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Interview
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BiographyEclectic personality and scientist specialising in exploring and pushing the frontiers of Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier (jaron@well.com) is considered a genius of computer technology. He is a pioneer of Virtual Reality, a phrase he coined, and has explored all aspects of the field, scientific, engineering, and commercial. He set up the first virtual reality company, VPL Research, Inc., which for years produced most of the technology available for virtual reality . He co-invented the interface gloves for manipulating virtual objects, and has experimented with Virtual Reality networking, which he has defined as "electronic LSD". He created such breakthrough products as EyePhone, Reality Built for Two and DataGlove. Along with Joe Rosen and Scott Fisher he initiated the fields of real-time surgical simulation and telesurgery. Currently, Lanier serves as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2. He is also head scientist at New Leaf Systems, Inc. in San Carlos, California, and co-president of the Science Committee of Medical Media Systems. He serves on numerous organisational advisory committees and boards, and has been active in scholarly groups, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program, the Global Business Network, the World Economic Forum Fellows, and the Infoworld Futures Board. He also carries out research activities at the computer science department of Columbia University, and the Interactive Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts, at New York University, and is a founding member of the International Institute for Evolution and the Brain, which is based at New York University, Harvard University, and the University of Paris, and is helping to develop a new programme in medical visualisation at Yale University. Lanier is also a writer, musician and artist. He has performed with artists such as Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Vernon Reid, Terry Riley, Barbara Higbie, and Stanley Jordan. He also writes chamber and orchestral music and in 1994 released his first recording as composer, "Instruments of Change". A pianist, he is also fascinated by unusual instruments and recently invented and performed "cyber instruments" that exist only inside Virtual Reality. He also works with a group of virtual musicians, Chromatophoria (http://www.well.com/user/jaron/index.html ). He is working on a new album of chamber music for Sony Classics, and a ballet, "The Thinning of the Veil", commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival. Lanier's paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. In 1983 he created Moondust, considered the first artistic video game, and the first interactive music publication. In 1994 he directed the film "Muzork" under commission for ARTE Television. He has presented several installations, including the "Video Feedback Waterbed" and the "Time-accelerated Painting", which was situated inside the Brooklyn Bridge. He contributes regularly in conferences and television debates, and has been profiled on the front pages of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His writings on topics such as high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism have appeared in the New York Times, Harpers Magazine, Wired Magazine and Scientific American. His book "Information is Alienated Experience" is about to be published. |
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