iDMAa: Looking back over the last ten years, what are the things that stand out within these broad intersections?

PR: It is vividly apparent that the technologies of digital information and networked interactivity have made a significant and irreversible change in how we live, work, learn, and play. These technologies have altered how we human beings communicate, interact, socialize, and even think. The whole notion of organized society, from the individual to the group, has been recast in a digital framework. More soberly, I believe that these changes are having a profound impact on our perception of self, or identity, and group, or belonging. Geography, immediate familial ties, and physical experiences are used to define identity, both the view of oneself as well as the projection of that self outwardly to others. By expanding boundaries and allowing nearly instant connectivity to anyone and anywhere, both real and virtual, the digital is changing the melding process of the self. With equally strong and yet opposing forces, digital media makes it possible to simultaneously recast oneself within different contexts while rendering our ability to completely sever ourselves from previous projections nearly impossible. But such warning bells should not take away from the powerful positive impact that interactive networked technologies have on art and media in general. If art is the universal understanding of personal experiences, then the digitization of art enables the connecting of personal experiences in unprecedented accessible ways and amplifies their dissemination by highly democratic means.

One may take from the above that the idea that technology significantly alters human experience is somehow a new and unprecedented phenomenon. It is not new at all! Technologies have always changed human beings. I like the notion that we should not call ourselves homo sapiens, as we have proven not to be so wise, but rather we should refer to ourselves as homo technologicus, as a species that makes and uses technology. In a very real way, we humans create technology, which in turn changes us and reshapes us. We speak of many symbiotic relationships between humans and other species, and how we have helped each other survive, but the most potent of relationships, if we can call it that, has been between humans and technology, initially “machines,” and more recently machines and software. We create new technologies, which in turn give us the increased power and ability to create even newer and more powerful technologies. This has existed since we struck two flint stones together or used a stick of wood to make a hole in the ground. What is unprecedented, though, is the speed with which significant technological breakthroughs are now coming, or, should we say more accurately, coming at us. It used to be that several generations lived within a given technological era, where the stuff that we humans made and used persisted for several generations. Now, many important, and even transformative, technological advances appear within a single generation. So much so that even parents and children have significantly different familiarity with and dependencies on the technologies of the day, such as smart phones, tablets, videogame consoles, social networks, video and music platforms and sites, etc. If we accept the fact that the technology we make remakes us, then within the last ten years we have experienced an existence in which generations of different technological “ilk” are living different lives within the same timeframe.

I haven’t even yet mentioned how digital media have changed the perception of power, the conduct of political reform, the ability to crack challenging scientific problems by using the power of crowd sourcing, or the real notion of joint authorship made possible by digital collaboration. Perhaps I’ll get to these at a later point.

iDMAa: How do these changes affect your work?

PR: Work has clearly changed. Undoubtedly, many still labor in the fields or otherwise physically exert themselves to make life better for the rest of us. But for most, particularly in the more affluent nations, work has become inextricably connected to the digital. I find that a significant amount of my time is now taken by communication rather than by ideation, contemplation, or creation. Because it is so easy to communicate and because we humans are by our very nature communicators, we spend more and more time communicating. The inherent value within each communication is generally not as high. As a matter of fact, there seems to me to be an inverse relationship between volume and value. Just think of the mounds of email we receive every day that are of little significance, and which seem to have implicitly relieved us of the needs for consideration and reflection in our written communications. Alas, the art of letter writing has joined the list of endangered species! Another area of change affecting my work is the notion 9 of subject matter authority. The near instant connectivity and the breaking down of geographic barriers have widened the established circles of “expertise.” For many centuries, disciplines were built around clear hierarchies and processes for knowledge acquisition, advancement, and dissemination. Knowledge came to be measured by the possession of its instruments — tablets, scrolls, books, libraries, equipment, tools, and laboratories — and the process of passing on these instruments from each generation of masters to subsequent generations of students, journeymen, and apprentices — in schools, universities, ateliers, guilds, and conservatories. Digital and interactive network technologies have been changing all of these long established structures. First, what I like to call computer-aided thinking multiplied the effectiveness of the individual, but then, the addition of networked interactivity amplified the potential of the individual to the power of the larger numbers of collaborating crowds. Today, we are witnessing a surprisingly quiet and yet powerful examination of the roles of institutions of learning and the teaching professions. If educators are no longer the gatekeepers or the exclusive vessels of knowledge, and if institutions of learning are no longer the sole repositories of the annals of information, then what is the new role of the professoriate and the traditional campus?

iDMAa: What new technologies interest you, or are you excited about?

