First Impressions about a book questioning Web 2.0

This afternoon I picked up this book at the local public library:

Lanier, Jaron. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

I usually don't comment on books that I read until after I read them, but I am quite impressed with this book after reading just one chapter. We all must think of Web 2.0 services such as Facebook and Twitter and think how they have changed our lives and way of thinking. It is a small world since Lanier's biography states that he was the graduation speaker at NJIT in 2006.

I must make two exact quotes from the book:

"Emphasizing the crowd means deemphasizing individual human beings in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people they revert to bad moblike behaviors. This leads not only to empowered trolls, but to a generally unfriendly and unconstructive online world."

Hmm... This reminds me of a moderator of a certain message board.

Another quote:

"If you are twittering, innovate in order to find a way to describe your internal state instead of trivial external events."

This is difficult to do in 140 characters. I will have to work on this.