Program Description

Plastic: A Toxic Love Story

Using eight familiar objects as guides, Freinkel takes audiences on an eye-opening multimedia journey tracing the rise of plastic and touching on some of its more lasting impacts on the economy, culture, health, and the environment. Focusing on some of the interlocking themes explored in the book — the rise of throwaway culture and its environmental impacts; the new kinds of health risks posed by synthetic chemicals used in plastics, and the politics of regulating them — Freinkel explores both the benefits and problems stemming from our tight embrace of synthetics.

Moreover, Freinkel addresses the problem of plastic waste and pollution and the challenges of dealing with plastics at the end of their useful lives.  And, in doing so, she poses and attempts to answer some of the tougher questions to grow out of this discussion: Is recycling the answer?  Could bioplastics be the materials of the future, and do their benefits outweigh the risks?

Whether or not we as a species can come to grips with our reliance on, and addiction to plastic is a question that will play itself out over the decades to come, but Freinkel’s talk can help audiences better understand our role in perpetuating plastic’s ubiquity, and by the same token, give us the tools to attempt to create a more enlightened consumer future.

The American Chestnut: A Parable of Our Time

In her award-winning book American Chestnut: The Life Death And Rebirth Of A Perfect Tree, Freinkel details one of the worst ecological disasters to ever hit North America: the near extermination of one of the country’s most important forest trees.

Her lecture, based on the book, draws fascinating parallels between this early almost-catastrophe and the ecological problems of invasive species and loss of biodiversity afflicting American landscapes today.  Freinkel tells the story of the chestnuts’ near demise and the decades-long effort of various scientists and amateur botanists to save and restore this beloved tree.  Once one of the most plentiful trees in East Coast forests – source of sustenance for all living beings in its range, from hares to hogs to human and a cultural icon for mountain folk of southern Appalachia — the chestnut was driven to near-extinction by a virulent newly-arrived pathogen

Freinkel discusses the notion that while the natural world is constantly evolving and seeking it’s own equilibrium, we must be more vigilant stewards of our own environment.  If we don’t act responsibly, then we run the risk of setting events in motion that can’t easily be undone.

Bio

A science writer whose work has appeared in a variety of national publications including: Discover, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, The New York Times, OnEarth, Health, and Real Simple, Freinkel was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship in 2005, which allowed her to conduct much of the research for American Chestnut. The book won a 2008 National Outdoor Book Award.

A graduate of Wesleyan University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freinkel began her career as a reporter at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon in Wichita, Kansas.  Her interests run wide. She has covered subjects ranging from adoption to weight control, coyote hunts to mad cow disease, new psychiatric treatments to the quest to develop a blue rose — not to mention trees and plastic.

In Free Ride, Robert Levine, business journalist and former Executive Editor of Billboard, details how Congress helped create this situation, how tech companies convinced politicians not to regulate the online world, and how the media business can save itself (in spite of itself).

Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

Piracy?  It’s only part of the problem.  While piracy obviously has an economic cost in addition to its cultural consequences, the real problem is that an Internet without restrictions is an Internet without a functioning market. Some technology pundits see this as progress – but many of them have made valuable businesses out of information and entertainment funded by the media companies that have been devastated by their actions. In the long term, this can’t last: Google won’t be nearly as useful without newspaper journalism, and Spotify won’t work without major label music.

Levine presents some revolutionarily new, yet simple ideas that could reverse the current situation — demonstrating how European Internet regulations present some hope for the media business, especially since countries like France and Germany aren’t afraid to regulate Google. But, ultimately, the solution is both as simple and as complicated as the fact that we can’t have an online economy without some kind of property rights – and some way to enforce them.

Program Descriptions

Free markets and free information: an anatomy of an unsustainable economy

The Internet promised an “information economy,” but information is worth less than ever. While the companies that move information are thriving, those that actually create it – movie studios, record labels, newspaper companies – are struggling. Over the long term, this can’t last: Google won’t be nearly as valuable if there isn’t as much professional content to search for.  Levine’s thesis is a simple but powerful one: We can’t have an working online economy without a market, we can’t have a market without property rights, and we can’t have property rights without some means of enforcing them. This isn’t just about protecting a few media businesses – it’s ultimately about preserving the value of the work that the prosperity of advanced economies depends on.

At what price success?

In 2010, when record companies raised the prices of the most popular songs on iTunes, most bloggers thought it would be a disaster, and sales declined more than 10 percent. But since the most popular songs were selling for about 30 percent more money, record companies made more revenue – and more profit. Although the digital world seems to demand lower prices, in order to hold back piracy, most of the evidence shows that this isn’t a good strategy. Instead, media companies need to adopt more flexible pricing and introduce different products aimed at different consumers – much as airlines do. Levine offers practical advice on how to maintain pricing power in the digital age.

