First published in 2010, You Are Not a Gadget is Jaron Lanier's influential critique of the internet's shift from an open, experimental space into one increasingly shaped by the priorities of platforms, algorithms and collective conformity.

A computer scientist, virtual reality pioneer and musician, Lanier argues against the idea that technology develops according to its own inevitable logic. Instead, he insists that digital systems are designed by people, and can therefore be designed differently. His concern is not technology itself, but the ways certain online architectures flatten individuality, creativity and economic life.

Many of Lanier's arguments have only become more relevant with time. Long before widespread concern about social media, AI-generated content and the platform economy, he questioned anonymous online culture, the economics of free digital labour, the erosion of authorship, and the reduction of people into data points. Whether or not one agrees with every claim, the book remains one of the foundational texts for understanding contemporary debates around digital identity, surveillance capitalism and the politics of the internet. Essential reading alongside Shoshana Zuboff, Nicholas Carr and early internet thinkers such as Clay Shirky, if only because Lanier provides such a forceful counterpoint.

2011 Penguin paperback. General shelf wear and light creasing to the covers with a sound binding and clean, unmarked pages. Very good condition.