Ideologies and Futures of the Internet

Keynote: Conrad Wolfram (uk)
Wolfram Alpha: Information, Computation and the New Era of Knowledge

Participants: Juliana Rotich (ke), Joy Ayo Tang (tw), Florian Rötzer (de)
Moderator: Mercedes Bunz (de)

The best way to predict the future, is to invent it!
Alan Key 1971

One of the potentials of the new media technologies is to change the ways in which knowledge is produced and communicated. The indetermination of how media are being used upon their introduction is a “utopian and political factor” (Mercedes Bunz).

The current technological, cultural and social quality of what we refer to as the Internet, demands that we rethink the most fundamental elements of our cultural identity, namely human communication, interaction and interrelation. We live in a time in which diverse cultures can virtually at any time enter into mutual exchange, dialogue or cooperation, something not possible without the present digital technologies. Having arrived in the technological future we are facing the responsibility to redefine its social and cultural application.

Which ideologies and notions of the future will emerge from the introduction, application, rearrangement and expansion of the Internet as "twin phenomenon of technology and society" (Dirk Baecker)?