Emerging Technology Conference

The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference is coming to San Diego and I'm going. Some of my favorite mentally endowed nerds are going to be there... Lessig, Anderson, etc. I'll be keeping you all posted in the spirit of citizen journalism, possibly even moblogging, from the conference. Unfortunately they prohibit the recording of video or audio but I'll be taking a lot of notes. I've been thinking a lot about these topics lately but haven't had time to put my thoughts down in a coherent form on my blog yet. In the mean time check out the following article and movies. If you're interested in culture or the economy they're worth the time...

The Long Tail
"Forget macroeconomics. While you're at it, forget microeconomics, too. The really interesting new work is in nanoeconomics, or economic behavior in markets of a million niches far down the long tail of demand. From Pareto distributions to the rise of secondary markets, the ability to find big businesses in small sums is casting a new light on the dismal science."

Lawrence Lessig Speech (.wmv video file)
Explains his take on culture and common assumptions that we shouldn't be making. Website here.

Mixter is a great site with really good free music, no really... Here's a remixed song I found on it. Yes, it's legal.
And finally, a movie about the emergence of the Creative Commons license in Brazil.

My co-worker has been sick for the last week so I've been teaching his class. I did a nonpartisan brain dump of everything I know about economics, technology, culture, etc. to the kids on a big whiteboard with a bunch of blobs, arrows and colored pens. One of them said "Nobody has ever explained it to me like that before." It was sorta nice, makes me want to be a teacher.

The above creative commons licensed photo made me think about parking enforcement robots of the future. That will be their face (I added the red dot in the O for effect). It's the best way I can explain what the Creative Commons license allows. The song above was remixed into something new becuase of the less restrictive license placed on it. I modified the CC licensed photo above, legally, to get an idea across. This was of course all illegal under copyright law until fairly recently.