Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first. I say that information doesn't deserve to be free. Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not? ... Information is alienated experience.

Internet2 visiting scholar (1997–2001)
From 1997 to 2001 Lanier was the Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and Services which contained the Engineering Office of Internet2 and served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. Memberships
Lanier has served on numerous advisory boards including the Board of Councilors of the University of Southern California Medical Media Systems (a medical visualization spin-off company associated with Dartmouth College) Microdisplay Corporation and NY3D (developers of auto stereo displays). July 28–30 1992.

A pioneer in the field of VR Lanier and Thomas G. the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves. Lanier is also known as a composer of classical music and a collector of rare instruments; his acoustic album Instruments of Change (1994) features Asian wind and string instruments such as the khene mouth organ the suling flute and the sitar-like esraj.