Phobics sensationalist Here's a Silicon Valley insider there was a hugely influential pioneer in virtual reality as a consultant to some of the biggest tech giant We have done something to ourselves that mankind has never done before which is we've created a universe so. Surveillance can behavior modification over most of our species through devices through our social media and so forth that Jaron Lanier on hard talk after the news Hello I'm Julie Candler with the b.b.c. News dramatic footage has been released showing emaciated members of a Thai youth football team found alive inside a flooded cave network the teenagers are crammed onto a wedge of dry ground surrounded by water deep inside a cave where they've been trapped for 9 days the boys are asking for food enter leave the cave immediately the divers edging the boys to stay calm Jonathan Head is at the mouth of the caves but have been scenes of jubilation here at the cave entrance almost drowned out by the generators are still powering the water pumps which are draining the caves and filling the air tanks of the dozens of divers whose persistence in the toughest of under ground conditions has paid off all 12 boys and their football coach were discovered by the divers about $400.00 metres further than where they'd hoped they were they'd moved to higher ground to avoid the rising water now the authorities mistake are out how to extract them more than a quarter of a 1000000 Syrians have fled in the face of a government assault in southern Syria according to the latest figures from the United Nations many of those displaced by the fighting have headed towards closed borders with Jordan and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. John flanker Merkel is holding emergency talks with Germany's interior minister who's threatened to resign over her migration policy jeopardizing the future of her coalition government hosts a Hoffa who also heads have a very good coalition partners has said he won't accept the migration plan that Mrs Merkel agreed with the European Union leaders last week Jenny Hill has the details going into this evening's emergency talks the German chancellor who said she was keen to find a solution appears to have the advantage Mrs Merkel is backed by her own party missed as they Hoffa's c.s.u. Colleagues a distancing themselves he wants to unilaterally turn away migrants from the German border poll suggests that Germans prefer Mrs Merkel to plan a European migration strategy thrashed out at the summit of e.u. Leaders last week new criminal charges have been brought against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein more than 70 women have accused Mr Weinstein of sexual misconduct he denies that any of the activity was nonconsensual from New York his native Tofik last month Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty in New York court to felony charges of rape and a criminal sexual act involving 2 women at the time the Manhattan district attorney said their investigation was ongoing and urged alleged victims to come forward the new charges are in connection to allegations made by a 3rd woman and include 2 counts of predatory sexual assault which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison in a statement district attorney Cyrus Vance said the indictment by the grand jury was the result of the extraordinary courage of survivors who came forward well to news from the b.b.c. . The president elect of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says he has proposed a plan to President Trump to boost the Mexican economy and reduce migration the 2 leaders spoke on the phone for the 1st time since Mr Lopez Obrador victory in Sunday's presidential election Mr Trump said he believed the New Mexican leader would help the United States deal with its border problem relations with the u.s. Have been strained since President Trump took office President Trump says he's met 4 candidates to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court he said he'd meet 2 or 3 more potential justices and make a nomination in the next few days last week's retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy gives Mr Trump the opportunity to cement conservative control of America's highest court a court in Malta granted bail to the captain of the impounded migrant rescue boat lifeline which is run by a German charity close paid to Russia has been accused of sailing an improperly registered vessel something the charity contests has done it hot the legal route over the lifeline is part of a bigger struggle involving politics and human lives Italy's government is targeting rescue charities as part of efforts to limit a rival's it accuses them of complicity in migrant deaths their very presence encouraging risky sea crossings Motors impounded the lifeline but also detained a separate charity ship the charities accuse the politicians of trying to block them costing lives in the process the International Organization of Migration has warned of an alarming increase in the number of migrants dying off the Libyan coast in the football World Cup Belgium are playing Japan to decide who will take on today's early winners Brazil in the quarter finals the Brazilian scored a convincing win over Mexico 2 nil making it the 7th consecutive World Cup in which the Mexicans have been knocked out in the round of 16 b.b.c. News. Welcome to talk on the b.b.c. World Service with me Steven Sacco we live in the age of the Internet computing power and digital connectivity are reshaping our world and my guest today Silicon Valley inventor writer and think General Anea has been watching the tech revolution from the inside for the last 35 years which makes his current level of disquiet about the potential damage we're doing to ourselves all the more alarming like the i himself was a pioneer in the world of virtual reality back in the 1980 s. In the course of a long term a curial career he's worked for some of the biggest names in the tech sector he has made lots of money and lost some too increasingly he's felt the need to voice his concerns about the impact technology is having on us individually and collectively How deeply do we think about how we use social media and what it's doing to us how much previously and autonomy are we giving up to multinational corporations and government what will the next generation of artificial intelligent machines mean for our jobs and our security these are questions for which Jaron Lanier has offices are increasingly bleak why well he joins me now John they have welcome to Talk thank you for having me you spent what love the last 3 decades and more in the world of technology