Virtual reality guru Jaron Lanier has collected his musing on current technology culture and come up with a no holds barred critique of something many of us feel to be essential to our lives. He takes a long look at the user-based technology we all thought was supposed to democratize the internet and argues that it might be doing the opposite. What if Web 2.0 and sites like Wiki, Facebook, and Twitter are really creating a hive-mind and what happens if there really is no long-term economic gain to any of it? Lanier also makes a strong case that the sacred pedestal we've raised technology to is obligating us to fit into its capabilities rather than bettering our own lives. We are asked to wonder, "is technology stripping us of what makes us most human?" After all -- what goes in as binaries comes out as binaries. - Kyle