The New York Times - Janet Maslin
…[Lanier's] first book, You Are Not a Gadget…was a feisty, brilliant, predictive work, and the new volume is just as exciting. Mr. Lanier bucks a wave of more conventional diatribes on Big Data to deliver Olympian, contrarian fighting words about the Internet's exploitative powers. A self-proclaimed "humanist softie," he is a witheringly caustic critic of big Web entities and their business models…Mr. Lanier's sharp, accessible style and opinions make Who Owns the Future? terrifically inviting.
Publishers Weekly - Audio
10/28/2013
Lanier recognizes that the Internet isn’t going away, but also provides a critical analysis of how it operates today (increasingly on mega-servers such as Google and Facebook) and the negative ways it impacts our economy. The author also offers alternative ways users can better enjoy the benefits of the digital age. Narrator Pete Simoneilli’s reading initially comes across as excessively nasal. However, his voice will quickly grows on listeners and feel natural and appropriate by the audio production’s end. Simoneilli conveys Lanier’s cautious but sincere tone throughout, and he does well with emphasis and timing to tease out the sometimes-complex ideas the author presents. Lanier’s prose is non-judgmental, and Simoneilli works hard to show this, shifting between a matter-of-fact tone and one of sympathy. A Simon & Schuster hardcover. (Aug.)
Publishers Weekly
Information can’t be free if the digital economy is to thrive, argues this stimulating jeremiad. Noting that the Internet is destroying more jobs than it creates, virtual reality pioneer and cyber-skeptic Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget) foresees a future when automation, robotics, 3-D printers, and computer networks will eliminate every industry from nursing and manufacturing to taxi-driving. The result, he contends, will be a dystopia of mass unemployment, insecurity, and social chaos in which information will be free but no one will be paid except the elite proprietors of the “siren servers”—Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the like—that manipulate our lives. Lanier’s extrapolation of current trends to an economy where almost everyone will be judged redundant is incisive and scary. Unfortunately, his proposal for safe-guarding the middle class—micropayments for the supposedly valuable but currently free information that ordinary people feed into the Web, from consumer profiles and friending links—feels as unconvincing and desperate as the cyber-capitalist nostrums he derides. Lanier’s main argument spawns fascinating digressions into Aristotle’s politics, science-fiction themes, Silicon Valley spirituality, and other byways. Even if his recommended treatment seems inadequate, his diagnosis of our technological maladies is brilliant, troubling, and well worth the price. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (June)
The Guardian
"One of the triumphs of Lanier's intelligent and subtle book is its inspiring portrait of the kind of people that a democratic information economy would produce. His vision implies that if we are allowed to lead absorbing, properly remunerated lives, we will likewise outgrow our addiction to consumerism and technology."
bestselling author of Turing's Cathedral - George Dyson
"Who Owns the Future? explains what’s wrong with our digital economy, and tells us how to fix it. Listen up!
The New Republic
Lanier’s career as a computer scientist is entwined in the central economic story of our time, the rapid advance of computation and networking. . . . [Who Owns the Future?] not only makes a convincing diagnosis of a widespread problem, but also answers a need for moonshot thinking.
Joe Nocera
The most important book I read [this year] . . . Provocative, unconventional ideas for ensuring that the inevitable dominance of software in every corner of society will be healthy instead of harmful.”
Financial Times
Lanier has a poet’s sensibility and his book reads like a hallucinogenic reverie, full of entertaining haiku-like observations and digressions.
Michiko Kakutani
Brilliant.
Carolyn Kellogg
"A smart, accessible book that takes a critical look at our online state of affairs and finds it out of balance."
USA Today
"This ambitious book is about how to help ordinary people survive and prosper at a time when advances in computer technology make it increasingly difficult for some people to find a job."
Salon
"One of the best skeptical books about the online world."
TechGenMag.com
”Lanier’s book mixes scholarly analysis with a series of intriguing ideas on how to take back control of our virtual identity.
bestselling author of Reamde and Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
"Everyone complains about the Internet, but no one does anything about it . . . except for Jaron Lanier."
London Evening Standard
"Lanier has a mind as boundless as the internet . . . [He is] the David Foster Wallace of tech."
economist and author of The Nature of Technology - W. Brian Arthur
This book is rare. It looks at technology with an insider’s knowledge, wisdom, and deep caring about human beings. It’s badly needed.
author of The Master Switch - Tim Wu
"Who Owns the Future? is a deeply original and sometimes startling read. Lanier does not simply question the dominant narrative of our times, but picks it up by the neck and shakes it. A refreshing and important book that will make you see the world differently."
