Larry Latour

“The space between
The tears we cry
Is the laughter keeps us coming back for more”
Dave Matthews – The Space Between, copyright, 2001

Mr. Matthews was clearly singing a love song here.  I know that.  I’ve heard our own New Media faculty member Owen Smith talking about “the space between.”  I don’t think he was talking about love.  On second thought maybe he really was, albeit not in as direct a way as Ol’ Dave was.

I’ve heard Owen speaking about the space between a number of times, once as a panelist at a recent University of Maine Interdisciplinary Research Workshop, and another at the Intermedia Program Without Borders Exhibition.  In both cases he was talking about the uncomfortable but exhilarating space between two or more disciplines, a space that must be aggressively explored in order to solve real problems and play with real ideas.  I suppose you could also say that deep human relationships are always a bit uncomfortable and exhilarating, whether they be research collaborations or mating rituals.  You don’t always get them right the first time, and, as a fellow colleague recently said, “It’s not all beer and skittles.”

The idea of traditional disciplines embracing this space is not new.  As a Computer Scientist I’ve been influenced by a 1992 National Research Council study, Computing the Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science and Engineering, chaired by Professor Juris Hartmanis, a leader in the area of theoretical computer science.  That report strongly encouraged Computer Science and Engineering programs to “reflect a broader concept of the field,” by requiring all students to take a minor, encouraging dissertation research in non-traditional areas, and rewarding faculty for developing new curricula and research initiatives reflecting technological and cultural change.  And that was 20 years ago!

My own newly adopted field of New Media, the study of digital culture (the culturalization of digital media if you will) is by it’s very definition an interdisciplinary field.  We can’t truly understand New Media unless we understand and embrace ideas across the humanities, sciences, and engineering disciplines.  Members of my department are deeply into this interdisciplinary exploration, exploring cross-disciplinary thinking in the Intermedia Masters of Fine Arts program, collaboration in the humanities through the Digital Humanities initiative, the future of our society through the concepts of regenerative cultures, undergraduate thought through the digital Maine Journal, and digital storytelling through Documentary.

So what’s so hard about collaborative exploration?  True collaboration is far from simple cooperation.  One needs to understand someone else’s field, to walk in someone else’s shoes.  And as they say in the sports world, there’s no “I” in team.  Egos need to be left at the door, not an easy task in an ego-driven world where one is fighting for tenure, promotion, recognition from peers, and research dollars.  It’s also not easy when there are many possible approaches and dimensions to solving a problem, with not always a clear indication of the optimal path to the solution.

Dr. Paul Mayewski, director of the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, recently spoke as part of a collaborative research panel at the University.  He coordinates more than 80 faculty and students in the fields of climatology, glaciology, archaeology, ecology, chemistry, history and marine geology.    From a man who “has explored more regions of the Antarctic than anyone else in the world,”  the word is, make sure you pick collaborators who you like to work with, and make sure you are having fun.   I think he knows from whence he speaks.

I’m sure most of you have heard about TED, that wonderfully eclectic organization dedicated to exploring great ideas in sometimes not so neatly packaged 20 minute sound bites.  I recently attended TEDx Dirigo “Latitudes” in Portland, Maine, and I confess that the model was perfect for my SAD (Societal Attention Deficit) mind.

The Free Dictionary defines latitude as the “Freedom from normal restraints, limitations, or regulations” as in “They have been given a great deal of latitude in which to explore and spread their ideas.”  Why, because, as TED has been preaching for over 10 years now, these ideas really are worth spreading.

For 11 years now my wife Leslie and I have been running the DADGAD Coffeehouse, an Open Mic music/poetry event dedicated to community music and art.  While anyone can perform at the DADGAD, the performance quality is generally of a high calibur primarily because of the community responsibility that each member carries.  That was my impression of this regional TEDx incarnation of TED.  Taken as a whole the collection of talks and performances were wonderfully inspiring.

There were stories of cultural connection and disconnection, world inspired music and dance, examples of both art imitating life and life imitating art, inspirational projects, uproariously funny interludes, engineering marvels, plenty of good food and drink, and a very receptive packed house.  I was enthralled.

It was interesting to me that a large portion of the presenters and audience were young (or at least much younger than me), with a sense of wonder that was very catching to those of us who’ve been “around the block” more than a few times.  The false dichotomy of the old leading the young was shattered here.  In interacting with these wonderful speakers and very informed audience, I found it hard to tell one from the other, which, of course, is the way it should be.

