Conference Announcement
FM 2 Speed Demons, Contemplative Places: The Digital Importance of Momentum and Meditation
5-6 August 2002, Aarhus, Denmark
Please distribute! Speed - it means a lot in this digital era and brings with it a lot of meanings. We expect speed to increase in transportation, in the ways that organisations change, in the arrival of new products, in the creation of services, in peak performance in sports, and everywhere else. Speed is considered by some as the ultimate parameter of competition translating into increased profit and productivity. Speed is felt - unconsciously or consciously - at some level by everyone. Speed affects the ways we define 'control', 'certainty', and 'predictability'. Still, there are many processes that cannot - yet - be accelerated much; a pregnancy, the growth of a tree, the creation of art, the healing of sorrow or trauma, and learning all take time.
The Internet and information technology have advanced the prominent role of speed, but does technology have meaning in non-accelerative processes? Should traditional oases of contemplation, such as libraries, churches, museums, and ateliers, ban or embrace the Internet? How can we organise knowledge mean when knowledge creation is in a flux? What cultural heritage will be left for future generations?
This conference will consider these and other related questions and examine them from different perspectives - artistic, scientific, historical, religious, and political. Speakers and participants are invited for two days to dwell in a discourse of value characterised by sustainability, fascination and wonder, and feeling.
The organisers of the conference are:
The Alexandra Institute, Center for New Ways of Working (http://nwow.alexandra.dk) conducts research and consulting in design and evaluation of the integration of mobile and pervasive ICT, workspace design, and knowledge management in project organised collaborative work organisations.
First Monday (http://firstmonday.org), is one of the most widely read peer-reviewed, Internet-only journals, dedicated to the Internet. Over one million papers were downloaded from First Monday's server in the year 2000, accessed by some 340,000 unique hosts using the Internet from 160 different countries. Published since May 1996, originally in Copenhagen and now in Chicago, First Monday has published 314 papers, written by 374 different authors, in its five year history, as well as reviews and interviews.
The State & University Library (http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk) is one of Denmark's national libraries and the main library of Aarhus University. A key target for the Library, which is 100 years old in 2002, is to optimize the use of information technology to provide users with ready and unimpeded access to all relevant types of information, whether held on paper or electronically. At the same time the preservation of cultural heritage is one of the Library's tasks. The Library is involved in a project to preserve Danish cultural heritage which exists on the Internet.
For more information, write to FM2@statsbiblioteket.dk
Posted 3 December 2001.
Copyright ©2001, First Monday