New Media Minds Forum

ART / SCIENCE FORUM New Media Minds Forum Mark Beam The New Media Minds forum is an an­ nual series of four gatherings in down­ town San Francisco, where some of the brightest minds in new media discuss, describe, debate and perhaps shape the future of being human in the digital age. Part lecture, part panel, part perfor­ mance, New Media Minds seeks a more thoughtful and challenging perspective of technological and socio-cultural change as the physical environment, hu­ man nature and the virtual world con­ verge. The following is a fragment of the vision brought to life in the series NTT New Media Minds: Intelligence, Tech­ nology and ARTificial Society (Fig. 1) presented in Fall 1997 [1]. JARON LANIER 11 September 1997 When listening to Jaron Lanier speak for any length of time, it becomes appar­ ent how committed he is to solving what he calls "the language problem"—that is, the limitations of symbolic thought in the expression of human feeling. Un­ derstandably, the way he frames the problem and his work toward a solution are inspired by his passion for music—a passion that also explains his early work in defining virtual reality (VR). During his 2-hour discussion and per­ formance, Lanier repeatedly referred to two opposing motivating forces for ex­ panding our use of technology: (1) "cuttlefish envy," referring to the re­ markable ability of these aquatic crea­ tures to "be" whatever they imagine, and (2) "power," referring to the use of tech­ nology to acquire more control—con­ trol over nature, over people, etc. On this point, Lanier noted during his talk that "when the quest for power is di­ rected toward overcoming constraints that aren't really there . . . when the vast majority of human suffering is being Mark Beam, beaming, inc., 3841 24th Street, Suite B, San Francisco, CA 94114, U.SA. E-mail: . created by humans themselves . . . at that point, we have to wonder what we're doing this for." Lanier reminded us of the awesome factors that played themselves out in the development of the Internet, It's the first time in history ever that mil­ lions of people cooperated together— without lines of authority, without au­ thority figures, without advertising, without money, without the use of force, without threat, without dire need—simply because they wanted to and were interested in doing something together creative. They built this huge structure, millions of people cooperat­ ing together, and they did it really fast. A CYBER-FEMININE PERSPECTIVE: LINDA JACOBSON, DENISE CARUSO, MARLEEN MCDANIEL, SOLEDAD O'BRIEN 25 September 1997 This panel discussed deep-seated issues of power and access involving women and their relationships with technology. Electronic mail from Linda Jacobson a couple of weeks prior to the panel dis­ cussion set the tone for the evening: "This panel definitely is about feminism . . . feminism in the late 1990s [since] the tools we have at hand for organizing and communicating are 'cyber' at the core." Such tools potentially provide the opportunity to rebalance traditional spheres of power. During the discussion numerous bio­ logical analogies arose. The technology of knowledge and power has involved the politics of control of the body since the eighteenth century, when through the application of scientific principles, we began to develop more effective tools to enhance survival. By controlling ac­ cess to these new tools, those in power also controlled populations of individu­ als and the rights over die bodies of oth­ ers. As Michel Foucault declared in The History of Sexuality, "For the first time in history . . . biological existence was re­ flected in political existence." We have been legislating and dictating laws con­ cerning the rights to life, to control of one's own body, to health and to happi­ ness ever since. Today, in the age of cyborgs, relation­ ships between the body and technology are so intimate that it is becoming diffi­ cult to tell where people end and ma­ chines begin. Our common notions of identity—including gender—are now instantaneously shared through elec­ tronic extensions of ourselves, i.e. the Internet. What we choose to create, the connections we make and the politics of power are more important than ever be­ fore. As...