Anodyne
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
 
Scarce here for a few days, reading Jaron Lanier's Who Owns The Future?  About three quarters done. Confident stating that it is the most useful & relevant book I have read since opening PFB thirteen years ago.  Anyone who is a semi-regular here, or even remotely interested in the networked economy's assault on (a.k.a. "transformation of") the so-called creative professions, should find a copy ASAP.

Lanier's dreadlocks and straight-outta-1991 web page might make some less charitable readers think that I've been hoodwinked by some flaky New Media hippie.  Not so.  Lanier's book is a mix of speculative aesthetics, political philosophy, economic theory, and idiosyncratic cultural criticism.  It's directly, profoundly relevant to my work as a photographer, writer, and small business owner, someone with more creative capital than $.  Like Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, another recent favorite, it's written in clear, direct, jargon-free language.  Yet its simplicity is deceptive, packed with so many different simultaneously expressed ideas that it demands to be read very slowly.

Back soon.
- posted by cjb @ 6:39 AM


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