Author, computer scientist and composer Jaron Lanier talks about the emerging technology of virtual reality, as well as his belief that cephalopods could eventually use their shape-shifting abilities to create their own civilization.
“If you’re in virtual reality, it’s very different - because you can be floating in a virtual reality world, and you might turn from a squid to a unicorn, or whatever creature you are,” Jaron said.
“The world might turn from – I don’t know from planets to being in a blood vessel or whatever – everything changes, and yet there is something that continues through all of it, and that is you – that’s your pure consciousness floating there, so you notice it, he said. “You notice that your conscience is real – and so it’s the technology that reverses that feeling, that’s the very best thing about it.”
He also addresses one of his favorite forms of life, cephalopods - fish life that can shape-shift, and have the ability to change themselves in appearance into other creatures.
“You have these wild, wild things where they can use it for camouflage – they use it for weird sex games where they change their appearance for sex and all these crazy things,” he said about the amazing creatures. “There’s a cuttlefish population off the coast of Australia that’s really famous for this,” he added.
“So the thing is, they don’t have a fixed appearance, or reference point in terms of their shape – they have this strange ability – and so I’ve always imagined that maybe someday they might evolve to create their own civilization,” Jaron said. “And then instead of using words to describe things, they just sort of become things – and have - what I call post-symbolic communication, they’d have this more direct form of expression with each other by just turning into things.”
Watch the full interview for about Jaron’s assessment of the current state of the Internet economy and where things are likely to head in the future, as well as the concept of computer singularity and how big business has now taken over an active role in collecting data on individuals as a way to exploit their information for profit.
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