I mean, you can't have advertising be the only official business of the information economy if the information economy is going to take over.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that advertising should not dominate the information economy as it evolves.
Jaron Lanier's quote suggests that as the information economy grows and becomes more integral to our lives, it should not be solely driven by advertising interests. Instead, a more balanced approach that values the true potential of information and innovation is needed, enabling a more beneficial environment for users and creators alike.
In practice
During a conference on digital marketing, one might reference this quote to discuss the future impact of technology on advertising.
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.
Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.
When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.
It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest.
Scientists tell us that we have enough technology to save our planet. . . . Yet we don't take advantage of this new technology. . . . The technological has to work hand-in-hand with the spiritual. Our spiritual life is the element that can bring about the energies of peace, calm, brotherhood, understanding, and compassion. Without that, our planet doesn't stand a chance.
You know, one of these things that happened in the '60s and '70s was this confluence of, sort of, a counter-culture with computer culture.
Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don't quite work yet is just not worth the effort for end users, however much fun it is for nerds like us.
Right, and you point out something important which is that people who donβt want to pay, people who are pirates, donβt get bothered by the DRM, they go out and buy the cracked books or download the cracked books for free. Itβs only people who are foolish enough to pay for them that get locked into these platforms.
The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology.
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