I had the pleasure of being amongst an audience of about twenty other geeks at Microsoft to participate in a presentation and Q&A session with Jaron Lanier today.
Jaron is probably best known for coining the term "Virtual Reality" back in the early 80's. He's an extremely thought-provoking speaker and writer. In the past, his criticism's of Microsoft's products have been quite harsh.
Jaron is working with Microsoft Live Labs now, in a capacity that isn't exactly clear to me at this time. Unfortunately I can't discuss the content of the presentation he gave. However, I can say that it was mind-expanding to say the very least, and lived up to all the hype I had read about the guy prior to actually seeing him present. I was able to find a publicly available presentation, which provides a very good example of the types of thinking that Jaron is famous for.
By about the second or third slide in this presenation it was obvious that Jaron's brain works differently than most other people's. He's able to see metaphors, patterns, and connections in things you'd never imagine to be related. I guess that's why he's such a valuable resource to a company like Microsoft, where he can inspire employees to think about problems and solutions in incredibly bizarre and wonderful ways. His ability to look at what might seem like mundane problems at first, from totally original perspectives, is unequaled in my experience.
After the presentation Jaron took thirty minutes to answer questions and go into detail on certain topics. At times it was difficult to keep up with his train of thought. Often the originating question was completely forgotten by the end of the discussion.
Needless to say, having the opprotunity to witness first-hand such a unique personality and mind at work was inspiring and bewildering at the same time. It really made me appreciate the rarity of people with these combinations of skills and talents. Thinking this advanced (and I'm not exaggerating) shouldn't be taken for granted. :-)