Techonomy Media

How the Latest Breakthroughs Make Doctors Better

Penta Partner Andy Whitehouse, along with Penta Managing Directors Cecilia Thorn and Alex Bluestone, discussed the latest in climate policy and the corporate race to meet ESG standards in the U.S. and in Europe.

How Food Production Contributes to Climate Change - But Is Well-Positioned to Combat Its Effects

According to a statement the company released on its website, the decision was at least partially motivated by the effects of climate change and “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

Hydrogen Takes Center Stage as a Clean Energy Alternative - with Caveats

Techonomy and Wipro Host Ethics and AI Discussion at SXSW 2023

Dr. Larry Brilliant discusses his time in an ashram, eradicating small pox, and how humans are the most invasive species on the planet.

How professional services firm Aon capitalizes on its market-leading data & analytics to scale creative breakthroughs

David Kirkpatrick and Autodesk’s Andrew Anagnost Discuss Why Keeping Egos in Check is Good for Tech Today—and Tomorrow.

The Plastic Credit Exchange is on a mission to "clean up 80 years of plastic waste." It serves a global ecosystem of partners that recover, process, and recycle plastic waste with programs that improve livelihood and scale social impact.

How Aon is elevating data & analytics to prepare clients for the future

New tools help leaders preserve the planet—and increase profit.

Chris Motley made it to the top with help from his community. A virtual mentorship program he founded aims to attract under-represented talent—and help companies deliver on diversity promises on a larger scale.

Product specifications are key to manufacturing, yet haven’t had a streamlined digitized platform up until now. A new tool changes the game, and allows companies to enhance the bottom line as well as reduce their carbon footprint.

The collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh that killed more than 1100 people was a wake-up call to the manufacturing and inspection industries. The brothers behind Inspectorio are pioneering software to ensure transparency and worker safety.

ReSpo.Vision, the startup out of Poland, is making waves in the sports data industry. Through computer vision and machine learning algorithms using only a single camera, it creates immersive VR and AR visualizations.

VRGlass offers immersive software and content that enables companies to create 3D environments within minutes.

CEO Jean Belanger spoke with Techonomy about the most important things companies need to understand about their customers and why AI is so helpful in data engineering.

Xpert’s AI-enhanced technology shows promise in areas ranging from health care, where epilepsy diagnosis and treatment is one focus, to banking, where fraud detection is on the docket.

By transferring the risk of natural disasters, countries improve economic resilience and have greater access to capital to provide relief to citizens if an extreme weather event does occur.

Who should attend Techonomy? Anybody grappling with the impact of technology on their business and the wider world.

The security challenge has become more urgent during the pandemic, and vigilant companies are adopting new approaches in response. Trust is key.

The recent explosion of environmental, sustainable and governance investing has created a lot of opportunities for investors and financial institutions. But with no universally-accepted definition of ESG, how does anyone measure performance?

One longtime patent attorney put it this way: “If data is the new oil, IP is the new gold."

Watch the recap of our session with a top cybersecurity practitioner, a chief trust officer, and a leader of the new era of security automation discuss practical approaches to automation in light of cybersecurity threats.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16 | AN ALL DAY HYBRID EVENT Techonomy, CDX and Worth host our first full-fledged, fully-vaccinated in-person event! We invite you to join us in midtown Manhattan (or virtually) for the latest installment in our Health+Wealth of America series, where we’ll bring together experts on our national mood and politics, the future of […]

Just because you can innovate, doesn't mean you should. And sometimes core parts of the business need to be "gently blown up."

On November 18, join Techonomy and the Observer in an enlightening, video roundtable discussion with VC industry experts.

Join Katica Roy, CEO & Founder of Pipeline, as she walks through 3 solutions to meaningfully and sustainably bring women back into the workforce.

Can Insurtech Rise to the Challenge and Meet the Post-Pandemic Moment?

With many saying the market isn’t supplying enough skilled workers, companies are building their own pipeline via apprentice programs.

The Colonial Pipeline and JBS ransomware attacks were terrifying. Now companies, governments, nonprofits, and individuals are all in greater danger from hacking, cyber-assault, data theft, and other cyber-crimes.

BMC hosts a regular “Executive Council” with senior executives of a small number of clients. A recent virtual discussion honed in on lessons learned from the pandemic and where things head from here.

$69 million for a work of digital art, that anyone can theoretically reproduce? Find out why, all of a sudden, the art world and the cryptocurrency world have gone mad for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and what impact this will have on the economy. Join Techonomy on April 2 at 1 PM ET for a conversation […]

Every country and company now recognizes that its future depends on tech competence. But tech is not the purview of any one country, continent, region, or economic strata. Governance and access are becoming more complicated, especially as China and the U.S. compete in more ways.

With Bitcoin reaching stratospheric new highs seemingly every day, are we witnessing a technological reinvention of currency, or a crazy market fad? On Friday, March 5 at 1 pm ET, join Jalak Jobanputra, founder of Future/Perfect Ventures, and James Ledbetter, editor and publisher of FIN, for a timely discussion of blockchain, cryptocurrency and the future […]

With Bitcoin reaching stratospheric new highs seemingly every day, are we witnessing a technological reinvention of currency, or a crazy market fad? On Friday, March 5 at 1 pm ET, join Jalak Jobanputra, founder of Future/Perfect Ventures, and James Ledbetter, editor and publisher of FIN, for a timely discussion of blockchain, cryptocurrency and the future […]

Vaccines will be near-miraculous. Connecting everyone should be Biden’s top tech priority. The public looks more to business for solutions to society’s ills. Digital transformation could enable it to deliver. Social media needs an empathy infusion. America’s cities are finding new reserves of strength. Everybody needs a colonoscopy. Genomic medicine poses enormous promise. And business can decarbonize the atmosphere.. That’s a taste of what we heard in three days of intense discussion.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6TH | 1 PM ET With razor-thin margins and ballots still being processed, the country is in shock and wondering what’s next. To hear many tell it, we may still not know the full outcome for days or weeks to come. Many of us don’t know whether to be in shock or cautiously […]

As Techonomy joins its partners CDX and Worth to host our ambitious Health+Wealth of America initiative, with three afternoons of programming kicking off in two weeks, join us for a town hall meeting this Friday to discuss why this approach to programming is urgent and necessary now.

With TikTok in play, Huawei banned, WeChat in limbo, and a deeply intertwined economic and tech relationship thrown open to question, what happens next with US-China tech relations? Speakers: a veteran American investor in China, a journalist expert in tech geopolitics, and a CEO who has deeply engaged with both US and Chinese leaders.

The pushback against Covid-19 is leading to a proliferation of rapidly-developed AI applications. As we go from artificial intelligence to artificial super-intelligence, how can enterprises ensure they build ethical AI?

CX, or customer experience, is a well-established business discipline. But now we are in the era of Covid, with widespread home confinement and fear of contagion. Accordingly, the meaning of CX is evolving rapidly. Trust, digital connection, both physical and digital security, and even empathy are newly-reinforced elements in what it means to give customers […]

We mourn the murder of George Floyd. Racial inequality, discrimination, and exclusion are major problems as well in tech and business. To help amplify voices of those working for change, here are eloquent highlights from our events.

We asked leading experts of the telecommunications industry to explain what they think the mobile ecosystem will look like in 2030. Authorities on the subject from Micron, Qualcomm, Ericsson, and more weighed in on what exciting mobile landscape the future might hold.

Fortune Magazine veteran journalist Dumaine spent two years immersed in all things Amazon for his just-published book. The result is the best description yet of the unique culture, ambitions, and technology approach of this super-important company, as well as the thinking of its leader.

During a recent virtual happy hour with more than 20 of our newest members, an interesting question arose – Is Tesla to the Automotive Industry as the iPhone was to mobile? Here’s what a few of them had to say.

