[Nettime-nl] interview met caroline nevejan

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

(weliswaar in het engels maar toch relevant voor de nederlandstalige 
nettimelijst, dacht ik. prettige feestdagen! geert)

The Politics of Presence Research
Interview with Caroline Nevejan
By Geert Lovink

The Dutch cultural producer Caroline Nevejan is known for her work at 
the Amsterdam pop temple Paradiso, as a co-founder of the Waag centre 
for new media culture and in her manager role at HvA, the university 
for professional education. Currently she is a member of the Dutch 
Council for Culture and the Arts, which advises the Minister of 
Culture. She was about to leave the Hogeschool van Amsterdam in 2004, 
intended to write her PhD, when I arrived there. The dissertation is 
ready now. In April 2007 Caroline Nevejan got her degree at the 
University of Amsterdam. The title is Presence and the Design of Trust 
and can be freely downloaded at http://www.being-here.net. The 
interview below was done to reflect on her PhD research.

I must have ran into Caroline around 1980, during the turbulent riot 
days of the Amsterdam squatters movement. Late 1981 we were both part 
of the group that kicked off the bluf! weekly, bringing together 
undogmatic factions within the new social movements of the time. For a 
few months we were both in the editorial team. A few years later 
Caroline reappeared as the events producer of Paradiso. It was there, 
in August 1989, that we worked together during The Galactic Hacker 
Party, Amsterdam’s first computer hacker’s convention. I was there in 
my capacity of ‘illegal scientist’, as a member of the Adilkno group 
and Mediamatic editor, writing reports and manifestos.  A year later I 
participated again in an event of a similar visionary magnitude, the 
Seropositive Ball, which connected HIV-AIDS activists on a global 
level. Out of these grew the first Next Five Minutes ‘tactical media’ 
festival in January 1993.

Key element of these events was the spatial arrangement of the 
interaction between the Paradiso audience and people elsewhere. In 
conjunction with De Balie, the cultural centre next door, an Amsterdam 
style was developed in which a lot of emphasis was put to create an 
‘aesthetics of public debating’. Discussion was more than a 
disagreement between key actors. It had theatrical elements in which 
the producer took up the role of director. It was in this context that 
new communication technology such as telephone, fax, video 
conferencing, bulletin board systems and the Internet started to play a 
role. Why limit a dialogue to those who were able to gather in a 
particular time and space when you can also involve others remotely?

‘Presence and the Design of Trust’ is certainly an innovative and 
non-conventional piece of research. Let’s call it singular. Caroline 
decided to take both The Galactic Hacker Party and Seropositive Ball as 
her case studies and came up with valuable insights that contribute to 
the yet unwritten history of Amsterdam’s new media culture. The central 
dynamic she studied is the one between natural and mediated presence. 
Technology has altered our sense of presence. The question that 
Caroline Nevejan poses is how networked events can produce ‘thinking 
actors’ that play a role in building up ‘crucial networks’. Overcoming 
the usual binaries between real and virtual is one, but how can we 
build ‘communities of practice’ that really make a difference, beyond 
techno-fetishism and political dogmatism? How can we overcome the 
tendency to produce noise and tension on the line and develop a sense 
what ‘vital information’ is?

GL: You have a broad, conceptual understanding of ‘design’. Where does 
this idea come from? People know Dutch design and architecture, but 
that’s perhaps not what you refer to. Design, in your understanding, 
seems to be a procedure, a set of rules, not unlike project management, 
which is a practice, one that is not by definition related to 
aesthetics.

CN: Coming from Holland, the ‘man-made’ land where everything is 
designed and which has a remarkable design tradition of which the 
modern aesthetics have influenced worldwide perception of design, has 
definitely influenced my perception. I know the environment is ‘made’, 
I know aesthetics matter, I know different designs operate at different 
scales and need different approaches to resources, project management, 
distribution and protection. My personal understanding of design is 
also deeply influenced by social movements, by critical science and by 
the specific Amsterdam evolving digital culture at the end of the 
1980’s and early nineties, which was a remarkable inspirational 
environment to be part of.

It was not till I entered into the Doors of Perception community that I 
started to refer to my own practices in terms of design. In the Doors 
of Perception large global network people have been discussing and 
presenting best and worst practices in the developing networked society 
since 1993: scientists, engineers, artists, graphical designers, 
interaction designers, philosophers, businessman, inventors, computer 
wizards and others coming from art, grass root organizations as well as 
from small companies and large multinational corporations. All were 
concerned to find good and profitable ways to proceed in this unknown 
and fast changing landscape. Already in the mid nineties the discourse 
in this conference changed and started to imply that designing ‘stuff’ 
implied designing behavior and experiences of others. It became 
apparent from practices in business as well as social organizations 
that design is a way of looking at problems and solving them.

In the fast changing landscape design methodologies appeared to be 
capable of dealing with a large variety of input in a fast output 
process. People realized that such an approach could be very useful, 
also outside of the classical design realms. The evolving networked and 
information society and the elaborate digitalization of many processes 
had a huge impact on basic structures of many organizations and 
businesses. They needed the skills from the design world to be able to 
deal with the complexities they were facing. In my view, today, design 
has become a paradigm in itself. Because it emphasizes the ‘making of 
things’ people from different disciplines can contribute and 
collaborate. The ‘thing’ to be designed brings perspective to the 
collaboration. In design a variety of languages and media is used 
(writing, drawing, sketching, photo’s and film etc.) to make mock ups, 
demo’s, storyboards, scheme’s etc, and the use of such ‘boundary 
objects’ facilitates the conversation between people who usually have a 
hard time understanding each other. Nevertheless I argue that I think 
that ‘design as research’ or ‘deep design’ as Peter Lunenfeld 
formulated it, has not yet developed the rigor and knowledge base it 
needs to be able to deal with the complex issues it faces.

I propose to distinguish between 2D design for space (space) and 3D 
design for function (space and action), 4D design for dramaturgy 
(space, time and action) and 5D design for orchestration (space, time, 
action, relations between people). When focusing on dimensions, each of 
these kinds of design has its own traditions that it can build on. In 
the different arts and sciences basic issues around the structure of 
time and space, actions and relations between people have been studied 
and experiences have been gathered that can be used.

Originally ‘design’ referred to 2D design for space as in layout and to 
3D design for function (space and action) for creating objects and 
architectures of all kinds. This design is inspired by the classical 
‘design is art’ tradition. 4D design for dramaturgy (space, time and 
action) designs sequences of action. It is used to create events, 
educational modules, computer applications or the creation of games. 
This 4D design can build upon the rich traditions of theatre, dance, 
music, film, architecture and certain sports. Over the last 10 years we 
have seen the rise of 5D design for the orchestration of processes 
(space, time, action and the relation between people). One is today 
much more aware how infrastructures, frameworks and platforms influence 
how people interact. Designing user platforms, intranets and 
communities online have led to using design methodologies for designing 
new business processes, learning ecologies and human communities. 
Sometimes one can wonder whether to call this design. I do when design 
methodologies are used to tackle complexities. Traditions to look into 
are the arts in which improvisation and synchronization between the 
artists plays a role of significance as well as into the social and 
organizational sciences. So, yes, I guess I do have a conceptual 
understanding of design. I do argue, though, that aesthetics matter.

GL: How did you encounter the concept of ‘trust’? Isn’t it a concept of 
business consultants who saw that their clients had a security problem 
with their computer networks? How did this concept get introduced in 
cultural theory and design?

CN: The moment I was introduced to the existence of Internet 
immediately raised the issue of trust. In the 1980’s networks like 
Peacenet and Greennet provided us with news, which could travel beyond 
the censorship rules from countries like South Africa. So the Internet 
provided ways to get around not to be trusted formal news reports and 
it generated ‘trust’ because the witnesses themselves could speak up 
and testify unedited. When I started to make shows in Paradiso I 
collaborated with hackers and through them I found out how the 
technology itself is easily manipulated, how any code can be broken and 
how the business propaganda of delivering ‘safe’ environments was (and 
is) a fairy tale. At the time I could not have formulated it in these 
terms, but in hindsight I can see that we were dealing with 
multidimensional designs and were struggling how all these related and 
contextualized each other and in this process trust appeared to be 
fundamental to be able to understand what was happening.

Trust is a fuzzy concept and at the same time it is crucial in any 
interaction. Everyone who makes things that other people use faces 
issues of trust. In collaborations, agreements and contracts, in 
delivering and using services, as well as in every street, issues like 
safety, liability, believability and trustworthiness profoundly 
influence the dynamics of interaction. Even though little has been 
written about ‘trust’ as such in the design world, since people realize 
that they are modeling behavior of others, trust surfaces as an issue.

