https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4RJetzDyOY&t=28m18s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research

https://www.pioneersofdigital.com/about-book/about-pioneers/...

>Here’s an excerpt from the Jaron Lanier chapter in the book [Pioneers of Digital]:

>“In the early 1990s, Lanier got a call from movie director Brett Leonard saying he’d got the film rights to Stephen King’s short story, ‘The Lawnmower Man’. Lanier remembers that Leonard told his reluctant celluloid subject that he’d leverage the King story option to get the project funded but then do a ‘weird science fiction biography of you and your company.’ All the director needed was some explanation of how virtual reality kit worked and some old prototype gear from the era that ended up actually being used in the film.

>Lanier’s entrepreneur character was played by then unknown actor Pierce Brosnan, and real life appears to have mirrored the outlandish plotline as Lanier claims ‘it turned out VPL was part of a justice department investigation later, on the French Intelligence Service using the investment arms of French companies to do industrial espionage on American start-ups in Silicon Valley’.