Although it was not formally entered among the contestants, the jury felt compelled to propose IF for the first prize because it fulfilled the criteria of webness, distributed presence, community forming and supporting, powerful metaphorical value, and creation of sustainable virtual entities. The artistic content of IF may not be evident at first sight. But it is a model of a self organizing realtime collective thinking and information processing system. It deals with our collective creative power which is one of the best areas of creativity there is.
IF is a working model of our future where scientific claims and artistic projects are treated as futures on the mercantile exchange system. Users buy and sell futures on these ideas. This is a new model for funding ventures and research programs. Like e-money but with much more complexity, this site is the best collective forward thinking process the jury has encountered on the web.
last changed 21.April 95