Last week I traveled to Camden, Maine to volunteer for the 3 day gathering of world-changing ideas known as Pop!Tech. My second year at the conference was a much different experience, (no Artifact Project, which meant I was not working on a computer for 72 consecutive hours in the upstairs corner of the opera house and was able to watch most of the presentations live.
Highlights and links with a few quotes mixed in:
Chris Jordan: Chris kicked off the 3 days with a passionate description of his consumption- themed photography. Amazing stuff. A few of his large prints were on display upstairs in the opera house:
[cj photo]
A current piece he's working on concerns prescription drugs: "1/3 of all ER and hospital visits are for prescription pain killers." That's a lot of pills...
Christian Nold followed with a presentation of his work in emotional mapping.
'Info-graphic innovation' resonated as a major theme for me this year.
Jessica Flannery shared her story of establishing kiva.org
Surprised to learn her and her husband are entirely supported by donations from lenders.
Paul Polak discussed his purpose behind IDE (international development enterprises) and his capitalistic approach to combatting poverty-- way before it was hip.
Adrian Bowyer and his RepRap.
[photo]
Described as a 'self-replicating rapid prototyper', the implications of such a device are staggering. Potentially a major leap in the evolution of mass production, this machine could brings customized goods even closer to the hands of the consumer. Maybe in the living room next to the TV. Early this year Wired magazine had a 'Found from the future' illustration that showed a man fabricating a basketball he had purchased online right there on his desk next to his pc. This isn't too far from the RepRap reality, but it's got long way to go. Very cool for rapid prototypes of industrial object form exploration, shoe molds, nerfs balls, etc...
Daniel Pink promo'd his book A Whole New Mind:
The three big A's his book is based on:
Automation
Asia
Empathic, creative minds are most valuable in our current future...
Caleb Chung , the inventor of the Furby, proudly showcased his newest creature, PLEO, which will be available just over a week before xmas. Aside from it's wide range of movement, responsiveness, and 'awareness' (IR sensors to detect proximity to people and other pleos), the robot can also be upgraded and mod'ed with downloads from the caleb's robot factory. It's only a matter of time before we start seeing toys that are always 'on' (ok maybe they already exist and were given away at poptech '06). And here's a thought: what is there was a way to wirelessly power toys so that they never needed to be plugged in and re-charged? Hmm...
more to come...