New Media guru to give lecture at Colorado College

Jaron Lanier, credited for popularizing the phrase “virtual reality”, will discuss The Undiscovered Continents of Human Potential at 7 p.m. this Wednesday (2/8/12) at the Cornerstone Arts Center on the Colorado College campus.

Lanier, a computer scientist, author, musician, and artist, will present the Cornerstone Keynote Lecture for 2012, part of Colorado College’s Cornerstone Arts Initiative. Combining elements of cognition, Microsoft's Xbox video game console, chemistry and musical improvisation, Lanier will discuss the possibilities, pitfalls and potential of New Media.

As a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new classical music since the late 1970s. He plays virtual instruments and uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds. In the 1980s Lanier left video game maker Atari with Thomas Zimmerman to form VPL Research, the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves. His virtual world research includes working as an advisor on Linden Lab’s Second Life and as a scholar-at-large for Microsoft where he worked on the Xbox 360’s Kinect device. In his 2010 bestseller “You Are Not a Gadget”, Lanier argues that Web 2.0 developments have slowed progress and innovation and glorified the collective at the expense of the individual, which leads to something he calls Digital Maoism.

Lanier writes and edits numerous journals, appears regularly on "The News Hour," "Nightline," and "Charlie Rose," and has been profiled in a variety of national publications. In 2010, he was nominated for the Time Magazine 100 list of most influential people.

Doors for the lecture, which is free and open to the public, open at 6:45p.m.