Who Owns the Future?

In Who Owns the Future, Jaron Lanier makes the controversial case that the internet has destroyed more jobs than it created and looks into why this has happened and how to go about solving it. He focuses on the impact of artists and entrepreneurs who wanted to use the internet to sell their art, music, and other information to a worldwide audience. Wealthy individuals and companies have created what he calls, "siren servers," that have the largest amount of computing power and data and have become gatekeepers that have monopolized various segments of the web. The large amounts of data on users have become a new currency, transferring, even more, wealth to the top. The internet also introduced more efficiency innovations than empowering innovations and greatly reduced the number of people needed for labor and other tasks. Lanier's arguments are heavily focused on technologies impact on the creative and outside labor market and fail to acknowledge outside forces like government policy. Although Lanier, is a fan and heavy user of technology, his gloom and doom lack is tied to the rise of technology and it will continue to rise so what could we do to capitalize on the growth in more empowering ways.