Why I am not a Gadget – views on Jaron Lanier’s manifesto

Jaron Lanier’s latest book, “You are not a Gadget – a Manifesto”, has stirred a lot of conversations about the impact of the Internet and its social media darlings on our lives.

In case you are not familiar with it, the premise of the book, captured very well in a WSJ article, is that Lanier decries the trends towards what he calls “digital collectivism”, where the pervasive social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter dominate the digital and social life of the majority of the Internet’s participants, forcing everyone to gradually adopt their memes and modes of communication, even as the conformity to the typically inane social media interactions eventually leads to the stultification of the Facebook generation.

I would like to offer my own perspective, coming from within the venture capital industry, which is at least responsible for the rise of social media through venture funding and expansion capital to those very companies.

I think Lanier definitely makes some good points in his analysis. However, I would argue that his warning is rather too stark and his perspective too pessimistic. For, Facebook and Twitter and the many other social network sites are only the beginning of the true revolution in the way people communicate and interact with each other. Just think of how vastly different the old social networks of the past, such as Geocities or the original Friendsters to Facebook and Twitter of today. There is an inexorable trend towards better capability, better interactivity and flexibility. Venture capital funds are constantly looking for new, better ideas for social networking, and the dominant players are not resting on their laurels at all. We should look at Facebook and Twitter as broad-based platform for basic social networking features, on which better, more sophisticated software and services are going to be built, which will allow us to use the social graph and our social connections in ways more intelligent, productive and efficient than simple messaging or poking a friend. The appearance of real, purpose-driven and value-creating tools on top of these social networks will elevate the use of social media above the mindless digital collectivism that Lanier warns us of.

Of course, we are already seeing the germination of such applications, with the abundance of Facebook applications and Twitter apps. However, I am sure we will see even more in the near future and unlike Lanier, I think that social media sites are ultimately a godsend to our civilization.