randy@xanadu.com (Randy Farmer -- A survivor of the Lost Patrol) (05/11/91)
The Second International Conference on Cyberspace:
Literary Criticism Collides With Software Engineering
by F. Randall Farmer
This April saw the Second International Conference on Cyberspace;
it was even more colorful and controversial than its predecessor. The
collected abstracts listed 98 papers, covering a wide range of topics
like implementation, representation, 'wiring up', AI, hermaneutics,
artistry, religion, sex, fractals, cinema, anthropology, cychology
(sic), ghosts, mummies, architecture, post-modernism, jazz,
supercomputing, photorealism, dimensionality, space and time. Only 15
papers were actually presented. And, as you might expect, the content,
style and state of preparation of the papers varied widely.
Over half the presentations were given by software engineers about
the cyberspaces they were building and what they learned from them.
These talks were relatively clear, even if sometimes a little
disorganized. Some of them contained technical material, often prefaced
with the disclaimer "I'm sorry, but I'm going to get technical for a few
minutes". I saw some eyes glaze over in the audience until the jargon
was over.
The remainder of the papers were presented by academics, in the
traditional language of the literary critic, examining everything from
cyberspace as master narrative to a character by character analysis of
Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy. I'm certain these presentations were
professional enough, and I truly believe that there were some points
they were trying to get across, but, frankly, I couldn't figure out what
they were. After talking with other software engineers, I discovered
that I was not alone. The title of one of the papers helps to
illustrate my confusion: "Cyberspace and the Proprioceptive Coherence: A
Proposal." This sent me scrambling for my dictionary as soon as I got
home. The language of literary criticism left me playing catch-up with
the presenter, and falling three words further behind every paragraph.
One programmer quipped that to his untrained ear these presentations
sounded like "polysyllabic word salad."
So, these two worlds collided due to confusions in purpose,
language, and even in the definition of cyberspace. The software
engineers were looking for information about where to go, and what to do
next. I presume (and hope) that the literary critics were trying to
bring artistic, literary, social, and humanistic concerns to cyberspace.
It is clear that both groups will benefit from understanding the purpose
of the other. But understanding the purpose is useless if the message
itself is not also understood by the audience.
I am one of the many software engineers in the audience who was
bewildered by the language of the literary critics at this conference.
Perhaps an explanation of how we think might shed some light on why.
I'll use myself as an example.
I am one of those lucky few who have actually implemented a
cyberspace system and survived to tell the tale. Like many others, I
have a few years of college, and lots of hands-on experience. Like many
others, I don't spend much time studying the humanities or arts or
reading the great French philosophers. My thought processes are instead
dedicated to debugging. Debugging is usually defined as finding the
failure points in a computer program, but software engineers also debug
concepts and their implementations. Our emphasis is on finding an
adequate initial design, and modifying it based on feedback until we get
one that works--not a something perfect, just one that is functional.
The advantage to this approach is that we can start working right away,
and therefore have a working prototype done more quickly. Of course
this also means that we are prone to make mistakes early on, and
unlikely to get a solution that is optimal or even correct. In
complicated systems, it is a fundamental reality that perfect solutions
are a practical impossibility anyway. So like the scientist, we need
gobs and gobs of input early on, to shape our systems, and help us
improve them over time.
Software engineers want input! This is very important to us
because we are building cyberspace now. We want insights from people
who are non-engineers: artists, psychologists, sociologists, economists,
archaeologists, historians, and philosophers. This kind of
communication is essential if cyberspace is fulfill its potential as a
powerful medium for interpersonal communications instead of becoming
just another rich boy's toy, sold to the wealthy consumer through places
like "The Sharper Image Catalog." However undesirable we find this
latter outcome, it is a very real possibility because cyberspace systems
are consumer products: they want to be built, packaged, and shipped. As
in the development of all consumer products, time is a most precious
commodity. Time is so valuable that several well known cyberspace
implementors have stopped attending conferences--except when they can be
used as advertising vehicles--in favor of getting their systems built.
This trend is likely to continue if the conferences don't offer
something tangible. Presentations in the style of the literary critic
aren't very tangible to us because the language used is not concrete
enough for swift or accurate comprehension, extension or refutation. In
short, software engineers can't debug literary criticism, so we don't
get it. We can't even tell if there is any 'it' to get!
Conferences are for sharing information and insights. They should
be very important to the cyberspace researcher. It is this assertion
that led me to write this article. But at this year's conference we
didn't share very well. We collided with each other, confused in
purpose and in language.
