Category: Live Blogging

When I go to a conference, I usually take notes. Here they are.

TEDx Geneva: Guillaume Massard, Michael Doser, Bruno Giussani, Jill Bolte Taylor [en]

Guillaume Massard — Industrial Ecosystems – beta version

*(steph-note: not sure if Guillaume is the person giving the talk, or if he’s the guy being replaced because he went to Copenhagen)*

Industry and biosphere are separate. Let’s bring the inudstrial system down to earth. How could the biosphere inspire the economy?

Nature has created a system where there is no waste. It just doesn’t exist. How about applying that to industrial systems?

Strategy in four goals: circularize, minimize losses, dematerialize, decarbonize.

Re-use things more locally. Not a new idea. E.g. The Symbiosis Institute (1996). Get companies to collaborate in order to save resources. Eco-industrial networks and parks, all over the world!

The rebound effect: when you introduce a new technology, you’re sure it’s more efficient/better/etc. But 10 years later, maybe you realize that you’ve created a huge new impact on the environment. E.g. the computer, everybody thought we would go paperless, but actually computers generate more paper. Is efficient really efficient?

A classical example (UNIL research, Roman Näegeli): Toyota Prius, from 8 to 4.3 litres/100km, so you save fuel and money. But if you didn’t have a car before, you’re not being good for the environment by buying it, because then you travel more, it’s another car on the road, etc. So is this green technology more efficient, if it makes car-less people buy cars? What about the money he’s saving on fuel? Travel, restaurants, more consumption (if he did have a car), raw material consumption increase.

Heretic question: should we favor inefficiency, and prohibit low consumption vehicles? 😉 and therefore encourage other types of energy consumption?

Michael Doser — If apples fall down, do anti-apples fall up?

We don’t live in a symmetric universe. Matter and anti-matter are not created in equal quantities. *(steph-note: did I get that right? can’t hear him very well — mic fail)*

Question mark: is antimatter really just matter with opposite charge and identical properties? In 1996, experiment to try and produce anti-hydrogen atoms. But that’s only the first step, because once you have the atom, you want to study it. That first step took 5-8 years. Step “trap anti-hydrogen” started about 3 years ago. “cool anti-hydrogen” will likely take another 5-8 years. We’re not there yet! *(steph-note: and all this in Comic Sans…)* Measure light emitted by antihydrogen… in 10 years maybe?

A detour might be shorter and more scenic… let’s try again.

How about measuring the fall of antimatter? Bring gravity into the fold of particle physics. So, let’s use the limitations of the previous experiment (the atoms are moving) and form a beam of anti-atoms.

Bruno Giussani — Ideas About Spreading Ideas: Inside TED

With the internet, more and more people are having access to the best teachers in the world, to learn and be inspired. Important phenomenon when it comes to how ideas spread: before this, the reach of these inspiring teachers was much more limited.

TED is a very broad platform devoted to spreading ideas: videos, fellowship, events, all year around.

Some less-known aspects of what TED does.

1. TED Open Translation Project

Talks free to the world… not exactly true if they’re just in English. Now there are many languages in which subtitles are available for TED talks. 59 languages in 7 months. Community. Started out with professionals.

2. TEDPrize

Has to do with past achievements and future potential of people. Express a wish and ask the TED community to help them realize it. 100’000$. Example: XDR-TB awareness campaign (extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis).

Other example: Charter for Compassion.

3. TEDx

Delocalizing. Allow anybody to organize a conference “à la TED”. The license is free, there are just a dozen rules, e.g. not to charge for entry. There have been more than 250 TEDx events to this day, all over the world, from NASA to Kibera, a shanti-town in Africa.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight (video)

I hadn’t seen this video. Do watch it if you haven’t.

Right hemisphere: present moment, sensory collage, connexion to the world as a whole perfect human being (parallel processor)

Left hemisphere: thinks linear and methodically, about the past and the future, details, thinks in language which connects my internal world from my external world, and it says “I am”, separates me from the energy flow around me, and from the others.

When she had her stroke, she lost her left hemisphere, basically. Perceives her body as some weird external thing, walks across the living-room in a very rigid, mechanical way. Loss of distinction between self and outside. Then brain chatter stopped. Felt at one with all the energy around here, blissful Lala-land, no distinction between her and the world. Peacefulness, all stress gone, as well as 37 years of emotional bagage.

At one point she realises she’s having a stroke “OMG! so cool! how many brain scientists get a chance to study their own brain from the inside out?”

Couldn’t recognize if she was looking at her business card or not.

Stroke in waves, moments of clarity, on off, on off… Matches the shapes of the squiggles on the card to those on the phone to dial the number. She didn’t know that she couldn’t speak or understand language until she tried.

NDE.

Wakes up shocked to be still alive. Feels so huge she can’t imagine fitting back into her body. Nirvana, and still alive. Clot the size of a golf ball. Took her eight years to completely recover. We have two minds, and we have the power to choose who and how we want to be in the world. We can choose to step into the consciousness of our right hemispheres… or the left.

The we inside of me. Which do we chose, and when?

TEDx Geneva: François Bugnion, Robert Klapisch, Jan-Mathieu Donnier, Frederic Kaplan [en]

François Bugnion — Solferino: the birth of an idea

Bloodiest battle Europe had witnessed since Waterloo. 9000 wounded transported to the nearest city (population: 5000) after two days. Book published and translated in various languages.

This is the story of how the Red Cross came to be.

Important principles of the Geneva convention: neutrality of hospitals, and wounded will be cared for (regardless of nationality).

Less than 2 years between the publication of the book and the realisation of the convention.

Dunant was able to translate the shock of what he witnessed at Solferino into a book. Gave birth to an actual strategy.

Robert Klapisch — Broadband Internet for Africa: from Research & Education to Social Development

The driving force for the internet is still science. (steph-note: could be argued it’s commerce and porn, imho)

Research and education networks all over the place. The kind of connections the CERN required paved the way for “consumer” connections at 100Mb/s.

Researchers in African universities have less resources than in Europe. Travelling is costly, etc. They need the network.

Lisbon Summit. Africa Connect.

Obstacles: cost of connectivity, lack of infrastructure, enormous distances, legal and regulatory obstacles in some countries…

Until July 2009, there was only one cable connecting West Africa to the rest of the world. 80% of the traffic is by satellite, much more expensive. No competition => very high prices. Consequence? Most universities have less bandwidth than a typical western household, so students have to resort to internet cafés to have access.

In July, SEACOM raised the money to set up a cable from Marseille to Mumbai and South Africa. American CEO, French VP etc, but 80% capital is African. Capacity growth x50 over the next few years.

UbuntuNet groups 10 countries in South and East Africa (surface = China + Europe + India… Africa is huge!)

HDI Human Development Index: what happens when more people have access to the internet?

Cellphones++ in Africa (300 mio), very creative use. Money transfers to make up for the absence of banking infrastructure. E-government (paying taxes, filling forms). Commerce (farmers getting better deals selling crops and advice on best practices). E-medicine, E-learning.

Fighting the scientific divide.

Jan-Mathieu Donnier — 360° imagery systems and applications

(steph-note: couldn’t really take notes as was busy climbing back on the wifi)

Google Street View cars.

360° photos… and videos.

streetview.ch: interface of their dreams (streetview, map, and street list on the same screen). When you go through the streets, it’s video (whereas Google street view is just a collection of images). (globalvision.ch)

Next challenge: produce 2D images from the 3D data.

Frederic Kaplan — Are Gesture-based Interfaces The Future of Human Computer Interaction

Computers to live with, not computers to live inside. Frédéric gets trapped inside his iPhone. What kinds of interfaces could we have which allow us to interact with computers whilst still interacting with the people around us?

QB1: has microphones, fabric skin, camera, etc — interaction at 4-5 meters. Lives in the same space as we do. User-centred system. They mapped what kinds of gestures people made in front of the QB1 => various zones.

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Blue zone: noisy. Red zone: much less noisy. => in the blue zone, you need to make sure the gestures are intentional, whereas in the red zone, you can be much more reactive.

Shows video: the screen follows the user, and there is a representation of yourself on the screen so you can see if you’re “touching” the controls. Pretty cool. You can call it and it will put its focus on you. You can also just show it a card rather than using gestures to give it an order.

