It’s been a week since Reboot 8 in Copenhagen, and my head is still spinning from it. Last weekend already I poured most of the snippets of thoughts into a mindmap in order not to forget stuff and create space for even more memories, ideas and thoughts. I have been building on the mindmap in the past week, and am slowly ready to start writing some more extensive thoughts. Let’s start with the themes I picked up from the conference. The seven themes are cut into five posts, to keep the size manageable, but they really are one story.
Renaissance
This of course was the theme of the whole conference. Even though some attempts of connecting presentations to this were somewhat artificial, it was a genuine theme throughout the conference. Revisiting ideas to interpret and make them work in new ways. Hearing that notion of existing ideas reused in new contexts again expressed and reconfirmed in itself was an eye opener I needed. I knew it rationally, now I feel it as a possibility again too. The helicopter was a good idea in Leonardo’s time, and it needed revisiting in the 20th century when we had the means to make it work. A lot of good ideas have been floating around since the dawn of the internet, but also a lot of it wasn’t feasible yet because of lack of people on the net and inflexibility of technology. I heard a number of things that I connect to the Renaissance theme. That broadness of scope, interest, and curiousity are a key part. That it is social above technological. Global microbrands, taking marketing literally as bringing stuff to market. And also that Renaissance brought Inquisition as well, as Euan Semple pointed out. That strengthening emerging European networks in which each participant’s uniqueness is acknowledged and leveraged is important. That we need to use European examples much more often. They are there, we just don’t share them enough. I all knew that. Now for me it is connected in a new way, more established as a pattern, and thus reinforced, stronger, and more likely to be acted upon more effectively.

Leonardo’s Giaconda remixed

All parts in this story:
I Renaissance
II Diversity
III Good Enough
IV Privacy and Ownership
V Relationships, Visualization, Contactivity
Tags: reboot8, renaissance
Photo’s: Reboot sign by Kaeru, Giaconda by Sergio Vollono, both under Creative Commons license