Currently, Lanier serves as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2.  He is also a visiting artist at the Interactive Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts, at New York University, a visiting scholar at the computer science department of Columbia University, and a founding member of the International Institute for Evolution and the Brain, which is based at NYU, Harvard University, and the University of Paris. He serves on numerous boards, and has been active in scholarly groups concerned with the future, including the World Economic Forum Fellows, and the Global Business Network.

Lanier has proposed and implemented a variety of technologies that have since spawned industries in their own right.  Among his lineup of "firsts" are the first "avatar" for network communications, the first moving camera virtual set for television production, and the first performance animation for 3D computer graphics. He was the first to propose web-based network computers. He was one of the originators of real-time surgical simulation and telesurgery. As a computer scientist, Lanier is also known as a pioneer in the field of visual programming. Sun Microsystems recently acquired Lanier's seminal portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality and networked 3D graphics.

As a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new classical music since the late seventies.   He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Vernon Reid, Terry Riley, Duncan Sheik, Barbara Higbie, and Stanley Jordan.  He also writes chamber and orchestral music.His record Instruments of Change was released on Point/Polygram in 1994. His orchestral commission for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Mirror/Storm, premiered in 1998.   He has also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical stage performance with his band Chromatophoria.  He plays virtual instruments and uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds.

Lanier's paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe. In 1994 he directed the film Muzork under a commission from ARTE Television. His 1983 "Moondust" is generally regarded as the first art video game, and the first interactive music publication. He has presented installations in New York City, including the  "Video Feedback Waterbed" and the "Time-accelerated Painting", which was situated inside the Brooklyn Bridge. His first one-man show took place in 1997 at the Danish Museum for Modern Art in Roskilde.

Lanier is also a well- known author and speaker. He writes on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism.  His  book, Information is Alienated Experience, is forthcoming from Basic Books. His writing also appears in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harpers Magazine, Wired Magazine (where he is a contributing editor), and Scientific American. He has edited special future issues of SPIN and Civilization magazines.  He appears on national television regularly, on shows such as "Nightline" and "Charlie Rose", and has been profiled on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.