PR: The scaffolding power of technology, in general, and computing technologies, in particular, have enabled humans to solve many challenging problems and to push the boundaries of our existence. Tackling problems of ever increasing complexity has required developing and growing expertise, which has led us to a natural division of professions and work fields. Since the Socratic notion that “there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations,” humans have sought and valued mastery and expertise. When the field of knowledge was still relatively contained, it was not unusual for some brilliant human beings to make their mark in more than one field. With the establishment of the educational models of the industrial era, students were made to focus on an area of specialization, and naturally super-specialization became the ultimate pursuit. When problems crossed disciplinary boundaries, teams of individual experts were formed to tackle these, but as individual disciplines grew, they spliced into multiple sub-disciplines, and with every iteration, the distances between disciplines grew. This state of affairs was reasonable and even encouraged since problems were becoming more challenging, requiring ever increasing focus and deeper specialization. Since the languages of the various disciplines diverged so much, it became increasingly difficult for experts in different fields to leverage each other’s expertise, and so experts tended to work within their own individual domains. However, computing technology became so powerful and so cheap that it could act as an intermediary between experts by, in essence, capturing the expertise in one field and putting it at the disposal of experts in another field who could “drive” the vehicle without necessarily needing to know how to build it. Just as a teenager doesn’t need to know how a complex car is built to be able to accomplish the task of transporting herself to the movie theater, a gifted composer can create a catchy piece without knowing how to play every single instrument in that piece. The digital platform in this case provides a common intermediary to articulate the various instruments, which themselves have been encapsulated by different fields of expertise that the otherwise gifted composer could not possible master, or for that matter should be expected to.

The problems that we are and will be faced with in the twenty-first century are highly cross-disciplinary and multidimensional, requiring the expertise of many. Since fields are so wide and deep, and no one has the opportunity anymore to become an expert in more than one or two fields, we cannot rely on the individual DaVinci who has mastered several disparate domains, but rather on the DaVinci team whose members wield and can bring to bear the sum, or even the product, of the disciplines that the problem at hand requires. Interactive network technology is precisely that medium which can enable the team to leverage the expertise of its individuals, not at the lowest common denominator of their collective understanding of each other’s expertise, but rather at the apex of the knowledge, knowhow, and abilities of each individual expert. So suddenly, instead of dividing and conquering large complex problems, we solve them by assembling and teaming up against them. As I mentioned above, the digital amplifies the power of the individual to the power of the team. But now imagine that the membership of this team encompasses those experts who are present as well as those who have been previously encapsulated. Since the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century reside at the intersections of the sciences of nano-, bio-, info-, and neuro-technology, we will need experts who can meld the atom, gene, byte, and neuron, and consequently we will need educational processes that produce the types of DaVinci teams of experts that we have just discussed.

Cheap computational power has made it possible to experiment endlessly, to play “what-ifs,” to search for solutions, and effectively to accelerate innovation through such rapid prototyping. This same computational power has opened up the realm of the visual, so that experimentation can easily encompass the sense of seeing, and in doing so, enable us to manipulate parameters and constraints to see what happens. And we do so in a safe and controllable environment, just as, say, in a flight simulator. No wonder video games are as powerful as they are at holding our attention. They engross us in a process of personal discovery, challenging us to meet new situations and to resolve them with skills acquired in previous iterations. This scaffolding of thinking and muscle memory is not a mere exercise in mimicry. Far from it, I firmly believe that experiences gained in such a way actually grow our mind’s ability to assess and solve new and more complex problems. We have an understanding of this symbiotic relationship between practice and growth when it comes to sports or skill-based fields. We know that the tennis player does not merely hold a racket, but rather that the racket becomes an extension of the player’s body being masterfully manipulated by the brain no differently than we might use utensils to eat our meal. Surgeons don’t think about the instruments they hold. Rather they use those instruments as natural extensions of their being to solve the problem at hand. We need only try to remember the first few times we drove a car to realize how progressive experimentation leads to mastery, which is when we subsume a subject matter into our very self.