Very important: representation of the user. More or less realistic, iconic, etc — they tried lots of things. (steph-note: I’m thinking of Second Life avatars right now…)

You do need feedback about your actions on the machine. Tennis game.

Gesture-based systems can know a lot about you because they share your physical space. They learn. The system can know who is in the room, how many people.

The mouse did not kill the command line. Gestures will not kill the mouse. They open a new kind of relationships with computers. It’s just the beginning.

TEDx Geneva: Louis Palmer — Solartaxi, around the world with solar power [en]

Louis Palmer — Solartaxi: Around the world with solar power

Went around the world in a solar car, in a year and a half, from Lucerne. Louis got this idea when he was 11: go around the world without fuel! At 14, he was certain everybody would be driving solar cars. In 2004 he still couldn’t buy a solar car!

So he decided to build his own car. He’s a schoolteacher, not an engineer. He didn’t have the money, but had the will to do it. Went to factories, got parts and pieces, approached Lucerne university to develop the car (1 year had students working on it). After two years the car was there.

solartaxi-in-nz

July 3rd 2007, the trip started. Louis didn’t really know which way to go. He published his tour on the internet, and invited people to welcome him and host him. Invited by the united nations, and asked to make a presentation. First time in history that a car entered the united nations!

Then invited to the global warming conference. 110 press conferences, he had the Swiss embassies with him, they helped with contacts.

He called it a taxi because many people travelled with him. You can even shift the steering wheel from left to right so the passenger to drive 🙂

Syria. He was told to beware, but nothing happened. Friendly people but his first accident. Somebody crashed into his car. He met the Syrian transport minister and told him about the accident, and the minister gave him a police escort so it would not happen again!

Everybody was waiting for the solar taxi! Prince Hassan of Jordan wanted a test drive. (Video sequence with armed military running after the car, hehe.)

He was escorted all around Saudi Arabia, the country you can’t get a visa for.

India, with Hell’s Angels escorting him through Bombay. Lots of traffic accidents in India. He had an accident there, which was filmed (pure coincidence). Great Indian video sequence. People are fascinated. Huge media coverage while driving through India.

Four months later, in Bali, for the opening of the UN climate change conference. Solartaxi on CNN! Then invited by Greenpeace, who took them down the Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, only one person at the press conference (the Swiss ambassador!) — stark contrast to the very positive and enthusiastic response from the press all over the world. Australia? Huge producer of coal, export to China. No investment in solar energy. Very disappointed.

What about China? Solar panels on every rooftop! Petrol bikes aren’t allowed in big cities anymore. Red carpet reception for the Solartaxi. Yay! 635 press articles in China, absolute record. They do the most. Hope!

Japan: they refused the Solartaxi because Swiss license plates aren’t allowed.

USA? Didn’t know what to expect. Great media coverage. Helicopters following him in Los Angeles. Very open-minded stars in Hollywood, very easy to meet them! Headshots of a bunch of celebs in the Solartaxi.

  • Corn: 36K km
  • Solar power: 25’000K km with the Solartaxi

Whee, had the secretary general of the UN in the Solartaxi for 15 minutes in New York (with escort and press reception of course).

Poland: exactly one year ago, last climate change conference, the journey ends. BBC and all over the news.

Louis isn’t stopping here! He wants to continue. He’s now setting up a race for existing cars in 80 days. Green energy cars, batteries charged with renewable energy. Has 13 teams so far. Siemens even wants to send the first ever electric-powered truck around the world.

Departure? 1st July 2010 in Shanghai, China (Wold Expo).

Louis has a lot on his hands, and welcomes any help that can be given. Volunteers, etc. Just contact him.

Lift09 — Vint Cerf [en]

Story of the talking dog. Excitement, but nobody is paying attention to what the dog is saying.

Vint feels like the talking dinosaur.

(haha)

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The Internet works because there are standards, and people cooperate to work together around those standards.

Jan 1983, 400 computers, official launch of the Internet.

Now: 542 mio hosts, 1.464 mio users. Doesn’t count computers behind firewalls.

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Other relevant phenomenon: 3.5 bio mobiles have come into the system. The first experience of the internet for many people in the world is going to be through mobile.