Monday, May 18th | 2 PM ET Top communication and marketing executives join us to explain how they balance core brand efforts with agility to address the daily changes we all face.  All organizations are figuring out in real time how to adapt in this weirdly-difficult time. Leaders are challenged to think creatively, as all […]

Join John Chambers and Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick for a live digital roundtable on Friday, March 20th at 3 PM ET.

In Davos Techonomy partnered with Wipro on four meaty sessions, and reported from the scene in several videos. Watch the sessions here. All of them came out great!

While we work hard to edit the Techonomy 2019 videos, you can watch the livestream here. Sunday Afternoon: Monday Morning: Monday Afternoon: Tuesday Morning:

In the digital economy, customers, employees, and other stakeholders have more choice and higher expectations than ever before. It's never been more essential to create experiences -- across the front, middle and back office--that secure their loyalty.

Here’s a list of some of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals that have the most potential to be impacted by 5G technology.

On his podcast Keen on Democracy, Andrew Keen entitles his interview with Techonomy's founder "Why David Kirkpatrick Turned on Facebook." Whether he did is debatable, but Kirkpatrick does not mince words here.

Techonomy events are unlike any others. Check out this video of highlights from our flagship conference, including insights from John Chambers, Sir Tim Berners Lee, Emily Chang, and many more.

Missed Techonomy 2018? Watch video of all the main stage speakers here. Most individual sessions are also available on our agenda page.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Susan Robinson, Principal, Cultural Change and Inclusiveness, EY.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Paul Brody, Global Innovation Blockchain Leader, EY.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Bryan Mason, Chief Operating Officer, VSCO

At our conference in November we’ll host the top authors on AI, major AI product creators, and some of the deepest thinkers on how AI and technology ought to be governed. And that 360 appraisal is just part of our program.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Nir Erez, co-founder and CEO at Moovit, a public transit data and analytics company.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Catherine Steiner-Adair, a research associate at Harvard Medical School.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Robert Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer, BlackRock

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Neesha Hathi, Chief Digital Officer, Charles Schwab

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Tony Prophet, chief equality officer at Salesforce.

Who should attend Techonomy? Anybody grappling with the impact of technology on their business and the wider world.

In which our business manager makes his way to Burning Man and comes back, shall we say, enlightened.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer critical questions in an ongoing series: Paula Goldman, global lead of the Tech and Society Solutions Lab at Omidyar Network.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer three critical questions in an ongoing series: Maynard Webb of Webb Investment Network, an investment firm for world-changing companies.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer three critical questions in an ongoing series: Michael Dunne of ZoZo Go, an auto-tech advisory firm.

Techonomy 2018 speakers answer three critical questions in an ongoing series: Cory Johnson of Ripple, an electronic-payment service.

Despite impressive perseverance, Mark Zuckerberg's attempts to crack China are almost certainly destined to fail. Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick explains why, in this piece he wrote in mid-August for the South China Morning Post.

We Recommend: Getting companies to pay attention to engage in so-called “evidence-based management” is a challenge. This piece from Knowable Magazine takes a deep dive into why.

Speaking to a group of technologists, investors, journalists, and entrepreneurs convened by Techonomy, Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost made the case that software and automation are creating more possibilities for society than they are taking away — that without it, the need for more buildings, roads, and other material things cannot be met.

Technology is neither good nor bad. Which is up to us. That's just one of the energizing insights shared at Techonomy NYC. See the six top takeaways.

Speakers and attendees of Techonomy NYC grappled with the impact of technology on business and society, both for good and for bad. See videos of the key sessions.

The Techonomy community has been grappling with the promise and potential perils of artificial intelligence as the technology has moved from science fiction to reality. Follow the conversation and check out our infographic that breaks down the numbers.

Note: the data in this infographic comes from the article, “Will Bots Take Our Jobs? Yes and No.” by Puneet Shivam

A Techonomy conference is consciousness raising for a time when our brains are overwhelmed by changes wrought by tech. Our dialogues are for anyone who wants to better grasp the times we're in and how to navigate them. Here's what to expect on May 8-9.

In 2016 Mark Zuckerberg famously stood on our stage and declared that the idea of fake news on Facebook influencing the election was "crazy." Techonomy from its founding has been closely attentive to Facebook and its impact. Here we chronicle the path that led to Zuckerberg's testimony to Congress this week. We've written numerous stories, hosted company executives on stage, and published important opinion from outsiders.

In a time when the integrity of the press is more important than ever, major organizations are taking steps to combat fake news and improve news literacy. This discussion from SXSW explores how brands and marketers can build more informed communities.

Get a taste of SXSW with this discussion on the relationship between technology and the arts. It gets at the heart of what it means to be human -- and if that is, in fact, uniquely human. Will technology augment the creative process or replace it?

As part of Techonomy’s partnership with media company Turner, we are publishing a series of interviews with Turner executives. Meredith Artley spoke to Techonomy on digital overlap, tech and news, and Trump's inevitable domination of the news cycle.

Techonomy’s program for our New York conference on May 8th and 9th is progressing. Conversation will range across technologies, industries, strategies, public policy, and the state of human progress in this dizzying, confusing era.

Techonomy's next big conference is in New York on May 8th and 9th. We proudly announce a superb lineup of topics and speakers, including Martin Sorrell, Jeffrey Sachs, Merit Janow, Eric Hippeau, Anjali Sud, and Jon Stein. And we've got an amazing group of yet-to-be announced speakers and guests also joining us. Stay tuned!

Former Vice President of the United States Al Gore introduced a panel at Davos on geospatial technology — a range of tools for the geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth and human societies. See the video of the full discussion.

The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are the world's roadmap for progress. At Techonomy 2017 we asked speakers to choose one of the 17 goals. Here, each speaker explains why they care about that specific goal. The slideshow within is our series on these supporters of the world-changing goals. 

Most people can't tell the difference between today's high-definition TVs and 4K ones, but Bob Hesskamp says HDR will offer a more realistic picture across devices big and small. (Note: Turner is a Techonomy partner.)

A special summit at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas puts the spotlight on Digital Health. Our coverage of the CES Digital Health Summit is sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.

A special summit at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas puts the spotlight on Digital Health. Our coverage of the CES Digital Health Summit is sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.

For 2018 Techonomy turns its attention towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (SDGs). We will explore how tech can advance the goals and the business case for action. Making the world better may generate $12 trillion in new business and 380 million new jobs.

CVS agreed Sunday to buy Aetna for about $69 billion. Just a month ago, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini recently sat down with David Kirkpatrick onstage at Techonomy 2017 and shared his vision for a new kind of in-store experience for healthcare.

A conversation with Mark Bertolini of Aetna and David Kirkpatrick at Techonomy 2017.

To bring a fresh perspective to Techonomy 2017, we invited four high school students to attend the event and share their impressions.

Business leaders, policy experts and engineers gathered at Techonomy 2017 for two days of discussion on the promise and perils of a tech-driven future. Status Update: It’s complicated. Attendees painted a picture of great progress driven by innovation, but the way forward is fraught with peril.

From the impact of AI to the perils of “fake news” on social media, this year’s event looks at the weirdly increasing convergence between humans and technology and its impact on business, social and economic progress NEW YORK, NY – October 16, 2017 – Techonomy, the thought leadership company that poses the most provocative questions […]

What we do at Techonomy is unique, by two essential measures–the people on stage, and the people in the audience. You will not find a mix of thinkers like this elsewhere. Here we introduce a few of the amazing people speaking at Half Moon Bay in November. Diversity and intensity of collective conversation are our tools to deepen our collective understanding of the zeitgeist, as it is inflected by tech.

We've just published our program for Techonomy 2017, this coming Nov. 5-7. In addition to big names like the CEOs of Aetna and Verizon, John Chambers, and Beth Comstock, we've gathered an inspiring group of less-famous leaders who you will want to get to know.

