Some of Lanier's speculation involves what he dubbed "post-symbolic communication." An example is found in the April 2006 issue of
Discover, in his column on cephalopods (i.e., the various species of octopus, squid, and related molluscs). Many cephalopods are able to morph their bodies, including changing the pigmentation and texture of their skin, as well as forming complex shape imitations with their limbs. Lanier sees this behavior, especially as exchanged between two octopodes, as a direct behavioral expression of thought.
Criticism of any single (simple) paradigm on knowledge approach
In his online essay " Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism", in
Edge magazine in May 2006, Lanier criticized the sometimes-claimed omniscience of collective wisdom (including examples such as the Wikipedia article about himself), describing it as "digital Maoism". He writes "If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people [creating the content] and making ourselves into idiots."
His criticism aims at several targets which are at different level of abstraction:
- any attempt to create one final authoritative bottleneck which channels the knowledge onto society is wrong, regardless whether it is a Wikipedia or any algorithmically created system producing meta informations,
- sterile style of wiki writing is undesirable because:
- it removes the touch with the real author of original information, it filters the subtlety of his opinions, essential information (e.g. incl. graphical context of original sources) is lost,
- it creates the false sense of authority behind the information,
- collective authorship tends to produce or align to mainstream or organizational beliefs,
- he worries that collectively created works may be manipulated behind the scene by anonymous groups of editors who bear no visible responsibility,
- and that this kind of activity might create future totalitarian systems as these are basically grounded on misbehaved collectives which oppress individuals.
This critique is further explored in an interview with him at the
Philosopher's Zone where he is critical of the denatured effect which "removes the scent of people".
In December 2006 Lanier followed up his critique of the collective wisdom with an article in
Edge titled " Beware the Online Collective".
Lanier writes:
- I wonder if some aspect of human nature evolved in the context of competing packs. We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the lure of the mob.
and that:
- What's to stop an online mass of anonymous but connected people from suddenly turning into a mean mob, just like masses of people have time and time again in the history of every human culture? It's amazing that details in the design of online software can bring out such varied potentials in human behavior. It's time to think about that power on a moral basis.
Lanier argues that the search for deeper information in any area sooner or later requires that you find information that has been produced by a single person, or a few devoted individuals:
"You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning." That is, he sees limitations in the utility of an encyclopedia produced by only partially interested third parties as a form of communication.
One-Half of a Manifesto
In what is probably his most famous paper
One-Half of a Manifesto (Wired, 2000) Lanier opposes the prospect of so called "cybernetic totalism", which is "a cataclysm brought on when computers become ultra-intelligent masters of matter and life."
Lanier's position is that humans may not be considered to be biological computers, i.e., they may not be compared to digital computers in any proper sense, and it is very unlikely that humans could be generally replaced by computers easily in few decades, even economically. While processor performance increases according to Moore's law, overall performance rises only very slowly. This is because our productivity in developing software increases only slightly, and software becomes more bloated and remains as error-prone as it ever was. Also the computational complexity of computer simulation of the real world increases even more rapidly when the scale gets more precise.
At the end he warns that the biggest problem of any theory (esp. ideology) is not that it is false, "but when it claims to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality." The impression of objective necessity paralyzes the ability of humans to walk out of or to fight the paradigm and causes the self-fulfilling destiny which spoils people.
