Technology, Philosophy, Meaning and More

I saw this guy, Jaron Lanier, on Newsnight last night discussing the controversy over Instragram's new terms and conditions and I had to look him up.  He made a great point on Newsnight that if we continue to share everything for free over the internet, all that people will be able to make money from on the internet is advertising.  However, he goes on, if in an information economy we can only make money out of advertising, then what is the point of the advertising if there are no longer any 'products' to be sold and, consequently, advertised because they have all been shared for free.  You can think about music and other intellectual property type products here.  I looked him up and found the following clip on Youtube where he talks to an audience at CalArts - a third level educational institution in California.  It's inspiring stuff and takes in everything from Science Fiction, Karl Marx, Industialisation, Aristotle to slavery.  Stay with it because it will make you think about everything we study in Media, including copyright, meaning making (Hall's encoding and decoding) and, of course, technology. I'm definitely putting his book, "You Are Not a Gadget" on my wish list.  Of course, his is only one point of view but it is great to see someone combining so many different ideas and historical moments in an effort to make sense of our world today.