Jaron Lanier
Encyclopedia
Jaron Zepel Lanier (ˈdʒɛərɨn lɨˈnɪər, born 3 May 1960 in New York City
) is an American computer scientist
, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality
(VR).
A pioneer in the field of VR, 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. More recently, he has acted as an advisor to Linden Lab
on their virtual world
product Second Life
, and as "scholar-at-large" at Microsoft Research
where he has worked on the Kinect device for Xbox 360.
Lanier is also known as a composer of classical music and a collector of rare instruments; his acoustic album, Instruments of Change (1994) features Asian wind and string instruments such as the khene
mouth organ, the suling
flute, and the sitar-like esraj
. Lanier was the director of an experimental short film, and teamed with Mario Grigorov to compose the soundtrack to the documentary film, The Third Wave
(2007). As an author, Lanier has written a column for Discover magazine; his book, You Are Not a Gadget (2010), is a critique of Web 2.0
.
In 2010, Lanier was nominated in the TIME
100 list of most influential people.
, Lanier was raised in Mesilla, New Mexico
. Lanier's mother and father were Jewish immigrants from Europe; his mother was a survivor from a Vienna concentration camp and his father's family had emigrated from the Ukraine to escape the pogroms. Lanier's mother was killed in a car accident when he was 9. He lived in tents for an extended period with his father before embarking on a seven year project to build a geodesic dome home
that he helped design. He dropped out of high school, and worked as a goat herder providing goat milk and cheese from 1974 to 1978.
At the age of 14, Lanier convinced New Mexico State University
to let him enroll. At NMSU, Lanier met Marvin Minsky
and Clyde Tombaugh
, and took graduate-level courses; he received a grant from the National Science Foundation
to study mathematical notation, which led him to learn computer programming. From 1979 to 1980, the NSF-funded project at NMSU focused on "digital graphical simulations for learning". Lanier also attended art school in Manhattan during this time, but returned to New Mexico and worked as a midwife. The father of a baby he helped deliver gave him a car as a gift; Lanier drove the car to Los Angeles
to visit a girl whose father happened to work in the physics department at the California Institute of Technology
, where Lanier met and conversed with Richard Feynman
and Murray Gell-Mann
.
. After Atari Inc. was split into two companies in 1984, Lanier became unemployed. The free time enabled him to concentrate on his own projects, including VPL, a “post-symbolic” visual programming language
. Along with Zimmerman, Lanier founded VPL Research, focusing on commercializing virtual reality
technologies; the company prospered for a while, but filed for bankruptcy in 1990. In 1999, Sun Microsystems
bought VPL's virtual reality and graphics-related patents.
, which contained the Engineering Office of Internet2
, and served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three-year development period. From 2001 to 2004, he was Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics
Inc., where he developed solutions to core problems in telepresence
and tele-immersion. He was also visiting scholar with the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University
(1997–2001), a visiting artist with New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a founding member of the International Institute for Evolution and the Brain.
, overall performance rises only very slowly. This is because our productivity in developing software increases only slightly, and software becomes more bloated and remains as error-prone as it ever was. Also, the computational complexity of computer simulation of the real world increases even more rapidly when the scale gets more precise.
At the end he warns that the biggest problem of any theory (esp. ideology
) is not that it is false, "but when it claims to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality." The impression of objective necessity paralyzes the ability of humans to walk out of or to fight the paradigm and causes the self-fulfilling destiny which spoils people.
magazine column, he writes abut cephalopods (i.e., the various species of octopus
, squid
, and related molluscs), many of which are able to morph their bodies, including changing the pigmentation and texture of their skin, as well as forming complex shape imitations with their limbs. Lanier sees this behavior, especially as exchanged between two octopodes, as a direct behavioral expression of thought.
magazine in May 2006, Lanier criticized the sometimes-claimed omniscience of collective wisdom (including examples such as the Wikipedia
article about himself), describing it as "digital Maoism
". He writes "If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people [creating the content] and making ourselves into idiots."
His criticism aims at several targets which are at different levels of abstraction:
This critique is further explored in an interview with him on The Philosopher's Zone radio program where he is critical of the denatured effect which "removes the scent of people".
