Jaron Lanier Quotes

I am completely opposed to the concept of big data.

As individuals, we have very little say about how our data is being used. I'm not worried about the privacy implications of it so much. But it seems to me that, as an individual, if I'm the one generating the data, I should have some kind of say in how it's going to be used.

As our society tips toward one based on data, our collective decisions around how that data can be used will determine what kind of a culture we live in.

We have allowed a situation to develop in which it is legal for a multibillion dollar industry to own, wholly and in perpetuity, the intimate and personal details of children.

I clearly say yes to Big Data, yes to greater security and convenience, but no to paternalism and Big Brother.'

If there can be three certain things in life, instead of two, it might be death, taxes, and data.

As medical data has such power to deliver better understanding of disease and better patient outcomes, it is important we find the best way of sharing it.

I hope that, in the future, data is used to empower people and not just for marketing purposes.

Our data has been harvested, collected, modeled, and monetized - sometimes sold on as raw data, and sometimes licensed just for advertisers to be able to target us.

Who knows more about the usage of personal data than Cambridge Analytica?

Sharing data allows us to research, communicate, consume media, buy and sell, play games, and more. In return, businesses develop products, scientists undertake research, and governments use data to enable voting, inform policies, collect tax, and provide better public services.

The Internet was invented in an age when our entire approach to regulation has been extremely lax, and so you'd think, 'OK, there might be a law on the books that governs how these corporations can handle our data.'

Individuals should be able to monetise their own data - that's their own human value - not to be exploited.

Apple knows a lot of data. Facebook knows a lot of data. Amazon knows a lot of data. Microsoft used to, and still does with some people, but in the newer world, Microsoft knows less and less about me. Xbox still knows a lot about people who play games. But those are the big five, I guess.

Information agencies operate in an industry that values data. Restricted access to information is what makes it valuable.

And the user may have a higher comfort level deciding what information to provide rather than worrying about what inferences might be made from what they've gathered.

If 300 million people were to offer up the details of their private lives, you would need to hire another 300 million people just to keep up.

It's high time for a fresh European alternative to enter the market, taking the existing Internet behemoths head on. What the world needs now is a cloud storage service that is not subject to uncontrolled access by intelligence agencies.

Everyone knows, or should know, that everything we type on our computers or say into our cell phones is being disseminated throughout the datasphere. And most of it is recorded and parsed by big data servers. Why do you think Gmail and Facebook are free? You think they're corporate gifts? We pay with our data.

It simply isn't acceptable for the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, which amass data by the terabyte, to say, 'Don't worry, your information's safe with us, as all sorts of rules protect you' - when all evidence suggests otherwise.

We get more data about people than any other data company gets about people, about anything - and it's not even close. We're looking at what you know, what you don't know, how you learn best. The big difference between us and other big data companies is that we're not ever marketing your data to a third party for any reason.

In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything.

The people who are thinking most about big data right now are corporations and governments.

You can't talk about big data without talking about things like privacy and ownership.

The cloud is still really just a bunch of servers, owned by someone or something, whose decisions and competence must be trusted. This applies to everything from Google Docs to Gmail: Putting our data out there really means putting it 'out there.'