So far, Lanier has explained to us what might be of us as technology grows and the impacts that this fast-growing technology is having on us. During the second part of his manifesto, Lanier goes into the value that certain things on the Internet had, have, and will have.

Lanier talks about the social impact of people and machines in the past and how without the technology we now have the lives of those less privileged people were almost unlivable. Without machines, people had to do a lot of work by pure strength, so when certain machines were invented, these horrible jobs went obsolete. The growth of technology has improved our living standards and keeps doing so. Although some inhumane jobs have gone obsolete, others have developed, probably not as bad but people are still working long-days and not getting paid much for what they are doing. These growing jobs use computers, for example in help desks and hotlines for big companies.

Some people are making money on the web from things they would probably not get too much attention for without it. There are some success stories of people getting attention on the web through YouTube videos for example. The job of a “YouTuber” has grown and become more popular in the past few years. These people vlog and post videos about what they do and through the views they get, they get paid. This particular “job” doesn’t require much talent, yet some people get paid more than those who have studied for years to achieve high and important degrees in their areas. If you are lucky and people are interested in your life and share about it, your life could drastically change in no time. This also relates to silly, and most times funny, videos on the Internet on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. This video could draw as much attention as the work of a professional filmmaker, who has spent hours working to achieve something great. This refers to the social issue of people and machines in some ways, although we have access to all this great technology which is creating many new jobs, some people are also losing theirs, or not necessarily losing them, simply getting as much attention for the years of study and work they put into their projects as someone who just took a video of a little kid biting his brother’s fingers, a video with over 877 million views on YouTube.

In an article for NBC News, Cassie Slane talks about the job of a YouTuber and the big, life-changing decisions that some of them have had to make throughout their YouTube career. Slane claims that when you ask a kid or even a teenager what they want to be when they grow up, some of them now want to become YouTubers. It is easy to say this is the career you want to pursue but it is easier said than done. With YouTubers such as PewDiePie (a YouTuber who has a gaming channel and is probably making the most money from his videos) who makes over $12 million a year simply playing video games, you understand why kids want to become YouTubers. Over 95% of those trying to make it as YouTubers don’t make more than $16,800 a year, and according to research by Mathias Bärtl, a professor at Offenburg University, to make a decent living, a YouTuber would need tens of millions of views per month.

But for those who do reach stardom on YouTube and are then faced with the option of college or a full-time YouTube career, what is the best path? When talking about this big decision which will surely have a big impact on a YouTubers life, Slane refers to Noah Taitano and Ryan Burton, two YouTube stars who have a shared channel called “Love Live Serve”, they needed to make this decision in 2015. Their parents wanted them to go to college as it is the safer option and you can have a backup plan in case something goes wrong as YouTube careers aren’t that long-lasting. Taitano and Burton ended up going to college but sometimes struggled as on average they dedicated 50 hours per week to their channel and sometimes weren’t able to achieve the grades that their teachers were hoping for as they had to dedicate a lot of time to their channel. Keeping up with a YouTube channel is hard as the cards need to be played right, if they aren’t you can quickly lose followers and views which is why it is important to have that backup plan.

I personally believe that pursuing a career as a YouTuber might be a very fun and special job, but probably not one I would take over myself as there are a lot of risks around it and it is hard to be successful due to the growing number of people who want to reach stardom. I also think that while it seems fun and simple, there is a lot of work around it, you need to shoot your videos and edit them, and a lot of effort needs to be put into the last one. I think that if you want to start your own channel, by all means, do, but have a backup plan and be aware of the risks and time it takes to be successful.

Lanier claims that some jobs have appeared over the past few years that won’t be particularly successful, or simply people won’t make much from them, in the future. All the jobs that she refers to are in the music ‘department’.