GE’s Beth Comstock, Arianna Huffington of Thrive Global, and John Martin of Turner are among 60 speakers dissecting the role of tech on social and economic progress, and especially in health. New York City, NY, April 18, 2017 – Techonomy, a leading events and media company focused on helping organizations and executives prepare for the […]

StartUp Health NOW: Longevity Moonshots, with Craig Venter, PhD

Cloud computing and digital platforms offer huge benefits for people around the world. But the rise of large and powerful global technology platforms owned by commercial companies raises fundamental questions. What kind of rights, rules and responsibilities should govern this new landscape? What is the role of nation-states, when technology is global and data moves seamlessly across international borders? What kind of rules will best insure that tech is a force for good? Who should set them? And how can tech companies, governments and civil society best begin to address these issues?

David Kirkpatrick, Founder and CEO of Techonomy, chats with Dodi Axelson at CES 2017.

Digitalization comes with both - possibilities and challenges. In this talk Ian Goldin, Timotheus Hoettges and Niko Mohr will navigate through the fields of automation and AI. They will discuss how this will affect our life and society in the near future and how we can learn from history to face and cope with change.

David Liu of XO Group explains why he thinks our interest in democratizing everything is creating an uninspired society.

Dan'l Lewin at Techonomy 2014.

Marleen Vogelaar's Fusion talk at Techonomy 2014.

Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau of the European Commission at Techonomy 2014.

Pradeep Khosla's Fusion talk from Techonomy 2014.

Barton Gellman on security and privacy at Techonomy 2014.

David Kirkpatrick sits down with Dr. David Agus at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to discuss the future of tech and healthcare.

Chief Sustainability Officer of BT Group, Niall Dunne sat down with Chief Techonomist David Kirkpatrick for a chat at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

David Kirkpatrick was joined by Missy Cummings, David Kenny, Brad Smith and Paul Daugherty for a panel discussion on AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Regional innovators are bucking the notion that Western imported tech is the solution to the Middle East's problems. Music, creative ways to bypass censorship, and grassroots literacy are the real paths to change, and are being forged by innovators already in the region. Esra'a Al Shafei tells how you can help.

With tech changing business and societal norms, where does that leave government? Will it exist as we know it in 20 years? Can governments become as agile as businesses? What should evidence-based policy and data-driven government look like?

As the IoT connects more and more, business and industry will reshape products and services to create a more intuitive and efficient world. What are the wildest ideas that may emerge? Where will the benefits appear? Is there anywhere the IoT can’t reach?

A conversation between David Kirkpatrick and Marina Kaljurand, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Estonia.

A conversation between David Kirkpatrick and Bill Ruh, CEO, GE Digital; SVP and Chief Digital Officer, GE.

We're in an era of agile aerospace, when a satellite the size of a shoebox can show us things we've never seen before. From agriculture and forestry, to business intelligence and defense. How will monitoring everything, every day impact how we live?

How might humans, machines and the network evolve together? An ecosystem that responds, adapts, adjusts and intuits our every move is the promise of an interconnected, intelligent world. It will be stitched together with IoT and monitored by AI. Will the biggest challenge to building this connected and networked world be technologies, industry cooperation, or societal response?

In places with limited connectivity, innovative ways to share information, via CDs, USB, and Bluetooth are changing personal communication, politics, entertainment and commerce.

Singer-songwriter Lolo was the featured musical guest at Techonomy 2016.

Join business and government leaders as they analyze and evaluate the political revolution of 2016 and predict its implications for the future of the United States and the world.

Data is transforming not only our institutions, but out relationship to them. It's also transforming out relationship to each other. Access to data and its interpretation will inform our notions of injustice, inequality, fear, want, need and our perceptions of our abilities to address them. How should we be approaching the issue of access, ownership and value of data? Do we have the institutions we need?

Powered by chemistry and biology, soon temporary tattoos will be not just a conduit of self-expression but one of health awareness. What happens when low-cost biosensors embedded in tattoos can detect blood alcohol or sugar? Or biomarkers related to diseases like Malaria or Zika? How will that impact not just the health and wellness of individuals, but that of the healthcare ecosystem?

Nothing is more inefficient than how we manage and parcel out payment in American healthcare. Healthcare administration costs $150 billion nationwide, and in hospitals, comprises 25% of total costs, compared to 12% in Canada. Authorizing procedures is another delay. But networked tech is targeting bureaucracy and efficiency at the same time it’s stitching together new methods of care. How do we reduce the cost, increase efficiencies and improve healthcare?

A conversation with Dr. Ross Breckenridge, on the shift from 20 years at the UK's National Health Service to CEO of an early-stage pharma startup.

No development in tech is more hyped and freighted with expectation than artificial intelligence. Every industry is poised for AI driven transformation, but none more than health. What should we expect? But since AI only really gets its “I” if the software gets access to gigantic data sets, where will the data come from, and who will control it? What role will tech companies play, compared to those traditionally focused on health? Will AI alter the industry balance of power?

Be it analytics, data or devices, tech is changing the healthcare landscape for patients and healthcare professionals alike. But how do we ensure a move towards a more patient centric, integrated and connected system? One with lower costs and better outcomes that extends beyond the walls of our hospitals and into our day today?

Crypto currencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Peercoin and Ripple generate ever more enthusiasm. Blockchain is said to pose the potential of platforms for nearly all data. Will central banks be able to reassert control? Will a digital fiat currency, backed and minted by those banks, be the future of digital money? (In association with Omidyar Network)

Personalized, digitized healthcare is evolving at warp speed. We not gather health data from not just wearables, but implantables and ingestibles. New tools and technology will interact with ambient devices to assess and even diagnose us. What is the nature of this evolving ecosystem surrounding the person? Does it have limits?

Singer-Songwriter Lolo and friends chat with Techonomy President Josh Kampel at Techonomy 2016.

Rachel Maguire, Research Director at the Institute for the Future, gives a glimpse into the future of health tech ecosystem. Where is all this data, analytics and the cloud taking us? How will AI, automation, blockchain and robotics impact healthcare? How will these innovations integrate into standards of care, and how broad will the impact be?

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, UCSD’s Benjamin H. Bratton and neuroscientist entrepreneur Vivienne Ming discuss where AI, biology and machines that learn by themselves are taking us.

Dr. Eric Topol visits with David Kirkpatrick at the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay during Techonomy Health.

Shunee Yee, President and CEO of CSOFT International Ltd., speaks about language and how it separates us in our current digitized age at Techonomy 2016.

José-Marie Griffiths, President of Dakota State University discusses how Technology has eroded trust in our "traditional infrastructure of truth."

Joshua Browder discusses DoNotPay at Techonomy 2016.

Gary Rieschel of Qiming Venture Partners, speaks at Techonomy 2016.

Roger Pilc of Pitney Bowes, speaks at Techonomy 2016.

Andy Lowery, CEO of RealWear Inc. speaks about the "last six inches" of the Industrial Internet at Techonomy 2016.

Marlin Page of Sisters Code with some "real talk" about diversity and inclusion in Technology at Techonomy 2016.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down at Techonomy 2016 with Chief Techonomist, David Kirkpatrick, for an exclusive interview that made worldwide headlines.

Tune in to Techonomy 2016, LIVE from the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay.

The video hasn't been sliced and diced yet, but the Livestream can still be watched--including great sessions on IoT, The future of health with David Agus, Marketing with Carolyn Everson of Facebook, danah boyd and Gillian Tett (final session) on the perils of a data-centric society, Sec. of Transportation Anthony Foxx, author Rana Foroohar, sharing economy expert Arun Sundararajan, and many more deep thinkers. The program is in two chunks-morning and afternoon. We will break it up into sessions in coming days.

Gods in Boxes: Almighty Algorithms and Hidden Values Much of what we see and learn is determined by increasingly complex algorithms. From news to auto emissions, from pricing to scheduling, tech largely indistinguishable from magic is selecting, editing, and organizing more and more of our daily lives. How do we ensure the values and beliefs […]

The transition to a technologized and interconnected society is more and more challenging for everyone, everywhere. We still need to keep amity and constructive human interaction as our supreme priority. That’s why we call the Techonomy 2015 conference “Re-Humanizing Society.” Here is where you’ll be able to watch the Livestream of the conference from its […]

The Techonomy Policy conference in June 2015 focused on the relationship between tech innovation and government. The tech industry and Washington need to better understand and work together, for our national good. (Videos play in reverse order, beginning with the Sean Parker and senators closing session. Click the arrow to scroll through earlier sessions.)

