We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to appreciate the intellectual beauty of computer science beyond its commercial value.
Jaron Lanier expresses concern that society is becoming overly focused on the financial benefits of computer science, neglecting the inherent beauty and intellectual joy that can be found within the discipline. He calls for a revival of appreciation for the creative and exploratory aspects of technology, urging a balance between understanding its vast potential and recognizing its artistic and scientific value.
In practice
This quote can be used in a technology conference to inspire attendees to appreciate the creative aspects of programming.
Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.
Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.
I mean, you can't have advertising be the only official business of the information economy if the information economy is going to take over.
When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.
It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
The Internet's abundance - of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority - creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what they want. But this plenitude threatens political and cultural authorities who believe in telling individuals what they can have rather than letting them choose for themselves.
In a sense, communications networks can be defined entirely by who has cryptographic keys, and I think a lot of networks will work that way in the future.
The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.
You're either on, and you're connected and distracted all the time, or you're off, but then you're wondering, am I missing something important? In other words, you're either distracted or you have fear of missing out.
These days, you have the option of staying home, blogging in your underwear, and not having your words mangled. I think I like the direction things are headed.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.