logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2018
15 m

How we need to remake the internet | Jar...

TED
About this episode
In the early days of digital culture, Jaron Lanier helped craft a vision for the internet as public commons where humanity could share its knowledge -- but even then, this vision was haunted by the dark side of how it could turn out: with personal devices that control our lives, monitor our data and feed us stimuli. (Sound familiar?) In this visionary talk, Lanier reflects on a "globally tragic, astoundingly ridiculous mistake" companies like Google and Facebook made at the foundation of digital culture -- and how we can undo it. "We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them," he says.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Yesterday
Can you spot the lies in your news feed? | Laura Smythe
Laura Smythe spent years in legacy newsrooms, and she thinks the habits journalists use to vet information should belong to all of us. Using Fyre Festival as a cautionary tale, she explains why media literacy is a vital skill in our age of deepfakes and algorithmic feeds — and de ... Show More
14m 30s
Oct 22
I can't speak. Here's how I get people to listen | Jessica Irwin
Jessica Irwin is many things: a photographer, artist, author, performer. She also happens to be nonverbal, born with cerebral palsy that affects the muscles she needs to talk. Speaking through a device that turns her typed words into speech, she gives a sharp, funny and urgent re ... Show More
9m 2s
Oct 21
How would you design your dream city? | James Rojas
Urban planner James Rojas has led hundreds of workshops where participants creatively design their ideal communities with small objects — and he's noticed that people of every age, income and background build strikingly similar places. Through play and storytelling, he shows how ... Show More
14m 58s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2025
It’s time to get weird
The internet was supposed to set us free. But somewhere along the way, it became a tool for surveillance, extraction, and control. What happened? And is there still time to reclaim the weird, untapped potential of the digital world? This week, Sean is joined by Douglas Rushkoff. ... Show More
1 h
Jan 2024
Trailer
It all started with a crazy idea to realise a hippie dream of building a “global consciousness”. The plan was to build a connected world, where everyone could access everyone and everything all the time; to overthrow the old gatekeepers and set information free.But social media d ... Show More
3m 7s
Jan 2025
Familiarity Breeds Contempt (And Other Underappreciated Consequences of Digital Communication)
There has been a lot of cultural discussion of the way digital technologies and social media contribute to things like political polarization and adolescent depression.But as I'll explore with Nicholas Carr, the author of Superbloom, our digital tools are also changing our abilit ... Show More
53m 38s
Jul 2023
Who owns the internet of the future? | Ordinary Things
The emergence of data-driven mass surveillance "is threatening to turn privacy into a relic of the 20th century," says the anonymous YouTube creator known as Ordinary Things. Meanwhile, state-funded troll farms are spreading disinformation and curating chaos on platforms meant to ... Show More
19m 55s
Aug 2024
#378 — Digital Delusions
<p>Sam Harris speaks with Renée DiResta about the state of our information landscape. They discuss the difference between influence and propaganda, shifts in communication technology, influencers and closed communities, the asymmetry of passion online and the illusion of consensu ... Show More
56m 36s
Feb 2018
Do We Need a New Internet?
All around the world, governments are increasingly looking at control of the internet; whether it’s to regulate content, hide or ban content or increase ownership of your data. Is this the opposite of what the internet was originally designed to be - a free, open and uncensored s ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2023
#319 — The Digital Multiverse
<p>Sam Harris speaks with David Auerbach about the problematic structure of online networks. They discuss the tradeoffs between liberty and cooperation, the impossibility of fighting misinformation, bottom-up vs top-down influences, recent developments in AI, deepfakes, the insta ... Show More
36m 34s