The 78-year-old Heidegger scholar and advocate for examining how we learn to cope in the everyday world says of the Center for New Media: "If anyone on this campus has a vision for this, it is Ken, bringing the rigors of hard science to cultivated human beings, combining the critical and rational with the imaginable. This could be transforming in some form. And it would be good to do. It would be amazing to see a change in curriculum for instructing us on how to lead a good life."

Dreyfus, a critic of artificial intelligence, sees the fusion of humanities with hard sciences and technology as an antidote to at least two perplexing aspects of our use of technology—although we have a high regard for its speed, efficiency, and reach, we lack regard for the consequences of technology's bypassing real human experience. This shortcoming, he believes, stems from a paucity of social interaction or regard for social context by the designers and builders of technology. "As we spend more and more time interacting remotely, we may erode our embodied sense of a risky yet trustworthy world that makes physical or human contact real," he wrote in an anthology entitled The Robot in the Garden, which Goldberg edited in 2000. Engineering technology, Dreyfus argues, should be used to fertilize and not steamroll the imagination of the humanists.

Sound and sight bites Recent BCNM lectures have
included presentations by San Francisco artist Bill
Fontana, who uses sound as his primary medium.
This image, Meyer Parabolic Speaker on the roof of
11 Madison Ave. during Panoramic Echoes of New
York City, is a part of a series presented in eight-
channel surround sound, intended to cultivate the
auditory senses of his audience.

In this spirit, the Center's curriculum offers a slow-down-and-sniff-the-roses opportunity for aspiring Ph.D.s who are already immersed in their primary fields of interest but who wish to broaden their exposure to other disciplines to which they might apply their research and revelations. This requires them to select what the Center calls "a designated emphasis in new media." Thus humanities doctoral candidates can stretch their own brains, and leverage what the campus has to offer by exposing themselves to the rigors of science or engineering, just as someone pursuing hard science can project its applications to dance or music or art. If da Vinci, the ultimate polymath, did it, why not a Berkeley Ph.D. candidate?

"Actually, we're not trying to re-create Renaissance scholars," corrected Goldberg, who holds appointments in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, with secondary appointments in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information. "But we do know that Ph.D.s can become intellectually isolated. We're trying to bring people together in different connections to enrich their experiences here. We are striving for new levels of curiosity, open-mindedness, collaboration, and approaches to skepticism."

Kristina Paulsen, a seventh-year doctoral candidate in rhetoric sees the Center for New Media as a key to helping her achieve her ultimate goal—teaching art history, her undergraduate major, in the digital age. Questions about ethics and thresholds of skepticism are now coming more and more into play as technology advances, she realizes, particularly as she studies the technological/visual arc of television and remote cameras. "What is real or not?" she asks, not rhetorically. And that goes for the consequences of what a remote camera delivers, perceived or not perceived. "Surveillance cameras ... kids are used to seeing themselves being seen and think nothing of it if nameless, faceless strangers are watching. Yet when they appear on screens before their own friends they get uncomfortable," she points out, suggesting new and complex levels of tension—anonymity versus privacy—surrounding security.

Berkeley geographer and artist Trevor Paglen’s newly released book I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black Work, reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon where classified projects are known by peculiar names (“Goat Suckers” and “Tastes Like Chicken”) and are often illustrated with ridiculous cartoons or occult symbols such as the patch at left worn by personnel working on secret missions.



Over the course of his BCNM lectures, Paglen takes students on off-road trips through hidden military budgets, state secrets, covert bases, sometimes using extreme telephotography to document what the government doesn’t want us to see. His work also demonstrates how the Pentagon’s “black work” gives rise to peculiar visual aesthetics. This image, entitled Unmarked 737 at Gold Coast Terminal, Las Vegas, Nevada, was taken in 2006 from a mile away.

She is also troubled by the lack of immediate human emotion toward the power of certain telerobotics. Paulsen cites weapons directed remotely far from the battlefield, or even a hunting ground, where a deer may be targeted by a computer and a rifle scope a thousand miles from each other with no risk to the armchair aggressor. "The ethics of distance—new criteria for creating and criticizing art," identifying new boundaries for connecting and then disconnecting are part of the value she sees for herself "as a humanist" interacting with engineers, artists, and designers through the Center's programs.

During an evening orientation in late August in the vestibule of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Goldberg and several colleagues welcomed aspiring Ph.D.s, outlined the Center's program, and then invited remarks from George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. His approbation was important politically. As the campus's number two administrator, Breslauer, a former political sciences professor and dean of social sciences, holds the keys to university funding and therefore campus support—essential for a budding initiative.

"At its best we'll have a merging of disciplines—imagination and verification," Breslauer said later, during an interview in his office in California Hall. "I'm excited about helping foster new perceptions on old phenomena. And I'm certainly excited about the university placing its bets on the future." To back up his words, Breslauer has earmarked $125,000 in infrastructure support, as well as the equivalent of three faculty salaries. The rest must be borne by departments affiliated with the Center, through availability of space and faculty.

The Center's future will also rest on the grantsmanship Goldberg and his colleagues can muster in seeking and harvesting outside support. He is no stranger to the shuttle diplomacy between projects and prospective providers that is required for raising money, and has a track record of attracting donations for art installations, dance performances, and academic research. In fact, Goldberg represents the emerging paradigm of an up-and-coming Berkeley professor—part academic, part entrepreneur—by necessity. His eyes twinkle as he fiddles with his iPhone, multi-tasking, processing, connecting. "The proposals are coming together," he says assuredly, without revealing his targets. "I'm learning that all forms of fundraising, whether from donors or granting agencies, requires diligence and cannot be rushed." That is a far cry from the old "we're going to own the world, and own it fast" dot-com whirling dervish that seems so suddenly retro.

Patrick Dillon is executive editor of California magazine.

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