Topic: The Future

Dr. Moira Gunn looks into the future with author and comedian, Mark Stevenson, through the pages of his new book, An Optimist's Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer 'What's Next?

As half of the world struggles to meet energy needs at a reasonable price and the other half strives to develop cleaner energy solutions, Alexis Belonio does both. In this interview by Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman, we hear from Alexis Belonio, of the Center for Rice and Husk Technology, as he joins the Prize Laureates from the 2010 Tech Museum Awards. He discusses how he is changing the world by providing a clean burning and accessible source of energy for all.

Consumer mapping on the web and traditional back-office geographic information systems (GIS) are becoming less distinct. Both are more accessible, standards-based, and flexible. Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI, speaks about the creation of a publicly accessible GIS mapping system, ArcGIS.com, a web platform that works with maps from various authoritative sources and provides the public with useful tools to add and use their own crowdsourced, volunteered geographic information (VGI).

Is the cloud infrastructure becoming the "new hardware?" What are the issues around points of control, and who will end up being the custodian of our information? What does the "global operating system infrastructure" look like? Hear informed perspectives on these timely questions in this candid exchange of ideas among leaders from VMWare, Inc., salesforce.com, and Amazon Web Services.

Conferences are very important to professionals, particularly in the technology industry, where developing new ideas and services often begin as part of brainstorming. Eric Norlin discusses his work in running conferences, including Defrag, Gluecon, and Blur. He also reviews the issues related to user interfaces, the main subject of Blur.

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.

Are we in the middle of a bubble or boom? That's the key question in this "Great VC Smackdown." This frothy time, they agree, is an unusual and exciting one. They agree that only great companies should go public today. Then, dispensing with equanimity, the fireworks begin.

Announcing the creation of setiQuest, Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute makes an appeal for aid from the open source developer community. Tarter invites the open source community to check out the SETICloud stack, and highlights advances in fifty years of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. "We all have a common origin in stardust," Tarter says. Intelligent life leaves its imprint in this dust, as well. The key to finding it, Tarter says, is "sticking around long enough."

The government is not a vending machine for services. In this Gov 2.0 presentation Tim O'Reilly discusses how the government can be a development platform for greatness by taking advantage of web 2.0 features ranging from cloud computing and social media to mobile platforms.

"Tap and pay" enabling cell phones to replace credit cards -- just one of the innovations Eric Schmidt sees coming soon. As mobile and internet markets grow at exponential rates, Google is building applications that will re-shape how we use that technology. Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits down with web pioneers Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit 2010 to discuss Google's new Chrome OS, Google TV, mobile technology, talent acquisition, privacy, security and net neutrality. Whew!