In December 2006 Lanier followed up his critique of the collective wisdom with an article in Edge titled "Beware the Online Collective".
Lanier writes:
and that:
Lanier argues that the search for deeper information in any area sooner or later requires that you find information that has been produced by a single person, or a few devoted individuals: "You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning." That is, he sees limitations in the utility of an encyclopedia produced by only partially interested third parties as a form of communication.
) and describes the open source and open content expropriation of intellectual production as a form of "Digital Maoism". Lanier argues that Web 2.0 developments have retarded progress and innovation and glorified the collective at the expense of the individual. He criticizes Wikipedia
and Linux
as examples of this problem; Wikipedia for its "mob rule" by anonymous editors, the weakness of its non-scientific content, and its bullying of experts. Lanier also argues that there are limitations to certain aspects of the open source and content movement in that they lack the ability to create anything truly new and innovative. For example, Lanier makes the observation that the open source movement didn't create the iPhone. In another example, Lanier claims that Web 2.0 makes search engines lazy, destroys the potential of innovative websites like Thinkquest, and hampers the communication of ideas like mathematics to a wider audience. Lanier further argues that the open source approach has destroyed opportunities for the middle class to finance content creation, and results in the concentration of wealth in a few individuals—"the lords of the clouds"—people who, more by virtue of luck rather than true innovation, manage to insert themselves as content concentrators at strategic times and locations in the cloud.
music since the late 1970s. He is a pianist
and a specialist in many unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. He maintains one of the largest and most varied collections of actively played rare instruments in the world. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass
, Ornette Coleman
, George Clinton
, Vernon Reid
, Terry Riley
, Duncan Sheik
, Pauline Oliveros
, and Stanley Jordan
. Recording projects include his acoustic techno duet with Sean Lennon
and an album of duets with flautist Robert Dick
.
He also writes chamber and orchestral music. Current commissions include an opera that will premiere in Busan, South Korea, and a symphony, Symphony for Amelia, to be premiered by the Bach Festival Society Orchestra and Choir in Winter Park, Florida
, in October 2010. Recent commissions include “Earthquake!” a ballet that premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in April 2006; “Little Shimmers” for the TroMetrik ensemble, which premiered at ODC in San Francisco in April 2006; “Daredevil” for the ArrayMusic chamber ensemble, which premiered in Toronto
in 2006; A concert-length sequence of works for orchestra and virtual worlds (including "Canons for Wroclaw," "Khaenoncerto," "The Egg," and others) celebrating the 1000th birthday of the city of Wroclaw, Poland, premiered in 2000; A triple concerto, "The Navigator Tree," commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts
and the American Composers Forum, premiered in 2000; and "Mirror/Storm," a symphony commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which premiered in 1998. Continental Harmony was a PBS
special that documented the development and premiere of “The Navigator Tree” won a CINE Golden Eagle Award
.
In 1994, he released the classical music
album Instruments of Change on POINT Music/Philips/PolyGram Records. The album has been described as a Western exploration of Asian musical traditions by Stephen Hill on "The Crane Flies West 2" (episode 357) of Hearts of Space
. Lanier is currently working on a book Technology and the Future of the Human Soul, and a music album Proof of Consciousness, in collaboration with Mark Deutsch.
Lanier's work with Asian instruments can be heard extensively on the soundtrack of Three Seasons (1999), which was the first film ever to win both the Audience and Grand Jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival
. He and Mario Grigorov are currently scoring a new film called The Third Wave, which premiered at Sundance in 2007. He is working with Terry Riley
on a collaborative opera to be titled Bastard, the First.
Lanier has also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical stage performance with his band Chromatophoria, which has toured around the world as a headline act in venues such as the Montreux Jazz Festival
. He plays virtual instruments and uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds. In October 2010, Lanier collaborated with Rollins College
and John V. Sinclair's Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra for his Worldwide Premiere of “Symphony for Amelia.”
Lanier contributed the afterword to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky
.
, Medical Media Systems (a medical visualization spin-off company associated with Dartmouth College
), Microdisplay Corporation, and NY3D (developers of auto stereo displays).
