosphere.