Ever been out with someone who texts the entire time you’re talking to them?  They’re not paying attention, that little jingle goes off constantly, you get to hear, “One sec, what was that?” about 12 times. I recently had a guy in the shop asking if I had a certain book. He would read the title, and I would look up the publisher and tell him how much and how fast I could get it. While I did that, he was looking it up on Amazon to calculate if it was cheaper or faster with their shipping. Like nine books. I asked him why he even came in to a store, as he was obviously more comfortable shopping at home. Another dude came in last week and started scanning barcodes with his iPhone to see if he could find a valuable book amongst the stacks.  I might be glad to sell it, but here’s a little tip for the gadget hounds: It’s kind of rude. Luckily, I recently found Jaron Lanier, anti-gadget guru.  He looks like a character straight out of Fred Armisen’s “Portlandia”: long dreadlocks, Aztec muumuu, shakuhachi flute. I’m a straightedge barefoot runner, he’s a hippie musician-philosopher. Peanut butter meets jelly, right? Unfortunately, we won’t be antiquing in Berkeley together anytime soon. The book’s “anti-gadget” philosophy is pretty tame and watered-down. Lanier believes that gadgets, the Internet, all of it could be great if it just was programmed a little bit differently. Clearly he’s never attempted a conversation with his wife while she plays Scrabble on an iTouch. For example, he writes (basically) that the Internet should not be anonymous. Great point! Child porn? Gone. Music stealing? Gone. Awesome idea, and one you have to think about to really digest the ramifications of it, but he uses merciless page upon page of paragraphs like the following: “Someone who has been immersed in orthodoxy needs to experience a figure-ground reversal in order to gain perspective. This can’t come from encountering just a few heterodox thoughts, but only from a new encompassing architecture of interconnected thoughts that can engulf a person with a different worldview.” Ouch — you just lost whole swaths of the Midwest, my friend. On the bright side, there are some great ideas, and the manifesto on page 21 for online behavior is a good start. Some tips from Lanier (paraphrased) include: Don’t post anonymously on message boards (it encourages bad behavior, like forum-trolling we wouldn’t normally do in real life); and write blog posts that take days or weeks of reflection, out of respect for yourself and any audience you might attract. I like his ideas, but why not take them further? How about no forum posting, and no Twitter at all? Why bore strangers when you have friends and family? For music, go to live music and art events and actually buy something. Look online all you want — to find what you want, and a local place to actually buy it. Toss the Bluetooth, unless you’re in the Secret Service.  Create freehand art, write with pen and paper or learn to play a musical instrument. Read books with pages. Walk, bike or skate whenever possible. Make time for group activities, such as bowling, basketball, book clubs or board games. Lanier’s central point is the one that is central to what bookstores, vinyl stores and local artists are trying to achieve: the restoration of community in a technologically dominated and isolated society.  “You Are Not A Gadget” features big ideas, encumbered by a huge amount of techno-speak.  If the author wished to be perceived as a reasonable and academic moderate, he has succeeded. But he might have been better served by letting his freak flag fly, and bouncing some laptops down the street.  Even still, this book is great for philosophy majors or software engineers — get it at Backlist Books for $15 in paperback. (No iPhone scanners allowed.)