At the height of its business, before it went bankrupt, Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, it employed 13.
It’s one of the frightening realities of changing economics that Jaron Lanier, the bestselling author of You are not a Gadget, writes about in his new book Who Owns the Future?, which hits U.S. retailers today.
“[Digital] Networks need a greater number of people to participate in them to create significant value. When they have them, only a small number of people get paid,” he writes. “That has the net effect of centralizing wealth and limiting overall economic growth.”
As Lanier writes in his foreword—that’s a future he doesn’t care to see, and one for which he pens an alternative, in the new book published by Simon & Schuster.
Wed. May 8 at 7:30pm (tomorrow evening), Lanier will read from the book and sign copies at the Central Free Library. Join Technical.ly Philly for opening remarks at this free event.
For more information, visit the Free Library’s events page.
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