In mid-1997, he was a founding member of 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. Lanier is a member of the Global Business Network
, part of the Monitor Group
.
, and the 2004 television documentary Rage Against the Machines. Lanier was credited as one of the miscellaneous crew for the 2002 film Minority Report
. Lanier stated that his role was to help make up the gadgets and scenarios.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
) is an American computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
(VR).
A pioneer in the field of VR, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari
Atari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...
in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves
Wired glove
A wired glove is an input device for human–computer interaction worn like a glove.Various sensor technologies are used to capture physical data such as bending of fingers. Often a motion tracker, such as a magnetic tracking device or inertial tracking device, is attached to capture the global...
. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2
Internet2
Internet2 is an advanced not-for-profit US networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government....
, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. More recently, he has acted as an advisor to Linden Lab
Linden Lab
Linden Research, Inc., d/b/a Linden Lab, is a privately held American Internet company that is best known as the creator of Second Life....
on their virtual world
Virtual world
A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of...
product Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
, and as "scholar-at-large" at Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...
where he has worked on the Kinect device for Xbox 360.
Lanier is also known as a composer of classical music and a collector of rare instruments; his acoustic album, Instruments of Change (1994) features Asian wind and string instruments such as the khene
Khene
The khene is a mouth organ of Lao origin whose pipes, which are usually made of bamboo, are connected with a small, hollowed-out hardwood reservoir into which air is blown, creating a sound similar to that of the violin...
mouth organ, the suling
Suling
A suling or Seruling is an Indonesian bamboo ring flute. It is used in gamelan ensembles.Depending on the regional genre, a suling can be tuned into different scales...
flute, and the sitar-like esraj
Esraj
The esraj is a string instrument found in two forms throughout the north, central, and east regions of India. It is a young instrument by Indian terms, being only about 200 years old. The dilruba is found in the north, where it is used in religious music and light classical songs in the urban areas...
. Lanier was the director of an experimental short film, and teamed with Mario Grigorov to compose the soundtrack to the documentary film, The Third Wave
The Third Wave (documentary)
The Third Wave film was shot in Sri Lanka following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. It was directed by Australian film maker Alison Thompson and Italian producer Oscar Gubernati.-Plot:...
(2007). As an author, Lanier has written a column for Discover magazine; his book, You Are Not a Gadget (2010), is a critique of Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
.
In 2010, Lanier was nominated in the TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
100 list of most influential people.
Early life and education (1960–1982)
Born Jaron Zepel Lanier in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Lanier was raised in Mesilla, New Mexico
Mesilla, New Mexico
Mesilla is a town in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 2,180 at the 2000 census...
. Lanier's mother and father were Jewish immigrants from Europe; his mother was a survivor from a Vienna concentration camp and his father's family had emigrated from the Ukraine to escape the pogroms. Lanier's mother was killed in a car accident when he was 9. He lived in tents for an extended period with his father before embarking on a seven year project to build a geodesic dome home
Geodesic dome
A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...
that he helped design. He dropped out of high school, and worked as a goat herder providing goat milk and cheese from 1974 to 1978.
At the age of 14, Lanier convinced New Mexico State University
New Mexico State University
New Mexico State University at Las Cruces , is a major land-grant university in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States...
to let him enroll. At NMSU, Lanier met Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
and Clyde Tombaugh
Clyde Tombaugh
Clyde William Tombaugh was an American astronomer. Although he is best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper Belt, Tombaugh also discovered many asteroids; he also called for serious scientific...
, and took graduate-level courses; he received a grant from the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
to study mathematical notation, which led him to learn computer programming. From 1979 to 1980, the NSF-funded project at NMSU focused on "digital graphical simulations for learning". Lanier also attended art school in Manhattan during this time, but returned to New Mexico and worked as a midwife. The father of a baby he helped deliver gave him a car as a gift; Lanier drove the car to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to visit a girl whose father happened to work in the physics department at the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, where Lanier met and conversed with Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
and Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann is an American physicist and linguist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles...
.
