This likely would have been a “10 reasons you are not a gadget” list post on a typical blog. It is great to see posts “that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.”

I definitely agree that “people are encouraged by the economics of free content, crowd dynamics, and lord aggregators to serve up fragments instead of considered whole expressions or arguments.”

However, there is a key fact that I think is neglected in his arguments. The Internet is bringing the tools of creative expression and communication to virtually everyone, everywhere on the planet. The Internet is not constricting the most creative people, it is just drowning them out in sea of mediocrity.

It is important to remember that technology is just a tool. The tool itself is not good or bad. Giving everyone in the world free sculpting tools does not diminish the works of the most talented artists. It just inundates the world with a lot of lousy sculptures.

Substandard and fragmented content is increasing, but there is more access to quality creative expression as well. I would have never found your blog if it weren’t for this “Internet that institutionalizes bad Web design and a Web-mentality that celebrates constrictive, data-centric technology over infinite human creativity.”

There is a vast world full of people who not only live fully sense-experiential lives, but to whom it would never occur to consider a box of circuitry as the Motherland – or the Afterlife. Most of us, I think (even in the presently screen-addicted cultural state of the U.S.) still find actual human interaction, and employment of our physical senses, to be preferable to a life of the mind on the scale proposed by Lanier’s nemeses.

Re: blog posts: I couldn’t agree more about that one.

“Adaptation” “belongingness” Yea! “Group thinking” “group creativity” Boo!

Rather than, “the social whole has greater worth and significance than its individual parts,” I’d say, “individual parts of the social whole put together is better than any single person.” I know I’m flawed. I know I don’t know it all. But I also know I’m better than anyone else at certain things. Let’s find each other’s awesomeness.

The problem I’m trying to solve (I don’t know about these nut-jobs you’re writing about) is still a human problem. And I think there is a human that knows the answer better than any computer or any collection of agreed-upon answers. But to ignore the tools we have in an effort to find these nuggets is just plain silly.

I guess that means I don’t fully agree or disagree with you or Lanier. It’s just a different perspective.

BTW, for an interesting take on the personal in the group social, you might want to check out Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy about curating your own micro-reality as an expression of the self.

Seriously, good article, just, you know, can’t get behind the issue.