Digital_Heirloom

Our communication methods have improved over time, from stone tablets, papyrus, and vellum through to the printing press and the World Wide Web. But while the web has democratised publishing, allowing anyone to share ideas with a global audience, it doesn’t appear to be the best medium for preserving our cultural resources: websites and documents disappear down the digital memory hole every day. This presentation will look at the scale of the problem and propose methods for tackling our collective data loss.

Jeremy Keith

We shape our tools and our tools shape us.” As more of the tools we live with every day become digital instead of physical, our opportunity – and responsibility – as designers is multiplying. We live in a world of screens, and we are the ones who decide what goes on them. We are in a unique position to have an impact – one that lasts longer than the next redesign or the latest technology. What happens when we stop thinking of ourselves not just as developers or experience designers, and take up the mantle as a new generation of product designers for a digital world?

Wilson Miner

Martin Roemers

What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a “religion for atheists” — call it Atheism 2.0 — that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.

Miru Kim

Hubert Branz 

On 8 November 2011, the Global Pulse team briefed the United Nations General Assembly on its Research Projects, Technology Toolkit, country-based Pulse Labs and its plans for the coming year. The briefing also featured a keynote address by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. This video is an edited version of the full 1.5 hour event and provides a summary of Global Pulse’s work in 2010.

Wrenay Gomez Charlton

Hersman asks us to shed outdated notions of Africa as a unified place plagued by starvation and war. Between mobile phone innovations like M-PESA, social networking like MXit and entrepreneurial spaces like Maker Faire Africa, Hersman sees innovation and entrepreneurship exploding within some of Africa’s—and the world’s—fastest growing economies.

Sergio Albiac’s “videorative portraits” use videos about the subject’s life as digital paint, so that each piece is made of the sitter’s own memories.

via FastCoDesign