PROFILES THE VISIONARY A digital pioneer questions what technology has wrought. BY JENNIFER KAHN ("N ne day in June, Jaron Lanier was V lounging barefoot in the living room of his house in the Berkeley hills. Stretch- ing back on a wom sofa, he began musing about the connection between Represen- tative Anthony Weiner's tweeting of lewd photos and Facebook's controversial de- ployment of facial-recognition software, which automatically scans uploaded pho- tos and identifies a user's friends. To Lanier, a computer scientist and author, the common thread is that the In- ternet in general—and social networking in particular—has become difficult for the ordinary person to use with any security. 'Tve really been struck that a lot of people have said, 'Why would powerful men risk so much for some sexual adventure?'" La- nier said. "But risk can be very sexual." He briefly considered the possibility oftwo al- ternate Internets: one in which everything was viewable by anybody, and one in which users had absolute control over their private information. In neither case, Lanier said, would Weiner have sent his illicit snapshots. "What makes it erotic is the risk," Lanier speculated. "If you had either perfect competence or no need for competence, because everything was a hundred per cent transparent, there would be no risk. So, in a way, the whole erotic risk factor of the Internet is being able to use it but not very well." He paused to interrogate a tortoise- shell kitten that was dozing in a corner of the sofa. "What's happening, Starlight?" he cooed. As the kitten peered up sleep- ily, he added, "We think she's female, but I haven't done the most thorough exami- nation." Ile paused and said dryly, "If only cats texted, we'd know by now." Lanier is often described as "vision- ary," a word that manages to convey both a capacity for mercurial insight and a lack of practical job skills. In the nineteen- eighties, he helped pioneer the field