Spanning the Centuries




Copyright(C)1996 MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO.,LTD.

Ueshima: The greatest theme to be addressed today, I feel, is: why did only communications technology develop so much? It's not that I reject the present developments in media and communication, but I wonder why their advance was so huge in comparison with other fields. Even with regard to the occurrences of the past fifty years or so╤major changes in the history of mankind╤while it is thought we are in the vortex of such changes, in order to understand the direction in which we are headed, we might need another two or three hundred years.

Ito: Ten years ago, you proposed a strategy, or direction, for redefining communication. I believe that, in this networking era, more than ever, communication has new meaning. For example, there is the issue of coordinating meaning, or technologies for putting hidden systems back on the block: if we don't think about these now, I believe this network society will be completed as a homogenous, unified communication space.

Ueshima: I think we have to form a vision of our society as a place where media networks function to guarantee the plurality and diversity of experience. Rather than working on showing how connecting A to B results in this kind of function or that kind of possibility, we have to create a society in which the media serve to protect freedom of thought.

Ito: Technology has brought us a way to join the entire world together in a pluralistic network, but such communication technologies have long existed in various forms, among various peoples in various places, as issues of the body or mind. What do you think about the possibility of a new primitivism, shall we call it, or a new shamanism, that revives such technologies in new ways?

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