I’ve had my head down all day focused on the task of putting the finishing touches on the Trend Spotting in the Age of Social Media presentation for IIR’s Future Trends 2007 Conference. While searching for the perfect example of a social networking website, (realizing all the while a perfect example doesn’t exist, users determine what perfect is for them), I ran across Ancestry.com, one of the largest online genealogy search sites. Although I don’t think it is the quintessential social networking site it certainlyoffers a novel twist on the idea.

Ancestry.com is now offering DNA testing to help users find relatives. For $200.00 USD you can order a DNA test kit, return your cheek swab and receive an online report showing your DNA Haplogroup. Your results can then be compared to Ancestry.com’s DNA database which aims to house50,000 genetic profiles within six months.

According to the Financial Times Ancestry.com is creating networking groups that will allow haplogroups to share their common interests. Those with a common surname could also form a group and pool their DNA resources to work out how they are related. This kind of testing will make it possible to identify distant relatives that you could not find any other way.

Now we have one more thing we can do with our genome, network with it.

One the best things about Pop!Tech is the richly diverse community of people it brings together. This year was no exception, so we decided to devote this week’s “FringeHog Friday Five” toa few of theamazing women we met at Pop!Tech 2007:

Dr. Victoria Hale

Dr. Victoria Hale could be described in many ways: a renegade, an entrepreneur, an activist, a scientist. She is the Founder of One World Health, the first US-based non-profit pharmaceutical company. No, that wasn’t a typo: funded not by shareholders or venture capitalists but by philanthropic organizations and a network of research collaborators, One World Health (OWH) develops drugs for people with neglected diseases in the developing world, what Hale calls “diseases of poverty.”Most recentlyOWH developed paromomycin, an antibiotic used to treat Kala-azar, the world’s second most deadly parasitic disease following malaria.?

Katrin Verclas

There aren’t many people who love mobile phones as much as Katrin Verclas. But then again, where most people look at a cell phone and see, well, a phone - Katrin sees a revolutionary tool for social change. Ask her how mobile phones are being used to change the world, and she ticks off an ever-growing list: to ensure impartial elections, free political prisoners, stop human trafficking, distribute HIV/AIDS information and help farmers in the developing world get their crops to market. In her day-job she directs NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network; she also coordinates the global “mobilist” practitioner network MobileActive.org.?

Stacey Aldrich

Stacey Aldrich has spent her career advocating for one of the arguably most significant, yet often undervalued, social institutions in America - the public library. In the era of Wikipedia, libraries may seem like an endangered species, but she’s convinced that public libraries can not only respond to change, but become vanguards of the information age. A librarian and a futurist, Aldrich is the last one to call attention to herself, but thankfully others have, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recently appointed her Deputy State Librarian of the California State Library. It’s no small job: with a budget rivaling the size of many private-sector companies (nearly $90 million), Aldrich is poised to bring the public library system into the future.

Zainab Salbi

Zainab Salbi believes there are two sides to war: victims and survivors. The first we hear about on the news: about guns, bullets, bombs and the number of people killed. Survivors, especially women survivors, are often invisible; their stories of keeping life going in the midst of war are rarely told. Yet it is with the survivors of war that the future depends. Drawing on her own experience growing up as a survivor of war under Saddam Hussein, Salib created Women for Women International, a humanitarian organization that has provided financial and emotional support to tens of thousands of women to deal with the aftermath of conflict.?

Dr. Sarah Otterstrom

Ecologists often have a gift for seeing the future, and Sarah Otterstrom is no exception. Looking out at a field in Nicaragua, she doesn’t see abandoned pasture land, but rather a future forest, lush with previously endangered trees and a thriving population of native animal species. Tocreate that future forest, Otterstrom created Paso Pacifico, a non-profit organization whose aim is to build wildlife corridors along the western slope of Central America by supporting private landowners and small-scale farmers in sustainable land use and conservation activities. Paso Pacifico’s “Return to Forest” project has planted 850 acres of native tropical dry forest trees which will restore the land, curb greenhouse gas emissions and provide job opportunities to the local villagers.