The possibility of using multiple identities on the Internet has made 
more and more people aware about for example the basic trust people 
exchange when they meet. I find the design of trust most complex in 5D 
designs. These often deal with power relationships in which the 
establishment of trust can easily be misused. I do not think such 
misuse only happens in business, I have seen it in many places. 
Especially when larger groups of people start to express themselves and 
start to take responsibility, as is facilitated by developments like 
the Internet, the old fashioned forms of control is not good enough 
anymore. With new ways of generating knowledge and new ways of 
interacting, new management styles are necessary. Such styles focus on 
orchestration, on delegating responsibility (instead of tasks) and 
facilitate people to contribute and meet other people with other skills 
and knowledge as well. The way ‘trust’ and its dynamics are shaped, 
shapes how people will relate and this defines possible success.

GL: I read your study as a reflection on the culture of organizing 
public debates that existed in Amsterdam. From early on you have been 
looking for alternative formats and ways to ’stage’ controversies in a 
different manner, for instance through a banal detail like the 
rearrangement of seats. Do you think that we reflect enough on this new 
culture that has been created in Amsterdam? It is great to read about 
the Galactic Hacker Party and the Zero Positive Ball. However, you also 
get the feeling that we do not take ourselves serious enough. Could we 
talk about a ’school’ in Amsterdam that deals with alternative designs 
of public debates? There is a lot of knowledge floating around amongst 
event an organizer that is not written down. You’re not a historian, 
and neither am I. How do you see that we could better ‘capture’ the 
overflow of innovative, unique practices that happen in this city? How 
can this fertile place of experimentation gain more influence, 
worldwide?

CN: When traveling I realize again and again that the Amsterdam 
cultural context in which I grew up and to which I could contribute to, 
was very special. It would be interesting to analyze this from a design 
perspective: to distinct the historical, the structural and the 
self-organizational elements for example. What created this amazing 
challenging and yet safe playground at the time? Such an analysis also 
needs to take into account how it changed early this century. How 
community centers were shut and kids were back in the streets, how 
people retreated in their own realm, how bureaucracy and administration 
dehumanized, how the homo scene is suddenly in defense again, how the 
local media scene more or less disappeared. Most of all I wonder 
whether the current generation of young people in Amsterdam experiences 
this freedom and richness we participated in at the time.

I do agree with you that in the seventies, eighties up to the mid 
nineties there was a very special culture here, which was 
internationally recognized and which maybe you could even label as what 
I would propose to formulate as The Amsterdam School for Public 
Research. One of the characteristics of this Amsterdam culture was and 
maybe still is that things are made and tried out in public spaces and 
had a research character. People from different disciplines 
participated as well as artists, whose involvement has been crucial for 
success. By making things in public place, ‘the public’ influences what 
happens. And as a result things that are made and happenings inform the 
larger political and social debates. Public Research, a notion we 
introduced when we founded the Waag Society in 1994, has not been much 
elaborated very much upon since. There is a lot of not-formulated 
experience and insights in how to make Public Research happen, here in 
Amsterdam as well as in other places (like the Sarai initiative in 
India for example). I wonder, though, whether this is a question of 
‘capturing’. I guess cultures fertilize new cultures when there is a 
chance to experience. Such an analysis should inform new designs that 
can operate in the new current contexts.

Your question also seems to suggest that the ‘Amsterdam approach’ 
should gain more influence worldwide. Even though I tend to be 
skeptical about such ‘cultural transmissions’, I realized through the 
many responses on the Al Jazeerah broadcasting of “Couscous and Cola”, 
a television series produced by my (own) sister, in which a group of 
migrant teenagers from the Amsterdam-West suburbs freely discusses 
their lives, that the ‘openness’ that till today characterizes Dutch 
society, resonates with young people around the globe. To be able and 
to be allowed to ask questions and listen to each other is fundamental 
to Public Research. The challenge as well as the safety needs to be 
provided though.

Personally I have taken the challenge to take the things I learned into 
a different professional arena in 1999, namely to higher professional 
education: to design a sense of performance in education, to switch the 
attention from designing ‘education’ to designing ‘learning 
environments’, to orchestrate public research in such large 
organizations. The methodologies we developed in the emerging Amsterdam 
digital culture were rather useful in that context. I also witnessed 
that the battle for power is much stronger which pointed out how 
fragile such processes can be.

Because of the Web 2.0 developments, and the knowledge management 
problems that organizations have, more study into Public Research makes 
a lot of sense. James Surowicky points out that diversity and 
independence are prerequisites for any ‘wisdom of crowds’. Scale makes 
all the difference and as my research strongly suggests, a balance 
between mediated, witnessed and natural presence has to be found. Such 
research will address a larger movement in society: how do we create 
and communicate experience and collaborate at a time of 
post-industrialization, hypermodernity and mass-individualization? I 
like your suggestion to start this analysis with a focus on the 
re-arranging of seats. How the seats are positioned, I can testify and 
you as well, makes a huge difference in what will happen next.

