Welcome to the Future

realize that the first headline for the first editorial for the first issue of CyberStage is a bit of a cliché but frankly, until more people start grasping the concept, I have little problem using it.

One of the problems we have as a society is that our obsession for the future blinds us to the realities of the present. Science-fiction writing tends to paint a future of slick vehicles, international computer webs, electronic wet dreams, greedy corporate conspirators, ships that can travel to distant regions of space, failing economies and the suffering it creates, and an ever-widening gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots". Those of us brave enough to pull ourselves away from our TV screens know that these very things exist today. Our current forms of media and technology have helped create this fantastic world that gets depicted in such science-fiction novels, and which exists in everyday life today. This magazine you're holding is not about things which we imagine will happen in ten or twenty years, but things that are happening now.

Approaching the twenty-first century, we are just now beginning to learn that with great technology comes great responsibility, and that part of this responsibility involves the necessity of exploring how new technologies could potentially change our way of life before they are fully absorbed into the culture. "If man is to survive this new technology," Einstein is quoted as saying with regard to the atomic bomb, "he will require a radically different way of thinking." Realizing that his words are true for more than just the splitting of an atom, we are finally beginning to understand just what Einstein meant.

With any change in society comes a corresponding change in art. Every new toy, every communication device, every new entertainment medium changes the way we live our lives and the way we look at and produce art.

Artists have traditionally been the ones who have used various media to reflect the human condition in its present form as well as provide glimpses of what the human life could be. We are witness to a growing number of artists who use new technology to create their work -- technology which for the most part has been reserved for efficient, ergonomical, technical use. But who are these people? What work are they doing? How is their work changing the nature of traditional artforms, such as film, theatre, dance, music, and visual art? And is all this just another 90s technofad, or is it actually leading up to something?

As with any new tool, these new technologies leaves some very open-ended questions with respect to these artforms:

Why use the technology in the first place?

What advantages will it give me?

How will it affect my audience?

How do I use it to its best capacity without it being overwhelming?

Why can't things be the way they used to be?

Many questions, but few answers. Although there is no doubt that new technology will affect art, how and to what degree is another matter entirely. Currently, artists are trying to make sense of the technological revolution, and facing it with more than just a little apprehension. One of the reasons for this is a lack of sources from which to explore the bigger picture as to what is happening in the artworld.

This is CyberStage. CyberStage is designed to be a facilitator for the continuing discourse surrounding the development and use of technology in traditional and new artforms, and to provide a platform for those voices that want to be heard. I believe we are in the middle of a reconvergence between the artistic and scientific communities, where artists are becoming technicians, and vice versa. CyberStage is a proponent of the global village. Though published in Toronto, this first issue is being read in the United States, Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid, Britain, Australia, and South America. The region is growing by the month, showing the kind of hunger for a publication like this.

CyberStage is not simply a technology love-in. True, we will from time to time sing the praises of our new gadgets the way children often do with their new toys, but we are also committed to the debate surrounding the potential negative effects of them.

CyberStage, quite simply, is for you. If you were curious enough to pick it up from the shelf of your local magazine rack, you are probably also curious about the same things we are. And on this path we'd like you to join us.

Mark J. Jones - ed.