Jaron Lanier Quotes

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena.

~ Jaron Lanier

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

I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface.

~ Jaron Lanier

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

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

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

What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.

~ Jaron Lanier

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