Everyday life is increasingly dominated by the objects and cultural forms created by technology research. For example, telephones, computers, entertainment systems, medical equipment, transportation systems, governmental and policing systems, and product distribution technologies shape the ways people in the developed world spend their days, interact with others, and conceptualize the present and the future. The output of technology research is not confined to small technical niches. Theorists such as Baudrillard and Virilio, for example, expose the hidden assumptions, shaping of categories and pervasive consequences of technology. Scientific research similarly reaches beyond narrow academic questions.
Astronomers attempt to understand the origins and shape of the universe.
Biologists increasingly unravel mysteries of life and invent methods for manipulating the genetic heart of life. Scientific research will have profound practical and philosophical implications. Often they have tried to ignore these developments and treat them as peripheral to the core of culture. Even when artists did attend to these developments, they did so as distant commentators, sniping from the audience, often without deep understanding of the world views and processes of scientific research. I believe there is a much stronger role for the arts in which artists integrate critical commentary with high level knowledge and participation in the science and technology worlds.