Revolutions

Revolutions
May 10–11, 2012
Washington, D.C.

Conference schedule
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venue
The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City
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for Hotel information

conference overview
Technology has dramatically reshaped our business, economic, and political environments. Each of these ecosystems has, in turn, heavily influenced technology adoption and use. In this session, we'll examine the yin and yang of technologies and their application, along with their potential for explosive, often disruptive effects. Virtually no industry, government, or organization will go untouched; patterns of organizational behavior, the empowerment of nonindustrialized nations, geopolitical shifts, and demographic patterns will be transformed.

Longstanding traditions in research and development are evolving. Peer review has expanded so virally that the way in which authority is configured has changed. The dissemination of news and information will be further upended by new tools and channels. Will personal testimony and objects created on the Internet be considered trusted sources, capable of creating sustainable value?

Some governments are crowdsourcing the writing of new laws, involving their population by leveraging social media tools and soliciting feedback. Hackers are building ad hoc mobile networks for their own communication needs and as a way to circumvent political control. Will the major social media players each find their own territory, each playing a different role? We'll look at challenges to traditional notions of secrecy and privacy, especially in a world where transparency is demanded and implemented by nontechnologists. Are individual privacy and corporate secrecy relics of the past? What challenges will we face as we manage the transition between secrecy and openness? Is just too much information available?

Effective human cooperation, the quick formation of loose connections, and frequent, frictionless communication are taking place all around us without intervention from market or government processes. How far will this extend? Relationship technologies and economies created on the Net can't happen without large amounts of trust. What will be the new era of interplay between cooperation and traditional monetary incentives? Self-organizing principles may eventually lead the way to governance without government, networks without centers, and manufacturing without factories.

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Partial list of speakers

Dr. Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
Dr. Thorvaldur Gylfason, Professor of Economics, University of Iceland
Mr. Carl Malamud, President and Founder, Public.Resource.Org
Mr. Sascha Meinrath, Director, New America Foundation Open Technology Initiative
Dr. Daniel Mellinger, Co-Founder, KMel Robotics
Mr. Mohamed Nanabhay, Head of Online, Al Jazeera English
Mr. Achal Prabhala, Researcher, Writer, and Advisory Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
Mr. Andrew Rasiej, Founder, Personal Democracy Forum
Mr. David Schafran, Co-founder and CEO, EyeNetra
Mr. Ethan Zuckerman, Director, MIT Center for Civic Media

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