EFTA00304813.pdf

ence, in Austin, in March of 2010, La- cussed on the long game, not the item of surrounded by a mossy undcrbcard and PROFILES nier gave a talk, before which he asked the week Because the issues I'm talking rootlike dreadlocks, Lanier has an impos- his audience not to blog, text, or tweet about will take a long time to address." ing presence that nonetheless comes off as while he was speaking. He later wrote oddly fluttery. He tends to talk in breath- THE VISIONARY that his message to the crowd had been: or the past eight years, Lanier has less bursts, and he often defuses his inflam- A digitalpioneer questions what technology has wrought. "If you listen first, and write later, then whatever you write will have had time to F lived in Berkeley, the mecca of matory remarks by allowing his voice to techno-utopianism, in a ridgetop house rise into a register that is more often re- filter through your brain, and you'll be in that he shares with his wife, Lena, who is served for talking to pets or small children. BY JENNIFER KAHN what you say. This is what makes you a child psychologist, and their four-ycar- This can give listeners the impression that ("N ne day in June, Jaron Lanier was ers of "Minority Report," Steven Spiel- V lounging barefoot in the living room berg's film about a dystopian future. Since of his house in the Berkeley hills. Stretch- 2006, he has worked as a consultant at ing back on a wom sofa, he began musing Microsoft Research. about the connection between Represen- More recently, he has become the tative Anthony Weiner's tweeting of lewd go-to pundit for people lamenting the so- photos and Facebook's controversial de- cial changes wrought by modern technol- ployment of facial-recognition software, ogy. Last year, he published "You Are which automatically scans uploaded pho- Not a Gadget: A Manifesto," a provoca- tos and identifies a user's friends. tive critique of digital technologies, in- To Lanier, a computer scientist and cluding Wikipedia (which he called a tri- author, the common thread is that the In- umph of "intellectual mob rule") and ternet in general—and social networking social-networking sites like Facebook and in particular—has become difficult for the Twitter, which he has described as dehu- ordinary person to use with any security. manizing and designed to encourage shal- 'Tve really been struck that a lot of people low interactions. Teen-agers, he writes, have said, 'Why would powerful men risk may vigilantly maintain their online rep- so much for some sexual adventure?'" La- utations, but they do so "driven more by nier said. "But risk can be very sexual." He fear than by love." In our conversation briefly considered the possibility oftwo al- about Facebook's face-recognition soft- ternate Internets: one in which everything ware, he added, "It'll just create a more was viewable by anybody, and one in paranoid society with a fakey-fakey social which users had absolute control over life—much like what happened in Com- their private information. In neither case, munist countries, where people had a fake Lanier said, would Weiner have sent his social life that the Stasi could see, and illicit snapshots. "What makes it erotic is then this underground life." the risk," Lanier speculated. "If you had Such objections have made Lanier an either perfect competence or no need for unusual figure: he is a technology expert competence, because everything was a who dislikes what technology has be- hundred per cent transparent, there would come. "I'm disappointed with the way JanmLanier, athome withhis daughter, believes that social-networkingsites devaluefriendship. PhotographbyMartin Schoeller. be no risk. So, in a way, the whole erotic the Internet has gone in the past ten risk factor of the Internet is being able to years," he told me at one point. He exist. If you are only a reflector of infor- old daughter, Lilibell, whom he credits he is lecturing to a three-year-old while use it but not very well." added, "I've always felt that the human- mation, are you really them?" with being his muse for "Gadget" When walking up a steep hill. He paused to interrogate a tortoise- centered approach to computer science Peter Haynes, a technology strategist I visited in June, Lanier had just returned His house is nearly submerged in But- shell kitten that was dozing in a corner of leads to more interesting, more exotic, and former U.S. business editor of The from NewYork City, where he celebrated ter, the living-room decor includes a four- the sofa. "What's happening, Starlight?" more wild, and more heroic adventures Economist, who is currently working with his fifty-first birthday in the lounge of the foot hookah topped with a rubber Jar-Jar he cooed. As the kitten peered up sleep- than the machine-supremacy approach, Lanier at Microsoft, says that he sees La- Bowery Hotel. The event, which began Binks mask, polka-dot curtains, a grand ily, he added, "We think she's female, but where information is the highest goat" nier's book as an overdue corrective to the modestly, gradually turned into a celebrity piano buried under papers