As technology and culture grow inseparable in the next millennium, what will be the role of communication?
Representatives from the academic and professional worlds will gather to address this question at Communicating Culture, an international conference taking place at the Getty Center in Los Angeles on Thursday and Friday.
"Although there are hundreds of conferences about information technology in the millennium, none have taken on the issue from a cultural standpoint," said James Bower, conference spokesman and head of institutional relations for the Getty Information Institute.
The conference will bring together representatives from culture, education, technology, industry, government, and entertainment to discuss common issues and try to reach some solutions. Intellectual property law participants will sit next to educators and sociologists, while linguists and technology developers discuss how best to represent languages on the Internet.
While any number of individual sectors may work together, Bower said that Communicating Culture will be "unique in bringing all of these sectors together around common issues."
The agenda is both broad and ambitious. It includes topics such as technology's global impact on culture, the potential of cultural resources online, cultural information exchange in the new economy.
William J. Ivey, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, will be among the speakers for the two-day series of speeches, moderated panels, and round-table discussions.
Other speakers include authors James Burke and Carlos Fuentes, futurist Peter Schwartz, World Bank vice president of special programs Ismail Serageldin, network pioneer Einar Stefferud, and Harriet Mayor Fulbright, executive director of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Similar conferences and meetings have brought together cyberpundits and technology executives to assess the impact of technology in the next millennium.
In several American cities, new media futurists have gathered to predict technological advances in the Next 20 years series. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs meet monthly at Round Zero to discuss technology markets, models and trends.
But while these forums hash out technology's impact on society, they do not focus on technology's influence upon cultural institutions.
Communicating Culture meetings and Q&As will be accessible by video teleconferencing to invited Los Angeles residents. The rest of the world can tune in through an online discussion that will take place on the Getty's Web site following the conference.
