We live in a world that is full of algorithms. We have an unconscious relationship to code and numbers. Even creativity is now quantified by data. — DJ Spooky The Internet Archive is pleased to announce that tickets are now on sale for the World Premiere of DJ Spooky’s QUANTOPIA: THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET—a multimedia hip hop concert…
In November 2016, the U.S. elected a new president who had sworn to roll back important environmental protections, dismantle the EPA, and who had once called climate change a “hoax.” In the context of warming global temperatures, rising tides, and oil pipeline battles, a dozen colleagues at universities and nonprofits across the country got together…
Silently, the performers took their places, tucked behind the thick black curtain. The members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, led by director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, quickly flowed into two neat rows in the wings of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater. The stage crew snapped into their positions at the table covered with laptops, monitors,…
Guest post by Iryna Nezhynska What should the user experience be for the Decentralized Web? This is a short recap about how designers from blockchain and decentralized tech organizations all over the world gathered at the Decentralized Web Summit — Builders Day to ask important questions about the future of the web. First published on the Jolocom blog…
The Decentralized Web is a concept. It’s a set of technologies. It’s a network of builders and designers and dreamers. What started with small gatherings in San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, Toronto and Berlin is growing into a global movement. So how do we visually convey the identity of this idea we call the “DWeb”?…
Some people are tasked with seeing into the future to offer us a sense of what it may hold. Mary Lou Jepsen is one of those people. Her curiosity sparks and ignites with the slightest provocation and manifests itself in the tech products that transform our lives. This week, her curiosity is bringing her to…
Being able to lend an array of materials is fundamental to what public libraries do and Controlled Digital Lending–the digital equivalent of traditional library lending– is another tool for libraries to fulfill that mission, according to John Chrastka, executive director of EveryLibrary, a national organization dedicated to building voter support for libraries. “There are numerous marooned assets…
In southern Maryland, St. Mary’s County is 54 miles long and there are only three libraries. “We have people living at one end who might be 25 miles away from a branch,” said Michael Blackwell, Director of the St. Mary’s County Library that operates in the small communities of Leonardtown, Charlotte Hall and Lexington Park.…
Melvyn Urofsky suggested in a New York Times op-ed yesterday that Obama and his new administration can learn a few things from Louis Brandeis’s 1914 book, Other People’s Money, and How the Bankers Use It. Brandeis wrote the book after revelations of a Congressional investigation into the predatory practices of J. P. Morgan and other big bankers. The…
Guest blog post by Author Finn Brunton The history of money is history itself. From the accounting and contracts of Sumerian cuneiform tablets (the earliest written language) to buried coin hoards, stamps and letters of credit, Incan khipu knot-counts, or the maps and censuses written in the service of levying taxes, part of the great…