Abstract: The original goal of science and technology, beginning with the Renaissance, was to increase the power of mankind relative to nature. It is remarkable that this goal has largely been met in the twentieth century. We can proudly say, at this time, that we have more to fear from human behavior than from the rest of nature. The only areas of development in science or technology that are truly, objectively needed now are medicine and the study of natural disasters. All the rest we must honestly describe as being justified for cultural reasons alone.

Unfortunately, when we continue to develop new technologies on auto-pilot as if we desperately needed them, we run the risk of harming ourselves, if not through nuclear technologies, then through genetic ones, or by some other means. Any technology of power, if developed sufficiently, will give us a new method to destroy ourselves.

The importance of new media technologies, Virtual Reality included, is not simply that they may make some tasks easier to perform. These technologies are the critical link in turning technology into a sustainable art form. We must make up adventures good enough to distract us from mass suicide.

In this spirit I offer my uninhibited and most idealistic vision of Virtual Reality: VR will emphasize the experiential, creative side of people. For instance, since a virtual object will never be rare or fixed, the processes of personality and creativity will be more noticeable than their products. Even though Virtual Reality is the most body-based media, the body can be experienced as anything in VR; it can be a human body, an animal body, an animate mountain range or galaxy cluster. There's really no difference between you and the rest of the world in VR. At the same time, the most amazing experience of Virtual Reality is leaving it and perceiving the physical world with renewed wonder. We will someday, generations hence, be able to gracefully create virtual things and happenings in a community virtual space with the same speed that we now create sentences in speech. Of course we'll still speak traditional languages, but we'll be able to speak reality as well, and symbols will no longer be our only way to communicate many things.

VR suggests a healthier agenda for our love of technology; We replace the finite, dangerous game in which we try to become ever more powerful, with an infinite, sustainable game in which we learn to reach each other in new ways.

Biographical Sketch: Jaron Lanier is a composer, computer scientist, visual artist, and author. He has been active in the world of classical music since the seventies. He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Vernon Reid, Terry Riley, Barbara Higbie, and Stanley Jordan. He also writes chamber and orchestral music and has pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical stage performance.

Lanier is probably best known in the sciences for his work in Virtual Reality. He coined the term "Virtual Reality," and founded the VR industry. He started the first VR company, VPL Research, Inc., which produced most of the world's VR equipment for many years. He is the co-inventor of fundamental VR components such as interface gloves (with Tom Zimmerman) and VR networking. He is currently the lead scientist for the National Tele-immersion Initiative. Lanier was also the first to propose and implement a variety of technologies that have since spawned industries in their own right. Among his lineup of "firsts" are the first performance animation for 3D computer graphics. As a computer scientist, Lanier is also known as a pioneer in the field of visual programming.

Lanier writes on numerous topics, including the philosophy of consciousness, internet politics, and the future of humanism in a technological world. He is a founding contributing writer for Wired Magazine and has been profiled in many prominent publications, including front page pieces in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His current academic affiliations include: Visiting Scholar with the department of Computer Science at Columbia University, Visiting Artist with the Interactive Telecommunications Program with the Tisch School of the Arts, and Founding member of the International Institute for Evolution and the Brain based at NYU, Harvard, and the University of Paris.