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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.

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
Powerful
Journalist
Eventually
Profession
Musician
Canaries
Kill
Professions
Computer
Journalists
Middle
Computers
Class
Musicians

More quotes by Jaron Lanier

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I would argue that among musicians who work in technology today, the level of technological sophistication probably exceeds that of military programs, to be blunt. They are just really smart people attracted to making strange new sounds.
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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.
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We should talk about the ultimate cause of war. It's a question we should never stop asking, because if we do, there's a chance, however remote, that we might miss an opportunity to reduce the occurrence of war.
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In fact, one reason I am interested in developing things in virtual reality is that they're so fascinating. I can come up with problems that are harder than warfare to take up people's time.
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If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.
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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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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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Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique - shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.
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A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.
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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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There's no question that males are more violent and more prone to the type of hierarchical organizations that lead to war. War is largely a male activity. In fact, there is some correlation [between making war and] having an excess of males in the population.
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I have been around military technology people a lot because of my role in virtual reality I've seen weapons from conception to implementation. And there is an extraordinary gadget lust that drives the military. So it's possible that war is just the ultimate expression of creativity.
Jaron Lanier
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When developers of digital technologies design a program that requires you to interact with a computer as if it were a person, they ask you to accept in some corner of your brain that you might also be conceived of as a program.
Jaron Lanier
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The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share
Jaron Lanier
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Humans change themselves through technology.
Jaron Lanier
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There were studies that asked people in different cultures to draw pictures of their enemies, and the pictures all looked remarkably the same. They always had exaggerated canine teeth and a certain sort of expression. That led to speculation about whether at an earlier stage in the human experience we were hunted by some sort of carnivore.
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The most important thing about a technology is how it changes people.
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Our times demand rejection of seven word bios.
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Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.
Jaron Lanier
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Advertising is the edge of what people know how to do and of human experience and it explains the latest ways progress has changed us to ourselves.
Jaron Lanier