Jaron Lanier’s Sleight Of Hand

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class

So Kodak has 140,000 really good middle-class employees, and Instagram has 13 employees, period.

Wait one minute.

Does he really think people are that stupid?

More people can take pictures than at the height of Kodak’s wealth.

Because cameras are now inside phones and tablets — not to mention standalone digital cameras themselves. People who would have never been able to before take thousands of photos can now do so, cheaply. Without having a middleman extracting money between clicking and seeing.

And there are probably more employees around the world making those cameras (or camera elements) than there ever were employed by Kodak.

To blame the Internet for the downfall of Kodak is to sidestep the bad decisions of Kodak’s management. And what about Polaroid and its bad decisions? And Fuji Film and its bad decisions?

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Orphan Black: Episode Seven

What? The? Hell?

The Book You Are Reading Is A Lie

Philip K. Dick and Our Predicament

This is what Dick has to offer — something beyond mere politics; a glimpse at what makes us human. The moral law within, the ability to tell good from evil without actually being able to define them. In a literary world teeming with Mailers, and Vidals, and Thompsons, overrun with the cynical, and the vicious, and the twisted, Philip Dick stood alone in his defense of the human values.

As I waited for this post page to build, I wondered what PKD would have made of eBooks.

And the answer was obvious.

The book would talk back to the reader, harassing him, telling him that what he’s reading is all a lie, that character X was up to no good despite being depicted as the hero, and why don’t you just put it down and go outside and experience some real people?

TV: Touch, Series Finale

I was right to dismiss this series early on.

I caught random minutes of the second season. What a botch.

I caught the season — now series — finale and it had degenerated into a poor rip-off of the movie Pi.

Same-day update: And, yeah, I noticed Tim Kring ripping off a Paddy Chayefsky line. I can’t decide if that was the work of a hack or his way of giving Fox the bird by hinting to viewers that the network had ruined his original vision.

Previously here:

TV: Touch, Episode Two
TV: Touch, Episode One