and adorned I haven't done the most thorough exami- These arguments have proved popu- national obsession with social networking. bash. The film director Jim Jarmusch with a pink feathered hat, and a home- nation." Ile paused and said dryly, "If only lar. The book has received admiring it- "As I read it, I was thinking, Yes, god- stopped by uninvited, as did the actor made cave draped in scarves. The house cats texted, we'd know by now." views in the Times and (twice) in The dammit, this is exactly how I feel!" he said. Forest Whitaker. As Whitaker recalls it, also contains more than a thousand rare Lanier is often described as "vision- New York Review Books. In the months Such enthusiastic reactions have been, he and Lanier got into a long conversation musical instruments, all of which Lanier ary," a word that manages to convey both after "Gadget" was published, Lanier lec- for Lanier, both gratifying and disorient- about individual empowerment and the plays. Ile will often begin his talks by per- a capacity for mercurial insight and a lack tured at Harvard's Shorenstein Center, ing. He relishes the attention, but it also Internet. "When I saw him, I was really forming on an esoteric instrument such as of practical job skills. In the nineteen- travelled to Seoul to speak at a major unnerves him. When a major newspaper excited," Whitaker remembers. "I le was a Laotian khene, which sounds something eighties, he helped pioneer the field ofvir- conference about innovation, and made asked him to write an op-ed about the sitting with a lot of other guys. I came over like a harmonica. That afternoon, Lanier tual reality, and he is often credited with Time's list of the hundred "most in- Weiner scandal, he declined. "I'm not sure and said, 'Virtual reality!' I have a lot of ascended the stairs to his studio, picking having coined the term. He has also dab- fluential people in the world." At the I should be the person who's doing that," respect for him. I-ie has an artist's soul." his way past an overflowing garbage can bled in film. In 2001, he advised the writ- South by Southwest Interactive confer- Lanier explained. "I'm trying to stay fo- Mountainously built, with a broad face and a forest of microphone stands, and THE NEW YORKER, JULY I 618, 2O11 47 EFTA00304813 seated himself before a tall golden harp. "The thing about technology is that it's tend a private elementary school across then still later I started looking into it, and He played a dark, plinky composition in made the world of information ever more the border, in Ciudad Juarez. Lanier—a I discovered that there was a mechanical what sounded like a minor key. "It's not dominant," Lanier told me. "And there's self-described "hyper-romantic" child— flaw in that particular model of car—so it really minor," Lanier said when I inquired. so much loss in that. It really does feel as spent his free hours poring over art books became feasible that it was actually the car He played another dissonant progression. ifwe've sworn allegiance to a dwarfworld, in the school's library. He recalls being manufacturer's fault." "It's not that simple." He gazed upward rather than to a giant world." enamored of a folio of paintings by Hi- Lather's mother had recently bought and added, "I'm really interested in scales eronymus Bosch, which he would some- the family a new house, in El Paso. But that are harder to resolve." y parents were kind of like me times leaf through while listening to it burned down before Lanier and his fa- In the nineteen-eighties, Lanier came in that they had tons and tons of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. ther could move in. Lanier suspects, to believe that virtual reality—the creation weird, amazing stuff," Lanier explained. "The trifecta for me was eating choco- without any specific evidence, that the of computer-simulated environments in He recalled that, as a boy, he dug late, listening to Bach, and staring at fire was set by vandals. Broke and unem- which real people can interact—would through a pile of his father's junk and Bosch," Lanier said. The combination ployed, Lanier's father moved the family precipitate an extraordinary found an antique telescope produced what he remembers as an "al- to an empty parcel of desert in Mesilla, revolution in art and com- that had once belonged to most sexual" rapture. New Mexico. munication. In an inter- Commodore Petty. `This Lanier was technologically precocious, In Mesilla, Lanier's father allowed him view with Omni in 1991, -1.