Last Wednesday I was thrilled to be able to speak at the Infopresse conference at L’Excentris. Apart from being included amongst some of our brightest and best, I was able to present for the first time my talk called “The Oncoming Social Data Analysis Revolution”. View the full presentation here.
I’m grateful to have met Stowe Boyd– a longtime web anthropologist whose keynote book-ended the day with his talk on the physics of web information.
His talk entitled “An Architecture For Cooperation” argues for a new ‘physics of society’ that’s rooted in recent advances in research in cognitive science, social network analysis, and new media studies. Stowe argues that people are a liquid, with elastic changing bonds between people and even to the extent of experiencing multiphrenia (multiple, co-existing and sometimes contradictory personae) in their everyday use of social networks. (Ideas that have echoed in my own experience…. )
Stowe is writing a book tentatively titled “Liquid City: A Liquid, Not A Solid; A City, Not An Army”, which will be released onto the world chapter by chapter on his blog www.stoweboyd.com. I can’t wait to hear more from him and carry on exchanging ideas.
As a physicist kicking off the day speaking about web anthropology, I couldn’t have been happier to listen to an anthropologist talk about physics to finish the day.
Now I know we’re getting somewhere.
