Interviews
Participant-submitted bios & "lower-third" captions (copy/pasted 'as is' & in order of appearance; all interviews recorded live via webcams around the globe between June-Sept 2011):
//the rest of the interview footage (out of ~30hrs total) will be posted here soon
Jon "maddog" Hall - President, Linux International
Vinton G. Cerf - Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
David Weinberger - Senior Researcher, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet Society
Howard Rheingold - http://www.rheingold.com/university
Professor Terrell Ward Bynum - Director, Research Center on Computing and Society
Marina Gorbis - Executive Director, Institute for the Future
Carlos Mantilla - Web Designer / CEO
Michael Chorost - Author, "World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humans, Machines, and the Internet"
Tiffany Shlain - Filmmaker & Founder, The Webby Awards
Jamie Janover - Emissary for http://theresonanceproject.org
Giordano Nanni - co-writer/creator, TheJuiceMedia Rap News
Hugo Farrant - co-writer/creator, TheJuiceMedia Rap News
Richard Esguerra - Senior Activist, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Douglas Rushkoff - Author, Program or Be Programmed
Jason Silva - Media Personality / Futurist / Philosopher, Fellow at the Hybrid Realities Institute
Dr. Kimberly Young - Founder and President, The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery
consensus - Devil's Advocate, Anonymous
Sean M. Bodmer - Sr. Threat Intelligence Analyst, Damballa, Inc.
ze frank - founder zefrank.com :: star.me
Andrew Keen - The antichrist of Silicon Valley
Joe Grand - Electrical Engineer & Hardware Hacker, Grand Idea Studio
Kenneth Geers - U.S. Representative, NATO Cyber Centre in Estonia
Dr. Roger Nelson - Founder and Director, Global Consciousness Project, Princeton University, Retired
Nikola Danaylov - Singularitarian Infopreneur & Blogger
Dr. Michael Laitman - Professor of Ontology, Bio-Cybernetics & Kabbalah
James Jorasch - Founder and CEO, Science House
Luciano Floridi - Professor of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford, UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics
Lio Spiegler - Creative Director/Copywriter
Ben Goertzel - CEO / Novamente LLC
Navi Reshet - Internet Prophet
Serenity96 - Second Life citizen
Rita J. King - Executive Vice President, Science House
Resident Futurist, National Institute for Aerospace
Kevin Kelly - Senior Maverick, Wired
Kosta Grammatis - Founder and CEO, AHumanRight.org
Jon "maddog" Hall
President, Linux International
Computer industry since 1969, Unix since 1980, Linux since 1994.
Programmer, Systems Administrator, Educator, Product Manager, Technical Marketing Manager, CEO, Author.
BSCE - Drexel University, 1973
MSCS - RPI, 1977
Vinton G. Cerf
Vice President and
Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
Vinton G. Cerf is Vice President and Chief Internet evangelist for Google. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. With his colleague, Robert Kahn, Cerf received the U.S. National Medal of Technology in 1997 for co-founding and developing the Internet. In 1994 and 1998 respectively, Kahn and Cerf were honored as Marconi Fellows. They received the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. In November 2005 they received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2008 they received the Japan Prize.
Vint Cerf served as Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000-2007 and is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA. He also holds honorary Doctorate degrees from 18 universities.
David Weinberger
Senior Researcher,
Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society
David Weinberger, Ph.D., is a co-author of the seminal work in Internet marketing, The Cluetrain Manifesto (2000). He is a well-known blogger, writer, and mainstream media commentator, focusing on how the Internet is changing our ideas, and our roles as citizens and customers. Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department. He is the author of two other highly regarded books, "Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web" and "Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder." His upcoming book, "Too Big to Know" (2012), looks at how the networking of knowledge and expertise is changing how we understand our world and make decisions in it. Dr. Weinberger is a senior researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto. He lives in Boston with his wife and children.
Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold is the author of: Tools for Thought
Was:
editor of Whole Earth Review
editor of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog
founding executive editor of Hotwired
founder of Electric Minds
Non-resident Fellow, Annenberg Center for Communication, USC, 2007
Visiting Professor, De Montfort University, UK
Has taught:
Participatory Media and Collective Action (UC Berkeley, SIMS, Fall 2005, 2006, 2007)
Toward a Literacy of Cooperation (Stanford, Winter, 2005)
Digital Journalism (Stanford University Winter, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 )
Current projects:
21st Century Literacies 40 min video
Professor Terrell Ward Bynum
Director, Research Center on Computing and Society
Southern Connecticut State University
Terrell Ward Bynum is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, Director of the Research Center on Computing & Society there, and Visiting Professor at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. He is a lifetime member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Past Chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the Association for Computing Machinery, and Past Chair of the Committee on Philosophy and Computing of the American Philosophical Association.
