The award ceremony took place on Sunday, October 12, , in the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The laudatory speech was held by Martin Schulz. In honoring Lanier, the association and its members have chosen to pay tribute to a true pioneer in the digital world β one who has always recognized the inherent risks contained in this new world with regard to each individual's right to shape his or her own life.
Throughout his career, Lanier has consistently and effectively spotlighted the threats our open society faces when deprived of the power to control its own progress and development. While acknowledging the gains in diversity and freedom that accompany the growth of the digital world, Lanier has nevertheless always pointed to the dangers involved when human beings are reduced to digital categories.
His most recent work "Who Owns the Future? Lanier's concept of assigning a sustainable and economic value to the creative contributions made by each individual on the Internet reflects his commitment to the enshrinement of the human values that form the very basis of peaceful coexistence β in the real and digital worlds alike. Will artificial intelligence develop in the service of mankind or will we soon live in the sort of society that even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could not have imagined?
The sick butterfly will soon recall the sea, this stone with the inscription of the fly has given itself into my hand. Instead of home, I hold the transformations of the world. It was fifty years ago that the poet Nelly Sachs stood on this very site and read her poetry aloud. Recipients of the Peace Prize bear witness to their times. They advocate peace and freedom, they conceive ideas for a peaceful world, they overcome obstacles and break alleged taboos:.
He was one of the most important writers for me. All of them, alongside the recipients in most recent yearsβDavid Grossman, Liao Yiwu, Boualem Sansal, and Svetlana Alexiyevitch, whose books all deal with the subject of war and oppressionβhave left a decisive imprint upon the history of the Peace Prize, which is also the history of Germany and its neighbours. This choice stands in stark contrast to prior decisions, and yet it is also entirely consistent with them.