More internet users in China than in the US

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Asia biggest number of users, then Europe. Hard to make predictions about Europe as it keeps adding countries.

Astonishing: the kinds of things that people put on the net! Fridges and picture-frames! (Sounded about as useful as an electric fork…)

steph-note: internet-enabled picture frames sound cool, to share photos with family around the world

Internet-enabled surfboard. Surf the internet while waiting to surf the next wave, with wifi hotspot on the beach 🙂

Vint seems to have the house of the future: sensors all over the place, network, monitors temperature of the wine cellar for example, and sends and SMS when something is wrong (happened to him when nobody was home, so got one SMS for every five minutes for the next three days of his trip, and when he got back the cellar was a bit warm…)

For the moment, all Vint can tell is that the lights have been on in the wine cellar, but not if somebody took wine. RFID: could put a chip on the bottle, so would know if it walks away. But you could drink it and leave the bottle! So put something in the cork… steph-note: wild!

This year is a significant year of change for the internet. moving to run in parallel with the IPv6 something or other (steph-note: fuzzy for me)

In the seventies, nobody could decide how much address space was needed for this “experiment”. Someone wanted variable length fields, too much computing power. 128-bit addresses (3.4 X 10^38 sounded like a preposterous number of addresses to ask for for an experiment).

The experiment never ended… we’re living in it.

Non-latin characters in domain names — that’s happening now. Hard to integrate that in the current domain name system without disrupting it.

Multi-core chips. (steph-note: technical stuff I’m not following, about clock speeds and chips and stuff and how this relates to the internet)

Conventional relational databases are not scaling up to the sizes people are looking at today. Petabytes of data…

Bit-rot problem: it’s 3000, can you interpret a 1997 Powerpoint? Big big problem. Application software needed to interpret our bits not available anymore. Need to maintain access to application software after support is dropped.

Before: computing utility = big building. Today, big buildings with lots of computers and people use the internet to access it = Clouds. Cloud makers don’t usually worry about dealing without other clouds. No vocabulary to talk about other clouds. How does one cloud communicate with the other? How do you tell Cloud B to protect the data that’s just been copied to it in the way that Cloud A was protecting it?

Privacy and acceptable behavior: how will we agree on what privacy is online, and what is acceptable or not there?

Big clash between copyright policies and the structure of the internet. Legislators and technologists will have to come together to figure out stuff that will hold in a world built by copying.

Digital libraries. Most works will hopefully be available in online form.

In 100 years we’re going to say “can you imagine that at some point, we had books that did not talk to each other?” How do you navigate a dynamic world of books.

Non-Google project here: Interplanatary stuff. Point-to-point transmission is ok if you don’t have to talk to too many devices or spacecraft. Design a space communication system that is as rich as the internet. Why not use TCP/IP? doesn’t work because the distance between planets is astronomical… it takes 3.5 minutes for a signal to propagate to mars (20 minutes at the furthest). TCP/IP is not designed for 40 minute delays. Other problem: celestial motion. Planets have the nasty habit of rotating and we haven’t figured out how to stop that yet.

Disruptive and highly delayed environment. Devised new protocols. Went to test them in tactical military communications because it’s also a highly disrupted environment. DTN.

DTN transfered way more data than TCP/IP, and the marine corps ran away with it. Where is my experiment?

NASA: Deep Impact Testing. launch a probe and get data, but the spacecraft is still going round the sun, so they used it to test data transmission from and to it. Neat!

This summer they upload the protocols to the space station. August, another craft. October, another, so three nodes. By the end of the year, will have formally qualified the interplanatary protocols, and they’ll be able to offer them to standardize communication in space. => interoperability between space missions, if desired!

Next step: interstellar network. But… today it takes long to get over there to the other stars. So need to work on a propulsion system to fix that. Lot of work to be done!

Questions:

  • Are you happy? Yes, internet shows people are willing to come together and collaborate. And the WWW has demonstrated that sharing information is power. Happy to be at Google, because they’re too young to know “you can’t do that” and so they just go and do it. The reason things didn’t work out 25 years ago might not be true anymore.