Professor Bynum’s academic degrees include a PhD (CUNY), MPhil (CUNY), MA (Princeton), BA (U. of Delaware) – all in Philosophy – and a BS (U. of Delaware) in Chemistry. He has been a Fulbright Fellow (U. of Bristol, England), Danforth Fellow (Princeton), Woodrow Wilson Fellow (Princeton), Mellon Fellow (CUNY), and Dartmouth Fellow (Dartmouth College). In 2008, he was awarded the Barwise Prize of the American Philosophical Association “for significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing.” In 2009, he received the Joseph Weizenbaum Award from the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology (INSEIT) for making “significant contributions to the field of information and computer ethics through his research, service, and vision.” In 2011, he received the Preston Covey Award of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) for “leadership and a lifetime of achievements in the field of Computing and Philosophy.”
On the topic of computing and human values, Dr. Bynum has published articles and books, created conferences and workshops, given speeches and addresses, produced and hosted video programs, and developed an internationally influential web site. His other works include books, monographs, articles and reviews in logic, psychology, history of philosophy, and education. In 1968, he created the scholarly journal Metaphilosophy, which he edited for twenty-five years.
In 1991, Professor Bynum was co-creator and co-director of the National Conference on Computing and Values funded by the National Science Foundation; and in 1995 he was co-creator and co-director of the ETHICOMP series of international computer ethics conferences held, since 1995, in England, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Sweden, Japan, China and Denmark.
Marina Gorbis
Executive Director,
Institute for the Future
During her tenture at IFTF, and previously with SRI International, Marina has worked with hundreds of organizations in business, education, government, and philanthropy, bringing a future perspective to improve innovation capacity, develop strategies, and design new products and services. A native of Odessa, Ukraine, Marina is particularly suited to see things from a global perspective. She has worked all over the world and feels equally at home in Silicon Valley, Europe, India, or Kazakhstan. Before becoming IFTF's Executive Director in 2006, Marina created the Global Innovation Forum, a project comparing innovation strategies in different regions, and she founded Global Ethnographic Network (GEN), a multi-year ethnographic research program aimed at understanding daily lives of people in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Silicon Valley. She also led IFTF's Technology Horizons Program, focusing on interaction between technology and social organizations. She has been a guest blogger on BoingBoing.net and writes for IFTF and major media outlets. She is a frequent speaker on future organizational, technology, and social issues. Marina holds a Master's Degree from the Graduate School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
Carlos Mantilla
Web Designer / CEO
Between 1998 and 2005, Carlos participated as a programmer in mobile projects, oil and banking. Projects related to security, mobile, banking (transfers, change control, etc.)
From 2005 to present, Carlos works as Executive Director (CEO) of Aliongroo (Founder). Since late 2010 the company is focused on creating Internet products and services, and on a social network based on collaborative consumption and copyleft.
In the early years as IT Manager, Carlos participated in defining the architecture of a project, which uses cutting edge technology and infrastructure services in the cloud (Amazon, Dotcloud, Google, Cloudflare), and open source languages ??(Python, Ruby onRails, Javascript , HTML, CSS).
Michael Chorost
Author, "World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humans, Machines, and the Internet" http://www.michaelchorost.com
Michael Chorost (pronounced like “chorus” with a T at the end) is a technology theorist with an unusual perspective: his body is the future. In 2001 he went completely deaf and had a computer implanted in his head to let him hear again. This transformative experience inspired his first book, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. He wrote about how mastering his new ear, a cochlear implant, enabled him to enhance his creative potential as a human being. The critics agreed; in 2006 Rebuilt won the PEN/USA Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Shortly afterward it was reprinted in paperback under the new title Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World.
Dr. Chorost earned his B.A. at Brown University and studied computer programming, Renaissance drama, and cultural theory on the way to his Ph.D. at UT-Austin. He doesn’t draw sharp lines between programming, science, writing, and art; to him, these are all profoundly creative human endeavors. This freewheeling approach infuses his second book, World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet. In this book he ups the ante, proposing that humanity can incorporate the computer into its collective soul in a way that enhances communities and creative work instead of diminishing them.
