Lamentations about the disastrous nature of digital technologies for humanity have been heard so regularly lately that it is becoming less and less interesting to listen to them. However, for Jaron Lanir (in Russian, his surname is more often written as “Lanyer”), it is perhaps worth making an exception.
Lamentations about the disastrous nature of digital technologies for humanity have been heard so regularly lately that it is becoming less and less interesting to listen to them. However, for Jaron Lanir (in Russian, his surname is more often written as “Lanyer”), it is perhaps worth making an exception. If only because the contribution of the author himself to the current dominance of these digital technologies is very significant. Lanier was a developer at Atari and worked with Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and Microsoft. He stood at the origins of the creation of virtual reality computer technologies, and, for example, most of today’s video games simply would not exist if Jaron Lanir had not worked hard thirty years ago. Moreover, he owns the authorship of the term «virtual reality». Perhaps for this reason, his reflections that social media devalues the concept of friendship, and that user-created content on websites reduces the value of the individual deserve closer attention. True, it is worth remembering that Jaron Lanir is far from the first creator to become concerned about the danger of his offspring for humanity, but life on planet Earth continues. Probably, a tendency to exaggeration is generally characteristic of authors who think of using the word «manifesto» in the title of their books. However, it’s still fun to read.
ASTREL, 320 p.