Lift with Fing 2009: Sessions

Technology & Society: Know your History!

Friday, June 19, 2009 - 09:45

Is technology liberating us or enslaving us? Hardly a new question, says Dominique Pestre... He will thus challenge us to raise our level of thinking and, in searching for an answer, to embrace dissensus and complexity: How can we welcome techno-skeptics in order to produce more sustainable technologies? Can we really believe that green techs will allow us to avoid drastic (and collective) choices on how we live? How can the interaction between markets, democracy, usage, science, code, become more productive?

Fab Labs: towards decentralized design and production of material products

Friday, June 19, 2009 - 12:00

Existing or unheard-of things, designed, modified, exchanged and manufactured by individuals or entrepreneurs anywhere in the world; Local workshops equipped with 3D printers and digital machine-tools, able to produce (almost) anything out of its 3D model; P2P object-sharing networks… Are "Fab Labs" heralding a new age of industrial production?

Changing Innovation: The end of IT

Friday, June 19, 2009 - 14:45

Today, corporate information systems are innovation's worst enemies. They set organizations and processes in stone. They restrict the enterprise's horizons and its networks. They distort its view of the world. But ferments of change emerge. Meet those who breathe new air into current organizations, those who design tomorrow's Innovation Systems.

Changing Innovation: Innovating with the non-innovators

Friday, June 19, 2009 - 16:30

Innovating used to be a job in itself. It has become a decentralized procès which includes, in no particular order, researchers, entrepreneurs, designers, artists, activists, and users who reinvent the products they were supposed to consume. Why is that important? What does it really change? And where will it stop? Will it stop somewhere?

Changing the Planet: Sustainable development, the Way of Desire

Saturday, June 20, 2009 - 09:00

What if global warming and the exhaustion of natural resources were in fact, initially, design problems? How do we move from bad, unsustainable design to a design – of goods, services, systems – that is sensitive and sustainable, durable and beautiful, sensible and profitable? Could we build sustainable growth on desire as well as reason, on creativity as well as regulation? Short answer: Yes!

Changing the Planet: Co-producing and sharing environmental consciousness

Saturday, June 20, 2009 - 11:15

Planetary climate change is too large a challenge for each individual. It can quickly become abstract, technical, remote. How can we reconnect individual aspirations, personal and daily choices, to global challenges? How can we all become part of environmental measurement, evaluate and compare the impact of our own activities, become parts of our collective environmental consciousness?

Conditional Future: discuss, build, experiment and reflect upon the present and the future

Saturday, June 20, 2009 - 14:30

"The best way to predict the future, is to invent it", said Alan Kay (and Buckminster Fuller). That is only true if as many of us as possible are given the opportunity to discuss, build, experiment and reflect upon their present and their future. Three speakers describe the conditions required to make that possible.

Changing Things: The Internet of Things is not what you think it is!

Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 10:15

If the "Internet of things" was just about adding chips, antennas and interactivity to the things we own, it would be no big deal. Discover a wholly different perspective: Open, unfinished objects which can be transformed and reprogrammed by their users; Objects that document their own components, history, lifecycle; Sensitive and noisy objects that capture, process, mix and publish information. Discover an Internet of Things which intends to transform the industrial world as deeply as the current Internet transformed the world of communication and media.