Fisticuffs at ARS Electronica

Perhaps “fisticuffs” is a bit dramatic, but there were certainly some conflicts on the panels this year at ARS. A bit of conflict is refreshing, as it gets tiring going to conferences were everyone agrees all the time, non?

A notable clash happened during the “Disruption” panel, moderated by the clever and engaging Jonah Brucker-Cohen. Bruce Sterling gave his “When Blobjects Rule the Earth” speech, which he had previously delivered as the SIGGRAPH 2004 keynote. Sterling painted a rather bleak portrait of the future: the elderly will blog everything, because they love complaining and will have nothing else to do; we will be more or less in thrall to “spimes”, which are objects that are “smart” and have email addresses and other amenities; and that people who love their gadgets already do a lot of free work for the corporations that make them, and this situation will only become more severe, as corporations rely more and more heavily on the early adopters to do the alpha testing for them. There’s a transcript of his speech, more or less, on boing boing.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, looking very princely and having just delivered an eloquent lecture that outlined some elements of his practice using technology in public space to give voices to those who may not always feel they have a voice, stepped up to confront Sterling. In his considered, serious way, he spoke for a few minutes about his dismay at this vision of the future, of his desire to strive for a utopic vision to counter Sterling’s dystopic vision, and of the need to not simply submit to this prediction for the future but to strive for something better. The audience responded with enthusiastic applause. Wodiczko’s comments provided an essential counterpoint to Sterling’s rapid-fire description of our relationship with technology in coming years.

Another rousing moment occurred on the “Spirit” panel between Marvin Minsky, computer science pioneer, and Geetha Narayanan. Minsky was making some fairly controversial statements about culture being irrelevant (to a roomful of mostly artists). Geetha neatly shot him down by letting him know that that was a pretty easy thing for him to say (being an old white male) and that of course culture plays a major part in nearly everyone’s lives (except maybe for hermits!) Sherry Turkle tried to mediate this rift by stating she thinks that technology is increasingly becoming part of people’s culture and daily reality.

And conflicting views didn’t just exist on the panels. I didn’t spot this parody of the ARS Electronica poster, but I am grateful to Katherine Moriwaki for telling me about it and posting a picture on her blog.