# Wenn Träume erwachsen werden: Ein Blick auf das digitale Zeitalter *By Jaron Lanier. Hoffmann und Campe (Hamburg), 2015. German only; translated from the American.* > I did not read the book, and this one is **German-edition-only**: it is a German collection of Lanier's essays, speeches and interviews, and I found no English edition under this title or a matching English-language book. What follows comes from the publisher's page, a Perlentaucher record summarizing a Frankfurter Allgemeine review, a Deutschlandfunk review, a Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung review, a library catalog record seen only as a search snippet, and German Wikipedia, all linked below. I read German page text and translated it myself; my English renderings are marked as mine. **I found no table of contents, so there is no chapter outline and no page numbers.** I make no claims about individual essays beyond what these sources say. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Wenn Träume erwachsen werden: Ein Blick auf das digitale Zeitalter* (roughly "When Dreams Grow Up: A Look at the Digital Age"; my translation). German Wikipedia adds the descriptor "Essays und Interviews 1984–2014" | | Author | Jaron Lanier | | Translators | Heike Schlatterer, Sigrid Schmid, Friedrich Pflüger, Violeta Topalova ("Aus dem Amerikanischen"). Editor (Lektor): Dr. Constanze Neumann (publisher page) | | Publisher | Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, Hamburg. Publication date **15.05.2015** (publisher page) | | ISBNs | Hardcover (Pappband mit Schutzumschlag) 978-3-455-50359-3. E-book (EPUB, watermark copy protection) 978-3-455-85142-7 (Pocketbook listing, also published May 15, 2015) | | Pages | Hardcover: 448 pages, 146 × 217 mm (publisher page, Perlentaucher, Deutschlandfunk). The e-book record in the Gießen city library catalog says 336 pages, which I only saw in a search-result snippet (that page returned a 403 to my box) | | Price | €25.00 list (Perlentaucher and Deutschlandfunk). The publisher's own page shows €10.00 and **"Ausverkauft"** (sold out) when I opened it, so the print book may be out of print at the publisher. E-book €9.99 at Pocketbook | | Language | German. Original-language edition: none found. German Wikipedia's list of Lanier's books gives this one with no English counterpart | | Audiobook | None found (the Audible.de author search showed only English titles for Lanier) | | Contents | An anthology of **38 essays** (Deutschlandfunk and the publisher's quoted reviews) written between 1984 and 2014 (Perlentaucher; library record), opened by his 2014 peace-prize acceptance speech (Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung review; library record) | **Where it came up.** There is no source video or note. Marshall asked for it on Nov 3, 2026, as part of "all books by Jaron Lanier". ## 2. Book resources **Free (legal).** The book is in copyright. These are library routes and the prize's own published speech. - **Peace-prize speech (free, from the prize's own site).** The German text of Lanier's acceptance speech, "Der 'High-Tech-Frieden' braucht eine neue Art von Humanismus", is on the [prize page](https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/die-preistraeger/2010-2019/jaron-lanier) and in the prize's [PDF of the 2014 speeches](https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/fileadmin/user_upload/preistraeger/2010-2019/2014/Friedenspreis_2014_Reden.pdf). Two reviews and a library record say the book opens with that speech. I did not compare the book's text with this one. - **Onleihe (German public-library e-lending).** The [Onleihe site](https://www.onleihe.de/) loads, but each library has its own catalog and a card is needed, so I could not check whether any holds this title. Your German library may. - **Libby/OverDrive.** The [OverDrive search page](https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=wenn+tr%C3%A4ume+erwachsen+werden) loads; the Los Angeles Public Library catalog check I ran found no OverDrive record for this title. Libby collections vary, so ask your own library. - **Hoopla.** The [search page](https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=lanier) loads, but I could not see availability from my box and I have no evidence a German title is there. - **Internet Archive.