Opening Plenary

Monday, 11/18, 09:00-10:30 in Regency EFGH

Howard Rheingold

Smart Mobs: Mobile Communication, Pervasive Computing, and Collective Action

Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some of its earliest adopters to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks.

Howard Rheingold has written about computers and their implications in such best-sellers as The Virtual Community (1994), Virtual Reality (1992), Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind (1988), and Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Amplifying Technology (1985). Both The Virtual Community and Tools for Thought have been reissued in revised editions by the MIT Press (2000).

He was the editor of Whole Earth Review and executive editor of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, and founding executive editor of HotWired, the commercial webzine launched by Wired magazine in 1994. He was also the author of the weekly multimedia newspaper column, "Tomorrow," which was distributed worldwide by King Features Syndicate.

For more than than 20 years, Howard has been on the leading edge of the cyberspace revolution, as both a participant and an observer, and his forecasts, advice, warnings, and dreams have been shared with audiences around the world. His books have been published in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.

While knowledgeable about the technical and commercial possibilities of these merging communications media, he is especially interested in the human and policy issues that inevitably result from the adoption of new inventions. He has a proven track record of being able to identify the way our lives, businesses, and institutions are going to change tomorrow as the result of technologies that are emerging today. In the 1980s, he forecast the rise of the Internet. In the 1990s, he wrote about virtual communities. Now, he is looking at the astonishing changes that are going to take place as the result of today's mobile communications, ubiquitous computing, geographical position sensing, and social reputation technologies. His present forecasts about what he calls "Smart Mobs" are the subject of his latest book. (http://www.smartmobs.com)

In 1996, Howard launched his own electronic business called Electric Minds, a second generation web publishing company. In 1997, he sold it to Durand Corporation. Rheingold Associates, his latest enterprise, is a consulting network (http://www.rheingold.com/associates) that helps commercial, educational, and nonprofit entrprises build online social networks and knowledge communities.

Howard lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. He was educated at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His website is http://www.rheingold.com.

Closing Plenary

Wednesday, 11/20, 16:30-18:00 in Regency EFGH

Steward Brand

How Systems Learn

Learn or die. Collaborative operations are always busy learning (adapting). Learning is supposed to be wonderful but in fact it is costly and uncomfortable and often MALadaptive. Routine is supposed to be stultifying but in fact it is the most efficient way to get things done. "Tradition" is even more conservative than the routines, and it serves a still deeper function of continuity and framing.
A learning organization is neither a contradiction nor an oxymoron, but it is a paradox. Which can be finessed.

StewartBrand has had a long term interest and active involvement in cultural, community and technology issues. As well as being the founder of the now legendary Whole Earth Catalog and later The Whole Earth Review, he has a deep interest in cutting edge issues in computer science and in the design and development of technologies. In this vein, he published an article in 1972 called "Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums" in Rolling Stone which later became Two Cybernetic Frontiers (published by Random House). In 1984 he initiated The Hackers Conference, and a year later co-founded a bulletin board system called the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) as a "pioneering experiment in electronic discussion."

Currently Brand is president of The Long Now Foundation (which is building a 10,000-year Clock and Library), a co-founder of the All Species Inventory and the Long Bets Foundation and a consultant with Global Business Network. He also serves as a trustee of the Santa Fe Institute, and occasionally consults for Ecotrust.

Brand is author of oft-cited How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built (Viking-Penguin, 1994; in the UK, Orion Books) which follows traditions laid out by Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language and Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities to change the practice of building and the use of buildings. He is also author of The Clock of the Long Now (Basic Books, 1999; in the UK, Orion Books).

Stewart Brand's home page is http://www.well.com/user/sbb/