The 70's

Up through the 1960’s, computers were still relegated to the realm of central processors for military and university use. Ushering in the next decade, Ted Nelson looked to the future of personal computers in his 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines.

Nelson’s book communicated revolutionary ideas about what the computer could be used for, going beyond their capacity for calculation and into their potential for media and design. In addition, these potentials would be available for everyone to explore in an open publishing network. The network would be flexible and interconnected, reaching back to his 1965 conceptions of hypertext.

Augusto Boal further blurred the divide between producer and consumer/actor and spectator through theater in the late seventies. In his 1979 work, Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal described techniques for embodying interaction in performance. The concepts of encoder and decoder were consequently melting away in both technology and art.

The ultimate realization of immersing the “decoder” audience in the product began to be realized in the late seventies with the inception of virtual reality. Initially, virtual reality was a great application for architecture, allowing architects to visually experience and graphically design structures before bringing them into reality. Ted Nelson’s vision for computers catering to design came to life with the founding of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group by Nicholas Negroponte in 1967 and the opening of the MIT Media lab in 1985.

Virtual reality, and the relationship of art and technology, took a great leap forward in 1977 with the introduction of “responsive environments” by Myron Krueger, who would become known as the “father of virtual reality.” Krueger insisted “that the art world was ready to embrace work that focused on response rather than the creation of appealing physical items” as he brought the realms of computer science and art together to deconstruct the “form/content divide.”

Krueger also was adament that people explore all aspects of their inventions and know them because only then will we understand and be able to “choose what we become as a result of what we have made.” Krueger’s concerns echo those of his contemporary Joseph Weizenbaum, who demanded in 1976 that scientists and technologists take responsibility for computer and machine influences on human society.