Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author.

His web site: www.jaronlanier.com

Computer science bio:

Lanier's name is often associated with Virtual Reality research. Indeed, he did coin the term ‘Virtual Reality’ and in the early 1980s founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. In the late 1980s he lead the team that developed the first implementations of multi-person virtual worlds using head mounted displays, for both local and wide area networks, as well as the first "avatars", or representations of users within such systems. While at VPL, he co-developed the first implementations of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping, virtual sets for television production, and assorted other areas. He led the team that developed the first widely used software platform architecture for immersive virtual reality applications. Sun Microsystems acquired VPL’s seminal portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality and networked 3D graphics in 1999.

Since then, he has collaborated broadly with researchers in machine vision, computational neuroscience, cell biology modeling, and other disciplines defining the border between human cognition and the rest of the world. One major recent investigation, into what he has dubbed “Phenotropics”, concerns rejecting traditional protocol-based approaches in favor of statistical and pattern-recognition techniques to bind software components together in order to improve large scale reliability. A non-technical introduction to this work is found in the chapter he contributed to the 2002 book “The Next Fifty Year; Science in the Twenty First Century,” edited by John Brockman.

Academics and other positions:

Lanier is currently Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics and an External Fellow at Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute. Prior to that, Lanier served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three year development period. His current tele-immersion-related research interests include real time, remote, terascale processing, autostereo methods, haptics, and software simulation component integration and reusability.

He tends to collect adjunct appointments, and is currently a visiting faculty member of one sort or another at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, the Interactive Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (where he is a visiting artist), and at the Columbia University Computer Science Department. He serves on numerous advisory boards, including those of Lindenlab, Meaningful Machines, Numedeon, Nevengineering (the successor company to Eyematic, where he was Chief Scientist), the Board of Councilors of the University of Southern California, and Medical Media Systems (a medical visualization spin-off company associated with Dartmouth University.)

Music:

As a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new "classical" music since the late seventies. He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. He maintains one of the largest and most varied collections of actively played instruments in the world. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, George Clinton, Vernon Reid, Terry Riley, Duncan Sheik, Pauline Oliveros, and Stanley Jordan. Current recording projects include his "acoustic techno" duet with Sean Lennon and an album of duets with flautist Robert Dick.

He also writes chamber and orchestral music. Current commissions include an opera that will premier in South Korea. Recent commissions include: A concert length sequence of works for orchestra and virtual worlds (including "Canons for Wroclaw", "Khaenoncerto", "The Egg", and others) celebrating the 1000th birthday of the city of Wroclaw, Poland, premiered in 2000; A triple concerto, "The Navigator Tree", commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Composers Forum, premiered in 2000; and "Mirror/Storm", a symphony commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and premiered in 1998. “Continental Harmony”, a PBS special that documented the development and premiere of “The Navigator Tree” won a CINE Golden Eagle Award. His CD "Instruments of Change" was released on Point/Polygram in 1994.

Lanier’s work with Asian instruments can be heard extensively on the soundtrack to "Three Seasons", which was the first film ever to win both the Audience and Grand Jury awards at the Sundance Film Festival. He is at work with Terry Riley on a collaborative opera to be titled "Bastard, the First." Lanier has also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical stage performance with his band Chromatophoria, which has toured around the world as a headline act in venues such as the Montreux Jazz Festival. He plays virtual instruments and uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds.

Art:

Lanier’s paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe. In 2002 he co-created (with Philippe Parreno) an exhibit illustrating how aliens might perceive humans for the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. In 1994 he directed the film "Muzork" under a commission from ARTE Television. His 1983 "Moondust" is generally regarded as the first art video game, and the first interactive music publication. He has presented installations in New York City, including the "Video Feedback Waterbed" and the "Time-accelerated Painting", which was situated in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage. His first one man show took place in 1997 at the Danish Museum for Modern Art in Roskilde.

Jaron as a public figure:

Lanier is also a well known author and speaker. In 2005 he was selected as one of the top one hundred public intellectuals in the world by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines. He writes on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism. His book, "Technology and the Future of the Human Soul" will be finished someday, but is delayed by epic procrastination. His writing appears in The New York Times, Discover, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harpers Magazine, The Sciences, Wired Magazine (where he is a founding contributing editor), and Scientific American. He has edited special "future" issues of SPIN and Civilization magazines. The nation of Palau has issued a postage stamp in his honor. He has appeared on national television often, on shows such as "The News Hour", "Nightline" and "Charlie Rose", and has been profiled on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The Encyclopaedia Britannica includes him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors. He has served in various research groups concerned with the future, and has been appointed a fellow at Cap Gemini/Ernst & Young, the World Economic Forum, and the MacArthur Foundation Roundtables, and is one of the “remarkable people” of the Global Business Network.

Most important:

Lanier has no academic degrees.

Show full bio

Hide full bio