24 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Information Aggregation as Oppression
More and more ordinary people are thrust into a winner-take-all economy. It is a 21st century reprise of the Horatio Alger stories from the 19th century. A token few will find success on Kickstarter or YouTube, while overall wealth is ever more concentrated and social mobility rots. Social media sharers can make all the noise they want, but they forfeit the real wealth and clout needed to be politically powerful. Real wealth and clout instead concentrate ever more on the shrinking island occ... 1 
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notesProvocative idea from Lanier that by contributing to social networking sites and financial aggregates we are enslaving ourselves for other's gain.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Encapsulation Serves a Purpose
The quintessential example of the open ideal showed up in Freeman Dyson’s otherwise wonderful piece about the future of synthetic biology in the New York Review of Books. MIT bioengineer Drew Endy, one of the enfants terribles of synthetic biology, opened his spectacular talk at Sci Foo with a slide of Dyson’s article. I can’t express the degree to which I admire Freeman, but in this case, we see things differently.
Dyson equates the beginnings of life on Earth with the Eden of Linux. ... 1 notes
notesUsing the promise of synthetic biology as an illustration, Lanier explains why the ability to infinitely trade ideas or genes results in normalized unremarkableness.
