HAcker Congress 07 Almost Done

Greetings once again from Berlin, where I am attending the 24C3, the conference hosted by Germany’s Chaos Computer Club one of the finest groups of hackers and humans on the planet. This year the topics revolve around Global Warming and how Nerds will survive the apocalypse. In many ways it is a humorous theme, but in between all the joking around, I do believe we should take it more seriously in terms of solutions to fight global warming and the forces behind it.

Somehow I’ve ended up at the more comedic, the world is over, enjoy yourself and wear good shoes type sessions, that have left me laughing but also longing for some new ideas. Of course, outside of the sessions, in the hallways and various dark corners of the congress, that is where I see the true geniuses creating – as always- something out of nothing. Among the things I’ve seen: the revival of old technology for modern day uses, namely the telex machine. I watched as someone telexed *interesting* images from somewhere else in the conference center to the machine next to me. Of course I’ve also seen the drones, 4 propeller flying machines with some improvements since the camp over the summer. Also this year there are at least 8 to 12 OLPC’s also known as the green machine/100 dollar laptop, being played with. I may do a followup on it, although clearly lots of people are getting their hands on them now (including madame l)

What else? A puppet show about steam power. Rebellious knitting. Infectious diseases in virtual worlds. Yes there are plenty of insanely interesting topics that occasionally have some social relevance as well. No podcasts recorded yet, but once I give my talk on the Arctic Cold War in a few hours… I’ll get on the podcasting.

For a live stream of it, click here (12h45 CET, 6:45am EST)