and it seems during that time you have made to an emotional journey from optimism much more toward pessimism and I'm wondering why I have to disagree with you I find that a quick look at human history things generally in the big picture have gotten better for humanity and I have no reason to believe that that pattern will go away I think things can get better and I'm an optimist However I believe that. Every time things have gotten better it's because a critic said wow things could be better so to me being a critic is the mechanism by which one expresses optimism that the enemy of the future is complacency and criticism so I absolutely reject the label a pessimist Ok Well fair enough but it does seem to me you're more than just expressing creative constructive criticism you're also expressing fear Yeah and it's warranted that is warranted we have done something to ourselves that mankind has never done before which is we've created a universe so system of surveillance and behavior modification of our most of our species through devices through social media and so forth and I want to emphasize the problem is not the devices the problem is not the experience of using social media Perceval I think that can often be extremely positive the problem is this behind the scenes effort to manipulate everyone and I think that that indeed is creating a dilatory astri's all for democracy for interpersonal relationships for personal psychological health it's a very gradual problem but it is very real I really do want to spend time on that notion of manipulation and ask you who's doing the math manipulating and the want in but before we get there I think it's important to just get to grips with the rather extraordinary story that you bring to this hall top table I mean you're childhood was very difficult and tragic I mean you lost your mother in a contrast when you I believe you were just 10 years old and your father was badly injured too and then he took you off to New Mexico and it seems you were sort of living almost off grid you know for a long time I have to say compared to many stories in the. In the world I don't think my childhood was as bad I mean I I had a very unusual mother for her generation in that she was the breadwinner for the family and my father was not so when she died we found ourselves impoverished and we became homeless and what my father did is he got the cheapest land available which was desert land in southern New Mexico and we lived there in tents and gradually built a home for ourselves and he became certified as an elementary school teacher. And over the course of 7 years we built this fantastical house that was made of strange geometric forms and domes and all kinds of things I think the experience that my father gave me of using creativity as a way to rebuild against tragedy. Has been central and effective I mean I think it's creativity is a proper and and good response if it's possible so yes of course of course it's what made me and I'm eternally grateful you're a tiny bit younger but not that much younger than the generation of the great generation of sort of tank superstars Steve Jobs Bill Gates you're a little bit younger but you like them gravitated to working in California and I just wonder whether you like them we're both somewhat idealistic about what technology can do but what you also driven to create a business to become a superstar on like they clearly were not at 1st actually when I 1st showed up in Silicon Valley. I had never experienced wealth and I had I mean some video games on the side right in the dawn of video games in the 8 that era and made money and I was actually initially uncomfortable and embarrassed by it and indeed when my friends and I started the 1st virtual reality startup which was in the early 1980 s. We were quite embarrassed and uncomfortable with the notion of money in business and. We're trying to make it into some sort of a collective or something gradually though there's a funny thing when you're surrounded by a value system in a society you do start to take it on and I felt this thing staring at me like I should be an entrepreneur it's funny how that happens but the social environment is extraordinarily powerful and thought that I currently think there's anything wrong with entrepreneurship I actually have come to really love the business side of Silicon Valley but yet it wasn't what brought me there at all but I'm probing of your life in the degree to which you want to make money and be an individual success because coming back to your opening remarks about where the Internet and social media are taking as you seem to have a fundamental problem with the big decision that was taken quite early on in the development all of for example Facebook or even Google which was to say they got this amazing idea of this new technology and the owners of the idea decided well we'll make it creepy to the great general public but we'll monetize it by generating ad revenue and of course this particular applies to a company like Facebook and You seem to be saying that looking back on that decision it was a fundamental mistake right well you know the tension that we just talked about between loving entrepreneurship and then also feeling a little uncomfortable with the sort of greed inherent in Silicon Valley was exactly what caused this all to happen back around the time that companies like Google and Facebook were being created there was the prevailing feeling that everything online should be free to be free of capitalism the notion of the public commons and right of opening everything up a knowledge base for Humanity exactly so computer code would be made open music would be free journalism would be free. Everything would be open but at the same time we loved the the the hero idea of the cowboy idea of the great hacker or the great entrepreneur like a Steve Jobs and if you try to combine those 2 things it's rather difficult you know and so the solution and really I think the only solution was what was called the advertising model but even though it's started off innocent American computers kept on evolving the software got better the customers got more sophisticated and that's how we. Inadvertently I believe. Brought about this surveillance game in this manipulation scheme almost every penny made by a company like Facebook is earned from customers who believe that the behavior of users of Facebook will be modified by the use of Facebook and so he did create this society where anytime people connect through the Internet it is financed exclusively by those who wish to manipulate the users but why is that different from t.v. Advertising because