Siren Servers

Jaron Lanier, the Author of "Who Owns the Future" and "You Are Not a Gadget" calls out the "Siren Server" as the evil of technology that is corrupting civilization. 

In an interview with San Francisco Magazine he said this about the Siren Server: "It's the biggest and best computer on a particular network.  They almost always have evil consequences, even though they're rarely designed with evil intent. A great San Francisco example is Craiglist. Craig is genuinely a sweet guy (something I can personally attest to as well), but even so, Craigslist is destroying newspaper revenues and harming local journalism. The most damaging siren servers are the ones that deal with money.  When you cross a siren server with finance, as happened in the housing bubble, you get the meltdown of the market, "too big to fail," austerity, and jobless recovery." 

Lanier's definition of a Siren Server does not have to be just applied to the large-scale.  As each of us become more aware and able to use big-data to disrupt and upend one thing, let's remember that there is a law of unintended consequences that will create reactions that without long thought, could be more damaging than good.

(For a further faith based application of this post you can visit: http://purposedworking.blogspot.com/)