Atari Labs, VPL Research (1983–1990)
In California, Lanier worked for Atari, where he met Thomas Zimmerman, inventor of the data gloveWired glove
A wired glove is an input device for human–computer interaction worn like a glove.Various sensor technologies are used to capture physical data such as bending of fingers. Often a motion tracker, such as a magnetic tracking device or inertial tracking device, is attached to capture the global...
. After Atari Inc. was split into two companies in 1984, Lanier became unemployed. The free time enabled him to concentrate on his own projects, including VPL, a “post-symbolic” visual programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
. Along with Zimmerman, Lanier founded VPL Research, focusing on commercializing virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
technologies; the company prospered for a while, but filed for bankruptcy in 1990. In 1999, Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
bought VPL's virtual reality and graphics-related patents.
Internet2, visiting scholar (1997–2001)
From 1997 to 2001, Lanier was the Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and ServicesAdvanced Network and Services
Advanced Network and Services was a United States non-profit organization formed in September 1990 by the NSFNET partners to run the network infrastructure for the soon to be upgraded NSFNET Backbone Service.-ANSNet:...
, which contained the Engineering Office of Internet2
Internet2
Internet2 is an advanced not-for-profit US networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government....
, and served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three-year development period. From 2001 to 2004, he was Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
Inc., where he developed solutions to core problems in telepresence
Telepresence
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance of being present, or to have an effect, via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location....
and tele-immersion. He was also visiting scholar with the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(1997–2001), a visiting artist with New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a founding member of the International Institute for Evolution and the Brain.
"One-Half of a Manifesto" (2000)
In what is probably his most famous paper, "One-Half of a Manifesto" (Wired, 2000), Lanier opposes the prospect of so called "cybernetic totalism", which is "a cataclysm brought on when computers become ultra-intelligent masters of matter and life." Lanier's position is that humans may not be considered to be biological computers, i.e., they may not be compared to digital computers in any proper sense, and it is very unlikely that humans could be generally replaced by computers easily in few decades, even economically. While transistor count increases according to Moore's lawMoore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
, overall performance rises only very slowly. This is because our productivity in developing software increases only slightly, and software becomes more bloated and remains as error-prone as it ever was. Also, the computational complexity of computer simulation of the real world increases even more rapidly when the scale gets more precise.
At the end he warns that the biggest problem of any theory (esp. ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
) is not that it is false, "but when it claims to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality." The impression of objective necessity paralyzes the ability of humans to walk out of or to fight the paradigm and causes the self-fulfilling destiny which spoils people.
Post-symbolic communication (2006)
Some of Lanier's speculation involves what he calls "post-symbolic communication." In his April 2006 DiscoverDiscover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
magazine column, he writes abut cephalopods (i.e., the various species of octopus
Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...
, squid
Squid
Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles...
, and related molluscs), many of which are able to morph their bodies, including changing the pigmentation and texture of their skin, as well as forming complex shape imitations with their limbs. Lanier sees this behavior, especially as exchanged between two octopodes, as a direct behavioral expression of thought.
"Digital Maoism" (2006)
In his online essay "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism", in EdgeEdge Foundation, Inc.
The Edge Foundation, Inc. is an organization of science and technology intellectuals created in 1988 as an outgrowth of The Reality Club. Its motto is 'To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together and have them ask...
magazine in May 2006, Lanier criticized the sometimes-claimed omniscience of collective wisdom (including examples such as the Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
article about himself), describing it as "digital Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
". He writes "If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people [creating the content] and making ourselves into idiots."
His criticism aims at several targets which are at different levels of abstraction:
- any attempt to create one final authoritative bottleneck which channels the knowledge onto society is wrong, regardless whether it is a Wikipedia or any algorithmically created system producing meta information,
- sterile style of wiki writing is undesirable because:
- it removes the touch with the real author of original information, it filters the subtlety of his opinions, essential information (for example, the graphical context of original sources) is lost,
- it creates the false sense of authority behind the information,
- collective authorship tends to produce or align to mainstream or organizational beliefs,
- he worries that collectively created works may be manipulated behind the scene by anonymous groups of editors who bear no visible responsibility,
- and that this kind of activity might create future totalitarian systems as these are basically grounded on misbehaved collectives which oppress individuals.
