James Woudhuysen - "The Future of Creativity
and Innovation"
<www.woudhuysen.com>
CONTRIBUTE TO THE DISCUSSION BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE EVENT BY VISITING THE 'XMAS LECTURE' WIKI HERE.
PUT QUESTIONS TO JAMES VIA EMAIL IN ADVANCE OF THE EVENT <questions@cybersalon.org>.
About
James Woudhuysen
James Woudhuysen, 52, is a physics graduate. He wrote about chemical weapons for the Economist in 1978, and devised an instruction manual for a word processor in 1983. He consulted on and advocated e-commerce in 1988 and Internet TV in 1993. He has worked with AT&T, BA, BT, Equant, Ford, HP, IBM, John Lewis Partnership, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Philips, Symbian, Unisys, Vodafone, Xerox and Yamaha Motor, as well as the cities of London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow.
Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester, James has written for The Times and contributes regularly to IT Week, spiked and Radio 4’s You and Yours. His most recent publications are Why is construction so backward? (Wiley, 2004), The globalisation of UK manufacturing and services, 2004-2024 (UK Trade & Investment, 2004) and ‘Play as the main event in international and UK culture’ (Cultural Trends, 2003).
The Post Lecture Social
Cybersalon and NMK invite all Xmas Lecture attendees to a post lecture social and networking event in the Dana Centre's d.cafe featuring a live VJ set from The Sancho Plan <www.thesanchoplan.com>.
The Future Of Creativity and Innovation
In tomorrow's living room, the mobile phone is a remote control unit that runs your computer games, your television and the videoconferencing calls you make to your granny (she has a Webcam, too). But what kind of creative content can we expect to see on wall-sized, wafer-thin TVs that are coming – and will the homes of the future be built efficiently enough for young people to be able to afford them?
The educated classes in Britain talk a lot about both its strength in creativity, and its need to accelerate innovation in the face of challenges from Asia. Yet from consumer electronics to construction, government is more interested in cutting down energy use than in turning British science into technological breakthroughs.
Perhaps it fears such breakthroughs. In this lecture, James Woudhuysen, Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester, will talk about the cultural barriers to scientific progress, and why public debate about dismantling these barriers has become so essential.
About
The Xmas Lecture
This will be the fifth Cybersalon/NMK Xmas Lecture. The lecture was
established in 2001 as an opportunity for leading members of the UK new
media industry to talk freely about their work and speculate about how
media and communications technologies are interacting and impacting on
society, economics, politics and culture. Lectures are attended by a
mixture of new media professionals, academics, commentators, journalists
and policy makers.
In previous lectures, Eva Pascoe has described her experiences in founding Cyberia,
the world's first Internet Café, and how Internet Cafes have continued
to evolve and impact on society, Professor Jonathan Briggs has discussed the
role of Internet technologies in helping to rebuild war-torn Kosova, journalist
Bill Thompson has wondered if big business is destroying the Internet and Dr
Richard Barbrook has pondered the shape of nets to come. You can find reports
on all of these at <www.nmk.co.uk> or <www.cybersalon.org>.
About NMK and Cybersalon
New Media Knowledge <www.nmk.co.uk> is a not-for-profit body owned by the University of Westminster, one of the country's leading educational institutions for digital media. Established in 1998, NMK has worked to support and develop the UK's emerging digital media industries, through a programme of events, seminars, courses, research projects and publications. Over the course of this period, NMK has worked extensively with digital media businesses, policy makers and public sector agencies to deliver support, advice and learning, and encourage best business practice.
Cybersalon <www.cybersalon.org> is a "community of interest" - a network of new media practitioners, artists, academics, commentators and entrepreneurs motivated by the liberating and creative potential of the new Internet and communication technologies. Cybersalon has built a strong reputation for pioneering critical debate and platforming developments in new media and digital art. The organisation has a well-established track record of activities over the past 7 years having hosted regular discussion forums, devised innovative digital arts projects, developed technology based communication products and organised larger festivals such as Cybersonica - the International Festival of Music, Sound & Technology.
About ‘Sorted’
Cybersalon and NMK also use the Xmas Lecture to launch a new research project and publication initiative – ‘Sorted’ – authored by Richard Barbrook, Sookie Choi and Tom Corby.
Over the last fifty years, London has been the birthplace of many celebrated subcultures: mods, punks, goths and ravers. In the mid-1990s, the Net was the catalyst for the emergence of another important cultural moment in London’s history. This book will chronicle the emergence and flourishing of the new media subculture that has flourished over the last decade in the city and maps its links to earlier subcultures.
Sorted is an annotated collection of articles, quotations, flyers, interviews, manifestos, e-mails, postings, fashions, blogs, photos, adverts and drawings covering over a decade of London’s new media scene. The book is constructed as a <proto> hypertext: the items in the main text are accompanied by a multiplicity of footnotes, background information and editorial commentary. As in a medieval Bible or Talmud, the overview is as important as the narrative. Sorted is the literary equivalent of a DJ remix which combines hit tunes with new breaks and voice-overs - or of the director’s cut of a cult movie with additional scenes and a critical voice-over. This book is a definitive collation of important pieces and contemporary discussions about net culture from the late-1990s and early-2000s combined with brand new material that helps the reader to understand the social and cultural importance of these items.