My camera and I just spent an hour with Jason Linear at Colorado College.
My brain is full.
Who is Jason Lanier? Check him out starting at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier
Two things about him intrigue me. He was named one of 100 most influential people on the planet in 2010 by Time Magazine, and he coined the words “virtual reality”. To be sure, there are lots more kudos, awards and accomplishments, but this guy is dynamic.
He, maybe like most geniuses, is a study in contrast. Physically, he is HUGE with flowing dreadlocks down below his ample butt. Intellectually, he is HUGE with a grasp of history and an understanding – I think a REAL understanding – of what history indicates for the future. Yet his voice is soft, he spends most of his hours writing code and playing ancient or obscure musical instruments.
He has CREATED the future multiple times. First, VIRTUALLY like all science fiction thinkers, but then REALLY with his understanding of computers and mathematics and music and how the world works…or doesn’t
…and he came with a message, a message this college crowd didn’t particularly want to hear. He wasn’t preachy or screechy, but he didn’t back down on his central theme – that we have blown it with the Internet, with the creation of optimization for giants like Walmart, Facebook, Google, et al. That, as with other attempts to be cool, fit in, be accepted by the crowd, we’ve received a boatload of unexpected consequences AND we are not aware that the boat has sailed into OUR dock.
(You can see why I was eating up what this guy was serving)
We want cheaper goods. We want them quickly available in our town. We got… Walmart. What it really cost us was our jobs. Jobs manufacturing the products, jobs in the stores that used to compete with Walmart. If our grocery stores go the way of our lumber and hardware stores, we will be left with far fewer choices while seemingly having more for less.
Facebook? While networking with a larger group of friends online, our social interactions and real-time encounters have shrunken and become more difficult. Facebook attempts to optimize the life histories of us individuals, but at the cost of being truly individual lest people don’t “friend” you in large numbers.
BTW, Jaron is very clear that he has been and still is part of the problem. He helped develop the optimization that is at the root. He really IS at the top of the 1%!! However, he’s traveling the country and writing books about what’s REALLY going on, before history records our present civilization as boobs and rubes in the same way it has reported on so many others in the past.
I, also, need to be clear that with my lifestyle and choices, I too am very much part of the problem. Guys like this and writing this blog help me take a close and sometimes painful look at these issues.
Anyhow, I’m going to read Jaron’s new book, You Are Not a Gadget (http://www.jaronlanier.com/gadgetwebresources.html).