.
People
before
Technology
.
Interviewed
by Ken
Freed.
The "most
influencial woman on the Internet" talks about the
relationship between humanity and the
media.
Esther
Dyson is a natural born networker.
Raised amid the
Dyson family network of scientists and thinkers, since
the Seventies, Esther Dyson has been on her own
connecting people and ideas in original ways. Watched and
emulated as a model for women in media, Dyson's personal
vision for interactive media has influence far beyond the
scope of her daily work.
Dyson is president
and owner of EDventure
Holdings, a
small yet globally diversified information services
company based a few blocks from Washington Square in New
York City. EDventure invests in information-oriented
startup ventures in central and eastern Europe as well as
in the USA. EDventure conducts industry events like the
PC Forum and the High-Tech Forum. Since 1982, EDventure's
newsletter, Release 1.0, help readers see
underlying patterns behind industry trends, a theme
echoed in her book, Release 2.0.
Esther Dyson was
the controversial first interim chairperson of
ICANN,
the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,
a position she resigned. She was a member of Vice
President Al Gore's vital National Information
Infrastructure Advisory Council, where she focused on
privacy and security issues along with fostering support
for Project Kickstart, helping schools, libraries and
community centers hook up to the Internet.
Pree-ICANN, Dyson
also served as the chair of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation.
She additionally is associated with the Institute for
EastWest Studies, Global Business Network, Eurasia
Foundation, Santa Fe Institute, Poynter Institute For
Media Studies, the Russian Internet Technology Center
(she speaks fluent Russian), and a few small software
companies, chiefly in eastern Europe. In most cases, she
sits on the board of directors.
Upside
stated
that her "stature is based entirely on her ability to
influence others with her ideas rather than directly
control companies or huge amounts of capital."
After five years as
a Wall Street securities analyst, Dyson graduated from
Harvard in 1972 with a BA in economics, soon gaining
national attention as a reporter for Forbes
magazine. These days she's generally on the other end of
the interview, such as when we spoke by phone in January
1997 (two years before ICANN) while she prepared to leave
home yet again to use her mind and her voice to shape the
world.
.
Freed:
When you say the words, "interactive media," what
do you mean?
Dyson:
Frankly, I don't think it really matters how you define
it. You just need to speak clearly about whatever you are
talking about.
There are two
general visions of interactive media. The vision a lot of
people have is that they're just going to interact with
some computer, and I don't find that very exciting. The
vision I like is the one where a person interacts with
other people. A video game is interactive, in the first
sense, but to me, what's more interesting is if there are
other people there, so that the game becomes a
communication medium. That's my concept of
interactivity.
Freed:
Would you
include interactive TV as a form of interactive
media?
Dyson: I
wouldn't consider traditional "interactive television" to
be what I'm talking about although some people might well
do so. To me, Interactive TV is still just TV with more
user choices from a bunch of channels set up by whoever
is running the interactive TV system. The user doesn't
have any real feedback on the content, and the people
sending it to him don't care who he is or what he thinks,
other than wanting to know what he's watching so they can
sell stuff. You give me 500 channels to choose from, and
I choose. But I want to have some input on what's in
those 500 channels. In the end, I want it to be
decentralized. I want to be able to talk with other
people.
Freed:
Would you
say true interactive television needs to be
two-way?
Dyson:
Absolutely. If it's genuinely two-way TV, where they can
communicate with other people, I think that's great. If
it's two-way only to the extent they can tell the
television supplier what program they want to watch, I
don't consider that to be my version of interactive
media.
.
Power
of Interactivity
Freed:
With your
definition to stimulate lively conversation, do you think
the act of interacting via new media will alter our
individual consciousness of ourselves?
Dyson:
Absolutely. It affects your sense of yourself the way it
affects any other kind of interaction. It depends on
who's on the other end, of course. It's like saying, how
does interacting with other people affect you? It affects
you a lot, as well, but how it affects you depends very
much on the people you interact with.
Freed:
What
happens if you interact in an open system without limits
on access to other people?
