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Anthony Townsend on presence

My colleague Anthony Townsend recently gave a talk in Newcastle about mobility and presence:

[W]hat I want to talk about is not the future of mobility but rather, the future of presence. By “presence” what I mean, is that if movement or travel is a means - then presence is the end. And so I want to broaden the discussion of mobility to include technologies and practices of telecommunication - ways of being "present" at remote locations....

I keep looking at the map of my social network on Dopplr, a site that lets people share trips, and realizing that young people are defining their very identity through mobility, and network-enhanced and augmented mobility. We need to appreciate just how deeply embedded this high degree of personal mobility has become in our lives, and plan for lots of it rather than pretending we can socially engineer ourselves to stop. This is not just my group here of globe-trotting hipsters, its also the millions of Britons who'll holiday in Spain and Greece this year.

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26 October 2007 at 00:27 in Places / Spaces, Travel |

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What is the End of Cyberspace?

  • About the end of cyberspace

    Cyberspace is a "metaphor we live by," born two decades ago at the intersection of computers, networks, ideas, and experience. It has reflected our experiences with information technology, and also shaped the way we think about new technologies and the challenges they present. It had been a vivid and useful metaphor for decades; but in a rapidly-emerging world of mobile, always-on information devices (and eventually cybernetic implants, prosthetics, and swarm intelligence), the rules that define the relationship between information, places, and daily life are going to be rewritten. As the Internet becomes more pervasive-- as it moves off desktops and screen and becomes embedded in things, spaces, and minds-- cyberspace will disappear.

  • About this blog

    This blog is about what happens next. It's about the end of cyberspace, but more important, about what new possibilities will emerge as new technologies, interfaces, use practices, games, legal theory, regulation, and culture adjust-- and eventually dissolve-- the boundaries between the virtual and physical worlds.

  • About the author

    Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is an historian of science and futurist.

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