good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight, part 2 of my conversation with virtual reality pioneer jaron lanier, his new memoir, and his fears about how technology influences our minds and affects our world. more with jaron lanier in just a moment. ♪ ♪ and by contributions to your

pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ pleased to have jaron lanier back on the program tonight. his new book is "dawn of the new everything: encounters with reality and virtual reality." if you're wondering why i have my shoes off, it's because he has his shoes off. if none of that makes sense to you, go back to last night's show and you'll understand how the shoes ended up coming off last night. if you missed last night's show, go to pbs.org and you'll see how our shoes were discarded last night. last night you were just getting

into something that was really starting to really -- i was trying to process it. this notion of -- can i say negative stimuli. >> absolutely. >> for those who forgot where we left off, pick up on this notion of black lives matter. you take it. >> so i was describing this process whereby people do something very positive, very pure-hearted in the current online world, and black lives matter is an example, i could also talk about the arab spring, i could talk about a lot of other examples. i have a feeling this is going to happen to #metoo right now. >> the hashtag #metoo for women. >> yes. they create literature, beautiful community, it's moving, it makes you cry, it's incredible, it opens eyes, it opens hearts. but behind the scenes there is this completely other thing

going on. the data coming in from these people is the fuel for the engine that runs the advertising business or what i prefer to call the behavior modification business. it has to be turned into something that will generate engagement not just for those people but for everybody, because you want to maximize the use of your fuel, you want it to be as powerful and as efficient as possible. and unfortunately, if you want to maximize engagement, the negative emotions are more efficient uses of that fuel than the positive ones. so fear, anger, annoyance, all of these things, irritation. these things are much easier to generate engagement with. all that good energy from black lives matter or other movements is repackaged and rerouted not by an evil genius but automatically by algorithms to maximally coalesce a countergroup that will find each other that might not have found each other otherwise, that will

be irritated and agitated by it. and because the negative emotions are more powerful for this kind of scheme, that counterreaction will typically be more powerful than the initial good movement. and that's why you have this extraordinary phenomenon of black lives matter and then the next year yo have this rise of white supremacists and neo-nazis and this horrible thing which we really hadn't expected, nobody had seen that. it's this -- it's like this algorithmic process that i think is kind of reliable, and we must shut that down. >> so i want to advance this in just a second to your suggestion that you think the same thing is bound to happen with the #metoo campaign. >> it typically takes a year, yeah. >> i want to get a sense of what you think it looks like a year from now. but what i want to talk about now, though, i know in our

vernacular, there is a phrase we use, i'll clean it up for television, stuff happens. but there are a lot of people that don't believe that stuff just happens. so when you say to me that this negative backlash, that this good that gets put out there, gets turned into evil, it gets turned on by some algorithm that nobody controls, jaron says it just happens, i don't believe that, i'm not buying that. tell me why i should. >> because it keeps on happening. where did the alt-right come from? the prototype was gamer gate, do you know what that is? >> no, educate me. >> going back a few years, there was a feminist movement to try to increase inclusion of women in the gaming world, meaning digital gaming, right? and so they organized in a very beautiful way, they said some beautiful things, there was a lot of sympathy. but then this backlash coalesced

over social media that was called gamer gate, that was vicious. it ruined people's lives. it had this mean quality. and for many people, it was the training ground for what would become the alt-right. many of the alt-right fingers we know today at that time were in some way involved with or inspired by or interacting with the gamer game community. so this is something that has happened multiple times. and it's perfectly logical when you understand how the algorithms work. that's not to guarantee it will always happen every time, but it's a common phenomenon and a perfectly reasonable one to expect. >> but algorithms aren't controlled by people? that's what i'm getting at here. >> algorithms are designed by people but then they're set free and run on their own. there are a lot of reasons for that. for one thing, if you're running some big cloud company, you tend to want to run away from liability. so you say, oh, no, i didn't direct what happened, i just had my algorithm do this and that.

