Quote

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

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
Profound
Future
Nature
Ideas
Pessimism
Human
Rhetoric
Humans
Cheerful
Think
Consistently
Thinking
Express

More quotes by Jaron Lanier

Image
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.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
To me, to say that war isn't evil is to say that nothing is evil.
Jaron Lanier
Image
The most important thing about a technology is how it changes people.
Jaron Lanier
Image
I think that one can seek a way to eliminate war, and still agree that fighting the Nazis was a good thing.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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.
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
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
Image
Humans change themselves through technology.
Jaron Lanier
Image
Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
I'm not in any sense anti-Facebook.
Jaron Lanier
Image
I've occasionally been wrong about certain things, which is in a way more delightful than being right.
Jaron Lanier
Image
There will always be humans, lots of them, who provide the data that makes the networked realization of any technology better and cheaper.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
Image
The great thing about crummy software is the amount of employment it generates.
Jaron Lanier
Image
You have to be somebody before you can share yourself.
Jaron Lanier
Image
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
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
We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.
Jaron Lanier