jaron lanier

Jaron Lanier on How to Not Create a New Cyber Plutocracy

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Jaron Lanier is as eccentric as he is smart and accomplished. He is the author of a manifesto titled You Are Not a Gadget as well as one of the better known critics of the technological singularity as a religion for geeks.

The video below was recorded during this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York City exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government. This year’s topic was The Internet’s New Political Power and Jaron Lanier shares the ideas of his upcoming new book on How To Not Create A New Cyber Plutocracy.

During his 20 min talk Jaron covers a number of issues and trends such as the simultaneous rise of concentration of power in the hands of big data companies such as Google, Bing and Facebook as well as the ability of the public to petition for change, such as the recent successful SOPA protests; the rise of the internet and the fall of the middle class;  why value always comes from people and so on…

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Jaron Lanier: The Singularity Is A Religion for Geeks

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Today my guest is Jaron Lanier. Jaron lives in Berkeley, California, and, like John Horgan, is one of the better-known critics of both Ray Kurzweil and the technological singularity. Unlike many other critics, Lanier is neither a technophobe nor a Luddite. In fact, he is known as the father of virtual reality technology. In addition, Jaron has worked on the interface between computer science and medicine, physics, and neuroscience. Most recently he is the author of a manifesto titled You Are Not a Gadget.

I thought of asking Jaron for an interview right after I watched a couple of YouTube videos where he argues that the Singularity is a new religion for geeks. Though I certainly disagree with this claim of his, I still think that his book is a great read with a lot of sound arguments about the pitfalls of legacy software backed up by several solid examples. Unfortunately, I have to admit that in my opinion, his reasoning during our conversation did not strike me to be as sound as that of his book. This, however, may well be a direct result of my arguably poor questions. Perhaps I somehow failed to lead the conversation in the most productive and constructive manner…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

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