This critique is further explored in an interview with him on The Philosopher's Zone radio program where he is critical of the denatured effect which "removes the scent of people".
In December 2006 Lanier followed up his critique of the collective wisdom with an article in Edge titled "Beware the Online Collective".
Lanier writes:
- I wonder if some aspect of human nature evolved in the context of competing packs. We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the lure of the mob.
and that:
- What's to stop an online mass of anonymous but connected people from suddenly turning into a mean mob, just like masses of people have time and time again in the history of every human culture? It's amazing that details in the design of online software can bring out such varied potentials in human behavior. It's time to think about that power on a moral basis.
Lanier argues that the search for deeper information in any area sooner or later requires that you find information that has been produced by a single person, or a few devoted individuals: "You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning." That is, he sees limitations in the utility of an encyclopedia produced by only partially interested third parties as a form of communication.
You Are Not a Gadget (2010)
In his book You Are Not a Gadget (2010), Lanier criticizes the hive mind of Web 2.0 (wisdom of the crowdWisdom of the crowd
The wisdom of the crowd refers to the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question. This process, while not new to the information age, has been pushed into the mainstream spotlight by social information sites such...
) and describes the open source and open content expropriation of intellectual production as a form of "Digital Maoism". Lanier argues that Web 2.0 developments have retarded progress and innovation and glorified the collective at the expense of the individual. He criticizes Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
as examples of this problem; Wikipedia for its "mob rule" by anonymous editors, the weakness of its non-scientific content, and its bullying of experts. Lanier also argues that there are limitations to certain aspects of the open source and content movement in that they lack the ability to create anything truly new and innovative. For example, Lanier makes the observation that the open source movement didn't create the iPhone. In another example, Lanier claims that Web 2.0 makes search engines lazy, destroys the potential of innovative websites like Thinkquest, and hampers the communication of ideas like mathematics to a wider audience. Lanier further argues that the open source approach has destroyed opportunities for the middle class to finance content creation, and results in the concentration of wealth in a few individuals—"the lords of the clouds"—people who, more by virtue of luck rather than true innovation, manage to insert themselves as content concentrators at strategic times and locations in the cloud.
Music
As a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new classicalContemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
music since the late 1970s. He is a pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and a specialist in many unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. He maintains one of the largest and most varied collections of actively played rare instruments in the world. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
, George Clinton
George Clinton (funk musician)
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost...
, Vernon Reid
Vernon Reid
Vernon Reid is an English-born American guitarist, songwriter, composer, and bandleader. Best known as the founder and primary songwriter of the heavy metal band Living Colour, Reid was named #66 on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.Critic Steve Huey writes, "[Reid's]...
, Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
, Duncan Sheik
Duncan Sheik
Duncan Scott Sheik is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik initially found success as a singer, most notably for his 1996 debut single "Barely Breathing". He later expanded his work to include compositions for motion pictures and the Broadway stage, leading him to involvement in the...
, Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
, and Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and pianist, best known for his development of the tapping technique for the guitar....
. Recording projects include his acoustic techno duet with Sean Lennon
Sean Lennon
is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist and actor. He is the only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. His godfather is Sir Elton John.-Early life and education:...
and an album of duets with flautist Robert Dick
Robert Dick
Robert Dick , Scottish geologist and botanist was born at Tullibody, in Clackmannanshire.His father was an officer of excise. At the age of thirteen, after receiving a good elementary education at the parish school, Dick was apprenticed to a baker, and served for three years...
.
