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

The Future of Libraries as Places

Being the only IFTF staffer based in New York City, I've been taking a "maker" approach to office space. Why carry thousands of dollars per month overhead in this overheated real estate market, when there are any number of wireless parks and coffee shops to set up shop at?

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.

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.

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!

Make the Future! Future of Making Map

We are pleased to present our map of the Future of Making! This is our first Creative Commons–licensed map and we plan to share and distribute it at Maker Faire this weekend. We're excited to use it as a way to tie the innovation and general awesomeness of Maker Faire to our research on the future of making.

Click here to get to the map.

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.

"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:

A year of television = 2000 Wikipedias

My colleague Jason Tester pointed out (ultimately via Boing Boing) a post by Clay Shirky that helps answer a question that often comes up about collaborative media. As Jason put it, "Often when I give talks illustrated with examples like Wikipedia, delicious, Flickr, etc, to largely non-tech audiences (HR for example) someone will ask 'Where do people find the time?' or the less thoughtful 'Is this just about nerds in basements?'"

Clay points out two things. First, that a lot of time that goes into writing blogs, adding content to wikis, mashing things up on Google Earth, etc., is taken from other activities like television-watching. He notes that Americans watch something like 200 billion hours of television a year.

That's an amazing amount of time, and when you can take little bits of your time and spend them on projects that other people can also spend little bits of time on, it adds up pretty quickly.

Have you taken your smart pill today?

Coming soon to a pharmacy near you . . . pills that can monitor when they have been taken and what effects they are having on your body. Michael Chorost, who spoke at IFTF's recent Ten Year Forecast Conference, reports in MIT's Technology Review about Proteus Biomedical's development of in-body computing platforms.

Tech Horizons Keynote: MythBuster Adam Savage

We've confirmed our keynote for the Spring Tech Horizons conference May 4–5: a conversation with Adam Savage of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters! We're excited! If you haven't registered or need more information, please contact Jeannie Swanson at jswanson@iftf.org.