Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that relying on advertising for societal support is both ineffective and harmful.
Jaron Lanier uses a provocative analogy to emphasize the absurdity of funding civilization through advertising. He implies that this method of support is not only misguided but also detrimental, much like the bodily harm that would result from attempting to derive nutrition through such an unnatural connection. By drawing this comparison, he critiques the commercialization of culture and the detrimental effects of advertising on human values and societal progress.
In practice
During a lecture on consumerism, you might use this quote to illustrate the pitfalls of modern society's reliance on advertisements.
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.
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.
Religion and practical life are not different. To take sanyas (renunciation) is not to abandon life. The real spirit is to make the country, your family, work together instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God.
For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.
I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.
Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?
To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.
In Hollywood, 'under development' means 'all I have is the title.'
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