Carl Honorgot on stage at Pop!Tech and spoke to my soul. Yes, I’m well aware that I’m being hyperbolic, and that it was more likely a case of the right talk at the right time. After all, his message to “slow down” isn’t exactly rocket science; my mother has been saying the same thing for years. Yet Pop!Tech was the next-to-last stop for me in a five-week personal travelpalooza. I’ve been on the road for 4+ days a week for over a month; in the course of ten days I’d been through Amsterdam, Hawai’i and finally, Camden, Maine. Maybe it was his sincerity, his humor, or perhaps it was just the slightest hint of the sexy accent, but at last I was finally ready to listen. Aside from the message to eat slower, cut out unnecessary trips and trim my calendar, what I heard Honorsay was: start to blog slow.

Let me be clear: I love - make that LOVE - the fact that I attend many of the same conferences as two of my favorite bloggers, Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani. These “twinbloggers” sit tirelessly in the back of conference rooms and crank out crystal clear renditions of the speaker’s presentations - in real time. Ten minutes after a session is over, while the rest of us are still catching our breath, they’ve posted an online record for the world to see (Ethan, while at Pop!Tech, wrote over 20,000 words in three days). Moreover, I’m grateful for the fact that they attend many more conferences than me, and so I reap the benefits of their parallel-processing brains; reading either one of their blogs is like getting a masters degree in global current affairs.

But.

Yes, there’s a but. Here’s the thing: I want to liveblog. I aspire to liveblog. But the truth is, I’m not all that good at it. I’m a futurist and as such I’m hard-wired to think before I type, to process things, to connect the dots and consider the systemic implications of any newly presented idea. Moreover, I invariably find that the most interesting people at any given conference are NOT the ones on stage, and so I instinctively spend my time meeting people and sniffing out the stories no one else is paying attention to. It’s also why I spend an inordinate amount of time talking to cab drivers, but that’s another story.

And as much as I admire Ethan and Bruno and the cadre of other livebloggers, I’m continually troubled by the sense of personal inadequacy and guilt (thanks, Mom, for the Catholic upbringing) that their presence initiates. The truth is: I can’t type as fast, I can’t think as fast, hell, I can’t LISTEN as fast as these guys. It’s a little like being at the local ice rink, casually skating around on a Sunday afternoon, and Michelle Kwan shows up and starts throwing out triple solchows.

Which brings me back to Carl Honor?, whose message I internalized as: “it’s ok to blog slowly.” If it takes me a few days (or a week) to let the ideas marinate and get my thoughts out, then so be it. I don’t know if the result will be any better, but at the very least I hope I will stop suffering from idea indigestion. And so, in my Pop!Tech haze, I make myself a promise to live less frenetically. I will practice deep breathing. I will do yoga. I will not get on airplanes before 6am. And from now on, I will slow blog. Thanks, Carl.

Like many of you I tuned into CSI NY last night to see if the show lived up to the buzz. After watching the show, I think it did. The collaboration between Anthony Zuiker, creator of the CSI franchise, and Sibley Verbeck’s Electric Sheep Company demonstrated the power of cross-platform entertainment. The narrative began in “first life” with a murder that needed to be solved and seamlessly melded into the virtual world of Second Life. Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) created an avatar and went in world to chase the killer. Throughout the episode characters moved in and out of first life and second life. Several scenes in the show played like mini-tutorials for those not familiar with the virtual world platform. The story ended in a cliffhanger and from now until the conclusion which airs in February CSI fans and Second Life residents can affect the story outcome by working to solve the crime in Second Life.

The Electric Sheep Company created a new client for this venture. They assumed thatCSI fans didn’t necessarily knowanything about virtual worlds or Second Life so they created a client that immediately immersed fansin CSI content.?

This collaboration is a proof of concept for cross-platform programming. If it goes well, we’ll see entertainment created across the television, online, mobile and gaming platforms.?

Anthony Zuiker thinks within five years all entertainment will be cross-platform.

I just returned from Pop Tech! and over the next few days I’ll post my ruminations about the talks I heard and the conversations I had while there. Before I do, I want to give a special shout out to two guys from Microsoft, Michael Aday and Ryan Calafato.

My lap top tried to die first thing Friday morning. Michael and Ryan happened to be seated behind me in the backstage screening room. As the blue screen of death appeared Ryan leaned forward and asked if he could help. To make a very looong story short, both Michael and Ryan spent the better part of Friday working to breathe life back into my lap top. While performing CPR on my computer they missed several phenomenal talks by Sheila Kennedy, Cary Fowler, Robert Boroffice and Chris Luebkeman, and they did it even though it WASN’T a software problem. It was a hardware issue. In the end, they resuscitated my lap top for which I can’t thank them enough. ?

Corporations like Microsoft can be big and impersonal. Michael and Ryan reminded me that Microsoft is also made up of individuals who take pride in their work and want to do what they can to provide a good customer experience. That’s what they did at Pop Tech! They spent their conference time helping a Microsoft customer.In my book that makes them Rock Stars.

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And the countdown begins: only 3 days until the start of this year’s Pop!Tech, the annual “social innovation network” gathering in Camden, Maine. The tagline of this year’s conference is “The Human Impact” - a theme that’s appropriately broad enough to cover the eclectic array of scheduled speakers and performers, including marine ecologist Enric Sala, leading Islamic thinker and Grand Mufti of Bosnia Mustapha Ceric, legendary toy designer Caleb Chung and health care entrepreneur Victoria Hale, founder of the world’s first non-profit drug company.?

IMHO,one of the coolest things about Pop!Tech is that it relentlessly reinvents itselfeach year with a host of new sessions and experiences. This year is no different: special Wednesday pre-conferenceevents include an oceangraphic expedition, an introduction to the Slow Food movement and a session on “mobile empowerment.”?

Can’t make it Camden this week? No problem: in addition to the entire event being simulcast live, a host of global bloggers will be live-blogging in seven languages: English, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi and Kiswahili.

“Design like you give a damn”; this phrase, borrowed from Cameron Sinclair, sums up the work of the five design activists featured in this FringeHog Friday Five. Each creates positive change in the world through architecture and design. Their projects are diverse, but they share common themes. All are open, collaborative, generative and DIY, the core values of the emerging era of design I blogged about recently called Designers R Us.

(1) Roberta Feldman is the Director of the City Design Center and UIC Professor of Architecture. She focuses on the practice of design in public spaces. One of the most innovative projects Dr. Feldman spearheads is “Design Matters: Best Practices in Affordable Housing”. Design Matters is the first Internet catalog of nationwide exemplary housing that is affordable for people with limited incomes.

(2) Brian Bell, founder of Design Corps , designs for the 98% of the population without architects. He calls it his dream job. In his book Good Deeds, Good Design he chronicles his work with architecture students who learn the social application of architecture through an internship program he started. The Shiloh Bus Shelter is one example of Brian’s Good Deeds, Good Design.

(3) John Peterson of Public Architecture would like to see his Day Labor Station deployed across the country. Peterson realizes the station is controversial, but says, “The design is based on the realities of the ways in which the day labor system operates, and responds to the needs and desires of the day laborers themselves, as clients”.The station is in the Design for the Other 90% exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The exhibition highlights efforts by designers to create affordable and socially responsible objects for the vast majority of the world’s population not traditionally served by professional designers. Mr. Peterson has also founded The One Percent Solution , a Match.com for architects and nonprofits with the mission of strengthening non-profits through design.

Daytime rendering by Phoebe Schenker & Margot Lystra

(4) Randy Hester is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental
Planning, University of California, Berkeley. His passion is sacred landscapes; site planning neighborhood design; environmental anomie; community participation; environmental justice; localism; community development, planning and design, place-appropriate economic development. To find out more check out his book, Design for Ecological Democracy

(5) Cameron Sinclair solves problems with architecture through the organization he co-founded aptly named Architecture for Humanity. His famous tagline and the title of his book, “Design like you give a damn,” encapsulate his mission. He uses architecture and design to solve world problems. His latest initiative is the Open Architecture Challenge . It is sponsored by AMD and the vision is to help enable affordable Internet access to 50% of the world by 2015.

