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 Future
I've always felt that the human-centered approach to computer science leads to more interesting, more exotic, more wild, and more heroic adventures than the machine-supremacy approach, where information is the highest goal. -Jaron Lanier Science
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 Business
Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions. -Jaron Lanier Computers
Style used to be an interaction between the human soul and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it will have to come from the soul alone. -Jaron Lanier Technology
What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means. -Jaron Lanier Technology
I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface. -Jaron Lanier Change
It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering. -Jaron Lanier Technology
Technologists provide tools that can improve people's lives. But I want to be clear that I don't think technology by itself improves people's lives, since often I'm criticized for being too pro-technology. Unless there's commensurate ethical and moral improvements to go along with it, it's for naught. -Jaron Lanier Technology
Advertisers are not thinking radically enough - they look for technology to lead instead of trying the neuroscience approach and thinking about what parts of the brain haven't been activated before. These new experiences bring new capabilities to the brain. -Jaron Lanier Technology
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 Science
I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface. -Jaron Lanier Technology
The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share. -Jaron Lanier Wisdom
It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering. -Jaron Lanier Work
