Jaroslav Lanier's considerations are a topic that encourages discussion. His ideas are stunning and incredibly original. They create astonishment in people and force us all into creative thinking, simply by imagining how many possibilities humanity has for its further development. To write this short essay, I'm going to rely primarily on the video "Who Owns the Future?" and a little bit on an interesting discussion with the hypothesis "Do not Trust the Promise of Artificial Intelligence".
Jaron Lanier talks about the centralization of power that is taking place in the world. Unfortunately, this centralization is automatically considered as a bad thing. Why should the accumulation of wealth by economic entities be against the interest of society? If people use Google services, they obviously have no problem supporting this giant. Of course, people use them because they are free of charge, they make life easier ... Yes, Jaron Lanier has condemned the term "free of charge" because we pay for the information we provide to Google. People understand that they are providing it. They are not forced to use the services of giants. They do it freely. Everything works as it should. For us a free service, for Google a little bit of information. And when Google gains a lot of information and uses it to get a lot of money, is it really the biggest evil on earth? Can we be sure that dividing this money among the middle classes would be a better option? It is precisely this concentration of wealth that enables the future companies to develop. I do not mean just the development of the company itself, it is the development of the whole society. Companies like Google invest unimaginable amounts into advanced technologies. Lanier further argues that people need a benefit in the form of money much more than a benefit in the form of a free service because a search engine that they can use for free does not feed children. Such an argument is losing strength with the progress of society and increasing of the standard of living. There is no longer the era when the only concern of parents is to provide bread for the baby. Are supercomputers bad? Is the accumulation of wealth by capable people evil? If supercomputers make life easier for people, such as the algorithm that offers relevant items to purchase on Amazon, it is well worth it. If the firm of wealth that "accumulates" actually sends back the value in the form of new technologies that could not have been generated without huge accumulation of funds, perhaps the answer is not as clear. Can we talk about middle class dying out? What if we have just reached a stage where the middle class can afford to be rewarded with "free" benefits instead of financial ones. What if the middle class is so rich that it can afford to invest a part of its potential profits in form of information into larger companies, where it can then be used more efficiently?
And how is the loss of jobs? Can we be sure that the onset of artificial intelligence will reduce the number of jobs for people? In the past, such claims have never been confirmed. The same concern was caused, for example, by the invention of a steam engine. If we lose the jobs that machines will be doing for us, will we go to the path of the end of society? Or will it just allow us to get rid of routines and focus on what is beautiful on humanity - on processes that require creativity?
Another interesting idea of Lanier was: Since there are free courses of English on the Internet, it negatively affects the salaries of English teachers (meaning the offline ones :)) whose services are no longer so rare. Since music is free online, the musician does not earn much. It sounds nice, it makes sense at first glance. If the only source from which we could get the knowledge of English were teachers, their professions would certainly be valued more. But today a ruined teacher is fighting free online courses that rob him. Does this problem maybe bring some opportunities too? The answer is simple, a good English teacher who is not lazy and builds a web or Youtube channel with videos has the opportunity to enjoy profits never before thinkable. To me, it seems like today's world just shows more than ever differences between lazy ones and the hard-workers.
Lanier then talks about the difference between Facebook and Youtube. Lanier says that if we paid people for using Facebook, wealth would be better distributed in society. Youtube he sees like a platform where all glory is accumulated in a limited number of people (he calls it star system), while on Facebook everyone is watching a circle of his friends. How can we be sure that this is not caused by the financial reward system that has been applied on Youtube for many years, whereas Facebook does not provide such a service? What if a similar star phenomenon was created on Facebook if Facebook would pay the uploaders? People would be motivated to move to Facebook all their activities that could attract audiences, start professional diaries, upload high-quality videos, attract attention. Surely it would not last long, and high-quality profiles would once again gain higher awards in the form of audience ratings. And so we get to the "winner takes it all" model, which Lanier criticized in the example of Youtube.
What do you think of wealth redistribution? And how will Steemit look like in 5 years? Will there be a few big stars and a huge majority of people who can barely make some money?