This is an interesting book written a decade ago, forecasting much of the digitally-induced malaise we find ourselves in today.
## Cybernetic Totalism vs. Dataism
In the first part of the book Lanier outlines a school of thought he names "cybernetic totalism" - in essence, the surrender of human experience to the "noosphere", the meta-entity formed from the sum of all human interaction with the net. Cybernetic totalists believe in the power of the cloud, the "hive mind" and the power of technology to ultimately improve the lives of everyone, through the folding in of everyone to this digital existence. The more human experience is brought online, the more connected they can become, the more effective crowd-sourced algorithms may become. Since these algorithms operate on data from everyone, and operate for everyone, this is the ultimate in experience-sharing and will beckon in a more communal, understanding future because we will simply have so much raw data - the fuel these algorithms need to work.
This struck me as eerily similar to Yuval Harari's "dataism", outlined in _Homo Deus_. Harari uses the examples of digital maps, which navigate more effectively through a bustling city across chaotic modes of transport better than a baseline human being. It does this by having access to vast quantities of information, update in real-time, which no human could hope to acquire and process themselves, notwithstanding having also acquired telepathy.
Harari extrapolates that dating applications - which can scan more people than an individual user could ever meet in their lifetimes - are therefore more capable of finding a truly perfect match, and music recommendation services, among plenty of others. Harari appears to have a broadly optimistic understanding of the idea.
Lanier's cybernetic totalism is a distinctly more cynical perspective, and one that I must admit I am much more in accordance with. Though I can appreciate the utility of a network-driven map which can inform me ahead of time of service disruption, or present a route previously unbeknownst to me, I find it difficult to believe that digital representations of our reality are "better" in any way beyond their immediate availability.
I have, as I expect the majority of my generation, flirted with dating applications for the better part of a decade. In that time I have seen the profiles of thousands of potential matches, matched with hundreds, talked with dozens and actually met a small handful. In all cases, they've been pleasant enough, but there was never anything close to resembling the connections I've made with those I've met sporadically, chaotically, through chance. I mean not to complain of a lonely heart - just to present a viewpoint, and perhaps something approaching a cost-benefit analysis. The result of those hundreds of hours with dating application have resulted in plenty of self-loathing, of profile-preening and of attempting to select - as with Fight Club's narrator's condo - precisely the item, tidbit or trinket which I believe to present the most interesting, attractive, dateable facets of myself to the outside world, to strangers whom I don't know. The result has not been scores of successful dates, any relationship, or even any particularly long-lasting friendships.
The dataist/cybernetic totalist view might take a statistical argument, and suggest that I having sufficiently curated my profile, that I haven't spent enough time looking, or that I am simply too picky, but i the broad experience of my use of these applications is one of spiralling misery, lethargy and mindlessness, I fail to see what the supposed good outcome actually is. Perhaps I have a lower tolerance for swiping than the developers of the application had designed for, or perhaps I fall outside their target market's predicted psychology, but it remains that these applications have never been a strong strategy in my experience.
I don't mean to say that any of the people I matched with, talked to or met were in any way bad, or had it out to me - but to challenge the idea that an algorithm is actually any good at matching people together in any but the most superficial means. In actuality, those who I've enjoyed relationships with, those who've become lifelong friends, have all been people that I've met by chance, broadly speaking in an outside context, where I was thrust (often not by choice) into a social situation and forced to interact. Exactly the way, curiously enough, that anyone met anyone in the days before global, instant communication.
It's in those cases, I think, that we get to experience some of the mystery of the other, that hook which entices one to develop a meeting, into an acquiantance, into a friendship and perhaps a partner. You don't get a profile when you meet someone in a bar - you get maybe a joke or a pick-up line, and perhaps a hint of dress sense, and that's it. The rest is down to the ensuing conversation.
I can hardly claim to be an expert in picking people up in bars - I don't think anyone is, and I would genuinely challenge the idea that anyone should want to be, but even if the number of chances is low, the cost is high and the consequences of failure much more overt and potentially publicly humiliating, it is a fundamentally human way to meet another human, and for that there's a lot to be said.
I have more to write on this book yet, but wanted to express some initial thoughts, on but one of the interesting ideas it is presenting.
