Lift with Fing 2010: Sessions

Web Squared: Making Sense of the World Through Shared Data

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 10:15

From the re-use of public-service information to the massive flows of data produced by people as well as sensors, huge opportunities arise for knowledge production, value creation – as well as pervasive surveillance. We will hear from the first open-source cities, from researchers who extract new knowledge from data, from entrepreneurs who share them and create new services out of them, and from activists who turn surveillance technologies on their head…

Open Public Data: a New Resource for Innovation and Participation

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 11:45

Public-Service Information is a major source of new services, of value creation as well as knowledge production and citizen participation. Whole countries and cities are opening up access to their data. How can open public data become reality? What does it really change?

Fab Labs: Reinventing industry

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 14:30

In which "garages" are tomorrow's things and places being invented? What happens to industry when desktop design and fabrication become reality? Which new shapes, materials, concepts, product lifecycles, will emerge from the digitization of manufacturing? Let's ask the Fab Lab pioneers, those who invent the tools that we'll use to design and manufacture things and places in the future, and the designers who are already doing this.

Empowerment: What If Anyone Could Make Almost Anything ?

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - 16:45

Fab Labs are workshops where almost anyone can design and make almost anything. Under that or other names (Tech Shops, Hackerspaces...), hundreds of shared spaces are providing the means to design, prototype and produce new objects, to create installations, to customize existing products. What happens in these places? How do they work and what are their success factors? What new prospects do they open: innovative concepts and enterprises, "opensource hardware", relocalization... ?

  • Adrian Bowyer
    Senior lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Bath
  • Haakon Karlsen
    Director, MIT-FabLab Norway / Fab Foundation
  • Ton Zijlstra
    Board member, FabLab Foundation Netherlands

People Hack: Distributing control and knowledge

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 09:30

Can we become smarter, individually and as a community? Can we learn better and faster? Remember more, at the right moments? Make better decisions? And if so, what difference does it make for all of us? What will we lose in exchange? Researchers, pedagogues and entrepreneurs have unexpected answers to share.

Embracing Complexity: can technology help us?

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 11:15

Complexity could become a feature, not a bug. How can we regain control of our information flows, our time, the ways in which we appear to others? Can we discuss complex issues in more productive and less destructive ways ? Can we understand complex systems and act on them? Can technology help us do that?

Privacy Revisited: Protect and Project

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - 14:00

Never before have we been so worried about privacy, yet never before have we so willingly allowed so many people to know so much about us. Is there a paradox, or do we need to revisit what we expect from privacy? We will ask thinkers and doers who are exploring a new road: Give individuals the tools to know as much about themselves as organizations do, and use this information to their own ends.