The best article/interview I read today. I agree with Lanier on so many things. Here are a few of my favourite passages from the interview:

• I think what’s been happening is a shift from the formal to the informal economy for most people. […] So there’s still a lot of human effort, but the difference is that whereas before when people made contributions to the system that they used, they received formal benefits, which means not only salary but pensions and certain kinds of social safety nets. Now, instead, they receive benefits on an informal basis. And what an informal economy is like is the economy in a developing country slum. It’s reputation, it’s barter, it’s that kind of stuff.
• [The idea of a job] …was all a social construct to begin with, so what changed […] is that at the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it’s a kind of capitalism that’s totally self-defeating because it’s so narrow. It’s a winner-take-all capitalism that’s not sustaining.
• We don’t realize that our society and our democracy ultimately rest on the stability of middle-class jobs. When I talk to libertarians and socialists, they have this weird belief that everybody’s this abstract robot that won’t ever get sick or have kids or get old. It’s like everybody’s this eternal freelancer who can afford downtime and can self-fund until they find their magic moment or something.

Jason Brennan:

I’m going to get right down to it: you should buy Linger for iOS (here’s an App Store link). The app lets you explore the Prelinger Archives, a collection of short movies, ads, PSAs and propaganda from the 20th century all on your iPad (it works great for iPhone too).

Even if you’ve never heard of the Prelinger Archives before, you’re probably still familiar with the style of videos you’ll find there, the old black and white movies, showing assorted clips with a wholesome-sounding narrator.

Oh yes. Definitely recommended.

Jonathan Poritsky:

I use Ulysses III for almost everything I write now. Long-form writing, aimless yammering, quick things I don’t want to forget; it’s all going into Ulysses or Daedalus. It’s solid, beautiful and simple. And it’s only going to get better.

His in-depth review of The Soulmen’s brand-new Ulysses III is an excellent read. I’ve been a happy writer using simpler tools, but now I’m seriously thinking about switching to this application.

I could give lots more examples, but it’s clear that a great many people are completely overwhelmed by email. That’s a problem, for sure, and it needs to be solved. What bothers me is when people blame the medium. […] Your email problems aren’t the fault of email as a communications system, and they’re probably not even the fault of the tools you’re using. It’s easy to pick on email because it won’t fight back. But the real problem for most people who feel email is out of control is that they haven’t taken responsibility for figuring out why the problem exists for them and how to change their habits to address it.

Excellent article at TidBITS by Joe Kissell, with whom I agree completely. I’m taking notes on this very same matter myself, to write a piece of much the same tone.