windsend

poptech 2005 wrap-up

Bob Metcalf
Bob does his famous dry and humor filled summation of the conference

Poptech 2005 12

Session 12

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Scandal of Prediction
Value of library is the books we haven't read
We focus on what we know.  The narrative falacy - we ascribe a cause to random events
Epistemic error - over confidence in your ability to know what you know
Most pojects late and over budget.

THe limits of our ability to predict the future.

Robert Trivers
On the biological roots of behavior
deception is part of the biological repertoire
principles of deception
- rarity helps deception

Poptech 2005 11

Session 11

The Future of ideas

Sam Harris
THe End of Faith - Religion Terror and The Future of Reason
We only honor belief only with regard to religion
Religious moderation prevents us from coming up with viable alternatives to faith as a blueprint
Religious books remain as an inspiration to extremism.

Susan Blackmore
Memetics

Memes C-TAP (copy me - threats and promises)
Virus memes - include religion

Poptech 2005 10

Session 10 Big Fixes

Cameron Sinclair
Rethinking architecture - Architecture for Humanity
Advocating for design to help solve social problems

Neil Gershenfeld
Computing to build.  Digitizing fabrication
Tools to build anything Fab Lab

Bunker Roy
THe Barefoot College
Adopting and teaching the traditional technology
Buildings - rainwater harvesting

Poptech 2005 9

Session 9
Robert Neuwirth
21st century mideval cities - rural to urban migration - 70 million per day
today - 1 billion squatters - 2050 3 billion squatters
to keep up we need to build 66 houses per minute
to improve squatter communities - a guarantee you won't be evicted and access to politics

Ingo Gunther
World Processor - building globes that show more than the standard geo-political
showing various world data - a very visual presentation

Poptech 2005 8

Davy Rothbart
Found magazine

Yochai Benkler
The economics of open source
networked information economy
shared production infrastructure

Nick Negroponte
the $100 laptop

Bart Decrem

Flock

Poptech 2005 7

Edward Castronova
The economy of the virtual world

Ivan Marovich
the ground roots movement to dislodge milosovic from serbia
use a video game to train people in nonviolent strategy 'a force more powerful'
to help people make and refine strategies to change their own society.

Stephen Johnson
Implications of video gaming

The game world - lost

PopTech 2005 - 6

First - Ethan Lipton and his orchestra - wonderfully funny and intellegent lyrics, well played

Oded Shankar

The Chinese Century

Autos as an indicator of the future of the Chinese economy

Chinese eating our lunch

Rebecca MacKinnon
China and the Internet
The Internet is changing the lives of Chinese
Using the medium differently than we do.
Censorship of political speech

PopTech 2005 - 5

Session 5

People, Place, Planet

Mark Lynas
High Tide the truth about climate change
temperatures highest in the holocene - new era - 'anthropocene'
greenhouse gases highest in 40 million years
glaciers retreating in South America and around the world - 97% of them
water from glaciers and temperature expansion is submerging Tuvalu
In the next 100 years up to 6 degrees centigrade temerature rise.
Mass extinctions - up to 1/3 of all species going
This issue has to rise to the top of the political agenda.

Suketu Mehta
15 million in Bombay - biggest city in the world.  1 million /sq mi
pays 60% of India's taxes
Bombay is a mass dream of the citizens of India

PopTech 2005 - 4

Session 4

Explorer's club

Peter Diamandis - commercializing space travel - founder of the X-prize
A moral imperative to open up the space frontier
    back up the biosphere
prizes as a means to inspire the solution of the great challenges

Marcia McNutt
Underwater exploration
biomass and biodiversity of midwater environment exceeds all rainforests combined

Carolyn Porco
Beautiful images of Saturn her rings and moons