![You Are Not a Gadget [Kindle Edition]](https://i0.wp.com/ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51uF3zWIQCL._SL500_AA266_PIkin3,BottomRight,-16,34_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg "You Are Not a Gadget [Kindle Edition]")
I’ve finally disciplined myself into reading the book You Are Not A Gadget (Jaron Lanier, Amazon). And so far (three chapters in) I can say that it is really getting me to think and un-think several things. I’ll get all of these into some coherent thoughts once I’m done reading the entire book and taken some time for reflection, but for now, here are some of those items I’ve highlighted (that the web-version of Kindle makes easy to find and quote).
For the sake of reading and organization, I’m also including the location think: page number) of the quote.
…the future of religion will be determined by the quirks of the software that gets locked in during the coming decades, just like the futures of musical notes and personhood.
As long as you are not defined by software, you are helping to broaden the identity of the ideas that will get locked in for future generations.
Information is alienated experience.
When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful. People already tend to defer to computers, blaming themselves when a digital gadget or online service is hard to use.
…we should not be irreverently usurping His power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”
That’s all for now. These are just a few of the items that have already got me thinking more heavily towards MMM, my use of social networking, mobile web servers, and the eventual identity of all of us that utilize computational technologies.
To have one’s reality being challenged like this is unsettling, fun, and will overall either drive me nutty or enable me to truly live.
Side Note: Does anyone reference Kindle books in journals or other papers using this location format? Would be neat if that’s the case, since that technically works better in a hyper-linked document that page numbers. I’ve always wanted to do something like this in college.
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