We all will see much more of TED and our local TEDx Dirigo effort in the coming years.  As it grows, it will become less Portland-centric and inclusive of northern Mainers.  And we all will be an integral part of it.  Congratulations, TEDx Dirigo!

For some time now I’ve had this naive perspective that search engines were the next best thing since sliced bread.   Naive?  What could be bad about current search engines?  Without them we don’t have a hope of sorting through the otherwise intractable pile of data out there.  Without them we just don’t get it.  But what is it that we actually are getting?

I listened to a fascinating TED talk recently by Eli Pariser, “Beware of Online Filter Bubbles.” His premise is that search engines tailor search so conscientiously to your demographic information that what you end up with is information too tailored to your profile, a “filter bubble.”  If your politics are left leaning, you end up with left leaning information.  But this is good, right? Why would you want anything else?

My politics tend to lean a bit to the left.  I’m a Yankee fan in Red Sox country, a folk rocker who can’t deal with speaker stacks and decibel levels much out of the ordinary, and not at all a fan of sushi, Lost, and the Metropolitan Opera.  But it’s not only that I’ve differentiated myself from (and possibly alienated) a significant number of people.  I’ve also unknowingly restricted the results of my favorite search engine.

I do have my radio dial set to both left wing and right wing radio.  I love listening to Rush Limbaugh, not because I agree with his politics, but precisely because I disagree with him so completely.  In this case, my online search patterns are probably not helping me, subtly steering me away from surprising and unanticipated information about Limbaugh and Co., while also subtly steering me into my filter bubble.

In a somewhat related vein, sites like Netflix have this powerful movie search tool that says, “If you like this, then you’ll like that.”  Mark Little, in his online talk, “The Future of News,” (check the 15 minute mark) asks us to “challenge prejudice instead of encouraging it.” It’s interesting, by the way, that he uses the word prejudice.  We couldn’t possibly be prejudiced, could we?  Mr. Little would rather we use a search tool that “messes with your mind.”  In other words, he’d like a tool that says “If you like this, then you’re going to hate that.”  In other words, he’d like to provide tools that steer us clear of filter bubbles.

As if popular search engine “filter bubbles” are not bad enough, things could be worse.  Consider this story from 89.3 KPCC, Southern California Public Radio, “Religious Search Engines Yield Tailored Results.”  From the lead paragraph of that article:

“Some Christians, Jews, and Muslims are abandoning Google and Yahoo and turning to search engines like SeekFind, Jewogle and I’mHalal that yield results they believe are more likely to have God’s seal of approval.”

My God!  No pun intended!  Now that’s some interesting group of self-imposed filter bubbles.  But what are these people getting exactly?  I suppose porn sites are easy enough to filter out.  The same is probably true for R rated movies.  But what about the informed Jew who wants to read Al-Jezeera news?  Will that perspective be filtered out, or pushed down the selection list?

We can take this to the absurd, building tailored search engines for Windows fanatics, vegetarians, Soccer moms, anglophiles, baby boomers, etc…  But maybe we don’t need to.  General search engines are already favoring each of these groups.  As search engine algorithms become more precise, then those unhappy Christians, Jews, and Muslims won’t have to be concerned.  Their search engines will do the filtering for them.

As of July 1, 2011, I am the new chair of the New Media department.  I’m taking over for Prof. Owen Smith, who did a great job chairing New Media for a number of years, and Prof. Susan Groce, interim chair and holder of the torch during this transition.  This is a chance to get my feet wet a bit.  It’s literally a “Hello World” post, so I’ll leave that title on it.

I’ve always shied away from blogs, probably because I’m never been quite sure I have anything truly useful to say on a daily basis.  So this blog will not be updated on a daily basis.  It’ll be updated when I feel the urge to update it.  How’s that?

I’ve been a Computer Science Professor for 26 years in the University of Maine Computer Science Department, I’ve been teaching Computer Science related courses since 1977, and I’ve been involved with computing since 1971 (I was introduced to Fortran in College at the age of 20.  Do the math.)   As chair of New Media, it’s probably a good thing that you get a chance to see what I’m thinking, however dangerous that might be for you.

