Topic: History
The Know Your Meme team gives this fast-tempo and seamless presentation of Know Your Meme as an important node of internet culture and folklore. Comparing themselves to American musicologist and folklorist John Lomax, they delineate the issues of internet meme-recording: even where you might think there's too much information, you still don't have any guarantee that it will be there forever.
Ray Kurzweil has spent most of his life imagining what the future might be like, and then inventing it. In this keynote from 2010, Kurzweil shares his vision of the future with Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media. The interview begins with a discussion about the Blio, the future of digital publishing, and finally the Singularity. This interview precedes the September 2010 release of the Blio, a TTS-enabled, full-color, web-enabled eReader.
In a departure from the typical technology interviews and presentations, Doug Kaye reviews the recent trip to Egypt that started just before the country's demonstrations commenced. He tells the story of how he and his wife dealt with the events and what he learned from talking to Egyptian citizens. He also discusses the importance of technology to the population, as well as what he thinks might happen as events continue to unfold.
Jef Raskin started Apple's Macintosh project, and he wants to set the record straight. He decries mistakes in published accounts of the creation of the Macintosh. For example, he cites the "creation myth" that the Mac was built by "college drop-outs and intuitive engineers flying by the seats of their pants." Jef spices his account with anecdotes of square pixels, one-button mice, bit-mapped fonts, and more. A longtime BayCHI member, Jeff passed away a year after this program, the last of his six BayCHI appearances since 1994.
You have have an opportunity to transform everything about the way we think about programming. This "big picture" talk starts with the Earth; it's losing mass at a rate of 1.5 grams per second due to the energy the Internet demands. This is in spite of the fact that programming languages fundamental to the modern Internet remain essentially the same as they were in the 1960's, says Robert Martin. Martin's energetic lecture questions the basic assumptions involved in software development.
Dr. Moira Gunn chats with author, Bill Bryson about his new book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life. In it, he examines how common household items have transformed the way people lived, and how houses have evolved around certain items.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with PBS host and author, James Tabor, about deep cave exploration from the pages of his new book, Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth.
Dr. Moira Gunn catches up with author and columnist, David Duncan, to hear about the US Judge who has ruled against President Obama's stem cell policy.
Dr. Moira Gunn catches up with science journalist and author, Matt Ridley, to talk about his new book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves' and explain why he believes it is probable that humanity will be better off in the next century than it is today, and so will the ecology of our planet.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with Cornell professor and author, Spencer Wells, discussing the contents of his new book 'Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization' where he voices misgivings about the breakthrough to farming 10,000 years ago, spurred by climate change.
