PopTech Archives - Author JD Lasica

The man who coined the term ‘virtual reality’ discusses art, science and life in the post-Sept. 11 world

jaron_lanier Jaron Lanier — artist, scientist, visionary, and coiner of the term “virtual reality” — spoke by cell phone with J.D. Lasica from a café in Tribeca, New York, on Oct. 4, 2002, in advance of the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine.

The PopTech program teases us with your presentation by saying only, A Musical Experience With Virtual Reality. What should we expect?

Oh, my, that’s news to me. There is a thing I do sometimes which involves using some of the equipment from virtual reality research and stage performance, and I try to make virtual worlds that are themselves musical instruments in some way or have instruments in them. It’s fun, and it works on stage, but I’m struggling with this question of how to make creative tools for invention inside virtual worlds, and these instruments are, for me, the most familiar and appropriate metaphor to start with. However, I was not planning to do it in Maine, the reason being that it’s kind of a big production, and it’s expensive and involves a lot of equipment, and I had been thinking of this as a much simpler affair. [Read more…] about Jaron Lanier discusses virtual reality & music

The author of ‘Avatars’ talks about cyber cocktail parties and the concept of shared virtual worlds

Bruce Damer, a pioneer in the field of virtual worlds and author of “Avatars,” spoke with me by phone in advance of the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine.

Have you been to PopTech before?

This will be our first trip. My life partner, Galen Brandt, will be coming, too. I’ve heard so much about it.

Bruce Damer

What have they asked you to talk about?

I was brought into PopTech by Ray Kurzwell as our organizations (the Contact Consortium and DigitalSpace) have been doing virtual worlds stuff for seven years now. I even wrote a book on the subject. I have to say I’m a little skeptical of the notion that some day AI’s will replace us and we’ll fall in love with them or upload our consciousness. I agree with Jaron Lanier that in fact we are as a species pretty bad at writing code and that in 25 years we will still be buried under the weight of legacy systems. I have a whole barn full of computers on our property here in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California that bears living testament that progress in software is painfully slow. I wrote a lot of code for 15 years giving me a healthy respect for the gap between expectations and reality in technology. In response to last year’s debate among folks like Bill Joy, Jaron, Ray and others, I wrote a piece for Ray’s site that pretty much spells our my views on this. [Read more…] about Bruce Damer on building the Intercommons

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