Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier
Jaron Zepel Lanieris an American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist, and composer of classical music. A pioneer in the field of virtual reality, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. From 2006 he began to work at...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth3 May 1960
CountryUnited States of America
Criticism is always easier than constructive solutions.
The network by itself is meaningless. Only the people were ever meaningful.
At a minimum if we can just have enough distribution of clout in society so it isn't run by a tiny minority, then at the very least it gives us some room to breathe.
When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.
As information technology becomes millions of times more powerful, any particular use of it becomes correspondingly cheaper. Thus, it has become commonplace to expect online services (not just news, but 21st century treats like search or social networking) to be given for free, or rather, in exchange for acquiescence to being spied on.
What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.
Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.
Information is alienated experience.
Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.
I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're a full-class citizen. You have the potential to make money from the system.
If we allow our self-congratulatory adoration of technology to distract us from our own contact with each other, then somehow the original agenda has been lost.
Style used to be an interaction between the human soul and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it will have to come from the soul alone.
The most important thing about a technology is how it changes people.
Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.