On Dyson and Lanier

Dyson has high expectation in new technologies. She thought that the cyberspace can knit together the diverse community, and facilitate the creation of electronic neighborhoods bound together not by geography but by shared interests. She hoped technologies have capacities to lead people to create a better future and to renew an American Dream.

Lanier did not have positive attitudes towards technology optimism. He pointed out the danger in the ways people used technology. In this case, Lanier took Wikipedia as an example. Lanier criticized the idea that collective is all-wise, and the way people are promoting the collective productivity. The collective wisdom to him is too fast, and not considerate in qualities. He might sound conservative to suggest the quality control by some leading figures, representative democracy, and meritocracy, instead of the direct participation of civilians, but he surely provided critical viewpoints to evaluate collective wisdom. Lanier said the collective is more likely to be smart when it is not defining its own questions, when the goodness of an answer can be evaluated by a simple result (such as a single numeric value) and when the information system which informs the collective is filtered by a quality control mechanism that relies on individuals to a high degree.