It should not be surprising to us that the visual has such power on human learning. We’ve all heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I like to extrapolate this idiom by saying that a video is worth a thousand pictures, if nothing else because it takes that many and more to make a video. I further like to extrapolate that an interactive video or simulation is worth a thousand videos because we’re able to explore and make decisions that alter the outcomes within the simulated world. In a very real way, then, an interactive simulation is worth a billion words. This is not to mean that we don’t need words anymore, far from it! It simply means that we’re able to engage more of ourselves when we use more of our senses, i.e., more channels to our brain as well as senses that engage our brain in patterns that seem to be more closely aligned with our brain’s process of deciphering, codifying, and retaining experiences and knowledge.

iDMAa: What do you believe the future holds for digital arts or media education?

PR: Technology has always undergirded the arts, from painting, to sculpting, to performing. Artists use instruments to create artifacts and experiences to share as well as to scaffold their own development. But these instruments and media to date have been real and containing, and at their limits, tethering the artist’s imagination to the physical and the practical. Digitization, on the other hand, can be what low gravity is to physical movement, freeing the art student to explore unconstrained by real-world physics and the art master to create beyond the bounds of materiality.

I also believe that the challenges that we face and the powerful technologies of interactivity and computing will move us (hopefully!) to value equally both sides of our brain. Our educational systems have forced us to choose between the right and the left sides of our brain and even place differential value on one versus the other as if a human being could exist with only one side! This has led to an educational system that favors one side over the other to the point of allowing, even choosing, to let the “lesser” side atrophy. As I alluded to previously, the problems that we face in the twenty-first century are highly crossdisciplinary and complex, making it imperative that we approach problem solving with our whole brain, not just half of it. I think this will have a positive impact on art and media, in that we will no longer think about art as merely an “ennobling” pursuit or something we do to entertain ourselves, but rather as an integral part of formulating the right questions and bringing “artistic means” to solving them. As an example, the engineering approach has always placed value on sketching and drawing as an important first step to casting a problem. Computational technologies that make visual immersion possible will only heighten that perceived value, and it is not a wild prediction to propose that future engineers will also be 11 “technical artists” in the sense that they will be adept at constructing and using visual and artistic interactive media as part of their problem solving arsenal. This and intersections of other disciplines with art should serve to broaden both the appreciation for the arts and their study. I have been saying for quite some time now that I am not for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), but rather for STEAM, where the arts take a central and equal place in our pursuit to educate future generations—a potentially controversial position for an engineering educator!

iDMAa: What—through technological shifts— have we lost as a culture in the last ten years?

PR: One of the most powerful benefits of low-cost computing power and storage has been customization, as in the tailoring of search results to the interests of the person doing the searching. This widespread capability has permeated well beyond searching and has led to the inversion of previously accepted norms of information exchange. The notion of broadcasting or pushing ideas, stories, advertisements, and the like, has been replaced with the more individual-centric notion of pulling or customization of experiences. This sea change did not lead to the loss of shared communal experiences, but rather to the broadening and redefinition of what a community represents. While geography and institutional memberships (e.g., family, school, work) tended to define community, the Internet made it possible to form communities of common interest beyond the boundaries of geography or even language, nationality, etc. Yes, there is no arguing the fact that nowadays individuals can build bridges with faraway likeminded persons because of the Internet. But perhaps a more powerful component to this newfound capability is in locating or finding these likeminded individuals and the ease with which these communities can be built and maintained, and this is entirely due to large-scale searchable databases. Currently, this customization allows people in the sales and services fields to tailor their interactions with us based on our likes and dislikes. But ultimately, customization can lead to our ability to acquire artifacts that have been made according to our choices or needs, whether it is the components of a computer, the color of a car, or even the formulation of a medicine. The cost of ownership has always been driven down by standardization, but cheaper and cheaper automation, computing, and manufacturing is making customization affordable to increasingly larger segments of society.

