In partnership with our friends of the TSR, we organize an informal debate about the digital traceability and the risks of a "transparent society". Registration is free but you need to register by emailing julie.bauer@tsr.ch. May 19th, 6:30-8pm @ Télévision Suisse Romande, 20, quai Ernest-Ansermet, Geneva, full event in French

De nos achats quotidiens à notre comportement sur le Web, les traces que nous laissons sont de plus en plus nombreuses. Et les caméras qui nous observent sont presque omniprésentes, qu'il s'agisse de vidéosurveillance ou de particuliers équipés de téléphones portables.
Ces informations sont exploitées par d'autres: employeurs potentiels, équipes marketing ou même forces de police. Sommes-nous en train d'aller vers une société totalement transparente? La vie privée va-t-elle disparaître? Comment gérer cette situation nouvelle où nos moindres mouvements sont surveillés?

Le débat est animé par Bernard Rappaz, rédacteur en chef de TSR Multimédia.

Intervenants:

Sami Coll (Département de sociologie de l'Université de Genève). Il aborde dans son étude les risques de surveillance induits par les cartes de fidélité de type Cumulus. Le chercheur s'intéresse à de thématiques telles que la protection de la sphère privée et la protection des données.

Stéphane Koch (intelligentzia.net). Consultant dans le domaines de l'intelligence économique, la veille stratégique et la confidentialité de l'information. Il intervient dans des cas liés à la gestion de la réputation, la protection du "patrimoine informationnel" de l'entreprise et de sa marque sur Internet, ainsi que sur d'autres problématiques liées à la cybercriminalité.

A very warm welcome to the four new members of the LIFT conference advisory board:

Bruce Sterling
SF writer, journalist, essayist and commentator, Bruce is is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work, which helped define the cyberpunk genre. A tech journalist, Sterling also launched another movement: the Viridian Greens, which focuses on how industrial design could be used to respond to global climate change.

Adam Greenfield
Soon to be Nokia's Head of Design Direction, Adam is an internationally-recognized writer, user experience consultant and critical futurist, having worked for clients ranging from global concerns like Toyota, Capgemini, and Sony to local nonprofits. He is also the notorious author of "Everyware", the the first book on ubiquitous computing suitable for general audiences.

Jasmina Tesanovic
Jasmina is a feminist, political activist (Women in Black, Code Pink), translator, publisher and filmmaker. She is the author of Diary of a Political Idiot, a war diary written during the 1999 Kosovo War and widely distributed on the Internet.

François Grey
François is in charge of outreach and public relations for CERN's IT Department. A regular contributor to the Economist, François was in charge of organizing the CERN Computing Colloquium, a series of conference that welcomed the likes of Mark Shuttleworth or Richard Stallman to the CERN, the birthplace of the web.

For years, in the "North-West" (that is industrialized countries - usually understood as North vs. South and West vs. East), we've been babbling about the "digital gap" that is supposedly the new line of division, usually understood as running along that of economical and political development. We often have quite a simplistic idea of the situation, imagining countries that are like technological deserts, on top of being devoid of everything essentials for a normal life (that is one car per family, two TV-sets per household, all with at least 40 channels, and 4-weeks vacations in the Bahamas or in the Swiss Alps per years). We tend to forget the forest of satellite dishes that are ornementing most cities and even village buildings in what we used (politcally) incorrectly call "third world" countries. And a recent article from the Mail & Guardian, translated in French in the Courrier International, just reminds us how wrong we often are about the appropriation of "our" modern technologies by people in these countries.

Younghee Jung, Senior Design Manager at Nokia, recently moved to London from Tokyo. Learn more about Younghee's groundbreaking work by viewing her LIFT08 video.

Many will remember her presentation in the User Experience Track where she shared research performed in shanty towns around the world. The purpose was to capture input from users with a view to analyzing trends for future development.

Younghee's well-known colleague and Principal Researcher at Nokia, Jan Chipchase, will be attending LIFT08 in Korea. We'll be back with more about Jan's contribution soon.

Every year in April we know if we did a good job or not, if you guys liked the event or not. We anxiously await Glenn O'Neil's post-conference survey he has been doing for LIFT for the past three years (see LIFT06 and LIFT07 surveys).

As usual the community massively answered our call for feedback (thanks to the 272 attendees who took the time to answer), and as usual you were kind enough to give us a good grade, with 89% of attendees having a good or excellent overall appreciation (and nobody called LIFT08 very poor which I'm quite proud of). FULL REPORT HERE (pdf).

The report indicates we achieved some of our main goals (networking, learning and exchanging) with room for improvement on a few things like the venue. Some formats will be improved, like discussions (we really need a more quiet place, you will have that in Asia and next year) and Open Stage (I hope more LIFTers will get involved when voting time comes).

