Program for the Future Conference: Double-click to enlarge Eileen Clegg’s visual insights into the years beginning with Doug Engelbart’s birth in 1925 and emerging through his ‘mother of all demos’ in 1968 as we time travel to track the evolution and convergence of collective intelligence via human and techno systems…
Where have we been, where are we going, what will this mean for youth and kids of the future? How can we best use media and technology to raise the collective IQ of humanity toward problem solving? How do we “collectively use technology to map our future with integrity mindful of the perspectives of others and future generations?
Doug Engelbart often ponders this ‘co-evolution’ (technology/tools with human/cultural systems) which I’d like to perceive aspirationally as the ultimate ‘mashup.’ (uniting the best of both spheres to design and create for a greater good)
I’m lending a hand in the press room today, so will miss some of the speakers on stage and catch them on cam as the timer instead…
Our NextNow Collaboratory has a ton of folks volunteering on site here besides me at the Tech Museum of Innovation, so I’ll hunt down some of the live bloggers, and meanwhile you can catch some of the amazing collective knowledge being shared at the Program for the Future virtual hub created on ning!
Exciting times…Mei Lin Fung has been a gracious host an amazing point person pulling this all together, and Steve Wosniak was as jovial, fun-loving and childlike in his ability to laugh and engage with others (who else would tape a Big Gulp cup to the top of his car hood just for a reaction?) as ever imagined.
More soon…am on ‘overload mode’ and need time to process some of this before my brain fizzles! Pfffffffffthhhhhhhhhht! Short circuit! (Looks like it landed on Wired Magazine’s blog already here…check the ning site and follow up feeds below for more…)
p.s. In his new book Evolving Collective Intelligence brought to life by Next Now artist/scribes Eileen Clegg and Valerie Landau in beta form right now, you’ll read about the vision behind the inventor of the computer mouse that goes FAR beyond technology.
Here’s a teaser from the Father of the Internet, Dr. Douglas Engelbart himself,
“I believe that the complexity of the problems facing mankind is growing faster than our ability to solve them. Finding ways to augment our intellect is both a necessary and a desirable goal. The mouse was just a tiny piece of a much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect.”
Engelbart Legacy Mural by Eileen Clegg of Visual Insights (post via NextNow Collaboratory)
“The Engelbart Legacy Project collaboration supports the development of artifacts, web-based communities, interactive events and exhibits, and publications that will help us visualize and re-imagine efforts made over the last 40 years to augment human intelligence through the co-evolution of human systems and technology, specifically as originally envisioned by pioneer Doug Engelbart.
Widely known as the inventor of the mouse SRI International – News in San Francisco in 1968 during what came to be called, the “Mother of all Demos” Engelbart demonstrated the first uses of:
· The graphical user interface
· The mouse for control and user interaction
· The Internet as a communications medium
· Hyperlinked media
· Live Telepresence
“For all of us working with the powerful extensions of Doug’s ideas that now exist on the Web, on our desktops, laptops and mobiles, this is a time to celebrate Doug’s extraordinary vision and his lifelong quest to help us all reach the heights of collective intelligence necessary to deal with increasing complexity and wicked problems of a globalizing world.” http://collectiveiq.blogspot.com.
Virtual Participation Links for Program for the Future (pftf)
(for new media/virtual world collective knowledge!)
Friend Feed: Conference Video/chat/speakers, Twitter and more…
Shaping Youth’s feature on the MIT Media Lab’s I/O Brush used by kids/art here:
Using New Media to Teach Classic Art Techniques to Kids
Slide Decks/Presentations from Program for the Future Dec. 8 & 9
(Inc. links of media/content from some of the speakers)
Thomas W. Malone: MIT Center for Collective Intelligence:
“Mapping the collective intelligence genome”
Hiroshi Ishii, MIT Media Lab/Tangible Media Group:
“The Art of Tangible Bits: Inspired by Doug Engelbart’s Vision”
Also, Hiroshi Ishii’s downloadable media (zip) and related G-speak YouTube video on the ‘Minority Report’ movie style/James Bondish technology that exists today (via Oblong Industries: G-speak spatial operating environs; new computing platform)
Alan Levine: The New Media Consortium
“Solving the Meta Problem–Leveraging collective intelligence to improve teaching and learning”
Joyce Reynolds Sinclair, PhD--“Project on National Security Reform Case Study–Optimizing collective IQ–New challenges in the new normal”
Official Second Life Program for the Future Locations (requires download, see below):
The Tech 2 Contact avatar at this location: Agent Heliosense Event announcement
Spaceport Alpha Contact avatar at this location: Latha Serevi Event announcement
The Tech Virtual.org Very cool concept where The Tech Museum built a virtual museum in Second Life and then asked creative thinkers from around the world to curate it! Here’s more:
” Want to share your exhibits with visitors in both real and virtual galleries? The Tech Virtual is a collaborative design platform for developing museum exhibits. The best of these get installed in the Virtual Test Zone gallery at the Tech Museum of Innovation…
Exhibit designers and contributors can add content to gallery sections and join teams to work on specific projects. Museum curators can select from content that includes exhibit concepts, working prototypes, and other media. International teams can collaborate in real-time to produce exhibits or model an entire exhibition.”
Zat cool or what?!
The Program for the Future challenge is just part of their ongoing Tech Challenge work at the “Virtual Tech,” with ongoing awards (cash prizes) for solutions-based innovation. (I think I heard some mini-grant four-figure numbers kicking around the collective knowledge front, too?)
Kids can get in on the Tech Challenge annual contest, where grades 5 – 12 (ages 8-17) form teams of about 2-6 students for hands-on projects geared to solve a real-world problem. e.g. list of previous entry examples including:
*Create a device to deliver water to a tank located in a village on a hill above the river. With no electricity in the village; only the flow of the river can be used to generate power…*Design a device that simulates an inspection mechanism that can traverse the bridge cable supports. The device must be completely suspended from the cable, travel from on bridge support to the other, and touch a sensor at each end….”Design a device that retrieves a canister from the bottom of an ice-covered lake simulated by a platform of thick plastic; challenge models retrieval of a canister of nuclear waste…etc.”
Who says virtual worlds are just for goofin’ around, eh?! Here’s the Virtual Tech Museum on the Teen Second Life grid (no adults allowed) that awaits kids’ solutions…Fun! More cool Doug Engelbart and PFTF.org links:
Raising the Collective IQ: (VizThink.com)–Tom Crawford podcast/interview with special guest Eileen Clegg, interviewed about the creation of the Engelbart mural (segmented into short 1-3 min. clips totally appx. 15 min)
“Whether it’s called “wisdom of the crowds” or “collective IQ”, visualization has a way of bringing people together, creating understanding, and creating a shared vision of both the past and the future. In this 19 minute, 26 second podcast, we talk with Eileen Clegg from Visual Insight and I talk about how visuals can be used to allow people to contribute to the collective intelligence of a group. We discuss such topics such as:
– What is Writing on the Walls (or graphic recording)?
– Who is Doug Engelbart and what is Collective IQ?
– How does visualization support raising the Collective IQ?”Related, On Shaping Youth: Eileen Clegg: Mural on Kids/S.Y. Counter-Marketing Tactics: Capturing Knowledge via Visual Insight
And fellow NextNow Collaboratory pal Clark Quinn’s Learnlets blog (learnings on learning) who posted his take on Collective Intelligence Patterns
A Fire From A Spark: Frode Hegland (director of the Hyperwords Project, a Firefox extension influenced by Doug Engelbart) gives you all the geek-speak on augmentation and visions beyond, in a 7 minute video that explains how technology ignited into the force field of techno-media as we know it today…
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