“Digital Maoism” (2006)
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“.[11] 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.”[11]
His criticism aims at several targets which concern him and are at different levels of abstraction:
Continue reading “Jaron Lanier: Digital Maoism [Mob-Sourcing]”
