Musings

Things to do at a conference: There shall be drinks and food. Preferably free. Preferably drinkable (coffee in the shape of dark water is not enough - especially if it costs CHF 1.50). I don’t mind paying for a beer or something solid to eat. But water/coffee/fruits have to be available. There shall be Wireless LAN and electricity. Collaboration at a conference is not possible without. (it seems though, that there should be wireless access - it’s just not working) ...

Das “Big Brother” Panel Die Debattierenden waren wirklich nett zueinander, sagten nicht viel neues und sind meiner Meinung nach am Thema vorbeigeschrammt. Neben dem Datensammeln im Namen der nationalen Sicherheit, das a) zur Sicherheit notig ist (Peter Regli) aber b) nicht transparent ist und deshalb gefahrlich (Matthias Leisi), dem Hacken von Krankheitsgeschichten durch WLAN lauschen vor dem Krankenhaus (Dominik Flammer). Wirklich gefahrlich scheint mir etwas ganz anderes zu sein: Das Datensammeln in grossem Stil wird durch die Firmen betrieben. Sony hat mit dem CD Debakel vorgemacht, was passieren kann, wenn Firmen um des Profit willens zu unlauteren Methoden greifen. Google ist zwar “not evil”, aber wie lange noch? Die Datensammlung, die Überwachung von uns wird freiwillig geschehen. Der Staat mit seinen Überwachungsanforderungen wird eine geringe Rolle spielen als die Firmen, die den glasernen Konsumenten mochten. ...

**Update: **The mp3 recording of the speech is online Professor, Dr., Cyberpunk (What would William Gibson say) Bruce Sterling gave a speech called “The Hacker Crackdown”, a reference to his 15 year old book about “hackers” and how the ideas and ideals have changed over time. Starting off by comparing the original motivations for “romantic computer hacker” Anonymity, Pseudonymity or a stolen identity. Took place in another space - cyberspace Hacking involved gangs. Loose, laterally organised networks, smart mobs. ...

Elmar Ledergerber, the mayor of Zurich, greets the - not to many - visitors and wishes “happy tweaking” The team behind tweakfest, explains the reasoning behind Tweakfest and what awaits us. The agenda and the goals of tweakfest look impressive. 10 things are going to be premiered, a lot of speakers. Art meets commerce. I’m probably going to blog in german for the rest of tweakfest, because the constant translation between german and english is getting difficult. ...

Tweakfest takes places in “Museum fur Gestaltung” in Zurich. Interestingly enough, at a conference that is about “visions of the digital lifestyle”, there is neither electricity for the audience, nor wireless LAN. So there won’t be a backchannel, collaborative note-taking, heckling, background checking of the speakers or all the other fun stuff that would be possible. Could it be, that “reality of modern conferences” haven’t arrived in Zurich yet? **Update: **Just before I left, there was a WLAN available. Unfortunately, it seemed that it did not allow connections to the internet. Maybe tomorrow will be better ...

Today, Tweakfest starts in Zurich. It’s a conference about “visions of digital lifestyle”. The program reads like a mixture of really boring (“Die Kreativwirtschaft als strategischer Erfolgsfaktor”) to the political interesting (“Totale Überwachung: im Namen der Sicherheit?” - featuring Matthias Leisi on the panel ) to the one I’m looking forward to (“From Science Fiction to Science Facts” by Bruce Sterling ) and then a lot of other presentations that might or might not be of interest ( the new digital home, future of the mobile phone, dancing robots, etc, etc) ...