Jaron Lanier a Milano
Jaron Lanier and SECOND LIFE at meet the media guru
on wired - the dreadlocked virtual reality explorer”
- (il rasta che ha esplorato la realtà virtuale).
Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author.
Born 1960, grew up in rural Southern New Mexico.
Now residing in Berkeley.
Married (in 2005!)
Computer science:
Lanier's name is most 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 and his colleagues 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. He also is working with physicists on “digital” approaches to fundamental theories.
Lanier has never held a full time job or had a full time academic appointment. The closest he has ever come was his association with Internet2. He was the Chief Scientist of the Engineering Office, and served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three-year development period.
Lanier has no academic degrees. He has been offered honorary degrees from time to time and will finally accept an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2006. Virginity Lost…
He tends to collect adjunct appointments, and is currently associated in one way or another with the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, the Molecular Sciences Laboratory (Berkeley, CA,) 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, Nevenvision (the successor company to Eyematic, where he was Chief Scientist), the Board of Councilors of the University of Southern California, and Medical Metrix Systems (a medical visualization spin-off company associated with Dartmouth University.)
He was the recipient of CMU's Watson award in 2001, and was a nominee for the first Edge of Computation Award in 2005.
He shared the first Virtual Reality Industry Award for Applications with VPL client Matsushita in 1992.
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 rare 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 and concert-length piece for the Toronto-based Array chamber ensemble. 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.
Visual 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. He helped make up the gadgets and scenarios for the 2002 science fiction movie Minority Report by Steven Spielberg. The 1992 movie Lawnmower Man was in part based on him and his early laboratory.
Punditry:
Lanier is a well-known author and speaker. He writes and speaks 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 lecture client list includes most of the well-known high technology firms as well as many others in the energy, automotive, and financial services industries. A monthly column by Lanier will begin to appear in Discover Magazine in early 2006. His book, "Technology and the Future of the Human Soul" will be finished someday, but is delayed by epic procrastination. His writing has appeared 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. 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.
Business accomplishments:
• Paracomp, a spin-off from VPL (which was founded by Lanier) merged with MacroMind to become MacroMedia, which then merged with Adobe.
• Medical Media Systems, another spin-off, which was co-founded by Jaron, became Medical Metrix Systems, a major player in medical imaging software.
• The PowerGlove was a major toy licensed to Mattel Toys from VPL.
Celebrity fluff:
In 2005 Lanier was selected as one of the top one hundred public intellectuals in the world by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines. The Encyclopaedia Britannica includes him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors. The nation of Palau has issued a postage stamp in his honor. Various television documentaries have been produced about him, such as “Dreadlocks and Digital Dreamworlds” by Tech TV in 2002. He has appeared on national television often, on shows such as "The News Hour," "Nightline," and "Charlie Rose," and has been profiled multiple times on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_index.html
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier03/lanier_index.html
from google video : 2005 : Host Harry Kreisler welcomes computer scientist Jaron Lanier. Lanier talks about his work in computer science and his ... all » work as a composer and student of music. He reflects on the implications of technology for culture and offers his assessment of how far the revolution in communications will go. Series: "Conversations with History" [Science] [Humanities]
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