Great Presenters at Wayland Library: Your Brain On Code – John Landry

Next Tuesday, March 3rd at 7:30 PM, I’m giving a talk at the Wayland Library called “Your Brain on Code.” The title borrows from Nancy Reagan’s old “Your Brain on Drugs” campaign.
Only this time, the addiction isn’t to a drug or gambling — it’s to a system. To code.
My wife Annie and I have lived in Wayland for nearly 50 years. I’ve spent those same decades inside the software industry — 12-time CTO, IBM, Lotus, six startups, investor in more than 80 others. I’ve loved this industry. For years it felt like sipping from a bottomless glass of astonishing technological progress.
Which is why what’s happening now gives me pause.
Software used to be a tool. Today, it’s our environment — in our offices, our homes, our cars, our pockets, even on our wrists.
A decade ago, thousands of software companies were blooming. Most built tools to help us get things done.
But the companies that became trillion-dollar giants weren’t tool-builders. They were the ones that mastered attention — our attention. They learned how to influence our behavior at scale — drawing directly from neuroscience — and built business models around it.
It worked so well that those companies are now the most valuable companies in the world, and their founders and top management the richest, and likely most powerful, people in the world.
They broke away from the old model, where everyone saw the same thing, and built platforms where every experience is precisely customized to you.
Each of us now lives inside a personalized information stream, tuned to our habits, reactions, and emotional triggers. At scale, these systems build what I call a Digital Twin — a predictive model of you — and optimize what you’ll see and feel in real time. It’s you, but not under your control.
And now AI is accelerating and deepening that process.
This isn’t just about screen time. It’s beyond privacy. It’s about autonomy — about who holds the steering wheel for how we learn, think, and process reality.
If that question matters to you — for yourself and for your kids and grandkids — I hope you’ll join us.
I’m honored to return for my fifth appearance in the Great Presenters series on March 3rd, 7:30 pm – 8:45pm at the Wayland Free Library. Limited to 35 seats! It’ll be Zoomed but we’re in Wayland, not Hollywood. Instead, come on down!
Register here: https://waylandlibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/great-presenters-12/