Jaron Lanier is no Digital Maoist

For a white guy with dreads, Jaron Lanier is mighty productive. In the 1980s he coined the term "virtual reality" and amongst other things, established the idea of online personas through the use of avatars. The Encyclopaedia Britannica lists him as one of history’s greatest 300 inventors, and the film Lawnmower Man was partly based on him and his workshop (he was the one played by Pierce Brosnan). Meanwhile, Jaron has simultaneously carved a successful career as a jazz musician playing with, amongst other people, Ornette Coleman and George Clinton, and has amassed one of the world’s largest collections of rare Asian wind and string instruments. More recently Jaron set-up a little website called Second Life and now lectures at some of the world’s most prestigious universities.
This year he released You Are Not a Gadget, a manifesto on why parts of the digital revolution are making us mean, bland, cultureless bastards. We basked in his mighty intelligence.

VICE: Hello Jaron. So what are the main problems you see with the currently state of the digital world?
We have to be able to be clear here. I am very happy with the web as it has evolved and I’m very happy with the internet as it has evolved (which is the layer underneath the web), I’m delighted with cloud computing. I’m specifically critical of a set of designs called the web 2.0 designs, which I didn’t originate. But I did originate some of the rhetoric behind it, which I now regret.

And what was that rhetoric?
Well, it was around the idea that there would be such an infinity of wealths brought about by the new internet that if you gave away the products of your mind for free, somehow there would be rewards that would come to you that would be far greater. It was an interesting idea, but we have waited 17 years now and the benefits have not arrived. At a certain point, you have to accept the data that comes back to you and I think it’s time to accept that that particular concept is not working. I’m trying to criticise a very specific thing here without questioning my support for the overall project of technology. Because digital technology has such an influence on us, it’s important for us to get the ability to be selectively critical.

In the book you talk about this accepted lack of financial support for artists as ‘digital Maosim’, how did that phrase come about?
The reason I use the term "digital Maoism" is because the only other group I can find that tells the intellectuals that they shouldn’t be paid and everyone should choose physical drudgery as their way to survive are the Maoists.
Makes sense. Another theme in the book is the idea that, much like the width of railway tracks came to dictate the speed and abilities of train travel, current software design is defining and limiting the way we can work and shaping our thought processes.

In what ways do you is this happening?
As an example, right now there are a lot of software designs that have a tendency to put people in a situation where they happen to get mean. Because people act in an anonymous way, they are without consequences and so aggregate into mob-like tendencies very easily. One example of poor design which brings out the worst in people is the anonymous postings beneath YouTube videos. We’re seeing these specific designs – not the web as a whole – tending to create a profound split where people only talk to their kind, becoming ever more confrontational and ever more dysfunctional. I don’t think such designs are good, they promote meanness and they cause damage on a very significant scale.

But is the activity of aggregating and communicating only with your own niche of like-minded people on the internet not balanced by mass culture events like X Factor which also only seem to be increasing in popularity? Maybe it’s not as bad as you’re making out?
You know, they’re two different issues. X Factor is still an example of a mass medium – television – which doesn’t have the organisational quality I was talking about where people form into opposing mobs. You could say it’s a ‘unifier’, and whether that’s a good or bad quality is not my concern here. I’m talking about something more specific than that. What X Factor is, is an example of something which has become a craze lately; to believe that whatever the crowd centres on must be the best possibility. Sometimes that’s true. If all you ask a crowd for a single number, like what the price of something should be in a market, then the crowd really can be wise. But if you ask a crowd to do something creative or constructive, you end up with a dull average and X Factor is an example of that. The types of artists we get this way have a predictable, likable, non-controversial quality. I don’t think we’ll get a Kurt Cobain or a Clash through this. We can’t nurture originality this way. If one of the problems of the new web is meanness as a result of anonymity, this is the other problem – blandness, which is associated with a slightly different problem but they’re the two main things that I worry about.

Why do you think these problems are coming about?
One problem is that companies like Google want to be the central hub through which people connect. The intention behind this being to extract money from the functioning of society through the form of a new kind of advertising which isn’t really advertising, in the sense that it isn’t an art of communication at all, rather paying to be connected. And I have a problem with that.

What else?
There is also the very strange but prominent idea that computers and people are the same and that as computers get faster they’ll overtake people, eventually they’ll be so quick they’ll be able to scoop up our brains and give us everlasting life so long as we relate to them in a way that will make them want to do that. You have a lot of engineers designing software that includes an almost ritualistic erasure of the reality of individual people. Google’s Wave program is a good example of this. You are encouraged to type over what other people write in their own communications, and have people watching your individual keystrokes so you don’t get a chance to introspect before you even press return. These are all just little ways that software designers are trying to erase the boundaries between individual people and pretend that this machine is itself alive and superior to people.

You also aren’t a big fan of social networking. How do you think it is impacting on culture?
Let me give you example of this; let’s take somebody who’s an interesting artist or figure, say David Bowie as I’m in Britain. In order to become ‘David Bowie’, he has to invent his adult persona, and in his case a number of them. If he’d had a Facebook page from when he was fifteen it’s hard to imagine him having done that. Fifteen-year-olds on Facebook are compelled to constantly keep up with their Facebook page to make sure they don’t become the victim of something; they’re constantly nursing their reputation as if they’re about to run for office and worried about paparazzi or something. It forces you to become somewhat fearful and be constantly ‘on’. You never get a break, and not getting a break means you never get a chance to introspect. I don’t know what David Bowie was like when he was 15, but I’m sure there must have been aspects of his character that he would have to have override to become the performer he turned into, and could he have done that with a Facebook page? Could he have had the chance to start a new personality?

He probably wouldn’t have the chance to have such a successful career these days anyway.
That’s a point worth making. It’s one thing for Radiohead to be able to give things away for free now, but if they had given away their stuff for free when they were starting, they would have been just another band whose music you hear one day on the net and forget about the next. Radiohead are actually a great example of people whose music requires a great amount of introspection. They’re in their own little world, and that kind of person is really dispossessed if they’re starting out in the current system.

Is your criticism of the collectivisation of creative arts more from the perspective of allowing people the time for introspection, or because collectivisation means you end up compromising your ideas from the very start?
Well, I think you have to be somebody before you can share yourself, and introspection is part of that process. It’s not all of it, but if everything is totally open all the time you don’t even have the opportunity to create enough individuality to have something to share. That’s not to say that nothing should ever be open, just that it should be open periodically, so you can think before you speak.

One of your own creations, Second Life, is going strong. How do you feel about its success?
Second Life was and continues to be a bold experiment. It was an unknown whether enough people would put in enough work to create an alternate layer of reality; once again people rose to the occasion. One of the things that annoys me about the culture of some people is they take it for granted that they deserve everything for free, as if the world was made of nothing but passive consumers. And as they’re the overwhelming majority, they’re the people whose rights we should respect. Just today I looked at the TechCrunch website and there’s another headline about free and open stuff being best for readers. But who cares about readers? What people want to be are writers. The key difference between Second Life and some of the things I criticise is that people really exercise a degree of creativity on Second Life. Anyone who’s an avid user has actually done a lot; they’ve built, they’ve created, and that’s a big commitment. I think relying on people to contribute intrinsically brings out the good in people. Also, Second Life continues to change. I don’t think it’s perfect but I like it more than some other designs.

I wanted to ask you as well, how did you come up with the name “virtual reality”?
Oh that was a long time ago, how would I remember that? I actually never thought it was all that great, it’s kinda surprising it’s stuck as well as it has. I’d always wished I’d come up with something a little bit better but there it is.

Like something with your name in it?
Oh no, I wouldn’t do that!