is it just me? or is jaron lanier everywhere? of course the ‘copy’ is provocative:
“”My world has gone nuts for liking computers too much and not seeing them clearly for what they are,” he says in an interview with Salon about the essay.
What they are, Lanier argues, is far from the omnipotent engines of destruction envisioned by other
scientists-turned-cautionaries such as Sun Microsystems’ Bill Joy. Nor are they saviors, declares Lanier. Neither the evil nanobots of Joy’s nightmare, nor the poverty-curing “mind children” that Moravec envisions are possible, says Lanier. Simply put, software just won’t allow it. Code can’t keep up with processing power now, and it never will.“Software is brittle,” he says. “If every little thing isn’t perfect, it breaks. We have to have an honest appreciation for how little progress we’ve made in this area.””