Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Brain
Corners
Asks
Requires
Also
Program
Developers
Persons
Accept
Interact
Person
Computer
Conceived
Might
Design
Technologies
Accepting
Corner
Technology
Digital

More quotes by Jaron Lanier

Image
I think seeking perfection in human affairs is a perfect way to destroy them.
Jaron Lanier
Image
The attribution of intelligence to machines, crowds of fragments, or other nerd deities obscures more than it illuminates. When people are told that a computer is intelligent, they become prone to changing themselves in order to make the computer appear to work better, instead of demanding that the computer be changed to become more useful.
Jaron Lanier
Image
The beauty of HTML was that one-way linking made it very simple to spread because you could put something up and take no responsibility whatsoever. And that creates a society in which people display no responsibility whatsoever. That's the problem.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
To me, to say that war isn't evil is to say that nothing is evil.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People try to treat technology as an object, and it can't be. It can only be a channel.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.
Jaron Lanier
Image
I'm not in any sense anti-Facebook.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
Mobs and dictators were made for each other, and when mobs appear, dictators will soon flourish.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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.
Jaron Lanier
Image
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
Jaron Lanier