GL: Over the years certain concepts become alive. As ‘memes’ they start 
to travel and become meaningful for a group of people and then are 
taken outside of that context, appealing to people you had no idea 
about. This happened to ‘tactical television’ that we both worked on 
with a group of artists and activists in 1992. This turned out to be 
the first Next Five Minutes festival. Three others followed in 1996, 
1999 and 2003. These days there are academic anthologies and lectures 
series about ‘tactical media’. In the book you haven’t emphasized this 
event. Can you nonetheless say something about your role?

CN: It started in my perception with a conversation between David 
Garcia and me at my kitchen table. We were discussing how the current 
language to talk about media did not pay tribute to the things we liked 
and thought were good. It was not anymore about ‘left or right’, or 
about ‘independent versus dominant’. We decided to explore this more 
and we invited a few people, like you and Bas Raaijmakers, Geke van 
Dijk, Raul Marroquin and Menno Grootveld who were all concerned with 
media, to share this thinking. In my memory we met three or four nights 
and had long conversations and came up with the notion of tactical 
television, which emphasized the cracks in the media-landscape as well 
as the position of the media-maker.

I was the producer and ‘concept-protector/communicator’ of the first 
N5M. Each of you had a program-line and I was safeguarding that it 
became one program as well as that the developed thinking would 
communicate. You did Eastern Europe I remember distinctly. Bas en Geke 
did the southern hemisphere with Patrice Riemens as well. David invited 
artists from all over. Tjebbe van Tijen made the archive. It was a very 
rich program and in the end the atmosphere from the event was nearly 
utopian. For many participants it was very reassuring to see how people 
using media in smart ways could make interventions. Remember that the 
strategic freeze of the cold was over and so much potential seemed to 
blossom.

At the end of the first N5M I had a clash with David Garcia, which in 
hindsight was a very interesting one. He wanted authorship over the 
concept of N5M, being an artist this was very important for him because 
the building of reputation is crucial for new funding. I, being the 
producer and responsible for something that was a collective endeavour, 
said that this was out of question. It is a whole group who made it 
happen and in case of a community activity one does not claim 
authorship, one is happy enough to participate. The issue of reputation 
building through ownership of authorship versus the building of 
reputation through participation is till today an issue of tremendous 
importance.

When we started to produce the second N5M I ran into a serious 
disagreement with the editorial group. In 1996 the Internet was 
conquering the world and all you guys wanted to pursue net-critique. 
You and Pit Schulz had just started the nettime list and this was an 
opportunity to meet and explore more. The result was a program full of 
white young ambitious boys, yet it has been my pride to always make 
programs in which diversity is the fundament and also I thought that 
the scope and original agenda of the N5M was not pursued enough. 
Together with Patrice Riemens I wrote the article “Vital information 
for social survival” to make my point (which was published in the 
Economic Times of India). In the end I withdrew from the editorial 
group. I supported the second N5M from out Paradiso, but it was not ‘my 
program’ anymore. It is great to see though how the notion of tactical 
television has traveled. It makes sense because the notion of tactical 
media is way to understand certain positions in today’s complex 
media-landscapes. Also, many of the nettime-posters have become 
Professors of New Media and Digital Culture, who teach between them 
thousands of students all over.

GL: A concept that you emphasized, time and again, is ‘vital 
information’. It appealed to me, and stayed with me, ever since it was 
used in the Zero Positive Ball event in 1990. Can you say something 
more about it? Has it been used in other contexts?

CN: Vital information has been an important notion for me since the 
Zero Positive Ball indeed. That is where it surfaced for me. The strive 
for survival and well-being, the conatus as Spinoza called it, makes 
people take hurdles they thought they never would. When this strive is 
triggered, original energy of people becomes available and what happens 
next will make sense. The dialogues and the connections that are made, 
will truly influence people’s lives. When mediated presence offers 
‘vital information’ the bridge between natural and mediated presence 
becomes very smooth. I have found that in any situation one can find 
the vital information. It always taps into this deeper layer of 
survival and therefore it also taps into the sense of ethics people 
feel. One communicates around the current status quo, so to say, to be 
able to create, if at all needed, changes in this status quo. It takes 
an effort to find ‘vital information’, one has to ask questions and 
challenge the current status quo.

I only know a few people who work with the concept of vital 
information. As you know I am not a regular writer, and after the first 
article with Patrice Riemens, I only discussed the concept again in my 
dissertation. Nevertheless I have worked with many people over the 
years and in those collaborations ‘vital information’ always has played 
a role of significance.

