Quotes by Jaron Lanier

About Jaron Lanier:

Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, and composer of classical music. A pioneer in the field of virtual reality (a term he is credited with popularizing), 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. From 2006 he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 forward he works at Microsoft Research as Interdisciplinary Scientist.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Criticism is always easier than constructive solutions.

Jaron Lanier

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

I'm not in any sense anti-Facebook.

Jaron Lanier

I think most of the dramatic new ideas come from little companies that then grow big.

Jaron Lanier

If we enter into the kind of world that Google likes, the world that Google wants, it's a world where information is copied so much on the Internet that nobody knows where it came from anymore, so there can't be any rights of authorship.

Jaron Lanier

I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're...

Jaron Lanier

I'm an advocate of human nature.

Jaron Lanier

I've always felt that the human-centered approach to computer science leads to more interesting, more exotic, more wild, and more heroic adventures than the machine-supremacy approach, where information is the highest goal.

Jaron Lanier

It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering.

Jaron Lanier

People try to treat technology as an object, and it can't be. It can only be a channel.

Jaron Lanier

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...

Jaron Lanier

Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and mora...

Jaron Lanier

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

I feel drawn to experiment with ways that technology can interact with notions of intimacy, because so much of technology is done in a way that's very cold and has such an opposite effect.

Jaron Lanier

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 send...

Jaron Lanier

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

Author Bio

  • NameJaron Lanier
  • DescriptionAmerican computer scientist, musician, and author
  • BornMay 3, 1960
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionComputer Scientist; Composer; Author; Programmer
  • AwardsPeace Prize Of The German Book Trade