So when I was in Seattle, I had the pleasure of talking to Jaron Lanier – whose official title is Partner Architect of the Microsoft eXtreme Computing group but in reality, he should just be called ‘fucking genius’.
This is a guy who has been characterised as one of the top 100 thinkers in the World, one of the top 300 inventors of all time, the person Steven Spielberg turned to when he was making the movie ‘Minority Report’ and the creator of the term ‘Virtual Reality’.
In short, quite clever.
Of course I almost fucked it up because when I first met him, I had no idea who he was so after discussing the quality of the beef burgers at the buffet, I talked about how I loved his hair.
[He has dreads]
God knows what he must of thought, but he was very kind and put up with me … however when I saw him walk out on stage the next day after one of the longest and most impressive intros I’ve ever heard, I died a little inside.
Seriously, I felt like the guy in the cliché Jock movie who tries to pick up some woman at a bar only to find out that she’s his teacher the next day.
Anyway I have to say hearing him talk was an amazing experience … not just because of what he was saying, but in the manner in which he said it.
He was humble, charming, witty and just really engaging … and while I am sure you all know this about him already, I didn’t and he was a definite highlight.
But that aside, it was seeing how his brain worked that I found the most captivating.
There’s a lot of people in adland who think they’re clever … hell, there’s a lot of people in adland that are really clever … but what I loved about listening to Jaron is that while he was talking about issues and insights that were on the edges of human and technological capabilities, he explained it in a way that not only made it easy to understand, but also relevant to every single person in attendance.
When so many people try desperately to show how intelligent they are, here was a guy who was actually trying to downplay it … but then when you’ve been called one of the cleverest people who has ever lived, I don’t suppose you really have to try. Nor care.
But here’s the thing, intelligence without the capability of being understood – either in terms of concept, benefit or relevance – is pointless, which is possibly why my Father used to say people who try hard to be seen as clever are actually demonstrating how they’re not nearly as clever as they think they are.
It’s a lesson that many people in this industry could do with remembering – especially those who think shouting out factoids or percentages is a sign of genius, despite the fact it’s done without context or relevance to the subject, audience or task at hand.
Anyway, I want to touch on one thing that Jaron said that had a profound effect on me.
He was talking about his love of virtual reality when he casually mentioned one of it’s roles was to see what the brain is really capable of.
His view was that thousands of years ago, there was no language and yet over thousands of years, we [read: our brains] had been able to not just adapt to a new way of communicating, but also develop various forms of it.
In short, he said the brain always had the capacity to learn languages – it just took a long time to get there – which means there are probably many, many more things it can do, learn, uncover however unless we place it in situations and circumstances that represent radical evolution, we may never find out what they are – at least in this life time – and that is the beauty of Virtual Reality, because it can do that … it can collapse the time of evolution.
Now that’s big thinking … like ten trillion times more than the bollocks I spouted at the Creative Circus.
And that leads to my two main points:
1/ Don’t ever just listen to advertising people for thinking/views/concepts and ideas. Infact, you’d be better off listening to them last because way before them should be conversations with Mr and Mrs Average because they can feed you with more potentially valuable insights and perspectives than Mr or Mrs Advertising and their ‘niche lifestyle bubble’ ever could.
2/ Don’t put limits on your imagination when developing ideas because according to Jaron, we all have the capacity to make them normal, even if in some cases, it might take a few thousand years.