Jaron Lanier on Online Identity and the Cloud

Computer scientist and author of the book Who Owns the Future (May, 2013) Jaron Lanier argues that unless we change our attitudes towards technology and each other, whoever has the biggest CPU and largest network will own all markets. Instead, he proposes micropayments for knowledge and skills, and suggests that cloud computing makes owning our own data and ID crucial:

if you rely on a private concern like a Facebook or a Google to own your personal identity in the world for you, it makes you particularly vulnerable. Primarily because companies die over time, and they also go through periods of corruption and dysfunction. So we cannot have [so called] too-big-to-fail-digital companies. People must have some self-determination, and some social mobility, independently of whether some company is failing or not. Otherwise you cannot have an authentic market, and you cannot have real capitalism.

You can read the rest of the interview with Jaron Lanier at The Spectator.