Jaron Lanier
American computer scientist, musician, and author
Jaron Zepel Lanier (born May 3, 1960) is an American computer scientist, futurist, and composer. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and wired gloves.2
From Wikipedia’s article on Jaron Lanier (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born May 3, 1960.1
About
In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. In 2006, he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist.
Lanier has composed contemporary classical music and is a collector of rare instruments (of which he owns one to two thousand); his acoustic album, Instruments of Change (1994) features Asian wind and string instruments such as the khene mouth organ, the suling flute, and the sitar-like esraj. Lanier worked with Mario Grigorov to compose the soundtrack to the documentary film The Third Wave (2007).
In 2005, Foreign Policy named Lanier as one of the top 100 Public Intellectuals. In 2010, Lanier was named to the TIME 100 list of most influential people. In 2014, Prospect named Lanier one of the top 50 World Thinkers. In October 2018, Lanier was featured as a keynote speaker at the WIRED25 Festival marking the magazine's 25th anniversary, delivering the closing address on digital culture and human agency.
From Wikipedia’s article on Jaron Lanier, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2
Companies
- VPL ResearchFounder18
Early life and education
- Date not recordedNew Mexico State University3
Born Jaron Zepel Lanier in New York City, Lanier was raised in Mesilla, New Mexico. Lanier's mother and father were Jewish; his mother was a Nazi concentration camp survivor from Vienna, and his father's family had emigrated from Ukraine to escape the pogroms. When he was nine years old, his mother was killed in a car accident. He lived in tents for an extended period with his father before embarking on a seven-year project to build a geodesic dome home that he helped design.
At the age of 13, Lanier convinced New Mexico State University (NMSU) to let him enroll. At NMSU, he took graduate-level courses; he received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study mathematical notation, which led him to learn computer programming.
From 1979 to 1980, Lanier's NSF-funded project at NMSU focused on "digital graphical simulations for learning". Lanier also attended art school in New York during this time, but returned to New Mexico and worked as an assistant to a midwife. The father of a baby he helped deliver gave him a car as a gift, which Lanier later drove to Santa Cruz.
From Wikipedia’s article on Jaron Lanier (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Career
Occupation: composer, musician, university teacher, visual artist, artificial intelligence researcher, pianist, writer, artist.5 7
- Since 2006Worked at Microsoft4 5
- 2001 to 2004Worked at Silicon Graphics4 5
- 1997 to 2001Worked at Advanced Network and Services4 5
- 1984 to 1990Worked at VPL Research4 5
- 1983 to 1984Worked at Atari, Inc.4 5
- Date not recordedWorked at Columbia University4
- Date not recordedFounded VPL Research6
Personal life
Jaron Lanier and his wife, Lena, have one child, a daughter.
From Wikipedia’s article on Jaron Lanier (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Awards
Links
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataJaron Lanier on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaJaron Lanier on Wikipedia
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- 9Wikidatanotable work, as reported
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- 12WikidataJaron Lanier: award, on Wikidata
- 13Wikidataaward, as reported
- 14Wikidataaward, as reported
- 15Wikidataaward, as reported
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- 17WikidataJaron Lanier: IMDb, on Wikidata
- 18WikidataVPL Research, Founder
- 19Wikimedia CommonsJaron Lanier photo by vanz, CC BY 2.0