As a freelance science writer he has written for Wired, The Washington Post, Technology Review, and The Scientist, among others. He wrote the screenplay for a TV special on brain implants titled The 22nd Century, which aired on PBS in January 2007. He sits on external advisory boards for neuroscience research at Northwestern and Brown. He has given over 85 talks at institutions such as Google, MIT, Stanford, Brown, the Brookings Institute, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
Dr. Chorost was born in New Jersey and has lived in North Carolina, Texas, and California. In 2008 he moved to Washington D.C., where he now lives with his wife and their three cats Harper, Posy, and Elvis.
Tiffany Shlain
Filmmaker & Founder, The Webby Awards
twitter: @tiffanyshlain
Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards, co-founder of The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute. Her work in film & technology has received 48 awards and distinctions and her last four films premiered at Sundance. They include “Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness,” about the importance of reproductive rights in America and “The Tribe,” an exploration of American Jewish identity & the Barbie doll, “Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl,” about our addiction to technology and the value of “unplugging,” and her new acclaimed feature documentary, “Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology,” which explores what it means to be “connected” in the 21st century. Her films have shown on TV and in theaters throughout the world. Her team at The Moxie Institute combine film + new technologies + educational materials + live events to engage people in new ways. They just have begun a new film series of 10 short films called “Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change.” A celebrated thinker and speaker, she is a visiting professor at The University of Wales, is on the advisory board of M.I.T.’s Geospatial Lab, has advised Secretary Clinton and presented the 2010 Commencement Address at UCBerkeley. Tiffany is married with two children and they all unplug from technology one day a week for a technology shabbat.
Jamie Janover
Emissary for http://theresonanceproject.org
twitter: @JamieJanover
http://www.jamiejanover.comhttp://www.facebook.com/JamieJanover.artist.profile
http://theresonanceproject.org/emissaries/jamie-janover
Jamie Janover is recognized as a true innovator. His considerable creative output includes: being a master of the ancient percussion stringed instrument called the hammered dulcimer, inventing and performing on an instrument he calls the "mini-kit" (a miniature amplified drum kit), playing pyrocussion (fire drums) and creating the RealmsMobile (a recumbent tricycle with the mini-kit attached, enabling him to ride and play drums simultaneously). By combining recent innovations in modern technology with the wisdom of ancient instruments, Janover achieves a balance between the electronic and the acoustic to create a unified field: music reflective of the nature of modern times. For many years Janover has maintained a rigorous international touring schedule with several acts including: PRAANG (w/ EOTO & Steve Kimock), ZILLA (w/ Michael Travis from SCI and VibeSquaD), LYNX & Janover and the Everyone Orchestra (w/ a revolving lineup). Jamie is also a veteran of hundreds of collaborations and guest appearances, having performed on stage with artists including Phish, Bela Fleck, The String Cheese Incident, G. Love & Special Sauce, Umphrey’s McGee, Keller Williams, Beats Antique, Stanley Jordan and many others. In the past 2 years alone Janover has performed at over 50 festivals in countries as diverse as Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Australia, Indonesia, Canada & the USA and is currently touring solo, performing electroacoustic live PA set style shows usinghis unique live rig which includes hammered dulcimer, laptop computer, mini-kit, sampler, sitar, electric kalimba, midi controllers and percussion. When not playing music, you can find Janover connecting dots around the world in his extensive travels and collaborations in multiple creative realms including creating stunning images as a professional photographer and making sculpture works using natural found objects. Janover’s life-long interest in the true nature of reality and the universe brought him to become an official emissary for scientist Nassim Haramein of the Resonance Project, delivering fascinating presentations on the physics of unified field theory. Jamie Janover also produces music events including an annual electronic music festival in Colorado called SONIC BLOOM.
Giordano Nanni
co-writer/creator,
TheJuiceMedia Rap News
Giordano Nanni is Rap News’s writer, director and editor, whose rants and ruminations on history, politics and current affairs are channeled into rhyme by Robert Foster. Hailing from Italy and South Africa, Giordano’s background is in history, music, and media; he is the instigator of a number of original projects spanning theatre, print and the internets – including ~TheJuiceMedia, which he established in 2008.
