Future Salon

As the Future Catches you in Las Vegas

They say that copying is one of the sincerest forms of flattery. First I copied the model from John Smart in Los Angeles, and now Mike Korns and Gilda Cabral are taking the best elements from Los Angeles and our Bay Area Futurist Salon and roll their own in Las Vegas. We can feel flattered. Here is the invitation to their event:

Las Vegas Futurists Unite!

The first meeting of the Las Vegas Futurists Reading Group will be held on Friday November 14th at 7:00pm at the Borders Bookstore at 2190 N. Rainbow Blvd, LV.  Each month the Futurists will focus on revolutions in computers, artificial intelligence, medicine, and longevity and their profound effect on our lives in the 21st century.  The suggested reading for this first meeting is As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth by Juan Enriquez.  Even if you haven't had the time to read the book but are interested in these futurists topic, please come and join in the lively discussions. 

If you haven't already, please join the yahoo group: lvfuturists.

Open question is of course, will there be Las Vegas specific themes? Future of Gambling, Entertainment, Vice or Urban Architecture (Las Vegas being one of the fastest growing cities in the US).

If you like our little get together every month, then tell all your Las Vegas friends that the intellectual drought is over the LVFuturists are in the hood.

I will be there for the opening and hope you can make it too.  

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Fresh Out of Beta

"Fresh Out of Beta". No wonder Ross didn't have time the last days to discuss what exactly we are going to do at the next Futurist Salon on the 21st of November were Social Software is the theme.

He and his team were putting the final touches on their new product Socialtext Workspace. Congratulations, going to be interesting to hear more about it at the Salon.

1000st Post on the Bay Area Futurists Yahoo Group

This is the 1000st message on the Bay Area Futurists Yahoo Group.

I would like to thank everyone who contributed and makes this one of the most interesting boards out there regarding futuristic themes.

Mike Korns said it yesterday evening at the dinner and I would like to extend a special thank to Wayne for the many quality well researched posts. Mike even said that he keeps all of his posts. We joked, that he does that, so that he has a track record, for when the Feds catch up with Wayne :-)

When you search the board for Wayne, it turns out that he is mentioned in 921 of our 1000 posts. I always post the announcements and my name is so much more common, still I only get six more 927.

Some more interesting ones
Mike (Although there are at least two): 628
Mila (Words like siMilar count unfortunately): 831
Troy 779
John 830
Eric 885
Joschka 526
and the winner is:
Chris with 940 messages.

This will find a place in the drawer with the pretty useless statistics.

Here the information for the next Futurist Salon:
Friday the 21st of November 7pm.

Back by popular demand. Socialtext cofounder Ross Mayfield, who had one of the highest rated sessions at the ACC2003 conference, will lead us through the latest developments in the area of Social Software. No book to read this time, but check his blogs: Many-to-Many, Socialtext, Ross Mayfield.

We will be back at SAP :
SAP Labs North America
Building D
3410 Hillview Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Driving directions to building D via Highway 101
Driving directions to building D via Highway 280

Cybersalon: Digital Democracy in 2004?

As promised yesterday at the Futurist Salon here are the details of this Sundays Cybersalon in Berkeley:

6:00-8:30 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 19
Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., Berkeley
Will the Internet encourage more people, including political candidates, to participate in the next Presidential elections? Joan Blades, cofounder of moveon.org, will relate how moveon.org has moved hundreds of thousands of citizens to take direct action; Garrett Gruener, former gubernatorial candidate and founder of search engine Ask Jeeves, will describe the implications of the Internet for candidates; and Tyler Ziemann, 23-year-old founder of Affinity Engines, will talk about why a major Presidential candidate is using Affinity's software platform to mobilize and monitor voter support.  Also on our panel is Lauren Gelman, assistant director, Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, and Zane Vella, executive director, Campaign Video Project.  Notice: We're starting later and ending earlier, serving light refreshments (not dinner!), and lowering our donation request to $10. RSVP to whoisylvia@aol.com and feel free to bring friends and family. Directions: From the Bay Bridge or Oakland and points south, take the University St. exit off 880, bear right and go straight (north) along the frontage road for about half a mile. Make a right onto Cedar Street and continue 2.3 miles. The Hillside Club is three blocks east (up the hill) of Shattuck Ave, between Spruce and Arch Streets, and there is parking in the neighborhood. For BART travelers, get off at the Central Berkeley BART, and take any bus going along Shattuck and get off at Cedar.

