Tempered Craziness

Last night I went to the university to hear a presentation by Jaron Lanier, billed as the father of virtual reality, author of You Are Not A Gadget, and one of Time Magazine’s "100 most influential people of 2010”. I had previously heard him on a radio talk show and read a couple of articles about his ideas. I was intrigued by his precautionary view of the world wide web and the cultural transformations it has wrought, and I wanted to hear more of his observations and insights and perhaps get a better sense of the new “humanistic” technology that he advocates.

I’ve been doing some thinking myself lately about the ways in which the internet and social networking have altered our lives, and I welcomed the chance to hear a true genius and innovator expound on the subject.

A bearded, rotund fellow with an impressive mass of dreadlocks, Lanier was not what I expected. First he lovingly removed from its case a wooden mouth organ that he said was from Laos. He played it for us, a haunting sound somehow both ancient and futuristic. Then he drew the connection: consider this the first computer, or its earliest precursor: multiple parallel objects and a device that you set to an on or off position.

Child-like and twinkle-eyed, he jumped enthusiastically from thought to thought, describing the pioneer days of virtual reality with all the glee of a nine-year-old kid, albeit a very brainy one. Avatars, shapeshifting, transforming oneself into a mathematical equation…my brain doesn’t even grasp this stuff. I was beginning to feel like I’d wandered into the wrong class. This was a geek festival, and Jaron Lanier the emperor of all geeks.

But even if I couldn’t always follow, I could not help but admire his brilliance, exuberance, and good nature. He acknowledged that he was starting out with the fun and the positive because he didn’t want to come across as a scowling social critic, but he moved on to the concerns. The internet, he believes, rather than becoming a realm of humanism, individuality, and creativity, has drifted to a “hive mind” mentality of online collective thinking.

Meanwhile, anonymity enables extreme and unaccountable comments, and individuals are flattened into “multiple choice” Facebook-type identities. Here we are, changing the world, but what are we getting? A world wide mush.

Here's Lanier, expounding in an interview: “The problem is not inherent in the internet or the web. Deterioration only began around the turn of the century with the rise of so-called "Web 2.0" designs. These designs valued the information content of the web over individuals. It became fashionable to aggregate the expressions of people into dehumanized data. There are so many things wrong with this that it takes a whole book to summarize them. Here’s just one problem: It screws the middle class. Only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. This is why newspapers are dying. It might sound like it is only a problem for creative people, like musicians or writers, but eventually it will be a problem for everyone. When robots can repair roads someday, will people have jobs programming those robots, or will the human programmers be so aggregated that they essentially work for free, like today’s recording musicians? Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.”

He talked a lot about the misguided tenet that all information on the web should be free. Here he is again, from an interview: “The original turn of phrase was 'Information wants to be free.' And the problem with that is that it anthropomorphizes information. Information doesn’t deserve to be free. It is an abstract tool, a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way. What we have done in the last decade is give information more rights than are given to people. If you express yourself on the internet, what you say will be copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone else’s fortress to support an advertising scheme. However, the information, the abstraction, that represents you is protected within that fortress and is absolutely sacrosanct, the new holy of holies. You never see it and are not allowed to touch it. This is exactly the wrong set of values.”

To keep information "free", we have made a trade-off. We voluntarily and enthusiastically pour into the internet all sorts of data about our personal lives, our consumer habits, our likes and dislikes, our social contacts, our aspirations, you name it...and this information is sold to advertisers and spammers. And the internet is increasingly dominated by large companies, which is a bit disturbing when you think about it. This did not have to be the outcome. We took a wrong turn somewhere.

Toward the end of his talk, Lanier took questions from the audience. One young woman asked him what he would say to someone who is spending too much time on Facebook, one of those big data-sucking companies. This one seemed like a no-brainer. "Get off it," he responded. "If it’s a problem for you, get off it. Isn't this within your control? If it’s not a problem, don’t. On second thought, you’re young, maybe you should quit for a year, travel, and have some real experiences. Yeah, travel. Go someplace."

And it isn’t as though there is something inherently wrong with online social networking; it’s just that it isn’t a substitute for real communication and interaction. But I have to ask – don’t most people know this? Maybe not. What I see happening is a lot of self-promotion and superficiality, which is useful and fine if that's what you want. I guess Lanier is saying that this was not necessarily the form the medium had to take.

"What's the difference between information and knowledge?" asked someone else.

"Information is alienated experience, or potential experience," replied Lanier. (Knowledge presumably being empirical data acquired from experience?)

One guy wondered, "What’s it like to be a mathematic equation?"

"You really begin to fear zeros in certain places."

And here's one for the books: "Do you think it would ever be possible to transfer human consciousness onto an inorganic platform?"

"No," said Lanier, dismissively. "And it's indistinguishable from suicide."

What I like about Jaron Lanier is that despite his dire warnings, there is something innately optimistic and constructive about him. He believes not only in technology but in human imagination and creativity. He believes in solutions and the possibility of change. We can still redefine this thing, still turn it around.

“For people who don’t get it," he says, "I just want to make it clear that this is our appointment with destiny.”

But I was out of my league here, and I am not at all clear on what we need to do to change course, though I suppose enlightenment is the first step. Anyway, I have a hunch that this room was full of very smart folks from the college of creative studies, so maybe some of them can figure it out more tangibly. Lanier provided this clue: “Never think anything is too crazy, but always be empirical. Tempered craziness. That’s what you want.”

Tempered craziness. I get that. I seriously get that.