Hugo Farrant
co-writer/creator,
TheJuiceMedia Rap News
Hugo Farrant fills the role of the amiable Rap News anchorman, Robert Foster – as well as all the guests who appear on the show. Hailing from Branksome in the UK, Hugo is a prolific rhymer and orator, MC and spoken-word poet who regularly graces the stages and festivals of Melbourne. Having spent seven years rhyming and rapping, he now co-rhymes/writes ~TheJuiceMedia: Rap News.
Richard Esguerra
Senior Activist,
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Richard makes sure the public knows what's up on the digital rights frontier, writing articles for the Deeplinks blog and issuing action alerts through the EFF Action Center. When not heatedly hammering away at his keyboard, Richard continues attempts to rescue the mystifyingly fabulous Orb of Zot and takes photos of his cat.
Douglas Rushkoff
Author, Program or Be Programmed
Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist and the author of a dozen books including Media Virus, Coercion, Cyberia, Life Inc., and, most recently, Program or Be Programmed. He made the PBS Frontline documentaries Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, and Digital Nation, and wrote the upcoming graphic novel A.D.D.
Jason Silva
Media Personality / Futurist / Philosopher
Fellow at the Hybrid Realities Institute
twitter: @jason_silva
Jason Silva (born Feb 6, 1982 in Caracas, Venezuela) is a Venezuelan-American television and media personality, filmmaker, gonzo journalist, writer and founding producer / host for Current TV, the Emmy winning youth-oriented lifestyle cable network started by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, now the fastest growing network in TV history.
Silva earned a degree in film and philosophy from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He, along with Max Lugavere, produced and starred in a video documentary / performance piece entitled "Textures of Selfhood"- an experimental film about hedonism and spirituality. "The Party-Philosophers" and "Intellectual Hedonists", aptly named by Angeleno Magazine, borrowed the name for the film from the Hedonistic Imperative, a website promoting the end to human suffering by philosopher David Pearce.
Silva produced and directed a short documentary film titled The Immortalists, profiling scientists and philosophers, including Ray Kurzweil, about the philosophical implications of tinkering with our biology, merging with our technologies and overcoming our biological limitations. Inspired by the Stewart Brand quote: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it," the film is a love letter to science and technology and the intersection of science and art. The film generated buzz among scientific and futurist circles for its impassioned exploration of the subject matter. Silva is now working on a feature length follow up aptly titled Turning into Gods.
Silva is a regular contributor for The Huffington Post, BigThink.com, and has written for Vanity Fair, Fast Company, Motherboard.tv, NextNature.net, and HPlus Magazine. He is currently working on a feature article about accelerating technology and the future of humanity for Playboy Magazine. He recently completed a pilot for an HBO documentary series titled Talk Nerdy To Me about science and technology.
Silva was featured as part of a recent GAP "Icons" Campaign, as well as The Abercrombie and Fitch "Quarterly", photographed by Bruce Weber. Silva is an active speaker - he has spoken at Yale about accelerating tech and future of media and has also led panel discussions at The Paley Center for Media in both in NY and LA (formerly museum of TV and Radio) on the future of media. Most recently, Silva became a fellow at the Hybrid Realities Institute to research the implications of our human-technology co-evolution.
Silva resides in Los Angeles, California and New York City.
Dr. Kimberly Young
Founder and President,
The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery
Author of Caught in the Net - the first book on Internet addiction recovery
Dr. Kimberly Young is a licensed psychologist and an internationally known expert on Internet addiction. She founded the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995 and travels nationally conducting seminars on the impact of the Internet. She is the author of numerous articles and books on Internet addiction and her work has been widely featured in the media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, CNN, CBS News, Fox News, and Good Morning America.
consensus
Devil's Advocate, Anonymous
Speaking only for himself - and any who happen to share his views.
Sean M. Bodmer
Sr. Threat Intelligence Analyst, Damballa, Inc.
Sean is an active senior threat research analyst at Damballa. He specializes in the analysis of signatures and behaviors used by the botnets and the cyber criminal community. Sean focuses his time learning tools, techniques, and procedures behind attacks and intrusions related to various persistent threats. Sean has worked in several Information Systems Security roles for various firms and customers over the past decade across United States. Most notably he has spent several years performing black box penetration testing, incident response, and intrusion and intruder analysis for Fortune 100 companies, the Defense Department, and 'other' Federal Agencies. Sean has shared numerous accounts of his findings at various industry conferences relating to the inner-workings of advanced persistent threats (APTs). Sean has lectured at industry conferences including Bluehat, Defcon, Defcon Skytalks, Hacker Halted, PhreakNIC, DC3, NW3C, NSA, DHS Annual Security Symposium, Pentagon Security Forum, and Carnegie Mellon CERT discussing his interest in analyzing and manipulating the minds and morale of persistent threats without their knowledge.
