TheFutureTour is an exclusive Workshop-Format, wherein over the course of one day, the most important trends from the week long ARS Electronica Festival will be presented in business relevant terms.
Thus TheFutureTours becomes a seismograph, measuring and recognizing interesting economic developments early on. The exclusive information and insights that will be presented are not the only worthwhile part of the workshop. The workshop offers an intense networking opportunity, engaging experts and the invitation only attendees who will certainly not act as passive information consumers, instead contributing personal experiences and knowledge. Thereby participants will obtain valuable perspectives and solutions for challenges they face in day-to-day business.
The Future Tour – Open Life
@Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria
September 6th, 2007
The participation is by invitation only.
Request Invitation.
Ars Electronica is the largest worldwide festival for all things related to Computer-culture. More than 500 innovators, computer artists, and academics will display their work and future projects before an estimated 35,000 visitors. Since 1979 Ars Electronica has been the birthplace or the first public presentation for many groundbreaking trends. Important works are on permanent display in „the Museum of the Future.“ The highly renowned Ars Electronica awards span 8 categories, and are recognized as the “Oscars of the digital culture.” This year 3374 projects from over 63 countries will be exhibited.
The designs that will be on display at Ars Electronica, have certain implications for businesses, brands, media, and people (formerly known as consumers). Developments such as Web 2.0, SecondLife, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube were shaped here over the years. The Ars Electronica subject matter continues to anticipate important business, technology and cultural developments. The main theme „Goodbye Privacy“ stands at the center of this year’s Ars Electronic Festival. Our FutureTour takes up this theme and interpret its effect upon the economy as follows.
With the term Open Life we qualify the fundamental trend, that people and businesses lead a more open and visible life as reinforced by the digital world. The boundaries between private, public and economic spheres are dissolving. The Internet makes preferences, opinions, consumption, and communication behaviors increasingly transparent. Blogs and Internet forums are the scenes of voluntary sharing of personal and intimate communications.
Even more so: henceforth leading an Open Life, in which one’s own life is open and on display, is for individuals and businesses a status symbol. Photo, video, and mobile techonologies are the drivers behind this trend. In the near future we will face the following questions:
- Are we on the threshold of continuous live broadcasted Life-shows – comparable with the film The Truman Show starring Jim Carrey?
- How far along the path towards Matrix and Brave New World are we really?
- How will communities protect themselves?
- What roll will people, brands, land the media play in the new Open Life?
- What risks do companys today face?
- And, above all: what are the prospects that will arise from this adaptive economy?
In line with these central questions our Expert panel will present Brand-New Trends in the following theme groupings:
- The Future of Industry
- The Future of Media
- The Future of Technology and the Internet
- The Future of Humankind and the Social Network
- The Future of Computer Culture
Experts:
Joichi Ito, Neotony
The entrepreneur, activist, and venture capitalist was born in Japan and grew up in the United States. Besides the establishment of his venture capital firm Neoteny, Joichi Ito has acted in supervising positions at Creative Commons, Six Apart Japan, Technorati, Digital Garage, WITNESS, Pia Corporation, Socialtext, iCommons, ICANN and Mozilla Foundation. As an entrepreneur, he also founded PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. He writes one of the most popular blogs in the blogosphere scene. His interests lie particularly in Sharing E-conomy.
Kevin Leong
In 2004, he founded Mo’Blast in Palo Alto (San Francisco), a firm, which will set future standards in mobile Internet services. Additionally he is the program director for the Computer Engineering department at San Jose State University. With years of experience in the IT-computer industry Mr. Leon’s work now focuses around Mo’Blast’s further growth in areas of geolocal mobile services. His specialties, among many others, include working with user-interface design, multi-tiered software architecture, and computer languages such as Java and C++.
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