Jaron Lanier

Computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author, often associated with virtual reality, a term he is sometimes credited with coining. During the 1980s, he founded VPL Research, the first company to sell virtual reality products, and in 1997 helped to establish the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, which aims to give people communicating over long distances the illusion that they are physically together. Research at VPL led to implementations of virtual reality in surgical situations and other areas. He was Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and Services from 1997 to 2001, and Microsoft's Scholar at Large from 2006 to 2009.

Lanier is a talented multi-instrumentalist, and has written and recorded a number of albums of new classical music. He owns one of the largest collections of rare musical instruments in the world, and has collaborated with artists such Sean Lennon and Philip Glass. He composed the soundtrack for the award-winning documentary The Third Wave in 2009, and contributed to the score of the award-winning film Three Seasons (1999). His visual art has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris and the Danish Museum for Modern Art in Roskilde, and his 1983 work Moondust is widely regarded as the first 'art video game'. He directed the 1983 film Muzork and worked on the crew for the 2002 Steven Spielberg film Minority Report.

Lanier is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University's Department of Computer Science and a visiting artist with New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He has written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Post and Wired magazine, and authored the 2010 book You Are Not A Gadget. He was the recipient of the CMU's 2001 Watson award and the 2009 Lifetime Career Award from the IEEE.