t.v. Advertising isn't watching the person in detail the reason I call it behavior modification scheme is that behavior modification you're watching an individual continuously and then making constant adjustments in response to how the individual response to things to discover the pattern that will alter that individual and that has never been available before in advertising or in any other scheme on such a mass basis so here we are you have this notion of the you know and I am focusing in on particular companies because you do like Facebook and Google you know them behavior modification empires I do and that is clearly not a good thing well but let me just you know let me just reflect on what monks look at book says for example he says look the thing we're trying to do it Facebook is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently this is sort of what makes this situation confusing confusing. Direct experience of users and what they do can often be quite legitimate quite positive quite authentic and I'd be the last to dispute that the problem is that in the background it's feeding this manipulation machine that's also present what I would advocate is not attempting to destroy the whole thing instead what I did what I'd advocate is getting rid of this background manipulation machine and keeping the good well. You know the book you've written 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now I mean that if everybody reading the book was taken seriously and act upon it would be a death knell for companies like Facebook Well Facebook has 2 advantages that make the scenario you're describing extremely unlikely one is that they've deliberately created an addictive scheme so that large numbers of people are genuinely addicted and will not be able to delete their accounts and 2 they have a network effect locker there's nowhere else to go because everybody's already on their scheme so therefore when I say this I have really 2 reasonable hopes one is that young people who have only known life while they are connected to these things will it will be motivated to get off them at least for awhile in order to for the purpose of self exploration to get a sense of contrast what life is like without the manipulation and then the 2nd thing is if the whole society is universally tied into manipulative scheme then it's impossible to have conversations because there's no one left to give perspective so even if if you can only a minority of people are off of them then it whitens our possibilities it widens our conversations Sunday 70 is since the Arab Spring in Tunisia and then in particular in Egypt with all of the popular street protests that was taking place they were being described as in Egypt as the Facebook revolution and there was this idea that social not just for that we. Enough of the folks on Facebook but social media platforms generally were creating a new sort of discourse which was bottom up rather than top down which was allowing people to bypass the normal centers of sort of authority and power and control and create new communities and therefore actually do em power themselves are you saying all of that just 7 years on is now gone the situation is subtle and I'd like to describe it what happened with the Arab Spring was authentic However the problem is that the algorithms that are gathering data from people and then using that data to drive who sees wot in their customized speeds or customized experiences. Has to rely on the emotional responses of those people how they become engaged now if I may there are 2 general categories of how people respond to things that can be used for behavior modification using social media they might respond positively to something which means they start to trust it or have affection for it and so forth or they might respond negatively which means they're afraid they're startled they're angry now the thing is that the emotions that I described in the 2nd batch the negative ones come on more quickly and so the algorithms that are sampling people so quickly tend to amplify the negative ones and the result of that is that whenever there's a positive movement like an Arab Spring the algorithms gradually start to emphasize those people who are alarmed by it over the people who are part of it and therefore you start to get a phenomenon like ISIS which gets even more mileage from the same social media platforms in the Arab Spring did or in the United States fear fear is exaggerated fear and irritation and paranoia alarmism and everything you're telling me is actually is fascinating I know it's based on a huge amount of experience and knowledge but I come back to a simple thought you've made a lot of money out of working with some of these companies indeed I believe you sold one. Your own start ups to Google itself absolutely an insider in part of the case and so I mean do you have now days now that you see so many sort of potential pitfalls in the lungs with the way social media is developed do you have a sense of guilt or responsibility as being part of this well the responsibility absolutely does I am here with you. And guilt I mean it happens in my case that I have been warning about just the scenario for many years what is different now is that there are many many others in Silicon Valley who who have also started to recognize the trouble that we've created and I'm not saying I was the only one to perceive it there were others as well but it's a much less lonely position and I think those who should have been aware but weren't or were aware but ignored it perhaps should feel a bit more guilty but of course I'm part of it so I do share some collectors just a couple of thoughts on your your bleak analysis I mean you seem to be suggesting that you know and we talked about that crucial moment when a decision was made to create these services as free to the user but to finance and fund them and make them profit making sense is by using advertisement you say that in your view was a mistake but there are some different examples which do tend to suggest that this notion of the public commons really can work in a way that you've told me you don't think you know what Wikipedia What about Linux what you know what about these amazing offers to the general public across the world which off free and which really do work on the basis of a sort of common collective accessible knowledge I remain a true believer that this can work. I think we still need to work on the concept in the case of Linux for instance the idea was that if you have open source then you'll be able to detect trickery and you won't be fooled by sneaky software however what's happened