** My search for the title and for Lanier returned nothing (the [site search](https://archive.org/search?query=wenn+tr%C3%A4ume+erwachsen+werden+lanier) is here if you want to retry). Note that the IA scan `wemgehortdiezuku0000lani` is a *different* German book, *Wem gehört die Zukunft?* (*Who Owns the Future?*). - **Open Library.** My search by title and by ISBN 9783455503593 found no record. [Search page](https://openlibrary.org/search?q=jaron+lanier+tr%C3%A4ume). - **Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.** The [DNB catalog search for the ISBN](https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=9783455503593) answered, but I could not read results from my box (it showed an anti-bot check), so I did not use it for facts. - **Project Gutenberg.** Not available; the book is in copyright. **Paid.** - Publisher: [Hoffmann und Campe product page](https://hoffmann-und-campe.de/products/4650-wenn-traeume-erwachsen-werden) (showed "Ausverkauft" when I opened it). - E-book: [Pocketbook, EPUB €9.99 with a sample](https://pocketbook.de/en/wenn-traume-erwachsen-werden-9783455851427). - Amazon and Kindle: [Amazon.de page for the hardcover (ISBN-10 3455503594)](https://www.amazon.de/dp/3455503594) and [the same ISBN on Amazon.com](https://www.amazon.com/dp/3455503594) both respond, but I could not parse price, stock or whether a Kindle edition exists, so I have not checked Kindle availability. - Audible: no German audiobook found; the [Audible.de author search](https://www.audible.de/search?keywords=jaron+lanier) lists English titles. - Used copies: Perlentaucher links to a used-book store (not opened). **Cover:** [publisher cover image](https://hoffmann-und-campe.de/cdn/shop/files/4f087a481e1b71089bcf52d996293a88.jpg?v=1724898248). ## 3. Author biography Jaron Lanier (born May 3, 1960, in New York City, raised in Mesilla, New Mexico) is a scientist, musician and writer best known for his work in virtual reality. He enrolled at New Mexico State University at 13. In 1985 he left Atari with Thomas Zimmerman to found VPL Research, the first company to sell VR goggles and wired gloves. He has worked at Microsoft since 2006 and at Microsoft Research since 2009; his own biography gives his title as "octopus". Honors on his site and Wikipedia include the 2014 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (awarded Oct 12, 2014, in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, with Martin Schulz giving the laudatio), TIME 100 (2010) and Prospect's top 50 World Thinkers (2014). German Wikipedia says his Jewish parents came from Vienna and Ukraine and that his mother Lilly emigrated to the US at 15 after surviving a concentration camp. His other books: *You Are Not a Gadget* (2010, German edition *Gadget*, Suhrkamp), *Who Owns the Future?* (2013, German edition *Wem gehört die Zukunft?*, Hoffmann und Campe 2014), *Dawn of the New Everything* (2017) and *Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now* (2018). Sources: [his biography page](https://www.jaronlanier.com/general.html); [English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier); [German Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier); [prize page](https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/die-preistraeger/2010-2019/jaron-lanier). ## 4. Author interviews and talks I found no English-language interviews about this book, since it exists only in German. The material I opened: - **Peace-prize acceptance speech, Oct 12, 2014, Frankfurt.** German text on the [prize's page](https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/die-preistraeger/2010-2019/jaron-lanier), the source for the quotes here (my English). He says he accepts the prize "on behalf of the world community of digital activists and idealists", and also in honor of Frank Schirrmacher. He says the "new humanism" is "the belief in humans, but specifically in the form of a rejection of artificial intelligence", and that any supposedly artificially intelligent algorithm can just as well be understood as a non-autonomous function serving humans as a tool. I read the excerpts shown on the page, not the whole speech or a recording. The prize's own summary of why he won points to risks the digital world poses to freedom and to people being reduced to "digital categories". - **Quotes in the Deutschlandfunk review** (below) attributed to him in German translation: a 2013 New York Times piece ("I don't myself know who is to blame for our digital passivity. Did we give ourselves up at some point?", my translation of the review's German), and the "tightrope walker" line between "gluttonous robot nerds" and "sentimental antiquarians". I did not look up the originals. - German Wikipedia lists a [taz interview with Peter Unfried (Dec 9, 2018)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier) and a FAZ piece on "digital Maoism" (2010). I did not open either. ## 5. Summary **What the book is.