Techonomy Policy aims to bring a higher level of dialogue to the confluence of technology innovation and government. The need for the tech industry and Washington to better understand, engage and productively work together is crucial to the future of economic progress and social cohesion in our tech-enhanced, digitally-enabled times. As tech’s advances spread into virtually every sector of business and society, how do government and policy keep up and respond? And as tech companies aggressively move into diverse industries and more and more areas become tech-infused, how does business better work with policymakers?

Techonomy Bio is a big-picture exploration of the transformative global social and economic benefits driven by the rapid advances being made in the biological and life sciences. Powered by IT developments and spurred on by new collaborative and open-source thinking, these advances affect everything from manufacturing to medicine, food to fuel and business to buildings. We […]

This video captures highlights from last year’s inaugural Techonomy Bio conference. Join us on March 25 at the Computer History Museum for Techonomy Bio 2015, where we’ll again bring together cross-sector leaders from biotech, IT, science, healthcare, pharma, agriculture, academia, finance, and the synthetic bio community for an open and dynamic dialogue on the fast moving ideas, solutions […]

“The next phase of all this stuff is increasingly viewed to be the Internet of Things.” That’s how Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick introduced his discussion with Flextronics CMO Michael Mendenhall on the final day of the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in Munich. Kirkpatrick didn’t feel compelled to define what he meant by “all this stuff” because it implicitly […]

As 2014 winds down, we look back on a productive and impactful year at Techonomy. Our events and publishing projects continued the dialogue about the centrality of technology in modern life and its potential to make the world better. Our editorial content is a growing channel. Our community of writers and videographers includes over 100 published contributors, including both professional journalists and thought leaders of industry, politics, and public service. Here's a look back at our five most-read Techonomy exclusives of the past twelve months.

​The sharing economy has taken off with the dramatic rise of companies like Uber and Airbnb, but the measures to regulate it are lagging far behind. April Rinne of the World Economic Forum says the public’s perception of what’s necessary to extend the benefits of so-called collaborative consumption to everyone—high and low income alike—is also lagging. “At the end of the day, sharing rather than owning assets, regardless of how much you have, still helps you save money,” Rinne said at September's Techonomy Detroit conference at Wayne State University. “We need to rethink whether we’re looking at this as there’s one model for hipsters and people that are well-to-do and there’s another model for low income. There’s a whole lot of opportunity in the middle.”

When it comes to driving, we spend a lot of timing thinking about navigating from point A to point B, but often forget about point C, which is where we park, says Zia Yusuf of Streetline. “It’s estimated that 25 to 30 percent of traffic in the city is caused by people looking for parking,” Yusuf said at September's Techonomy Detroit conference at Wayne State University. Streetline is working to solve that problem. Through a system of sensors and consumer- and business-facing apps, the smart-parking company enables cities to instate dynamic pricing that adjusts automatically to demand.

November's Techonomy 2014 conference continued our ongoing exploration of the manifold ways technology is accelerating business and social progress. We sliced and diced that question every way we could think of, with leaders both famous and unknown. The challenges grow greater even as the opportunities become more obvious. Navigating those options is a giant job for society and its leaders. Here is a video snapshot of TE14 highlights, and more detailed reports are below from sessions and onsite conversations. It was a series of rich and gratifying conversations.

Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick sits down for spirited conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in the final session of the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

It’s 2020—robots and automation have replaced workers in droves. So what are all the people doing? What new systems must emerge to employ and engage people, and what new policies and regulations will be needed to protect them? John Markoff of the New York Times discusses the future of work with Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Jessica Rosenworcel of the FCC, Ford's Ken Washington, and Philip Zelikow of the Markle Foundation in this session from the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Why didn’t the rise of network technologies bring great wealth to the world in the last decade? Instead of experiencing excellent financial health because of the efficiencies of digital technologies, those efficiencies are having the effect of concentrating wealth while reducing overall growth. How can we better apply these powerful tools to promote greater balance, clarity, focus and genuine human connection? Technologist and author Jaron Lanier tackles some big-picture questions about the present and future role of tech in society at the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

The best opportunities will come from creating the greatest impact on the biggest realms of human activity, like healthcare, food, water, energy, and education. How can businesses rise to the occasion and focus on the things that really matter? How can they best partner with governments and NGOs to implement the solutions? At the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Larry Brilliant of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, Pfizer's Geno Germano, Leila Janah of the Sama Group, and Ericsson's Rima Qureshi discuss applying tech tools to global challenges in a session moderated by The Economist's Matthew Bishop.

Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick speaks with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner onstage at the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

How and where is society moving in this era of innovation, entrepreneurship and rapid change? Two masters of the genre talk about the next big disruptions and where they’re most needed. Where do they agree, and where do they disagree? LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel of Thiel Capital and The Founders Fund tackle these and other questions on the first day of the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

At the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Bloomberg's Emily Chang chats with David Marcus, the new vice president of messaging products at Facebook, about the emergence of Messenger as a networking tool.

The human brain, a super organ of around 100 billion nerve cells, remains the single most powerful, complex and least understood computer on the planet. Cracking its code will allow us to better utilize our brains, and to drive the creation of better artificial intelligences. The applications span from marketing to medicine and education to warfare. How will how we work, live and play be changed by these new neuro-discoveries? Ed Boyden, associate professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute, explores the frontier of brain mapping in this talk at the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

In a reprise of his talk at Techonomy Detroit in September, author and tech-polemicist Andrew Keen warns the audience at the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., that tech and Internet companies should not get be trusted as guardians of our collective welfare.

An increasing number of companies refuse to follow the rules. Tesla is no longer just a car company; it’s a transportation, fuel and energy-storage company. Companies must embrace the foundational change being driven by tech every day. What must business leaders do to be the disruptors rather than the disrupted? Ali Diab of Collective Health, eBay's Dane Howard, LendingClub's Scott Sanborn, Jake Seid of Auction.com, and moderator Dan Elron of Accenture discuss how entire industries will transform in a technologized economy in this session at Techonomy 2014 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

At the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick speaks with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison about the future of online payments.

How is Africa’s youthful population preparing to write a chapter in the history of development through game changing inventions? Where do they find inspiration? Join a remarkable conversation with three innovators from across Africa. In this session at Techonomy 2014 in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Kate Krontiris of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society speaks with Spiruteens co-founder Bonolo Matjila, Human Waste Bioreactor founder Leroy Mwasaru, and David Moinina Sengeh of Global Minimum and the MIT Media Lab about how a new generation is changing Africa's approach to innovation.

Trends in openness, access to technology and an expansion of new resource channels combined with a burgeoning hacker mentality mean doors are starting to open to an industry long closed off to startups. What does the future of making things look like as the hardware changes and software evolves? What is the new infrastructure of manufacturing? Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick speaks with Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, PCH CEO Liam Casey, and Shapeways co-founder Marleen Vogelaar at the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

At the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Drew Purves of Microsoft Research speaks about why we will need a second green revolution in order to keep the globe well fed.

Tech and the Internet blur borders between industries. Meanwhile, connectedness is accelerating globalization. We’re redefining what a company does and where it is. What does the new borderless world of business mean for incumbents, and for the next generation corporation? In this session from the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Castlight Health CEO Giovanni Colella, Intuit founder Scott Cook, McKinsey's Eric Kutcher, and Talko CEO Ray Ozzie discuss how tech is transforming the way that we define industries.

