John Tierney reviews Jaron Lanier's brand new book – You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto – in yesterday's New York Times. I ordered it today. I have to admit I'm pretty wary of any new book with the word "Manifesto" in the title. Seems awfully cocky to me. Reading Tierney's review, I suspect Lanier's book will be provocative, but I suspect I'll disagree with most of it. Why would Lanier want to throw in with folks like Andrew Keen and Jonathan Zittrain, seemingly trying to make a buck or a headline by pointing out the horrible things that the internet will lead us to? Let's fight the technological determinist tendency to argue that the internet is a great beast that has us in its grips and is marching us back to its lair.

I'm going to reserve judgment until I read the thing, although I admit it's hard. People do not seem very tolerant of this tumultuous (but exciting!) period in which we're trying to figure out the whole always-on, massive collaboration, cloud computing, social norm changing thing that's going on. I for one am content to give it time.