The above is some of what we have gained, and it is good. However, the ease of customization also has the unintended consequence of what I like to call the loss of serendipity, and ultimately the potential for isolation and intellectual self-centeredness. A perfect example is the ease with which we are able to select what news we wish to read or what movies we would like to see. With the act of perusing a newspaper, magazine, or the racks of a library or bookstore, came the chance of encountering topics which we might not have sought or even been aware of. Listening or reading commentaries that are counter to our beliefs or life experiences could lead us to greater understanding or appreciation of others, or even simply strengthening those beliefs by testing them. Sharing the same space with others could lead to the start of special and lifelong relationships. This serendipity needs freedom of movement and association, thrives on taking chances, and requires a healthy lack of certitude. All of these can get lost if one hears, listens, and associates with the already familiar and customary. To grow is to venture beyond the safe shores of our personal boundaries.

iDMAa: Looking back on your own professional experience with digital culture, is there something you wish you had learned more about/explored/been a part of?

PR: I was fortunate to be on an academic path that allowed me to become proficient in computational sciences while also acquiring the mindsets associated with the practice of engineering and with engineering systems thinking. I have also been fortunate to gain a deep appreciation for literature, music, and the arts. I would do that all over again. What I wish I knew more about is in the arenas of cognitive psychology and neurosciences. The brain is the next exciting frontier! Someone said that we know more about the bottom of the oceans than we know about our own brain, and that’s probably true. My experiences in founding The Guildhall at SMU and designing a curriculum that crosses the disciplines of art, design, and technology have given me a keen interest in the potential of intersecting neurons and bytes — in other words, the melding of the fields of interactive networked technology and cognitive sciences.

iDMAa: What will the next generations of students bring to our digital culture?

PR: This generation brings courage, a “no-fear” attitude, and the sense of unbridled exploration! Students bring a mindset that is comfortable with iterative trial and error, with learning through multiple failings, and with systems thinking. All of these are beneficial attributes, but it is also a generation that has less patience for detail, a low tolerance for the “hard subjects,” and a predisposition for “chunking,” or bite-sized problem solving. It is a generation that is attuned to reliance on crowd sourcing and thinking en masse. There seems to be this undercurrent of not worrying about learning for ourselves because someone we know or have access to can give us the answer. This comfort level with not knowing or not fully commanding a subject matter is alarming. Ultimately, I fear that such attitudes could lead to an abdication of one’s responsibility for one’s own knowledge to the collective. It then falls on the shoulders of the next generation of parents and educators to strive to keep the love of individual knowledge alive and its pursuit a worthy personal goal.

iDMAa: How will people be interacting with search and knowledge exploration in ten years? Will we still recognize it?

PR: One of the evolutions that I am most excited about is in the area of human computer interaction (HCI). Since the industrial revolution, technologists have been guilty of shoving technology down the throat of society, without feeling the responsibility of trying to anticipate, much less understand, the unintended consequences of their particular technology. The acceleration of the introduction of technology into society has made it even more difficult for individuals to assimilate every new invention that comes along. This is certainly true in computing technologies: ever faster computers, larger storage, smaller footprints, more mobility, and the ever more complex software to take advantage of all that increased power. The most vexing nature of this “innovation for the sake of innovating” approach is how humans have been forced to adapt to the machines as opposed to the other way around. It seems like since we humans were more adaptable and intelligent than those computing platforms that were supposed to be making our lives and toil easier, we were the ones expected to learn the machine’s language and adapt to the means of communicating with it. This has led to high levels of complexity in hardware and software, invariably leaving behind those who could not adapt, in essence creating a chasm between those who are “with it” and those who aren’t.

