Date Posted: Monday, Sept. 23
Re: Cool Events worth attending.

There are some events worth attending. Put them on your calendars!

On Wednesday, September 25:

Corporations, People, and Power:
featuring Naomi Klein of The Nation, author of No Logo,
and Sameena Ahmad of The Economist, author of Pro Logo: Why Brands Are Good For You.
Moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer.
The New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 West 64th Street, New York NY 10023
7:00 until 9:00 pm free admission; seating is limited; no reservations; doors open at 6:15pm
www.wnyc.org

On Thursday, September 26:

Collaborative Telepresence with Ken Goldberg
6:30pm - Japanese Room
ITP, 721 Broadwayk, 4th Floor

Description: Motivated by the appeal of "liveness" in sports, music, and theater, we are developing a collaborative telepresence system that we call the Tele-Actor.Ê It allows audiences to not only view but to participate in live remote experiences such as a rainforest, biotechnology lab, political rally, or rock concert. The Tele-Actor Project explores two innovations: (1) the human Tele-Actor is more agile and responsive than a tele-robot, and (2) the spatial dynamic voting interface allows many simultaneous participants.Ê This interface facilitates group dynamics and could be applied to a wide variety of online experiences ranging from education and journalism to entertainment. Such systems are feasible and practical due to recent advances in broadband Internet, local wireless digital standards (802.11x), video teleconferencing standards (Microsoft's Media Player), and Gigahertz processing capabilities at both client and server, which will be enhanced by future developments in bandwidth and set-top box technology. The Tele-Actor Project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society. www.tele-actor.net Ken will also describe initial results with a formal model of Cinematrix, the well-known audience participation system that is stable under disturbances such as drop-outs, randomness, time-delay, and malicious behavior.

Bio: Ken Goldberg is Professor of IEOR and EECS at UC Berkeley.Ê His research addresses telerobotics, geometric algorithms, and online robots.Ê More information and online projects are linked from www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg.