Jaron Lanier
December 17, 2014Residence: Berkeley, California
Occupation: IT specialist, composer, artist, author
Education: Took courses at New Mexico State University at the age of 13.
Books: "You Are Not a Gadget" (2010), "Who Owns the Future" (2013)
Award: Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2014
Social media: None
On the value of the book: "The book has many values that I find to be incredibly precious. One thing about books is that they were very high-stakes expressions of an individual person because they are so hard to write. Books are a pain in the bud to write, so you have to make a commitment to write a book and that distinguishes them from a tweet or blog post."
On the future of the book: "I described it as water - so that could mean that it could be mashed up like a fluid with other books and have no nature at all anymore after the Internet is done with it."