Speaker Profile: Frank Beau

Frank is a researcher and independent consultant specialized on new media. He currently works with the RATP, the Parisian Transport Operator, on the future of the subway. He will be speaking on love in the 21st century, more specifically about “metromantics”: internet messages about romantic encounters in Paris’ metro.

Why LIFT
It’ll be Frank’s first LIFT conference. Having only heard and read about the conference until now he still gave us a wonderful, detailed answer of what he believes LIFT stands for. He feels that a space, where people from all over the world get together to open-mindedly reflect and discuss technology and society is much needed. In the face of the challenges of our time: what can technology, the technologos, do for us and what does it do to us?

Listen in: “We’ve got googleface-tube-iphone-engine-maps-earth-streetviewer-socialgraphs-gps and an enormous amount of real time data about cities-friends-neighboors-theothersideoftheworld in our fingers, on the same screen. And so? And then? Why are so much people feeling so lonely in our cities, what can the Internet do for the housing crisis, or worse … for feeding people? Is it crazy to wait for technology to solve that, and to think that it’s only a question of time with the Internet as the next miracle of the happy global village? The Internet is only a camera. And its power lies more in what this new camera-micro-and-macroscope can bring to light about our non-changing way of life and beings than about the power of radical modernity. So, by discovering the naked world through the eyes of technology, what could we do?”

What Frank expects
Frank would like to share with fellow LIFTers, participate in a gathering that goes beyond technology, assist in the creation of a “campfire of exchanges”.