Will Wright Vs. Jaron Lanier on Our Human Future

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?"