Innovation is happening faster because it’s getting better organized. Incubators of all stripes are sprouting all over the world. Large corporations are spinning in talent and building internal startup labs. Leaders know they can’t just wait around for inspiration to strike, they have to seek it out or grow it themselves. At the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Idealab CEO Bill Gross, Citi Ventures CEO Debby Hopkins, and Coca-Cola SVP Guy Wollaert talk about how companies can stay ahead of the innovation curve in this discussion moderated by McKinsey's Michael Chui.

At the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick interviews the irreverent Michael Fertik of Reputation.com about his latest "innovation," Femto-Management.

Innovation in biology is accelerating at a rate that makes Moore’s Law look leisurely, throwing open doors to opportunities unimaginable. From food to fuel, manufacturing to medicine, business to buildings, what do the visionaries see just beyond the horizon? Stanford's Drew Endy, Brian Frezza of Emerald Therapeutics, Nancy J. Kelley of the New York Genome Center, and Floyd Romesberg of The Scripps Research Institute discuss the social and economic impact of biotech in this discussion, moderated by Marcus Wohlsen of WIRED, from the opening day of the Techonomy 2014 conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

On the opening day of the Techonomy 2014 conference, Laura Mather, founder and CEO of Unitive, spoke about how her company's software helps to eliminate unconscious bias and encourage diversity in hiring and promotion.

These are wondrous times. Transformation is cascading across society. While it may be unsettling how quickly our lives can change, it’s invigorating to step back and observe the process. It’s easy to take my iPhone for granted. Occasionally I rouse an appropriate awe. The information abundance at our fingertips at all times is truly astonishing. […]

How can connectivity make for a better driving experience? At our Techonomy Detroit conference at Wayne State University, Ford’s Don Butler talked about the ways the 111-year-old auto company is leveraging connectivity to make its vehicles more attractive to consumers. Increased connectivity—whether it’s beamed in via AM radio, brought in by syncing the vehicle with smart devices, or built into the vehicle itself through smart-computing platforms—is allowing drivers to be truly mobile, Butler said.

Internet entrepreneur and author Andrew Keen will join Techonomy Media, a New York-based media and events company, as a contributing editor. Keen’s ongoing web series, “KeenON,” featuring interviews with leading opinion makers in technology and policy, will move to Techonomy.com from TechCrunch.

After Google released the demographic data of its employees in May, a slew of other Internet giants followed suit, reaffirming a troubling truth: the tech industry is largely male and largely white. At September's Techonomy Detroit conference at Wayne State University, Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelmann talked about the diversity divide and what is needed to close it. “Only 3 to 13 percent of the venture-backed companies are run by women,” she said. “If you look at Indiegogo, which is an equal-opportunity funding playing field, and you see that 47 percent of all campaigns that reach their funding target are run by women, that conversation about why venture capital is unequal is almost obsolete.”

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the new tech gadgets, gizmos, software, and systems coming out, but as Jack Dorsey says, “At the end of the day, technology is really just a tool. That’s all it is. And great tools … allow us to focus on things that are more meaningful to us.” Dorsey spoke at the Techonomy Detroit conference at Wayne State University in September, explaining why citizens should voice their support for tech that has a positive impact. Civic-minded technology, he said, promotes better decision-making and leads us to “a stronger economy … and a stronger civic society.”

Techonomy, a New York-based media and event company, hosts its fifth annual Techonomy conference November 9-11 at The Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California. Techonomy will convene leaders from diverse industries and social sectors to discuss technology as a driver of productivity and social progress. The invite-only conference provides a meeting ground for technologists, innovators, business leaders, government officials and academics to explore the ongoing societal transformation driven by technology, as well as the challenges and opportunities that creates.

In the weeks leading up to our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit event, we collaborated with Magisto and Ford to launch the #LoveMyCity video contest, inviting members of our community to create and share Magisto videos that showcase what they loved about their city. (To learn more about the technology underlying the Magisto platform, read David […]

The ideas are flowing fast, as is the money. Young (and old) the world over are increasingly drawn to entrepreneurship, and inventive tech solutions are emerging everywhere. Is “Silicon Valley” a spirit rather than a place? What makes a city attractive for company incubation? Is this energy likely to continue, or will cities like Detroit have trouble sustaining it? Will the successful companies of the future stay put or move elsewhere? In this session from our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference, angel investor Jill Ford, Josh Linkner of Detroit Venture Partners, VegasTechFund's Andy White, and Venture for America's Andrew Yang join moderator Andrew Keen examine how cities can grow and retain talent and innovative companies.

By 2022 the U.S. is projected to need 1.4 million new programmers, but at the current rate only 400,000 IT grads will emerge to fill them. How America tackles this disparity will help determine its ongoing global competitiveness and the economic success of all Americans. Codecademy has developed innovative training tools, and the White House is turning to this issue with great urgency. In this session from our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference, Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talks to Brian Forde of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Codecademy CEO Zach Sims about how to close the looming skills gap.

What is citizenship in the digital age? Policy experts Susan Crawford of Harvard University and Jennifer Bradley of the Brookings Institution discuss themes from Crawford’s new book about civic engagement, innovation, and the role of tech and the Internet for Detroit and other major cities.

What has philanthropy achieved in Detroit and America’s cities, and where will it go next? Join the heads of the Case and Kresge Foundations for a conversation on the role of foundations in the revival of urban life. How do they see their role in bolstering partnerships and collaboration in the communities they serve? How do they enable a new notion of civics, and civic leaders driven by the use of tech for social good? In this session from Techonomy Detroit 2014, Nolan Finley of The Detroit News interviews Jean Case of The Case Foundation and Rip Rapson of The Kresge Foundation about how the non-profit sector can drive partnerships for change.

Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures discusses how tech is transforming the economy in this talk from our Techonomy Detroit 2014 conference.

As companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Apple release their hiring data figures, the Twitter-verse explodes with commentary on the lack of diversity in the industry. This is not a new problem, but there should be new solutions. How can tech and American entrepreneurship be more inclusive? Brian Forde of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Google's Chris Genteel, Laura Mather of Unitive, Marlin Page of Sisters Code, and Indiegogo's Danae Ringelmann discuss how to make the tech industry more of a melting pot in this Techonomy Detroit 2014 breakout session, moderated by Andrew Keen of TechCrunch.

Airbnb, DogVacay, Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit. A host of new platforms are transforming the economics of sharing. But what does their rapid spread mean for a city and its citizens? Is the sharing economy the future of employment, compensation, and exchange of value? As the trend reorients business, social and cultural norms, how can we ensure that cities and citizens become beneficiaries? TaskRabbit's Stacy Brown-Philpot, April Rinne of the World Economic Forum, and NYU's Arun Sundararajan discuss the future of the sharing economy in this session from Techonomy Detroit 2014, moderated by Jennifer Bradley of the Brookings Institution.

From bike lanes to the hyper-loop, how do you build an intelligent urban transit infrastructure that offers efficient mobility? How do we knit together the various modes of transit to form robust, sustainable transportation systems that serve the city and its citizens? Ford's Don Butler, Jeff Olson of Alta Planning + Design, Shiva Shivakumar of Urban Engines, and Streetline's Zia Yusuf tackle look at how tech is transforming the way we get around town in this Techonomy Detroit session moderated by Fast Company's Greg Lindsay.

The digitization of everything and access to vast databases of information means we can measure more of the world. It also means we can change what we measure—about city functions, services and the economy. New opportunities are emerging to cultivate innovation, build new services and unlock economic value. Agencies across the country are opening doors to a data treasure trove hidden for years. In this session from our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference, Alex Alsup of LOVELAND Technologies, David Behen of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management, and Budget, McKinsey's Michael Chui, NYU's Joel Gurin, and Tony Scott of VMware examine how data can unlock business opportunities and speed progress for cities and citizens.

Building a brand in today’s hyper-connected, consumer-driven era means two things. First,more than ever before, brands need to own their POV and stay focused. Second, your company has the ability to rise, commute, work, dine, drink and go to bed with your customer; never before has this intimacy been possible. What you do with that relationship determines success or failure. In this presentation at our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference, Constance DeCherney, head of the iCrossing Collaboratory, looks at some examples to see what it takes.