GL: You have somehow copy-pasted the NGO rhetoric around ‘human rights’ 
in your work. I wonder why. As you know there is a whole debate about 
how useful the ‘rights’ discourse is in the new media and activist 
context, and how, potentially, disempowering it can be to claim 
‘rights’. It’s such a passive and institutionalized activity. 
Nonetheless, you have chosen the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
as a central document in your study. One would expect boring government 
or U.N. documents to do. Is there maybe a personal reason why this 
document plays such an important role?

CN: It is interesting that you ask about a personal reason for this 
choice. It was not a personal reason at first. Since the moment I 
realized that ‘the sense of presence’ can be described as ‘the sense 
for survival and well-being’ to formulate it shortly, I was looking for 
a way to make trust operational in which this sense for survival would 
resonate. I was aware of the many critique’s that are formulated about 
the UDHR, but realized that in the light of destruction during World 
War II the UDHR is formulated (which is mentioned in the preamble). In 
the light of the unimaginable destruction that happened all ideological 
or religious reasoning became obsolete. Also the fact that it is a 
secular document and that it has played this vital role in 
international diplomacy for over 50 years, defines its significance. 
And I felt with the current developments in which there seems to be no 
limit as to how far we are digitizing people en mediating our presence 
around the globe, such a strong reference point is necessary.

Up to this day, when being involved in working with refugees, ‘illegal’ 
people and other political situations, the UDHR has been a declaration 
that one can refer to and on which basis one can go to local, national 
and international courts, to point out that in certain situations human 
dignity was denied and that therefore such situations have to be 
challenged and changed. If I would look for an even more personal 
reason than I guess the UDHR resonates in its fundament most with 
motherhood for me. Children have rights that are not to be neglected 
nor denied by any religion or political system. This is something I 
feel very strong about.

GL: I noticed that in your references and experiences that you 
describe, you easily switch between the world of global corporations, 
human rights activists and social movements. Is the context that you 
work in really without frictions? You do not often mention that there 
are conflicts of interests. I suppose you are not suggesting that we 
all work on the same project. In the past people would have asked: 
which side are you on?

CN: Already in the past the question: “which side are you on?” has 
produced more than enough atrocities, exclusions and humiliations that 
were not beneficial nor necessary as well as that they were 
counterproductive to ‘the cause’. I strongly believe that people can be 
‘good’ human beings in all realms of society, even if they have 
different interests, as long as they are willing to enter into 
dialogues and conversations with others when appropriate. You notice 
indeed that I try to get around the ‘being good’ and the ‘being bad’. I 
think that does not actually exist, as a scientist definitely not, but 
also in my personal life and in my professional life I find this 
distinction not useful at all. However, in my dissertation and up to 
this day, I have not entered into any thought or dialogue about the 
character and value of intentions, which is part of this debate and 
which I also expect to have consequences for this debate.

I focused on how things and processes can be good and bad in certain 
contexts from the perspective of supporting survival and well-being. 
The feeling of something being good or pleasant is an important 
indicator of where well being is to be found (I here take the 
perspective of Professor Antonio Damasio). To transpose such senses and 
feelings into judgments about other human beings in general I find 
medieval reasoning. That is why our judicial systems as well as our 
scientific structures are important. Logic and reasoning sanction the 
action and ideas of people in certain contexts, which is how we can 
protect ourselves from each other’s misconceptions and destructive 
actions.

Nevertheless I do agree that when certain interests color certain 
actions and perceptions this should be mentioned. In my perception I 
show awareness of this. Are there any specific paragraphs where you 
miss the mentioning of certain interests? The introduction of the 
‘crucial network’ specifically deals with these conflicts of interest. 
As you can read, I argue that the presence of the ‘crucial network’ the 
gathered conflict of interests, generates an environment in which trust 
can be found. Power becomes transparent in such a case and therefore 
the power status quo can be challenged as well.

GL: There is an example we can discuss here. Lee Felsenstein, who is 
featured in your book as one of the early hackers, has recently made 
some critical remarks about Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child project 
(http://fonly.typepad.com/fonlyblog/2007/06/one_computer_pe.html). How 
would you, using your vocabulary of Presence and the Design of Trust, 
look into this controversy? Your PhD supervisor, Cees Hamelink, also 
has strong views on this ‘ICT for Development’ field.

