W2C

Richard Florida writes:

"Last March, I had the opportunity to meet Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, at his film complex in lush, green, otherworldly-looking Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson has done something unlikely in Wellington, an exciting, cosmopolitan city of 900,000, but not one previously considered a world cultural capital. He has built a permanent facility there, perhaps the world's most sophisticated filmmaking complex. He did it in New Zealand concertedly and by design. Jackson, a Wellington native, realized what many American cities discovered during the '90s: Paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change. It took Jackson and his partners a while to raise the resources, but they purchased an abandoned paint factory that, in a singular example of adaptive reuse, emerged as the studio responsible for the most breathtaking trilogy of films ever made. He realized, he told me, that with the allure of the Rings trilogy, he could attract a diversely creative array of talent from all over the world to New Zealand; the best cinematographers, costume designers, sound technicians, computer graphic artists, model builders, editors, and animators."

Link
Source: CreativeClass.org

See also:
The Rise of the Creative Class - IT Conversations
Creative Class War: Reverse Brain Drain in US? - kuro5hin.org
Creative Class Going Into Exile? - Moore's Lore
Job Bust: That's So Yesterday - business2blog

"The fact that the paperless office hasn’t come to pass yet doesn't mean that it never will. After all, while desktop computers and clunky monitors still bear a family resemblance to the terminals and CRTs of a bygone era, technologies like smart dust, RFID, wireless, and flexible displays are completely different. Likewise, the vision of computing that drives pervasive computing research is nothing like today’s chunky interactions with keyboards and monitors. Should it come to pass, the model will deeply affect the way people will interact with information, and, in turn, the way information will interact with the world.

Most importantly, computers will be everywhere, and we will interact with them constantly, but hardly be aware of them. Think of what driving a car is like today. A luxury car can have a hundred microprocessors or more in it, monitoring and controlling everything from the ignition to the exhaust to the temperature of the seats. Yet the experience of driving a Mercedes C-Class or a BMW 700 series car (so I’m told – I’ve never been behind the wheel of either one) is nothing like checking your email or fiddling with a spreadsheet. An even better - or at least more financially accessible - model is the iPod. It’s a big hard drive, some software, and thousands of files. But from an interaction standpoint, it’s nothing like a computer.

In the office, this trend will translate into no longer having to choose between dealing with colleagues or computers. Today, most of us have to toggle our attention between people in the room or our computers; it’s very hard to keep both in our perceptual field. But smaller, less-obtrusive technologies could be the basis of devices that support face-to-face interaction, sociability, and creativity, rather than competing with them, or forcing them into narrow channels."

Link
Source: Red Herring

Remarks by Bill Gates
"BILL GATES: Well, the right adoption of computer technology will change the way resources are used. I was at a CEO event a few months ago and I was saying that even though the idea of the paperless office has been kind of ridiculed, I still believe in this idea of the paperless office, that is I believe that eventually you'll be reading off of the Tablet PC, whether it's your daily newspaper or your textbooks, that we won't be using paper for those things. And I'd forgotten there was a CEO from the paper industry in the audience, and so he spoke up and didn't like that, and then somebody from HP said, "Hey, but then we won't need printers, so that can't be right." (Laughter.) And I thought, hey, you just can't win.

So there are elements of this information technology society that are beneficial; that is, use of paper should go down quite a bit. We promote a new piece of software we have called Live Meeting literally for the fact that you don't need to travel as much. We're not saying you don't have to go face-to-face at all, but a lot of those trips are unnecessary as we bring in rich collaboration right there to the screen and there's a lot more software can do in terms of the different video viewing and how we record those things and make that easy to do.

So I think we can cut down on the amount of travel that's necessary. I also think computer technology, the intelligent computer technology really is pro-environmental. I mean, people are talking about now with gas engines that the way you can do injection in a different way, if you have enough computer control you can get almost double the efficiency out of even a gas engine, which is a great thing. So overall if you have more information the way you do irrigation is just more targeted and smarter, the way you use fertilizer is targeted and smarter."

Link
Source: Microsoft

See also:
Dude, where's my office? - Ross Mayfield's Weblog

"President Bush and Sen. John Kerry addressed a variety of questions from everyday Americans Friday in the second of three presidential debates.

The debate, at Washington University in St. Louis, featured a town-hall format, in which randomly selected audience members, not the moderator, posed questions to the candidates. Participating audience members were voters selected by the Gallup organization.

The questions covered a gamut of issues, including the candidates' approach to picking Supreme Court justices; stem-cell research; prescription drugs from Canada; and abortion. Several questions probed the president and his challenger on their policy toward the war against terrorism and the ongoing conflict in Iraq.

Kerry climbed in many public opinion polls after the first debate, cutting the president's lead and leaving the candidates in a tight race. The debate Friday night follows Tuesday's face-off between Vice President Dick Cheney and Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards."

Link
Source: NPR
See also:
Bush vs. Kerry
Presidential Election - Yahoo News
America Votes 2004 - CNN
Vote USA 2004 - BBC News
US elections 2004 - Guardian
Election 2004 - About.com
Election Issues Explained - Howstuffworks
Google Zeitgeist Special Edition - Election 2004
The Diddy Factor - PBS

"President Bush and Sen. John Kerry discuss leadership and America's standing in the world as they meet on the University of Miami campus in the key electoral state of Florida for the first of three presidential debates.

U.S. policy in Iraq and the war on terrorism dominated a discussion of foreign policy issues moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS."

Link
Source: NPR
See also:
U.S. presidential election - Wikipedia
Swing state - Wikipedia
US presidential debate - Google News
2004 Presidential Election News - Topix.net
Election Watch 2004 - Technorati
Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
Futures Market
Historical Bush Approval Ratings
Don't Hate the Debate - Yahoo Buzz Index
O'Reilly Digital Democracy - IT Conversations
Political Campaigns Are Missing the Boat on Paid Search - Business 2.0
FactCheck.org
WatchBlog
Google Zeitgeist