At our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference, Beth Niblock, Detroit's first CIO, interviewed Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square about how tech tools can help small merchants thrive in communities like Detroit.

The American Dream—that hard work could lead anyone to prosperity, success and upward mobility—feels increasingly irrelevant for a growing and frighteningly large group of Americans. What will people do to attain economic and social security? Will the middle class survive? What new policies and strategies could we devise to help keep the American Dream alive? Carol Goss of Harvard's Advanced Leadership Initiative, Indiegogo's Danae Ringelmann, Elizabeth Shuler of the AFL-CIO, and Philip Zelikow of the Markle Foundation tackled these and other questions in a discussion moderated by David Kirkpatrick that kicked off our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference.

Andrew Keen, Internet entrepreneur and author of several books about technology including "Digital Vergito" and, most recently, "The Internet Is Not the Answer," spoke at our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference about his belief that tech companies seek profits under the misleading guise of doing social good.

“City labs,” set up explicitly to advance progress, sharing and a digitally-enhanced economy, are emerging around the world. Defined by cross-sector collaboration, they are harnessing creativity, innovation, civic entrepreneurship and tech to re-build, re-vitalize and re-think solutions to crucial urban issues. At our Sept. 16 Techonomy Detroit conference, Gabriella Gómez-Mont spoke about her efforts to foster civic engagement in Mexico City in an interview with Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review.

Techonomy Detroit brings together leaders and thinkers from business, technology, government, and academia to better understand how to move the U.S., and the world, into an urbanized, technologized, inclusive future. Detroit’s travails symbolize issues faced by many American cities and to some extent the entire country. But this is also a city energetically seeking to revive itself. The birthplace of assembly-line manufacturing and technologized transportation, Detroit was once the innovation engine of the U.S. economy. There is no better place for a conversation on how our national priorities must change in a technologized economy.

The shift from analog to digital trade means global commerce is increasingly vulnerable to digital attack, says former National Intelligence Director Adm. Mike McConnell. McConnell, now with Booz Allen Hamilton, is concerned that cyber attack tools—which nation states are building by the thousands in the name of mutual deterrence—will get into the hands of extremist or terrorist groups. At our recent Data Security Lab, Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick spoke with McConnell about how the digital revolution is transforming security and intelligence.

Former National Intelligence Director Adm. Mike McConnell (now at Booz Allen Hamilton) notes in this interview at Techonomy's recent Data Security Lab that our democracy has traditionally made decisions and developed legislation in reaction to events. That is unwise now, though, he says, if we wait until a major cyber event before imposing regulations to demand good cyber practices from business. Sadly, though, he suspects that we won't act until such an event happens.

At our March 19 Data Security Lab, sponsored by EMC, Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick spoke with RSA’s Art Coviello and former National Intelligence Director Adm. Mike McConnell (now at Booz Allen Hamilton) about emerging cybertrends. Coviello and McConnell kicked off the discussion by sharing their thoughts about why companies are increasingly at risk, and what they can do to deter cyberthreats.

[View the story “Top Tweets from Techonomy Bio” on Storify]

“Universities are two or three hundred years behind the curve,” said writer and entrepreneur Andrew Keen (without any evident irony) when we spoke with him at the recent DLDnyc conference. Despite a technologized economy “rushing at about a million miles an hour,” Keen believes our institutions of higher education still “move with glacial speed.” But he doesn’t think that keeping up with technology will necessarily solve this problem. While the “Digital Vertigo” author is a confirmed techno-skeptic, he recognizes that the failures of higher education in America are not necessarily caused by the misuse of technology. Rather, he believes universities are suffering from a deeper cultural and intellectual malaise.

We are in the midst of "a trust revolution," says Michael Lazerow, "where everything is transparent." This revolution in transparency is redefining the rules of business, government, and beyond, as all of us are being forced to act more responsibly and with greater authenticity. Lazerow, CMO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and founder of Buddy Media (purchased by Salesforce in 2012), talked with Techonomy at the recent DLDnyc conference. He explained how tech fuels transparency in an age where everything is interconnected.

Gearing up for next week's first annual M1 ("Mobile-First") Summit, Techonomy sat down with M1 host and entrepreneur Nihal Mehta to talk about his vision for what he calls the first mobile innovation conference of its kind. Mehta, who is also a founding general partner of Eniac Ventures, says he's launching M1 to fill a gap in the mobile conference world—the need for an advanced-level event that goes beyond the basic ABCs of mobile innovation to explore in depth what boundaries are being pushed and what's expected to happen next. "Disruption is inevitable and it's happening very quickly," Mehta told us. "Instead of pushing it away and inhibiting it you gotta embrace it. If you push it away it's going to potentially destroy your business."

A who's who of Techonomy participants join Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick in a series of highlights from our 2010-12 conferences that address the growing impact of technology on business and society and why, increasingly, every company is a technology company.

We hope you enjoy this digital version of our 2014 Techonomy magazine. It includes four exclusive feature articles plus shorter techonomic items, along with content from our 2013 conferences. You'll find Jack Dorsey's original drawings for Square, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini's grim diagnosis and aggressive course of treatment for American health care, David Kirkpatrick's assessment of Facebook's Internet.org initiative, and much more.

No sector of society is free from risk of cyberattack, says Craig Mundie of Microsoft. "Information technology is embedding itself in virtually everything," making us susceptible to threats ranging from malicious mischief to full-blown cyberterrorism, Mundie told us in an interview at Techonomy 2013. Such new and developing threats call for products and business methods to improve alongside technology. The government, too, is going to have to to keep up with better law enforcement, intelligence, and defense.

"While tech is sometimes thought of as a sector or a niche, it's increasingly clear that tech is the economy and tech is the transformative force," says Devin Wenig, president of eBay's global e-commerce business. As tech reinvents industries, jobs, and processes, and changes how people work and act, companies that want to succeed must learn to accept creative destruction. "Any time you go through a disruption, you end up with winners and losers," said Wenig, who joined us at a Techonomy dinner salon in San Francisco. "But I do believe it's a positive-sum game," he added. And he says that in this game, humans, not just machines, are winning. "I don't think the world coming is all full of drones and robots.... It can be amazingly humanistic," Wenig said.

Cybersecurity expert and RSA executive chairman Art Coviello says it's crucial for privacy advocates and industry leaders to come together to create modern laws to protect society from cybercrime. But the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, also known as CISPA and the Rogers-Ruppersberger Bill, was introduced in Congress in 2011. And while the House of Representatives has passed it twice, the bill still languishes in the Senate. In part two of a conversation recorded at Techonomy's recent Data Security Lab, Coviello talks about the responsibilities both of the government and of private companies that have suffered security breaches.

From advanced automation in the developed world to smart phone adoption in the developing world, global society is getting more information-driven at a mind-boggling rate. As John Chen says, "This is not science fiction. This is real-time stuff." Chen, the CEO of BlackBerry, sat down with Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick at our San Francisco dinner salon to talk about the future of tech and the trends he's seeing in markets around the world. Chen's longtime business leadership and experience both in the U.S. and Asia give him a unique perspective. In the developed world, Chen said, "all the players are talking about machine-to-machine, they're talking about connected cars, they're talking about making your life more automated." But in the developing world, Chen added, people are just starting to get into the consumer space. "More and more people are moving into the middle class, more and more people are knowledgeable, are trained," he said.

On top of the more than 2.4 billion people using smartphones, tablets, and PCs, another 1 billion devices—including sensors, card readers, and vending machines—currently access the Internet. But by the end of this decade some 200 billion items will be connected to the Internet and digitally controlled, predicts Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA, the security division of EMC. The attack "surface," as Coviello calls it—meaning the range of potential points of entry for cyber criminals—will grow vast. At our recent Data Security Lab Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talked to security veteran Coviello about changes in the industry, emerging risks, and what kind of leadership and governance we need to address them.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen, who's been at the helm for just four months, has a looming task ahead of him—bring the once-booming brand back to its glory days. At Techonomy's recent San Francisco dinner salon, Chen talked with us about the future of BlackBerry, citing its security systems as one key way the company can turn itself around. "It's the most secure mobile environment," Chen said. "Today in this world of security complexity, people are not only stealing the data but they're modifying the data. It's an enormous opportunity."

