ars03 .:. code ::: unfair2 min read

my two-sentence-per-speaker-highly-opinionated-
and-totally-unfair conference review:::

yesterday morning the theme of the conference was social code.
first howard rheingold delivered a sales pitch of – instead of an update to – his brillant book smartmobs; the book, that has recently inspired flashmobs, flashcommerce and other forms of new technology-based forms of social interactions. okay, howard, we know that. but what has happened since you wrote the book? we think lots.
next leo feindeisen drew an interesting comparison between two traditional attempts at creating an international language. he said, that codes, in his example languages, create communities. but what defines the developement and continuity of the communites is strongly determined by the fact of how the code was distributed. he showed how in the case of volapük, which was handeled in a very proprietary way by it’s inventor, has now dissappered. while in the case of esperanto, which was distributed in a more “open-source” way, the language has survived, even through two world wars, and is thriving to this day.
after that i sort of lost it for the morning. errrr. hmmm. i dont remember anything about the next two speakers: where was i? oh wait… fiona raby talked about pigs some, so that was *oink* and showed a slide of a dildo with a gun-handle.
[PDF] florian cramer spoke really really fast…
[PDF] the afternoon session [theme: collective creativity] started off with pierre levy. he is the wanker/scientist i have written about in my earlier post.
then there were two speakers that left me with a wow-what-fun-to-see-one-of-these-guys-in-person feeling.
john warnock is the founding member and i think ceo of adobe software company. it was a funny situation to have the ceo of a software company in front of you, of which you have been borrowing rather much software over the years.
i was wondering the whole time if i owe him money? and i sort of got the feeling, that lots of people went through the same process.
[PDF] next up spoke marc cantor [ex-macromedia and inventor of director]. now here we had the classic old-hippie/computer nerd/weirdo idealist/powerhouse.
woo to marc! they still exists!
plus: marc is the ultimate buzzword-generator!
want some?
activity based computing. social software for social networking. digital convergence. digital lifestyle aggregators. scalable content.
cantor solved my earlier dilemna almost immediatly by introducing the concept of pay-per-use in software licensing. we should only pay for software, that we actually use alot and are making money with. marc calls for new school software: pay-per-use, the tool itself a community, adaptable to different types of users.
the last speaker of the day was james mccartney who mumbeled awhile about his programming language supercollider…
fair enough.
and i was fried!

as usual: more, better, fairer information can be found at aec.at/code

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