Topic: The Future

When it comes to aging baby boomers, "the personal is political" is still a strong rallying cry for people engaged in social enterprise. In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Center for Social Innovation, the ever-lively Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman looks at redefining aging and how we may continue to make meaningful contributions to our families, communities, and country into the elder years.

At the 2009 eComm, Mark Rolston, Chief Creative Officer of Frog Design, talks about a new phase in design exemplified by the likes of Wii and the Android open OS. We currently live in two worlds, the real and the virtual, mediated by 'white boxes' less and less limited by functional distinction. Rolston ponders what we want to do next, what we'll be able to do next, and how the interface device, if there is one, will look and feel.

In his densely informative presentation, Cullen Jennings, Cisco's Distinguished Engineer talks about Network Address Translations (NATs), how they work, what's going on and more importantly, why we should care. Jennings looks at if and when we're really going to run out of IP addresses, how ISPs are using this to avoid the network neutrality push, and the disturbing implications ISP 'Carrier Grade NATs' have for application developers and end users alike.

The Barack Obama administration ushered in a new model of cooperation between citizens and their government. In this audio interview from the Gov 2.0 Summit, O'Reilly Media founder, Tim O'Reilly, speaks with America's first Federal Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, about using technology to build a digital commonwealth and a digital nation.

According to science fiction author Karl Schroeder, it is sometimes possible to get things done more efficiently by relinquishing the traditional methods of control. Open source, democracy, government 2.0, and the invisible hand of the free market are mechanisms that demonstrate of the success of this phenomenon of handing control to a self-willed entity. He calls this principle "rewilding", and tells how this metaphor relates to open source software and other contemporary technological trends.

With new commons-based approaches to radio spectrum regulation like Wi-Fi, UltraWideBand and TV White Spaces battling against the interests of broadcasters and the mobile phone industry, what is likely to occur over the next two to five years and beyond? At the 2009 Emerging Communications Conference (eComm), a diverse panel of industry experts explore the technical, commercial and political issues involved in the spectrum policy debate.

There is big money to be made in the telecommunications industry by optimizing how businesses connect, interact and complete transactions with their customers. In his keynote address at the Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) 2009, industry futurist Martin Geddes shares his thoughts on how a complete transformation of the prevailing business model is needed in the telecom industry and how companies could take advantage of a new model.

The web - vast, open, participatory, independent - is an unprecedented human construction. But could forces already be at work to rob it of its very essence? In this presentation from the O'Reilly Media Open Source Convention Mark Surman discusses how this marvelous, open, self-governing resource - taken for granted by so many - may not stand the test of time.

Wikipedia isn't just a resource created by volunteers, it's also a highly social project, a test-bed for researchers, and a source of valuable data for scientists studying community behavior. This panel features some of the wiki community's top contributors, who present the latest trends, issues, and knowledge from Wikimania, the annual international Wikimedia conference.

What's on the O'Reilly Radar this year? In this OSCON keynote Tim O'Reilly, co-founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media Inc., peers into the crystal ball to foretell a future of sensor driven interfaces combining with co-operating cloud databases; the unlikely emergence of Government as an ally of open data platforms; and a rethinking of Gov 2.0 as a platform and means for collective action.