You Are Not a Gadget- A Case Against Web 2.0

I think aggregated behavior is interesting. While it may be true that Wikipedia and Facebook (and perhaps even more pertinently, 4chan) are networks of individuals chopped into a "mush", each of these resulting mushes has its own unique character and identity. A mega-individual, if you will. I can't see how he could consider that meaningless.

What is he against, exactly? Curvy pastel controls? Cloud computing? Ajax? Quick access to useful information? Social networking? What? I believe he means "crowd sourcing". That is a term with a specific meaning. He should use it.

And of course, because we have crowd-sourcing, and the benefits it has brought, individual expression is dying. Fewer and fewer people blog their own thoughts. Expressions of one's artistic individuality on the internet are few and far between. Riiiiight.

The internet reflects reality. The reality is that there have always been a whole lot of groupies and trend-followers. And there have been a much smaller number of people who forge their own path.

Either Lanier doesn't have much of a case or MacManus does a poor job of summarizing the book.