One of the first presentations on Wednesday at ETech 09. Luebkeman, from Arup, talking about “Urban Futures”. It was an interesting presentation, and he was a great talker but… I still don’t know what the point of the presentation was. It all felt like an introduction to some...

Chris Luebkman of Arup discusses Urban Futures and the arrival of the Ecological Age today at ETech 2009: Tokyo - a sprawl of concrete and steel.  But cities like this (and of all sizes) are for people, existing to help people thrive.  Peak urbanism - cities are seeing a decline in popul...

The second session today I'd like to share with you was presented by a personal friend of mine, Jeremy Faludi. Jer started his session entitled "Priorities for a Greener World: If You Could Design Anything, What Should You Do?" by pointing out that if we want to change the world, we ought to know wh...

Andrew Dent (of Material ConneXion, Inc.) discusses the enormous steps towards replacing and revamping everyday materials in our consumer/production world.  This material innovation is helping us to move towards a more sustainable and green future.  The key to this presentation is that i...

Alvaro Fernandez (of Sharp Brains) speaks on cognitive science and growing your brain.  He and other researchers struggle hard against misconceptions of our brains. Elkhonon Golberg, The Wisdom Paradox -- 3 image brain scan at different stages of learning an activity Our frontal lobes help us ...

Alex Steffen (of World Changing) kicks off our 2nd day of ETech 2009 with a great discussion on 'Sustaining the American Family' in an economically and environmentally turbulent time. People living in many countries got rich by causing climate problems.  Unfair to generations that come...

I'm sitting in Leah Buechley's Lilypad Electronic Fashion tutorial. Where we'll be playing with Lilypad Arduino kits, a collection of sewable electronic pieces that lets you build soft electronic devices. Essentially it's a specially packaged Arduino, a sewable computer. The materials are strange an...

In an early test of the OLPC XO in Nigeria, the student users dropped every laptop several times a day. Despite the laptops' rugged construction, they occasionally needed fixing, and a group of six-year-old girls opened up a "hospital" to reseat cables and do other simpler repairs. Mary Lou Jepson, ...

Perhaps my favorite presentation ever on IT Conversations is this session from ETech with Saul Griffith (presentation hardcopy here). He discusses some assumptions on how carbon dioxide levels could be stabilized at non-catastrophic levels and then what the energy requirements of the maximum average...

Wendy Grossman asks the question, and answers with: Probably not - or not directly. But some of the same people that have 2 million people tracking their MPs' voting records via the site theyworkforyou.com and who, through farmsubsidy.org, got the EU to publish full subsidy data, have set up UNdemoc...