• There’re those bands that post music for free downloading, this way the gain attention as a lot of people will rather listen to these songs than having to pay to download them, if you are successful enough, you might actually make money out of this.
• You also have what Lanier refers to as “The Aggregator”, some musicians who, as their name suggests, aggregate music others music to websites. Some of these services might offer music themed around something, so some people might pay for these playlists to play them on different occasions. Not every aggregator is successful because if there are a lot of aggregators, there’s a smaller chance of your playlist being bought.
• You could also come up with jingles and soundtracks for TV, you can somehow promote yourself online and maybe compose a jingle for a big company which would put you in a very good position, but once again, not all jingle composers are particularly successful.
• You also have the vanity career, where people try to make it as musicians and try to convince others that they are in fact musicians. They might post videos on sites like YouTube, and as expected, most of them aren’t making a living out of it, as it is very hard to be different than the others and be the next Ed Sheeran (the most listened to artist on Spotify).
• And finally, the “kids in a van” as Lanier calls them. This is more for those younger people who want to make it as musicians, you can get a van and play in gigs around the country, which you can promote online, you could also go around crashing on couches of those fans at your concerts. This career isn’t long term as it is tiring and painful in the long run as you get older.

This book was written in 2010, 10 years ago, since then a lot of things have changed so some of these jobs might not be as relevant today. A lot of people are now attempting to post their songs on Spotify and many others, as mentioned before, have become YouTubers, where they get paid for posting their life online.

Now what Lanier refers to as “the crowd” is growing in some areas, the crowd are those people who take on jobs when they might not be as specialized as someone else or haven’t completed the right studies for that position. Some of the crowd works for free or less, which is why they might be taking on these jobs. Lanier claims that these people have it easy and might be lucky as there are algorithms that can take the risk out of certain things. You don’t need a lot of skill if there is no risk. The only issue with this comes when the algorithm isn’t perfect, but so much time goes into perfecting these that it becomes less unlikely as time goes on. Today, human creativity and understanding are starting to become worthless and unimportant as people now trust in the crowd and the algorithms that will help you remove the risk of creativity and lower the standards of understanding.

These new jobs don’t fit everyone though, a digital divide is created due to the inequality of access. You and I have access to technology, I know this because I typed this up on a laptop and you are probably reading it from some device, you and I could both join the crowd and come up with some algorithm to get some sort of job. But not everyone has access to the technology we have. People in less developed and poorer countries won’t be able to take on these jobs. Will this make them be behind everyone else? Not necessarily, after all, they do value human creativity more than we do as they haven’t been exposed to what we have.

In an article for Rindle, Katie talks about how technology affects our creativity. Katie claims that a strong argument for why technology is negatively affecting our creativity is that people are buried in their phones in public areas and situations and they don’t participate in imaginative activities that help promote creativity. Katie claims that there was a study by PNAS that suggests that we need time to daydream as this helps us boost our creativity. Creativity is a “use it or lose it” discipline, as the name says, if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Another good point that Katie makes is that you can find anything online, you have templates for everything and a lot of academic information can be found which sometimes leads to copying and plagiarizing. It is also killing the way we communicate, when you text someone you are not communicating face-to-face and sometimes we even lack words when texting, which is why we use emojis. Communication is becoming lazier and human contact is being lost. Katie also suggests that a lot of kids’ creativity is decreasing due to the number of hours they spend in front of the TV or playing video games. Their intelligence scores might be rising, but their creativity ones are dropping and have been since 1990.

However, technology is not all bad when it comes to creativity. Katie mentions that technological innovations themselves require creativity, coming up with a system that lets you book any type of taxi, where you can select your destination and pick up point, and now even lets you order food, requires some creativity. Grab or Uber weren’t created just like that, someone had to come up with them and design them. And thanks to big data, we can now target different people through ads and come up with ways that will help capture them, so marketing also depends on creativity. Thanks to technology people are also getting more creative on social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. These platforms are accessible to anyone on the Internet and no rules need to be followed regarding the way you post and share your photos and videos. Other apps and programs have also helped graphic designers in huge ways making the tools they use more accessible. They also have access to more tools through different programs and can now expand their limits when it comes to their designs. And although we are losing some human contact, technology is also helping us communicate better. Many apps help you communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, so these friendships which used to be hard to keep are now a lot healthier.

While I agree with Lanier about some things regarding the way technology is affecting our creativity, I also have to agree with Katie as while it might be closing some doors it is also opening up plenty more, we just need to find the right balance between technology and the rest of our life.

Here is the original article by Cassie Slane

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/youtube-career-or-college-new-question-facing-teens-n920581

Here is the original article by Katie

https://hello.rindle.com/is-technology-killing-creativity/