CN: For a start I like to argue that we are not dealing with a 
controversy here. If anything we are observing a debate between two 
groups of Americans who both claim to know how to change the world. I 
guess it is great if they make cheaper computers, do more research into 
learning and I am always in favor of people who put children on the 
agenda. However, both do not seem to be inspired nor hindered by 
knowledge of things that are happening already, nor do they seem to be 
aware of the social and economic circumstances of the ‘developing 
world’. Even IT multinationals like Intel, Motorola, Philips, HP, Nokia 
and others have realized at the beginning of this century that while 
the northern markets are being saturated with their products, people in 
the southern hemisphere of whom most earn less than 1 dollar a day, can 
not afford their products. This realization is one of the reasons that 
they are shifting from product to service design.

To push for a hundred dollar computer per child excludes most of the 
children in our world, also many children in the United States are too 
poor to be able to afford such a machine. It is clear to me that this 
initiative generates lots of research funding for the Americans 
involved and has a potential business perspective worth billions of 
dollars. Where this initiative may become dangerous, in the sense that 
it will prevent other people to make their own things, is where they 
start developing infrastructure with American for profit companies for 
all regions of the world. The material infrastructures of the Internet 
in the end define who has access to what. Especially the market of 
building infrastructures is, as Cees Hamelink has been pointing out for 
over 20 years, a new form of colonialism, cultural imperialism or 
whatever you want to call it. The ownership and responsibilities that 
come with this ownership (and its potential misuse and if not being 
affordable), should be of great concern worldwide. Even in Amsterdam we 
do not own our own information infrastructure anymore.

Concerning Lee’s proposal for a computer per village, I can only point 
to things that are already happening. In 1990’s Sam Pitroda, and Indian 
entrepreneur collaborating with the Indian government, gathered over 
300 engineering students one summer to design India’s telephone system. 
The idea was that one phone per village makes all the difference. And 
so it appears to be. By 2002 every village, so is claimed, now has an 
STD phone in its local shop. The shop owner provides the service of 
making phone calls to the villagers who pay a few cents per call and 
the shopkeeper has a raise in income because of exploiting the phone. 
Jiva, one of the many social entrepreneurs in India, has started to put 
a computer with every phone to develop telemedicine as well as distant 
learning. Infrastructure matters, but even more so do new models for 
learning. Since 1999 Professor Sugata Mitra, at the time connected to 
NIIT and now connected to Newcastle University, has been exploring the 
idea of children who learn through self organization. His by now famous 
Hole in the Wall project has advanced a lot since. In his last 
experiment he asked the question whether Tamil speaking children could 
learn bio-technology in English on their own and he found that they had 
acquired 30% of the material he had left them alone with for three 
months (speaking English with a Texan accent they had acquired from one 
of the sites!). He comes to the conclusion that groups of children, 
when left alone with a computer hooked up to the Internet, actually 
learn a lot. For this to happen the computer should be located in a 
public space so that children can discuss what they see and can enter 
into competition with each other as well as learn by copying each 
other.

You ask me to connect this to my research into Presence and the Design 
of Trust. I guess the market of infrastructures should become 
transparent for it to generate trust. However, we people will use 
anything that works and a worldwide judicial system that will respect 
privacy and promote freedom of expression is not in place. Much 
government policymaking is way behind technological developments.

Sugata Mitra’s work on the self organization for learning I find 
extremely interesting, also from the viewpoint of my research. He 
emphasizes that children who gather in natural witnessed presence, 
because they enter into conversation with each other, have unexpected 
high learning curves. They make ‘sense’ of the mediated chaos they 
encounter in the first place and within days are capable of operating 
this chaos and learn from it. From his research one could conclude that 
mediated presence generates the highest learning curves when it is 
perceived in natural witnessed presence. A similar experience we had 
with projects like Demi Dubbel from the Waag, and also my experiences 
at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam point into this direction.

GL: If we become culturally specific, much of the Amsterdam ‘making 
things happen’ that you and I are part of can be reduced to the 
exchange between the Netherlands and the United States. In both case 
studies, the hackers event and the AIDS conference, US-American 
activists, and their concepts and reference systems, are playing a key 
role. Obviously, continental Europe had a lot to catch up with in 
1989-1990, particularly if we look at cyber culture. If we switch to 
the current Web 2.0 craze not much has changed. Americans are flown in 
to do their spiel, both in the academic, commercial and cultural 
contexts. Just look at the large creative industries event, held here 
in Amsterdam so far in 2006 and 2007 called Picnic. The cultural flow 
seems one-sided. Have you seen much change over the past twenty years 
in the way that the USA and Europe are interacting?

