Virtual-reality frontiersman Jaron Lanier argues that sites like Twitter and Wikipedia are fostering the spread of collective views that drown out individual voices. How can you maintain a credible presence in cyberspace without becoming swept up in what he and other experts call the “hive mind”?
Here are three suggestions from Lanier’s new You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Knopf, 209 pp. $24.95):
“Don’t post anonymously unless you really might be in danger.”
“Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.”
“Create a website that expresses something about who you are that won’t fit into the template available to you on a social networking site.”