So, given that software engineers debug systems, are busy building
cyberspace now, are still making efforts to hear others' concerns, and
given that literary critics are ready to offer their insights on how
worlds work, how can we bridge this communications gap? Perhaps we
could try using one or more of the tools that other conferences have
found effective for dealing with these problems.
The community could create 'Conference Submissions Guidelines'
requiring clear statements, in plain language that avoids jargon, of
both the paper's purpose and applicability to current or future
cyberspace systems. The guidelines committee should encourage
diversity: the request for clarity is intended to make papers
understandable across disciplines, not to restrict the participants to a
single style or approach. The chief drawback of this proposal is that it
introduces the problems of a review process.
Alternatively, the conference could split into a number of tracks.
This would allow more papers to be presented, published, and would not
require any standards of language. This would allow attendees to
customize use of their time, but would not increase inter-disciplinary
communications. It could also reduce the intimacy that the conference
has enjoyed thus far.
These measures are a matter for the cyberspace community to
discuss and decide upon. To that end, I propose a multi-disciplinary
panel for discussion of these and other suggestions the community may
have. The Usenet newsgroup sci.virtual-worlds might well serve the
purpose, considering both the origins of this conference and the wide
dispersion of the participants.
Last year, I was able to take at least some germ of an idea away
from each and every presentation. Sadly, that was not the case this
year. If this article touches the community in the way it was intended-
-to encourage open and plain communications--I eagerly look forward to
next year's conference in Montreal.zippy@gumby.Altos.COM (Tim Mcfadden) (05/23/91)
This is a specific recommendation for the format of cyberconf3.
Its goal is to is to express a concrete suggestion and a vote
from a concerned cyberpunk.
It's based on the ideas from the similar postings of Farmer,
Benedikt, and Bricken. They have already made comments
on the "Two Cultures" we live in and the format of the
conference.
--------------------- Why we need to change --------------------
Timing is everything.
There does not exist a cyberspace yet of the sort we wish to build,
so unless we change our priorities to encourage builders as presenters
we will not attract them. The heavy weights (except for some current
VR people) in the applicable fields (AI, computer networks,
distributed systems, etc.) are not being featured as presenters.
If we are not the forum for the cyberspace engineers, then we can only
talk about what the furniture of cyberspace might be like and won't
be listened to during planning and early implementation
(the next decade or so).
------------------- Recommendation ----------------
Establish two sets of independent standards for presenters, with
roughly equal presentation time or perhaps more presentation time
for category 1 (muli-tracks are a similar proposal):
1 | alpha
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuts and bolts of cyberspace engi- | Humans *in* cyberspace. The experience
neering, e.g., distributed | of cyberspace, the politics and
systems, VR in cyberspace, etc.; | sociology of cyberspace. Who will
all the usual engineering and | pay for cyberspace and who will
scientific topics as set out in | control who gets into cyberspace?
the syllabus. | The philosophical problems of
"bottom up." | cyberspace; mind/body problem, etc.
| "top down."
|
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------------------------ Defense ---------------------------
"Timing is everything"
- Musashi Myamoto
Musashi was a humanist (perhaps a homicidal maniac by our standards)
who tried to learn as much as he could from every craft.
The explicit purpose of the recommendation is to gather implementors
around the banner of "cyberspace" in the next few years. This is a
new goal for the conference, but, if it is not met, there may be no
point in having cyberconf4. Benedikt's comment about timing is that
we may have to have biannual cyberconfs, because of the rate of engineering
development - facts are not being created fast enough.
"Cyberspace" may have to be renamed "playing around with data goggles on
several computers at once." and our chance as cyberspace implementors,
designers, pundits, flaneurs, etc., may be lost.
This is not a "humanist bashing" proposal. There are far more forums
for humanist comment in this area than there are forums for
cyberspace. I also can to speak of Eintein, Jung, Pynchon, Minsky,
and Merleau-Ponty in the same sentence. <<<< see ?
For all of us, it is a matter of sailing with the morning tide or
waiting for someone to invent the hovercraft.
The first question I asked at cyberconf1 was, "how do we make room in
cyberspace for those who like to fly like eagles and those who like
to analyze things with diamond sharp tools?"
--
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"Fall on your decks cyberpunks, we jacked in at Austin and you were
not there". All opinions expressed here are mine and not necessarily
those of Acer-Altos. Tim McFadden - Acer-Altos Computer Systems