The most effective young Facebook users, however -- the ones who will probably be winners if Facebook turns out to be a model of the future they will inhabit as adults -- are the ones who create successful online fictions about themselves. Jaron Lanier More Quotes by Jaron Lanier More Quotes From Jaron Lanier We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential. Jaron Lanier track joy beautiful In the Sixties, the hippies said "Make love, not war," and that was naive. But it might be less naive to say "Make music, not war," in the sense that the people who create musical instruments are the same people who make up new weapons. Jaron Lanier hippie war people Every time we give a musician the advice to give away the music and sell the T-shirt, we're saying, "Don't make your living in this more elevated way. Instead, reverse this social progress, and choose a more physical way to make a living." We're sending them to peasanthood, very much like the Maoists have. Jaron Lanier progress advice giving My parents were kind of like me in that they had tons and tons of weird, amazing stuff. Jaron Lanier parent kind stuff The interesting thing about advertising is that the things that annoy us sometimes about it are really human. It's us looking at ourselves - and like all human endeavors it's imperfect. Jaron Lanier imperfect advertising interesting There will always be humans, lots of them, who provide the data that makes the networked realization of any technology better and cheaper. Jaron Lanier data technology realization As information technology becomes millions of times more powerful, any particular use of it becomes correspondingly cheaper. Thus, it has become commonplace to expect online services (not just news, but 21st century treats like search or social networking) to be given for free, or rather, in exchange for acquiescence to being spied on. Jaron Lanier networking technology powerful Criticism is always easier than constructive solutions. Jaron Lanier constructive easier criticism When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do. Jaron Lanier pseudonyms identity people Software breaks before it bends, so it demands perfection in a universe that prefers statistics. Jaron Lanier demand statistics perfection Back in the 1980s, when the internet was only available to a small number of pioneers, I was often confronted by people who feared that the strange technologies I was working on, like virtual reality, might unleash the demons of human nature. For instance, would people become addicted to virtual reality as if it were a drug? Would they become trapped in it, unable to escape back to the physical world where the rest of us live? Some of the questions were silly, and others were prescient. Jaron Lanier technology silly reality We have repeatedly demonstrated our species's bottomless ability to lower our standards to make information technology look good. Jaron Lanier information technology looks Writing and thinking is not economically sustainable. Jaron Lanier writing-and-thinking writing thinking Advertisers are not thinking radically enough - they look for technology to lead instead of trying the neuroscience approach and thinking about what parts of the brain haven't been activated before. These new experiences bring new capabilities to the brain. Jaron Lanier new-experiences technology thinking A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess. Jaron Lanier valleys accomplishment culture One good test of whether an economy is humanistic or not is the plausibility of earning the ability to drop out of it for a while without incident or insult. Jaron Lanier insult tests earning The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic,” the New York Times tech columnist once wrote. “Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease. Jaron Lanier cancer robots new-york At a minimum if we can just have enough distribution of clout in society so it isn't run by a tiny minority, then at the very least it gives us some room to breathe. Jaron Lanier minorities running giving An intelligent person feels guilty for downloading music without paying the musician, but they use this free-open-culture ideology to cover it. Jaron Lanier musician intelligent culture I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of empathy and humanity in that process. Jaron Lanier empathy design worry
