You Are Not A Gadget
  • Published: 6 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141049113
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $29.99

You Are Not A Gadget

Formats & editions
EBook
13 Jan 2010
Paperback
6 May 2011
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'Poetic and prophetic, this could be the most important book of the year' The Times

Something went wrong around the start of the twenty-first century. The crowd was wise. Social networks replaced individual creativity. There were more places to express ourselves than ever before ... yet no one really had anything to say. Does this have to be our future?

In You are not a Gadget digital guru and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier reveals how recent developments in our culture are deadening personal interaction, stifling genuine inventiveness and even changing us as people. Showing us the way to a future where individuals mean more than machines, this is a searing manifesto against mass mediocrity, a creative call to arms - and an impassioned defence of the human.
  • Published: 6 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141049113
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier is one of the most celebrated pioneers of digital innovation in the world, and also one of the earliest and most prescient critics of its current trajectory. His previous books include the international bestsellers Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget, both chosen as best books of the year by the New York Times, and most recently Dawn of the New Everything: A Journey Through Virtual Reality, chosen as a best book of the year by the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Vox. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, one of the 100 top public intellectuals by Foreign Policy, and one of the top 50 World Thinkers by Prospect.

Also by Jaron Lanier

Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
Dawn of the New Everything
Who Owns The Future?
Who Owns The Future?
See all

Praise for You Are Not A Gadget

Fabulous - I couldn't put it down and shouted out Yes! Yes! on many pages . . . This is a landmark book that will have people talking and arguing for years into the future.

Lee Smolin

Lucid, powerful and persuasive . . . Necessary reading for anyone interested in how the Web and the software we use every day are reshaping culture and the marketplace

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

There is hardly a page that does not contain some fascinating provocation

Guardian

Mind-bending, exuberant, brilliant

Washington Post

A pioneer in the development of virtual reality and a Silicon Valley veteran, Mr. Lanier is a digital-world insider concerned with the effect that online collectivism and the current enshrinement of "the wisdom of the crowd" is having on artists, intellectual property rights and the larger social and cultural landscape. In taking on such issues, he's written an illuminating book that is as provocative as it is impassioned.

Michiko Kakutani's Top 10 Books of the Year 2010, New York Times

In the world of technologists, Jaron Lanier is that rare combination: a pioneer and a skeptic. A legendary computer scientist, he did crucial early work in the field of virtual reality (the phrase is his). But he now recoils at the way Web 2.0 and social media sell us short as human beings, both in our relationships and in our sense of who we are. In purposeful, reasoned steps, always informed by a profound understanding of how software really works, he lays out his vision of where it all went wrong and champions the power of the human brain in an age of ever smarter machines.

Lev Grossman, Time Magazine Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of 2010