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Date: 10/12/2014 00:13 clock
Jaron Lanier receives today at the Frankfurt Book Fair Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The computer scientist, writer and musician regarded as the father of virtual reality and has made in recent years as a critic of the big Internet companies a name.
No, it would probably an Internet theorists and computer not imagine first: Jaron Lanier is currently playing a Syrian lute, collecting, and learning new instruments is his passion. More than 2000 he has in his house, the creative muddle suits his pretty hippie uniform appearance. The long red hair dangling in Rasta braids around his head.
He is 54, but looks a good 20 years younger when he worked as a drum from Germany. On the question of whether music is a hobby for him or a second job, he says without hesitation: No, the first profession. And the music it was that made him rethink and be a critic of technological development. His resume has one a few unexpected turns taken: It comes from a Jewish family, the mother was a Holocaust survivor. He was an early enthusiastic about technology, worked in the 1980s as a game programmer for Atari, considered the father of the concept of “virtual reality”, and the Encyclopædia Britannica calls him one of the 300 most important inventors of all time.
Today, the musician, tomorrow the workers
But the beginning of the new millennium doubt on belief in progress, the Silicon Valley came to him: “Almost every week I was asked if I would organize a benefit concert – in favor of once famous musicians who could no longer stay afloat, since the music industry had collapsed by the digitization And I thought to myself: Why should it be any different for the workers in the car factory, though. assume the robots Because I realized:. The idea of digitizing sound may be good – but it did not work “
We feed the monster
From his home in the hills above the university city of Berkeley Lanier has a magnificent view of the bay of San Francisco – and almost into the Silicon Valley. Companies such as Google and Facebook have their headquarters there and are financially enormously successful, but, as argued Lanier, they are only because we constantly all they – and free – treat with our data, by taking advantage of their services: “The whole economy organized exactly new, by the people, are monitored by algorithms, computer programs: We collect vast amounts of data about the people who form it profiles and then contact them advertising before, which is really no more advertising, but a modification of behavior. “
How to make itself superfluous
Will say: These companies know each other so well that they are a digital push in can give a particular direction. Amazon’s purchase recommendations are just the beginning – and the end are the Miliardäre of Silicon Valley -., And on the other hand a lot of jobs in the middle class that are superfluous
Lanier explains the the new taxi service Uber, which comprises a carriage calls with a smartphone app – and the drivers are often private citizens – without taxi license and without adequate insurance, “Uber brings some good innovations: Of course, you should be able to call a taxi with your smartphone. Of course, algorithms should all be organized more efficiently, so that in the end less taxis are needed. But why have these advantages with an attack on the existing labor protection, the taxi driver accompanied? “
The Lure of Sirens
At the end, entire professions: booksellers, realtors, journalists – simply because their services to the digital society apparently nothing more worth. . Lanier has formulated his criticism in several books, the latest entitled “Who Owns the Future”
Lanier writes about the complex and unwieldy subject tangible and easy to understand – he finds metaphors that remain in the memory, as the “Siren Server” – sirens not in the sense of Poliziei and fire, but after the mythical creatures of Greek mythology: it is the case of Lanier mainframe computers of Google and Co., which attract us with their free services such as the . sirens irrfahrenden Odysseus – and yet only suck our data
The siren Sever act but also to corporate CEOs and politicians: “It is a seductive power in these huge amounts of data: If it has access to and can influence the behavior of people – I’ve learned that no one can resist, no matter whether it is in the financial world or in secret just too tempting “
A constructive critic
Internet critic is often called Lanier. Internet-thinkers would rather meet – because he not only nitpicks, he also proposes a solution to the problem. And the looks, as you would not expect from him, perhaps: Lanier wants to impose capitalism on the Internet. And indeed, he himself says, in such an extreme that something else will it: “Then would Google and Co. are paying money for it, that they use our data Minimalstbeträge would be that for every Internet search, for every uploaded photo and everything. ‘Like’ on Facebook but in the end would it billions “
About Google Translate:.. This automatic translation service from Google searches on the net constantly for texts which are in two languages – and improved its algorithm by comparing the two language versions. Actually, the authors of the texts and the translator would have to get money for it, says Lanier: That would secure a stable future for the Mitttelschicht, which in turn would be the backbone of a stable society and government
yet. only a court jester
Lanier says he was with senior civil servants, big Silicon Valley companies in the steady exchange. Many saw the problem, but so far no one has taken the bait in his proposed solution. Critics say Lanier was something of a court jester, to the Silicon Valley think, without really seriously him. He sees himself as a “loyal opposition”. “I am part of the corporate world that I criticize – the folks at Facebook are nice, and I’ve sold a company to Google and currently working for Microsoft, it is easy to get enemies to pick out, but that does not bring you further I’m trying to highlight.. that it comes to a deep-seated problem and not a few malicious people. “
A plea for the related right
The charming manner in which he conveys his ideas in the United States during panel discussions and talk shows, is method: He is a pragmatist, not an idealist, Lanier says of himself. Therefore, he does not keep his approach for the only possible. Impressed he is with eg the much-maligned German intellectual property right – what Google has to pay the newspaper publishing fees when entire passages from the articles in the news offering Google News are cited. The law was heavily criticized not only by Google, because it hinders the free flow of information on the net.
“Newspaper publishers are right, and Google is wrong,” says Lanier. “And what the publishers want to use long term, Google, because as a richer, more stable society arises, can flourish in Google. Using Google’s method, however impoverished society, and in the long run starves the Google itself.”
Such sets are the industry representatives of the newspaper and book publishers in the Frankfurt St. Paul’s Church to hear – but who knows what Lanier has in his acceptance speech to say them yet. “This speech makes me a bit nervous Firstly, because I want to read it -., The I have in my life never had And I know that she gets a lot of attention, I would like to use But if too many.. that packs ideas, it is a bit sterile – because I’m trying to find a balance “
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