‘Everybody’s Brain Knows How to Run a Tail’: Glen Weyl Talks to Jaron Lanier About How to Live With Technology
Jaron Lanier is a writer, musician, and pioneering computer scientist who helped create modern virtual reality. He is also the author of several books about technology, most recently Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. E. Glen Weyl is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, where he works on the intersection of technology and economics. He is also the co-author of Radical Markets.
Jaron and Glen are friends. So we asked them whether they could record their next Skype conversation and let us publish it. Fortunately, they said yes.
E. Glen Weyl (GW):
We spend a huge amount of time talking to each other over Skype. But one of the first things that I learned from you was how foolish it is to be satisfied with Skype, to assume that it offers any kind of substitute for being there in person with someone. I wonder if you could start us off by talking about technology’s failures, and why it’s important for us to be aware of them.
Jaron Lanier (JL):
Accepting any particular technology as being a given, as an inevitability, as beyond criticism, as just a part of the natural environment, means that…