Dyson: It
makes you feel more powerful. You feel more connected
with the broader world.
Freed:
Let's take
each of those in turn. Following an "if-then" line of
reasoning, if people feel more powerful, then
what?
Dyson: If
they feel more powerful, they have more self-esteem and
more incentive to take action about whatever it is they
care about. They no longer feel passive. My hope in a lot
of the things that I do is to help make people feel they
have an impact on the world around them, so they will get
more politically involved. I want them to feel they have
an investment in the society around them, so they
contribute to their community, whether it's getting
active in their children's school or even not littering.
It's feeling some sense of responsibility for what
happens around you. If you feel that nothing you do makes
any difference, then you're not going to care about
others or yourself.
Freed:
Sure, we
become truly careless. Would you agree with those who say
having control over an interactive screen may help evoke
a feeling that we also can control the rest of our
lives?
Dyson: I
don't get self-esteem from having power over a screen. I
get self-esteem from having a broad reach, from being
able to talk with other interesting people all over the
world. I'm smart enough, and I presume most other people
are smart enough, to feel that controlling a TV screen,
let's face it, really doesn't validate me very much as a
human being. Real self-esteem is based on some kind of
genuine accomplishment, and people are smart enough to
know what that is. Controlling a TV screen, I'm sorry, is
not a terrific
achievement.
.
Learning
Media
Freed:
What about
the accomplishments possible through distance
learning? How can interactive media best benefit
education?
Dyson: First
of all, interactive media can do great things for getting
children excited, having them learn how to read and write
so they can send things to one another, having them get
interested in communicating with other people. They
[the media] cannot replace teachers. If I had to
choose between getting a good teacher or else getting a
good computer, I'd pick the good teacher every time. I
think the quality of the people who are surrounding the
kids is ten times more important than the technology. But
if you have that already, then I think interactive media
are great, much better than having the kids sit passively
in front of the TV.
Freed:
Do you
think kids should be taught to be wary of interactive
media?
Dyson: To
the extent that kids should be taught to think
skeptically about everything, I think interactive media
are definitely one of the main things for them to think
skeptically about. Just like whenever you read something,
you want to ask, "Who wrote it? Is it true? Why did they
write it?" That's called intelligent reading. You need
intelligent interacting, as well.
Freed:
That would
mean expanding standard media literacy training in the
schools to include instruction about interactivity
itself, what I call "Deep Media Literacy." What about
interactive content inside the home? What do think about
parental controls like the V-chip?
Dyson: I
want to stress the importance of going beyond the V-chip
and having a rating system that is more decentralized,
that has different raters and different criteria so that
it's not "One size fits all." The V-chip is better than
censorship, but it's pretty close because the ratings are
centrally controlled. People are fully capable of making
their own choices -- not just of what to watch or
download, but whose judgment to trust, which rating
services to rely on. The V-chip doesn't allow the
plurality and multiplicity of viewpoints that I
support.
.
Global
Sense
Freed:
Let's come
back to the point you made about feeling more connected.
How do you think a greater awareness that we're all
interactive will influence the way we
behave?
Dyson: If
you feel more connected, you behave more responsibly. For
instance, I think everyone should have a right to
anonymity on the Internet, but anonymity generally is not
the best way for us to interact socially. It weakens our
sense of responsibility because it removes our sense of
accountability. There are reasons for anonymity, and they
are very good ones, on occasion, but it's not something I
would encourage as a rule.
Freed:
Is there
anything the media industry can do to promote a global
sense of responsible interactivity among the general
public?
Dyson:
Engage in it themselves [responsibility].
Everybody who's in the industry, ideally, should feel
some sense that, "Gee, people won't respect us if we
publish garbage." Unfortunately, a lot of people would
rather just get rich. I hope that people start to think
more about their kids in whatever it is they're
doing.
Most of all, they
can take time to think about these issues. It may sound
like a stupid answer, but just thinking about this stuff
really does make a difference. Honestly, it does. People
can think about it. Write about it. They can publish
columns like yours. I know it sounds simple, but that's
what it takes to start.
.
