Jaron Lanier

Computer Scientist, Composer, Visual Artist, and Commentator on All Things Digital

BIG IDEAS

• Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism
  The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it? The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meri- tocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.
• Technology and the Future of the Human Soul or What is a Person?
  Technology is getting powerful enough that it will soon change the meaning of the word "person.” How will we find meaning and direction when biotechnology and artificial intelligence threaten to undo every assumption we have about our identities? One easy answer is to embrace some idea of progress for its own sake, even if it means demoting the human agenda. The other easy answer is to turn backwards, to a seemingly traditional, or fundamentalist, vision of human identity, even if this vision is actually a recent invention. What is difficult is finding a new, but human-centered, path forward.
• Advice to a Young Digital Artist
  Technology offers convenience, but people are searching for meaning. Most digital developments offer neither, for the simple reason that the creators are confused about what a computer is. A skeptical appraisal of computers and the psychology of relating to them can break through the blandness barrier that confines most digital creations.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Jaron Lanier is a musician, writer, and technological visionary. He came on the scene with his work in Virtual Reality (VR), a term he coined. In the early 1980s, he founded VPL Research—the first company to sell VR products—and, since then, he has remained one of the world’s most respected digerati.

Jaron has collaborated broadly with researchers in machine vision, computational neuroscience, cell biology modeling, and other disciplines defining the border between human cognition and the rest of the world. He also is working with physicists on “digital” approaches to fundamental theories.

He writes and speaks on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism.

A Closer Look at Jaron

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Jaron's current research agenda?

In his own words…

The Next Five Hundred Years of Communication
Every technology visionary holds in his or her heart an extravagant image of what happens when computers, user interfaces, and networks are developed to their limit. Science fiction writers and Artificial Intelligence believers sometimes imagine the emergence of a new global-scale consciousness that would be separate from and "higher level" than people. Each of these visions is a projection of core beliefs about epistemology and the nature of personhood. In my case, my core optimistic mysticism has led me to propose an alternate future of communication; I call this "Post Symbolic Communication.”

In the Post Symbolic scenario, VR equipment has become ubiquitous (30 years from now), is accompanied by marvelous software authoring tools (100 years from now- software takes so long!), and a generation of children have grown up with fluency in the tools. Because of the generational pace of adoption of new interfaces, my scenario must therefore only begin in perhaps 150 years or more. In this future, children discover an alternative to the use of symbols; they invent the content of a shared environment at a conversational rate instead of using tokens like words to refer to contingents that aren't present. I have explored the possibilities of this future extensively, and have found that some of our most cherished uses of abstraction, such as categories, are not necessary when one has fluent control of concreteness.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Jaron's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Jaron’s client list includes most of the well-known high technology firms, as well as many others in the energy, automotive, and financial services industries.