puts everybody into this behavior modification regime that even if it doesn't do what it's supposed to,

it has all these side effects. It makes everybody a bit more vain and crazy and stupid and contentious

and paranoid. That does happen. It's really good at that. And because of that, it becomes this

giant invitation to the worst actors in the world to try to go in and sabotage other people's

societies.

Hello and welcome to Trigonoma Trip. I'm Francis Foster.

I'm Constantin Kishin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating

people. Our brilliant guest today is somebody we've been trying to get onto the show literally since

the day we started. He's an American computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer,

technologist, futurist and composer of contemporary classical music as well. He's considered one

of the founders of the field of virtual reality. Jaren Lanier, welcome to Trigonoma Trip.

Hey, how's it going? It's going great. Listen, man, before we get into what we hope is going to be a

brilliant and fascinating conversation, tell everybody a little bit about your story. Who are you?

How are you where you are? What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting

here talking to us? Oh gosh, you know, I find that to be a confusing question. I can do it.

Well, let's see. I'm known for a few different things. And to different communities of people,

some people only know me one way or the other. I approximately started virtuality. I came up with

the term and I had the first start up and pioneered a lot of the apps and devices and whatnot

a long time ago in the 80s when I was a kid in my waste of youth. I write books that are

critical about technology. I'm very concerned that we have responsibility as computer scientists

to think about what we're doing to the world. And when it's not working, we have to be honest

about it. And so I've written a bunch of books. The best known one might be the 10 arguments

...