Am I a Gadget?

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto  

By Jaron Lanier. 
New York, Vintage Books, 2011.  Index, 223 pages.  ISBN: 978-0307389978.  

This is an important book to read for anyone who creates webpages, maintains a website, writes a blog, maintains a wiki webpage, or uses Facebook; and for Internet users in general.  It will make you seriously question the value of creating products for free in an open source environment, not only personally but socially and economically.  His lively analysis is insightful, his writing style very engaging and clever, and I felt his wagging finger was pointed directly at my own web persona in some ways.  His reasoning is flawed at a few points, but the overall thrust of his arguments are persuasive for authors, artists, photographers, musicians, and other creators of content.  His varied assessments of the hive world, group mind, and trivial communications found in much social networking is highly thought provoking.   

I have been employed for 44 years in various "information industry" jobs as a library clerk, reference and audio-visual librarian, webmaster, instructor, instructional technology coordinator, educator, library manager, and library administrator.  I have been very fortunate that I could earn a living in this manner.  

I first went on the Internet in my home in 1992 using a UNIX server ISP host, used PINE for email, read and contributed to USENET groups, and started creating simple HTML webpages by 1994.  I have witnessed and participated in the rapid development of the Internet for the last 20 years.  

In the early days of the WWW I did make some money ($1,900 a month highest) with commercial websites and click through advertising, but that had dried up by 2003.  After I became semi-retired in 1998, I was inspired in 2000 to create and distribute content on the Web and share my passion for gardening, taijiquan, qigong, walking, mysticism, and Neopagan viewpoints.  I now make enough through paid advertising to cover annual expenses for my hardware, software, ISP, and web server costs; but, little for my time.  Indeed, the many webpages I've created, and that have been served to over 29 million readers around the world since 2000, are truly "labors of love," given freely, generally appreciated and positively reviewed, donated value added products, gifts to readers, altruistic social contributions, sharing my hobbies, opening my notebooks to others, and publishing webpage files that anyone can use for "free."  

Increasingly, however, over the last two years, I have doubted myself and think these past efforts have not been worth my time and effort, and even have been a mistake? 

Are not my Spirit of Gardening webpages just hybrid "mashups" of the work of others?  Have I taken away business from publishers of anthologies of gardening quotations, where authors were paid something for their efforts at insightful compilations? Since I did not provide citations to the sources of many of these quotes and/or hyperlinks to the cited books, did I violate the rules of good scholarship? 

I do think that many of my Taijiquan and Qigong webpages do have original content that reflects thorough and wide research, personal practice, and includes hyperlinks to valuable resources on each topic.  However, are not a few of my webpages just rehashing the creative work of others, e.g., Temple Qigong, and taking away a small income from the publisher. 

In the past two years, I've done a careful study of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.  I purchased and read scores of translations and commentaries about this classic text.  I scoured the Internet for translations and resources on the subject.  I found that comparing different translations of each chapter was fascinating.  I shared my notes on the subject on webpages and in my blog.  Maybe this effort was only possible in a hypertext environment.  Nevertheless, were these efforts merely derivative and maybe a bit unfair to hard working translators.  I feel like I am on the edge of an ethical-unethical border at times.

Using the creative work of long dead authors or artists on my "free" webpages seems acceptable to me and supported by public domain principles.  My webpages are a vehicle for advertising relevant books or media on the topic of the webpage, and do not advertise irrelevant products or services.  Nevertheless, I feel I am fudging sometimes to make a few bucks (literally very few bucks), when using the creative work of recently deceased or living authors even if I cite references.  

When I use an image on a webpage of mine without finding the original creator, getting permission to use the image, and/or paying to use the image, is this fair, is this right, is this helping other original creators of art or photographs?  Many people think that if somebody puts up an image on the Internet it is fair game for others to modify and use because they are not "selling" it like a book.  But I've seen two or three borrowed quotes on a single page with a borrowed graphic all surrounded by advertising that benefits the webpage creator and, of course, Google Ad Sense. 

I quickly read posts aggregated from "friends" to my Facebook account only about three times each week.  Therefore, I'm not as familiar with the key issues in social networking since I don't use it very frequently.  Some of the short posts on Facebook are informative and engaging; but, many are diary type entries about the external events of our daily lives and/or social/political flames.  However, some of my negative suspicions about Facebook and Twitter were confirmed in some of Jaron Lanier's critical analysis.   

If you are concerned about the cut and copy world of the web, the economic impact of the Internet on traditional information industries and individual creators of content, the depersonalizing aspects of web interactions, the dumbing down of readers and writers using the web, mean spirited attacks and inflammatory statements on the web, poor quality information and misinformation on Internet webpages and wikis, the negative impacts of centralized search engines and advertising, profiling of readers by marketing companies, big business with "free" tools or software driving out small for-profit businesses, or the hive mind or group mind of the imaginary cyber-noosphere, then purchase and read You are Not a Gadget.  You will be challenged by what you will read!

Should I change my Internet WWW behavior?
Will I change my Internet WWW behavior?