Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that relying on advertising for societal support is both ineffective and harmful.
Jaron Lanier uses a provocative analogy to emphasize the absurdity of funding civilization through advertising. He implies that this method of support is not only misguided but also detrimental, much like the bodily harm that would result from attempting to derive nutrition through such an unnatural connection. By drawing this comparison, he critiques the commercialization of culture and the detrimental effects of advertising on human values and societal progress.
In practice
During a lecture on consumerism, you might use this quote to illustrate the pitfalls of modern society's reliance on advertisements.
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.
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.
To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.
What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
As breath stills our mind, our energies are free to unhook from the senses and bend inward.
When you play a game of thrones you win or you die.
The question of souls is old—we demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, god is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy.
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