![](../images/pla20.gif)
May 12 -14, 2000 * San Francisco,
CA
Sponsored by Planetwork
COMPLETE SET OF AUDIOTAPES IN BINDERS FOR
$400
CONFERENCE CODE: PLA20
001 Promise Ahead: Humanity’s Journey Toward a Culture of Meaning -
Duane Elgin 1 $10.00
A sweeping overview of the human journey as we travel toward a more sustainable and soulful way of living
on the Earth. We will look beneath the headlines and explore the deeper currents that are now
changing our lives--from adversity trends to opportunity trends, including the Internet revolution.
002 Whole Earth Magazine - Biodiversity Perils and Opportunities -
Peter Warshall 1 $10.00
Peter Warshall's work centers on conservation an conservation-based development. He works
on all socio-economic levels and with highly diverse people and ecosystems of the planet. He
has worked in Ethiopia for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, in ten other
African nations under contracts with U.S. AID and other organizations, with the Tohono
O'odham and Apache people of Arizona, as a consultant to corporations such as
Senco, Chlorox, Trans Hygga, and SAS Airlines, and with municipal governments such as the city of
Malibu.
004 Green Maps Online: Charting Nature & Culture in Urban Places -
Wendy Brawer 1 $10.00
Wendy E. Brawer... is a eco-designer with an artist's background. Since 1990,her company, Modern World Design, has created services, systems
and products that promote ecological stewardship, including the Green
Apple Map of NYC's green sites, which inspired the Green Map System,
an award-winning local- global collaboration that she directs www.greenmap.org.
006 Consciousness: The Last Frontier - Peter Russell 1
$10.00
We hear much of the new frontiers of the net, robotics, biotechnology and
nanotechnology, but the greatest unmapped frontier of all is consciousness itself. Without consciousness there would
be no science and no technology. Yet, as far as the current scientific worldview is concerned,
consciousness is one huge anomaly. Integrating leading edge ideas in physics, psychology, and
philosophy, Peter Russell shows that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the cosmos; and
that the singularity to which our techno-cultural evolution is ever-more rapidly headed is the
Omega Point at which we awaken to our true spiritual heritage.
007 Envisioning Earth - Payson Stevens 1 $10.00
A presentation of satellite imagery and multimedia focusing on the Earth System and global
change issues. The latest generation of high-resolution satellite photographs will show the
surface of the Earth in incredible Detail.
008 The Infinite Grid as a Platform for Interoperability (partial talk
only) - Pliny Fisk 1 $10.00
On a national basis the national material flow model created by Pliny and his associates referred to as
BaselineGreenª establishes the environmental and economic baseline
from which green specification decisions should be made and is speicific to various regions or
cities in the U.S. BaselineGreenª is presently being used by the City of Seattle, the Pentagon, the EpiCenter in
Montana, the UT Health Science Center in Houston, and the Department of Energy Building
America Program.
010 Use it or Lose It: Defending the Internet from Commercial Information
Pollution - Jan Hauser; ![](../images/speaker.gif)
Principal Architect at
Sun Microsystems
Ecologically-Sustainable
Economic Growth in China?...Yes! - Sheri Xiaoyi Liao;
Founder and President
of Global Village of Beijing - one of China's best-known environmental
NGO's
The
Viridian Green Movement - Bruce Sterling 1 $10.00
Sci-fi author, cyber-punk progenitor
011 Music and Vocal Performance - David Rothenberg & Tsering
Wangmo "Earth Machine Music"
- 1 $10.00
012 Digging Through the AstroTurf: The Future of Environmental Content, Products and
Services on the Internet -
Josh Knauer 1 $10.00
013 What Does Technology Want? - Kevin Kelly 1 $10.00
Kevin Kelly is the founding Executive Editor of Wired. He was involved in the 1993 launch of this influential magazine, and has
been editing the magazine since. Mr. Kelly is also the author of Out of Control: The New Biology of
Machines, Economic and Social Systems and
The New Rules of the New Economy. Kevin Kelly's writing has appeared in many national and international
publications such as Time, The Economist, Harpers, Esquire, GQ, and the New York Times.
