Topic: Culture
Elizabeth Churchill, researcher at Yahoo, discusses a project to connect online community activity with offline community activity in the physical world toward a goal of building relationships and trust between two groups of colleagues in different time zones. She shares observations about people's behaviors around the project, challenges faced, and ponderings about what the future business success of such installations might be.
Jeremy Silver discusses why the world of music in the internet age is on the edge of enormous change, but not on the edge of disaster. Silver reviews the recent difficult history of the music industry since the growth of the internet. He sees positive signs in the many areas of experimentation in music activity. Although the new business models are not proven, there is tremendous energy at work.
As the 2008 campaign season ends, independent producer Katie Ball discusses how intolerance still exists, even with the election of an African-American President. She discusses a lemonade stand in Florida where the homeowners covered up their John McCain signs to avoid offending anyone. Her commentary reflects on political prejudices within a battleground state and within her own heart.
While many recall Marshall McLuhan's prophetic pronouncement that the "medium is the message", few people and companies are actively involved in examining how this concept applies to today's Internet-centric world. In this session from the 2008 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Eric Rodenbeck, founder and creative director for Stamen Design, offers several examples of how computers, massively large databases, and visualization can be combined to create beautiful, yet scientifically valuable ways of exploring data.
The media has changed drastically in the last ten years, both in the explosion of choices and the ability for interaction and self expression. In the presentation from the Thinking Digital conference, Matt Locke of Channel 4, one the UK's primary television channels, discusses the blurring of public and private communication and the six kinds of social spaces online.
Many of us feel that the Web is ushering in a new era of global consciousness. But Howard Bloom thinks life has been a collective mind from the very beginning. He made the case in his book "Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang To the 21st Century." Host Jon Udell speaks with Bloom who reviews the themes of that book -- group selectionism, complex adaptive systems, collective learning -- and considers what has, and hasn't, changed since the book was published in 2000.
Do you appreciate when someone brings a fresh perspective to a complex and daunting issue? Well can you imagine an issue more impenetrable or discouraging then the Singularity? From the "How Far are We from Advanced AI?" session of the 2007 Singularity Summit, Paul Saffo offers some new advice. He recommends that we find some poets and novelists and whisper in their ears about this stuff. Then hopefully they will help shape what the Singularity should be, rather than what we hope it will not be.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Kris Kimmel, founder of the Idea Festival, and what's coming up at IF 2008.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Michael Meyer, author of "The Last Days of Old Beijing," about the transformation of a city.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Pete Blackshaw, author of "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends," about consumer megaphones -- the folks who get extremely displeased and upset with products or services.