so there's a way that it creates an arms length kind of protection, a safety net for the people involved. but the other odd thing is that people don't really fully understand how the algorithms work. they're a little mysterious these days. you don't have great explanations for how the types of algorithms we like to use do what they do. they just kind of adapt themself themselves. if you have an algorithm maximizing engagement so you make more money, and if negative emotions are more effective for that than positive ones, it will naturally find a way to coral people to some kind of cesspool of negative emotions. >> that's my point. if we can bring people into this cesspool of negativity, and there's an algorithm that somebody designed, whether or not they can explain it to me or not, somebody designed it in a way that allowed that to happen, why can't we undesign it? in other words, if we know, to your point, that there's an algorithm that allows push back on the arab spring or pushback on black lives matter, if we can

write the algorithm, why can't we unwrite one? >> yeah. it's easier to design an algorithm to break something than to put it back together. there's an asymmetry to it, that's the problem. not to say that it's absolutely impossible. but these things, we don't have infinite powers as technologists. a lot of people are saying, like, to the companies, facebook, whatever, snap your fingers and get rid of all the bad stuff. but software isn't wise enough to do that, you know. and like what we should really do is try to change the incentive so it doesn't get emphasized in the first place. >> when i said write, i don't mean go back in later. if we know what the outcome is, why can't we plan for, design for, create for different algorithms? >> we can. i would ask everybody to be a little forgiving of silicon valley in the sense that this is our first go-round and we have lessons to learn. i think we did kind of screw this one up.

>> when you say, and this is going to me, when you say that you expect within a year, you said it takes about a year, a year from now we'll see some backlash like we saw against black lives matter, we'll see something similar to the #metoo campaign. why do you feel that way? >> i'm not sure it will happen, but it has happened a lot of times, it won't be surprising. it would involve locating a pool of people who are i have no idea by #metoo and agitating them more and more so they become more engaged. that might be some of the same men who are in the alt-right or gamer gate or any of that. it might be women who for whatever reason have a different feeling, feel that the world's never done anything for them, they're not part of this fancy world where you get to criticize your boss for doing something and why should these elite women get to complain when i don't get to complain. i don't know, there's all kinds of possibilities. the point is the algorithm will

find a way to coral some group that's irritated and empower and connect that group, because that's what they do. >> so that leads me to ask an impossible and insane question. on balance, is the internet a good thing or a bad thing? i know, i know. it's an unfair question, i know. >> i still have this faith that the project is a really good project. i think people are basically good. i think connecting people is a good thing. i think in the end we'll get it together. we'll grow up. we'll use it well. to this point it's really complicated, because there are so many beautiful things that have happened on the internet. i mean, one that i think is really moving is it used to be that if you had some rare medical problem you couldn't find anybody else with it, i couldn't share experiences. now you can. that's huge. some of those simple things we take for granted are incredible. and yet it's tearing our world apart. it's made everything crazy. i mean, i'll tell you, here's

the worst thing going on right now for me. if one thing holds us together, it's empathy. back in the old days, when i was introducing virtual reality, that's the world i used all the time, empathy, we'll be able to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes. a lot of virtual reality artists are trying to do that, giving you the experience of being a refugee and so forth. in order to have empathy, you have to have some bridge, some feeling for what the other person is feeling. in this world of constant advertising or behavior modification looping, we're all seeing different things. we're seeing news feeds calculated to do something to us so we don't see the same news anymore. as people are seeing different things, we can no longer understand each other. we no longer even make sense to each other. the people across the aisle, we can't even talk anymore. it's like we're in different universes. we're killing empathy with the way we're used to go the internet. it's deadly, it's horrible, we can't survive that. >> i hear you.

so we're killing -- we are killing -- to quote you, we are killing empathy with the way that we are using the internet. does the internet or those persons who drive the internet, control the internet, do they have any agency or responsibility in helping to create more empathy in the world? >> well -- >> or is that not their concern? >> of course it's our concern. >> not you. more broadly. >> this gets back to something i said in the previous -- our previous encounter, which is there was this beautiful project from the left to make everything free. but at the same time to want commerce because we love our commerce heroes like our steve jobses. we said, make it all free, free e-mail, free everything, but you still have to make money. so the only option is advertising. but in this very high tech situation where we have this constant feedback and measurement loop with this device we have all the time, it's no longer advertising, it turns into behavior modification. i think this was not an evil

scheme. because probably the people in silicon valley would have been perfectly happy to come up with something like facebook that was a subscription model where you could earn a royalty for being successful as a poster on facebook or something. that alternate universe would have had its own problems, but it wouldn't have had this problem. this idea that the only business model available is behavior modification for pay by mysterious third parties so you don't even know who is hypnotizing you, that didn't have to happen. that was a mistake made by the left. and it was kind of imposed on the businesses. i was there, i think that's an actual description. >> we can blame al gore for this, is that what you're saying, for inventing the internet? >> not really al gore. he did kind of invent the internet, by the way, he deserves a lot more credit, as a political thing, he didn't do it technically. but the idea of there being one thing that everybody could use, that was kind of his thing. but as far as the -- this particular problem, this was a

