12/30/12 4:40 PM InfluencerCon New York: Ed Keller | Chorus+Echo

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24 September '12
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Interview Ed Keller
The New School The Future of Security
Parsons Institute for Information Mapping
InfluencerCon New York: Ed
Keller
In anticipation to the upcoming InuencerCon New York on Wednesday October 3rd at
Fitography, we speak to director of the reboot of the Center of Transformative media and C+E
panelist Ed Keller about the post human, geopolitics and what we can glean of the future of
Architecture from William Gibson's classic Neuromancer.
How are you?I'm well! It sounds too predictable, but I'm overworked. Too many good projects!What
have you been working on recently?I'm directing the 'reboot' of the Center for Transformative Media
at The New School. This is great fun, I get to work with some incredible folks at Parsons/The New
School. We are running a series of great conferences this year, on subjects ranging from 'The Future of
Security', which we're co-producing with Parsons Institute for Information Mapping [PIIM]- to an event
on Science Fiction, Scenario planning, and Design, in the spring 2013. We are also developing internal
projects thinktanking policy around technology at the university, as well.
And I steal time from myself whenever possible to write a bit- mostly about the relationship
between emerging biotech, geopolitics, and the posthuman. That seems a bit sci to most people but I
see it as pretty basic, cutting edge thinking about where we'll be in a couple of decades.
Do you think that technology and location-aware services have altered the perception of the
architecture of cities?
Denitely. Accelerationism is, for better or worse, axiomatic for us, and we can barely perceive the
changing socio-technical horizons- evolution didn't prep us to fully grasp this change. Cities are really
super-organisms, and their evolution is increasingly unpredictable. It's like that line in William Gibson's
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12/30/12 4:40 PM InfluencerCon New York: Ed Keller | Chorus+Echo
Page 2 of 3 http://www.chorusandecho.com/collections/influencer-conference-2012/article/influencercon-new-york-ed-keller-_84901
classic cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer: "Night City was like a deranged experiment in social
Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward
button." Except it isn't in a novel- we're living in it.
How do you think this has effected social interactions within cities and spaces?
In so many ways... How about this: it has produced new connections between legal systems, normal
everyday interactions, surveillance, and the boundaries of institutions. New forms of micro-sovereignty
are being produced, and old paradigms erased without our even noticing until it is far too late. I
especially appreciate the work of writers like Charles Stross- his recent novel Rule 34 extrapolates
these kind of overlaps to a brilliant, absurd, and frighteningly believable end.
There is a question of whether this promotes or hampers cross-culturalism, do you believe
there are any signs to suggest either?
It depends on how one interprets cross-culturalism. I tend to take both the closeup view- that cross
cultural exchange is GOOD for people, for communities- and so, yes- this fast form of modernization
and meshwork communication DOES promote that. But I also take a macro-historical view and see that
there have been oscillations across history which- though slower than the ones we're living through
today- have increased social diversity, but only temporarily. And on the downside, the faster
communities form today, and change, communicate- - the faster destructive moments can propagate
through a system. If that system is global, then... the consequences can be disastrous. Cross
culturalism works for me when there's enough time for people to netune it to the basic needs of
everyday life- living, caring for each other, empathizing.
I'm not sure we have time for those adjustments any more- they take decades.
What do you envisage the major developments of the next 5-10 years in tech and architecture to
be?
Many architects and designers identify smart materials, or parametric design, as tools and
methods that will 'revolutionize' architecture. But, sadly, I think this misses the implications that the real
users of smart materials and parametric thinking on a massive scale will not be the designers, but other
populations.
Signicant changes in security are likely in the next ten years: because the acceleration of biotech and
the wildly growing 'maker culture' will overlap. The consequences for this on a daily level will be huge.
Legal boundaries will change. Our previous ideas of privacy will utterly vanish. As an example: in only
the past decade, we've realized that junk DNA is actually crucial; and we've realized that the human
microbiome is a crucial part of individual and collective health, growth and evolution. All our previous
paradigms of architecture were in large part oblivious to this idea that a single person could actually be
an ecosystem! This affects, for example, the design of hospitals; modes of food preparation; and our
paradigms of health and cleanliness in product design, use of chemicals, cleaning products... it is not
just an architectural problem, but scales up and down.
But most architects, urbanists, and designers continue to be oblivious to this fact- while out in the
world, communities of hackers [and I mean fabricators, kids working in maker spaces, etc.] are getting
closer and closer to nding overlap points between their projects coding software, coding hardware,
and coding social structures.
Pretty exciting times, but I very much hope the designers start to think in more sophisticated ways. I've
been trying to work on this in a series of design studios and seminars taught at Parsons, Columbia, and
SCIArc over the past ten years, focusing on Post Empire, and Post Planetary design. We'll see what
this generation of students manages to do over the next few years..I can only hope that they work
faster and are smarter than my generation!