Now, technology has always required a learning curve and the gaining of some level of proficiency for proper utilization. But, as we discussed earlier, when subsequent waves of the new, improved, and ever more complicated come at us with faster frequencies, even the hardiest of technophiles eventually run out of breath. If the vocation of the technologist compels them to continually tweak, evolve, and modify, is it a given that the non-technologist majority must just keep up? Did anyone ever ask us if we really needed a multi-code supercomputer to type a letter? What then are we to make of this inevitable accelerating wheel of technological innovation, particularly in the interactive network technology sphere? The answer in my mind rests within the problem itself. Given that interactive and computing technologies have advanced so much beyond the needs of the average human being, the technologist can, even must, use this vast power to make the machine learn the human being as opposed to the other way around. HCI gives us the means by which machine complexity can be controlled by natural human faculties. We only have to think of how trivial the basic controls of a car are – steering wheel, shifter, two pedals – and yet, as we mentioned earlier, a teenager can control a beastly power plant on wheels with chemicals, mechanisms, electricity, computers, software, and sensors, all keeping track of millions of details per second and still has the bandwidth to warn us that another car is in our blind 13 spot or that we might want to refuel in 35 miles or so, give or take 5 miles! And yes, you can even now speak to the car and tell it to call home or to play your favorite song. Now, that’s putting the power of technology at the disposal of human beings. Of course, we already have many such examples, including voice recognition, gesturebased control, predictive search, exoskeletal prosthesis, and the like. The trend will only continue, and as we now know, will even accelerate well beyond our capacity to predict. The news is good though: we have gone past the threshold needed to make machines that can adapt to humans rather than the other way around.

iDMAa: Most valuable lesson learned from the past decade?

PR: On the negative side, I have come to realize that if you let the pessimists, the shortsighted, the tentative, and the lazy catch up with you, they’ll bring your efforts and the fruits of your labor down to the level of their aspirations, vision, industriousness, and abilities. The corollary lesson is that the cost of trying to do something is not much more than actually doing it, but the rewards are far more satisfying. However, institutions seem to spend more money and energy on deciding not to do something than to actually do what stretches them.

The other equally valuable but positive lesson that I have learned is what makes a team and what makes it successful. A team is not simply a group of experts; that’s just the surface of it. While expertise is absolutely necessary, members of an effective team have to also share a common vision, culture, and purpose; have a sense of belonging and relevance; and be able to extract a sense of self-worth from their belonging to the team. Such a team of experts that can in addition engage in clear and collegial communications and make efficient use of time and resources can execute with exquisite effectiveness and be highly productive.

Article Authors

Peter E. Raad

Peter E. Raad (Ph.D., MS, and MSME, University of Tennessee, Knoxville) holds the Linda Wertheimer Hart Professorship and is a full professor of mechanical engineering at Southern Methodist University. In 1999 he founded the Linda and Mitch Hart eCenter, a university-wide center dedicated to helping business and society address the intended and unintended consequences of interactive network technologies with an emphasis on the Internet. In 2002, he founded The Guildhall at SMU, a novel, industry/university cross-disciplinary graduate program designed to educate and train future practitioners and innovators in the fast-growing field of digital game development. He served as director of the Hart eCenter and executive director of The Guildhall at SMU until May 2012. Previously, he served as the associate dean of the SMU School of Engineering. Prof. Raad has received several awards including the Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award four times, the Outstanding Undergraduate Faculty Award twice, the 1999–2000 ASME North Texas Section Engineer of the Year, the 2006 Harvey Rosten Award for Excellence in Electronic Thermal Analysis, and Next-Gen’s Top 25 Most Influential People in the Video Gaming Industry in 2007. Dr. Raad has published over 50 journal articles, and presented over 100 conference and invited talks. He holds U.S. and international patents in thermal metrology and computational characterization of multi-scale integrated circuits. He has received over $2.5 million in funding support for his research in tsunami mitigation and in metrology of submicron electronics. In 2006, he founded TMX Scientific to innovate and commercialize deep submicron thermal measurement systems and ultra-fast thermal computational engines. He is a fellow of ASME and a senior member of IEEE.