As I complete the book I find that it prompts me to think about a few further things. I think this should be thought of as a "primer" for the budding technologically inclined people of the future. A lot of what Lanier discusses has to do with how people can become arrested by their culture. Regardless of whether I'll be able to track my carbon footprint with nanobots installed on my eye lashes, the future will be created, or destroyed, by people with capabilities and goals that far outpace even that.
Read this book and then understand how important it is to make human connections and understand things in human terms. You'll be able to better appreciate that there are monoliths of information and money that kick off the very foundation of how you structure significant portions of your life. Governments won't always be able to keep up. Shifting rules of information and contribution won't sort themselves.
If you can take the sections and treat them as little thought experiments or moments of reflection, it's a much easier read than just trying to power through. It can almost be picked up at random and have a chapter read if you want to start theorizing about what's going on in someone's head who genuinely thinks we'll be able to cure death. Or you can keep it simple and think how convenient it would be to be post-facebook or if every online marketplace allowed you to use the same log-in information.
Ultimately, for me, the optimism got exhausting. I know of nothing about "human history" verses how we see technology grow that says we'll get anything even remotely like Lanier suggests; an equitable playing field where people are valued for their contributions in real time. Given that he only vaguely explores a handful of "maybe if our leaders did this" type of scenarios, I don't think he believes it'll happen either. To that end, the prescriptions in this book feel like they're for idealists after you've ripped apart the idealism that motivates most of his Silicon Valley-cultured crowd.
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