** The publisher says it is "Jaron Laniers Essays erstmals als Buch" (my translation: Lanier's essays collected as a book for the first time) and a view into the "ideas cosmos of the great internet visionary". It describes him as the originator of the term "virtual reality", who developed his first computer game in 1983 and went independent with friends in 1985; from around the turn of the millennium he turned increasingly critical of the "promises of salvation" of the digital world. It says he accompanied his research with essays from the start, examining their social implications and looking ahead. A library record's summary adds that the collection also documents how he went from a champion of a free net for everyone to a critic of big data collectors such as Google and Facebook, that it includes an early piece about data-glove experiments, and that it includes essays from before *Gadget* and after *Wem gehört die Zukunft?* (my paraphrase of a snippet I could not open in full). **Structure as far as I could verify.** - Opens with the 2014 peace-prize speech (Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung review; library record). - Then texts from 1984 to 2014: essays, speeches and interviews (Perlentaucher; library record; the publisher's blurb says "Essays" only). - 38 pieces in all, per Deutschlandfunk. - The only essay title any source gives is **"Der Mythos von der Künstlichen Intelligenz"** (the Deutschlandfunk review). I did not find the original English title or date. - I found no contents list, no chapter titles beyond that one, and no page numbers; the e-book sample at Pocketbook is where one could look. **The themes, as the reviews report them** (secondhand; I haven't read these passages): - **Deutschlandfunk (Brigitte Neumann, Dec 21, 2015).** Calls him a "Breitwanddenker" and "no cultural pessimist and machine-breaker", an early internet pioneer and critic of the commercialization of the net since the late 1980s. She reports a call for regular payment for what users contribute online, via micropayments to users who agree to their data being used, and his objection to e-book makers collecting readers' highlights, notes and reading speed. She reports his "digital Maoism" idea and his argument, in the AI essay, that software is bad, which prevents machine rule for now. Verdict: 38 essays that give readers "an excellent basis for forming their own stance" and a feeling of not being powerless. - **Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (Christoph Rohde, *Politische Studien* 464).** Says the collection shows how his thinking developed; reports his criticism of "swarm intelligence" and the shitstorm, of an elite class of super-rich technologists, and of the AI myth (the problem is "the myth constructed around the technology", not the technology); and says virtual life made him appreciate the real world. It recommends the book for school discussion. It also cites Schirrmacher on the commercialization of the internet creating new power centers. - **FAZ via Perlentaucher (Uwe Ebbinghaus, May 28, 2015).** The note says the reviewer can forgive "a bit of vanity and redundancy", sees Lanier as a "Schwejk of the digital age" practicing "loyal opposition" between a well-paid Microsoft job and sharp criticism of the surveillance economy, and does not take his idea of selling personal data to the highest bidder seriously, while valuing how he measures freedom's ideals against reality. That is a summary of the review by Perlentaucher; I did not read the FAZ article itself. - **Publisher's pull-quotes** (Bernd Graff, Süddeutsche; Uwe Ebbinghaus, FAZ; Antje Korsmeier, Handelsblatt; Brigitte Neumann, Deutschlandfunk) are all favorable and chosen by the publisher. **Reception.** Everything I found is favorable, but my sample is one publisher page and three reviews, not a survey. I did not look for negative reviews. **Why it is here.** Marshall asked for every Lanier book; this one is the German-only collection. The related books with English editions are in the other Lanier dossiers. ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **mixed**. The publication facts are supported. The contents are known only from reviews, with no contents list. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | Hoffmann und Campe, May 15, 2015, ISBN 978-3-455-50359-3, 448 pp. | Supported | Publisher page; Perlentaucher and Deutschlandfunk match on publisher, year and pages | | Four translators | Supported | Publisher page, Perlentaucher, Deutschlandfunk | | E-book ISBN 978-3-455-85142-7, EPUB €9.99, May 15, 2015 | Supported | Pocketbook page; the Gießen catalog snippet gives the same ISBN | | E-book has 336 pages | Unverified | Search-result snippet of a library catalog; the page returned a 403 | | 38 essays | Supported (as reported) | Deutschlandfunk, and the publisher repeats that review's quote; I did not count them myself | | Opens with the 2014 peace-prize speech | Supported (as reported) | Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung review; library record snippet | | Written 1984 to 2014 | Supported (as reported) | Perlentaucher's summary of the FAZ review; German Wikipedia's subtitle; library record | | German edition only | Probably, not proven | No English or other-language record found at Open Library, IA, the publisher or German Wikipedia's book list; I could not search the DNB or WorldCat from my box | | Print edition currently sold out | As shown on one page | Publisher page "Ausverkauft" on Nov 3, 2026 | | Library availability (Onleihe, Libby, Hoopla) | Unknown | Could not check per-library catalogs | | Amazon and Kindle availability | Unknown | Pages respond but I could not parse them | | Deutschlandfunk says a piece for Edge.org in the "late 1980s" | Inconsistent, not resolved | Edge.org was not around that early as far as I know; I did not check, so treat the review's date as the reviewer's and the original as unidentified | | Contents, chapter order, page numbers | Not found | No contents list found anywhere I looked | | Quotes | As quoted | The speech excerpts are from the prize page, the rest from the reviews; none checked in the book | ## 7. Citations and references - Publisher and catalog: [Hoffmann und Campe product page](https://hoffmann-und-campe.de/products/4650-wenn-traeume-erwachsen-werden); [Perlentaucher record (includes the FAZ review note)](https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/jaron-lanier/wenn-traeume-erwachsen-werden.html); [Pocketbook e-book page](https://pocketbook.de/en/wenn-traume-erwachsen-werden-9783455851427); [Gießen city library catalog record (e-book; read via a search snippet only, 403 to my box)](https://sb-giessen.lmscloud.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=155904). - Reviews: [Deutschlandfunk, Brigitte Neumann, Dec 21, 2015](https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/jaron-lanier-wenn-traeume-erwachsen-werden-warnung-vor-den-100.html); [Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, *Politische Studien* 464 (review by Christoph Rohde, PDF)](https://www.hss.de/publikationen/rezension-wenn-traeume-erwachsen-werden-pub793.pdf); the FAZ review by Uwe Ebbinghaus, May 28, 2015, as summarized on Perlentaucher. - Speech: [Friedenspreis page for Lanier](https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/die-preistraeger/2010-2019/jaron-lanier); [PDF of the 2014 speeches](https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/fileadmin/user_upload/preistraeger/2010-2019/2014/Friedenspreis_2014_Reden.pdf). - Library and retail routes: [Onleihe](https://www.onleihe.de/); [OverDrive search](https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=wenn+tr%C3%A4ume+erwachsen+werden); [Hoopla search](https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=lanier); [Internet Archive search](https://archive.org/search?query=wenn+tr%C3%A4ume+erwachsen+werden+lanier); [Open Library search](https://openlibrary.org/search?q=jaron+lanier+tr%C3%A4ume); [DNB catalog](https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?method=simpleSearch&query=9783455503593); [Amazon.de](https://www.amazon.de/dp/3455503594); [Amazon.com](https://www.amazon.com/dp/3455503594); [Audible.de author search](https://www.audible.de/search?keywords=jaron+lanier). - Author: [Lanier's biography page](https://www.jaronlanier.com/general.html); [English Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier); [German Wikipedia](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier). - Source: requested by Marshall, Nov 3, 2026 (no source video).