About the Talk
At BIL 2008 I introduced the future of robotic cars. But they’re still a decade away. This talk will focus on technologies that are on the near term horizon, or even available now. It will also outline new thinking in the design of transportation and energy based on modern computer technology that can be used while the people are still driving. I’ll show videos of cars today avoiding pedestrians and valet parking themselves, and simulations of intersections without stoplights taking us down the path to automatic transportation.

About the Speaker
Brad Templeton has just completed a 10 year term as Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading civil rights defender in cyberspace. He is also on the boards of the Foresight Institute and BitTorrent Inc. He was founder of ClariNet.com, the internet’s first dot-com, rec.humor.funny and Looking Glass Software. He is also a panoramic photographer and Burning Man artist.

Past Talks
BIL 2009 – The Evils of Cloud Computing

About the Talk
The old education infrastructure is what’s holding the world back from moving forward and truly empowering people to live a learning life-style that fits the information age. We need to build a new infrastructure for learning. We need to build new digital roads, bridges and highways to connect people world-wide to learn and teach from each other on a daily basis. We need a next generation school. A technology platform that can create schools and connect them within seconds. In this talk I will share some of the stories of our experiment of creating 50 online schools in 50 days…the things we learned…the things we screwed up & the things that surprised us most!

About the Talk
I will discuss the yin/yang of Artificial Reality. Can we create virtual worlds as rich and interesting — or even more so — as the one we find ourselves in? Are the rules of reality themselves digital, discrete, and computable?

About the Speaker
Daniel B. Miller has led a varied career as a musician, computer guy, and serial entrepreneur. As a co-founder of On2 Technologies (now in the process of being acquired by Google), he championed the release of Theora, the open-source video codec. Recent ventures include Singular Robotics and Katalabs, Inc.

About the Talk
Scientific collaboration, that hallmark of collaborative scientific endeavor varies greatly among different disciplines. What is in common on all scientific publications is the author list. In SciColab a framework for forming scientific collaborations using Web 2.0 technology is presented. Comments can be made on published papers, interested readers can communicate between each other, and new collaborative groups can be formed to do new research work. This streamlines the discovery process beyond what is capable on pre-print servers and electronic mail and is “open access” publishing at its best.

About the Speaker
Russell Hanson was born in Palo Alto, CA on May 2, 1981 and grew up in California and Bloomington, IN. From 1999–2003 he studied in Portland, Oregon at Reed College, completing a bachelor’s degree in Physics. In 2005 he received an M.S. in Biology from Georgia Tech and his PhD studies were in Chemistry at Boston University. His research interests are varied and span machine learning and statistical learning, chemical engineering, biophysical and medicinal chemistry, quantitative finance, algorithmic trading and technology, synthetic biology and computational biology, quantum computation and information, natural language processing, and mathematical logic and recursion theory. Past academic appointments include Harvard, MIT, and the Technical University of Berlin. An entrepreneur and businessman, in 2008 he founded SciColab.com a collaborative website for scientists and researchers, co-founded LobeLink.com a web annotation and recommendation engine company, founded Reducible Systems, Inc a quantitative consulting company, and in 2009 co-founded TagHalo.com a word tag cloud-based information browsing/search system.

About the Talk
A brief “Basics of Biofeedback” powerpoint plus a live demo with one or more audience volunteers, where we’ll throw their physiology and brainwaves up on screen for everyone to enjoy during a quick tour of 3 or 4 types of biofeedback optimal performance and wellness training.

About the Speaker
Craig Sim Webb, dream and consciousness speaker/researcher/author, physicist/inventor, performing artist, and Executive Director of the DREAMS Foundation (www.dreams.ca)

Web site: www.craigwebb.ca

About the Talk
There is a revolution occurring right now in the study of biology. Traditional methods have focused on reducing biological systems down to their most basic parts and studying them in great detail. With the advent of several high throughput technologies it is becoming possible to put these parts together into functional models of the entire system. This has allowed us to ask (and answer!) a whole host of new biological questions, ranging from the mechanics of evolution to drug development and bio-fuels production.

