Held every October, in the beautiful seaside village of Camden, Maine the PopTech Conference brings together 700 influential participants for one of the world’sbest thought leadership events.
ThinkUp co-founder and tech blogger Anil Dash questions what happens to our civic discourse when our online conversations occur under the terms of service of a small group of privately-owned tech companies whose sense of civic-mindedness is questionable at best? Are we part of the problem by not being part of the solution?
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“We really need to reexamine the types of materials that we use in robotics.” Carmel Majidi discusses how the robots of the future will be pliable and soft to accommodate the characteristics of the human body. |
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy's pioneering research shows that subtle manipulations in posture can actually change our hormone levels and dramatically alter the way we feel and are perceived by the people around us. Just two minutes in one of Cuddy's power poses boosted testosterone and lowered cortisol levels, and actually changed the performance of research participants in stressful situations. She channeled these findings into empowerment training tips.
Read MoreCognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman unravels some of creativity’s mysterious origins with the help of brain scanning equipment. see more >>
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“This sort of speculative work explores the remarkable potential of technology and its new experiential aesthetics.” Anab Jain talks about design in a future world of insect cyborgs, mass surveillance, DNA monetization and guerilla infrastructure. |
PopTech 2013 Science Fellow Miriah Meyer explains how data visualization can be more concise, practical and scientifically useful, and still be aesthetically pleasing.
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Anand Giridharadas, child of Indian parents who immigrated to the United States, returns to live in India as an adult. He encounters a culture shifting from traditional and collective values to a me-centric individualism. Giridharadas asks if the “American Dream” is better represented in places like the New India, rather than in our own increasingly calcified class system with limited upward mobility.
Tom Darden is the Executive Director of the Make It Right Foundation, an organization founded by actor Brad Pitt to build 150 green, high design homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Darden said he wants to take what has been a local conversation about green construction to the national level.
“Is water still running?” is perhaps the most important question when considering water initiatives worldwide, concludes Water for People CEO Ned Breslin. He’s tired of seeing broken hand pumps and taps litter Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These signs of failed projects underscore the critical need to overhaul water aid for real impact.
Adaptation is the basic idea that we get used to stuff and interpret signals. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores how these types of signals relate to pain and social adaptation. How does our previous exposure to pain alter how we experience it now? How is it that we all appreciate the pinnacle of beauty in the same way, but we’re drawn to partners with a level of attractiveness similar to our own?
Designer Orlagh O’Brien gave a simple emotion-specific quiz to a group of 250 people. Asking respondents to describe five emotions – anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love – in drawings, colors, and words, O’Brien ended up with a set of media she used to create Emotionally}Vague, an online graphic interpretation of the project’s results.
Alphachimp LLC is a visual learning company based in Houston, Texas.
Through drawings, animations, and the design-thinking process we help people understand complex situations and make better decisions.
We provide a cluster of inter-related services in the area of visual learning, graphic facilitation, problem-solving, and innovation.