CN: In my perception, being a witness of USA policy since the 
seventies, the USA has rudely intervened all over the world and does 
not hesitate to offend the international community nor does it hesitate 
to promote their culture with all means available. This has not much 
has changed. In the telecommunications sector the battle about 
infrastructure is not over. But also, because the US government has 
shown such disrespect for others, the USA underground is also profound, 
which again is an inspiration for many of us. The USA is and has been 
over the last 50 years ‘the’ major player in information and 
communication technology as well as in the cultures (music, film, 
internet, TV) it produced. In 1989 when we organized the Galactic 
Hacker Party (before the Berlin wall broke down) the UNESCO declaration 
in which a “more-balanced flow of information” was on the agenda. 
However, since the cold war was over, ‘wild capitalism’ has conquered 
the planet as you know, but such dynamics also produce its counter 
forces and for example the fact that whole regions of the Internet are 
not English anymore will have impact. In the shows we organized in 
Amsterdam Americans were never our only guests. And of course this 
takes a lot of effort, with many European countries it is not easy to 
interact and with other parts of the world it is even harder. Even with 
the Internet being so omni-present today, it is often complex to 
identify the right people. Networks of trust are crucial. I remember 
distinctly that because you had spent time early nineties in Eastern 
Europe we had regularly had East-European guests. Because you were the 
‘social interface’ as you are till today for many of us to many others 
we do not know in other areas of the world. I do argue that current 
event-organizers do not take enough trouble to make sure they present a 
diverse program and reach out to diverse publics as well. In my 
dissertation I describe how in Paradiso a constant effort is taken to 
prevent the rise of mono-cultures and include new or not known or 
not-staged people again and again. I think the taking of such effort is 
a prerequisite for any good program that wants to make a difference.

GL: At the end of your dissertation you have proposed your own 
methodology, and coined it YUPTA. It describes a design method in which 
the relation between presence and trust takes centre stage. Could you 
explain it to us?

YUTPA is the acronym for “being with You in Unity of Time, Place and 
Action”. I argue that if we want to understand the relation between 
presence and trust there are four dimensions that deeply influence this 
relationship: here/not-here, now/not-now, do/not do and you/not-you. 
The dimensions place and time define what synchronicity is possible and 
what feedback possibilities there are. I also realized that the 
perspective of possible action, to be able to intervene in what happens 
next, influences the responsibility we can take (and not retreat in a 
moral distance) and therefore influences what trust we can establish in 
a certain situation. And this is influenced also deeply by the relation 
we have to other human beings. When we are in relation with someone 
(family, friends, colleagues, neighbors) we understand what happens in 
the context of this relation. people we do not know and with whom we 
have no connection we merely treat as information to which different 
laws of causality apply.

In the model I developed the four dimensions create 16 possible spaces 
for social interaction. I argue that each of these spaces for social 
interaction have specific possibilities for certain kinds of 
trust/distrust and delegations of trust. When designing communication 
processes a much more deliberate design of such processes is possible. 
By identifying what kind of trust is necessary, you can also decide 
what medium and format to use to be able to establish such a kind of 
trust. I find through giving lectures and working with people that 
especially in 5D design trajectories YUTPA seems to be a valuable 
contribution.

GL: In terms of education, so much seems focused on short-term skills, 
in particular when we look at new media. There is a great fear amongst 
higher education officials to miss the connection with the labour 
market. However, there are places, such as the Design Academy in 
Eindhoven and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, where they do focus 
on concept development. Is it possible to teach conceptual design on a 
broad graduate level, to the thousands of students who are now into new 
media design? Or do we really have to limit this to a small group of 
more experienced students that work in post-graduate labs?

CN: I definitely think you can teach conceptual design to children, 
grown ups of all ages and also to the thousands of students who are now 
studying new media design. The issue though is ‘attention’. To be 
involved in conceptual design requires reflection. To be introduced to 
the skill of being able to use different ways of reflection requires 
personal attention. I think more emphasis is needed on the development 
of solid analytical skills and ways of doing research. Also I found 
that a lot of the students I worked with were not used to openly 
reflect and needed to find the confidence to do this. One can learn 
analytical skills by seeing it done, especially when the subject is 
intriguing. In my twenties for example I did this fantastic minor in 
film in which we saw many unusual films as well as great analytical 
talks about them. We were with a few hundred students attending this 
course. But we also had breakout groups that were guided by students 
who had already done this course before and that made a huge 
difference. I realize that education had to deal with huge budget cuts 
in the last decades, which triggered the need for more a 
self-organizational design of education. Nevertheless I have been 
amazed in my years of higher professional education at the Hogeschool 
van Amsterdam, how the concept of students teaching other students is 
used so little in the orchestration of learning environments. Today 
students are mostly left alone in project based groups, but do not have 
the advantage of being guided by students who are ahead of them. So I 
would argue that it is a question of orchestration in the learning 
environments to make sure that the skill to reflect can be developed 
and conceptual design can become a ground from where you actually 
design ‘stuff’. I also think it is very necessary to do this because 
otherwise, as you point out, the fear to miss out the connection with 
the workforces of the future will appear to be correct.

