Q.
You seem to be different from a typical academic: you maintain your own Web site; you established your international reputation by publishing online rather than in traditional academic journals; and you obviously care about fashion, as can be judged from your personal appearance.
A.
This is all true. Growing up in Soviet Union in the 1970s made me distrustful of all official communication channels and taught me how to work around them. So when I saw Mosaic (the first Web browser) in 1993, a light bulb went in my head. I immediately set up my own Web site and also started to actively contribute to the emerging Web culture of mailing lists and online journals. I love real-time nature of Web discussions! Academics journals are fine; but you have to wait a year or two before your article appears in print; and just seven people read a typical academic article on the average. Instead, I can write something today, post it online and get feedback from the readers the same day.
As far as fashion is concerned, I am interested in tracking where culture is going. We can look at art, architecture or popular music, but I find that fashion is best in reflecting changing cultural sensibility quickly. Plus, I love to shop!
(Lev Manovich in a SELF-interview for MIT Press)
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