Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier (born 1960) is an artist, musician, inventor, virtual reality developer, public speaker, and member of the Global Business Network. He notable for coining the term "Virtual Reality" (VR) in the early 1980's. At that time, he founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products.

Early life and education

Lanier was born in New York City, but raised in Mesilla, New Mexico. Later in life, on May 18 2006, Lanier received a Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Career

Lanier taught at several computer science departments of universities around the US, including Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale. He recently was the lead scientist for the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, an effort devoted to utilizing computer technology to give people who are separated by great distances the illusion that they are physically together.

Philosophical and technological ideas

In addition to his thoughts on virtual reality and telemersion, Jaron has criticized certain aspects of artificial intelligence on the one hand, and the nuanced ramifications of unbridled extropianism on the other.

Some of Lanier's most interesting speculation involves what he dubbed 'post-symbolic communication.' A telling example is found in his recent Discover magazine column on cephalopods (i.e., the various species of octopus). Cephalopods are able to morph their bodies in remarkable ways, including changing in exquisite detail the pigmentation and texture of their skin, as well as forming complex shape imitations with their eight intrepid limbs. Lanier sees this behavior, especially as exchanged between two octopii, as a direct behavioral expression of thought.

Most recently, he criticized the sometimes-claimed omniscience of collective wisdom (including expressions such as Wikipedia), in an article for Edge Magazine:

"The problem I am concerned with here is not the Wikipedia in itself. It's been criticized quite a lot, especially in the last year, but the Wikipedia is just one experiment that still has room to change and grow. At the very least it's a success at revealing what the online people with the most determination and time on their hands are thinking, and that's actually interesting information.

No, 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 meritocracy. 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."[1]

Works

Books:

Voices from the Edge: Conversations With Jerry Garcia, Ram Dass, Annie Sprinkle, Matthew Fox, Jaron Lanier, & Others— by David Jay Brown, Rebecca McClen Novick
Cave, Damien (2000-10-04). "Artificial stupidity". salon.com. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Info Is an Alienated Expense Basic Books (August 2006) ISBN 0465032826 [to be published]
Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau, Doubleday, 2005. Lanier and his theories are prominently featured in the section Prevail.
Technology and the Future of the Human Soul (work in progress)

Video:

Synthetic Pleasures (1995) -- VHS English

Classical music:

Instruments of Change

Early life and education

Career

Philosophical and technological ideas

Works

Further reading