014 Macro-Phase Power and Micro-Phase Wisdom - Brian Swimme
1 $10.00
Brian Swimme received his Ph.D. (1978) from the University of Oregon in gravitational dynamics. His research focuses on the
evolutionary dynamics of the universe, the relationship between scientific cosmology and more traditional religious visions, the
cultural implications of the new evolutionary epic, and the role of humanity in the unfolding story of Earth and cosmos.
015 Revolutionizing Environmental Defense Using the Web - Bill
Pease 1 $10.00
William Pease is the Director of Internet Projects for the Environmental Defense Fund. He has
created two browser-based services for EDF: scorecard.org, a site that provides easy access
to information about local environmental quality, and actionnetwork.org, a site that enables
organizations to connect their membership with legislative representatives and conduct digital
lobbying.
016 Swords into Plowshares: Cold War Remote Sensing for Conservation -
Jan Hauser 1 $10.00
Jan Hauser is a Principal Architect at Sun Microsystems.
017 Living Systems, the Internet and the Human Future - Elisabet
Sahtouris 1 $10.00 ![](../images/speaker.gif)
What can we learn from nature's self-organizing systems in evolution over billions of years that
will help us insure our human future? Elisabet Sahtouris explores the viability of human
organizations such as businesses and governments, as well as the phenomenon of the Internet to
see what works and what doesn't. Evolutionary biologist, futurist and co-author of
Biology Revisioned.
018 Global Biodiversity Information: A Facility for the Future -
Meredith Lane 1 $10.00
Vice President of Biodiversity at the Academy of Natural Sciences, member of the Global
Biodiversity Information Facility team.
019 Adam Werbach-- Host of the Thin Green Line & former President of
the Sierra Club - 1 $10.00
Host of the environmental newsmagazine Thin Green Line, founder of Act Now Productions,
frequent guest on ABC TV's Politically Incorrect, formerly the youngest ever, President of the Sierra
Club.
020 New Directions for Earth and Planetary Visualization - Gloria
Brown Simmons 1 $10.00
Research Fellow at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, formerly Visualization Manager
with the White House GLOBE Program, and involved with visualization from Galileo, Voyager
and Viking space probes at CalTech.
021 Application Challenges for Geographic Information Science - John
Radke 1 $10.00
Understanding geographic information is critical if we are to build and maintain livable
communities. Since computing has become almost ubiquitous in planning and managing our
communities, it is probable that advances in geographic information science will play a founding
role in smarter decision making, available to all. We examine the challenges that
occur between humans and their environment under conditions thought to be hazardous to life and habitat.
Emergency preparedness and response are reviewed and results from focus groups at the
UCGIS Summer Assembly (1999), which identified and recommend priorities for research,
educational and policy contributions to emergency preparedness and response are documented.
Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley using GIS systems for environmental planning
022 Founder and President of Global Village of Beijing - Sheri Xiaoyi
Liao 1 $10.00
Notable among the many recent social and political changes in China has been the emergence of
some elements of civil society. Chinese non-governmental organizations (NGO's), especially
those addressing environmental protection, have been prominent in this development. University
students, intellectuals, and the public, along with an activist media, have begun to focus their
attention on the environment and its implications for social welfare. What are the broader
political ramifications of this NGO movement? What practical constraints do NGO's in China
face? What role might the U.S. play in the evolution of this nascent movement?
023 Slip-Sliding Between the Virtual and the Real: Re-Presenting Nature in
Immersive VR Environments - Char
Davies 1 $10.00
Renowned digital artist, creator of the virtual reality works: Osmose, Ephemere and
Immersense.
024 Art in the Post-Human Matrix - Ebon Fisher & David Rothenberg
1 $10.00
Digital Artist, 'Media
Breeder', one of MIT Media Lab's first instructors and creator of the astonishing
and immense Web Jam ritual 'Organisms' in Williamsburg Brooklyn,
Ebon
Fisher joins
Terra Nova founder/editor, fluid musician, nimble philosphy professor and writer
on technology and ecology, David
Rothenberg as they share their ground breaking work and explore, with
Planetwork co-founder Elizabeth
Thompson, the liminal zone where art, ecology and cyberspace
fruitfully mate. The discussion will mutate and evolve to include the aesthetics
of living systems, networks as a new cultural paradigm, subjective ecosystems, a
network-oriented ethics for cyberspace and the crucial role of the artist in the
creation of a sustainable global culture.
