Immersive Video communications

I'm currently in the midst of a fascinating conference, IMMERSCOM 2009, for which Ruzena Bajcsy and I are co-chairs. It is being held -- the first conference ever in this new site -- in the new CITRIS building at U C Berkeley, a grand testament to interdisciplinary research into IT (information Technology) and its impact on society.

At the moment, four of the best programs in the world in IT and its Impact on Society (what I called ISIS at Stanford for my course in 1984-1989 to honor the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility and nurturer of the earth) are on the West Coast -- our own MediaX at Stanford, the CITS program at UC Santa Barbara, the STS program at Santa Clara University, and the CITRIS program, mostly at UC Berkeley with outposts at Merced, Santa Cruz and Davis. I co-initiated the UCSB program, and still sit on the Advisory Board. Over the past two weeks, the Chair of both the Santa Clara program (Bill Coleman, the "B" of BEA Systems) and Ruzena Bajcsy, the director of CITRIS, have reached out to propose joint activities amongst us.

It is high time... in my opinion... to consider the IMPACT of our technologies on the users and inhabitants of the world, rather than just focus on the Whizziness of the Technologies. Hard for us technologists to say, let alone do. But a few quick examples may make the point, which I will do in some subsequent posts.