TOPICS INCLUDE:
• Cyber threats
• Security and intelligence
• Climate change
• Biosurveillance
• Risk analysis
• Smart(er) buildings
• Pollution controls
• Health diplomacy
• Outsourced software
• Air traffic management
CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
At times, we are inundated with a litany of global threats that seem likely to alter how we live, how we work, and how we view the future. For some, just knowing that problems exist impels their solution. And finding answers in technology to the biggest, toughest hurdles is what often drives researchers and entrepreneurs toward real breakthroughs. This conference will concentrate on innovative technology solutions in development that have the potential to significantly affect our environments.
We're concerned with numerous issues: climate change, global warming, terrorism, dwindling energy supplies, health care, genetically modified crops, clean water, and population growth. In each case, new technologies, researchers, and entrepreneurs are creating and developing exciting, effective initiatives that address these formidable problems.
Venture capitalists are directing their interest toward "green" technologies of all sorts. Future scenarios include smarter, cleaner ways to find more oil and coal, aided by enhanced visualization, which could help stabilize energy prices; nanoparticles grown in the lab that eat toxic waste; new wireless and embedded networks that ease traffic congestion; and smaller, more powerful implants that improve our health and bring mobility to the paralyzed. We may not be able to stop nature’s biggest threats, but we can mitigate their impact with canny (and even uncanny) technology. Increasingly, the linchpin for breeding such solutions is our rapidly evolving worldwide information infrastructure.
Which technologies will prove best to circumvent the threats we face? Where are the global technology advances likely to come from? What business opportunities will follow? How much better can we make our environment when life meets technology? In some cases, ever more intelligence and infrastructure is needed; in others, it’s political and economic will.
MEMBERS' WORKSHOP: MEDIA FUTURES
Workshop leader:
TOM ROSENSTIEL, Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism
Monday, May 7, 2007
1:00–4:30 PM
Informal Lunch: 12 NOON
The Web is our first true meta-platform. As such, what can we expect in terms of form and content in the future? In this workshop led by Tom Rosenstiel, we’ll look at: What does the future hold for media and information? How will content be affected? Will our standards for credibility change? What new distribution channels can we expect? Is there is a distribution model that makes sense (and money)? How can differing constituencies be effectively reached?
Newspapers and magazines have traditionally focused on text and photos; radio told stories with audio; television dealt with moving pictures and sounds. The Web has forced these platforms to integrate. Yet for all its progress, the ‘Net has not been mined for delivering information in really new and novel ways. We are far from the two-way interaction for which it is so well-suited. How will Internet/web technology evolve to change delivery and interaction?
Today, more outlets cover fewer stories. Too much information is being filtered. Partisan media and specialty newspapers and magazines pull in advertising by doing friendly pieces on the industries they cover. Journalism and Web 2.0 might have been made for each other, though participatory reporting isn’t currently churning out more or better news coverage. Can the Internet change those realities?
Organizations public and private cannot help but be concerned with how information flows through the media. Can technologies be effectively leveraged to get “the message” out? Given that so much on the Internet is underpinned by an ad-based revenue model, how can government and public services agencies get into the mix?