Originally scheduled for the morning, Prof. Zielinski's keynote was delayed because the digital overhead projector would not work, which itself was the occasion for an impromptu applause-generating stand-up routine about "mono media"--when the requirements of fitting into a digital network underperform the crude but effective multimeda of the AV era.
In fact, Zielinski's talk was very much back to the future, presenting remarkable visual evidence that much of "new media" has been conceptualized and even implemented since the earliest days of the Age of Enlightenment. From telematic haptics to 17th century "radio" to generative music Zielinski gave an impassioned account of his love affair with history in thinking about the future. He closed with a call for a "generous, global laboratory"--a network of resources not driven by the market and dedicated to support of artistic and scientific collaboration. Sign me up.
[Video of Zielinski's talk "Deep Time of the Media" as given at De Balie here. Pictures from his Beijing lecture below.]
Haptic telepresence in 1895
In this Renaissance residence, an elaborate sound system piped real time, ambient sound into the entryway as if it was coming from a bust lining the wall.
Mersenne in his treatise Harmonie Universelle poses the question if it is imaginable to compose the best chant possible. The answer is negative: the number of possible chants is too big, the composer can only proceed using trial and error. Developing the idea of musical combinations further in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, lead to the idea of automating certain aspects of the musical composition, to the fabrication of the first music machines (arca musurgia by the German Athanasius Kircher around 1650), and to musical games, such as the Musikalisches Wurfespiel by Mozart.
Peter Hanappe, Design and Implementation of an Integrated Environment for Music Composition and Synthesis
One of the highlights of the recent 
Haptic telepresence in 1895