Regulation in an age of free information (and free access)

Technology executives often say that the Internet can’t be regulated, that the spread of open communications technologies is inevitable. But that’s not exactly true: While technological advances are inevitable, the ways we use them are up to us – specifically, network designers and the governments that mandate what they can do. In the case of the Internet, we have an open system with no enforceable rules. Ultimately, that’s not nearly as good for users as it is for technology companies – which are running rampant over copyright, but also privacy, antitrust, and consumer protection laws. Levine takes audiences through the history of network regulation, and, more importantly, lays down a blueprint for what its future should look like.

Bio

Robert Levine has been covering pop culture, technology, and the awkward dance between them for 15 years. Most recently, he was the executive editor of Billboard, charged with running the influential music business trade magazine. He has also been a features editor at New York magazine and Wired. His first job was at HotWired.com, the Wired Web publication, where he was hired several months after it sold the first online banner ad.

His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Fortune, Rolling Stone, and the arts and business sections of the New York Times. He has offered commentary on the media business for CNN, CNBC, and VH-1, and spoken at the CMJ music conference and the World Copyright Summit in Brussels. He holds a B.A. in politics from Brandeis and an M.S.J.  from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

His first book, Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back (Doubleday), was called “brilliant if depressing” by the Times (U.K.) and garnered praise from the Guardian and the Financial Times. He now covers the culture business from New York and Berlin.

Program Description

The Observing Self: How living in our highly mediated culture can lead to increased self-consciousness and isolation, and what to do about it.

“Why do I have 600 Facebook friends yet feel so alone?”

From a lead column in the New York Times Magazine lamenting the “Twitterati’s unnatural self-consciousness” and their blurred “lines between the authentic and contrived self,” to the existential loneliness depicted by many celebrated modern novelists (Jonathan Franzen, the late David Foster Wallace, etc.) to recent sociological studies, it’s more and more evident that we are leading increasingly isolated lives, even though we are more technologically connected than ever. Zweig’s powerful multi-media presentation explores this paradox and offers launching points for ways to combat the alienating nature of our mediated culture while still living within the mainstream, or even the vanguard, of our technologically-dependent world.

“I love my iPhone, but the best way to enjoy it is to know when to turn it off.”

Through an interdisciplinary approach, Zweig examines how, today, we are living in an “observational reality” rather than the historically dominant “experiential reality.” For the first time in history people are spending more hours of their day immersed in Fiction (television, movies, the internet, social media, ubiquitous advertising, even the news) than living “in the moment” (i.e. engaged directly with others or the environment). A 2009 study showed that American teenagers are spending nearly eleven hours a day immersed in media. This is a fundamental change in how humans have lived for all of history. And, living this highly mediated life — which, for many of us, means being immersed in Fiction for the majority of our waking hours — inevitably alters the way one perceives oneself and reality itself.

Zweig addresses how our minds work differently when we are observing media (yes, even interactive media like the web) than when we are engaged directly with each other or our environment, and how this can lead to an altered sense of self — the most extreme version of which is depersonalization, a dissociative disorder where one literally views oneself from afar, as if in a movie or a dream.

Rigorously researched and academically lauded, Zweig’s theory, Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome (and its broader hypothesis The Observing Self), has exploded within the academic community since it was introduced as the thoughts of the protagonist in his 2009 novel, Swimming Inside the Sun. Zweig has been invited to lecture about his hypothesis at numerous prestigious scholarly meetings, including the Media Ecology Association’s annual convention at the University of Maine, the Junge Philosophie Conference at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Darmstadt, Germany, and the Institute of General Semantics annual symposium at Fordham University in New York City. The hypothesis has gained the international support of renowned academics from a variety of fields, including neuroscientists, communications theorists, psychologists, philosophers, and anthropologists. It has been referenced in multiple scholarly papers and PhD dissertations. Lastly, Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome has been added to the curricula at several universities for classes starting fall 2010.

Bio

David Zweig is the author of the acclaimed novel, Swimming Inside the Sun, called a “terrific debut from a talented writer” by Kirkus Reviews.  Heralded as a “symphonic pop prodigy,” Zweig has released two critically praised record albums, All Now With Wings and Keep Going, both charting in the Top 50 on college radio.  He is currently developing a book and documentary centered on his groundbreaking philosophical hypothesis Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome.

Program Description

The Internet is a Brain:
Predicting the future of technology and business from the inside out

In his multimedia lecture, Stibel demonstrates how networks (professional, social and otherwise) have changed and what that implies for how people connect and form communities; What the Internet-and online business opportunities-will look like in the future; What the next stage of artificial intelligence will be and what opportunities it will present for businesses.

