I mean, you can't have advertising be the only official business of the information economy if the information economy is going to take over.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that advertising should not dominate the information economy as it evolves.
Jaron Lanier's quote suggests that as the information economy grows and becomes more integral to our lives, it should not be solely driven by advertising interests. Instead, a more balanced approach that values the true potential of information and innovation is needed, enabling a more beneficial environment for users and creators alike.
In practice
During a conference on digital marketing, one might reference this quote to discuss the future impact of technology on advertising.
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.
Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.
When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.
Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to. So people complain that there's a lot of rubbish online, or that it's dominated by Americans, or that you can't necessarily trust what you read on the Web.
The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.
Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
The future is already upon us, it is just unevenly distributed.
Whatever they announce, they announce. They're in their honeymoon period, and anything they announce gets hype ... They will obviously branch out beyond Internet search, but I think the expectations won't live up to reality.
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