Without a Traceroute

Aside from the main robot exhibition in the museumquartier, there were also several seminar-style discussions on different topics related to robots and technology.

There were three different panel discussions:

1. Smartass reloaded? AI and the Future Role of Cybernetics
2. Rest in Pieces? Cyberpunks, Cyborgs and the Complexities of Discourses
3. The Policy of the Artificial: Strategies, Tendencies and Perspectives

The discussions were pretty interesting. However the participants in each panel were randomly assigned, not by area of expertise, so the conversations had a tendency to drift off topic. The second panel, in particular devolved into a love-fest for Twitter. One girl even said, “You’re no one if you’re not on twitter,” which was apparently intended to be a clever song reference, but just came off sounding pretentious since nobody knew the song. At this, I chortled audibly, and Johannes dragged me up to the front (“Who’s laughing back there?”) to discuss my distaste for Twitter.

This I did, reluctantly at first, but with gradually increasing vehemence. I believe I said, and still believe, that Twitter takes the worst elements of blogging and exaggerates them. It promotes self-absorbed navel-gazing, instantaneous, knee-jerk posting-without-thinking and obsession with irrelevant minutia. The one-hundred-and-forty character post limit virtually assures an absence of serious reflection. I’m not saying people who use Twitter are necessarily shallow people, but it is a tool that promotes shallow thinking.

In any case, I give the Twitter-loving audience credit for not immediately burning me at the stake. My aversion to Twitter did become my most well-known personality trait for the rest of the festival, though. Sample Tweet: “Roboexotica panel: finished. Having dinner with @melochka and the guy who hates twitter”
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