Addressing the forward-looking interactive aspects and potential predictive power of the Internet – which is evolving to mimic the brain’s own abilities – Stibel asserts that a more personalized Internet will emerge.  As Internet applications get to know the real “you,” the Internet will begin to tailor its opinions which will enable very personalized reviews and information, and it will be able to quickly match demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information.  And, as the Internet advances farther in this direction, the Internet will get better at interpreting subjective thoughts and opinions, and it will get better and better at making predictions and this will enable businesses to do a better job serving their customers.

Stibel also presents varied examples of how exceptional companies are using their understanding of the Internet’s brain-like powers to create competitive advantage – such as building more effective Web sites, predicting consumer behavior, leveraging social media, and creating a collective consciousness.

Even in such personal areas as healthcare, the Internet will be able to help medical companies like WebMD evolve to become a more interactive service, while significantly bringing down the cost of insurance.  The user’s experience will be more like being in a doctor’s office where the patient is being asked a series of symptomatic questions and offered medical advice.  People will have their own virtual doctors who will come to know them and their medical histories as well as their real doctors do.

Ultimately, Stibel predicts that the evolution of the Internet will fuel a new era of productivity where software advances will outpace the growth we previously saw in hardware; where intelligence will emerge not from brute force but from educated guesses — remember that the brain is a slow computer so we did not gain intelligence from sheer size or speed.  What makes us smart is that are brains are slow, and speculative in many respects.  When the Internet can no longer count on productivity gains from brute force or sheer peed, it will turn to other measures and that will surely come from mimicking the power of the brain.

Bio

Jeffrey M. Stibel is a brain scientist and entrepreneur who has helped build numerous public and private companies.  Currently Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp, Stibel was President of Web.com, a public company that helps entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses on the Web. He is also Chairman of BrainGate, a brain implant company that allows people to use their thoughts to control electrical devices. He serves on the boards of a number of private and public companies, as well as academic boards for Brown and Tufts University. Stibel studied for his PhD at Brown University, where he was the recipient of the Brain and Behavior Fellowship, and studied business at MIT’s Sloan School of Business.

Three years ago Leonard began to focus, as a reporter/blogger/columnist, on the topic of “globalization,” using a fairly broad definition — anything that interconnects humans living on this globe is included. He is neither for it or against it — he only endeavors to understand it, and, hopefully, help explain it.

Program Description

How the World Works: The interconnections between globalization, energy policy, economics, the environment, and politics…and everything else in between

In his lectures, Leonard discusses how in the course of exploring the issues of trade, capital flows, battles over intellectual property, and the challenges of getting the world together to work on global warming, he gradually found his beat revolving around three absurdly large and inextricably interrelated axes — economics, the environment, and energy.  And, as his work has converged on those topics, the U.S. housing bust precipitated the greatest economic crisis the world has witnessed in our lifetime.  Leonard addresses the depth and breadth of the global financial meltdown, and digs deeper into the root causes and underlying interconnections that, unless broken, will continue to harm our future prospects.

Moreover, Leonard illustrates how one cannot understand the U.S. housing bust without understanding China. One cannot can fight global warming without understanding how U.S. politics work. One can trace connections from 17th century India to 21st century Berkeley, CA.  Trade-offs exist everywhere, and understanding emerges from nuance.

Leonard’s lectures are about the sense of connection and interrelatedness that is essential to globalization. It’s not always a positive relationship — just ask the Midwestern auto industry workers whose pensions and wages are being slashed as a direct result of foreign competition. And it’s not always an obvious connection: the digital technology advances (computers, the Internet) that push globalization are responsible both for vast intellectual property violations and the rise of the open source software movement (Linux, Firefox). They are flip sides of the same basic transformation. A core element of globalization is that information travels everywhere, more cheaply and more quickly than ever before. We’ve only just begun to understand the implications of this.  Leonard not only helps distill the ramifications of these changes, but more importantly helps us glimpse the the possibilities that the future may hold.

Bio

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.com who currently writes the hybrid blog/column “How the World Works” — a venue for exploring the interconnections between globalization, energy policy, economics, the environment, and politics. Prior to ‘How the World Works,’ he edited Salon’s Technology & Business department from 2000-2005. From 1996-2000 he was Salon’s lead technology reporter.

Leonard is the author of Bots: Origin of a New Species, published by HardWired in 1996, and described in a New York Times review as a “playful social history of the Internet.” His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Wired, Newsweek, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Sierra Magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle and numerous other publications. Before becoming a journalist he studied Mandarin Chinese for ten years and lived and traveled extensively in East Asia.

His most recent career highlight came in early November 2008 when he was denounced by name on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Senator James Inhofe, R.-Oklahoma.