The Ars Electronica Festival premiered on September 18, 1979. This pilot project was designed to take the Digital Revolution’s emergence as an occasion to scrutinize potential futures and to focus these inquiries on the nexus of art, technology and society. With this philosophy, which remains Ars Electronica’s watchwords to this day, the Festival’s founders— cyberneticist/physicist Herbert W. Franke, electronic musician Hubert Bognermayr, music producer Ulli A. Rützel and Hannes Leopoldseder, then director of the ORF–Austrian Broadcasting Company’s Upper Austria regional...