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Software breaks before it bends, so it demands perfection in a universe that prefers statistics.

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
Demands
Perfection
Demand
Break
Bends
Universe
Prefers
Breaks
Statistics
Software

More quotes by Jaron Lanier

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Humans change themselves through technology.
Jaron Lanier
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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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A market economy cannot thrive absent the well-being of average people, even in a gilded age.
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.
Jaron Lanier
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I think seeking perfection in human affairs is a perfect way to destroy them.
Jaron Lanier
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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
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Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.
Jaron Lanier
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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
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People try to treat technology as an object, and it can't be. It can only be a channel.
Jaron Lanier
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Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
Jaron Lanier
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I'm an advocate of human nature.
Jaron Lanier
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Information is alienated experience.
Jaron Lanier
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The most important thing about a technology is how it changes people.
Jaron Lanier
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Mobs and dictators were made for each other, and when mobs appear, dictators will soon flourish.
Jaron Lanier
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You have to be somebody before you can share yourself.
Jaron Lanier
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A file-sharing service and a hedge fund are essentially the same things. In both cases, there's this idea that whoever has the biggest computer can analyze everyone else to their advantage and concentrate wealth and power. It's shrinking the overall economy. I think it's the mistake of our age.
Jaron Lanier
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The great thing about crummy software is the amount of employment it generates.
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.
Jaron Lanier
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Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique - shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.
Jaron Lanier
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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.
Jaron Lanier