he warns that the biggest problem of any theory (esp. ideology) is not that it is false, "but when it claims to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality." The impression of objective necessity paralyzes the ability of humans to walk out of or to fight the paradigm and causes the self-fulfilling destiny which spoils people. Post-symbolic communication (2006) Some of Lanier's speculation involves what he calls "post-symbolic communication". In his April 2006 Discover magazine column, he writes about cephalopods (i.e., the various species of octopus, squid, and related molluscs), many of which are able to morph their bodies, including changing the pigmentation and texture of their skin, as well as forming complex shape imitations with their limbs. Lanier sees this behavior, especially as exchanged between two octopodes, as a direct behavioral expression of thought. Wikipedia and the omniscience of collective wisdom (2006) In his online essay "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism", in Edge magazine in May 2006, Lanier criticized the sometimes-claimed omniscience of collective wisdom (including examples such as the Wikipedia article about him, which he said recurrently exaggerates his film directing work), describing it as "digital Maoism". He writes "If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people [creating the content] and making ourselves into idiots." His criticism aims at several targets that concern him and are at different levels of abstraction: any attempt to create one final authoritative bottleneck that channels the knowledge onto society is wrong, regardless whether it is a Wikipedia or any algorithmically created system producing meta information, it creates a false sense of authority behind the information, a sterile style of wiki writing is undesirable because: it removes the touch with the real author of original information, it filters the subtlety of the opinions of the author, essential information (for example, the graphical context of original sources) is lost, collective authorship tends to produce or align to mainstream or organizational beliefs, he worries that collectively created works may be manipulated behind the scenes by anonymous groups of editors who bear no visible responsibility, and that this kind of activity might create future totalitarian systems as these are basically grounded on misbehaved collectives that oppress individuals. This critique is further explored in an interview with him on Radio National's The Philosopher's Zone, where