Wired News: Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer

Half a Terra Flop of processing power for $25K.

What amazes me even more is, that the ClearSpeed chip only needs 2 watts power, therefore doesn't need a vent, which bothers me a lot with my current laptop.

Oops, not even a week to the Futurist Salon this Friday: The next Enlightenment

Time flies when you are having fun. Of the Futurist Salon regulars Mike Linksvayer, Lisa Rein, Harry Max, Bill Grosso (who was kind enough to drive me there) and I had a great weekend at the Foo (Friends of O'Reilly) Fest. I hope to find time to post about it soon.

Wow, the next Futurist Salon is already this Friday the 17th 7pm at the Barnes and Noble at the Hillsdale Shopping Center.(map)

Bring articles to share of futuristic stuff, that you stumbled over in the last month. Like the "Monkey brain operates a machine" one.

Here more details from my introduction a couple of days ago:

May I quote from Walt Truett Anderson's' book "The Next Enlightenment" (and I am not telling you where in the book I found this):

 There is much to learn, and there is also something to learn about learning. People have known for a long time that knowledge is power, and a lucky few have always understood that knowledge is joy. Now as we begin to understand that exploration is not only what we do but what we are, we find that knowledge -- the search for knowledge, the daring to know -- is also peace.

We are some of the lucky few, not only to understand that knowledge is joy, but also to have Walt Truett Anderson to introduce us to his great book at our next Futurist Salon on the 17th of October 7pm Barnes and Noble bookstore at the Hillsdale Shopping Center just across of the Hillsdale Caltrain Station. 11 West Hillsdale Blvd., San Mateo, CA 94403 650-341-5560 (Map:http://tinyurl.com/o2n3) 

In his book he gives a short introduction to the history of Enlightenment with chapters about Kant , Hume, Darwin, Freud, Jung and the Existentialists Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Then he writes about the more recent enlightenment events, like the 60s Flower Power movement. The great thing is, he grew up in the Bay Area and experienced it as a young journalist and author. (Which, no doubt we will quiz him about on the 17th.) He also writes about the growing influence of Eastern philosophy on the western thinkers, with one of the focal points being the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. (Which is high on my list of places to stay, just once)

This is how far I read and the first of three parts of the book. In the next chapters he is exploring some areas of science: Physics, cosmology, brain research as well as psychology: Cognition, constructivision and adult development. He claims, that findings in these areas are converging to a new worldview.

In the last almost 100 pages of the book he brings it all together, or so I hope :-)  to lead us to the next Enlightenment.  This is really exciting.

Blog coolness officially over ...

The man who is occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington has a campaign blog. Although, if you search at Google, there is still a satirewire blog the #1.

My other question is, when will he do a Larry Lessig guest blog?

Event: Tech Media Future at the Canvas Gallery

I have some doubts that there will be great tech revelations at that gallery.

So don't get your hopes up too much, but probably some great designs and some food for thought and the stomach.

Thursday, October 16th, 6-10pm - Free, The Canvas Gallery
1200 9th Avenue, SF

'Future About' and 'Past Themes and Books' Pages updated

Took some time to update the About and the Past Themes and Books pages. Let me know if there is something I should add or change.

Thoughts on the Future of Handheld Computing

Wile looking into the new Trio 600 I stumbled into this design study of a future handheld device. Retina reading for security is a great concept, but it looks like you have to get a different one if you want to use your left hand.