How the Internet is destroying the middle class

Artist and theorist Jaron Lanier argues that high-tech "innovations" are making us poorer and less ambitious

BY MATT ZOLLER SEITZ

Jaron Lanier

In a wide-ranging interview for the online magazine Edge, theorist Jaron Lanier diagnosis many of the ills that ail the Internet-age economy.

Apropos of nothing except the subject's brilliance, I strongly urge you to read this truly epic interview with Jaron Lanier at Edge. It's about, well, pretty much everything that affects you day-to-day -- the decline and death of the middle class, the awesome utility of the Internet as a means to spread hate, superstition and lies, the dicey relationship between humans and machines, the reduced expectations of the younger generations. 

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On young people's diminished expectations in the Internet era:

I'm astonished at how readily a great many people I know, young people, have accepted a reduced economic prospect and limited freedoms in any substantial sense, and basically traded them for being able to screw around online. There are just a lot of people who feel that being able to get their video or their tweet seen by somebody once in a while gets them enough ego gratification that it's okay with them to still be living with their parents in their 30s.

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/feature/2011/08/31/lanier_internet_modern_life