The Future Unwrapped: Media and Society, 2012+
First published by Media Futures Conference, July 2009The Media Futures Conference 2009 brought together leading thinkers and practitioners from around the media industry to share their pioneering work. It was structured around broad social trends, and current data and analysis; Desirable futures, Feasible futures, Challenging futures, and Viable futures; and included a review of past media futures and a viable future case study.
Notes on this session: Media exists within society and is shaped by social trends. If we want to better anticipate the future, and make the most of the present, we need to use research and forecasting more effectively to develop long-term strategies and short-term responses. This opening session set the scene and considered: why we are moving beyond broadcast; how we can use social insights to innovate content and platforms; and the shifting location for innovation. It also addressed the need to move beyond the management of old digital assets to the creation of new assets in a time of decreasing budgets and attacks on pubic sector broadcasting.
Presentation by Melanie Howard and Professor James Woudhuysen, with a response by Matt Locke, Channel 4. Chair: Nico Macdonald. 3 July 2009 (Bloomberg Auditorium, London)
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls
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