GL: You have not chosen for a classic academic career. Instead, you 
have been active as a cultural producer, consultant and manager. Over 
the past years you sat down and reflected upon your practice. This is 
in accordance with the general trend in the Anglo-Saxon countries to 
have more ‘practice-based’ PhDs. Now that you’re done, how do you look 
at the academic rituals? Universities seem to stick to their own people 
who have  followed the ordinary career path as required by the sitting 
professors. New media, design and activism, it all doesn’t seem to fit 
very well within the university system. If students do not chose for a 
life-long career in their late twenties, they usually can’t enter 
academia at a later stage, so it seems. What are the implications of 
this for society at large?

CN: I perceive the same trend as you do although it is not everywhere 
as rigid as the Dutch situation seems to be. In the United Kingdom and 
the USA for example I see that professional PhD’s are valued very much 
and academic careers can consist of diverse practices. But overall, 
yes, I see that the social sciences strongly defend their position. It 
is as if academia has become a class that one has ‘to be born into’. I 
find this very alienating since social sciences can really make a 
difference, which they are more and more loosing out to do. Today, 
interestingly enough, mostly in business schools I find the original 
thinking and the development of new social practices to be valued and 
supported.

To answer your question more in depth I turn to the concept of the 
‘double hermeneutic’ as it is formulated by Anthony Giddens. Social 
sciences retrieve their concepts from society, add and produce new 
concepts that in turn produce new practices which are then analyzed 
which produce new concepts which produce new realities and so on. This 
makes the social sciences very complex, as Cees Hamelink points out 
again and again. Only when I found out how much my practice has been 
influenced by the concepts I gathered, of which quite essential ones 
come from social sciences, I realized the implications of this double 
hermeneutic in the social sciences. When the exchange between academia 
and society is diminished to academic publishing and the influx of 
other kinds of knowledge and output is discarded of, it will be lesser 
and lesser equipped to be able to deal with today’s complexities and 
for that reason slowly fade out in the end. In professional social 
science’s realms (in business, in large organizations as well as in 
individual practices) you can clearly see that many more methodologies 
for creating engaging reflexivity have emerged. Interestingly it are 
the business schools and some anthropology departments that have 
devoted attention to such new models. It seems that academia is still 
trying to show the natural sciences that it matters by focusing on 
questions that can be measured in the manner of natural sciences. Such 
positivist research can be very useful provided it is contextualized in 
larger frameworks of thinking. Especially in the thinking I perceive a 
reluctance to connect to innovative and original theoretical and 
professional practices. Instead of claiming specific methodologies for 
its own domain, it adapts to a system which in the end, I suspect, will 
appear to be very counterproductive to its own goals.

Another way of analyzing the current situation is by focusing on the 
current social science’s research paradigm. As Thomas Kuhn elaborated 
so eloquently, science develops steps and gaps between paradigms, which 
make previous paradigms obsolete. Possibly the social sciences are 
stuck in a paradigm that deals with social realities as we could 
perceive them in the 1980’s. The current huge changes because of 
technological development as well as the scale of globalization that we 
have to deal with everyday, are mind blowing. Instead of taking the 
lead in these developments it seems that the social sciences have 
retreated in a world as we knew it, adding ‘some new wine in old bags’ 
and, what I object most to, demanding obedience from its students in 
the first place. The result is a mediocre thinking, which does not 
inspire social practices at all, since it does not take into account 
the need for innovation as it happens in education, in health, in 
business, in government etc. I also object to the fact that the few 
people, who dare to develop concepts that deal with these issues, are 
marginalized up to the point of exclusion.

So you can ask me why interact with this community? I guess that social 
sciences are dear to me, that I value the scientific methodologies very 
much and that they can help to understand and to invent the new ways of 
social interacting that we witness and practice everyday. I wish that 
the research establishment of today would open up and start to play its 
role of significance again because there is a body of knowledge to be 
developed that is badly needed by many. The current fragmented and 
distributed development of social practices would greatly benefit from 
social sciences taking up their historical role again.

(Thanks to Patrice Riemens for editorial assistance)
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