USA Today
"This ambitious book is about how to help ordinary people survive and prosper at a time when advances in computer technology make it increasingly difficult for some people to find a job."
Financial Times
Lanier has a poet’s sensibility and his book reads like a hallucinogenic reverie, full of entertaining haiku-like observations and digressions.
From the Publisher
Daringly original . . . Lanier’s sharp, accessible style and opinions make Who Owns the Future? terrifically inviting.”
“Lanier’s career as a computer scientist is entwined in the central economic story of our time, the rapid advance of computation and networking. . . . [Who Owns the Future?] not only makes a convincing diagnosis of a widespread problem, but also answers a need for moonshot thinking.”
"Lanier has a mind as boundless as the internet . . . [He is] the David Foster Wallace of tech."
“Lanier has a poet’s sensibility and his book reads like a hallucinogenic reverie, full of entertaining haiku-like observations and digressions.”
"Everyone complains about the Internet, but no one does anything about it . . . except for Jaron Lanier."
"Who Owns the Future? explains what’s wrong with our digital economy, and tells us how to fix it. Listen up!”
"Who Owns the Future? is a deeply original and sometimes startling read. Lanier does not simply question the dominant narrative of our times, but picks it up by the neck and shakes it. A refreshing and important book that will make you see the world differently."
“This book is rare. It looks at technology with an insider’s knowledge, wisdom, and deep caring about human beings. It’s badly needed.”
"One of the triumphs of Lanier's intelligent and subtle book is its inspiring portrait of the kind of people that a democratic information economy would produce. His vision implies that if we are allowed to lead absorbing, properly remunerated lives, we will likewise outgrow our addiction to consumerism and technology."
Library Journal
Computer scientist, revolutionary thinker, and a leading researcher in the area of virtual reality who either coined or popularized that term (depending on whom you ask), Lanier is the person to listen to about technology. Here he argues that while digital technologies should be guaranteeing our financial health, given the efficiencies they deliver, the information economy has in fact concentrated wealth in the hands of a few—weakening our middle class and hence our democracy. Lanier doesn't just sling arrows but makes suggestions—including monetizing data now treated as being cost free.
NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile
Narrator Pete Simonelli’s personable, evenly modulated style moves the material in this audiobook as if it were on a conveyor belt. Each building block in the book’s thesis—that the Internet is creating vast income disparity—arrives discretely and clearly. That’s no small feat considering that, at times, the author’s theories are difficult to comprehend and his proposed solutions hard to believe. But there’s plenty of thought-provoking, inventive stuff here, and it’s hard to knock Lanier’s core belief that nothing is really “free” on the Internet—we’re all paying for Twitter, Bing, MapQuest, and all the other Siren Servers (mega companies that dominate an Internet business sector)—and the bill for all of it will soon come due. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
A sweeping look at why today's digital economy doesn't benefit the middle class and the ways that should change. If many tech books today offer dire, sky-is-falling warnings, then Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget, 2011, etc.) takes that idea a step further: The sky is falling and will continue to fall until it crushes the entire middle class under its weight. Until recently, new technology has always created new jobs, but in this new information economy, "[o]rdinary people ‘share,' while elite network presences generate unprecedented fortunes"--e.g., when Facebook purchased the photo-sharing service Instagram for nearly $1 billion. Lanier claims this trend is "setting up a situation where better technology in the long term just means more unemployment, or an eventual socialist backlash." Although the author opens with this provocative thesis, what follows is a meandering manifesto bogged down by its own terminology. Lanier includes an appendix listing "First Appearances of Key Terms" (many of which he coined), but readers may wonder why the author couldn't explain this jumble of economic theories and futuristic ideas in more lucid terms: Rather than create the word "antenimbosian," why not just say "before the advent of cloud computing"? This isn't to say that Lanier hasn't come up with some exceptional theories. For instance, he hypothesizes that self-driving cars "could be catastrophic" for the economy. Driverless taxis would rob new immigrants of jobs and deny them a "traditional entry ramp to economic sustenance." However, these concepts are so lost in a heap of digressions, interludes and fables--including the continued recurrence of a fictional seaside conversation between a citizen of the future and a "neuro-interfaced seagull"--that the signal-to-noise ratio may prove to be too much for all but the most dedicated tech readers. An assortment of complex and interesting ideas, buried under the weight of too much jargon.
