Dawn of the new everything
by Jaron Lanier · first published 2017
89% recommend11% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Memoir-style account of Lanier's early VR work and Silicon Valley since the 1980s, mixed with honest thinking about what VR is and isn't; suits readers curious about VR's history and possibilities.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
xv, 351 pages : 24 cm
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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I would recommend anyone interested in this topic read ‘Dawn of the New Everything’ by Jaron Lanier, which is really quite honest about both the positives and negatives of VR. Having only recently had a chance to try it out, I feel like it’s really just another medium (a rather intense…
on “The Metaverse Has Always Been a Dystopian Idea” ↗Jaron Lanier's "Dawn of the New Everything". Beautiful description of his journey in VR and how Silicon Valley has evolved from the early 80s.
on “Ask HN: Best books you read in 2017?” ↗Top five, summaries easy enough to find via Amazon: - Turings’s Cathedral - The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood - A Mind at Play - The Victorian Internet - Dawn of the New Everything Plus two that I haven’t read but hear amazing things: - Mindstorms - Dream Machine
on “Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?” ↗I'm not sure how much this is a tech book, but Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier is great. Jaron is a pioneer from the early days of VR (he started/helped start VPL Research Labs). The book is a combination memoir and thoughts on what VR is and isn't. It opened my…
on “Ask HN: Book Recommendations” ↗I keep confusing this book with "The Dawn of The New Everything" by Jaron Lanier. When people started to talk about it on Twitter, I got excited that Lanier's excellent book was having a mini resurgence. Made for an awkward argument with a friend because we had vastly…
on “The Dawn of Everything challenges a mainstream telling of prehistory” ↗Both genius. Other readable computers books from an earlier time, that still resonate. - Soul of a new Machine, Tracy Kidder - Dawn of the New Everything, Jaron Lanier
on “Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer culture” I have seen” ↗You might like “The Dawn of The New Everything” by Jaron Lanier.
on “Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from reality'” ↗Lanier’s books are very, very good - he’s a genuinely novel thinker with a deeply humanistic perspective on technology. I highly recommend “You are not a gadget” and “Who owns the future?”, and “Dawn of the new Everything” will get you genuinely excited about VR.
on “‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier tech’s existential threat to humanity” ↗…proposes machines communicate through human (?) or VR (?) interfaces. Something like that. I spent 15 minutes searching the web and my library but couldn't find it. I read two books of his, it must be in "Dawn of the New Everything" or "You Are Not a Gadget". I'm fuzzy on the idea, but found it interesting enough that I remember it.
on “I built a receipt printer for GitHub issues” ↗