Genes are becoming the legos of life, a super-size carton of biological toys that can be endlessly combined, cut, spliced and reengineered.The average human has about 25,000 genes - that’s a lot of A, C,T & G’s floating around. Scientists are still clueless about what to do with most of them, so here are afew ideas for putting your spare genome to good use:

Map It

The Personal Genome

Can a personal genome sequence get a creative commons license? To protect yourself, should you create a Nom de Ome, or a pseudonym, for your genome? These are the some of the questions pondered on this introspective and provocative blog, The Personal Genome. Author Jason Bobe works with George Church’s Personal Genome Project at Harvard Medical School, which has recruited 10 volunteers to make their complete genomic data (genome sequences, medical records and health profiles) freely available to the public, in the hopes of creating an open-source public database for genetic research.

Hack It

DNA2.0

Supply list for hacking a genome: one Linux-supercomputer, a good map, a case of Red Bull, and oh yeah, some genes. For the latter, check out dna2.0.com, one of the many retail “genome shops” that have sprouted up to support the booming business of synthetic biology. For about $2 a base pair, you can order any number of standard genes, or custom-design your own using the company’s Gene Designer tool.

Write its autobiography

A Life Decoded

In Craig Venter’s new book “A Life Decoded” the self-proclaimed winner of the race to map the human genome describes his journey of personal cartography: the quest to map his own genome. Due in stores October 18.

Make Music

http://www.toddbarton.com/

One night musician Tod Barton downloaded a string of DNA data sequence from the International Genome Project website and entered a couple of lines from chromosome 1 into his Midi sequencer. The result: a rhythmic pattern to which he mapped string, vocal and clarinet sounds. It may not be a genomic symphony (yet) but the piece, which he calls Genome 1, which was featured at the Smithsonian Institute.

Make Art

http://www.dna11.com/

Wondering what to hang on that empty wall behind your couch? Tired of poster art and reprintsNow even the most artistically challenged can tap into their inner Van Gogh with the help of DNA11.com. Simply send the company a sample of your genome using a Q-tip-like cheek swab; they extract some DNA to create a unique genetic fingerprint. Your DNA is then stained with a fluorescent dye, photographed and printed on canvas as a Giclee fine art piece. The result is a completely unique piece of art that is oh-so-you.

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Highlights from PICNIC ‘07, the tech/media conference held in Amsterdam last week:?

My New Hero: Hacker Pablos Holman. Bouncing around the stage in his black jeans, grunge tshirt and pony tail, Holman looked more like a tall 10 year old with ADD than a serious techhead. Espousing the hacker ethos (”ordinary people look at a device and think ‘what can I do with this?’ while hackers look at a device and think ‘what can I make it do?’) he showed off some of his favorite hacks: remote controlling a hotel tv set to get free movies and see what fellow hotel guests are surfing online; “Hackerbot”, a robot on wheels which drives up to people with open wifi and displays their passwords; and the crowd favorite: hacking into Cory Doctorow’s cell phone live on stage by spoofing his voicemail (Cory, who was in the audience, looked mildly amused).

My New Favorite Term: “Minimally Invasive Education”, courtesy of Prof. Sugata Mitra, creator of the “Hole in the Wall” project. In 1999 Mitra, an Indian physicist, placed a computer in the hole of the cement wall that separated his high-tech office with an urban slum. The result: children from the slum self-taught themselves to use the computer without the help of teachers, schools or textbooks. Over the years Mitra has replicated the experiment across India, proving that perhaps the only thing needed to bridge the digital divide are some inquisitive 8 year olds. (see this great post by Bruno Giussani about Mitra’s work from the LIFT ‘07 conference earlier this year)

My Still-All-time-Favorite Digital Artist: Jonathan Harris, whose work continues to inspire and provoke. In his latest digital incarnation, Harris turns his signature pulse-taking lens on himself (literally): The Whale Hunt is a photographic heartbeat of 3214 images, documenting the spring 2007 Inupiat Eskimo whale hunt in Barrow, Alaska.