Keynote Speakers

The Keynote Luncheon near the close of PRESENCE 2001 featured a talk by presence scholar Carrie Heeter of Michigan State University. Her talk was titled, "Being Virtual: What happens when presence is everything?" Here is a short description:

"Inverting assumptions is an interesting technique for examining theoretical and philosophical paradigms. Most thinking and writing about presence starts with an implicit assumption that fleeting moments presence are the exceptional, occasional experience, while unmediated reality and less-than-present media are the dominant human experience. I will draw perspectives from two actual circumstances where presence is everything and also from other hypothetical situations which turn the concept of presence inside out. I will turn to my own 4 years of pure virtual existence as a full time professor for Michigan State University working from my basement in San Francisco. And I will draw examples from four cases studies I conducted with homebound elderly using a telewindow to connect to the outside world."

Carrie Heeter lives in San Francisco and is a full time professor of Digital Media Arts in the Department of Telecommunication for Michigan State University. She participates in the university community, teaches, runs a research and design laboratory, and serves as Creative Learning Advisor to MSU Virtual University remotely over the Internet.  Her professional life began as a television producer, shifted to studying social impacts of new media, and then to the design of interactive mediated experiences and eCollaboration.