Program for the Future Conference

Here’s another event worth noting:

The Program for the Future Conference is “An Invitation to Innovation. An interactive conference inspired by Doug Engelbart’s vision of harnessing technology for human betterment. “

The conference takes place Monday (12/08/08) at The Tech Museum of Innovation and Adobe Headquarters in San Jose, and then on Tuesday (12/09/08) at Stanford University. And for those of us who are not on the West Coast, we can attend both days in Second Life. Register now before all the FREE virtual tickets are taken!

Featured speakers include

    • Professor Thomas Malone, Founding Director, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
    • Professor Hiroshi Ishii, Associate Director, MIT Media Laboratory
    • Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google
    • Andries van Dam, Professor, Brown University
    • Alan Kay, President, Viewpoints Research Institute
    • Steve Wozniak, co-founder, Apple Computer, Inc.

Plus an impressive list of other speakers that is essentially a “Who’s Who in Computing.”

This should be an extremely valuable two days for anyone interested in where technology is heading. I’ve got my virtual ticket and my avatar, Rebekah Cavan, and I will be there both days.

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube by Michael Wesch

I caught this on Webmonkey yesterday and was blown away by this video production that Michael Wesch presented to the Library of Congress on June 23, 2008. Dr. Michael Wesch is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, and is doing some very interesting work in the field of digital ethnography.

This is a truly fascinating presentation:

More information can be found at Mediated Cultures, and at Anthrovlog.

Check out this list of projects going on at MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium.

It’s an amazing field and well worth watching what these people are doing.