I am intrigued by how Lanier can be so productive across so many different fields. He describes his work style as “compressed procrastination”, switching from one activity to another, like cross-training. “You can get away with feeling like you’re being lazy all the time and yet at the end of the day all the things have gotten done,” he says.

He is particularly damning of social media companies, even if he accepts that their services have real benefits: connecting patients suffering rare diseases or helping users find lost pets. The trouble is, as he puts it, that Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram all have a “manipulation engine” running in the background, working to the advantage of unscrupulous advertisers, scammers or Russian spies.