Topic: Culture
Jef Raskin started Apple's Macintosh project, and he wants to set the record straight. He decries mistakes in published accounts of the creation of the Macintosh. For example, he cites the "creation myth" that the Mac was built by "college drop-outs and intuitive engineers flying by the seats of their pants." Jef spices his account with anecdotes of square pixels, one-button mice, bit-mapped fonts, and more. A longtime BayCHI member, Jeff passed away a year after this program, the last of his six BayCHI appearances since 1994.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with author, Don Tapscott, about his new book, MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. In it, he and his co-writer, Anthony Williams, illustrate how mass collaboration is changing the way businesses communicate, create value, and compete in the new global marketplace.
You may find Cisco's TV ads touting "the human network" a bit abstract, but the company is serious about understanding how networks can help people collaborate. Hear user experience experts from several Cisco teams discuss their research into how a global workforce can work together, in particular using video to build knowledge in an organization. The panel shares lessons learned in applying current technology to business collaboration and planning for the network of the future.
If you stayed in a hotel recently, you may have seen signs that encouraged you to reuse your towel in an effort to conserve resources. What drives you and others to participate in this environmentally and economically beneficial program? Professor Noah Goldstein studies the factors that motivate individuals to engage in prosocial actions using descriptive norms to design effective messages. He presents his research in this audio lecture presented by the Center for Social Innovation.
Musician and CD Baby founder Derek Sivers had already built his popular music selling website using his own cobbled-together PHP framework when he realized he needed to do something different. His quirky code was not able to scale as the site grew and Rails was the solution. In his 2010 Railsconf keynote, Sivers describes the journey he took and his own thought processes in deciding to use Rails as a framework for this award-winning project.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with prominent public radio host, author and agnostic, Micheal Krasny, about the contents of his new book, Spiritual Envy … An Agnostic's Quest.
A subtle reminder of how money can change one's motivations to be less prosocial and less connected. Experimental research shows that subjects exposed to the concept of money work longer before asking for help, are less helpful to others, create greater physical distance from others, and prefer to play and work alone. In this audio lecture sponsored by Stanford's Center for Social Innovation, marketing professor Kathleen Vohs demonstrates how small reminders of money can have large-scale influence.
Paul Fenwick takes us through a humorous journey of bad inventions from bygone eras. They are cautionary tales with a plea for inventors not to screw up. He talks about asthma cigarettes, cocaine toothache drops for children, the Tempest prognosticator, and blood fueled devices. In the world of bad inventions, toys take center stage, with Cabbage Patch Doll "snack-time kid" which grinds its plastic food into dust along with other unintended food.
We have phones that take pictures, connect to the Internet, and play music. Now, Nokia is creating a line of smart phones with navigation programs for both drivers and pedestrians. Michael Halbherr focuses on describing the special features of the navigation programs, as well as how Nokia plans to continue developing media and social communication functions for their products and widening their global market.
Computer code is not yet art, but it could be. Neal Ford discusses aesthetics, constraints, creativity, and why the Ruby on Rails community is closer to art than other programming communities. He implores developers to create and define their own tastes, rather than merely consume what others have created.
