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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?"

3 of 20 comments (clear)

  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.
  2. 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.

  3. 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.