You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
Published 2010 · 240 pages · 70,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Philosophy
How hard is You Are Not a Gadget to read?
You Are Not a Gadget scores 30 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 32 out of 100
- Technical and philosophical vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Philosophical arguments about technology and identity.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with ideas and technical critique.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Essayistic. Moves between topics associatively.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The gadget as diminishment of the human.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Tech insider's critique. Self-aware about his position.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Manifesto offers principles, not programs.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Essayistic chapters. Not always linear.
How You Are Not a Gadget is regarded
You Are Not a Gadget holds a literary regard score of 44 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.