Page 1127 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

Gadget. Lanier fears that the openness and “collectivity” of today’s
internet is leading us towards mediocrity. “We shouldn’t want the

whole world to take on the quality of having been designed by

committee,” he said. “When you have everyone collaborate on

everything, you generate a dull average outcome in all things.” The

best innovation relies on privacy, he says.

The shift towards openness, however, has momentum and attitudes 31

may well be changing as Zuckerberg claimed. Young people are

either unaware of the risks or feel that less privacy is the price they

have to pay to participate in social networking.

Anderson is only half-joking when he says social networking has 32
become a “survival necessity” for the young. “At Cambridge all the

party invitations go out on Facebook,” he said. “So if you don’t have

Facebook, you won’t get invited to any parties, so you won’t have any

sex, so you won’t have any children, so your genes die out. So it’s an

evolutionary necessity to be on Facebook.”

Just remember, when you accept that Facebook invitation to a hot 33

date, do not use a Blippy card to buy contraceptives on the way there.

Unless you want the whole world to know what you are thinking.

Building Vocabulary

For each question, use your dictionary and context clues to choose

the meaning that most nearly defines the underlined word or phrase

as it is used in the essay.