-1 thing was just, like, on the as well as artistically minded, a mixture of to design their new home. Lanier, who he described the allure of floor," he added. "So this traits that his father tried to nurture bygiv- was eleven, chose a geodesic dome, and programs that would let environment ofdutter, and ing him books about Buckminster Fuller. with his father's assistance he drew up you feel as ifyou were wan- interesting objects, is ex- One Halloween when he was in gradc blueprints calculating the angles of the dering at will inside a actly the one that I grew school, Lanier modified a television to frame, plus plans for a squat, cantilevered Moorish temple or through up in—just with differ- generate Lissajous waves: shadowy black- spire that he envisaged as the entrance. the chambers of a beating ent objects. But I came by and-white interference patterns that, pro- ("Clearly a subconscious phallic expres- heart. In an early paper, it honestly." jected onto the walls of a makeshift sion of some kind," he told me.) But the Lanier wrote of the ability of some octo- Lanier's mother and father belonged to haunted house, would jump in response to project proceeded slowly. "We'd get puses to express fear or anger by chang- a circle of artists in Greenwich Village, but a person's movements. Lanier found the enough money to pour the foundation for ing color. In a virtual world, he hypothe- they moved soon after Jaron was born— effect magical—"like being surrounded by one part of the house, and then, after a sized, people would be able to commu- on May 3,1960—first to Colorado, and ethereal writhing spirits"—and imagined few weeks, we'd get enough to do another nicate in similar ways. Tom Zimmerman, then to a spot near El Paso, Texas, on the that other children would line up to visit. part," he recalls. Lanier's business partner at the time, re- border with Mexico. The area was deso- None did. "I didn't have any friends at the During the first two years that the calls that Lanier was taken by the idea of late and impoverished, and Lanier has time, and I really thought this would be dome was under construction, Lanier and hosting virtual-reality parties, where speculated that the move was driven, at my little honeypot—that somebody would his father lived in an unheated canvas guests would arrive in strange and exotic least in part, by fear. Lanier's mother, love this thing, and want to know me," Army tent that was stiflingly hot in sum- forms. "I had this feeling of people living Lilly, a pianist, painter, and dancer, had Lanier recalls. mer and frigid in winter. Lanier remem- in isolated spheres of incredible cognitive emigrated from Vienna when she was When Lanier was around ten, his bers shivering uncontrollably at times, and stylistic wealth," Lanier explained. fifteen, after surviving a concentration mother was killed and his father severely "like I was having a seizure." The family Constructing such spheres of wonder, camp. His father, Ellery, the child of injured in a horrific car crash. Immedi- belongings, which induded his mother's however, proved technologically difficult, UkrainianJews who had fled the pogroms, ately afterward, he fell ill with a succrvion grand piano and her antique furniture, and by the mid-nineteen-nineties the worked as an architect, painter, writer, of infections, including scarlet fever and were wrapped in plastic and heaped to- field of virtual reality had largely col- elementary-school teacher, and radio host. pneumonia, which kept him hospitalized gether on the ground outside the tent. lapsed. Despite this, Lanier has continued When Ellery was seven, a dose relative for almost a year. "I just wasn't ready to go "We scaled the piano in a bag, kind of," to argue that the purpose ofdigital technol- was murdered by a gang of anti-Semitic on without her," he said. Lanier said. "It must have sat out there for ogy should be to enrich human interaction. men wielding swords. A younger sister of Talking later about the crash, Lanier a year." One of his most recent ventures has been the victim, who witnessed the assault but noted that it had taken place on a freeway In Mesilla, Lather remained deeply to help Microsoft construct a new, joystick- was warned by the attackers not to speak overpass, and that no other cars had been withdrawn. "After my mother's death, I free gaming system, called the Kinect, of it, was so traumatized that she spent the involved. On the morning of the accident, had such difficulty relating to people," he which uses a computerized camera to rest of her life as a mute. he recalled, local bullies had jumped him recalls. "I don't think I was able to really match the movements of a player's body to Not long afterJaron's birth, his parents as he left for school. His mother, who have a normal conversation with some- the avatar in the game—allowing someone abandoned their last name, Zepel, for the hadn't finished dressing, had watched body until sometime in my late teens. I to kick a virtual ninja using her actual less Semitic-sounding Lanier, after Sid- from behind the screen door, "screaming remember feeling a sense of triumph foot. In an op-ed piece for the Wall Street ney Lanier, a nineteenth-century poet and and freaking out." Though Lanier man- if I could just go into a store and buy Journal, Lanier cited the Kinect, which this flutist, whom Ellery admired. "I think aged to defend himself—fighting back something and leave, because rd actually spring became the fastest-selling electronic they thought, We've got a child now, let's with a baritone horn—he worried that the successfully negotiated these human device ofall time, as an example oftechnol- get far away, let's hide," Lanier said. fight had distracted his mother and