iDMAa: Looking back over the past decade, what stands out to you as the most fundamental development in society and/or culture with regards to digital media/ digital art?

DB: The biggest shift over the last decade stems from the ways in which digital media have become mainstream. Mucking around with technology is no longer a practice left to geeks and hackers. Today, countless teens are creating and remixing media content for a wide variety of purposes, including self-expression and art. Meanwhile, through social media, people are connected to broader cohorts, which they are leveraging to spread media. Boundaries between creators, distributors, and curators are crumbling as people leverage the tools around them.

iDMAa: How has this specific change impacted your career? How would you describe the impact of digital media and art more broadly on your career trajectory? (e.g., what aspects of this field compel you to study it?)

DB: I was among the first generation of youth to grow up online. I was among the earliest adopters of many new social technologies, including most of the mainstream social media services. Although I experimented with hypertext as an art form in my early twenties and built a series of social visualizations in my earliest days of grad school, most of my career has been about understanding socio-technical practices in everyday life from a social science perspective. I wanted to understand how the technologies that I encountered so early on would shape and be shaped by everyday life. I became infatuated with challenging people’s assumptions and prejudices. Of course, unlike many of those who were early adopters, I never fetishized the new technologies and, thus, I didn’t develop utopian visions of a mediated society. Many of those who were digital zealots in the early days are now quite heartbroken. Digital tools didn’t create a new enlightenment. Rather, what we’ve found is that the digital has mirrored and magnified many aspects of society, including the good, bad, and ugly. I find this utterly fascinating.

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?

DB: Oh, there are many things that I wish I had explored more! I would love to dive deeper into machine learning, natural language processing, and social network analysis in order to do more large-scale structural analysis. I wish that I could spend more time analyzing the new types of Internet culture that have been emerging in recent years through sites like 4chan (http://www.4chan.org). I would also love to engage more deeply with hacker culture and understanding how that shifted over time. Those are probably my top three right now. The problem for me is one of time. I’m so curious about so many different cultural transformations, so many different practices, and so many different approaches to understanding socio-technical phenomena. But, until someone invents a time machine, I fear that I will not be able to do everything I’d like to do.

This leads me to a tangent that I think is important… I really, really, really wish students would understand the importance of developing deep technical knowledge. Although my Ph.D. leverages theories and methods primarily from anthropology, communication, and sociology, I’m forever indebted to my computer science degree. Without that foundational technical understanding, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Likewise, many of the amazing digital artists that I know regularly leverage their technical knowledge to develop magnificent art. I strongly believe that everyone—including social scientists and artists—need to develop basic computational literacy, if not deep technical knowledge in order to engage fully in the digital ecosystem. Too few people understand the boundaries and possibilities enabled by technology. Yet, it is that knowledge that makes innovation and research possible.

iDMAa: What aspects of digital life are you most excited to explore in the next ten years?

DB: I’m probably most excited about what will happen when bioinformatics (http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals. org) emerges more fully. Current DNA sequencing is pretty phenomenal, but what will happen when personal genomics is in everyone’s hands? I suspect that all sorts of fantastic innovations (and moral panics) will emerge from this space and I’m very curious to see what will happen. And I cannot even imagine how artists will engage, but I suspect it’ll be fun to see! That said, it’s probably not a field where I’ll have a lot to 15 contribute. At least not at the bioinformatics level. I suspect I’ll end up addressing the privacy issues and cultural fears. But I’m really excited about it!

iDMAa: Your past work could be described as an exploration of the ways in which digital culture operates differently across gender and generation, from digital infrastructures to the human instinct to engage interpersonally with one another. As a culture, what does the future hold for these intersecting areas of study?

DB: I’m a feminist and a liberal who believes that the world will be better off if we engage constructively with structural inequality rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, I get really frustrated with people who believe that “X New Phenomenon” will suddenly eradicate inequality and structural division from contemporary life. What excites me about new technologies is that it makes visible the structural divisions that exist. This terrifies people who easily blame the technology for creating said structural divisions. But it excites me because it creates a new vantage point from which we can understand how society is organized. I strongly believe that knowledge is necessary to create cultural change and, at the end of the day, that’s why I do what I do.

iDMAa: What do you think will be the most significant challenge for the next generation of artists, researchers, and global citizens with regards to digital life?

DB: Fear. I’m genuinely concerned that, as it becomes increasingly possible to connect to or “see” people from around the world, we will see a rise of hatred alongside new forms of tolerance. Much of this will come from economic inequality, but religiosity and cultural divisions will fuel it. I think that we need to collectively figure out how to combat fear if we’re going to realize some of the awe-inspiring potential of contemporary life.

iDMAa: Many cultural pundits argue that our digital culture has “cost us” everything from the ability to be fully social to the ability to focus on/fully ponder anything substantial for a sustained period of time. What do you think we have lost as a culture in the last ten years via digital media? What would you say we have gained?

DB: People fear change. And they fear anything associated with it. Personally, I’m more interested in how people’s use of technology sheds light on things that weren’t working. For example, teenagers’ mobility has been increasingly limited across generations because of adult fears. Teens have turned to technology to reclaim some space to socialize and hang out. That’s fascinating to me. You can look at this phenomenon and both blame and celebrate technology’s role in shaping teen sociality. Personally, I think that it helps us understand teens’ interests and desires, priorities and ingenuity.

This doesn’t mean that I’m immune to these shifts. I can get nostalgic with the best of them. For example, I love the smell of old books; my Kindle doesn’t make up for that. It’s easy to lament the disappearance of used book culture. Or to celebrate the ease with which people can get access to reading material at unprecedented levels. But it’s harder to recognize that “change” is not best understood by what’s gained and what’s lost. Everything changes over time. And yet people are obsessed with stabilizing culture. Letting go of this obsession is crucial.

iDMAa: What do you think is the “next frontier” with regards to digital social media such as Facebook and Twitter? What do you envision as the next key development, both technologically and culturally?

DB: It’s all about mobile (http://pewinternet.org/ topics/Mobile.aspx). What’s depressing to me about mobile is that it’s not the technology that’s the barrier, but rather the economics. Innovation is hardest when entrenched players are more deeply committed to maintaining status quo than creating an ecosystem in which new developments can unfold.

iDMAa: Looking back on the role that digital media and art have played in your own personal life, what has been the best and worst thing to change for you as an individual in your everyday life?

DB: I have the same answer for both: attention. Through social media, I’ve been able to take my work and make it very public. I’ve been able to attract a lot of attention for my ideas and my research. Because of this, I’ve been able to play a significant role in shaping many debates. As an activist, an advocate, and a researcher committed to impact, this has been a complete blessing. At the same time, the ever-present attention is also exhausting and, at times, really emotionally costly. I’ve had to face a lot of negative attention alongside the positive attention. It’s a lot harder to joke around on the Internet because people take everything I say so seriously. And I can’t just use social media to hang out with friends without someone making a big deal out of a throwaway comment I make. This would be the curse of it all. Yet, at least today, I’m very grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve had to be able to make a difference because of and through social media.