Computer scientist Jaron Lanier was an early futurist and virtual reality proponent in the 1980s, inhabiting a community of thinkers that made any environment “the most interesting room in the world.” But a couple of decades later, Lanier had rebelled, becoming sharply critical of technoutopian ideals that he decried in You Are Not A Gadget. Smithsonian magazine has chronicled Lanier’s split from the world of social media and crowdsourcing, which he says appropriates the work of others without offering enough in return. “I think we changed the world,” he says of his generation, “but this notion that we shouldn’t be self-critical and that we shouldn’t be hard on ourselves is irresponsible.”
Why author and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier rejected the modern web
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
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