Every week we spotlight techonomic happenings on the Web and beyond, picking people, companies, and trends that exemplify tech’s ever-growing role in business and society. Here’s what’s got our attention.

Every week we spotlight techonomic happenings on the Web and beyond, picking people, companies, and trends that exemplify tech’s ever-growing role in business and society. Here’s what’s got our attention.

When you want to make a mushroom omelet, you usually cut off the stems and use the caps—the tastiest, most tender part of edible fungi. But when it comes to putting mushrooms to more utilitarian use, the web of roots called mycelium has been getting a lot more love. Paul Stemets, author of “Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World” has prototyped medicinal applications from fungi, including small pox, HIV, and malaria treatments, and used mushroom enzymes to clean up contaminated soil. Now he’s developed a building material that attracts and kills termites. Meanwhile, a company called Ecovative Design is using mycelium to make mushroom foam for packaging (Dell uses the stuff to ship its computer servers) and building insulation that’s grown between walls instead of injected or installed.

The passenger pigeon became extinct in 1914, though not long before it flew in flocks that could number in the billions (yes, with a "b"). But a group of scientists has teamed up with tech visionary Stewart Brand in spearheading an effort to bring the species back to life. The so-called de-extinction project could reanimate long-lost species like the woolly mammoth and even mitigate environmental threats like melting permafrost, according to some.

Every week we spotlight techonomic happenings on the Web and beyond, picking people, companies, and trends that exemplify tech’s ever-growing role in business and society. Here’s what’s got our attention. A new report from entrepreneurship advocacy organization the Kauffman Foundation indicates the number high-tech startups—defined as young companies with a high proportion of STEM workers—has been in decline since 2000. The study concludes that the slowdown in tech entrepreneurship “might have disproportionate effects on long-term economic growth,” noting that while tech startups often fail, they help to sustain a vigorous rate of net new job creation.

Every week we spotlight techonomic happenings on the Web and beyond, picking people, companies, and trends that exemplify tech’s ever-growing role in business and society. Here’s what’s got our attention. The Day We Fight Back, Tuesday’s anti-spying Web protest, rallied more than 6,000 websites against government surveillance—among them, Internet heavyweights Google, Mozilla, Reddit, and Tumblr. Protest participants hosted a banner on their sites, linking visitors to legislators to encourage them to take action. “Dear internet, we’re sick of complaining about the NSA,” the banner read. “We want new laws that curtail online surveillance.”

Welcome to the first installment of our Techonomic 5, a brand-new series spotlighting techonomic happenings from around the Web and beyond. Every two weeks, our editorial team shares its picks of the top people, companies, and trends that exemplify tech's ever-growing role in business and society. Here's what's grabbing our attention: tech curriculums, Canadian data security, apps for mindfulness, the rise of Netflix, and Kayaanisquatsi director Godfrey Reggio.

Edelman and Techonomy Media today announced a partnership centered on accelerating the debate around the role and impact of technology on business and society. As Techonomy expands its portfolio of events and media products, the companies will collaborate to develop, produce and lead conversations, content and conferences for market leaders, entrepreneurs and institutions that want to change the world through technology. As part of the agreement, Techonomy Media has appointed Edelman as its agency of record for PR and digital services.

Join Chief Techonomist David Kirkpatrick and business leaders, technologists, and leading thinkers for an intimate two-day interactive conversation about tech-driven transformation in business and society.

As the urban population soars, city streets are growing increasingly traffic-clogged and difficult to navigate, impeding our ease of transit and, more critically, harming our environment. At our Techonomy 2013 conference, we talked to Jim Farley, EVP of global marketing at Ford, about the car industry and using shared ownership to tackle urban mobility. While business-to-consumer models (think Zipcar) have thus far dominated the shared-ownership market, they have struggled to succeed financially. Farley believes a peer-to-peer system of sharing vehicles is more promising. Electrifying the car industry, he added, will be an important part of developing this peer-to-peer system, enabling us to be more economical, more efficient, and kinder to our Earth.

With technology making transformative strides in business, communications, transportation, space, and beyond, why do two of society's most important sectors, healthcare and education, continue to lag so far behind? According to Microsoft's Craig Mundie—who as senior advisor to the CEO has spent years speaking with global leaders on the company's behalf—government may be the root of the problem. "The reason these two sectors have been resistant to change is because in almost every country [they] are controlled by the government," Mundie said in an interview at our Techonomy 2013 conference.

We know the sharing economy as an efficient and convenient resource, and launchpad for trendy startups like Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit. But the sharing economy could help address needs for a much wider swath of society, instead of just enabling better options for the already-privileged. At Techonomy 2013, Brookings Institution fellow Jennifer Bradley discussed the sharing economy's opportunity for inclusion, such as creating an Uber-like system to help low-income people get to work, and enabling the sharing of essential "means of production" like 3D printers and power tools.

As 2013 winds down, Techonomy takes a moment to look back on highlights from the year, especially those that portend—we think—the future. Our Top Ten list recognizes the people, companies, and ideas that embodied how technology is catalyzing change in business and society. Some of the individuals and organizations here were represented at our 2013 conferences, labs, and dinners, where we convene leaders to explore the biggest tech-driven challenges and opportunities. Some were featured in our expanding online editorial content.

Take a monolithic problem like climate change and consider its solutions. Many would say the only answer is to get all of us to alter our lifestyles so we can cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. But a "techno-optimist" like Microsoft's Craig Mundie would urge us to approach the problem from a different, more novel angle: Instead of hinging Earth's health on changing all of society, what about engineering a method of reflecting heat out of the atmosphere? At our Techonomy 2013 conference in November, Mundie spoke with us about how creative traits like "risk tolerance" and "novelty seeking" will help us confront big challenges like climate change. "If you give us a big problem, we'll invent a big answer," he says. "We're [not] bound to live within the constraints of the capabilities we only know today."

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini isn't afraid to speak his mind about the American healthcare system—even when that means underscoring its many failures. Bertolini talked with us at our recent Techonomy 2013 conference in Tucson, Ariz., about his views on U.S. healthcare's "recalcitrance" in accepting technology, and his hopes for changing that. "We've got a lot of really good technology in helping people survive diseases and get well again, but we haven't really focused on how we create a healthy human being and a better society," Bertolini said. This puts the U.S. at risk of falling behind, he added, speculating that countries in the Middle East will achieve better, more technologized healthcare systems before we do.

Cathy Lewis Long, founding executive director of The Sprout Fund in Pittsburgh, met with us at our Techonomy Detroit conference to talk about the Steel City and how it compares with the Motor City. Both places, she said, have a "spirit and legacy of innovation" and a special way of sneaking up on people. "[Detroit's| so exciting and it's that same 'ah-ha!' moment that people get when they come to Pittsburgh," she said. Both cities, too, are heavily focused on reimagining their futures. "Detroit is at a palpable moment now to propel forward," Lewis Long said.

At our recent Techonomy Detroit conference, McKinsey Global Institute director of research Susan Lund shared a worrisome statistic: today four out of five U.S. college graduates can't find work in their field of study. So how can we get more graduating students into the workforce? According to Lund, we need a radical rethink of American education. "The basic way we educate kids hasn't really changed in a hundred years," Lund said. "And what's needed today are workers of all different sorts, but with more skills."

Etsy represents a new way of connecting handcraft makers to buyers, but it's rooted in an age-old tradition. As Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson put it, "We represent something really fundamental about humanity: the making of things." At our Techonomy Detroit conference, Dickerson explained what draws people into the maker movement, and how it's going global.

