Flickr set: What will you bring to Maker Faire 2018?

Yet more praise

William Gunn at Synthesis describes X2 as "surprisingly interesting and engaging:"

When I read about it, it sounded interesting, but coming from futurists, I rather expected it to be all style and no substance. I was pleasantly surprised to find a substantial amount of interesting content on the site.

High praise!

Science Cheerleader and citizen scientists

I'm interviewed on Darlene Cavalier's Science Cheerleader blog.

One of the dangers of doing history of science or science studies (both of which I studied when I was in grad school, and taught before becoming a futurist) is that you end up spending time talking to your subjects. Generally, when you're an anthropologist, the people you write about don't closely read what you write about them: monographs on highland tribal manhood rituals or the semiotics of grain exchanges are hard to get through, even if you practice those things. Scientists, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of tracking down your work, and in my experience aren't shy about telling you what they think is wrong with your work.

Mixtapes & Playlists: A Few Favorites

Online playlists are everywhere, some services better than others. As with most things that come in multiple forms on the web, I've messed around with many of them and have found a few favorites. (iMeem is not one of them.) Half of the fun is just browsing and listening to other people's mixes and with a bunch of good sites popping up, there's no shortage of mixes to browse. First, I like Muxtape, which allows you to upload tracks and make one 12-track mix under your username at a time.

IFTF in the news

The Institute's new future of making map got a mention in the New York Times.

As important as tinkering has been to the nation’s past, it could become a much bigger deal before long, said David Pescovitz, a research director at the Institute for the Future, a consultancy in Silicon Valley. A new report from the institute argues that the makers could force enormous changes in the ways that goods and services are designed and manufactured. The renewed urge to tinker, along with flexible manufacturing technologies, could shift production from big companies and stores to communities of makers and consumers, Mr. Pescovitz said.

"It’s about having a deeper connection with the stuff around you, and through that with the people around you," he said. That is why his research group took the slogan from the pins given out at the Futurama pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair — "I have seen the future" — and edited it for the report to "I am making the future."

"If you want something done right, do it yourself. That’s really what it’s about," Mr. Pescovitz said.

Maoists on the Streets of Mumbai? Coming Soon

BusinessWeek Asia is reporting some genuine news for me - about the growing threat of India's home grown Maoist insurgency, the Naxalite movement, that is starting to bubble over after decades of simmering in the remote countryside. Now that Maoists have overthrown the Nepalese government:

Will sociability make Zune cool?

With the rise of recommendation-based music discovery systems like Last.fm and iLike, and the increased importance of friends and contacts as trusted recommendation sources and filters, music discovery is more social than ever. In an attempt to compete with Apple's iPod success, Microsoft has announced that it will release a portable subscription card for its Zune players. Users had recommendation functionality in the past, but it was accessible only through the website. With the portable card, Zune users can share their favorites with other Zune users.

Watch Your Carbon Footprint As You Go

Participatory web service Dopplr, which allows individuals to coordinate travel and inform colleagues about where they'll be, has now introduced a tool for calculating the carbon footprint of your journeys.

Dopplr co-founder Matt Jones describes its purpose this way:

Technology Horizons conference

Everyone at the Institute is at the Technology Horizons conference today on "The Future of Making." It's rather different from our usual events. Conference attendees started trickling in yesterday at the Maker Faire, and we put them through a couple exercises that encouraged them to spend some time exploring the Faire and talking to people. Today is more like our usual conferences: we're combining talks and roundtables, with exercises in which conference attedees think through the implications of what we're talking about.

Today's list of guests is also unusually interesting. Joshua Kauffman from Regional talked about DIY in Cuba (here's a video of a similar talk they gave at Stanford recently); Dale Dougherty (founder and editor of Make) and David Pescovitz (who divides his time between IFTF, Boingboing.net, and Make) talked about "the Maker mindset." Our panel on the future of open source included Bunny Huang (creator of the Chumby), Dan Morrill (Google Android), and Brian Carver (an IP attoruney at Fenwick & West). After lunch, we got into Citizen R&D with Eric Wilhelm (founder of Instructables), Hugh Rienhoff (founder of MyDaughtersDNA.org), Jeane Frost (founder of PatientsLikeMe.com), and Gary Wolf (a senior contributor at Wired, and now working on a project on the quantified self). Now, Mark Hatch (COO of TechShop), David ten Have (founder and CEO of New Zealand-based Ponoko), and Liam Casey (founder and CEO of PCH International) are talking about lightweight manufacturing.

Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon for IFTF @ Maker Faire!

The Bionic Athlete

The cover story of the current ESPN Magazine, "Let 'Em Play," explores the bigger issues surrounding the augmentation of our biological bodies with prosthetic technologies. The story's author, Eric Adelson, looks at a cross-section of prosthetic enhancements, some allowable, some not, and notes that this wouldn't be the first

Maker Faire: It's About Rethinking Assumptions

Maker Faire opened today with a Maker Day—a time for Makers to meet each other and showcase some of their cool projects. As I was listening to Umberto Crenca, one of the founders of AS220, a non-profit arts center in Providence, RI, that provides spaces for different types of media artists and performers, it occurred to me that the Faire is not just about seeing great DIY projects, it is about much more; it is about breaking established modes of thinking, established approaches to living, working, organizing.

Atlantic v. Howell Ruling: A Troubling Caveat

Yesterday I posted about the decision [PDF] in Atlantic v. Howell that found having a shared folder on a sharing service does not constitute copyright violation. After the initial excitement wore off, analysts began to look at a second part of that ruling which, according to David Kravets at Wired, could "embolden" the RIAA's lawsuit extravaganza.

X2 in Europe

One of the Institute for the Future's most powerful research tools is the expert workshop-- events in which a cross-section of experts spend a day brainstorming, creating maps of the future, and developing scenarios that look in depth at possible futures and our responses to them. The Institute has been organizing workshops for years, and has built up a tremendous store of both practical and tacit knowledge around them; and in addition to their being useful research tools, they're a great excuse to spend time with very interesting people.

The X2 project has been organizing workshops in Asia this spring-- I was just in Malaysia and Singapore, and we're going to Korea, China, India, and other places later this year. Now we're setting our sights on Europe.

"Shared folder" != copyright violation

After years of muscling fans into settlements and lawsuits over sharing folders of music on various P2P services, a judge has ruled that offering a "shared folder" of media does not constitute a copyright violation unless there is proof that an actual file changed hands.

From PC World: