Personal Democracy Forum 2012
NYC | Jun 11 - 12
The Internet's New Political Power
June 11 -12, 2012
Personal Democracy Forum, the world’s leading conference exploring and analyzing technology's impact on politics and government, returns to the NYU Skirball Center June 11-12, 2012. Hundreds of individuals interested in how technology is changing politics, governance and society will gather at the ninth annual Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York City. To keep up to date on conference news, join our mailing list or follow us on Twitter and be the first to know.
Featured Speakers
-
Rep. Darrell Issa
United States Representative (R-CA)
-
![Van Jones](http://personaldemocracy.com/files/imagecache/ConferenceCallSpeakers/%252Fvan%20jones.jpg "Van Jones is the co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy. Under his leadership, Rebuild the Dream has built an active network in all 435 Congressional Districts, signed up over 600,000 members, and crowd-sourced a "Contract for the American Dream."
As an advisor to the Obama White House, he helped run the inter-agency process that oversaw $80 billion in green energy recovery spending. A Yale Law School graduate, he has a 20-year track record as a successful, innovative and award-winning social entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of three other thriving nonprofit organizations: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, and Green For All.
Van's new book, Rebuild the Dream, is the first to come from a former Obama official, and in it he explores seven major missteps made by the White House and its supporters after Obama's 2008 victory. He also lays out a game plan for turning anger into action, protest into power and suffering into solutions—so that our economy can respect the 99% and work for the 100%, not just the top 1%.
He is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean energy economy. He was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and American Progress Action Fund, and held a joint appointment at Princeton University as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Van is on the board of Demos and the Natural Resources Defense Council. He is currently a Visiting Fellow in Collaborative Economics at Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco.
TIME magazine called him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine named him one of the "12 Leaders Who Get Things Done." He is also the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs, The Green Collar Economy.")
Van Jones
President and Co-Founder, Rebuild the Dream
-
Todd Park
Chief Technology Office of the United States of America
-
Susan Crawford
Professor, Harvard Kennedy School and Columnist, Bloomberg View
-
![Jaron Lanier](http://personaldemocracy.com/files/imagecache/ConferenceCallSpeakers/%252Fjaron%20lanier.jpg "Lanier's name is most often associated with Virtual Reality research. He either coined or popularized the term 'Virtual Reality' and in the early 1980s founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. In the late 1980s he developed the first multi-person virtual worlds as well as the first "avatars", or representations of users within such systems. He also developed the first virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping, and assorted other areas. Sun Microsystems acquired VPL's seminal portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality and networked 3D graphics in 1999.
From 1997 to 2001, Lanier was the Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and Services, which contained the Engineering Office of Internet2, and served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. From 2001 to 2004 he was Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics Inc. He was Scholar at Large for Microsoft from 2006 to 2009, and Partner Architect at Microsoft Research from 2009 forward.
Lanier received an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2006, was the recipient of CMU's Watson award in 2001, was a finalist for the first Edge of Computation Award in 2005, and received a Lifetime Career Award from the IEEE in 2009 for contributions to Virtual Reality.
Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2010. His book “You Are Not a Gadget" was released in 2010 and was named one of the 10 best books of the year by Michiko Kakutani in the NY Times. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Discover (where he has been a columnist), The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harpers Magazine, The Sciences, Wired Magazine (where he was a founding contributing editor), and Scientific American. He has edited special "future" issues of SPIN and Civilization magazines. He is one of the 100 “remarkable people” of the Global Business Network. In 2005 Lanier was selected as one of the top one hundred public intellectuals in the world by readers of Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica includes him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors. The nation of Palau has issued a postage stamp in his honor. Various television documentaries have been produced about him, such as “Dreadlocks and Digital Dreamworlds” by Tech TV in 2002. The 1992 movie Lawnmower Man was in part based on him and his early laboratory - he was played by Pierce Brosnan. He helped make up the gadgets and scenarios for the 2002 science fiction movie Minority Report by Steven Spielberg. He has appeared on national television many times, on shows such as "The News Hour," "Nightline," and "Charlie Rose," and has been profiled multiple times on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
As a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new "classical" music since the late seventies. He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. He maintains one of the largest and most varied collections of actively played rare instruments in the world. Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Yoko Ono, Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, George Clinton, Sean Lennon, Vernon Reid, Ozomatli, Barbara Higbie, Terry Riley, Duncan Sheik, Pauline Oliveros, and Stanley Jordan.")
Jaron Lanier
Virtual Reality Pioneer and Author, "You Are Not a Gadget"
Latest News
- [HOWTO] Five Basic Ways to Get Your Campaign Started Online
- Google to Charlie Rangel: You Are Dead to Me.
- Roemer to Americans Elect: Thanks Anyway
Personal Democracy Plus
SubscribeStay informed about the latest in technology and politics, government and civic life for less than $1.50/week. Since its launch in 2004, Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) – now Personal Democracy Media (PDM) – has helped foster a national and world-wide conversation about ...
Learn more about the benefits of PDPlus now