Straight Line Thinking Stops Here

Event Info

Tue 16 Mar, 2010 from 10:55am - 11:55am
Austin Convention Centtre
Austin, Texas, US (Map)
Cost: there is a cost please check the sxsw website

Description

This weekend I was invited to give a keynote @ sxsw 2010 based upon my submission in August last year. (watch the 2.5 minute film)

The topic is Straight Line Thinking Stops Here, something that I covered at The Do Lectures (watch the video) last year and is culminating in a course, book and research project. Howard Rheingold, writes of the project

“Economic transactions and markets have warped perceptions to such a degree that most people fail to see what is important in life, even when it’s right in front of them. Alan Moore’s “No Straight Lines” offers a vision that is at once more humane, more forward-thinking, and more realistic”

“I needs we, to truly be I,” wrote Carl Jung, and that is why we as a species are on a quest to rediscover our role in society. Humanity, deconstructed, over the last 50 years, to the point of deconstruction is now deploying communication technologies of cooperation to regain its true identity. The rise of the networked society is no accident, and a new philosophy is needed to help us with our quest.

What I am interested in particularly is what comes next? And how do we get there? What constitutes business when it is once again blended back into our daily lives in more meaningful ways? What does education and healthcare look like? As Alvin Toffler said the futures already here it’s just not evenly distributed at the moment. Standing in the freezing reality of a systemic failure of a linear world, we need to get to those answers as quickly as we can. We are post digital, where we need to take a more even handed overview of what makes us who we are as a species, and how that should affect everything we do.

The core areas are these:

  1. System breakdown: We are witness to a structural and transformational change in society.
  2. The wholesale pursuit of material wealth has in fact come at a terrible cost for society
  3. Threat: the current unsustainability of humanity
  4. The true nature of humans and the technology of man: their intimate relationship
  5. Liberation Day: We need to examine the various solutions and tools that can enable us to thrive and survive, to take back that which makes us whole as people, individually and collectively. (THIS IS NOT SOCIAL MEDIA)
  6. Simplexity: The digital and highly networked world seems to have created a more complex way of living. We need to learn to deal with this complexity, by understanding how it works.
  7. Deschoolling: Our imperative is to de-school ourselves in a philosophy that has driven us into a cultural, ideological and economic cul-de-sac.
  8. New Philosophy: We need a new language to help us understand the deep context of the change we are in
  9. The no straight line universe: We need to explore its shape we need to feel it; physically, intellectually, and emotionally

Map

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Organiser

sxsw