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Jaron Lanier on social media

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Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#31

Post by cma »

ptrott2017 wrote: post #19
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.

@S1mon - I think that is unfair, though he is a first class media hacker and quote giver. He has had a high-ish industry profile from his time as a developer at Atari Research in the early 1980s. He, Thomas Zimmerman and Mitch Altman et al formed one of the first commercial VR companies - VPL Research in 1984 and developed early generations of the data glove, eyephone (VR Headset) and datasuit (body tracking) and a v…

He also had a role in Power Glove, which had its issues, but at its price point in 1989 is still pretty cool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#32

Post by DonHopkins »

s1mon wrote: post #24
DonHopkins wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

In our July 1999 discussion about Body Electric, Jaron mentioned:

[...]

>There IS a community of Body Electric users. It is STILL building the most interactive 3D virtual worlds of any tool (though Alice, from Carnegie Mellon, is the other hot contender). That's SHAMEFUL! While BE sucks in every other way, all the more recent vr design tools, especially the vrml ones, simply avoid the problem of deep interactivity. How could the community be so whimpy, at this late date?

[...]

>The body electric community is surprisingly NOT entertainment oriented, though I and a few others still use it that way. There are people hidden away who are still using it for ergonomic simulations, simple surgical planners (because the fancy systems are too rigid to model some situations), cognitive test rigs, and some work with kids.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012948

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#33

Post by DonHopkins »

cma wrote: post #31
ptrott2017 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@S1mon - I think that is unfair, though he is a first class media hacker and quote giver. He has had a high-ish industry profile from his time as a developer at Atari Research in the early 1980s. He, Thomas Zimmerman and Mitch Altman et al formed one of the first commercial VR companies - VPL Research in 1984 and developed early generations of the data glove, eyephone (VR Headset) and datasuit (body tracking) and a v…

He also had a role in Power Glove, which had its issues, but at its price point in 1989 is still pretty cool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

VPL's Eyephone was featured in the 1992 science fiction film The Lawnmower Man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4RJetzDyOY&t=28m18s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research

https://www.pioneersofdigital.com/about-book/about-pioneers/...

>Here’s an excerpt from the Jaron Lanier chapter in the book [Pioneers of Digital]:

>“In the early 1990s, Lanier got a call from movie director Brett Leonard saying he’d got the film rights to Stephen King’s short story, ‘The Lawnmower Man’. Lanier remembers that Leonard told his reluctant celluloid subject that he’d leverage the King story option to get the project funded but then do a ‘weird science fiction biography of you and your company.’ All the director needed was some explanation of how virtual reality kit worked and some old prototype gear from the era that ended up actually being used in the film.

>Lanier’s entrepreneur character was played by then unknown actor Pierce Brosnan, and real life appears to have mirrored the outlandish plotline as Lanier claims ‘it turned out VPL was part of a justice department investigation later, on the French Intelligence Service using the investment arms of French companies to do industrial espionage on American start-ups in Silicon Valley’.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#35

Post by seebetter »

DonHopkins wrote: post #30
DoreenMichele wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Porn sucks vs reality. And the general attitude that it is normal and healthy is probably wrong. The future of intimacy is human.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#36

Post by DoreenMichele »

seebetter wrote: post #35
DonHopkins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Porn sucks vs reality. And the general attitude that it is normal and healthy is probably wrong. The future of intimacy is human.

In a post pandemic world? I'm guessing germ free porn will be even more popular than it is currently.

Also: Studies show availability of porn reduces incidents of rape. As a rape survivor, I'm very pro all things that reduce incidents of it.

If you don't enjoy porn yourself, then don't consume it.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#37

Post by JKCalhoun »

mwfunk wrote: post #9
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.

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…

Unfortunately (?) for him, I only know him as the media-targeted spokesperson for VR in the Wired/Mondo2000 heyday before the dot-com bust. VR helmets and power-gloves were the future. Until they weren't.

Until they were again.

The fading of VR twenty years ago has made me a rather staunch skeptic of this new craze for VR.

Or has it too faded again already?

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#38

Post by DonHopkins »

seebetter wrote: post #35
DonHopkins wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Porn sucks vs reality. And the general attitude that it is normal and healthy is probably wrong. The future of intimacy is human.

And movies suck vs reality, yet we still watch Netflix.

I bet Jerry Falwell Jr. wishes he and his wife stuck with porn, instead of going into business and the bedroom with their pool boy in reality.

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#39

Post by cousin_it »

As far as I can tell, Lanier's big idea is that tech companies should compensate us for our data and we could all live happily on that money while helping build our robot future. Well, Facebook's revenue per user per year is thirty bucks. Is this simple innumeracy or is there more to it?

Re: Jaron Lanier on social media

#40

Post by jpistell »

> That anytime you are provided with a service, like Facebook, for free, you are in fact the product being sold. That social media companies are basically giant behavior-modification systems that use algorithms to relentlessly increase “engagement,” largely by evoking bad feelings in the people who use them.

Fascinating. Twitter is a public health hazard

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