025 Greening the Media In a Dot-Com Era - David Irons, Alex Barnum & Jerry
Kay 1 $10.00
Join some major innovators in
envirnomental journalism as they look a how the eruption of this new medium
presents opportunities to augment the media's eco-consciousness. With SF
Chronicle metro editor and environmental writer Alex
Barnum, strategically placed at the major newspaper right in
the heart of the silicon revolution's and eco movement's most active fault line,
Ron Wolf of
AScribe Newswire and Jerry
Kay, veteran
host of the nationally broadcast radio program "Science in Action"
aired locally on KQED and KCBS, and globally on Environmental News Network's
cutting edge website.
026 GIS in Ecology & Conservation Biology - John Radke, Pliny Fisk
& Chris Davis 1 $10.00
Geographic Information
Science has found a wide variety of uses from conservation biology and natural
resource inventory to resource management as well as many other environmental
applications. This session will bring together representatives from several
different institutions currently using GIS for environmental projects to discuss
their own work as well as the general state of GIS technology and its
applications.
027 Green Interfaces - Michael Naimark, Carlos Seligo & Erik
Davis 1 $10.00
Erik Davis
convenes a session devoted to the question of how the Web and related
technologies can better represent, reflect, mimic or capture aspects of the
natural world. As the Web mediates more of our knowledge of things, how will it
transform the way we perceive and understand the environment? What are some of
the ways that designers can explore and exploit existing or future technologies
in order to better represent or mirror ecological forms and forces? Joining
Davis will be the digital artist Michael
Naimark,
who will give us a glimpse of the exploding world of webcams, and Carlos
Seligo, who
will explore how natural metaphors can aid in the structure and display of data.
028 The Contested Journey: Nature & Cyberspace - Jennifer Cobb,
Char Davies & Carol Gigliotti 1 $10.00
In this panel, artist Char
Davies,
ethicist Carol
Gigliotti
and theologian Jennifer
Cobb will
address one of the thorniest and most powerful issues in the nascent dialogue
between ecological and technological sensibilities: embodiment. Without a deep
empathy with our own messy and complicated bodies, a genuine connection with the
body of the earth remains tenuous. When this understanding is combined with the
inherent tendency of cyberspace to abstract us from our embodied experience, a
conflict quickly emerges. From their diverse and intertwined perspectives,
Davies, Gigliotti and Cobb will explore the tensions in this issue as well as
surface a variety of hopeful trajectories for healing the rift.
029 WTO: Beyond Seattle - WTO/IMF/World
Bank Activism and the Net - Richard Plevin, Kelly Quirke, Shane Korytko
& Sheri Herndon 1 $10.00
The Internet played a major
role in organizing the Seattle WTO protests that have dramatically reinvigorated
environmental and social justice activism. Representatives of 3 of the key
groups involved in Seattle and in resistance to a corporate-dominated "new
world economic order," who made highly creative and effective use of this
new medium, discuss their cyber-strategies and their visions of future activist
uses of the Net. Allan Hunt-Badiner
web designer for RAN;
Richard Plevin,
Electronic Communications Director of Global Exchange; and
Sheri
Herndon and
Shane
Korytko of the
Seattle-based Independant Media Center, which provided groundbreaking live
webcasts of the demonstrations.
030 Green Portals & e-Commerce - Josh Knauer, Joel Makower &
Jon Zilber 1 $10.00
With Josh
Knauer (Envirolink Founder, CEO of Green Marketplace.com); Jon
Zilber (Vice President, Verde.com); Joel
Makower (President Green Business Network and Greenbiz.com) and panel
moderator Marie Kerpan.
Three leading players at the forefront of the effort to establish strong,
creative and dynamic environmentally-driven cyber business enterprises share the
promise and pitfalls of bringing eco-consciousness to the furious, fluid realm
of E commerce.
