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The Berkeley Cybersalon at the Hillside Club
Welcome to The Berkeley Cybersalon at the Hillside Club Club. The Berkeley Cybersalon is an open forum about the impact of technology on culture. We started in 1994 -- when a mere 25 percent of Americans had a home computer -- with topics that veered from sheer skepticism ("Will computers make us crazy?") to evangelical fervor ("Can computers save our education system?"). Today, the Internet is ubiquitous, but the essential issue remains the same: how do we tame this beast so as to best manage the creative destruction it's capable of spawning? The possibilities for either improving our lives or destroying our culture, or doing both, comes up whatever the topic: "Asperger's: the Geek Syndrome" with Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of Second Life, to the future of libraries, personal relationships, music, television, and print media with pioneers in technology and media such as Dan Gillmor, Dave Winer, Jaron Lanier, Ellen Ullman, Scott Rosenberg, Joan Blades, the founders of Blogher (Elisa Camahort, Jory des Jardin, and Lisa Stone), Jeff Ubois, and Eric Allman. The Berkeley Cybersalon usually takes place the third Sunday of the month from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Hillside Club. Admission, which includes light refreshments, is $15 at the door, and we are wheelchair accessible, a short walk from downtown Berkeley BART, and bicycle friendly. Berkeley Cybersalon Salon.com staff writer Farhad Manjoo talks about his new book, True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society, which contends the Internet promotes belief over fact. Perhaps countering this view is Mike Godwin, formerly counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and now general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, and Zo (Connie) Spencer, brilliant, witty, and fearless blogger (www.humorlessbitch.com) on all things political, personal, and involving high-tech. As usual, everyone is invited to participate in the discussion. Cybersalon Concert Musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist David Rothenberg plays clarinet with a band of birds and crickets and writes thoughtfully on the deep connections between humans and the natural world. His highly regarded albums and work as founding Editor of MIT Press's Terra Nova book series, have earned him a unique place in the landscape of thoughtful creative humans wrestling with (and honoring) the kinship ties which bind us to the earth and its creatures. Jaron Lanier, founder of the first virtual reality company, obsessively learns to play the world's most unusual musical instruments, and will bring a few of them along to the gig. He will also play piano in his unusual "Scriabin meets Gershwin" style, which goes nicely with David's clarinet playing, which sounds like the playful wind. | ||
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