Core77

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3


Pop!Tech has done everything possible to create, disseminate, and preserve the goings on here to the absolute nth degree. There is the live webcast of course, but there is also the Artifact Project--complete with an Artifact War Room--charged with live-blogging, wiki-ing, scanning, sketching, collating and collecting any and all artifacts that anyone cares to share. (This will all be presented at the close of the conference, acting as a time capsule--albeit a 3-day time capsule.) There are photographers everywhere you turn (photocamp!), and laptops as far as the eye can see. (Looks like a 3-to-2 ratio of Macs to PCs for presenters/1-1 for attendees, if anyone still gives a shit.) There is the amazing Peter Durand illustrating real-time cartoons of the event, and bloggers, print journalists, and flickr enthusiasts on every isle end. So ya, a modern design conference.

The day started off with an update from a speaker who's had mythical buzz from last year's conference: Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. This year's images focusing on Eneladus, a moon near Saturn, provided visual proof that the moon has been geologically active with water...and you know what that might mean. Porco followed up with ring-wide images that were a revelation, showing a final image via the Casini spacecraft of a total eclipse of the sun, with a speck of planet earth clearly visible through the rings. See it all here.

After 10-year anniversary reprises from Tom Barnett and Juan Enriquez (make sure you check out Maps of War, the Yes Men took the stage, sharing several videos of some of their most infamous hoaxes (Dow and Bhopal, Halliburton), offering that they are "a corporate watchdog that bites." Kwame Anthony Appiah asked "what is Western Identity?", outlining 5 errors we make about cultures and countries: 1. The birthright error: overstating what we have in common with our ancestors; 2. The idealist error: overstating the role of ideas in human history; 3. The determinist error: overstating the extent to which what we have been fixes what we must be; 4. The organicist error: overstating the wholeness of cultures; and 5. The nationalist error: overstating the relationship between cultural and political identities.

Reggie Watts took us into lunch with a Bobby McFerrin-like voice, sequencer, microphone and nothing else--conjuring symphonic layers that were meditative and entrancing. Other numbers were comedic, and everyone left for lunch with smiles on their faces.

It was back to business after the break with what many thought might be showdown between believer/scholar Martin Marty and atheist/scholar Richard Dawkins. Marty was mellow and Dawkins positively rabid, alas alas, not a spark between them. This pair was followed by a Special Session, featuring Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton, two filmmakers who, in 2003 went to Iraq to do a documentary on the looting of antiquities. Carleton returned to New York to let Garen finish up, and shortly thereafter, Garen and his Iraqi translator were kidnapped by a local Shiite group. Their story--his from under the blindfold and hers from a makeshift command center in a small New York apartment--was incredible to hear, and the audience was silent for every word.

An ice cream social break followed, and, undeterred by a bit of rain, attendees crossed the street to covered tents to eat up the yummies. Things picked up again with Pop!Tech's Education Fellows: Deneen Frazier Bowen, consultant for new technologies in education; Mark Horner, founder of Free High School Science Textbook (FHSST), Adam Kenner, director of technology at Horace Mann; Kerri Richardson, director of academic technology at Brooklyn Friends School in Brooklyn; Dr. David Wiley, founder of OpenContent.org; Andrew Rasiej, founder of MOUSE; and Bobbi Kurshan, head of Curriki. The Panel discussion definitely raised some heat, throwing out provocative ideas--some hanging, some addressed. Some Sound bites: "Knowledge is not proprietary; IP may be an oxymoron." "The average student in a NYC public school spends 1 hour per week using a computer." "If humans weren't important in educations, then libraries wouldn't have evolved into universities." "If teaching were open to peer review, transparency would drive quality."

Erin McKean was a standout, taking us through some of the finery of lexicography, entertaining us with pullquotes like "Dictionaries are the vodka of literature: odorless, colorless, tasteless, but really powerful," and generally entertaining after a pretty heavy day. Using the metaphor of a Calder sculpture, she asked us to imagine all the hanging bits as words, and that each time a writer touched one of those words, the entire sculpture reacted, begging lexicographers to take a "new snapshot" of the language as a whole. That beautiful image hung in the room for awhile.

Losang Ragbey toured us through the incredible Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library, showing mapping, Quicktime VRs, and all other manner of data. A treasure of information for anyone online, The royal government of Bhutan has asked her to repeat the process for them. Youngchen Lhamo closed the day with gorgeous singing, ending her set with all the conference attendees holding a note as it swirled around the Opera House while she riffed over top to everyone's delight.

At the end of this siblime experience, Andrew Zolli stepped up to the stage, waved goodbye without words, and sent us into the night. Pitch perfect.

Again, live stream from the conference:
http://live.poptech.org/

Pop!Tech photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poptech2006

Wiki sessions:
http://poptech2006.jot.com/Sessions

Peter Durand's illustrations:
http://www.alphachimp.com

Other bloggings:
Ethan Zuckerman at his site as well as at Worldchanging
Jason Kottke at http://www.kottke.org
Ed Cotton at http://www.influxinsights.com
Jamais Cascio at http://www.openthefuture.com