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Jaron Lanier on social media

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Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#21

Post by DoreenMichele »

s1mon wrote: post #2

Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

Kim Kardashian brilliantly parlayed a revenge porn incident into fame and money. I'm guessing whoever this guy is, that's not his backstory.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#22

Post by mwfunk »

DonHopkins wrote: post #15
mwfunk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe less the Kim Kardashian of VR and more the Ray Kurzweil of VR? I’ve had similar experiences, he’s been talking about this stuff for 25 years but he’s more like a philosopher or creative thinker/talker type of person. AFAIK his main achievements are getting speaking engagements and writing the occasional article, but he’s often presented as some sort of VR pioneer or some sort of big deal in the world of VR, whi…

I'm pretty sure he is. You may have him confused with Palmer Luckey, if you think he was just in the right place at the right time with a big mouth.

I'm no fan of Palmer Luckey but didn't he do some actual engineering for Oculus though? I know Jaron Lanier had some success in academia in the '80s but I thought the past 30 years for him has almost exclusively been speaking engagements and interviews and writing think pieces. He was all over the mainstream media during the first wave of VR hype back in the early '90s and he always just seemed to be talking about how neat it would all be someday and how we all have to think about what it means and how it's going to change everything and maybe we should buy his book or go to one of his talks to learn more about his amazing predictions about the amazing future.

To be clear, I'm not down on anyone for being a thinker or a philosopher, we need those people as much or more than we need engineers when it comes to understanding how technology can (and should, and should not) change society. But sometimes people talk about Jaron Lanier as if he's been doing way more tangible, impactful stuff than speaking engagements, interviews, and think pieces over the last 30 years, and so far I haven't found much evidence of anything.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#23

Post by archsurface »

s1mon wrote: post #2

Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

I don't know a thing about Kim Kardashian, but I've never read anything by Lanier that I thought was worth reading. Whatever people see in his commentary, I don't.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#24

Post by s1mon »

DonHopkins wrote: post #10
s1mon wrote: post #2

Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

It's just you. If you're implying he's just famous for being famous, you're dead wrong. Jaron's actually done a huge amount of pioneering VR programming, VR hardware research and development, and interactive musical and visual artwork and live performances. I've used and worked on the same realtime visual VR programming language he used and helped develop with Chuck Blanchard at VPL, called Body Electric (aka Bounce)…

Ok, so maybe I'm being a bit flippant. It seems like he's done a bunch of pioneering work, but I ask to what end? I've worked on VR hardware development a couple times over the years. I'm still waiting for VR to actually be useful or fun beyond niche applications. It seems like one of those things that's always right around the corner, but it's always a tech push. Maybe I haven't seen the right demos or applications, but it still seems like VR is either useful in vertical markets (e.g. training), the arts, or an enthusiast toy. I work with a lot of very tech oriented people, and I only know one guy with a VR headset, and I'm not sure he even uses it that much. Looking at the PSVR sales, there were only 5 million units. I wonder how many of those are in a drawer somewhere? The Wii or even Guitar Hero guitars sold orders of magnitude more, and most of those end up as landfill.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#25

Post by neilv »

s1mon wrote: post #2

Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

I don't know about Jaron Lanier specifically (other than that he was once passing through a place where I was working, and greeted one of my colleagues warmly, so he seemed nice), but a few thoughts on the more general question...

Some of the computer-related visionaries of the last few decades earlier thought big, original things -- and we first heard of them because something they did was not only significant, but also conspicuous, and had their name on it -- then they went into relative obscurity, but continued to work quietly.

That's not the only scenario, but it's one of the best ones. Some of the least-appealing scenarios that come to mind, anecdotally, are delicate (e.g., human frailties; life happens), or things people otherwise don't like to talk about.

Regarding the "magazine visionaries", and people who wanted either to be those, or to be part of whatever movements/scenes they heard about, Patrick S. Farley's story is the best public explanation I know of. http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#26

Post by nefitty »

pipecork wrote: post #11

I remember first reading a profile on Lanier in the Beyond Cyberpunk! hypercard, touted as a visionary for VR. I'm glad his takes on the dangers of social media have held up, but also relieved he's optimistic on the recent wave of social justice knowledge sharing.

I’ve heard of hypercards but had never actually seen one or interacted with one. Here’s the web version the beyond cyberpunk HyperCard for any others who are curious: http://www.streettech.com/bcp/

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#27

Post by grugagag »

mwfunk wrote: post #22
DonHopkins wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure he is. You may have him confused with Palmer Luckey, if you think he was just in the right place at the right time with a big mouth.

I'm no fan of Palmer Luckey but didn't he do some actual engineering for Oculus though? I know Jaron Lanier had some success in academia in the '80s but I thought the past 30 years for him has almost exclusively been speaking engagements and interviews and writing think pieces. He was all over the mainstream media during the first wave of VR hype back in the early '90s and he always just seemed to be talking about ho…

You have the right to your opinion but I appreciate Jaron quite a bit. It dismays me though that people with contributions, no matter how recent or which were significat once are now being dismissed and compared to socialites with negative contribution. It says quite a bit about where we are at this point, the era of shitting on while sitting on the shoulders of giants.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#28

Post by DonHopkins »

mwfunk wrote: post #22
DonHopkins wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure he is. You may have him confused with Palmer Luckey, if you think he was just in the right place at the right time with a big mouth.

I'm no fan of Palmer Luckey but didn't he do some actual engineering for Oculus though? I know Jaron Lanier had some success in academia in the '80s but I thought the past 30 years for him has almost exclusively been speaking engagements and interviews and writing think pieces. He was all over the mainstream media during the first wave of VR hype back in the early '90s and he always just seemed to be talking about ho…

> we need those people as much or more than we need engineers

I don't know about "more than". Eloquent yappers who can't code are a dime a dozen, and largely fungible. Jaron IS an engineer. And also an artist, and a musician.

Scientific American invited him to illustrate the cover of their 1984 issue on Computer Software, showing a visual music program.

>Jaron designed the musical visual program (which Scott Kim cited in his thesis) on the cover of the September 1984 Scientific American on Computer Software (a wonderful issue, with many articles about programming languages and software by some amazing people).

https://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/1984/09-01/

For more concrete examples of the kind of software development and visual programming and hardware research and development that Jaron has done, see my post below with all the links:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266722

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#29

Post by fortran77 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #21
s1mon wrote: post #2

Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

Kim Kardashian brilliantly parlayed a revenge porn incident into fame and money. I'm guessing whoever this guy is, that's not his backstory.

You never know. Remember rule 34!

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#30

Post by DonHopkins »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #21
s1mon wrote: post #2

Is is just me or is Jaron Lanier the Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton of VR? Journalists seem to dig him up every few years for some puff piece, but I have never really seen what he's done other than managing to be available when someone needs a quote about VR. This is from someone who worshipped Wired magazine and moved to SF to be around all the visionaries and "techno-pagans" and what not in 1994.

Kim Kardashian brilliantly parlayed a revenge porn incident into fame and money. I'm guessing whoever this guy is, that's not his backstory.

Jaron Lanier on porn:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/style/jaron-lanier-new-me...

>Mr. Lanier, who discourses eloquently on subjects like limerence and lust in his book, says: “The future I’d prefer to see is one where people use VR together to make really crazy imaginative experiences that might be sexual or might not. Where you turn into fantastical creatures and that sort of thing. Or when your bodies merge in some ways. That to me is so much more interesting than the porn. Porn is a product of the cinema era. It’s an old-fashioned way of thinking, locked in the 19th century.”

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