IdeaFestival

IF09 participant Daan Roosegaarde and the Interactive landscape

Since we're on the subject of the intersection of technology and media today, check out Netherlands-based artist Daan Roosegaarde, who will be at the IdeaFestival in September. Like the layering of virtual data over real word images that Bruce Sterling discusses below, Roosegaard's exploration of interactive art, which he refers to as "tactile high-tech" at the website for Studio Roosegaarde, similarly explores spaces that have been augmented by technology.

The outdoor interactive landscape "Dune 4.2" is his latest project. Here, "Liquid Space" responds to its visitors by changing size and color:

Liquid Space 6.0_ Daan Roosegaarde from Daan Roosegaarde on Vimeo.

Space to see Roosegaarde and many other leading thinkers and creators is limited, so reserve your festival spot today.

Wayne

Bruce Sterling: Augmented reality emerging as an industry

With newly emerging iPhone applications, augmented reality - overlaying real-time media with virtual data - is making its way to the consumer. Here, author and rich conceptualist Bruce Sterling applies the human imagination to a future of blended reality at the launch of the Layar browser.

Two thoughts: the key languages being used in this emerging media field are not English, as Sterling points out. Second, we can not only experience augmented reality, but contribute to it as well. How, for example, might a visitor tag Kentucky? How might they tag Kentucky during the IdeaFestival next month?

 

Video: Bruce Sterling's Keynote - At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on Vimeo.

Bridget Brennan on the "female factor"

In the latest IF Conversation, CEO of Female Factor, Bridget Brennan explains why "if the economy had a sex, it would be female." This video and all other IdeaFestival Conversations may be found on IFTV as well.

Wayne

"Geeks get things done... They can't help themselves"

Senior Wired writer Daniel Roth, who will be presenting at IF09 on business innovation, just tweeted his latest essay for the magazine: "Making Geeks Cool Could Reform Education".

If so, at least one school is getting geek-cool right:

'Geeks get things done. They're possessed. They can't help themselves,' says Larry Rosenstock, founding principal of eight charter schools in San Diego County collectively called High Tech High. He has come up with a curriculum that forces kids to embrace their inner geek by pushing them to create. The walls, desks, and ceilings of his classrooms teem with projects, from field guides on local wildlife to human-powered submarines. (A High Tech High art project called Calculicious, based entirely on math principles, now hangs in the San Diego airport.) The students all work in small groups as a way to foster shared enthusiasm: Get two kids excited about something and it's harder for a third to poke fun at them.

Then there's this:

One hundred percent of High Tech graduates get into college. Nationally, the college attendance rate for High Tech High's demographic—half are eligible for free lunch, and even fewer have parents who attended college—is about 55 percent. Yet all High Tech students take advanced math and science classes, and many of them end up at universities like MIT and Stanford.

Wayne

"Netscape moment" for business of space?

According to VentureBeat, commercial space may be having its "Netscape moment".

The commercial space industry has seen some interesting developments over the past weeks. Statements last week by members of President Obama’s human spaceflight review committee (The Augustine Commission) suggest that commercial providers may be taking a significant role in how NASA accesses low Earth orbit and how missions beyond low Earth orbit use orbiting 'gas stations'. At the same time, two commercial space companies, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, have received significant investments from well known funds (more on that below), suggesting that capital markets see a fundable new industry developing.

Some of these developments are reminiscent of the Internet industry in the early 90s....

Kentucky Space (surprised?) may well be in the right place at the right time.

Wayne

Win FREE pair of tickets to Taste of Innovation

Be sure to check out how you can win a pair of FREE tickets to the ever-popular IdeaFestival Taste of Innovation. First, follow IF on Twitter. Then see yesterday's tweet. Contest winner chosen at random tomorrow.

Wayne

Students today: better writers?

In Wired, Clive Thompson points out that a large study of writing and rhetoric concludes that students are not only writing more, thanks in part to the social web, but how they're writing differently.

[The study] team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.

...it's also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool directions. The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like concision. At the same time, the proliferation of new forms of online pop-cultural exegesis—from sprawling TV-show recaps to 15,000-word videogame walkthroughs—has given them a chance to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose, often while working collaboratively with others.

Wayne

Need a good book? AJ Jacobs recommends

Just how irrational are you? Asked to recommend a book for IdeaFestival blog readers and festival participants, author and '09 IdeaFestival speaker A.J. Jacobs suggested "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Ariely.

All books in the speaker-recommended series may be found here. Passes to hear Jacobs and a host of other thought-provoking speakers are on sale now.

Wayne

Wikipedia: behavioral economics

A.J. Jacobs

Follow IF on Twitter. Win fabulous prize

Like fantastic food? Very soon, the IdeaFestival will give away a pair of tickets via Twitter to the Taste of Innovation. If you don't follow IF, you might want to.

Wayne

"Half the Sky" and Somaly Mam

In a recent tweet, '09 IF speaker @SomalyMam pointed out an inspiring new book "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide", authored by Sheryl WuDunn and '07 IdeaFestival presenter Nicholas Kristof. Describing the systematic exploitation of brutal treatment of woman worldwide - including many who have managed to face down despair - "Half the Sky" was featured this Sunday in the New York Times.

The book's stories are undoubtedly close to the heart of Somaly Mam, herself sold as a young girl into a criminal industry that now, unbelievably, disturbingly, eclipses drug trafficking in worldwide revenue. Since her escape she had dedicated her life to rescuing woman and children from slavery.

Hear her story at the IdeaFestival.

Wayne

Somaly Mam