caused relationships." ogy that could "expand what it means to In the desert, Lanier's mother helped the crash. Lanier enrolled in the local high school, think" Unlike more Luddite critics, Lanier support the family by trading stocks "I performed the calculus that children which was racially divided and often vio- complains not that technology has taken through a broker in El Paso. Educated do, and blamed myself," Lather said. lent. He found the experience "terrifying," over our lives but that it has not given us and bohemian, she taught her son piano 'Then, later, when I was a rebellious teen, and left after a year. Mesilla was near the enough back in return. in place of a ban- on a Steinway she had shipped from I wondered ifshe and my father had been White Sands Missile Range, and was quet, we've been given a vending machine. New York, and arranged for him to at- fighting at the time of the accident. And home to many scientists, induding Clyde EFTA00304814 Tombaugh, who had discovered Pluto, in the wearer—and helped build the first 1930. As a teen-ager, Lanier took to stop- surgical simulator, an abdominal-surgery ping by Tombaugh's house, where he training program featuring a virtual stom- would sometimes look through his home- ach, gallbladder, and intestines. made telescopes. With Tombaugh and Constructing larger worlds, however, other scientists, Lanier found that it was turned out to be more complicated. The possible to have long conversations about prototypes that Lanier built relied on ste- abstract subjects like mathematics "with- reoscopic goggles so heavy that sandbags out even being there yourself"—that is, were needed to counterbalance the weight. with little emotional connection. The software was similarly balky. Unable Not long afterward, Lanier began tak- to match the rapid movements of the ing classes in math and chemistry at New human cyc, the scene through the goggles Mexico State University. At seventeen, he tended to lag queasily behind any shift in transferred to Bard College, in New York the user's gaze. In 1992, Lanier was ousted, To cover the down payment on his tu- and the company collapsed soon afterward. ition, he sold fresh milk and cheese from Devastated by the failure of VPL, La- a herd of goats that he bred. But the tran- nier moved to New York, where he re- sition from goat herding to freshman civ- corded an album of Asian string and wind ilization proved harsh, and he soon hitch- instruments, produced by Philip Glass hiked back to New Mexico. and others, and embarked on what he de- scribes as "a really crazy, hysterical young A t nineteen, Lanier fell in love with a marriage" that lasted only a few months. girl named Cynthia Peck, a cellist "I was just out of control for a bit," he said. visiting from Pasadena whose mother Eventually, he was hired as chief sci- knew Lanier's father. Peck recalls that La- entific officer for Eyematic, a Los Ange- nier was both "intensely brilliant" and "ex- les company that was developing algo- tremely needy." His room, when she first rithms that would allow a computer visited, was heaped with dirty clothes. For camera to recognize and track human their first official date, Peck insisted that faces. When Google acquired the compa- they visit a laundromat. They stayed for ny's patents, in 2006, Lanier cashed out. hours, washing load after load while La- Shortly thereafter, he took a post as a nier serenaded her with a Japanese bam- scholar-at-large for Microsoft Research, boo flute. where he has gone back to developing When Peck eventually returned to tools for virtual reality. Pasadena, Lanier followed, only to be told Lanier's return to his original passion that the romance had ended. From there, isn't surprising to Peck Lanier, she notes, he caught a ride up to Santa Cruz, where never saw virtual reality as simply a useful he spent a few months engineering sounds technology. "It had to do with being able for video games before developing an un- to be in somebody else's mind with him," usual game known as Moondust—a cult she said. "With creating a kind of ultimate hit that used the motions of the joystick to connection and communication." generate the soundtrack Moondust led to a job at Atari and then to Tom Zimmer- C ince joining Microsoft Research, La- man, a coder in Palo Alto who had de- nier has been involved in more than a signed an electronic glove that would dozen projects, most ofwhich are futuris- allow the wearer to "conduct" a virtual tic and only loosely related to the compa- symphony. In 1985, Lanier, Zimmer- ny's products. One morning in early Feb- man, and a couple of partners founded a ruary, Lanier met with Janet Galore, a company called VPL, with the goal ofde- director who designs new devices, and veloping other tools for virtual worlds. Peter Haynes, a senior director in the Not long afterward, the company helped company's Advanced Strategies and Re- the toymaker Mattel produce the Power search Group. The trio discussed several Glove, which could be used in place of a of Lanier's proposals, including one that joystick. (In one game, Bad Street would make a smartphone screen