Future Salon

Great Phone Cam overlay picture from Identity Future Salon

Future Salon on Digital Identity
Originally uploaded by pinhole.

Love this overlay cameraphone pictures from pinhole it captures a good part of the Future Salon essence.

Great people coming together in a relaxed atmosphere to hear and discuss interesting things about the future. Geek out a bit and have fun.

From the picture it looks like remote, but you are a lot closer and part to the action if you like.

Love it, Mark.
P.S. This is my first post directly out of Flickr. Hope it works out.

Out of this world Idea? Now is the time to get funded!

Looks like if VCs don't spend their funds within the next 12-18 months they have to give it back even with their management fees. Robert X. Cringely:

In 1999-2000 -- at the very peak of the dot-com boom -- venture capital firms were not only taking companies public at a furious pace, they were just as furiously raising new venture funds -- funds that will shortly be coming to the end of their lives. Throughout the fixed lifespan of these funds venture capitalists are typically paid 1-2 percent of the total fund per year as a management fee. If a VC raises $100 million for a fund with a six-year life, they'll take $2 million every year as a management fee, whether the money is actually invested or not. Any money that remains uninvested at the end of the fund must be returned to the investors ALONG WITH THE ASSOCIATED MANAGEMENT FEE.

Right now, there is in the U.S. venture capital community about $25 billion that remains uninvested from funds that will end their lifespans in the next 12-18 months. If the VCs return those funds to investors they'll also have to return $3 billion in already-spent management fees. Alternately, they can invest the money -- even if they invest it in bad deals -- and NOT have to cough-up that $3 billion. So the VCs have to find in the next few months places to throw that $25 billion. They waited this long in hopes that the economy would improve and that technical trends would become clear so they could do their typical lemming-like jump off the same investment cliff as all the other VCs. Well, we're at the edge of the cliff, so get ready for the most furious venture investing cycle in history.

If that is the case, Harry Max should polish Public Mind, the concept is great. Let's bond together to get what we want. The Daimler execs may have looked at the Bring the Smart Car to the US request and actually decided to do it.  May be in my dreams :-)

Future of Art and Technology Salon Tonight

Future of Art and Technology Salon Tonight 15th of February. [Details]

Sponsored by SAP this time even more, because they helped us set up two servers for the Webcast tonight. It is a try out please don't be disappointed if it doesn't work or too many people tune in and it gets really slow.

Point your Quicktime to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp

We are also having an IRC chat session running:
Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #futuresalon
Bring your wireless devices to the event to be able to participate in the chat.

I am really curious how this one works out. See you later.

P.S. Camera man desperately needed. Wayne wasn't sure if he can make it tonight and I would like to give him a break. Please talk to me if you would like to do that.

P.P.S. I get asked whether one can come even though you have not RSVPd. Yes, just eat and drink less, because you were not planned :-)

Art on the Edge

Future Salon presenter Steve Dietz commenting my first Future Salon announcement:

One thing we want to stress is that we are hosting both ISEA and a new biennial festival called ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge.

Therefore all about Art on the Edge at the Future Salon next Tuesday the 15th. It gives you the opportunity to relax from your Valentine's adventure the day before :-)

To the left is one of the images that you get if you ask the Gooracle for Future of Art and Technology. It is so super random, I love it.

Having only one speaker, we will have a bit more time for the introduction round. Therefore here already the introduction question:

Which Art piece has lately made you think?

Think, as in expanded your horizon, made you say "Wow, that is so true".

Here is an example from Mike Rowehl:

For a while I’ve been thinking about hooking together biofeedback systems with the electronics commonly found at live events, spurred somewhat by reading The Diamond Age by Stephenson a while ago. It’s the merger of art, technology, and social systems like that which really gets my interest up. That’s one of the aspects that draws me to mobility, and technologies like mesh networking, TinyOS, and hacking RFID to do more interesting stuff than it’s deployed to do. When you allow the dialog of creation that the artist and audience engage in to compress to a realtime exchange (when the feedback loop is closed and direct) I think a state change happens. It’s a lot like the change in communication styles that happen between asyncronous and syncronous dialog everywhere else.

Don't fear this round of introduction, you can also say pass.

After that I can't wait for Steve Dietz to tell us his perspective from being front and center for so many years in the art and technology world as well as some info for what he and his colleagues are cooking up at ZeroOne and the 2006 ISEA Symposium.

If everything works out, we may be Webcasting this event live to the outside world. I'll keep you posted. Also I may have a little surprise in store, let's see how far I get.

More details to the event in my first Future of Art and Technology post. In short:

Tuesday the 15th of February 6-7pm networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentations and panel discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

This time please RSVP right away so we can better calculate food and drinks by sending an email to mona dot bhardwaj at sap dot com or to me. See you all there. As always free and open to the public.

Art at PARC

Some of you pointed out that the day after Valentine is Tuesday not Wednesday. So Yes, next Future Salon is on Tuesday the 15th at SAP in Palo Alto. (Corrected already)

Having one speaker has the advantage that we can do a bit more audience participation. The question will be: What technical piece of art has really made you think, made you see the world differently lately? You can nominate it on this list if you like already.

An example for me is the things that Spot Draves does with Electric Sheep. He once presented at the Future Salon too.

If you hurry you may be able to be catch Art at PARC in Palo Alto this afternoon starting at 4pm:

REVELations – 2005: Quilt Art & Fiber Sculpture from Faultline Studio Artists

Although it is just across the street from where I work, I will not be able to swing by :-( too busy right now.

Future of Art and Technology

Changes in society are sensed much earlier by artists than by us normans (as in normal humans). They use their craft to amplify what they sense and by doing so make us aware of these changes. As I told at the Future Salon last Friday, Joseph Beuys for me was one of these artists. In 1979 he was one of the founding members of the German Green party. For the Documenta 7 in 1982 he did the 7000 Oaks project:

I believe that planting these oaks is necessary not only in biospheric terms, that is to say, in the context of matter and ecology, but in that it will raise ecological consciousness -- raise it increasingly in the course of the years to come, because we shall never stop planting. -- Joseph Beuys, 1982

For this month's Future Salon we are happy to have someone who has his finger on the pulse of art and technology for many years: Steve Dietz was the curator in new media at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He may not have his own Wikipedia page yet, but his Internet Art definition is quoted there:

Internet art projects are art projects for which the Net is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing/expressing/participating. Internet art can also happen outside the purely technical structure of the internet, when artists use specific social or cultural traditions from the internet in a project outside of it. Internet art is often, but not always, interactive, participatory and based on multimedia in the broadest sense.

For the past couple of months he has been the new director of ZeroOne a public benefit organization based in Silicon Valley that provides the collaboration of art and technology. Its biggest project yet is the just-announced Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Symposium held in San Jose from the 5th - 13th of August in 2006.

ZeroOne, in conjunction with the City of San Jose, the San Jose Museum of Art, The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose State University's CADRE Institute, Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley and the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau is hosting the 2006 ISEA Symposium.

This is going to be really big and Steve is the curator as well as the festival director. His take on the Future of Art and Technology will therefore be very interesting.

The day after Valentines Day: Tuesday the 15th of February 6-7pm networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentations and panel discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

This time please RSVP right away so we can better calculate food and drinks by sending an email to mona dot bhardwaj at sap dot com or to me.

See you all there.