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Will Wright Vs. Jaron Lanier on Our Human Future

Posted by Zonk on from the the-future-of-our-society-rests-in-their-hands dept.

Jerry23 writes "At Accelerating Change 2004 (November 5-7 at Stanford University), Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier and Sims creator Will Wright will face each other in a debate entitled "Finding Humanity in the Interface: Capacity Atrophy or Augmentation?" As our interfaces get continually smarter, how do we keep them from dehumanizing us? Can we avoid the world of MT Anderson's masterful dystopia, Feed (2002), where the Internet-jacked, childlike teens of 2030 speak pidgin English and live primarily as vehicles for highly sophisticated and automated corporate marketing and political programming?"

20 comments

  1. I would think.... by FooAtWFU · · Score: 2, Insightful
    that as the interfaces get smarter, they are more humanizing than any before them. Compare the computer interfaces of today with the punch card. I'd say that we've been on an upward trend for quite some time.

    I'm waiting for tablet PCs to take off, myself.

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    1. Re:I would think.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't really care much for Tablet PCs at the moment something about manually typing each key with a pen on the screen and constantly repeating the same verbal commands over and over again till it gets it makes me feel like im communicating with a 4 year old or something with downs syndrome. But as the technology increases it'll get better I suppose.

    2. Re:I would think.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that as the interfaces get smarter

      Where is the evidence that interfaces are getting smarter?

      You seem to be taking that statement as self-evidently true, but just because something is being done more and faster, that doesn't mean that it's being done better and more intelligently.

      What does "interfaces get smarter" mean anyway - "computer GUIs get more usable to a naive user?"

  2. Cred by khaladan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Jaron Lanier has been a "virtual reality pioneer" for a really, really long time now. Is he going to do anything else?

    At least Will Wright done something interesting lately in making a popular game.

    1. Re:Cred by sien · · Score: 1

      You have to wonder what he is going to do. But he got stuck doing VR and seems to have done reasonably well for himself since then.

      Have you seen him speak though? He actually has some interesting things to say.

      He spoke at MMVR once and basically came out and poured cold water on everyone's dreams of producing useful simulators for nothing in the next 6 months. It was pretty brave and well worth saying.

      He does some stuff with UNC-CH too.

    2. Re:Cred by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Funny

      more commonly refered to as "that virtual reality wanker".

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Typo by contagious_d · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...childlike teens of 2030 speak pidgin English and live primarily as vehicles for highly sophisticated and automated corporate marketing and political programming"
    Should have read "2004", not "2030". Don't they read these before they put them up?

    --
    - /home is where the food is.
  4. I totally agree with him. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I think that giving that sort of technology to kids at the age of 3 is over the top - it wouldn't be a problem if the technology wasn't so "adult-oriented". At the moment even toys are totally electronic - it's hard to even find a teddy bear without a builtin microchip. I think there should be a limit to which we want those things to happen. It affects child's development, usually in a negative way. The thinking process becomes algorithmized and highly linear - very bad thing for humans - we thrive thanks to nonlinear and highly parallel processing.

    Sure enough those kids become very adept at using electronics, but their goals become extremely simplified. It's a social disaster.

  5. dehumanization is a myth by WormholeFiend · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We don't even know for sure what it is that makes us humans, otherwise, philosophy would use the scientific method and most philosophers would agree with each other.

    I think that as we invent new tools, those tools will make us evolve further, thus enabling us to invent better tools and further evolving...

    This is what's been happening since we discovered how to make fire all by ourselves.

    1. Re:dehumanization is a myth by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      I agree. We won't be dehumanized, we'll be re-humanized.

      Somebody from fifty years ago, a hundred, two hundred, would probably think, were they transported suddenly to now, that a certain element of humanity has been lost. Phones dehumanized us, industrialization dehumanized us, urbification dehumanized us, and so on.

      Crap. It altered what humanity is. That which does not grow, which does not change, will stagnate and die. Entropy and all that.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    2. Re:dehumanization is a myth by DoNotTauntHappyFunBa · · Score: 1

      I think that as we invent new tools, those tools will make us evolve further, thus enabling us to invent better tools and further evolving...