very widespread belief system. i don't think you could pin it on any particular small group of people. i think it was -- i mean, i felt it for a while, you know? i was kind of there. and i just think it was a mistake, it was an honest mistake. >> what was the -- you didn't have to do this book. why did you want to do it, why did you decide to do it? >> in the last four or five years, there's been a revival of virtual reality. i still love the stuff. in my world, i'm old, you know. i was 40 -- >> what are you in virtual reality years? >> i turned 40 at the turn of the century. it was like 2000 or something. i'm in stanford and this undergraduate comes up to me and said, jaron lanier, you're still alive? i'm like, oh, god. so here we are, 2017, i'm like old in this field, you know? and so, you know, just to see

these young people getting into virtual reality, and going through some of the same little adventures my friends and i did at that age has been incredibly charming. i also felt like i should lay back a little bit. i still have been working on it, i got to work on some incredible things we got to do at microsoft in virtual reality. i don't have to be in the middle of this scene. i just feel like it's gotten so potentially creepy. i just felt like i should make my case, say what i wanted to say, just tell my story. but the other thing is, i really don't like -- like the way they're doing virtual reality right now, and we're doing it too, everybody's seeing it, we're treating it like this solitary experience. you go to the store, you download this virtual world experience. you put on your headset and experience it. to me that's so lonely. what it should be is some sort of a new thing that's like a cross between skype and a dream, or a cross between skype and mardi gras or something, where you're with people doing all these things.

there are a few people doing it but not enough. i wanted to get out the vision of how i found it to be beautiful and move younger people. >> you're not impressed by the thing on the eyes, the goggle? >> i love virtual reality goggles, i've designed a bunch of them, i still a.m. the thing about goggles for me, i want had i headsets to be big and clunky, to be awkward, to look ridiculous from the outside. i'll tell you why. because it's ethical. what's the difference between a conman and a magician? the magician announces the trick and the conman tries to bilk you with a trick. i don't like to say we're trying to make them like regular glasses or even less, because that's unethical to me. what you should do is create this beautiful art form, this beautiful thing, but this is the stage. the goggles are the stage, it's an illusion. my favorite moment in virtual reality, you're in virtual reality, there can be fantastic things, you can turn into a

scorpion or an octopus or some alien thing, you can merge bodies with other people. you can do incredible, incredible things. it can be quite beautiful. but then you take the goggles off and look at reality and look at a flower, into somebody else's eyes, and it pops, you're seeing reality in a depth in the way you haven't since you were a baby, seeing it again for the first time. that moment when it refreshes you to seeing reality is like by far the most profound thing. it's really the coming out of it that's the best part. >> i hear that, and it's beautifully told, and i felt you when you shared that. and yet what it raises for me is this question of, what it says about us that it takes having a virtual experience to appreciate what is real in front of us. >> it just says that we're not gods. you know, it's just like, we're limited, you know? >> not gods or not human? >> humans -- humans are

beautiful, but humans are limited, you know. we have infinite potential but finite circumstances. and so what we have to do is work with what we have. what we have is wonderful, it's amazing. but it's like, you know, i don't know, a trumpet is just a piece of curved metal, you learn to play it, a beautiful pathway to the heart, right? all technology is like that. it's like we have to work with what's available and find these pathways to the heart. and it's no different for digital technology than anything else. and i just -- i guess -- let me put it to you in another way that may be overly dramatic. this is what i used to say when i was a kid. in the last segment we were talking about how you can't turn back from technology.

