Who Owns the Future?

Resumen del libro

Why didnt the rise of network technologies bring great wealth to the world in the last decade? We should be experiencing great financial health because of the efficiencies of digital technologies, but instead the information economy - as it is falsely construed - is merely centralizing wealth while wealth stagnates overall.Jaron Lanier, author of the highly acclaimed You Are Not a Gadget, presents paths to getting us back on track in his new book, The Fate of Power and the Future of Dignity. We have seen abundant technological advances - cars can already drive themselves, 3D printers spit out products without the need of factories or workers - but with all these developments, huge waves of permanent unemployment could become widespread. Network technology is being used to create private spying services to fuel schemes that appear to be risk free, even though the risks fall on ordinary people. The result is a gradual weakening of the middle class. In order to avoid the collapse of the middle class, Lanier advocates revolutionary concepts, such as monetizing data now treated as being cost free, an idea that just might save our economy.