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Honestly with Bari Weiss

Was the Internet a Horrible Mistake?

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The Free Press

Society & Culture, News

4.67.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2021

⏱️ 78 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last week, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, confirmed what we already felt; that big tech platform’s algorithms are manipulating our sense of reality, and ourselves, and in doing so enriching themselves.  Jaron Lanier, the technologist, philosopher, and virtual reality pioneer has been warning us about the dangers of the internet for years. Today, a conversation with Jaron, from his home in California, about the dangers of groupthink, digital maoism, ideology sluts, censorship, capitalism, universal basic income, Facebook, robots, billionaires, wokeness and losing yourself in the ambiguity of the internet’s fake reality.  Can the problems of the Information Age be fixed by more regulation? Or will it take a fundamental shift in how we structure our society, and our relationship to emergent technologies to reclaim our humanity?  In addition to being an author of the internet, he worked at Atari and Microsoft in the early days, Jaron wrote, ”Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” and “Dawn of the New Everything.” He appeared in the movie “The Social Dilemma.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Sign up to the economist for in-depth

0:03.0

expert analysis of world events

0:06.0

and topics ranging from business and culture

0:08.0

to science and technology.

0:10.0

You'll get the weekly digital edition, online only articles,

0:13.6

curated newsletters on politics, the markets, science, culture and China.

0:18.3

And full access to The Economist Podcast Plus.

0:21.6

The Economist is Independent Journalism for Independent Thinking.

0:25.8

Go to Economist.com and get your first month free. I'm Barry Weiss. Wow. And this is honestly.

0:35.0

A few months back I went to this gorgeous neighborhood in the Berkeley Hills

0:42.0

to have coffee with one of the

0:43.5

original visionaries of the internet.

0:47.0

Hey.

0:48.0

Hi!

0:50.0

The computer scientist, technologist, philosopher, composer, virtual reality pioneer, author and legendary eccentric

0:57.2

Jared Lanier.

0:58.2

Hi, I'm Jerry.

1:00.2

It's a really nice to meet you.

1:01.8

I don't even know what to...

1:03.0

I am too, but I'm...

1:05.0

We're fine, you can have me.

1:06.0

It's all good.

...

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