Future Salon

Crowd and Open Sourced Mobile Devices Future Salon

Update: Added the bios of the two speakers to the post.

O.K. everyone let's all stop the drooling over the iPhone. There are in my opinion more interesting developments happening in the mobile handheld space.

Two of them we will look at on Monday the 23rd of June at our usual hang out SAP Labs.

First there is Ismael Ghalimi who gave away at his Office 2.0 conference one year an iPod Nano, last year an iPhone and had the crazy idea, that the participants of the conference could develop with him the device for this year's Office 2.0. He calls it the Redux Model 1. In his own words:

The more interesting option would be to build our own device. By that I mean designing, certifying, and manufacturing our very own piece of hardware, all in the one year that separates us for the next Office 2.0 Conference. Today’s engineering processes make such a challenge technically feasible, but for someone who has never done it before, and has no engineering budget for it, this is virtually impossible, so by all means, please assume that we will fail and have to revert to option 1. But if you dare to dream with us for a moment, feel free to read what follows.[more]

Last time I talked with him he was looking for a CEO for the venture, but not certain whether it will be available for Office 2.0. Still the approach of getting input from his network and publically develop a new device is such a novel approach, that I invited him to speak about his experiences.

Another interesting development I found at Buglabs.
Doc Searls is convinced, that the IT industry is going to develop similar to the construction industry. Check out this article: 

This change in perception is tied to the relative (im)maturity of the computer indus-
try; when it finishes growing up, it will look much like the construction industry.

Now the folks at Buglabs have created a mobile base station that they call the bug and they have many modules that you can connect to it like Lego blocks.  The cool thing is, that software as well as hardware is Open Source, that means there is only a limit in imagination and funds to possible extensions of the bug.

Jeremy Toeman from Buglabs will present their approach and current status. He also promised to bring some bugs and extensions.  It is going to be very interesting.

Cure Aging Event in LA

Aging 2008 is the opening session for the technically focused Understanding Aging conference, running June 28-29 at UCLA.

Their press release opens up with: "Have you ever dreamed climbing Mount Everest on your 125th birthday?"

From the far this sounds cool, but I just think, why would you want to? What a waist of passion to direct it towards climbing the highest rock on earth. I once heard that the natives didn't even have a name for Mount Everest, because compared to all the other mountains around him, he was just unspectacular, not worth a name.

If you really ant to live forever, you wouldn't put yourself in such a risky situation. I recommend reading Into thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It describes in vivid details the risks involved. Wanting to live forever has its limiting factors.

Honestly the woman on the event picture just looks a bit creepy and I start to wonder whether the most pressing question on this earth isn't aging, but why almost everyone is following the cult of wanting to be young, wanting to look younger ... More on that in a later post.

Truth is, I really like Aubrey de Grey. The Future Salon debate between him and William Hurlbut was one of our best Salons ever.

We were afterwards standing outside and he said, that it is O.K. with him, if he dies before the problem of aging is solved. He, and I am transcribing now from memory, will be happy that he has done what he could to solve the problem and to push solutions forward.

Therefore I am a bit bummed, that I am not in LA at that time to  join him and top scientists and advocates at this event. I would have loved to get an update.

Picture from the Future Current

 

May Future Salon Video with Kenyan Maasai Warriors Sabore Oiye and Salaton Ole’ Ntutu

We finally got a video up from our last Future Salon. (If you are looking for previous ones, we have some on the Internet Archive, I hope to load others soon too. I'll keep you posted.

Lots of people came to the Future Salon with the Maasai warriors and people really liked it. I posted already about what we can learn from them. This is why I am super happy that you can check it out for yourself now.  One of the most powerful stories is when Sabore by chance meets an African American in a parking lot earlier in the day. He tells the story starting at at 1h06m.

Of course you shouldn't miss where the stiff, dorky white guy, as DJ Cline calls it, busts a move, it starts at 1h15m. I first hoped they would involve everyone in their song and dance, but no. Enjoy.