Sean has focused his research over the past several years on developing systems that enable the analysis of attackers through various advanced machine learning and enterprise platforms mixed of various public and private Honeynet technologies. Sean co-authored “Hacking Exposed: Malware and Rootkits (the definitive Computer Security book series)” with McGraw-Hill in 2009. Sean is currently working on another book covering "Countering Advanced Cyber Threats,” a comprehensive manual that illustrates how to employ various methods of counter-intelligence, disinformation, and deception against active threats in order to learn the 'who' and 'why' behind the breach of your enterprise.
ze frank
founder zefrank.com :: star.me
{external bio: wikipedia entry}
Andrew Keen
The antichrist of Silicon Valley
Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit, CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How the Internet is Killing our Culture, which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur, Andrew founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet music company. He is currently the host of “Keen On” show, the popular Techcrunch chat show.
Andrew is an acclaimed speaker on the international circuit, speaking regularly on the impact of new technology on 21st century business, education and society. Andrew’s new book about the social media revolution, Digital Vertigo: An Anti-Social Manifesto, will be published by St Martin’s Press in 2012.
Joe Grand
Electrical Engineer & Hardware Hacker
Grand Idea Studio
Joe Grand is an electrical engineer and the President of Grand Idea Studio, Inc. He specializes in the invention, design, and licensing of consumer products and modules for electronics hobbyists. Joe is a former member of the legendary hacker collective L0pht Heavy Industries and has testified before the United States Senate Governmental Affairs Committee regarding government and homeland computer security. He has spent nearly two decades finding security flaws in hardware devices and educating engineers on how to increase the security of their designs.
Joe was a co-host of Prototype This, an engineering entertainment show on Discovery Channel. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Boston University and a Doctorate of Science in Technology (Honorary) degree from the University of Advancing Technology.
Kenneth Geers
U.S. Representative, NATO Cyber Centre in Estonia
Kenneth Geers, PhD, CISSP, is the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Cyber Subject Matter Expert. Mr Geers has served as an intelligence analyst, a French and Russian linguist, and a computer programmer in support of arms control initiatives. He was the first U.S. Representative to the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. His new book, “Strategic Cyber Security,” is available as a free download at http://ccdcoe.org/278.html
Dr. Roger Nelson
Founder and Director, Global Consciousness Project
Princeton University, Retired
Dr. Roger Nelson studied physics and psychology at University of Rochester, served as a counterintelligence officer in the US Army in Germany, then took a PhD in cognitive psychology at New York University. He was a professor at Johnson State College in Vermont until 1980 when he moved to Princeton University to coordinate research in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab directed by Robert Jahn in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He retired from the University in 2002, but continues an intense engagement with consciousness research in his role as the director of the Global Consciousness Project which he founded in 1997.
Nikola Danaylov
Singularitarian Infopreneur & Blogger
www.SingularityWeblog.com
Dr. Michael Laitman
Professor of Ontology, Bio-Cybernetics & Kabbalah
Professor of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge, Doctor of Philosophy, with a Master of Science degree in Medical Cybernetics. Dr. Laitman has written over 40 books that have been translated into 18 languages, all with the goal of helping individuals to achieve harmony within themselves and the environment around them. Dr. Laitman has spent his entire life exploring human nature and society, seeking answers to the meaning of life in our modern world, and how to live in the new global village, our increasingly technologically interconnected world.
James Jorasch
Founder and CEO, Science House
Prior to starting Science House, James was head of Inventing at Walker Digital where he helped incubate a number of businesses over a 15 year period, including Priceline.com and RetailDNA. Before joining Walker Digital, James was a management consultant with Deloitte & Touche and a Financial Analyst for the Tropicana Casino. He received a B.S. and MBA degree from Cornell University.
