Both Bruce Sterling as well as the organizers of Tweakfest have allowed me to publish a recording of the speech that Bruce Sterling gave at this years Tweakfest. It was recorded using my Powerbook and it’s built in microphone, so sound quality is, let’s say “challenged”. Still, Bruce can be understood without problems. Enjoy: Bruce [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – The Bruce Sterling speech as mp3’.
Tweakfest ist gestern zu Ende gegangen. Ein paar Dinge sind nicht in voller epischer Breite gebloggt, aber ich finde die Zeit dazu nicht mehr. Nur kurz zum Panel über “Copy Right”, das eine Diskussion zum Urherberrecht versprach. Obwohl die Panelisten einiges zu sagen hatten (ein PJ Wassermann hatte sogar eher zu viel zu sagen und [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Gedanken zum Schluss’.
Cornelia Sollfrank, Netzkünstlerin Net.Art Generator sucht Bilder im Internet (Künstler / Stichwort) und baut neue Bilder zusammen. Wer ist der Autor eines solchen Bildes? Das Programm? Der Computer auf dem das Program ausgeführt wurde? Juristisch ist dagegen erstmal nix einzuwenden. Leider scheidet Software / Computer aus, weil nur Menschen Urheberrechte erwerben können. Der Programmierer des [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Net Art Generation’.
Georg C. F. Greve, President, Free Software Foundation Europe A long presentation that covers the basics of free (as in freedom) software, touches Open Source Software, and moves on to show that proprietary software is a danger to society, because code (software) forms the basic structure of an (internet based) society. By using proprietary software [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Open Source is not enough’.
Gabriel J. Gomez, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zurich Talks about the work on designing a robotic hand that mimic the human hand. Exploring the concepts of grasping. Very high degree of freedom. Pressure sensors. Different movies of the hand opening, closing, grasping things (spheres, cylinders). The hand is controlled by a neural network, fed [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – The Human Roboter Hand’.
Fuminori Yamasaki, CEO iXs Research Corporation Shows a small ECO Robot KHR-1, that is sold for $1’000. He shows that it can walk, stand on it’s arms, somersault and make a cartwheel. It is used for example for battle competitions between humanoid robots. There are 100 competitors that match their robots every 6 months, so [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Robots are better Dancers’.
Walter Hehl, IBM Research Center Rüschlikon Gives a broad overview on the progression of computer processing power and storage and how this influences “pervasive” computing. Interesting points: “What was once private is now public”, “what was once hard to copy, is now trivial to duplicate” and “what was once easily forgotten, is now stored forever.” [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Future Life’.
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 [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Random Observations’.
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 nötig ist (Peter Regli) aber b) nicht transparent ist und deshalb gefährlich (Matthias Leisi), dem Hacken von Krankheitsgeschichten durch WLAN lauschen [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Big Brother und ein Ende mit Schrecken’.
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 [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest – Bruce Sterling’.
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 [...] Read more – ‘Tweakfest 2005 – What / Why’.
GPRS coverage in Italy I didn’t bother with. I am back in switzerland and will be in my bed in two hours. Joy! A bed without sand in the sheets… Read more – ‘coming home’.
