/ / News

I’ll be speaking at the LIFT conference later this week in Geneva. My session is on Thursday, 2 February, at 1:30PM, on DRM and the European Broadcast Flag. Also at the event are Bruce Sterling, Robert Scoble, Euan Semple, Bruno Giussani, Xavier Comtesse, Régine Debatty, Anina, Jeffrey Huang, Matt Jones, Chris Lawer, Hugh Macleod, David Galipeau, Aymeric Sallin, Paul Oberson, Jean-Luc Raymond and a ton of other amazing people. Hope to see you there, too!

When: 2006, February 2 and 3 (that would be Thursday and Friday)

Where: The conference will be held at the International Conference Center (CICG) of Geneva, Switzerland.

The attendee list is full, but there’s a waiting list if you’re game.

LIFT is organized around five major topics, or tracks.

Big ideas — From co-creation to citizen journalism via the copyright-less economy, technology and communications are changing the rules. Big ideas are those that concern us all.

Design — Design is about making the life of people better. We’ve invited designers from across the spectrum of design, from strategy to pixels, from screens to devices, from business structures to experiences.

Emerging technologies — From RFID (the identification chips embedded in all objects) to nano tech, we are going to discuss technologies that are just starting to create an impact on our world. Folks from the labs are going to take off their white coats and tell us what’s coming.

Global Solidarity — Geneva is not only the place that saw the web come to life. It is also a major humanitarian center of excellence with hundreds of organizations having their headquarters around the lake. We invited speakers representing this constantly evolving field, in which solutions to complex problems don’t merely improve lives, but save them.

Internet — Last but not the least, the spine of all of the above. It gave many of us our careers, our passions, and it sustains much of our daily life. We are inviting speakers who are pushing the evolving definition of what the Internet is and can be.

/ / News

Here’s the introduction Javier Candeira wrote for Tocando Fondo, the Spanish edition of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Javier kindly sent me an English translation of the piece. I think it’s just awesome (and awfully flattering!).

The cure for death and the death of work (and free energy). The
opening line of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is fit for inclusion
in one of those novel-opening-line antologies that kids are so crazy
about nowadays. Like Gabriel García Márquez in One Hundred Years of
Solitude (“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel
Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his
father took him to discover ice.”) or Jane Austen in Pride and
Prejudice (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”), Cory
Doctorow starts off with a perfect pool shot: he considers the vantage
point of his preferred audience members, he sets the balls on the
table in an alegorical figure, he makes his main character the cue
ball and, with a steady pulse, strikes him and sends him in the right
direction, bouncing against the world and the rest of the characters,
achieving his desired effect

more

/ / Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, News

Here’s the introduction Javier Candeira wrote for Tocando Fondo, the Spanish edition of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom — Javier kindly sent me an English translation of the piece. I think it’s just awesome (and awfully flattering!).

The cure for death and the death of work (and free energy). The opening line of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is fit for inclusion in one of those novel-opening-line antologies that kids are so crazy about nowadays. Like Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude (“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buend�a was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”) or Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice (“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”), Cory Doctorow starts off with a perfect pool shot: he considers the vantage point of his preferred audience members, he sets the balls on the table in an alegorical figure, he makes his main character the cue ball and, with a steady pulse, strikes him and sends him in the right direction, bouncing against the world and the rest of the characters, achieving his desired effect

more

/ / News, Podcast

The Antwerpenbloggers have posted an
18MB, 40-minute MP3 of the talk I gave on Europe’s coming Broadcast Flag, last night at Antwerp’s MuHKA_media door/Constant vzw event. (A small correction: I misspoke when I said “I’m from the east coast of Canada” — I meant “I’m from the east part of Canada”)

Update: Stich-and-Split’s organizers have posted their own audio, with a Creative Commons license.