Luciano Floridi
Professor of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford
UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/Welcome.html
[ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floridi] Luciano Floridi (Laurea, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, MPhil. and PhD University of Warwick, MA University of Oxford) currently holds the Research Chair in Philosophy of Information and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Computer Ethics, both at the University of Hertfordshire, Department of Philosophy. He is also Fellow by Special Election of St Cross College, Oxford University, Senior Member of the Faculty of Philosophy and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy at OUCL (the Department of Computer Science), University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on two areas of philosophical research: the philosophy of information and information ethics. He is the founder and director of the IEG, an interdepartmental research group on the philosophy of information at the University of Oxford, and of the GPI, the research Group in Philosophy of Information at the University of Hertfordshire. He was the founder and director of the SWIF, the Italian e-journal of philosophy (1995–2008). His works have been translated into Chinese, French, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.
Lio Spiegler
Creative Director/Copywriter
Lio Spiegler is a thinker and a visual artist. He specializes in marketing, branding, and communications in traditional and emerging media. Over the past ten years Lio has built desirable brands for fortune 500 companies and boutique business alike. Today Lio is a creative brain-for-hire on anything from video games to real estate. Because of his cross-cultural experience and keen eye for the integration of business with community and design, Lio is routinely invited to consult with companies who are in the process of crossing (all sorts of) borders. Since it became clear to him that Internet holds the next frontier for humanity, he has been working to explore human consciousness and the next shift into group consciousness, with other pioneers on the old cyber trail.
Ben Goertzel
CEO / Novamente LLC
Dr. Ben Goertzel is CEO of AI software company Novamente LLC and bioinformatics company Biomind LLC; leader of the open-source OpenCog Artificial General Intelligence software project; Vice Chairman of Humanity+;
Chief Technology Officer of biopharma firm Genescient Corp.; Advisor to the Singularity University and Singularity Institute; Research Professor in the Fujian Key Lab for Brain-Like Intelligent Systems at Xiamen University, China; and general Chair of the Artificial General Intelligence conference series.
His research work encompasses artificial general intelligence, natural language processing, cognitive science, data mining, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds and gaming and other areas. He has published a dozen scientific books, 100+ technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles. Before entering the software industry he served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He has three children and too many pets, and in his spare time enjoys creating avant-garde fiction and music, and the outdoors.
Navi Reshet
Internet Prophet
Driving global and mass enlightenment. Seeing things as they are rather than as I want them to be. Using the Internet to acquire an integrated view of reality from all available perspectives. Using new technological tools, in a mindful way, to adapt to the incredible changes Humanity is experiencing. Removing ideologies that become obsolete and stand in the way of evolution.
Serenity96
Second Life citizen
Rita J. King
Executive Vice President, Science House
Resident Futurist, National Institute for Aerospace
Rita's lifelong passion for science started in childhood when she first learned about quarks. In 2006, she founded Dancing Ink Productions, a company with global clients focused on a new culture and economy. With collaborator Joshua Fouts, she most recently co-directed IMAGINATION: Creating the Future of Education and Work, an interactive project for educators focused on science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics. She's currently Resident Futurist at the NASA’s think-tank. Senior Fellow for Social Networking and Immersive Technologies at the Center of the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington, DC, and recently served as Innovator-in-Residence at IBM Analytics Virtual Center. Her art explores the creation of meaningful common space.
Kevin Kelly
Senior Maverick, Wired
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor from its inception until 1999. He has just finished a book for Viking/Penguin called "What Technology Wants," published October 18, 2010. He is also editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets half a million unique visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
Kosta Grammatis
Founder and CEO, AHumanRight.org
Kosta Grammatis explores new ideas rather than follow the established assumptions. He started ahumanright.org, an organization charged with bringing low cost Internet access to the world, because he believes that information empowers people. He is passionate about using technology to foster development. Kosta was a researcher and consultant for the MIT Media Labs, he worked on a low cost vision testing system called “NETRA” that aims to revolutionize eye care. NETRA was awarded Vodaphone’s Wireless Innovation Award, MIT Global Challenge Award, and a Google Innovation Grant. Kosta was the Chief Engineer for the video camera enabled prosthetic eye called the “Eyeborg Project.” His work was awarded TIME Magazines best inventions of 2009 and featured in "Ripley's Believe it or Not". He was an Avionics Systems Engineer for Space Exploration Technologies and was responsible for a micro-communications satellite that is currently in orbit. He likes big ideas and has spoken publicly world wide on topics ranging from Technology to Human Rights. He has photographed professionally, and travels profusely.