seem Brawler, players made a fist to "punch much larger, so that oversized digital doc- out" attackers.) VPL also sold a small uments, like a road map, could be viewed number of higher-end gloves to I.B.M. full scale. and NASA—in one case, to control a ro- Although the exact nature of Lanier's botic arm that mimicked the motions of contribution to the project was murky, EFTA00304815 it seemed to be a combination of free- to reflect a worry about falling too deeply tique may account for some of its popular- wheeling speculation and niggling detail. under his own spell. During his time as a ity. Because his pronouncements tend to Among other things, he complained re- pitchman for virtual reality, Lanier said be oracularly vague, readers can interpret peatedly about the team's use of NUI at one point, he developed a "hypnotic them to reflect their own views—from (pronounced "newen as shorthand for voice" with which he could "entrance the elnssicist who deplores pop music to "natural user interface," arguing that the people." He told me, "I could have set the vaguely disaffected Web designer, term was used only"inside the Microsoft myselfup as a guru figure. But I withdrew or the concerned parent who finds his bubble." from it, because I realized it was the wrong children consumed by social media. The "What I'd like to say is biorealistic; " thing to do." fact that Lanier is a genuine technology Lanier said, adding, opaquely, "I think These days, though, a guru figure is pioneer only adds to his authority. that's really addressing the human nervous something like what Lanier has become. Despite all this, Lanier can be almost system on its own terms." He was among the first critics to argue pathologically sensitive when he feels Haynes mentioned that another re- that social-networking sites like Face- misunderstood. When I confessed that searcher had proposed the phrase "com- book, which get their revenue from adver- parts of "Gadget" made me think he was puters that arc more like us." tisers who want to know as much as they anti-technology, he threw up his hands. Lanier squinchcd up his face. "You see, can about every user, have little motiva- "I mean, how loudly do I have to yell to I don't like that." tion to protect people's privacy. That has get people to understand what rm say- Haynes turned to Galore. "I is doesn't now become a popular view, as has his ar- ing?' he asked. like that." gument that companies like Google and What he actually wants, he says, "In fact," Lanier continued, laying his Foursquare a social networking service is to revive the development of software hands flat on the table, and then turning in which users broadcast their location to that allows people to be creative and make them over to stare at his palms, "I loathe friends—resemble "privatized spy agen- a living while doing so. He cited two that. And the reason why is that it implies cies" that collect information without giv- games as examples: Spore—in which this philosophical relationship between ing users an easy way to opt out. players guide the evolution of simulated people and machines that gives machines Just as often, though, Lanier merely life forms—and Second Life, a shared on- a certain status." seems to be saying whatever comes to line world in which players create ela- "That they could become like us," Ga- mind. Among other things, critics have borate virtual homes, businesses, and re- lore affirmed. questioned his claims that innovation in lationships. In both cases, Lanier said, "Yes," Lanier said. Then, as though popular music has ceased, and that the players invest creative effort in the imagi- suddenly sensing the abstruseness of his creativity of Web-page design peaked in nary world; in the case of Second Life, own oratory, he sat back "You know, it's the mid-nineteen-nineties. He is also they have also created a commercial mar- fine," he said, waving a hand. "I mean, it's fond of ambitious analogies and, at ket for selling goods. really good that there arc different points times, can make simple arguments al- Still, neither game has been a huge of view here." most willfully obscure. One chapter in commercial success. Spore has sold Unlike most polemicists, Lanier has a "Gadget," subtitled "My Love Affair around three million copies worldwide; its disarming tendency to conclude forceful with Bachelardian Neoteny," indudes a predecessor, The Sims, sold a hundred assertions with a momcnt of cheerful self- lament about the Web version of"Gold- million copies. Second Life has fared bet- deprecation. In part, this habit may be ingesque ncoteny," or the tendency of ter, but in ways that could hardly be de- rooted in his desire to avoid confrontation online forums to be dominated by bullies. scribed as representing a civic paradise. even as he provokes it. But it also seems Perversely, the opacity of Lanier's cri- Among other things, the game became a hook-up spot for people dressed as ani- mals and trying to have cyber-sex with one another. And experienced players sometimes extorted money from new ar- rivals-for example, by forcing them to pay for the restoration of their character's "sour after it had supposedly been bitten by a "vampire." Though Lanier secs fail- ures like these as particular flaws of Sec- ond Life, they raise another question: whether anyone will want to inhabit the humanistic future that he is so eager to create. Likewise, part of what Lanier finds most regrettable about Facebook—the way it mediates social contact—is pre- cisely what makes it so appealing to most people. "We use technology this way all "Please stop looking at me like now I'm gonna propose.