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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?"

5 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. 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 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. 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.