The organisers of the NEXT conference which was held on December 1 in Copenhagen have released the Lab TV webcasts with slides. They are available for free until December 31. A few lines about what’s in store for you:
George Dyson believes that if you’re interested in the future you might want to also have a good look at perspectives from the past. He gave a fascinating and amazingly well-documented talk about StanisÅ‚aw Ulam and other great people who came to the US in the ’30 and whom the States would probably not allow to enter now.
Louise Skyggebjerg tells the story of Jacob C. Ellehammer, a pioneer in Danish aviation and the man behind the boats in the Tivoli Lake, a revolutionising fire pump, a solar-powered tractor, an automated beer machine, etc. Her point was to demonstrate that there is a long way from invention to innovation and diffusion (and the stones on the way) but also to show that notion of success vs failure is also a question of interpretation,
Anthony Dunne discusses his idea of “design for debate”, a new design approach that would raise questions about the kind of technological future we desire.
Christopher Bauder explains how and why he gets to invent new projects.
Peter Qvist Lorentsen gives the lowdown on H2PIA, the world first hydrogen-based city.
Jane McGonigal tells all about alternate reality games.
Kevin Slavin, from area/code, gave a way too short talk about “Big Gamesâ€?, large-scale, real-world games that might involve transforming an entire city into the world’s largest board game with hundreds of players scouring the streets to escape ghosts, or a TV show reaching out to interact with real-time audiences nationwide. The video doesn’t seem to be online though :-(
Charles Leadbeater discusses why good innovation is un-finished and much much more.
Jason Kaufman explained the latest developments in GumSpots & GSPS: GumSpots Positioning System.
I wrote down my notes from Colin Bulthaup, Lucy McRae and Vuk Cosic‘s talks previously but they can’t beat the videos!
NEXT flickr set, images by Morten Fauerby from Innovation lab. My flickr set.