
Jaron Lanier on dystopia, empathy, and the future of the internet - uptown
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/8/16751596/jaron-lanier-dawn-of-the-new-everything-vr-interview
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Animats
Lanier has the bias that he thinks musicians should be important. For most of
history, musicians were nobodies, outranked by bartenders. For part of the
20th century, some musicians were a big deal because of the mass economics of
radio and record distribution. Now that everyone can record, mix, and
distribute music easily, musicians are mostly nobodies again. At peak, there
were several million Myspace bands.

(I met him back when he had the first VR rig on a pair of SGI machines. I've
worn his gloves and goggles. Kind of neat, but at the time, lag was about a
full second. Turn head, wait for head tracking to catch up. Early magnetic
head tracking was awful.)

~~~
shams93
Yeah the irony is that most people are attracted to music because they are
narcissists. The professionals I've met are very humble and grateful to have
had a chance to get paid to have fun even if it's a lot of work the successful
ones I know are grateful people. But the majority if would be musicians pine
for the era when you didn't need to be the very best of the best to carve out
a small niche. Technology has moved on, today you get fame and fortune not by
emulating Jimi Hendrix but by emulating Don Buchla and Bob Moog and George
Lewis. If you're not making interactive music software and or hardware then
you're stuck in the 1980s.

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ysr23
I've been reading interviews with Lanier since the 90s and i have come to the
conclusion that one of us is really dumb, but i'm still not sure which of us
it is.

~~~
zokier
I think he is a good example on why attempting to put people on simple "dumb-
smart" axis might not be such a good idea.

~~~
mercer
Could you elaborate on that?

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briga
This guy is fascinating to listen to. I think the facade of techno-utopianism
has really started to crumble in recent years and this sort of critical eye is
what the world needs right now. Anyone know which books of his are the best
reads?

~~~
rasur
"Who Owns the Future?" is IMHO very much worth a read, as it points out some
of the issues we face as a society dealing with the the big social-data-silos
in terms of 'us' being the product for sale, what that means, and maybe how to
combat it.

~~~
salt-licker
When I read "Who owns the future" three years ago I thought his diagnosis of
the Internet's issues was spot on but his solution of compensating online
creators with micropayments was outlandish and technically impossible.
However, the rise of cryptocurrency (e.g. Basic Attention Token) made me feel
short-sighted and I put a lot more stock in his ideas nowadays.

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acomjean
He did an interesting interview on the Tavis Smiley show last week (actually
the interview went into 2 shows). You can also read the transcript.

I found the interview interesting because he clearly loves
technology/internet/ai and is optimistic, but that doesn't stop him from
looking with a critical eye on things and pointing out what is going wrong/
mistakes that were made.

[http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/computer-
scie...](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/computer-scientist-
author-jaron-lanier-part-1/)

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aneil
He gave an interview on Nightline, I believe, back in the late 90s or early
00s where he was contrasting biotech and digital tech. He concluded that
digital would lead almost entirely to good things and biotech would lead
exclusively to bad things. It's been a long time, but I distinctly remember
how glib and categorical he was. I lost all respect for him.

~~~
gt_
Would you say that, so far, his predictions have been less than accurate?

EDIT: Why is this inquiry getting downvoted? Does anybody have an idea?

~~~
aneil
For instance, he didn't consider loss of privacy, the ability for governments
and companies to surveil people, or the effect of information bubbles, for
instance. Those seem like objectively bad consequences, or at least things
that he'd agree are bad.

Condemning the genomics revolution as "entirely bad" is really laughable,
though. The genomics era filled the drug development pipeline with thousands
of new targets, and was the necessary precursor to the coming era of precision
medicine and precision health.

(Also - HN has downvotes?)

~~~
gt_
Those sound like good points to me. Thanks for sharing. I am not enough
educated on biotech to draw a conclusive opinion myself. What I understand
about Monsanto’s exploits into corn production seems devastating, though.

Once you have a certain amount of karma, you can downvote comments. I don’t
know what the necessary amount is.

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neuro_imager
Its ironic that I've chosen not to buy his new book on VR yet, because its
only available in hard and softcover, not audible.

That being said Leron's work is phenomenal and I'd recommend "who owns the
future" to everyone.

~~~
awgm
It is available in audiobook format ... I just listened to it via audible :)

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jstewartmobile
Always good to hear from Mr. Lanier.

It was also vindicating to know that I'm not the only one who believes the
gamergate => alt-right connection:

" _When women got together to try and improve their lot in the gaming world,
it turned into Gamergate, which turned into the alt-right._ "

~~~
Viliam1234
It is nice to know that whatever you believe, someone on the internet agrees
with you.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Not just someone. Jaron f-ing Lanier. If I'm going to be crazy, at least I can
do it with good company.

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djroomba
Vr as an empathy machine is not a concept I buy.

The military uses vr to reduce empathy to out groups and increase tribalism.

Plus I see no reason VR gained empathy will last the moment someone gets into
a resource conflict in the real world. Somethings are zerosum.

