Ars Electronica: The Public Square, Squared

Ars Electronica: The Public Square, Squared

The Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria Next month Isaac Mao and I are headed back to Linz, Austria for this year’s symposium, titled “The Public Square, Squared.” I’m thrilled with the list of speakers and can’t wait to learn from...
The Digital Suburbs

The Digital Suburbs

Today is the first day since leaving Los Angeles that I’ve been able to breathe. All the other mornings I was awoken by the sound of the alarm clock or the discomfort of jet lag. But not today: I woke slowly, ate breakfast slowly, read the paper leisurely,...
An Outsider's Guide to Linz

An Outsider's Guide to Linz

The festival energy has arrived to Linz. The Bruckernerhaus is full of monitors, art installations, and computers. The Ars Electronica Center is filling up with laptop-toting digital nomads from all over Europe and beyond. And the Twitter stream for #ars09 is starting...
Techno-utopianism and Techno-skepticism

Techno-utopianism and Techno-skepticism

We rented a scooter, my sister and I, and decided to ride the damn thing all the way from Candidasa on one side of Bali to Ubud, almost all the way on the other. On the way my lower back began to ache and, to my eternal frustration, my sister was determined to knock...
Ars Electronica

Ars Electronica

Greetings from Ars Electronica in Linz. I’ve got about a million emails to write, a couple presentations to give, and an opportunity to hang out with some friends that I only see once every … well, actually, at this point I see them more than my friends...