Will Digital Networks Ruin Us?

[Commentary] According to Jaron Lanier, author of “Who Owns the Future?”, it’s only a matter of time before the advantages of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon et al. disintegrate.

There are two additional components to Lanier’s thesis. The first is that the digital economy has done as much as any single thing to hollow out the middle class. And, second, the value of these new companies comes from us. It is Lanier’s radical idea that people should get paid whenever their information is used. He envisions a different kind of digital economy, in which creators of content -- whether a blog post or a Facebook photograph -- would receive micropayments whenever that content was used. A digital economy that appears to give things away for free -- in return for being able to invade the privacy of its customers for commercial gain -- isn’t free at all, he argues. Lanier’s ideas raise as many questions as they answer, and he makes no pretense to having it all figured out. Lanier wants to create a dynamic where digital networks expand the pie rather than shrink it, and rebuild the middle class instead of destroying it. “If Google and Facebook were smart,” he said, “they would want to enrich their own customers.” So far, he adds, Silicon Valley has made “the stupid choice” -- to grow their businesses at the expense of their own customers.