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My top-8 podcasts of all times

Admittedly, I'm hooked on the Conversations Network :-)

In fact, surprised myself by having such a strong focus on technology in the top-3. But the truth is, these topics will have a huge impact on our future.

1. Pop!Tech 2004: Carolyn Porco, Cassini Science Imaging Team Leader: 'Explorer's Club'

"(...) Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) has been focused on Saturn since early 2004 as the Cassini spacecraft approached its orbit around the planet. (...) The icy moon Enceladus contains fissures that suggest tectonics, the south pole is especially warm and has signatures of organic material. (...) The other moon, Titan, is where the Huygens probe landed in January 2005. (...) the Titan moon may give us a significant glimpse of what the Earth was like before living organisms. (...) Lastly Carolyn shares some of her views on science and spirituality. (...)"

2. Pop!Tech 2004: Joel Garreau, Journalist, The Garreau Group: 'Human Nature'

"(...) "Are we fundamentally changing human nature in our lifetime?" Joel Garreau thinks that yes we will be...over the next twenty years. What's driving this? (...)" GRIN: genetics, robotics, Information and nanotech.

3. Tech Nation: Sandra Blakeslee, Contributor, NY Times

"(...) Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with NY Times contributor Sandra Blakeslee, about neuroscience, and how it is revealing how our brains map out our physical bodies. (...)"

4. Pop!Tech 2004: Ben Saunders, Solo Explorer

"(...) On his latest expedition in February 2004, Ben set out from Cape Arktichevsky in Northern Siberia in an attempt to be the first person in the world to make a complete crossing of the frozen Arctic Ocean in a 1,240-mile journey ending in Canada, solo and unsupported. (...) After experiencing first hand conditions described by NASA and Environment Canada as 'the worst on record', Ben has raised international awareness regarding the extent to which climate change is affecting the Arctic. He noticed conditions that were up to 15 degrees warmer than in 2000, and had to negotiate vast, unprecedented areas of thinning ice and open water. (...)"

5. Pop!Tech 2004: Doug Rushkoff: 'Renaissance Prospects'

"(...) Douglas Rushkoff analyzes, writes and speaks about the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it. (...)"

6. O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2005:
Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine: 'Economics of the Long Tail'

"(...) he explores the economics of the long tail and shares his insight on the effects it might have on future business models. Chris discusses how distribution networks like Amazon, iTunes and Netflix have shown that the right side of the curve which forms millions of niches can be as big a market as the chart toppers. (...)"

7. O'Reilly Digital Democracy Teach-In:
Gatekeepers No More? The Grassroots Challenges the Journalistic Priesthood

"(...) Professional journalists have been the chief gatekeepers of news about political campaigns and governmental operations. That's changing, fast, as the Internet and other technical tools open up a variety of avenues for other participants in the information process. (...)" With Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen.

8. Pop!Tech 2005: Sam Harris, Author, The End of Faith: 'The Future of Ideas'

"(...) Sam Harris debates many points relating to religion, particularly the dangers that can be brought about by religious extremists -- in any faith -- around the world (...)"

Runners-up:

Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School: 'Capturing the Upside'

"(...) Through his recent research, Professor Christensen has developed a set of theories to help guide managers as they seek to answer seven critical questions when trying to build new growth businesses, again and again: (...)"

Web 2.0 Conference: Lawrence Lessig

"(...) By presenting media remixing as the "creative writing" of the future he highlights the dangers of moving from a free culture where discussion and free speech are taken for granted, to a permission culture where permission to reproduce media messages will depend on the use of that media. (...)"

SDForum: Lawrence Lessig: 'The Comedy of the Commons'

"(...) Lessig (...) charts a history of IP, which helps him highlight the difference between physical-property law, which can result in a tragedy of the commons, and intellectual-property law, which can result in a comedy of the commons. (...)"

Eben Moglen, Director, Software Freedom Law Center: 'Freedom Businesses Protect Privacy'

"(...) Few, if any, presentations at conferences in the coming years will manage to combine the intellectual depth and delivery skills shown by Software Freedom Law Center director Eben Moglen in this penetrating analysis of privacy and technology. (...)"

Tech Nation: Dr. Steven Miles, Author & Professor, University of Minnesota

"(...) Dr. Moira Gunn talks to Dr. Steven Miles, the Minnesota MD who studied tens of thousands of documents released by the Department of Defense about US military prisons in Iraq. Included were those from the notorious Abu Ghurayb prison near Baghdad. What Dr. Miles found was extremely disturbing. (...)"

MeshForum 2005: Jamais Cascio: 'Participatory Panopticon'

Jamais Cascio's 'Participatory Panopticon', a presentation at the MeshForum 2005 Event held in Chicago, Il, May 1-4, 2005 and podcast via IT Conversations, takes the "memory prosthesis" concept of Nokia Lifeblog a few steps further.

"(...) [S]elf-proclaimed freelance world-builder, [Jamais] has a bold vision for the future. He calls it the Participatory Panopticon, and it spells the end of privacy and the end of secrecy. While personal privacy is eroding, the ability of those in power to lie, cheat, and steal is also becoming increasingly impaired. (...)"

