American writer, computer scientist, and composer Jaron Lanier.

Jaron Lanier

As a “hyper-romantic” child growing up in the 1960s, Jaron Lanier recalled, “The trifecta for me was eating chocolate, listening to Bach, and staring at Bosch.” After developing the video game Moondust in 1983, he worked for Atari; founded the company VPL to develop tools for virtual worlds; became the chief scientific officer for Eyematic, a company that designed facial-recognition software; and now serves as a scholar-at-large for Microsoft Research.

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