Read the full report here (and be sure to check page 5 to see the evolution over the three editions), and I will soon post my thoughts and the things that will change as a consequence of all the feedback. Thanks to all, and congrats to the team who deserves a big praise after such a plebiscite :)

The LIFT08 Asia program is coming along and we're happy announce the main topics we will talk about on September 4-5-6:

Beyond the Web we know what's exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0?

Online for better society: how web technologies will help shaping a more inclusive society and take advantage of the world's diversity.

Towards a Networked City: the new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities are now a reality, what does that mean for its inhabitants? What changes can we expect? How will ubiquitous computing influence the way we live?

From robots to networked objects: current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate. What will we see? What's hot in that domain that we will soon see all around us?

The near future of social worlds: social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. What does that mean for users? What does the usage of such platform tell us about new forms of sociality?

Techno-nomadic life: the wireless and mobile technologies have freed us from the tyranny of "place", but what are the new constraints? What are the new behavior? Is the mobile web going through the same process as the Web of the 90s?

Does money go virtual? Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

Sustainable development/green technologies (in partnership with WattWatt).

For the people who enjoyed the "lift experience" video and for those who haven't seen it yet... i'm currently working on an interactive documentary installation... and looking for an open-source programmer (pure data + dyne or ubuntu), french or swiss would be easier.
My artistic works and researchs deal with poetry, technology and social issues.
this new work is an open-source icon and a documentary about computer history.
feel free to send CV or questions at:
benjamin.pothier (at) gmail.com

After a lot of travel which resulted in slow blogging I have some important news regarding LIFT Asia. We have a location, a theme, a format, and partners!

^{Picture from a recent trip to Jeju University}

• JEJU
it will be Jeju. We decided to hold the conference on the island because it is really the most beautiful place there is (you will like the view on the pacific from the rest area, breath taking). It is one hour from Seoul - so we will ask you to travel a bit more - but it is worth it.

• BEYOND BORING BROWSERS
We want to have a main theme for the event, and we want to ask a simple question: what happens beyond the browser? Where will the next revolutions come from? Robots? Mobile? Ubiquitous computing? Virtual worlds? We will explore many of these fields with diverse points of views from all over the world, with a focus on Asian speakers of course. Robert Scoble, Jan Chipchase and Dan Dubno have already saved the dates and will be with us.

• FORMAT
We pushed the date one day (4-6 instead of 3-5 of Sept.) because we want to use less week-days and facilitate the life of those who will have to take some time off to attend. We will have seven sessions, an open afternoon (dedicated to workshops, discussions, demos, etc...), two evenings and time for cultural activities as there are tons of things to see on the island.

• PARTNERS
We already have five partners! The Jeju University, Jeju Knowledge Industry Promotion Agency, Daum of course, and the geneva based WattWatt and Alptic who will travel to the other side of the world with us to make the conference happen.

I've been tempted once or twice, but I don't Twitter. However, each time I log onto Facebook, inevitably I see at least one or two twittered status updates from LIFTers. And while it's constantly mentioned across the blogosphere, I was still surprised by Compete's estimate that twitter.com visits have experienced growth exceeding 1650% in the year since Twitter's explosion at SXSW 2007.

Today I'm thinking about Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, which - as its 1971 film trailer exclaims - "covers 96 of the most critical hours in world history!" and inspired this post's title. A&E, the cable television channel, is premiering a re-make of this classic next month. But what about Twitter?

A recent somewhat shocking experience with the Web 2.0, in which I really lost control of my image (fortunately, the content isn't damaging for my reputation, but still) has inspired me the following thoughts. I'm posting them today as I was invited to a seminar by Dynamia about the safety of one's digital personal data (in French only), which was temporarily postponed. But I hope this can serve as a starting point for deeper reflexions that could be elaborated on in such gathering.

The metaphor of the "Global Village" has now been offering for more than 40 years a vision of a sort of "flat world", with no barriers, where people can meet peacefully and communicate seamlessly. Based on an idealistic conception of the village community (I live in a village, so I know what I'm talking about), this expression tends to completely oversee some less charming aspects of this way of life. Among them, I'd like to particularly point community's gaze, gossips, neighbor's malevolence. Moreover, the adjective "global", while giving us the illusion of being connected to the rest of world, makes us then forget that we are unfortunately first and foremost rooted in the local, made of family, friends, colleagues or fellow students. This results in us loosing some sense of discretion if not decency when we are active online. And I'm not talking about puritanism or prudishness here, but about protecting one's personal sphere.