Tech Nation: Greenfield v. Kurzweil: 'Biotech: Will it Save Us or Hurt Us?'

"(...) Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, debates Ray Kurzweil, one of America’s most prolific inventors and a futuristic thinker in his own right. Will biotechnology save us? Or hurt us? (...)"

Pop!Tech 2005: Susan Blackmore, Author and lecturer: 'Memes'

"(...) Memetics is an intellectually rich but controversial field which seeks to explain how our minds and cultures are designed by natural selection acting on replicating information, just as organisms evolve by natural selection acting on genes. (...)"

Lifeblog is a blogging application!

Yes it is, Ivan! :-)

Granted, Nokia Lifeblog is foremost an attempt at a memory prosthesis, as Christian Lindholm explained in that interview before the launch of the beta version in 2004.

Gordon Bell is making a more thorough attempt, albeit one that would be unpractical for the Nokia Multimedia Business Group's target customers at this stage. But don't worry, we'll get there. (See also Wikipedia: "lifelog")

The content you consciously capture (photos, video, sound, text) is part of that extended memory, as is the context information which mobile devices will be able to capture for you in the background. Both consciously created or selected content and less consciously captured context are part of our human memory, so the metaphor still applies.

As you mention, Ivan, content and contextual information is not all that valuable unless it can be searched. True, or, to put it in somewhat broader terms: real value is derived from all that information only when you start using it.

Now, this is where the onions come in.

Huh?

The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations

IMHO, the Cluetrain Manifesto is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

From where I stand, the three most relevant themes in the Cluetrain are:

1. The significance of conversations, and how the Internet is bringing them back.
2. Why and how businesses need to change as a result.
3. The power of storytelling.

Below is my collection of references from the book, with an emphasis on the first theme, the rebirth of conversations.

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Doc Searls refers to my excerpts from the cluetrain on The Doc Searls Weblog:  Saturday, July 28, 2007. In response, I submit that we should combine the teachings of the Cluetrain and the Long Tail theory to be able to engage in the conversations that matter most to us.]

Futurology and the Meaning of Life

In the area of futurology and the meaning of life, these are a couple of podcasts from IT Conversation that spoke to me lately:

IT Conversations: Joel Garreau - Human Nature
"Are we fundamentally changing human nature in our lifetime?" Joel Garreau thinks that yes we will be...over the next twenty years. What's driving this? He goes into great depth on Moore's Law and later on, Metcalfe's Law, which he received brownie points from Bob at the end of his session. He talks about technologies, how they are now aimed inward and gives a number of s curve examples.

IT Conversations: Greenfield v. Kurzweil - Biotech: Will it Save Us or Hurt Us?
Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, debates Ray Kurzweil, one of America’s most prolific inventors and a futuristic thinker in his own right. Will biotechnology save us? Or hurt us?

Technorati Tags: Joel Garreau, Susan Greenfield, Ray Kurzweil, futurology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, meaning of life, purpose, happiness, IT Conversations, podcast

Divergence follows convergence follows divergence

"New mobility is my prediction about the future of mobile," Christian Lindholm writes in his remote contribution to Les Blogs 2.0. "It is a prediction of Divergence with new players."

"[T]he mobile phone we all love to talk on is perfected. [sic! - JS]
(...)
New entrants will enter from the service side or from innovative incumbents, but they do not enter with voice optimized devices, but e-mail, IM and service optimized devices. They are pocketable two-hand operated Webpads with Wi-Fi, they are built on top of Linux using open source core applications (Phonebook, Calendar, E-Mail etc.) applications.
(...)
The added value will come from a new form of social apps, which are server driven client-sever architectures, which has the ability to update themselves and evolve to become, so personalized that they in the end reach segments of ones. They will unite people via, text, pictures, location and interest.
(...)
The Nokia 770 is a powerful game opener
(...)
Since the cellular phone will not be used for data, it has to evolve into another direction and the most promising is towards a voice wearable, it will appear as a band around the neck providing the optimized carrying and usage experience voice and stereo audio. Think iPod Nano with cellular. I call it the NeckPhone.
(...)
This is the new mobility: a device for voice which is wearable and a device for data which is pocketable.
(...)
When you in ten years look back at this and look who did it you will say shit, this I did not see coming. It will be a disruption of unbelievable proportions."

So at the mega-trend level, Christian holds the view that convergence is followed by divergence. What fascinating dialectics!

After a great wave of integration of functionalities and services from the telecommunications, fixed-Internet, multimedia gadget, brick-and-mortar and e-commerce legacies into a converged digital mobile online multimedia ecosystem, the pendulum is now about to swing back and create highly diverse, task-specific hardware, software and services.

And by the way, he also throws social applications into the mix.

At the device level, this translates into wearable electronics, chips under your skin, robots on your kitchen table, and such. Christian, do we have pictures of the NeckPhone?

Actually, stupid question...

Bookmark this entry at del.icio.us.