we need to keep moving forward even though there are problems. and the thing is, if the way we think about new technologies is a quest for more and more power, more and more ability, that that's the only criteria, we'll probably destroy ourselves at some point. we're just opening up every -- i mean, it's just an agenda that leads to problems. i need a bigger and bigger arsenal, sooner or later something will go wrong, right yes, ma'am go if your agenda is, i want more and more connection to the mysteries of other people, i want more and more beauty, i want more and more meaning, i want more and more knowledge, i want more and more understanding, that can go on forever. there's nothing intrinsically self-defeating about that. so in order to survive, we need technology. but in order to survive technology, we need to treat it like an art or like a spiritual quest. and i think it's totally doable. >> in the time i have left, my time is about up for night 2, in no particular order, number 1,

what are you feeling, what are you seeing, what are you sensing, what are you hoping, jaron, that this new generation of virtual reality kids, since you're the godfather here, you're feeling old now, and you're still alive. >> and defeated. >> and defeated, what's your sense of how they're going to use this differently than what you and your compatriots did or what's your hope at least for how they will use it differently? >> well, i hope -- i hope they find beauty with it. i hope they don't get too lost in the dream of money, because that gets pretty boring, i've got to tell you. and i hope they find -- i hope they realize that their only possible existence is as embedded in the world with all of humanity and not to pretend they're in some isolated elite group that doesn't need everybody else, because we all need each other, that's an illusion. and i hope, i hope they -- i

hope they just take a moment to be themselves and don't get too caught up in the feedback loop with the tech where they forget to even notice their own lives. i hope they get to really know themselves. >> you've been honest for two nights now, to share the things that concern you and that scare you. what about ai? >> ah. >> yeah. >> okay. so look. i have a weird position on ai. i've got to tell you, it rubs a lot of people the wrong way, and i get it, a lot of my friends are not down with this at all. the actual math, the algorithms i'm really into. i've worked on them. i think that stuff is interesting and really useful. what i don't like is the mythology or the way it's framed, that we're building this box that's like a person that does what a person can do. because it's fake, all right? so let me tell you why i say it's fake. my favorite example is people who translate between languages.

let's say somebody is going to translate this to spanish, right? so we now have these services where you can get automatic translations that aren't perfect but they're okay for memos and things. how does it really work? it turns out the language is constantly moving. there's public events, that's slang, there's a new song that comes out. so people refer to it. so every single day, all the companies that do automatic translation have to go around the world and steal tens of millions of examples from real people who are translating for some reason, and none of those people are informed, none of them agree to it, none of them are paid. we have to regurgitate that through our brilliant algorithms for a service that puts people out of work. do you see the problem with that? do you see the problem? the ai algorithms are really fascinating. the math is really fascinating. but the idea, the mythology is a form of theft, right? what we're doing is taking people's data and using it in a new way that's really valuable.

then we're pretending that all those people aren't needed anymore when in fact we are. then we tell people these horrible things, oh, ai is going to do everything, we'll have basic income and we'll all be on the dole. you know what, that's a terrible message to give people. i think we need to support people who need to be supported, but to pretend that people need to be supported who don't need to be, like to pretend that we don't need people that we really need is a crime and it bothers me. that's what i think about ai. >> final question. "dawn of the new everything," what are you personally most excited about with this b"dawn f the new everything?" what are you anxious about, what are you looking forward to? >> virtual reality? >> anything. >> well, if you say with anything -- >> you said "dawn of the new everything," so you can say anything.

>> of the technologies, the stuff that excites me the most is progress in medicine, no question. i've been supporting my wife through a battle with cancer, and her case would have been not too hopeful only 15 years ago. now it was really hopeful. and like a lot of really pales compared to that, that's a big deal. aside from that, i mean, a couple of years ago my compatriots and i at microsoft came up with the first headset that does mixed reality, which means you see the real world but there's extra stuff in it. for the first time we have this thing, and what i've been doing with it is really unconventional. i go into like a forest and i start adding virtual stuff in the forest. and then taking it away. and it's that same thing i talked about, all of a sudden you see the forest more. what it's about is seeing reality in a new way. we've never really had a chance to compare it. and i don't know, that to me is just incredible beautiful. >> keep working on that, because

there is a bunch of stuff i would like to add to my real world. shoes. starting with my shoes. [ laughter ] >> jaron lanier's book is called "dawn of the new everything"": n encounters with reality and virtual reality." i appreciate it. thanks our show tonight. thanks for watching. as always, keep the faith. ♪ for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley. next time we'll take a deep dive into what's happening around the country. see you then. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

♪ and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. be more. pbs.

good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with virtual reality pioneer jaron lanier about his complicated relationship with technology. in his new memoir he writes about its beauty and endless possibilities as well as his fears about the ways digital technology is affecting our minds and influencing the world. we're glad you've joined us. computer scientist and author jaron lanier, coming up right now. ♪ ♪