Quotes from Jaron Lanier

Criticism is always easier than constructive solutions.

America's Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven't seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves - Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page, they wouldn't have been able to forget their former selves.

Mobs and dictators were made for each other, and when mobs appear, dictators will soon flourish.

To me, to say that war isn't evil is to say that nothing is evil.

I think most of the dramatic new ideas come from little companies that then grow big.

I've occasionally been wrong about certain things, which is in a way more delightful than being right.

Google's thing is not advertising because it's not a romanticizing operation. It doesn't involve expression. It's a link. What they're doing is selling access.

A market economy cannot thrive absent the well-being of average people, even in a gilded age.

Style used to be an interaction between the human soul and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it will have to come from the soul alone.

A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.

I feel drawn to experiment with ways that technology can interact with notions of intimacy, because so much of technology is done in a way that's very cold and has such an opposite effect.

I do real paintings, you know. I'm a little messy in the studio, so I'm a bit of a danger. But I just adore it.

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.

I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're a full-class citizen. You have the potential to make money from the system.

Advertisers and marketers should be looking to bring new experiences to different parts of the brain. It's a more profound idea than just dropping a billboard into a video game.

Information doesn't deserve to be free. It is an abstract tool; a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way.

I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of empathy and humanity in that process.