How we need to remake the internet | Jaron Lanier

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2018

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early days of digital culture, Jaron Lanier helped craft a vision for the internet as public commons where humanity could share its knowledge -- but even then, this vision was haunted by the dark side of how it could turn out: with personal devices that control our lives, monitor our data and feed us stimuli. (Sound familiar?) In this visionary talk, Lanier reflects on a "globally tragic, astoundingly ridiculous mistake" companies like Google and Facebook made at the foundation of digital culture -- and how we can undo it. "We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them," he says.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily.
0:04.9	This TED Talk features scientist, musician, visual artist, and author, Jaron Lanier.
0:12.0	Recorded live at TED, 2018.
0:16.2	Back in the 1980s, actually, I gave my first talk at TED, and I brought some of the very, very first public demonstrations
0:24.6	of virtual reality ever to the TED stage.
0:28.6	And at that time, we knew that we were facing a knife-edge future
0:36.6	where the technology we needed, the technology we loved,
0:44.2	could also be our undoing.
0:46.7	We knew that if we thought of our technology as a means to ever more power.
0:54.5	If it was just a power trip, we'd eventually destroy ourselves.
0:58.3	That's what happens when you're on a power trip and nothing else.
1:03.4	So the idealism of digital culture back then
1:11.6	was all about starting with that recognition
1:14.6	of the possible darkness
1:16.6	and trying to imagine a way to transcend it
1:19.6	with beauty and creativity.
1:22.6	I always used to end my early TED talks
1:24.6	with a rather horrifying line, which is we have a challenge.
1:34.0	We have to create a culture around technology that is so beautiful, so meaningful, so deep,
1:42.9	so endlessly creative,
1:44.7	so filled with infinite potential,
1:47.7	that it draws us away from committing mass suicide.
	...

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