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 More Quotes by Jaron Lanier More Quotes From Jaron Lanier If you listen first, and write later, then what you write will have had time to filter through your brain and you'll be in what you say. This is what makes you exist. If you are only a reflector of information, are you really there? Jaron Lanier filters brain writing If you love a medium made of software, there's a danger that you will become entrapped in someone else's recent careless thoughts. Struggle against that. Jaron Lanier struggle danger made Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind. Jaron Lanier empty-rooms doors people People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts. Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good. Jaron Lanier brain heart people I'm not in any sense anti-Facebook. Jaron Lanier The most important thing about a technology is how it changes people. Jaron Lanier technology important people I've occasionally been wrong about certain things, which is in a way more delightful than being right. Jaron Lanier delightful certain way What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means. Jaron Lanier technology writing mean The great thing about crummy software is the amount of employment it generates. Jaron Lanier great-things employment software Digital technologies are setting down the new grooves of how people live, how we do business, how we do everything--and they're doing it according to the expectations of foolish utopian scenarios. We want free online experiences so badly that we are happy to not be paid for information that comes from us now or ever. That sensibility also implies that the more dominant information becomes in our economy, the less most of us will be worth. Jaron Lanier technology expectations people Google's thing is not advertising because it's not a romanticizing operation. It doesn't involve expression. It's a link. What they're doing is selling access. Jaron Lanier google expression links Our willingness to suffer for the sake of the perception of freedom is remarkable. Jaron Lanier perception sake suffering The problem I have with socialist utopias is there's some kind of committees trying to soften outcomes for people. I think that imposes models of outcomes for other people's lives. So in a spiritual sense there's some bit of libertarian in me. But the critical thing for me is moderation. And if you let that go far you do end up with a winner-take-all society that ultimately crushes everybody even worse. Jaron Lanier crush spiritual thinking If anything, there's a reverse Moore's Law observable in software: As processors become faster and memory becomes cheaper, software becomes correspondingly slower and more bloated, using up all available resources. Jaron Lanier resources law memories Once you can understand something in a way that you can shove it into a computer, you have cracked its code, transcended any particularity it might have at a given time. It was as if we had become the gods of vision and had effectively created all possible images, for they would merely be reshufflings of the bits in the computers we had before us, completely under our command. Jaron Lanier vision might way If we allow our self-congratulatory adoration of technology to distract us from our own contact with each other, then somehow the original agenda has been lost. Jaron Lanier agendas technology self The nerd flavor of masculinity has overwhelmed the macho kind in real-life power dynamics, and therefore in popular culture. Jaron Lanier nerd real culture Some of the fantasy objects arising from cybernetic totalism (like the noosphere, which is a supposed global brain formed by the sum of all the human brains connected through the Jaron Lanier design actors brain Spirituality is committing suicide. Consciousness is attempting to will itself out of existence. Jaron Lanier spirituality consciousness suicide At the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it's a kind of capitalism that's totally self-defeating because it's so narrow. It's a winner-take-all capitalism that's not sustaining. Jaron Lanier self giving people
