benedikt@vitruvius.ar.utexas.edu (Michael Benedikt) (05/15/91)
Open letter, in reply to Randy Farmer's review of
The Second International Conference on Cyberspace
Dear Randy,
Out of town most of last week, I just read (and re-read) your piece about
the Santa Cruz Conference. For the most part I think it is spot on, but I
would like to offer my own perspective.
First let me say that I share(d) your frustration, not only because I have
(for better or worse) relatively well constructed models of parts of
cyberspace worked out now, some technical know-how, and some real
opportunities to build them, and not only because I did/could/would not
present these models at the Conference for fear of the appearance of
program committee nepotism, but because I too was dismayed--though not
surprised--at the gap between the software engineers (SEs) and the
"literary critics" (LCs), as you call them. (This leaves out, of course, the
architects, artists, film makers/students, communications theorists,
mathematicians, CIS managers, etc, that are neither SCs or LCs. I, for
example, actually move in both worlds and understood over half, I think, of
what both the SEs and the LCs said!)
I guess where I disagree a little with your observations, in so far as they
generalize to <all> participants, is that I thought the clash of worlds was
often also a creative one. I heard as many bewildered SEs somehow
pleased that they had heard and thought something other than SE talk and
SE problems, and as many LCs realizing that they needed more technical
expertise and a more constructive mind-set if they wanted to continue to
contribute. Things could have gotten ugly but didn't. Things could have
gotten self-congratulatory and clubby but didn't. For the scene of a major
mix of paradigms I felt a lot of "this hurts good" vibes rather than
outright rejection, although clearly there was indeed a little of the latter.
As for your suggestions, again, I think they are well made and well taken.
As a program committee member this year, I should tell you that every
submission was judged and scored out of 25 points on five criteria by each
of the six people on the committee. My own score sheet reflected far
more representation by VR and on-line system builders, CS theorists,
programmers, and creative artists than literary, political and
anthropological thinkers; but then, I assume that, counted with the others'
scoring, my judgments were fairly moderated. Also, you must realize that
making judgments from abstracts is a risky business. The alternative is
to ask for complete papers, as does SIGGRAPH etc. I believe that in few
years, when the volume of detailed and ongoing cyberspace projects picks
up and when the cyberspace conference series converts its newness into
earned prestige, it will become both possible and necessary to choose
presentations this way.
Judging the abstracts, one had either to choose between insightful
overview but no real research or creative work, and real
research/creation but in a fragment--say some scientific visualization,
simulation, or a multimedia project. Finding presentations that would
contain elements of both, that were in some sense "large," was difficult.
By way of remedy, for me, the breakdown of papers should not be along SE
vs. LC lines but along general/specific lines. For me, the very act of
identifying "fragments"-- projects that were perhaps not chiefly
motivated by the notion of cyberspace as such--and collecting them for a
conference ("re-troping them" as the LCs would say, "re-contextualizing"
them <as> elements of cyberspace as the rest of us would say) is in the
project of cyberspace itself.
Now, perhaps you would disagree, but from where I sit I don't see very
much progress in the field on a year to year basis. Not in networking, not
in VR, not in games, graphics, CSCW, CAD, or on-line life. This is part of
my frustration. Implementation and progress is always slower than
desire and the imagination, and for cyberspace, inherently visionary, this
is particularly true. Of course, an increasingly short-term-market-driven
computer industry in the U.S., much of it on the ropes today, does not help.
Nor do our universitys' shrinking research budgets. The hype around VR,
which is what most people think cyberspace is, has gotten old, and the
appetite generated for <new> virtual experiences and applications is
considerable. Given this, constructing conferences about cyberspace may
well entail admitting visions, criticism (literary and otherwise),
fragments, re- iterations, as well as reports from the "trenches"...for a
little while yet.
One alternative, I have sometimes thought, would be for the conference to
go biannual. Then there would be sure to be technological as well as
theoretical and critical <advances> on each occasion. But I think this
scheme will let things get cold. It will also fail in its mission to provide
and hold open a cross-disciplinary, face-to-face forum that is grwoing
steadily, and filling with new faces.
C. P. Snow identified the "two cultures" of the humanities and the sciences
over 30 years ago. Seperated, they are both alive and well, of course, but
earlier in the century the split was not clear or vindictive, as Don Byrd
pointed out in his review of the Santa Cruz conference on this newsgroup a
week or so ago. The absolutely amazing and infinitely valuable thing about
the topic of cyberspace, and the conference series that bears the name, is
the way in which the two cultures have finally to meet each other again
over a very large idea, one large enough to shape the electronic future of
our society. This, surely, is as it should be.
I hope this begins the kind of dialog you call for, Randy. And I hope you
will participate in the planning of the Montreal Conference.
Best wishes,
Michael
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