Topic: The Future
John Smart's energetic presentation is an exhaustive look at both the current state of futurist studies and the way technology is changing how we react to the planet we inhabit. This is a talk to be listened to with pencil in hand, ready to make notes as Smart bombards us with facts and theories in a bravura performance that is by turns stimulating, thought-provoking, and awe-inspiring.
As a major driver of global wealth, the advance of technology is paced by various forces including new discovery and human inertia. In this keynote, Peter Cochrane, the highly esteemed and engaging techno-futurist, delivers a fascinating analysis of change in our increasingly smart, networked world.
The hardest part of predicting the future is that it's, well, the future. That may sound flippant, but it's essentially true; the greatest problem in forecasting isn't understanding the current situation or the problem itself, it's accounting for unforeseen factors the cannot be predicted. In a session from Pop!Tech 2005, essayist and former financial trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses these "black swans" and their effect on the task of forecasting.
How will the future of the internet be and how will it change our lives? Many technologists have expressed their thoughts on this topics since the birth of the internet. Janna Anderson speaks about Imagining The Internet - a project which documents the predictions various people have made about the internet.
More and more people are using mobile phones with integral video cameras to capture events. Some of the most harrowing pictures from the London bomb attacks in July came from amateur video taken underground by passengers with camera phones. We seem to be heading towards a future where everything we experience will be captured and stored for retrieval. Perhaps only the sheer scale of the numbers of people involved will be the biggest safeguard we have against the nightmare of 'Big Brother' surveillance. [Accelerating Change Audio from IT Conversations]
What would it be like if the internet were a 3D immersive experience, if browsing the internet felt like walking down the street in a virtual town? In this introduction to the Exploration sessions at Accelerating Change 2005, Jerry Paffendorf discusses the convergence of 3D modelling and internet interactivity. Programs like Google Earth and games like Second Life offer a glimpse of what the internet may be in the future. [Accelerating Change Audio from IT Conversations]
Increasing technological advances are certainly making a global impact. However, one may very well ask how new technologies will change daily life. In this question and answer session, Dr. Moira Gunn of Tech Nation talks with Ray Kurzweil about the impact of technological change on large and small arenas of life. [Accelerating Change Audio from IT Conversations]
Social software, the Semantic Web, and information retrieval are useful and powerful technologies each on their own. Bruno Haid of System One discusses how, when merged together though, the whole becomes greater than the sum of these parts. [Accelerating Change Audio from IT Conversations]
Thomas Barnett argues that globalization is a force for good, bringing hope of an end to both war and poverty. Connection to the global economy reformats societies in positive ways and helping the disconnected world to integrate is a key challenge. In this conversation with Phil Windley, Dr. Barnett describes the new world order and America's place in it. [Phil Windley's Technometria audio from IT Conversations]
The debate about the definition of life is one that compels philosophers and technologists alike. Norman Packard of ProtoLife blurs the edges of the discussion by creating synthetic biology - cells made from scratch. [Pop!Tech 2005 audio from IT Conversations]
