Are we doomed? Are we saved? Are we somewhere in between?
I spoke at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown festival at the Southbank Centre on Sunday 23 June as part of the FutureNow weekend. The topic? The internet, of course. Specifically, I spoke about the premise of Untangling the Web: What the Internet Is Doing To You. Here’s the important part of the blurb:
Here she discusses how the web is changing our lives – and the tools and social norms we may have to develop to deal with the web in the future.
From 20-21 May, I’ll be in Melbourne to open up the State Library of Victoria’s very exciting Digital Society Series with two evenings of public talks:
UPDATE [5 April 2012] here’s the video of the event:
I’m interviewing author and researcher Rebecca MacKinnon on Thursday at the RSA at 1pm. Rebecca is the author of Consent of the Networked, a public-facing epic tome outlining the political undercurrents of the current crop of web/tech leaders (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon). Her book is a fascinating and important read, part of a crop of analyses of the contemporary web space that unpicks the implications of our transactions with US corporations. She achieves her aim without an overdose of techno-utopianism or techno-pessimism.
I’m speaking at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall next Thursday 1 March as part of the Glasgow Lectures series, organised by Professor Philip Schlesinger. My talk, Cult of Me Meets Cult of We, uncovers the sociocultural assumptions designed into the web technologies we use in everyday life. Here’s a blurb:
John Matthias is a musician and composer. And a particle physicist. He’s speaking tonight at the final lecture in the Connections series at the Royal institution, Hearing Connections: The Sonification of Natural Systems, an examination of the processes behind transforming our neuronal connections into music. I asked him the same set of questions I asked the other presenters (see Daniel Jones’ answers), and particularly like John’s reading list.
I’m wildly excited about next Monday’s lecture in the Connections series (the events I’m guest curating at the Royal Institution) – Hearing Connections: The sonification of natural systems. This is the final lecture in the series, and it takes a lateral step in the theme by looking at the physiological connections in our brains and how they can be used as inspiration for artistic expression. Specifically, the lecture is a demonstration of how a group of exceptionally talented musicians and scientists have translated neuronal pathways into sound.
Tech Weekly producer Scott Cawley and I have been very busy over the last few months developing the Tech Weekly Tech City Talks series, four evenings of debates on Mondays in October at Imperial College London between front benchers and the people at the coalface about the realities that lie behind the UK government’s Tech City initiative.
I’m curating a series this November at The Royal Institution of Great Britain in London, and I’ve selected three events that fall under the umbrella, “Connections”: a lecture by science historian James Burke, an experimental classical music performance that takes its inspiration from neuronal patterns, and live demo of a machine that produces serendipity. It’s all very exciting.
The Serendipity Engine gets its first outing on Monday 8 August at The Driver in London at sameAs, an evening of conversation and intellectual stimulation. I’ll be presenting with my co-conspirator, Kat Jungnickel, who’ll also be showcasing her Enquiry machine with Julian McHardy. The three of us will be joined by Natalie Downe of Lanyrd.
I have the great pleasure of chairing an event with Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You at the RSA next Thursday. You can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be pressing him about the ways technology can (and cannot) promote serendipity. I’ll also be picking apart the technological determinism of the book’s main argument (hearkening back to the agenda of US legal scholar Cass Sunstein), and why he is opposed to the “Daily Me” that the web can offer, as popularised by MIT Media Lab and One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte.
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