Emerging technology conference 2008 — March 3-6, 2008

The Emerging technology conference 2008 site is live and if you if you’re an artist, hacker, maker, and/or technologist that thinks the best way to predict the future is to build it, you might want to submit a proposal! The conference is March 3-6, 2008, I’m on the conference committee, so c’mon makers and represent’ –

Physicist Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.” We agree, which is why we don’t attempt to predict the future. At ETech, we show the tantalizing glimpses of future technology we think are going to truly matter, brought to life by cutting-edge researchers, be they scientists, product developers, academics, or hackers.

We put on stage the speakers and the ideas that help our attendees prepare for and create the future, whatever it might be. What interests us? The military running its own full Earth simulation. Instructions for creating your own 3D prototyping machine posted online. Biomimicry being used to organize teams and model crowd behavior. Gadgets that give us feedback on our behavior. A rollaway PDA that uses a flexible OLED screens, hopefully available for purchase in the very near future.

This year we’ll be asking ourselves: where are some of the previously emerging technologies? It’s been two years since a man got a neural implant to surf the web, but no one else has one yet. Virtual worlds have been multiplying since the ’90s, but many of us have never had a productive meeting in one. And where are our jetpacks, anyway? How close are these and many other “futuristic” technologies to being viable here and now, and if they’re still far away, are there techniques and lessons we can learn from any progress they’ve made in recent years?

At the 2008 version of ETech, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, we’ll take a wide-eyed look at the tech that’s just arriving and cast a cynical one at some that have been emerging for too long. From robotics, health care, and space travel to gaming, finance, and art, we’ll explore promising technologies that are just that–still promises–and renew our sense of wonder at the way technology is influencing and altering our everyday lives.

O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2008 • March 3-6, 2008 • San Diego, California – Link.