Digital pioneer, Jaron Lanier, on the dangers of “free” online culture

• Author: Catherine Jewell
• Position: Communications Division, WIPO

Has the digital revolution been a good thing for culture?

There are good and bad things. It’s like asking if cameras are good for culture. Culture has become digitally obsessed. It's just what culture is about today to an incredible degree.

But have digital tools had a positive impact on creativity?

I don’t know if anyone really has the perspective to say for sure. In my book You Are Not a Gadget, I did an experiment. Whenever I was around people and there was music playing, I asked them if they could tell me in which decade the music they were listening to was made. I was quite taken aback by how people can’t tell this decade from the previous one, whereas all the other decades seemed very distinct to them, including very young people. It is as if some kind of cultural stasis has happened, but it’s hard to say whether that is down to the Internet.

Sadly, the online universe has become very segmented and mean-spirited. It also has an increasingly isolationist quality about it. The algorithms used by social media platforms end up feeding us things they think we are already interested in, so we find ourselves in a mirror chamber with a narrower and narrower experience of the world.

I see a lot of really interesting and innovative stuff happening but I am not sure if tech-enabled art has moved me as much as some older art forms. But it's all very subjective.

What are your main concerns about the digital market today?

We have seen an implosion of careers and career opportunities for those who have devoted their lives to cultural expression, but we create a cultural mythology that this hasn’t happened. Like gamblers at a casino, many young people believe they may be the one to make it on YouTube, Kickstarter or some other platform. But these opportunities are rare compared to the old-fashioned middle-class jobs that existed in great numbers around things like writing, photography, recorded music and many other creative pursuits.

Economically, the digital revolution has not been such a good thing. Take the case of professional translators. Their career opportunities have been decreasing much like those of recorded musicians, journalists, authors and photographers. The decimation started with the widespread Internet and is continuing apace. But interestingly, for professional translators the decrease is related to the rise of machine translation.

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