* the time," Andy van Dam, a professor of EFTA00304816 computer science at Brown University, bafflement and shame, I found that I was notes. "To create a layer of insulation. paralyzed. When I admitted this to La- We send an e-mail so we don't have to nier, he confessed that he had had the call someone on the phone. Or we call same experience-1 build these things someone so we don't have to go over to and I couldn't do it!" Few people, in fact, their house." Many of us also use tech- can. `The pit is a great example of how nology, he might have added, when we're you can use virtual reality to really get at too isolated: when someone wants to find something deep in how people perceive a new friend just because he's feeling the world," he said. "It's such a richly de- alone—or because he's living with his fa- tailed window into what works and doesn't ther in a freezing tent in the desert. work in our own psyches." Heading back from the lab, Lanier for T he day after I talked with Lanier at once seemed generally satisfied—tempo- his home, we drove together to the rarily unambivalent about the future of Virtual Human Interaction Lab, a new technology and his role in it. "In the case virtual-reality lab on the Stanford cam- ofvirtual reality, I think what we have has pus. As I settled into the car, a battered turned out to be even more interesting Toyota Solara, Lanier apologized for the than what we'd have if we had actually condition of the front seat, the footwell managed to build the perfect fantasy- of which was cluttered with old maga- experience machine. Because this version zines, half-empty plastic water bottles, isn't just a tautology, a replica of the real and a squashed box of tissues. As Lanier world, it teaches us so much more about navigated carefully into heavy traffic, I ourselves." asked why he hadn't bought a luxury car, Like an innovative painter who alter- since he could presumably now afford nately courts and scorns the establish- one. Lanier sighed. "The thing is, we'd ment, Lanier often seems torn between just beat the hell out of it," he said. embracing and repudiating his newly At the campus parking lot, we were influential status. As we drove, he men- met by the lab manager, Cody Kamm, a tioned, with some pride, that he had mellow, collegiate blond in jeans and flip- been "banned" from the TED conferences flops, who escorted us into the lab's "ex- last year, after publishing an essay about perimental room": a squat chamber pan- the narcissistic nature of the event in a elled in gray-and-tan fabric. A thin orange London magazine. (A spokesperson for carpet covered a "haptic floor'' that can vi- TED said that Lanier is welcome at the brate and judder. (Later, when I sawed conferences.) He purported to be simi- down a virtual fir tree in a simulated for- larly unimpressed by Davos, the eco- est, the ripping crash as the tree fell seemed nomic conference, which he has attended to shake the ground.) "a billion times." "At one point, I was in In one corner of the room, a plastic an elevator with Newt Gingrich and headset and goggles hung droopily from Hamid Karzai," he said. "There are really a long black cable. Karutz damped them only so many times you want to be in that firmly to my head, tight enough to block situation." out the light. When he launched the first Laniei's desire to shun convention, simulation, I found myself standing in even while he longs for acceptance, has what appeared to be the same room as be- deep roots. "My dad has sometimes felt fore, but there was a deep rectangular pit that I grew up a little lacking in sufficient in front of my feet. eccentricity—in the sense that rm willing The pit simulation, Karutz explained, to live as an adult in a house with walls can be used to test the degree to which that are parallel to each other, that sort of cognitive knowledge—in this case, the thing," Lanier told me. Then he spoke knowledge that the floor does not con- about his mother. "Had she lived, I think tain a pit—is capable of overriding gut I would have been more conventionally instincts and fear. Because the simulation successful," he said. think I would be, realistically mimics the visual experience like, a Harvard Med School professor or of a fall, many people do topple over, and something. My dad was more into Be the may even feel their gorge rising, as Buckminster Fuller or the Frank Lloyd though they were falling through space. Wright'—be the weird outsider who be- Karutz offered to spot me if I wanted to comes influentiaL Which is kind ofwhere try stepping off the edge, but, to my I ended up." • EFTA00304817