So where does New Media enter the picture for me?  I was involved with the first efforts to start a multi-media minor at the University of Maine as early as 1992, and I was with that committee until the major was created and christened “New Media.”  I confess that the name “New Media” didn’t resonate well, and in retrospect that was because I missed the relativist connotation of “New.” I can still remember thinking, “New? What do you mean New?  What’s New will soon be old and then New is Newer, etc., etc.”

To get a working handle on the “New” in “New Media,”  I’ve needed to ground it by asking “New with respect to..,” “Game changing with respect to..,” “ahead of the cultural wave,” and so on.   I’ve looked at how media related technology has affected regional, national, and global politics, social networks, the financial world, the arts, communication and journalism, scientific inquiry, health care – what have I forgotten?  This list is extensive, and the New Media department is directly in the middle of it all.

As a fellow liberal arts colleague likes to say, I’m a gear head.  I like it that way because it’s comfortable.  I can lose myself in the mechanics.  Here’s the problem.  New Media is by no means a comfortable discipline.   Staying ahead of the wave means thinking outside of the box, predicting the future on a mere hint of where we’re going, and then having the audacity to act on these predictions.  I’ve heard it said that New Media faculty are snake oil salesman.  I wouldn’t disagree, although what separates them from snake oil salesmen is that they actually have more than an ounce of ethics, or so we hope.

I interacted with New Media in a safe way, by riding the wave, not getting in front of it.  I taught a fairly intensive course for gear head New Media students exploring Director, Lingo, and the architecture of interactive, event driven systems.  There were very interesting topics to be explored – a behavioral, multi-process, multi-agent, actor based model of computation set within a funky framework of movies, scripts, sprites, and behaviors.  But this stuff was easy for me.  It’s just gear head mechanics.

In addition to this Director course, I also co-taught a New Media overview course, using a fairly traditional “multi-media” textbook.  Again, this seemed ambitious to me, but was ultimately a fairly safe exercise.  Ride the wave, and dump heaps of technology on the students.  It wasn’t about “New Media.”

Fast forward 10 or so years.  I was off in Computer Science working on software architecture and reuse, technology for K-12 education, and complex adaptive systems.  During that time I participated in a project with the MIT Media Lab Epistemology and Learning group and the Santa Fe Institute for Complexity to teach complex adaptive systems to high school teachers and students.  I also worked on a project with Seymour Papert to develop new programming paradigms for young programmers.  Actually the University of Maine ASAP New Media Lab helped me to develop web presence for some of this work.

New Media faculty member Mike Scott had mentioned to me a few times about the future possibility of me taking the New Media chair position.  I finally said, “Ok, let’s hear what you have to offer.”  One thing led to another, a bit of soul searching, personal exploration into New Media issues, a bit of poking around the department’s faculty and projects, and here I am.

I see challenges ahead for the department.  There’s a delicate balance that needs to be maintained in any academic department between theory and practice, and there’s a golden opportunity here to explore that balance in a department as young as New Media.  We’ve always said that Computer Science is a relatively young discipline, if only based on the fact that most of its seminal work has been done by researchers that are still alive (or, as we get a bit older,  recently passed on).  Unfortunately Computer Science is becoming mature enough that it is fracturing into a number of sub-disciplines; database systems, software architecture, programming languages, 2D and 3D graphics, operating systems, security, networking, algorithms, complexity, and artificial intelligence, to name just a few.  Undergraduate programs are top-heavy with very narrow domain courses that seem to need to be taught at all costs.  The price is high.  True innovation is left until the final Capstone experience, and once students get to that point a bit too much of their innovative spark has been squeezed out.

New Media on the other hand is still in its generalist phase.  True New Media researchers still study and reflect on all aspects of the New Media problem, just as Computer Scientists did in the ’50’s and ’60’s.  We can embrace this newness, developing synergies between faculty and students that we can’t as easily do in a Computer Science Department of similar size.  And that’s the challenge – intense collaboration.  The whole can be much greater than the sum of its parts.

I’d like to use this blog to explore ideas in New Media that are interesting to me.  By no means will I attempt to try to create a complete cover of the discipline.  I have little clue what that might entail.  But I have been stimulated by a number of topics that I’d like to share with you.  Maybe that’ll stimulate you to share your thoughts with me.  As Arlo Guthrie says,  and I’m liberally paraphrasing here, “if we can get 50 new people a day thinking about this stuff, it’ll be a movement.”