This was the third book by Jaron Lanier I’ve “read”, although the first two, You Are Not A Gadget and Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. I liked both those books, and I liked this book, too.

Jaron Lanier is an incredibly expansive thinker. In the beginning of this book (which serves both as a memoir and as an introduction to concepts pertaining to the field of Virtual Reality), he says that, outside of the project of creating VR technology, VR works as an excellent thought experiment through which to explore the ideas of human perception, the concept of “interfaces” in the digital and organic spheres, and others.

Jaron Lanier has the unique ability to hold the technological, humanitarian, and spiritual concerns of a problem in hands all at once, and analyze the multidimensionality of a technological issue insightfully and succinctly.

The beginning of the book is chock full of beautiful insight about the nature of creativity, memory, and identity. The end of the book has some very interesting ideas about the future of technology, and it’s virtuous and immoral potential applications. The middle of the book.. sags a little bit. Worth a read, but has a couple tough spots.