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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

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Jaron Lanier
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: May 3
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Businessperson
Composer
Computer Scientist
Essayist
Programmer
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Lost
Agenda
Self
Agendas
Originals
Original
Contact
Somehow
Congratulatory
Allow
Distract
Technology
Adoration

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Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.
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Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob setting. The problem with a lot of software designs is that they switch us to that setting.
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Software breaks before it bends, so it demands perfection in a universe that prefers statistics.
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After my mother's death, I had such difficulty relating to people.
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Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.
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Humans change themselves through technology.
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We already knew that kids learned computer technology more easily than adults, It is as if children were waiting all these centuries for someone to invent their native language.
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I do real paintings, you know. I'm a little messy in the studio, so I'm a bit of a danger. But I just adore it.
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People try to treat technology as an object, and it can't be. It can only be a channel.
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There will always be humans, lots of them, who provide the data that makes the networked realization of any technology better and cheaper.
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America's Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven't seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves - Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page, they wouldn't have been able to forget their former selves.
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People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time.
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If there's any object in human experience that's a precedent for what a computer should be like, it's a musical instrument: a device where you can explore a huge range of possibilities through an interface that connects your mind and your body, allowing you to be emotionally authentic and expressive.
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An intelligent person feels guilty for downloading music without paying the musician, but they use this free-open-culture ideology to cover it.
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Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique - shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.
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I think that one can seek a way to eliminate war, and still agree that fighting the Nazis was a good thing.
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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.
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To me, to say that war isn't evil is to say that nothing is evil.
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Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.
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Our times demand rejection of seven word bios.
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