      This is what's been happening since we discovered how to make fire all by ourselves.

      Our culture has certainly evolved since then, but have our genes? I would guess that we are slightly less hairy than when we first controlled fire. We are taller than we were in past centuries, but this is probably from a better diet.

      --
      Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
    3. Re:dehumanization is a myth by WormholeFiend · · Score: 1

      The thing about evolution that bugs me is, we have seen the results from the fossil record, but we haven't seen it in action yet (apart from our genetic engineering -- which is artificial, if you consider humans as outside of "natural" evolutionary forces).

      How do we determine whether or not humans are evolving, as a species? Where do we put the thresholds?

      IMO we can only use comparison, but the human genome mapping is a recent endeavor, so we'll have to wait quite a few generations before a meaningful comparison can be made.

    4. Re:dehumanization is a myth by norkakn · · Score: 1

      Us silly humans trying to fit things into scales that we can comprehend. Evolution will always occur, as there will always be determinates of fitness. I really doubt that we will see much in 1 or 10 generations, but long after we pass, if humans have not yet killed themselves, we will be biologically different. Perhaps in 6000 years we may look back at the pitiful little earthbound creatures from the oldest books that look a bit like us (neanderthal comparison? yeah we weren't related, but in terms of similarity) and perhaps in 60000 humans will look back and not really recognize where they came from. I really don't think that evolution is for one to see, it is a force that happens that we can look back on and wonder what was before.

    5. Re:dehumanization is a myth by The_reformant · · Score: 1

      Actually tools are exactly why we as a species dont really evolve anymore. In fact some anthropologists are worried about us devolving..or at least evolving undesirably. For example many predict that the narrowing of womens hips will mean the c-sections will be the normal way of giving birth for the next generation.

      Tools allow us to do two thing. Firstly they allow us to change our environment and secondly they allow us to survive when we wouldnt before. Both these things means that there is essentialy no selection pressure and hence no evolution

      --
      I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
    6. Re:dehumanization is a myth by justins · · Score: 1
      We don't even know for sure what it is that makes us humans, otherwise, philosophy would use the scientific method and most philosophers would agree with each other.

      What does that sentence even mean?

      1. We know just fine what makes us humans. It's just a label, and right now at a least, it's a very easy label to apply. There might eventually be some confusion over the point if we eventually have mind uploading or true AI or something, but we don't.

      2. It is absolutely not a sign of maturity or distinction for all of the members of a given field to "agree with each other." A field like that would probably be pretty boring and useless.

      I think that as we invent new tools, those tools will make us evolve further, thus enabling us to invent better tools and further evolving...

      This is what's been happening since we discovered how to make fire all by ourselves.

      Any example you would care to give would probably exhibit a severe abuse of the meaning of "evolve."

      It's very easy to see how our evolution gives us the ability to create and use new tools. But to say that "tools make us evolve" is a pretty bizarre claim, unless your definition of "evolution" is just "knowing how to do more stuff." Which is more properly known as "learning."
      --
      Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
  6. Let's be honest by I+judge+you · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Jaron Lanier is an overhyped hack. Will Wright is a sucessful game designer, who also happens to be brilliant.

  7. There's another way. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Go with the dream of Deus Ex: Invisible War... the only question is, who will program our Helios?

  8. The decline of education by theMerovingian · · Score: 1


    has little to do with technology. Read this for more info:

    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.ht m

    --
    "If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
  9. MT Anderson's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can we avoid the world of [Every cyberpunk author ever] 's masterful dystopia where the Internet-jacked, childlike teens of 2030 speak pidgin English and live primarily as vehicles for highly sophisticated and automated corporate marketing and political programming?"

    Fixed...

  10. An Unexamined Life... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Blindly using technology condemns us to repeat the mistakes of the past. It's nice to see these guys are getting together to talk about the big issues.

    This country has seriously lost a lot of math, science, and verbal skills over the last generation, all the studies show it very clearly. You only need to look to digital cable (6+ hours of average viewing a day, by adults) to see why. And much of today's technology really does program us to go wide, not deep. So is that just going to continue?

    If you poke around on their site you will find a $50 discount code ("AC2004-COMMUNITY").