Our theme this year was to develop richer views of what lies beyond our current understanding of the potential for what text can be to augment how we think and communicate. The logo this year represents an ever expanding universe of potential for how we interact with the information stored and communicated in text. We ask what is beyond what we currently think of as ‘text’ and try to get a glimpse of potential as yet unseen. What might your perspective on this be? What might your field contribute to the future of thought and communication using text? If you have any thoughts we’d love for you to present them at the Symposium or as an article in the Book. We would also be very interested in learning what you do know. Valuable contributions would include perspectives from your own work and experience–above all, dialog around the potential futures of text needs diversity of perspectives.
Symposium
The 13th Future of Text Symposium was held on Saturday, November 23, in Vancouver, Washington, USA.
Co-Chairs & Co-Editors
- Frode Alexander Hegland, frode@hegland.com
- Dene Grigar, dgrigar@wsu.edu
Participant Comments
“I want to congratulate you on an amazing and thoroughly stimulating conference in Vancouver. I left with a deep sense of the importance of the work you are doing and the community you have assembled.”
Michael Witmore
“Coming from a background in multimodal input research for XR, with a particular focus on eye-based interfaces, I found the Future of Text has been awe-inspiring with all the thought fodder thrown in through many bright minds of our generation. There is a notion of visionary work on text – or, more generally human interface technology – that permeated the event, making it impossible not to fully take in all the information, talks, and discussions, and just be inspired. Thanks, I needed that!”
Professor Ken Pfeuffer
“If we understand text as the human programming language, then by definition, ‘The Future of Text’ is cornerstone to human understanding.The most mesmerizing thing for me sometimes is how some people (like Frode Hegland) can two decades in advance anticipate the importance of tech evolution on areas that are critical to human cognition. The foresight that we are in front of a revolution like AI, but now focus not only on that hype but how its combination with XR will transform humanity. In the end XR will be to AI what Screens has been to Computers.”
Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco
“The symposium was a captivating and thought-provoking exploration of a digital future, where real-time text shapes how we perceive, contextualize, and experience the world. Heartfelt thanks to the organizers and participants for an inspiring journey.”
Daveed Benjamin
“I am so grateful for the opportunity to participate in the 24th Future of Text Symposium. It was one of a kind chance to meet a group of passionate, visionary and action-oriented people. While we differ on topics, areas of knowledge (eye tracking, webXR, VR engineering, spatial web, AI, Hypertext, text itself), perspectives (industry, academia, enthusiast), we are aligned on our mission for the future of text, and we are FUN! We are amazed by each other’s projects and actively help test and provide feedback, we listen, understand and care. I personally can only build intimacy and trust with people when I feel genuine joy and intellectual engagement. Here, I find it so natural and so real. Thanks to Frode and Dene for their great leadership, energy and engagement, they nourish the soul of the entire community.”
Ge Li
Record
Photography by Ge Li
By the Numbers
Number of In-Person Participants: 46
Number of Presentations: 15
Number of Presenters: 16
Gender Representation: 32% of the participants identify as women
Number of Graduate Students: 3
Number of Undergraduate Students: 17
Countries Represented: U.S., UK, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, China, France & Italy
Thanks
This Symposium and Book was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Washington State University Vancouver, the Electronic Literature Lab and the Augmented Text Company
