
Jaron Lanier on social media - fortran77
https://www.gq.com/story/jaron-lanier-tech-oracle-profile
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dshep
I am a big fan of Lanier. I think he provides a very interesting perspective
on social media and the future that I haven't found elsewhere. I really
recommend watching this recent talk he gave, long, but worth it:

Jaron Lanier: How the Internet Failed and How to Recreate It

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOlqzMd2Zw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOlqzMd2Zw)

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cousin_it
As far as I can tell, Lanier's big idea is that tech companies should
compensate us for our data and we could all live happily on that money while
helping build our robot future. Well, Facebook's revenue per user per year is
thirty bucks. Is this simple innumeracy or is there more to it?

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lukifer
In addition to "10 Arguments", I strongly recommend Lanier's "Who Owns The
Future?" [0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Owns_the_Future%3F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Owns_the_Future%3F)

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pipecork
I remember first reading a profile on Lanier in the Beyond Cyberpunk!
hypercard, touted as a visionary for VR. I'm glad his takes on the dangers of
social media have held up, but also relieved he's optimistic on the recent
wave of social justice knowledge sharing.

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nefitty
I’ve heard of hypercards but had never actually seen one or interacted with
one. Here’s the web version the beyond cyberpunk HyperCard for any others who
are curious: [http://www.streettech.com/bcp/](http://www.streettech.com/bcp/)

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op03
Too much focus on the guy and too little focus on what he is saying in the
comments. Thats a bad sign.

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jpistell
> That anytime you are provided with a service, like Facebook, for free, you
> are in fact the product being sold. That social media companies are
> basically giant behavior-modification systems that use algorithms to
> relentlessly increase “engagement,” largely by evoking bad feelings in the
> people who use them.

Fascinating. Twitter is a public health hazard

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tvbuzz
I heard Jaron speak at a conference in 2011 and his predictions on Social
Media were spot on.

Highly recommend his books!

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s1mon
Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR?
Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have
never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when
someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired
magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans"
and what not in 1994.

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mwfunk
Maybe less the Kim Kardashian of VR and more the Ray Kurzweil of VR? I’ve had
similar experiences, he’s been talking about this stuff for 25 years but he’s
more like a philosopher or creative thinker/talker type of person. AFAIK his
main achievements are getting speaking engagements and writing the occasional
article, but he’s often presented as some sort of VR pioneer or some sort of
big deal in the world of VR, which I’m pretty sure he is not.

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DonHopkins
I'm pretty sure he is.

You may have him confused with Palmer Luckey, if you think he was just in the
right place at the right time with a big mouth.

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mwfunk
I'm no fan of Palmer Luckey but didn't he do some actual engineering for
Oculus though? I know Jaron Lanier had some success in academia in the '80s
but I thought the past 30 years for him has almost exclusively been speaking
engagements and interviews and writing think pieces. He was all over the
mainstream media during the first wave of VR hype back in the early '90s and
he always just seemed to be talking about how neat it would all be someday and
how we all have to think about what it means and how it's going to change
everything and maybe we should buy his book or go to one of his talks to learn
more about his amazing predictions about the amazing future.

To be clear, I'm not down on anyone for being a thinker or a philosopher, we
need those people as much or more than we need engineers when it comes to
understanding how technology can (and should, and should not) change society.
But sometimes people talk about Jaron Lanier as if he's been doing way more
tangible, impactful stuff than speaking engagements, interviews, and think
pieces over the last 30 years, and so far I haven't found much evidence of
anything.

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DonHopkins
> we need those people as much or more than we need engineers

I don't know about "more than". Eloquent yappers who can't code are a dime a
dozen, and largely fungible. Jaron IS an engineer. And also an artist, and a
musician.

Scientific American invited him to illustrate the cover of their 1984 issue on
Computer Software, showing a visual music program.

>Jaron designed the musical visual program (which Scott Kim cited in his
thesis) on the cover of the September 1984 Scientific American on Computer
Software (a wonderful issue, with many articles about programming languages
and software by some amazing people).

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/1984/09-01/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/1984/09-01/)

For more concrete examples of the kind of software development and visual
programming and hardware research and development that Jaron has done, see my
post below with all the links:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266722)

