The Technology Horizons Program at IFTF is currently engaged in a major research project on the technologies, practices, and social impacts of our relationship to video.

We are seeing the emergence of a new digitally-mediated oral society—one that will alter the way we shape our identities, communicate knowledge, create authority, and experience our sense world. A new public sphere, bringing together the semi-literate as well as the hyper-literate, will generate new channels for art, commerce, politics, and education.

Video comes with its own language, a language with a multitude of spontaneously generated and evolving vernaculars. We will examine trends in vernacular video, from lifecasting to collaborative content creation, with particular attention to the way technology, culture, and policy shape (and are shaped by) this massive participatory movement.

We will outline the new key players in the emerging realm of vernacular video: companies, organizations, campaign sand networks that are putting the power of video into the hands of individuals and channeling it to the world, and consider the implications for media, entertainment, political and social movements, indigenous and diasporic communities, marketing, and educational sectors.

Project Acknowledgments

Jake Dunagan, Director, Tech Program
Jake's research examines the role of emerging technologies in transforming subjectivity, culture, and governance, and he has been leading explorations into new methods for communicating foresight. Jake is currently completing his Ph.D. at the Manoa School of Futures Studies on neuropolitics, neuropower, and alternative futures for the extended mind. He has an MA in Visual Anthropology from Temple University, where he studied "fake documentary" and how truth is constructed by filmic conventions.

Mike Liebhold, Senior Researcher
Mike Liebhold is a Senior Researcher focusing on the mobile and abundant computation, immersive media and geospatial web foundations for context-aware and ubiquitous computing. Previously, Mike was a Visiting Researcher, Intel Labs, working on a pattern language based on semantic web frameworks for ubiquitous computing.

David Harris, Research Affiliate
David Evan Harris is a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future and Executive Director of the Global Lives Project, a non-profit media organization with more than 300 volunteer collaborators in 10 countries. His work with IFTF focuses on social change, political economy, the global south and new media. He has spoken and presented work around the world and his writings and video have been published by the BBC, Adbusters Magazine, CurrentTV, National Geographic Glimpse, Sarai Reader, Focus on the Global South and Editions Syllepse and translated into numerous languages.

Jess Hemerly, Research Manager
As a Research Manager for the Technology Horizons program, Jess is interested in the future of media, particularly music, and how new technologies will shape the way we make, access, share, and appreciate media content. She covers the San Francisco music scene for The Owl Mag and her own blog, SFJukebox and has participated in panels sponsored by the Bandwidth Conference and the Bay Area Video Coalition.

Zoe Finkel, Program Manager, Tech Program
Zoe Finkel is a writer, creative thinker and problem solver. She excels at decoding and encoding narratives. How stories infiltrate and influence technology, politics, culture and human experience is a source of continuing interest to her. Her blog is zoefinkel.com.

Rob Krieger, Video Consultant
Rob is also a director of Parade Productions a video and design company in the Bay Area, Rob is consulting with IFTF as a videographer, editor, and production specialist. Rob holds a BA from Columbia University, where he studied studio art, digital media, and computer science. He also has a Masters from the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he won a Student Emmy from the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences for Magazine Documentary.

Chris Sumner, IT Director
Joining the Institute in 1998 Chris Sumner directs the IFTF's MIS/IT dept. and leads our technology direction and implementation strategies providing new innovative collaboration systems and platforms. Prior to joining IFTF, Mr. Sumner was developing new technology systems for Department of Defense applications and has extensive experience as both a technologist and systems integration consultant. He currently holds several technology certificates in Linux, Cisco, OSX, Microsoft, and is fluent in several programming languages.

Other creative and very important people: Jean Hagan, Robin Bogott, Lisa Mumbach, Andy Lam