031 Youth, Media & Gaia - Ronan Hallowell, Kenji Williams and
Guests 1 $10.00
Unreflective consumer/media
culture is a driving force in the global eco-crisis. Young people are one of the
largest demographic groups targeted by the consumer/media industry. This panel
will explore issues concerning the need for teaching media literacy to youth to
empower them with tools for telling their own authentic stories and making sense
of the world around them. We will examine ways in which youth media literacy and
access to the tools of production can be leveraged to assist progressive
ecological programs and stimulate social awareness and action. Ronan
Hallowell, Kenji
Williams and
Zakary Zide.
032 Cyberspace as a Meta-Evolutive Step - Pierre Levy 1
$10.00
Professor in the
Department of Hypermedia at the University of Paris-VIII; author of Collective
Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace.
033 The Neptune Project - John Delaney 1 $10.00
Professor of
Oceanography at University of Washington; developer of the Neptune Project - a
vast fiber optic telescope to study the Pacific Rift.
034 The Real World - Marc Pesce 1 $10.00
Internet visionary,
co-inventor of VRML, author, lecturer and creator of WebEarth, a real-time VRML
model of the planet's weather.
035 Lessons from the Biosphere - Tyler Volk 1 $10.00
Professor of Biology
at NYU and NASA researcher, author of Meta-Patterns Across Space, Time and
Mind and most recently Gaia's Body, an in-depth examination of the
living, breathing network of systems that is our biosphere.
036 Visualization Applications in Earth System Science - John Helly
1 $10.00
Scientist at the San
Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego where he leads the Earth System
Science program.
037 Snakes and Ladders: Holism vs. Technology - Erik Davis
1 $10.00
Cultural critic and
journalist, author of Techgnosis: Myth Magic + Mysticism in the Age of
Information.
038 Casino-21: Public Participation in Climate Simulation of the 21st
Century - David Stainforth 1 10.00
Department of Physics,
University of Oxford and the Space Science and Technology Department, Rutherford
Appleton Laboratory.
039 Julia Butterfly-Hill-- Eco-Heroine, Treesitter Extraordinaire - 1
10.00
LISTEN TO JULIA'S PRESENTATION IN ITS
ENTIRETY!
040 Technology, Insight & the Internet: Catalysts for Future
Transformation - Hardin Tibbs 1 10.00
Strategist, futurist,
leading authority on industrial ecology and global scenario research.
041 European Reconciliation of the Commercial Internet with Sustainability
- Thomas Ruddy 1 $10.00
Info-tech designer for
World's Fair Expo 2000 in Hanover on Nature, Technology and Humanity; author of The
European Way of Using Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable
Development.
042 Viridian Green - Bruce Sterling 1 $10.00
Cyberpunk progenitor,
author of six sci-fi novels including Schismatrix, a "post-human
space opera", and most recently founder of the Viridian Green art movement.
043 From Nature to Meta-Nature: The Fold Point in Time - Jim
Fournier 1 $10.00 ![](../images/speaker.gif)
Design-scientist,
architect and former entrepeneur. Co-Executive Director of the Planetwork
Conference.
044 Industrial Ecology & Information Technology - Bill Shireman,
Gil Friend & Andrew Michael 1 $10.00
Bill Shireman from
Global Futures and the Future 500, and
Gil Friend from
Natural Logic are pioneers in "greening"
global business and industrial ecology. Andrew
Michael is
involved with the Bay Area Council promoting sustainable business pracitces by
understanding the intersection between information technology and environmental
performance. They'll discuss the role the info-tech revolution can play in
raising the eco-awareness of government and corporate institutions.
045 Art, Technology & the Environment - Shawn Brixey, Eduardo Kac
& Edward Shanken 1 $10.00
Artists Eduardo
Kac and Shawn
Brixey will discuss their
work and the problems of balancing the creation of digital art with their
concern for creating a greater ecological awareness. Art historian Edward
Shanken will moderate the
panel and discussion with the audience on the following issues and questions:
What is the role of the artist in digital culture? How can artists utilize
technology in ways that are critical of technocratic structures of authority and
offer alternative modes of knowing and being? In what ways does the artistic use
of technology - even in the most critical ways - unwittingly supporting the very
technocratic structures of authority those efforts seek to challenge? How does
the artistic use of technology follow the paradoxical formula of relying on
technological means to solve problems caused by previous technological means?