Rashmi Shinha's cognitive analysis of tagging

When I watched earlier this week, the most popular - and therefore potentially one of the most interesting - among Dion Hinchcliffe's items tagged "participation" was 'A cognitive analysis of tagging' by Rashmi Shinha, with a bit over 700 people tagging it.

Turned out rather insightful indeed, so I copy-pasted some of the topical sentences below.

Rashmi Sinha's theory of tagging is...

[STARTS]
"...a hypothesis about the cognitive process that kicks into place when we tag an item, and how this differs than the process of categorizing.
(...)

Eye in the sky

Following up on my exploration of OpenLaszlo and Google's maps beta (see my previous entry), the picture you see here is a satellite view of Mäntyharju, the village I live in.

Google's map search had never heard of Mäntyharju. No problem though, I "browsed" there through the global satellite picture interface. Starting from the default map of the United States, scrolling all the way East over the Atlantic, and up north into Finland. When I zoomed in close enough, I could just follow the motor way from Helsinki.

If you click on the image, you will get to the latest satellite picture of this location on Google.

QoL apple juice moonshine

It's been a year since we moved from Helsinki to the Finnish countryside. No regrets. Why? In one phrase: QoL (Quality of Life).

Space, fresh air, clean water, fantastic sunsets over lake Pyhävesi. A great place to grow up.

One of the attractions of living in the countryside is that you can truely live with the seasons. Like in the old days.

Capturables from 'Moving experiences'

I had a closer look at Christian Lindholm's blog, 'Moving experiences'.

"The current look was designed by Sami Koskela, a very talented graphics designer living and working in Finland. He has a keen eye for details I greatly appriciate," Christian wrote when he started feeling comfortable with his new digital identity.

Here's for some snippets of inspiration that I could draw from it at a glance:

1. Style. Page layout, visual brand elements, typography, colors, shades, photo sizes and  formats, use of space. 'Moving experiences' is elegant, fresh, light and delightful. (someone else mentioned this)

2. Structure. Top-level navigation is clear, logical and intuitive. Consistent horizontal page navigation with category symbols. I noticed that Christian uses a very limited number of category tags. While it does keep things simple, I'm not entirely sure if it's the way to go.

3. Branding. 'Moving experiences' is a clear theme that reflects the owner's personality and connects all content. Interestingly, the blog title differs from its domain name. On the one hand, this may seem confusing. On the other, it strikes me as modest and adding to the author's credibility. It's a trade-off, I guess...

4. Content. I caught myself drawn right into Christian's blog, so I decided to compile a list of entries that I find worth capturing for possible future reference. And now that I feel reasonably up-to-date, I'd better code a blogroll in my sidebar to keep in the loop ;-)

So here comes my list of recommended reading on 'Moving experiences' (leaving out most of the family and play stuff):

Jamais Cascio's 'Participatory Panopticon'

IT Conversations offers great podcasts. One of three podcasts that I was listening to in my car this morning is Jamais Cascio's 'Participatory Panopticon', a presentation at the MeshForum 2005 Event held in Chicago, Il, May 1-4, 2005.

We read on IT Conversations:

"(...) The term "panopticon" was coined by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century for his model for a prison in which the inmates are watched at all times. This term has now been repurposed to describe a society in which everyone is being recorded and simultaneously is recording everything around them, a society we are creating today. (...)"

Why I find Jamais' sketch of the future so interesting is that it draws a straight line from one of the original concepts of Nokia Lifeblog, the "memory prosthesis". The future will be one of all-pervasive connectivity, and we will voluntarily record our every move, to support our memories, through wearable devices stuffed with sensors.

Finnish Iqua bets on hands-free gear

Finnish technology startup Iqua is pinning its growth hopes on explosive demand for hands-free mobile gear and has set its sights on a stockmarket listing within five years, Reuters reported on August 2nd: 'Finnish startup targets growth from phone add-ons'.

Podcasting + mobility = un-escapable

So I started listening to podcasts on my Nokia 9500 Communicator. Six immediate observations:

Mobile video technology market "being divided right now"

"To simplify it to the extremes, our technology takes a first picture of a video scene and in the subsequent frames the software saves only the pixels which have been changed from the previous frame. Usually when you film, there is no sudden movements 15 or 30 times a second." That's how Eero Kaikkonen of Hantro Products Oy in the northern-Finnish city of Oulu explains his company's business proposition.

Washington Post on Liqum, MetaCase and Innosonic

The Washington Post is running a piece about high-tech entrepreneurship in Jyväskylä, allegedly Finland's second-fastest technology growth center:

'Moving Out of Nokia's Shadow - Finnish Entrepreneurs Seek to Replicate Cell Phone Company's International Success'

Despite housing only one thousandth of the world's population, there seem to be plenty of small enterpreneurs in this country eager to copy-cat Nokia and move out of its shadow, into the global economy.

In his article, Robert G. Kaiser points out Liqum's liquid measurement technology, MetaCase's software modeling environment and Innosonic's mobile language learning solutions.