In a short review of Jaron Lanier‘s You Are Not a Gadget, Nation magazine book editor John Palattella quotes one of the more bracing pieces of the book, which focuses on the “the hive mind spawned by the social-media technologies of web 2.0” and what it means to the exploding forces of online advertising and for intellectual and political culture. According to Lanier, the predicament is that:

[T]he combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians, and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given away without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.

Or, as Palattella refines the thought:

[E]ditors who justify not paying online contributors on the grounds that gratis articles provide invaluable exposure are not publishing journalism. They are grifters running editorial scams and killing journalism in the process.