Originally aired: November 2013
JARON LANIER writes: "At the height of its power, Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. Today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography is Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?"

He believes the emerging business model in which companies with relatively few employees profit off the participation of all of us, could doom any hope of a rebirth of the middle class. Lanier wants to solve a problem not many are talking about, and he envisions a radical solution -- "a highly humanistic economy - one that will reward people for the valuable information they share with networks and the companies that control and profit from them."

JARON LANIER either coined or popularized the term 'Virtual Reality', founded the first company to sell VR products, and developed cutting-edge medical imaging and surgical techniques. He is also the author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.
Also a musician and composer, Lanier has performed with Yoko Ono, Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, George Clinton, and Ozomatli.