Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity | Hacker News Reader

Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity

theguardian.com

50 pointsnemoniac22 comments

+1 for Jaron caring for, thinking about, and helping to shape humanity in how it employs technology. It's easy for us to be unhealthy with such powerful tools/toys.

Lanier mentions Russia and China.

I think it's fair to also mention both the NSA (USA) and GCHQ (UK) has departments fully dedicated to online psyops.

In fact, GCHQs top secret - at the time - psyops department called JTRIG has been fully exposed by Glenn Greenwald at his time at The Intercept using documents exfiltrated by Edward Snowden:

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

Since then it is an open secret JTRIG works domestically (in the West) and has for example succesfully infiltrated the Anonymous collective:

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/snowden-anonymous-jtrig-gchq-...

Perhaps this is a case of self censorship to ensure the article is published in the Guardian and other outlets. China and Russia's efforts to sway communications in the west is negligible to that of the US.

The absense of tech will eventually lead to the demise of Homo Sapiens species, since every species have expiry date. It may evolve into something different but also disappear as an evolutionary dead end.

The disappearance of the specific species Home Sapiens doesn't seem terribly important in my opinion, especially if it is supplanted by a descendant species.

But the absence of tech WILL eventually lead to the demise of life on Earth and consciousness in this little patch of the universe, because the planet Earth's ability to host life has an expiration date.

This is why I have no room in my mind for the anti-tech memes. A future where we live as primitive farmers or hunter gatherers for a few more hundred million years until the sun starts expanding and boils the oceans driving all complex life to extinction simply isn't an interesting enough future to get excited about contributing to.

The only way to avoid this future is to become a space faring civilization, and I think the existential risks present in that process are worth it, because the payoff of success drastically overwhelms the alternative. I want to be an ancestor of a multi trillion year type 3 civilization that develops levels of consciousness, awareness, and understanding of reality that we can't even begin to imagine.

Lanier is clearly advocating for appropriate technologies and not primitivism. We can doom ourselves on a much shorter timescale then the remaining lifetime of the sun.

> especially if it is supplanted by a descendant species

Don't see why you take that for granted.

there will be evolutionary progression even without an absence of tech. homo sapiens will be gone at some point.

But, the replacement is likely to be a descendant, not a distant cousin.

Unless aliens.

There may not be any descendants. It is not known.

On reflection, it's obvious, but I'd not perceived the the converging of on-line personas before. It's the same on the left and the right.

I remain a worried optimist, like Mr. Lanier.

Lanier’s books are very, very good - he’s a genuinely novel thinker with a deeply humanistic perspective on technology. I highly recommend “You are not a gadget” and “Who owns the future?”, and “Dawn of the new Everything” will get you genuinely excited about VR.

The links at bottom of page to share to Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin is somewhat ironic here. I know how to share to the fediverse. Hopefully some of these publications will implicitly encourage it by adding such a button.

Humans are rats. As long as we control fire, we can live everywhere and eat everything.

Civilization on the other hand...

Remind me of the song: The sound of silence.

One aspect not directly addressed is how the combination of tech at scale and capitalism is misaligned with social good or survivability.

That guy is the worst kind of contrarian.

Personal anecdote: there was another guy from my "class" at Google (people who started the same Monday in 2005) who was assigned to interview Lanier. I never heard any more about it.

I heard him talk at BayCHI, before that. I think he peaked in the 90s.

So you have no idea how the interview went, and you're coloring in that absence of information with your own biases? This is the type of annecdote you should keep to yourself.

"anecdote"

And how do you know how it went? Maybe they wanted him to do something he didn't want to do.

You're seriously correcting my spelling and trying to put words in my mouth (of course I don't know what happened & never implied I did), while implying I'm triggered & need to take a step back in your flagged comment?

I'm sorry if this has been upsetting to you; I'm not looking to piss you off. But frankly, it seems to me that if I had been misinterpreting in my original criticism - you'd just have said that?

When I have interactions like this, I sometimes show them to people I trust to give me honest feedback. I'd encourage you to consider it. Because it's clear to me this interaction is pissing you off, I won't be responding further; I hope you have a nice day.

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