  • Can we keep the internet open? Amazing pressures in the network today. At the time, academic geeks who were happy to work together. Pressures to try and control the network and the way people use it. Not necessarily all bad. Privacy questions. Protecting people. Legal system needs to be adapted. Tension between the open internet and being so shut down that nothing is possible. Somewhere in between the network is openly accessible, things can be tried out. Committed to keeping it as open as possibly.

  • Semantic Web, will it become reality? You should ask TBL… Was feeling sorry for TBL because the idea of the semantic web was moving as quickly as IPv6 into the public internet… Link = “something over there that is of interest”. What if we could add a “semantic hyperlink”? Jaguar can be a car, operating system, animal… (steph-note: this is what wikipedia disambiguation pages do) More hopeful.

  • Is Google the real Big Brother? Doesn’t think so and hopes it never does become it. Helping people manage their information. How well is the information managed and protected? Google recognizes that separate access and privacy is important. E-mail is always read by programmes. The one that puts ads in Gmail just does pattern matching.

Lift09 — Melanie Rieback — RFID and Security [en]

Whitehat hacker.

RFID uses radio waves to identify things. Shows much of a promise for breaking (?) into things. Next low-end of computing.

You have to bring virtual attacks into the physical domain, when it comes to RFID.

Some security problems:

– Unauthorized tag reading
– eavesdropping
– tracking
– tag cloning
– denial of service

Wardriving for passports. Skimming credit cards from a distance.

Low-level misuse of improperly formatted RFID tag data.

Three main kinds of RFID Malware:

– RFID exploits
– RFID worms
– RFID viruses

“Is your cat infected with a computer virus?” (pet tagging *steph-note: Bagha has one!*)

Google trends for RFID: biggest peak just after Melanie published her paper.

2 bio public transportation system was hacked in and 8-week project by students. Amsterdam.

Issues: same company designing and auditing the back-end security of the system. *steph-booth: gosh, what do people imagine?*

People in charge don’t listen about these issues until they’re demonstrated.

Melanie has worked on a device that does penetration tests and acts as a firewall for RFID.

Can spoof and jam RFID tags.

Listens to the first part of the query trying to figure out what it wants to do, and if it’s something not allowed, it sends out random noise (selective jamming). Filter inbound and outbound queries.

Security: RFID fuzzing.

All the hard work for cloning public transport passes has been done. Just needs to be put together.

The RFID Guardian is being commercialised now (so it’s not just students who are dangerous now).

Companies and governments assume that these attacks are going to stay in labs. They need to wake up. Why put the tools into the hands of the bad guys? The bad guys are going to have the tools any way, it’s time for the good guys to have access (full disclosure). If computer scientists have the right tools they might be able to prevent lots of these attacks. We need an RFID security industry.

The whole project is open source. Hardware and software.

Lift09 — Open Stage: Daniel Kaplan [en]

How do we expose ourselves online?
How do we choose our online friends?
Results from a new kind of online sociological survey.

Survey: you can’t just go and ask people to put words on their practices. Designed it like a game. Shown images / I values and U values.

– “I” values: traditional – the more revealing the picture, the less people are expected to see it.
– “U” values: things you feel strongly about

People have a strategy! they know what they’re doing…

– traditionnals
– exhibitionnists
– immodest
– trash/playing with the game

Traditionals, biggest group:

– don’t display more than what you would put on your desk or in your sitting room

Are social network equalizers? No, we mingle with people who are like us or of higher social status.

http://sociogeek.com

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Lift09 — Frank Beau — Métromantiques [fr]

Notes prises à l’occasion de la conférence Lift09. Bla-bla habituel de prise de notes: je fais de mon mieux, mais ce ne sont que des notes, qui peuvent contenir des erreurs et inexactitudes.

Coup de foudre dans le métro. Comment sera le métro du XXe siècle? A la fois un moyen de transport et d’échanges.

Paradoxal! Un véhicule qui circule, qui voudrait organiser la circulation interne des “particules” qui l’habitent.

Est-ce qu’internet permet d’éclairer cette question?

En France, sites de “retrouvailles” pour personnes qui se sont croisées furtivement dans le métro. Bouteille à la mer pour retrouver la personne qu’on a croisée. 600 annonces en un an. 600 histoires. => quelques pistes.

