Jaron Lanier rails against the social trends being fostered by the Internet--in particular its power to stifle creativity and grant anonymity as well as encourage groupthink and a lynch-mob mentality
Groupthink
Lanier claims ideology and the Web's design—user interfaces and logins for example—marginalize individuals as "sources of fragments to be exploited by others." Of particular concern is "hive thinking," whereby personal expression counts for little and the creative process is harmed. Instead, he wrote, the hive mind esteems networked technologies and holds information stored in those networks—often referred to as "the cloud"—in higher regard than the people who create the information. Lanier worries that valuing the aggregate more than individuals will "leach" people of empathy and humanity.
"Drive-by anonymity"
But it is hardly progress, Lanier argues, when Web user interfaces allow people to log in with pseudonyms and contribute to "drive-by anonymity." That easily devolves into moblike hounding, which in some extreme cases has ended in suicide, as with Korean movie star Choi Jin-sil in 2008. Such "trolling is not a string of isolated incidents," Lanier wrote, "but the status quo in the online world."