He also writes chamber and orchestral music. Current commissions include an opera that will premiere in Busan, South Korea, and a symphony, Symphony for Amelia, to be premiered by the Bach Festival Society Orchestra and Choir in Winter Park, Florida
Winter Park, Florida
Winter Park is a suburban city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 24,090 at the 2000 census. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 estimates, the city had a population of 28,083. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, in October 2010. Recent commissions include “Earthquake!” a ballet that premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in April 2006; “Little Shimmers” for the TroMetrik ensemble, which premiered at ODC in San Francisco in April 2006; “Daredevil” for the ArrayMusic chamber ensemble, which premiered in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
in 2006; A concert-length sequence of works for orchestra and virtual worlds (including "Canons for Wroclaw," "Khaenoncerto," "The Egg," and others) celebrating the 1000th birthday of the city of Wroclaw, Poland, premiered in 2000; A triple concerto, "The Navigator Tree," commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
and the American Composers Forum, premiered in 2000; and "Mirror/Storm," a symphony commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, which premiered in 1998. Continental Harmony was a PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
special that documented the development and premiere of “The Navigator Tree” won a CINE Golden Eagle Award
Golden Eagle Award
The Golden Eagle Award is an accolade by the Russian National Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences of Russia to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, directors, actors, and writers...
.
In 1994, he released the classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
album Instruments of Change on POINT Music/Philips/PolyGram Records. The album has been described as a Western exploration of Asian musical traditions by Stephen Hill on "The Crane Flies West 2" (episode 357) of Hearts of Space
Hearts of Space
Hearts of Space is a United States weekly syndicated public radio show featuring music of a contemplative nature drawn largely from the ambient, New Age and electronic genres, while also including classical, world, Celtic, experimental, and other music selections...
. Lanier is currently working on a book Technology and the Future of the Human Soul, and a music album Proof of Consciousness, in collaboration with Mark Deutsch.
Lanier's work with Asian instruments can be heard extensively on the soundtrack of Three Seasons (1999), which was the first film ever to win both the Audience and Grand Jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. He and Mario Grigorov are currently scoring a new film called The Third Wave, which premiered at Sundance in 2007. He is working with Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
on a collaborative opera to be titled Bastard, the First.
Lanier has also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical stage performance with his band Chromatophoria, which has toured around the world as a headline act in venues such as the Montreux Jazz Festival
Montreux Jazz Festival
The Montreux Jazz Festival is the best-known music festival in Switzerland and one of the most prestigious in Europe; it is held annually in early July in Montreux on the shores of Lake Geneva...
. He plays virtual instruments and uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds. In October 2010, Lanier collaborated with Rollins College
Rollins College
Rollins College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Winter Park, Florida , along the shores of Lake Virginia....
and John V. Sinclair's Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra for his Worldwide Premiere of “Symphony for Amelia.”
Lanier contributed the afterword to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
.
Memberships
Lanier has served on numerous advisory boards, including the Board of Councilors of the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, Medical Media Systems (a medical visualization spin-off company associated with Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
), Microdisplay Corporation, and NY3D (developers of auto stereo displays).
In mid-1997, he was a founding member of 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. Lanier is a member of the Global Business Network
Global Business Network
Global Business Network, or GBN, is a strategy consulting firm and member of Monitor Group, that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments use scenario planning to plan for multiple possible futures....
, part of the Monitor Group
Monitor Group
Monitor Group is a global management consulting firm headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States and with 27 offices in 26 major cities around the world. It provides strategy consultation services to the senior management of organizations and governments...
.
In the media
He has appeared in several documentaries, including the 1992 Danish television documentary Computerbilleder - udfordring til virkeligheden, the 1995 documentary Synthetic PleasuresSynthetic Pleasures
Synthetic Pleasures is a documentary film by Iara Lee that explores the idea of pleasure and futurism.-Awards and nominations:*1996 Sundance Film Festival - Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary category...
, and the 2004 television documentary Rage Against the Machines. Lanier was credited as one of the miscellaneous crew for the 2002 film Minority Report
Minority Report (film)
Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...
. Lanier stated that his role was to help make up the gadgets and scenarios.
Awards
- Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
's Watson award in 2001 - Finalist for the first Edge of Computation Award in 2005.
- Honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of TechnologyNew Jersey Institute of TechnologyNew Jersey Institute of Technology is a public research university in Newark, New Jersey. It is often also referred to as Newark College of Engineering ....
in 2006 - IEEE Virtual Reality Career Award in 2009.
- Named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in 2010 (nominated by Microsoft VP Dan Reed).
Western classical music
- Instruments of Change (1994), POINT Music/PhilipsPhilips RecordsPhilips Records is a record label that was founded by Dutch electronics company Philips. It was started by "Philips Phonographische Industrie" in 1950. Recordings were made with popular artists of various nationalities and also with classical artists from Germany, France and Holland. Philips also...
/PolyGram Records
Video games
- MoondustMoondust (video game)Moondust is a 1983 generative music video game created for the Commodore 64 by virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier. Moondust was programmed in 6502 assembly in 1982, and is widely considered the first art video game.-Summary:...
(C64Commodore 64The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, 1983) - Alien GardenAlien GardenAlien Garden was one of the first non-game "software toys" released. It was designed in 1982 by Bernie DeKoven and programmed by virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier, and it was designed with an emphasis on the need for experimentation....
(Atari 800, 1982, with designer Bernie DeKovenBernie DeKovenBernard Louis "Bernie" De Koven is an American game designer, author, lecturer and fun theorist. He is most notable for his book The Well Played Game, for his contributions to the New Games Foundation, his pioneering work in computer game design, and for his long-running web site, .-Career:In...
)
Significant papers
- "One Half of a Manifesto", Edge, 11.11.00
- "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism", Edge, 5.30.06
- "Beware the Online Collective", Edge, 12.25.06
Books
- Information Is an Alienated Experience, Basic Books, 2006. ISBN 0-465-03282-6
- You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, ISBN 978-1846143410
Speeches
- 'Finding Humanity in the Interface: Capacity Atrophy or Augmentation?' A debate between Jaron Lanier and Will Wright from the Accelerating Change 2004 conference.
- Video of Jaron Lanier speaking at a Film Festival
- Video of Jaron Lanier's "McLuhan Ramp" Lecture
- Video of Jaron Lanier with Neal Stephenson, Neil Gershenfeld, Raymond Laflamme, and Tara Hunt, on The Agenda with Steve Paikin at the Quantum to Cosmos festival.
- Video of panel discussion with Jaron Lanier, Neal Stephenson and Lee Smolin, "Seeing Science Through Fiction" at the Quantum to Cosmos festival
- Podcast of Science in the Pub panel discussion with Jaron Lanier, Hod Lipson, Wilson da Silva and Eliezer Yudkowsky: "So We're All Gonna be Robots, Now?"
- Video of Jaron Lanier giving a talk titled: 'Staying Human in a Tech-Driven World' at Zócalo public square, on January 28, 2010
- Audio of Jaron Lanier speaking at the London School of Economics
Musical performances
- The Sound of One Hand. July 28–30, 1992. SIGGRAPHSIGGRAPHSIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
'92 Electronic Theater. Live improvisational performance using several virtual musical instruments (including the "CyberSax") within a virtual realityVirtual realityVirtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
environment. Instruments were played with a dataglove using a gestural interfaceGesture recognitionGesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or state but commonly originate from the face or hand. Current focuses in the field include emotion...
.
Interviews
- Interview with Jaron Lanier on Music
- Coding from Scratch (Dead link, Archive.org copy): A Conversation with Jaron Lanier, Part 1
- The Future of Virtual Reality (Dead link, Archive.org copy): A Conversation with Jaron Lanier, Part 2
- Interview by the Australian Broadcasting CorporationAustralian Broadcasting CorporationThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
's Counterpoint program; Lanier strongly criticises both Wikipedia and singularitarianismSingularitarianismSingularitarianism is a technocentric ideology and social movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of a superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits... - A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
- "You Are Not a Gadget" author Jaron Lanier on Media Matters with Bob McChesney, Sunday, March 28, 2010, hosted by Robert W. McChesneyRobert W. McChesneyRobert Waterman McChesney is an American professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication. His work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic...
.
External links
- Jaron Lanier's Website
- Video discussion with Lanier involving intelligence (and AI) with Eliezer YudkowskyEliezer YudkowskyEliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky is an American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence, living in Redwood City, California.- Biography :...
on Bloggingheads.tvBloggingheads.tvBloggingheads.tv is a political, world events, philosophy, and science video blog discussion site in which the participants take part in an active back and forth conversation via webcam which is then broadcast online to viewers...
.