If you love a medium made of software, there's a danger that you will become entrapped in someone else's recent careless thoughts. Struggle against that.
Interpretation
Be cautious of the influences that software and technology can have on your thoughts and creativity.
In this quote, Jaron Lanier warns us about the pitfalls of becoming too attached to technology, particularly software, which may lead to adopting uncritical thoughts or opinions from others. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining independent thinking and the need to actively resist the passive consumption of information generated by others.
In practice
During a technology conference, this quote could be used to provoke discussion about digital media literacy.
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.
I find that writing unit tests actually increases my programming speed
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
I can't blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I've spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I'll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children.
I believe the continually advancing Information Revolution will lend us the wisdom and strength to address humanity's previously unsolvable problems and help us make a positive impact on all of society.
The invisibility of work and workers in the digital age is as consequential as the rise of the assembly line and, later, the service economy.
Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.
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