New Media Days: Day #1

Clay Shirky speaking at New Media Days 2009. Photo: Sofus Midtgaard.

Clay Shirky: New Motivations and Opportunities – Understanding the Amateur Producer

Sad to say, I had not come across Clay Shirky before, but he was instantly tagged by the host Martin Krasnik as “the son of the internet” – in the context of him speaking right before Vint Cerf, who is regularly tagged as “the father of the internet” (though he denounced that title again today). Clay was amused.

Clay talked a lot about how content on the web is nowadays produced for free. It also means that “journalism is no longer a profession – it’s an activity” … meaning that anyone could at one point be doing journalism, and then go back to just blogging about random stuff again. He used the “Gnarly Kitty“-blog as an example. He also talked about how “technology doesn’t get social until it gets technologically boring [...]. Once your mother figures it out, it is becoming mature…” or something along those lines. He implied (several times, since Vint Cerf was sitting right in front of him) that the technology behind the internet is “quite robust”, but the content and potential of the network is only in its very infancy right now.

Finally, there was the possibility to ask questions. I went the easy route (as did everyone) and asked mine via SMS: “With alle the new tech and content, is there a real risk of information overload? How will we cope? Will we adapt? Or collapse?”. Clay replied promptly: “There is no information overload. The problem is information filtering.” He examplified this with the notion of reading books. We don’t attempt to read every book that comes out, do we? Well … maybe not, but with so many “filters” out there, how will we filter the filters?

Vint Cerf: Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century

I had high expectations for the Vint Cerf keynote. He is – after all – The Man Who Invented The Internet (though he says some other dudes were involved). Or as is his current job title at Google: Chief Internet Evangelist. Way too cool.

Anyway, he immediately went into a diagram from 1977 that represented an experiment they did on a global packet switching network test, which incorporated several physical networks across the globe, a couple of geo-stationary satellites and a van that was driving around San Fransisco. They managed to hook everyone up and were obviously very happy. He then went on to diss Twitter. The audience seemed a bit disgruntled by that, at least afterwards.

He then went on to do a fair bit of severe geekish network-related talking and then a bit of humorous philosophising about sensor-networks and internet-enabled refrigerators. Eventually, his talk did become a tad too Google-oriented and he kept going on about how Wave will change the way we communicate. Finally, he talked about his work with JPL on the Interplanetary Internet, which is basically a set of protocols that is meant to create a decentralized network consisting of every two-way radio we have ever sent out into the galaxy. It is more or less costless, since the network nodes (e.g. a satellite) are supposed to be activated when their mission is complete. For instance, the Mars Rovers communicate with Earth through a relay-network of geostationary satellites around Mars to increase traffic throughput and minimize delay, thus using store and forward to get around the radio blackouts that occur as the planet rotates. Pretty cool that he is so into space exploration.

Sneak peek at a LEGO Universe teaser. Photo: Gullak.

Building a Brand of Virtual Bricks (LEGO Universe)

I couldn’t resist taking a sneak peek at LEGO’s newest venture into digital worlds: LEGO Universe. It is an online MMOG that is slated for release during the 2nd half of 2010. Apart from getting the usual sales’ pitch, we also received an insight into just how serious LEGO is taking this. They are employing a team of serious (adult) fans to sanity check their content and gameplay and to create content for the game. They also have appx. 2000 kids from around the world in the loop who regularly test new builds of the game. What is interesting is that they seek to create a game that is inherently non-violent, whilst making it possible for even young children to apply their creative skills in order to progress in the game. They apparently also seek to moderate the created content heavily so as not to infringe anyone’s IP rights (or allow adultish content). He made it very clear: there will be no adult LEGO Universe. It is for kids and adults to play in together. The gameplay basically looked like a mixture of Second Life and WoW. Will be subscription-based, so no surprise there.

Morten Bay talking about Homo Conexus. Photo: Jonas Smith.

Homo Conexus

Morten Bay’s talk on the connecting human was my next choice. He talked about a paradigm shift in the way we think that is akin to that, which occured in the Rennaisance when movable type was invented by Gutenberg. He again touched the concept of decentralized networks and how so many things in our world are made up of these kinds of networks, particularly in our own body. He briefly touched a topic that I’ve blogged about once before: The Hive Mind. A very intersting guy, and I’m inclined to go buy his book.

Creativity Without Borders

Lastly, I went to see Lars Bastholm, enticed by the tagline: “Welcome on this first-class tour that will guide you through the most creative cross-media campaigns in the world.”. I actually wanted to Genevieve Bell’s talk on “The Future of the Internet”, but she cancelled for personal reasons. However, Bastholm did a grand tour of bits and pieces of great content on the web. Examples follow: