Rendering Into the Cloud

To be rendered into the cloud is not merely to be replaced by technology. It is something more disturbing: to have your expertise absorbed into a system that does what it does precisely because it learned from what you did, while simultaneously denying that you were ever involved. Lanier's term carries a deliberate double meaning. In computer graphics, rendering transforms abstract data into visible images. In butchery and cooking, rendering extracts useful essence from raw material while discarding the rest. Both meanings apply. The developer's code, the writer's prose, the researcher's papers, the musician's recordings — all are rendered: transformed from specific individual craft into general aggregate capability, and simultaneously extracted, with the useful patterns retained while the identity of the contributor is discarded. The rendering is not a side effect. It is how the system works.