About the Speaker
Jan Schellenberger is a soon-to-graduate graduate student in the systems biology lab at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on understanding metabolism in micro-organisms. He is also a part time Bioinformatics consultant for local companies.

About the Talk
A buoyancy based device, dubbed the LavaAmp, is able to perform PCR faster than regular thermocyclers, for extremely low cost, and is easily of manufactured and operated. The LavaAmp will also be portable and battery or USB powered, programmable, and able to communicate with smartphones and computers. The LavaAmp hardware will be as open as possible, completely customizable and hackable, so it can be adapted to new purposes and suit the needs of its users. Currently, the detection of the amplified DNA has to be done by conventional agarose gels, however, a variety of methods could be used for in situ detection for the next versions of the LavaAmp. The coupling of DNA detection in a handheld device means quick, effective and even automatic detection of plant and cattle pathogens, food-borne bacteria and diagnostic of antibiotic resistant infections with no need of cumbersome culture tests, not always available. Such a device would allow better surveillance of emerging pandemics in risky areas.

This would improve our collective reaction time against pandemics and extend the reach of the PCR for solving needs currently unmet because of cost and portability. Portable Personal PCR can be attractive for diagnosing neglected diseases in a clinical setting or used by hobbyists and schools: Is this sandfly infected with leishmaniasis? Do you want to teach your kids the real science behind CSI? Do you want to perform your own paternity tests? The LavaAmp can solve these problems and answer these questions, it is an extraordinary tool harnessing the power of PCR and taking it outside the lab, allowing anyone to become a citizen scientist.

About the Speaker
I am a computational biologist from Venezuela, interested in developing inexpensive methods for detecting neglected diseases.

About the Talk
At the first BIL in 2008, I gave a talk on millicomputing. The iPhone was a new thing, there was no app store, no Android, and I was building my own homebrew phone (nowadays I write iPhone apps). I made predictions about what would happen in 2009 and 2010 which largely came true, so now it’s time to update the predictions for 2011 and 2012. As I predicted in 2008, iPhone and Android are dominating, and it’s all about the applications, augmented reality is just starting out and I’m still predicting that “assisted telepathy” will provide an immersive life sharing experience fairly soon.

About the Speaker
Work: computer systems guru at Sun for a long time, helped found eBay research labs, last few years at Netflix managing development of personalized movie choosing algorithms etc.

Home: I’m originally English, married to an American, live on top of the Los Gatos Mountains, spend a lot of time messing about with cars. Probably driving my 1973 Citroen SM down to Long Beach for BIL, and staying on the Queen Mary.

At the first BIL I volunteered as the sound guy with cobbled-together equipment, recorded almost all the talks in the main hall, and published a few of them at BILcast

About the Talk
Are we controlling our computers, or are they controlling us? The case for a better model for user interfaces was introduced at BIL 2009, and in my followup talk for BIL 2010, I will demonstrate some proposed solutions, and a way for people to get involved.
As we interact with more and more screens in our daily lives, we need to find a way to retake control of our tools by making them easier to use and get them to work for us instead of the other way around.
I will show how we can get rid of applications, file folders, windows, mice, alert boxes, and other banes of modern computing – all while getting more done and being happier doing it.
Open source enthusiasts are encouraged to attend and participate afterwards.

About the Speaker
Jayson Elliot is the Director of User Experience for Greater Than One, and a practitioner of usability design since 1994.
Lightful.org is his open source project to re-imagine interfaces from user-centered design principles.

Past Talks
BIL2009 – Rethinking the Modern GUI

About the Talk
Computer vision is a cluster of developing technologies that will enable computers to do some of the very difficult tasks (eg recognizing objects and faces, walking around a room without bumping into things etc) that our advanced brains do effortlessly. I will present a broad survey of computer vision technologies and applications, both present and future.

About the Speaker
Matt Bell is an inventor and entrepreneur best known for cofounding Reactrix, a company that used gesture interfaces to create immersive interactive spaces. Matt is also passionate about self-improvement techniques, practical life extension, the quantified self movement, computer vision, genetics, mixing art and technology, traveling around the world for months at a time, and more.