Matrice commune du récit: montés ensemble, tu es sortie à l’arrêt X, nos regards se sont croisés… plusieurs fois… => bouteille à la mer.

– la connexion s’établit avec le regard (dans le métro, on cherche une ligne de regard où on croise personne, et quand on croise… en même temps on n’arrête pas de regarder les autres. “L’électricité du regard.” => comment on passe au sourire?
– sourire
– contact des corps (le Tetris des corps… uniquement dans le métro) — typologie des contacts corporels dans le métro
– on partage le même temps — pour les pendulaires
– accélérateurs du contact: écouter de la musique, même si on est dans sa bulle; livres!; téléphones portables;

Romantisme urbain de la mobilité. Tutoiement.

Anti-internet par certains aspects:

Co-présence, force du hasard, non verbal, zone temporairement autonome, on est tous acteurs et spectateurs, le métro est un théâtre.

Espace public qui a des propriétés qu’on ne trouve nulle part d’autre. Ces propriétés expliquent la quantité de coups de foudre dans le métro. *steph-note: comme sur internet.*

Culture de l’ephémère.

Le métro, c’est pas un espace si terrible que ça. Internet est une caméra du réel, et un excellent lieux pour les bouteilles à la mer du XXIe siècle.

L’amour existe toujours!

=> mobile dating, rencontre à travers le téléphone portable, bluetooth, wifi, culture de 15 mètres. Phéromones?

3 approches:

– laissez faire! l’amour n’est pas de maths!
– technophéromonisons le métro et voyons ce qui se passe
– le sujet est en fait les codes sociaux de l’amour

Scénario de SF:

Edit, 8 mars 2009: à la demande expresse de Frank Beau, les photos que j’ai prises de son “scénario de SF” ont été retirées de cet article. J’avoue avoir été très surprise et déçue par cette demande (faire une présentation en public, devant 800 personnes munies d’appareils photos et de connexions wifi, et espérer pouvoir “contrôler” la diffusion des visuels utilisés lors de celle-ci, cela dénote à mon sens d’une assez grande naïveté et d’une incompréhension de comment fonctionnent les nouveaux médias — cf. Streisand Effect.) Ceci dit, je ne suis pas là pour chercher querelle, donc je m’exécute, mais à regret. Si j’en ai le courage, je reproduirai le contenu de ces slides ici (ça allait trop vite pour prendre des notes) — mais ne retenez pas trop votre souffle, j’en ai assez sur mon assiette ces temps, comme on dit.

Lift09 — Baba Wamé — L'appropriation de l'Internet par les femmes camerounaises [fr]

Remerciements.

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Cameroun: petit pays d’Afrique Centrale (11 fois plus gros que la Suisse). 18mio d’habitants. Langues officielles: anglais et français. Villes: Yaoundé, Douala, Bafoussam, Garoua, Maroua, Bamenda.

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Internet dès 1997, 400000 utilisateurs internet, dont 50000 en connexion directe. 2500 cybercafés dont 500 à Yaoundé.

Chatteuses camerounaises: sur internet pour chercher un mari. Profil bien défini. Entre 18 et 34 ans, niveau scolaire assez bas, élèves/étudiantes. Parfois inscrites comme célibataires alors qu’elles sont mariées (mari peut-être d’accord). Sud = chrétien, Nord musulman. Chatteuses plutôt du sud.

Motivations. Que font-elles sur internet, que cherchent-elles en ligne, et quels sont les facteurs qui les font revenir?

  • changer sa vie et celle de sa famille par le mariage
  • avoir des enfants métis, prestige du mariage avec un blanc (métisses privilégiés dans la société camerounaise)
  • facilité d’utilisation d’internet
  • amélioration des lieux de connexion.

Difficultés socio-économiques au Cameroun, peut-être 50% de taux de chômage => dur de trouver un travail, donc possibilité de changement et d’amélioration en partant à l’étranger.

Vision négative de l’homme camerounais (irresponsable, voleur, menteur — Baba Yamé nous précise qu’il ne correspond à aucune des ces descriptions!)

