1,500-8,000 word papers are invited for the following forum. Towards Humane Technologies: Biotechnology, New Media, and Citizenship Conference website http://www.uq.edu.au/gsm/biomediaindex.html You are invited to participate in Towards Humane Technologies, a unique international forum for discussion about the social, moral, and political implications of biotechnology research and commercialisation. The conference will be presented in an alternative format that foregrounds democratic participation rather than one way speeches from a select few. The conference will be held at The University of Queensland's Ipswich campus, 15-17 July 2002. Rationale: In the widespread debates about the future of biotechnology, many people feel that institutional and expert voices often overpower those of people who are personally and immediately affected by current technological developments, or the lack thereof. Such people include, for example, people with disabilities; people conceived through reproductive technologies; people who use reproductive technologies to conceive; farmers and graziers; scientists at the coal-face; government project and policy officers who promote and regulate the bioindustries; and community members who feel they have much to contribute to the debate yet feel they have no way to influence our technological direction. Yet in today's mass mediated arena we all have almost daily experiences of the widespread excitement and concern about new technologies and media forms, especially biotechnologies. It seems that the potentials for our new technologies are boundless, regardless of whichever attitude one takes towards them. Often they appear as inevitable, ubiquitous, agent-likealmost human. Too often, though, the human-ness of our new technologies gets ignored as we stand in thrall of their potentials, and their actualities. New media are always dependent on older media. Biotechnology is dependent on any number of media for its public propagation, acceptance, or rejection. These include, but are not limited to, ICT, mass media, and institutional media (the institutions of law, policy, and various other organs of public opinion). A "new media" perspective on biotechnology provides a more holistic way to understand the current issues surrounding the emergence of biotechnology and its attendant possibilities. In effect, a new media perspective allows us to map out and comprehend the extent to which developments in a field such as biotechnology can and do affect our lives, the lives of other species, and the world we live in. Citizenship is the process of engagement in such issues which is fundamental to healthy liberal democracies. It is in the spirit of citizenship that we take a new media perspective on biotechnological advances. Media in all forms are the means by which we move meanings and ideas from one context to another, across time and space. As such, an emergence of new media forms is always historically significant. Such emergences create possibilities for new forms of human relatedness; new ways of understanding what it means to be human; access to new meaning systems, new cultures, new beliefs, and new knowledges. So at least in a limited sense, we can also see biotechnologies and their associated practices as mediating practicesas biomedia. Biomedia provide new perspectives on what it means to be human, to be healthy, or even to be living; they move fundamental aspects of life from hitherto "secret" places into the realm of public space and commercial manipulation; they open possibilities for new knowledge about life; and they present new challenges to human understanding about what it means to be human and humane. Towards humane technologies is a forum for creating new understandings about these directions in our society. We want to ask important questions about what kinds of meanings are made and moved because of biotechnologies; about who gets to make the meanings that count; and about creating a forum for making meaningful contributions to the direction of our technological processes. That is something that cannot be done in isolation or ignorance. We invite you to join us in approaching biotechnology research and commercialisation as a challenge of citizenship in a new media environment. ...................................................................................................... Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated. If you have received this in error, please ignore and delete it. Phil Graham Senior Lecturer UQ Business School www.uq.edu.au/~uqpgraha ......................................................................................................