Abstract

New media technologies continue to change how intellec¬tual and artistic work is done, and how scholars and artists form communities.The Interne, has allowed for collabora¬tion across continents to become a matter of course. Because the stakes are so high, great care needs to be taken in the development of new technologies promoting creative intellectual communication. Care, however, should not inhibit experimentation. How might work be better disseminated? How might marginalized voices be ampli¬fied? What new kinds of inquiry and artistic expression will emerge from unorthodox methods of exchange? Will such exchanges fundamentally alter the disciplines of power in and out of the academy? Such questions are not only about how media technology will change our practice, they are about how practice will change our media tech¬nology. SPEED: Technology, Media, Society, is our contribu¬tion toward reflexively investigating these shifting terrains.

• Robert Nideffer, USA. Robert researches, teaches, and publishes in the areas of technology and culture, contemporary social theory, and electronic intermedia. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology, and an MFA in Computer Arts, and is a founding editor of _SPEED_, an online journal devoted to the study of tech­nology, media, and society. Presently, Robert works with the Alexandria Digital Library, where he is director of inter­face design, and teaches the Advanced Digital Arts course sequence at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has participated in a number of national and international online and offline exhibitions including Club Media at the Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy 97), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria 96), S1GGRAPH (New Orleans, Louisiana 96), Dirty Subways (Berlin, Germany 96), and FIVA Online (Montreal, Canada 96). Collaborative projects include Life in the Universe, with Stephen Hawking; Bodies INCorporated; History of Art and Computing (HAC); and Terminals: Considering the End, with Victoria Vesna. Solo projects include The Fine Art of Appropriation; Some Bits of My So-Called Life; analAT&T; Historic Insertions; and ASCII Alphabet.