Remember when the Web was going to save us all?

Jaron Lanier does. And he’s bitter about its failed potential. In “You Are Not a Gadget,” he attacks the pathetic side of Web 2.0, putting his finger squarely on a few of the problems.

It’s not that Facebook has turned us all into obsessed adolescents, exactly. It’s more that the whole culture of the Web, with its built-in devaluation of information, has begun to erode the world’s ability to produce and refine information of real value.

(Just that chilly word, “information,” has a built-in bias: That all information is as good as any other information.)

Laron points out that the Web is already well along in the process of destroying newspapers and music as paying professions. No one will pay for news, or for music, when it’s all “free.”

And, yes, the thought resonates completely with me. As a career newspaper writer, I would say that I have been able to average, over several decades, two to three coherent, useful stories a week — while working full time at producing them.

Is it any wonder that most daily blogs are vacuous?

Read the Independent’s review of Laron’s book here.

photo: Liberace Museum, Las Vegas, 2009