Zorah Mari Bauer visits, Shape the future but don't ignore it

Zorah Mari Bauer, who describes herself as "… a theorist, pioneer and activist of innovative media", visited our lab. She works at the crossroads of art, design, media and technology and looks into communities, web, TV, and mobile location based applications. We had an interesting discussion on upcoming trends in media and technology and how the inevitable shape our future and how a society has to innovate to be successful. It seems that people who understand the technologies seem to be more positive about the future than those who do not :-) It was very inspiring to discuss future trends with her - hope to continue the discussion in the future!

Reading the newspaper was a stark contrast to the interesting and forward looking exchange of ideas. On the way back I found an article in the German newspaper TAZ (www.taz.de) on how evil all the electronic publishing is - it is sometimes really frustrating how little some journalist - even at TAZ - research (or if they research how little they understand). One essential observation in business as well as in society is that if something does not have a value its existence is in danger. Moving towards a digital world for me the added value of traditional publishers is less and less clear - and the only way out is to be innovative… It is very clear that we can shape our future (and it is an exciting time for that) - but it is very clear that if you ignore the future it is still moving on. If you are a publisher and curious about ways to innovate talk to us we have some ideas! E.g. there is a great value if you facilitate relationships (between people, things, places, information) and people strive for external recognition.