INTERFACE ’86: HUMANITIES AND TECHNOLOGY— ATLANTA, GEORGIA, OCTOBER 23-24, 1986 JOAN D. MCCOY Interface ’86, the tenth humanities and technology conference, met at the Northwest Atlanta Hilton Inn on October 23—24, 1986. Di rected by the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at South ern College of Technology in Marietta, this multidisciplinary conference has become an important annual forum for the interaction of hu manistic, scientific, and technological issues. One hundred eighteen participants from twenty-five states deliv ered and discussed eighty-two papers grouped into twenty-one ses sions. The participants—academicians, philosophers, artists, architects, engineers, businesspeople, scientists, physicians—addressed a wide variety of issues. In one session a natural scientist, a social scientist, an architect, and an environmental engineer discussed the effect of technology on art and architecture; in another a physicist led a dis cussion on the political ramifications of technological development. Other multidisciplinary sessions focused on such subjects as “Myth and Science,” “Technological Progress and Ethical Standards,” and “Science, Humanities, and Technology Programs.” Through the in terplay of diverse topics—“The Counterpoint of Engineering and Music,” “Agricultural Technology, Animal Rights, and a New Ethic,” “The Myth of Thomas Szasz,” “ ‘Ah, Those Old Airplanes!’ The Cul tural Significance of Aviation Nostalgia,” “Statistics as a Humanity”— there emerged a multilevel perspective on modern society from which the conference derived its unity. Contributing to the sense of unity was a stimulating keynote address delivered by Professor Ray B. Brown, director of the Center for Pop ular Culture at Bowling Green State University. Entitled “The Affir mation of the Humanities,” the address was subsequently published in Humanities in the South 64 (Fall 1986). Brown called for redefinition of the humanities to embrace the whole of society. Taking issue with the idea that the humanities are the province of an intellectual elite, Dr. McCoy is assistant professor of English at Southern College of Technology.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2902-0004$01.00 283 284 Joan D. McCoy he declared that the humanities belong to “no one kind of person.” Rather, they are part and parcel of “daily experience: the way of life we inherit, practice, and pass on to our descendants; they are the mass media, entertainments, diversions, heroes, icons, rituals, reli gion—our total life picture.” Brown applauded technology for helping the humanities to bridge the elitist “gap.” By facilitating communi cation, “technological advances in the media” force people “to be more aware of one another,” give room for different points of view, and make life “more understandable, standable, and human.” Thus de mocratized, the humanities can bring us together, as at Interface ’86, uniting us “into a community somewhat similar to that which existed before people became separated by class, interests, desires, ‘culture’ and education.” ...