Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier
Lanier blowing into a woodwind instrument with several chambers
Lanier in 2010
Born
Jaron Zepel Lanier

(1960-05-03) May 3, 1960 (age 64)
EducationNew Mexico State University
Occupation(s)Computer scientist, composer, visual artist, author
Employer(s)Atari
Advanced Network and Services
VPL Research
Internet2
Silicon Graphics
Columbia University
New York University
San Francisco State University
Dartmouth College
University of Pennsylvania
University of California, Berkeley
Microsoft
University of Southern California
Known forCo-founder of Virtual reality
Websitewww.jaronlanier.com

Jaron Zepel Lanier (/ˈrɪn lɪˈnɪər/, born May 3, 1960) is an American computer scientist,[1] visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist, and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality,[2] Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and wired gloves. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. In 2006 he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist.[3]

Lanier has composed contemporary classical music and is a collector of rare instruments (of which he owns one to two thousand[4]); his acoustic album, Instruments of Change (1994) features Asian wind and string instruments such as the khene mouth organ, the suling flute, and the sitar-like esraj. Lanier teamed with Mario Grigorov to compose the soundtrack to the documentary film The Third Wave (2007).

In 2005, Foreign Policy named Lanier as one of the top 100 Public Intellectuals.[5] In 2010, Lanier was named to the TIME 100 list of most influential people.[6] In 2014, Prospect named Lanier one of the top 50 World Thinkers.[7] In 2018, Wired named Lanier one of the top 25 most influential people over the last 25 years of technological history.[8][failed verification]

  1. ^ "Tech guru Jaron Lanier: 'The danger isn't that AI destroys us. It's that it drives us insane'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2023-03-23.
  2. ^ "Virtual reality: Meet founding father Jaron Lanier". New Scientist. Retrieved 2017-06-13.
  3. ^ "Brief Biography of Jaron Lanier (Jaronlanier.com)".
  4. ^ [1] Dawn of the New Everything, pg. 144 (2017)
  5. ^ "The Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectuals". Foreign Policy. 14 October 2005. Retrieved 2021-06-30.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference time was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Team, Prospect (2014-03-25). "World Thinkers 2014: Jaron Lanier". Prospect Magazine. Archived from the original on 2021-07-10. Retrieved 2021-06-30.
  8. ^ "We Need to Have an Honest Talk About Our Data". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2021-06-30.