Les sites de rencontre sont beaucoup plus ergonomiques qu’avant. Aussi, Photoshop, c’est extraordinaire. La webcam facilite la communication entre personnes éloignées. Les sites de rencontre sont gratuits pour les femmes aussi, pas pour les hommes.

Cybercafés climatisés, avec boxes privés à l’abri des regards… Fibre optique. “Connexion haricot” — le haricot doit cuire longtemps, donc on utilise cette expression pour parler d’une connexion très lente, genre 10 minutes pour ouvrir Google. Avec la fibre optique, plus de ça.

Techniques pour approcher les hommes sur internet? Pour que ça marche, il faut de la technique!

  • choix judicieux des fiches (âge, pays, race) — les camerounaises sont très pointilleuses (dans quel pays veux-je vivre? en première position: la Suisse!) et elles ne veulent pas des jeunes, au moins 35-55 ans. Les jeunes sont exigeants et barbants! Puis, bon, il faut être blanc.
  • bons rapports avec les moniteurs de cybercafés (apprendre à surfer sur le net, si on n’est jamais allé à l’école… il y a des moniteurs qui tapent pour elles!)
  • régularité dans les échanges, au moins 4-5 fois dans la semaine, ça prend du temps et de l’argent (par mois, 150€ alors qu’on vit là-bas avec moins de 2$ par jour — la famille participe, elles ont des sponsors!)
  • le mystique: marabouts (ne pas boire ceci, aller à tel jour à telle heure…) — catastrophe à Yaoundé (?) le marabout est mort… obsèques avec des tonnes de jeunes filles, incroyable (Baba y est allé)

  • Le coût de la recherche: 8€ par jour

  • l’apport de l’entourage (famille, groupe de monitrices qui animent des groupes — elles sont organisées)

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Les valeurs chrétiennes (affichées sur le profil):

  • fidélité (“si vous êtes marié, passez votre chemin”)
  • Dieu (“je suis croyante” — “si vous croyez en Dieu comme moi, vous êtes l’homme de ma vie”)
  • la prose (textes très bien écrits: du Voltaire, Montesquieu, René Char)

Résultats:

  • entre 10 et 15% se marient
  • 60% de celles-ci se retrouvent se retrouvent dans un réseau de prostitution! (et ne rentrent jamais en Afrique — rentrer pauvre en Afrique, c’est impensable, on est un paria)

Vocabulaire:

  • une Suissesse est une camerounaise qui s’est installée en Suisse et revient montrer ses bijoux et sa rolex
  • chercher son Blanc
  • Mon Western Union (l’échange a commencé, on teste en demandant de l’argent pour l’école et ça arrive par Western Union)
  • Couple Internet (couple qu’on voit passé dont le mari est blanc et la femme noire)
  • Mariage affection.org (mariage fait par le biais d’internet)

Immeubles des “Suissesses” (qui sont rentrées et ont construit): “elles ont construit ces immeubles à la sueur de leurs fesses”

Les femmes qui se tournent vers internet pour tenter d’arriver en Europe, plutôt que par bateau (90% de morts!), c’est une très bonne chose.

Lift09 — James Gillies — How the Web awas Born: Stories from a scribe [en]

Was in the right place at the right time to write the story, says he.

1995: “we must write the story before everyone forgets…”

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James expected it to be a dull boring story. Big surprise! You can’t just tell the story of the Web, because you have to tell the story of hypertext, and the story of computing networks, personal computing… it’s all linked.

Back to July 1945: Vannevar Bush, calculating machine. Was frustrated with the way human mind associated things, randomly. Machines might be able to select by association… “As we may think”. Hypertext.

Doug Engelbart. Screenshot! 60’s, personal computing.

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1960’s: packet switching, ARPANET (world’s first LAN).

Other things need to happen before somebody could build the web on top of them.

Louis Pouzin, 70s. Network + network + network = network. That was in fact the definition of an internet.

Sam Fedida. 80s: Viewdata — Prestel, CEEFAX, Minitel. (Historical dead-en.)

Big impact in France through the Minitel. Surrounding countries got the drift. The web, however, took some time to pick up in France, because it had to displace the Minitel. First e-mail sent by a head of state, Queen of England.

Where does the CERN fit in?