046 Shadow Side of Info Tech - Steve Talbott, Melissa Nelson & JP
Harpignies 1 $10.00
All major,
civilization-altering new technologies have serious downsides and unintended
consequences (automobiles, nuclear energy, genetic manipulation, etc.).
Info-tech is no exception. Bioneers Co-producer and Lapis Contributing Editor
JP Harpignies
hosts the leading, deeply thoughtful Net critic Steven
Talbott,and
the indigenous rights activist, Executive Director of the Cultural Conservancy
and former editor of the Ecopsychology Newsletter Melissa
Nelson in
exploring some of the darker aspects of the Net. Will the vertiginously
accelerated flows of transnational capital made possible by the Net further
ravage the global environment? Will the disembodiment of virtuality further
sever our connection to the natural world?
047 Predicting the Future - James Kalin 1 $10.00
Digital tools exist to help
you predict the future. Normal people can use these tools to share dreams and
together create deeply evocative and visually realistic simulations of many
possible sustainable futures. You can immerse thousands or millions of people in
designing, testing and vicariously experiencing prototype sustainable futures
before we build them on Earth.
048 Info Tech & Sustainable Development - Michael North, Pablo
Zabala, Juan Martinez & Natan
Zaidenweber 1 $10.00
The acceleration of
technology has allowed us to experience the benefits of a digital economy, but
population growth, deforestation, pollution, famines in Africa, global warming,
dire poverty and global inequality continue unabated. Can the Internet help
Indigenous and other communities in the "developing world" address
their problems or will it only exacerbate the divide between rich and poor,
North and South? Join Michael
North, of
Greenstar.com, Pablo
Zavala and Natan
Zaidenweber
as they discuss how the Internet could help historically dis-enfranchised
communities in the "third world" carve a path of sustainable,
"green" development and empowerment.
049 Global Brain Roundtable - Jennifer Cobb, Duane Elgin, Jim
Fournier, Pierre Levy, Mark Pesce, Peter
Russell & Erik Davis 1 $10.00
Ever since Teilhard de
Chardin first proposed the idea of the noosphere earlier this century,
conceptualizations of emergent global consciousness have tended to describe the
phenomenon in terms of a radical separation from nature. With the rise of
computers, and especially the Internet, both the popularity of various concepts
of the noosphere, and the tendency to see it as existing exclusively in human
technology, in opposition to nature, have accelerated. This session will explore
the relationship between emergent global consciousness and nature, and
specifically address the question of the global mind waking up just in time to
find its body - the biosphere - in deep trouble. Duane
Elgin, Jim Fournier, Pierre Levy, Mark Pesce &
Peter Russell with
Erik Davis
050 Effective Web Campaigns - Jim Slama, Brian West & Catherine
Baldi 1 10.00
This panel highlights some of
the most effective, succesful, exemplary uses of the Web by activists and looks
ahead to possible future directions and strategies. With Jim
Slama, the
brilliant architect of the on-line component of the Keep "organic"
Organic campaign that mobilized over 250 000 people and forced the USDA to back
down from its proposed sham "organics" standards; Brian
West of the
Earth Island Institute, one of the most vital and influential environmental
groups on the planet; and Catherine
Baldi,
Communications Director for Project Underground, who is setting up "the
motherlode," an extraordinary database which is an invaluable tool in
arming activists resisting destructive mining and drilling operations throughout
the world with critical information.
051 Info Tech Professionals & Social Responsibility -Twyla Wilson,
Maria Jankowska & Denise Joines 1 10.00
The Information Technology
Panel: Many activists in the environmental movement feel that information
technology and ecological change are incompatible. In the Planetwork IT Panel,
we will hear from IT professionals who are exploring ways to use their skills in
support of the environment. Come join the discussion. Moderator:
Cate Gable,
President of Axioun Communications Intl., author of Strategic Action Planning
NOW! and e-commerce business consultant Maria
Jankowska,
Associate Professor at the University of Idaho, Network Resources Librarian,
member of the Idaho Geospatial Data Center project team, founder of the
Electronic Green Journal, and Chairman of the Environmental Task Force for the
American Library Association Twyla
Wilson,
Director of Strategic Alliance Program for Professional Service Division, USWeb/CKS,
founder and project team member of a new environmental portal currently under
development and Denise
Joines with
One North West.
|