Lanier Part 2-3

 While discussing part 2 and 3 of Lanier’s book in class I realized that many people are worried that the whole reason of the internet having so much freedom is based on two options: democracy and freedom.  Democracy, not in terms of government free countries, but in terms of approaching freedom, well, it has created this new culture where is all about competition.  Yes, everyone has their freedom to do anything they want, but because of file sharing and advertisements, the ones who benefit the most are the ones who invest the most in promoting their products or music.  Lanier explains that “only a tiny minority” can benefit from the advancement of technology.

               On this open economy, what else do we expect? It always has been about competition and musicians know this as well. No matter if technology advances faster than a blink of an eye, musicians have competed to be at the top of everything.  Technology can change this, but it is creating a new type of competition. It is not the same type of competition as compared to The Beatles time and the boom of radio, but this time is a time to reach those billions of internet users. There are thousands of musicians, but now all of them can’t be famous and rich.  That’s the whole concept behind capitalism. If you can’t make it to the top, then inequality will follow. The ideal of competition is to let those who are the best in something be recognized for their work.

               However, this is not only targeted at the music industry. It is targeted at businesses, normal citizens, governments, and much more. Lanier describes how China is becoming a big competition because of their cheap “high-quality” labor. Then we have India for their “nonroutine” economy. Their vast majority of English speakers has become the “world’s call centers.” This means that if I call Dell to fix my laptop, I will be talking to an Indian guy who knows nothing about the company’s policies on their products (I’m writing this because it actually happened before).  Our nation has decided to take a different path: to be the center of holding everything there is to know about the internet. This is from holding the world’s largest economy to being the world’s police. 

               We have created this digital economy, according to Lanier, that it could help many to benefit from it.  There is a part of the digital economy section where Lanier contradicts himself. He tends to agree with the idea made by Ted Nelson where everyone benefits from a capitalist internet or in other words a universal system.  There will be challenges for this system to work, government interruption and businesses restrictions. The new digital culture of the internet does not violate however the rules of capitalism. It opens a new set of rules where sometimes creativity can disappear as well.  An example is a singer that has a song similar to a previous one.  The new set of rules that could be seen is that everyone feels perfectly fine if this happens, but it leads to people being less creative. It leads to a capitalism will just be going in circles and it could destroy itself.