70s: CERNET; 80s: the Internet.

A place established to bring people together. TCP/IP. To communicate with the american government, had to network with them in the way they wanted (=>TCP/IP).

Magic ingredient: a consultant noticed there was a lot of information on lots of computers which weren’t talking to each other. The idea of the web is to try to emulate the way we think with a computer platform.

TBL (Tim Berners-Lee): 1989-1991, from vague to less vague, but always exciting.

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Web 1.0 or Web 2.0? First browser was a browser/editor.

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Next step: get it noticed out there. Students. Nicola Pellow: Web 1.1. Then around the world. 90s.

1993: the web is put in the public domain. The single thing that explains that we are using “world web” today.

Not an accident!

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Lift09 — Jörg Jelden — Fakesumption [en]

Unauthorized products. Office in Beijing, was shocked by the importance of fakes over there. Talked to his manager “let’s do something about it”. So started talking to fakesters, those who track them down, lawyers.

Disclaimer: not making fun of a serious challenge… want to offer a new way of thinking about this problem.

Fakes have been around for a very long time. As things were done, they’ve been copied. Also a learning strategy. The US was well-known in the early 20thC for ripping off European patterns and re-using them. *(steph-note: did I get that?)*

Hollywood: desire to move as far away from NY as possible.

Some facts: survey in the last weeks in Germany.

2 out of 3 Germans have heard of seen fakes in the last 3 years; other numbers I didn’t get: => fakes are socially accepted. Quality is very similar to the originals (50%: we can’t tell the difference). One reason? Many fakes are produced in the same factory. 15-20% of all goods produced in China are fakes. 35 mio jobs directly created by fake industry.

Generating jobs for the masses remains the focus of the Chinese government.

Connected to organized crime. Has gone global. Big business. Fakes: twice as big as Walmart. Illegal and shady, connected to crime, stealing, cheating, lying.

But if these people are so successful, they must be doing something right. So looking at it as a success story, what can we learn from them?

Fakes do something for consumers that the originals don’t — many people buy the fakes on purpose. Consumers need *good enough* solutions. Many fake buyers are your brand customers — they consider themselves to be. => it might not be the best idea to spy on them, sue them, punish them.

So how about finding news ways to integrate this customer base? Find a way to get them to commit to paying more for the real brand.

Fakes truly expose the brand gap. Brand bubble. Overvaluation of brands, and loss of trust in them on the other side. Declined 50% in 10 years.

Brands rely too much on their products, and products can easily be cloned these days (particularly in the digital world). What makes the difference: relations. One way to deal with that is better bonding with the customer. But what companies do is invest in brand protection. Very cost-intensive, particularly in the digital world. Can’t control anymore. Money short these days: many companies will have to reconsider these strategies.

The more they criminalize fakes, the more fakers become criminals. The more fakers become criminals, the more they connect to organized crime. Instead of buying bigger arms, how can brands win over and connect better with their customers?

And what can brands offer to those who can’t afford the premium?

Let’s talk about the fakers. In the brands’ shadow initially, but now have started to live on their own. Business is very demand driven and highly competitive. “We fake on demand and only that what we can sell.” Retail-driven.

Brands are busy running their empires, and fakers adapt products to local needs. New features, bigger variety of styles. In return brands begin to watch the fake industry to learn what customers might need.

Chinese middle class emerging: fakers go upscale. High-class fakes where you really can’t tell the difference. Just price difference, but not as cheap as you might expect. Premium quality, boutique stores, warranties, services => higher prices.

Fakers will develop retail brands and become the H&Ms of emerging markets. It’s still early days though. Real threat that competitors will emerge from this initially shady business.

Fakes attack prices — mix fakes with originals, sell fake parts to manufacturers… One container: big percentage of fakes amongst the originals. Makes it very difficult for customs. Sell directly through online stores.

So how much further will we let them take over?

To sum up: if you have a problem, you fight it. If you can’t fight, you criminalize. When you can’t do that anymore, you need to integrate. What do brands have to offer aside from their logo? Why don’t brands collaborate with the best fakers?

One last thought: the way the US dealt with alcohol in the 30s.

Not to say fakes are good, but the way we deal with them needs to be looked at.