Podcast Assignment

2 comments:

  1. Dated October 28th, 2018:

    His laugh is infectious. I had to google him to see what he looked liked. While listening, I was imagining him looking like Steve Wozniak. Nope. Jaron Lanier does not look anything like I expected.

    I appreciate how he speaks about virtual reality, well aware of the fact that it’s a double-edged sword. It’s an incredible leap forward within technology, but can also cause a lot of harm. The most interesting idea he discussed, touched on the way humans think while inside a virtual reality: we can change our environment to be whatever we want, but we rarely think of the idea that we can change our bodies to be anything we want. It makes complete sense, but that’s crazy to think about. From the moment we gain consciousness at birth, we acquire a sense-of-self. We know what it’s like to be in our bodies, we understand who we are and how our bodies function, but to immediately change our entire being only by putting a headset on is borderline incomprehensible. I don’t even know where to begin thinking about that. He mentions that deep, deep down in the recesses of the human mind, we can revert naturally back to our previous evolutionary stages if we see them “on” ourselves in the virtual world. His example is a tail. “Oh yeah, I used to have one of those.”

    The idea of creating a new body doesn’t seem universal. A digital out-of-body experience may be difficult for some, especially for someone who is older in years. Imagine spending 60+ years on this earth in the same body, and then, in a matter seconds you see yourself as an entirely new being. But, who knows? Maybe this will all change when I finally spend time within a virtual reality.

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  2. I’m glad this podcast was assigned because Jaron Lanier helped seal the deal that I’m not crazy. When he was speaking about advertising appearing all over the place and how they are targeted to the viewer, he expressed the concern that he has over these ads. He commented on how technology can fall into the wrong hands, and the targeted advertisements are clear case of how it’s being used against humanity and only benefiting corporations. But this brings up what Lanier had said about VR. To have this amazing technology available to us but yet has the improper use of it can lead to harm. But then again, Second Life is a technology that can be useful but can also lead to harm. So is that the case for every technology?

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