web

This talk explores some of the issues that emerge around networked information-collecting objects in our public spaces, and to frame a taxonomy of such objects from the unobjectionable (due to local effect and a clear public good associated with them) to those that ought to be causing us significant concern (no public benefit, global impact, pernicious second-order effects).

Adam is a long-time friend of Lift, he shared his work with us on several occasions in Geneva, Marseille and Korea. Watch his previous Lift talks:
"Everyware: Further down the Rabbit Hole" Lift07
"The read/write City" Lift Asia 07
"The Long Here, the Big Now" Lift Asia 08

A leading researcher on globalization, global cities and new technologies Saskia Sassen discusses the current hype around smart cities. She reminds us that “It is the need to design a system that puts all that technology truly at the service of the inhabitants—and not the other way around.”

Want to get more information? Check these related articles:

A propos de S. Sassen et de « l’urbanisme open-source » sur Technogéographie (in French)

An interview with Saskia Sassen about "Smart cities" by Nicolas Nova

David Galbraith is a former architect turned internet entrepreneur. He helped incubate Yelp.com and was one of the authors of the RSS 1.0 specifications. He talks about four trends for the digital world: people vs. celebrities, people vs. robots (recommendations from friends replace algorithmic results), people powered design (consumer Internet products are better than professional ones) and public vs. corporate networks.

We have aligned our web banners to the final Lift11 poster design. Use the images below to promote the conference on your site, and become an affiliate to make money each time a member of your community buys a ticket!

Wired claimed the web was dead a few months back. The recent Sandvine 2010 Internet Phenomena report examines the reality behind internet traffic, both from a mobile and broadband perspective. The report reveals there are significant differences between continents in terms of usage, and shows that indeed peer to peer and "real time entertainment" (think: watching a streamed movie) is surpassing the web in terms of traffic.

Europe is behind in terms of entertainment services, with web traffic still accounting for close to 45% of total transfers. Gaming and newsgroups (still there in 2009?!?) have disappeared from the top five, which at least in the case of gaming is surprising.

North America has a slightly different profile, with web browsing accounting for only 20% of total traffics (Wired's number was 23%), peer to peer 20% and real time entertainment the main category at 42%.

European traffic

North American traffic

Link (via Read Write Web)

The past, present and future are made of social connections. What will happen when objects and buildings join the party?

For buildings, you might already know a little if you watched Yang Soo-In's Lift talk on the Living City, skyscrapers communicating with each other to say something like "there is a cold wave at my location, it is coming your way, start your heaters". Not as useless as it first sounded.

Now what happens when vehicles also become members of social networks? "On Twitter, no one knows you’re a car" writes the New York Times, discussing the recent Ford American Journey 2.0, a project to experiment "applications combining social networks, GPS location awareness, and real-time vehicle data".

The project had several goals: see how a trip can be "socialized", allowing followers and fellow travelers to receive meaningful information, find out how web applications could use the data generated by a car, how the interface would work, and connect the car to existing social networks to see how it could communicate by itself in natural language.

^{Project map from Razorfish's Headlight blog.}

Concretely, the car took screenshots of its interior and of the road (and will have to develop an algorythm to blur plates and faces if it wants to do so in privacy-concerned countries like Switzerland), sent messages describing the road conditions it was facing ("I am not too happy about this weather. Current conditions: mostly cloudy day"), and checked-in at locations it was visiting. Nothing too revolutionary.

But remember one cardinal rule of innovation: very often, "what begins as a lark develops into a major invention". This could have interesting usages: localization and alert in case of emergency, tracking and broadcasting to surroundings for stolen cars, sharing and archiving of trips, tracking of driver's localization for senior or young drivers, etc. Not as useless as it sounds, again.

This will be an interesting area to follow, because it involves such a mass product and because social technologies will be one of the major differentiating factor car makers have at their disposal to attract more customers. Now admit it: this plus an electric engine, that would be nice right?

Links:
• NYT: Social Networking for Cars
• Living City talk at Lift Asia 08 by Yang Soo-In's profile.
• A project this reminds me of: GPS taxi for women in Korea.
• Ford American Journey 2.0 project homepage.
• Make Magazine: American Journey 2.0: AJtheFiesta takes Boulder.
• Nicolas Nova on the importance of futility in innovation.
• Switzerland Tells Google To Take Down Street View
• Ford’s American Journey 2.0 – Redux

When: Thursday May 6, 2010 , 18:00 (program begins at 18:30), cocktail 21:00
Location: Opposite Lift10 conference center : Conference Centre Varembé (CCV), 9-11 rue de Varembé, Geneva, Switzerland Map
Free registration required before Wednesday 5 here

Mobile Monday workshop at Lift10
Mobile Monday Switzerland workshop brings mobility right at the heart of the Lift10 conference and this year's topic "Connected People" is just the right one for mobile innovation. Come and discuss with us social and cultural success factors and the technology cocktail of smartphones, application stores. And enjoy drinks and cocktail with Lift and MoMo "mobile connected people". They will present their views on the following topics :

• Communities : how is Mobile Web 2.0 progressing and what are social / technical challenges ahead?
• Old new media : what is the role of mobile media and entertainment in this new media space and how will mobile engage people?
• Evolution of privacy : how much will people share location, phone contacts and real-time messages.

Format for this meeting: Short presentations by MoMo speakers from chapters worldwide, and a panel interaction. Full program here

Invited Speakers : Dan Appelquist, Sivakumar Kuppusamy, Monty Metzger, Katrin Verclas, Peter Vesterbacka, Jukka Kiiskinen and met our MoMo Switzerland team : Peter Angelos, Sid Arora, Claude Florin,Christine Perey, Nicolas Sierro.

Lots of people in the digital industry are gathering next week in New York for the Web 2.0 Expo. Sandbox Network founder and Lifter Fabian Pfortmuller organizes a dinner on Tuesday night to connect Web2.0 guests, Sandboxers and others Lifters over some nice food.

Guests will include Dominik Grolimund (founder of Wuala, see his presentation at Lift08 venture night), Jun Loyaza and the Head of Innovation at Deutsche Telekom USA.

More info and rsvp.

From the Jurassic Era of the Internet to its Futures

IP protocol inventor Vinton Cerf, who is now Vice President and Internet Evangelist at Google gave the concluding talk at Lift 09. After a quick recap of the history of the Internet, he basically gives an enthusiastic tour of its current limits (bitrot, IP address shortage) as well projects about its evolution, such as interplanetary internet though satellites.

I was looking for a trend on Google search earlier today, and quickly checked the impact of the Geneva conference on searches in Switzerland. Unsurprisingly there is a growing spike in searches, corresponding to the boost of traffic we have on our servers during the conference.

2009 (Lift09, Feb. 25-27)

2008 (Lift08, Feb. 6-8)

2007 (Lift07, Feb. 7-9)