Winning innovators don’t depend on the market for opportunities; they innovate their way into them. So says Venture for America founder Andrew Yang, who talked with us at our Techonomy Detroit conference about the need for more innovation and why Detroit can help spark it. “We need to get more smart people building things. We need to get more of our talented working to solve the problems of the day,” he said, adding that Detroit's access to talent, resources, and customers to put it at the forefront of tech entrepreneurship in coming years.

At our Techonomy Detroit conference, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson talked to us about the need for policymakers to treat micro-entrepreneurs as small businesses. "The idea that you can start a business literally on Etsy by listing an item which costs 20 cents is really powerful," he said. Dickerson discussed how policymakers can create opportunities for micro-entrepreneurs in what he calls the "new world" of platform-enabled businesses.

If you ask Michael A. Finney if Detroit is going to become a tech hub, he'll tell you to look around—Detroit already is a tech hub. "Detroit is loaded with technology," the Michigan Economic Development Corporation CEO said. Finney, appointed by Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder, talked with us at our recent Techonomy Detroit conference about Detroit's talent-driven infrastructure, from community and business leaders to universities, companies, and the auto industry. "It's a question of building on all the great strengths we have right now in the auto sector and extending it into other sectors," Finney said, calling Detroit "an ideal location for future development."

How many people have operated their own robot? A lot more than you might think, Rethink Robotics founder and CTO Rodney Brooks would say. "I tell everyone, 'You're driving around inside a robot, and 10 years from now it's going to become an even smarter robot,'" Brooks told us at our Techonomy Detroit conference. "Cars are the epicenter, actually, of robotics." Brooks also elaborated on how easy-to-use robots are in a position to transform the manufacturing industry, making it more efficient, more localized, and less generic--a potential boon for cities like Detroit.

A "prerequisite of being a kid" is dreaming big, says Annis Stubbs, executive director of Teach For America - Detroit. Our challenge is providing students with an education system capable of supporting their big dreams—a system that distributes resources equally, educates the child as a whole, and empowers students to execute on their ideas. At the Techonomy Detroit conference, Stubbs talked about her vision of a reinvigorated education system. "Everything starts with an idea," she said. "We need to help figure out how to ensure that our kids feel good about expressing their ideas and they feel confident enough to have these big ideas."

At our recent Techonomy Detroit conference, we presented Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson with a tough question: What was his own favorite Etsy purchase? The head of the Brooklyn-based handcraft e-marketplace struggled to narrow down his top buys to just one favorite, quipping "It's like children. Which one is your favorite child?" So what item did Dickerson end up picking? Hint: It saw its beginnings as a leather jacket, an army tent, and an army kit bag.

Rodney Brooks, founder and CTO of Rethink Robotics, joined us at our Techonomy Detroit conference to talk about the intersection between robotics and the maker movement. Robots like Rethink's Baxter offer small industries a tool to make workers more productive. But because Baxter operates on a software platform, it also benefits from users who think of new functionality and specializations for the robot. "There's going to be some kids out there who come up with some ideas that we would never have thought of in a million years," Brooks said. Those users may in turn use Baxter for smaller scale, maker oriented production.

Does adding "Silicon" before a community's name make it a better place for tech? Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson would answer with a resounding "No," saying the practice is one of his personal pet peeves. Dickerson talked at Techonomy Detroit about how cities like Detroit can remain authentic by embracing their unique identities. "Every city should try to be itself," he said, noting that part of Detroit's heritage is its long history of innovation and making things. "Detroit has that maker culture really baked into the city."

What happens when you combine a Midwestern mayor with a leading-edge CEO and stir in a timely Tweet about building an entrepreneurial economy? You get "the Internet at its best," says Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, who spoke with us at our recent Techonomy Detroit conference about the partnership that's creating new entrepreneurs in Rockford, Illinois. Where does the program go from here? The possibilities seem limitless. "It's really reconnecting with the idea that we can overcome cynicism, that literally we can do anything," said Dickerson.

Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick shares highlights from our 2012 Tucson conference, which was more business-centric than previous gatherings. As a place "where the suits meet the geeks," the Techonomy conference looks at the big issues changing retail, banking, money, international trade, and leadership, as well as how the trends of cloud, mobile, social, and big data impact business.

We just wrapped up Techonomy Detroit 2013, but you can watch the entire conference, start-to-finish, right here. Techonomy Detroit is a series of conversations and workshops we began last year at our first Detroit conference. Our urgent theme is the role of technology and innovation in boosting American economic growth, job creation, and urban revival. The all-day Techonomy Detroit focuses on issues that form the foundation of the urban century, with technology at the core of the conversation. We see it as the central source of both disruption and opportunity. Join our live webcast of Techonomy Detroit, Tuesday, Sept. 17, from 8:30am through 5:45pm.

Even as Detroit hits financial bottom, Techonomy retains its belief that applying tech and innovation can be a major aid toward a historic comeback. As Techonomy Detroit 2013 nears, the conference continues to grow its list of speakers and sponsors, and refine its program. Techonomy earlier announced the inclusion of Square CEO Jack Dorsey, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, Jean Case of the Case Foundation, Andrew Yang of Venture for America, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. New speakers include Rodney Brooks of Rethink Robotics, Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, Edward Luce of the Financial Times, Susan Lund of the McKinsey Global Institute, Hector Ruiz, Chairman and Founder of ANS, Nilmini Rubin, competitiveness expert for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ford's K. Venkatesh Prasad, and Cisco’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Tae Yoo.

Techonomy asked a few of the advanced thinkers who spoke at our Internet of Everything event in Menlo Park, "If you could connect anything in your life to the Internet, what would it be?" In this video, Cisco's Dave Evans, Alex Hawkinson of SmartThings, Ericsson's Geoff Hollingworth, and Kleiner Perkins partner Trae Vassallo talk a lot about families, health, networked cars, and connecting it all to the devices we carry everywhere. Our favorite: a networked home that dims the lights and plays Barry White when you're alone with the wife.

In May, Kleiner Perkins partner Trae Vassallo wrote an article for Techonomy.com about how Google Glass makes her a more efficient mom. At Techonomy's recent Internet of Everything event in Menlo Park, we caught up with Vassallo and asked her to talk more about her passion for wearable technology. She showed off her Basis watch, which gives her insight into her physical health and can even predict when she's about to get sick, and her Google Glass, which she prefers to wear in sunglass mode to tone down the geek factor.

Techonomy Media proudly announces it is bringing its one-day public conference, Techonomy Detroit, back for a second straight year. A diverse group of business, tech, government, and policy leaders will join in a spirited discussion of how technology is changing everything for the United States and its cities. National and local leaders will converge at Wayne State University on September 17, 2013 for a series of conversations and workshops to focus on the challenges and opportunities posed by headlong tech-driven change.

Alongside Techonomy's recent mini-conference on the Internet of Everything in Menlo Park in May, we interviewed Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com. Fertik is one of the world's most successful innovators focusing on a topic of great concern globally—privacy on the Internet. Reputation.com can sanitize and improve the way one is viewed in Google searches and other online contexts, and Fertik has given more thought than most to what we are doing as the Net evolves and more and more info about us is exposed in disparate contexts. In this video interview he talks about his hopes and fears, and waxes surprisingly philosophical about the relative importance and value of being human, and being a machine.

At a Dell Women’s Entrepreneurship Network dinner, Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick spoke with Carley Roney about XO's entry into China. Roney notes that China is the biggest wedding market in the world, with ten million marriages each year. But launching The Knot's online platform in China was more difficult than expected, because Chinese consumers already expect full mobile integration. "What was interesting was how far advanced they were from a technological perspective," says Roney. "So there we were thinking we were going to import our knowledge, and then we were like, 'Hey, do any of your engineers on the mobile side want to give us any ideas?'" The Chinese version of The Knot, ijie.com (which tranlates as "Love Knot"), launched in late 2010.

Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick joined longtime tech journalists Steven Levy and John Markoff onstage at the Computer History museum in Mountain View, CA, last week for a wide-ranging discussion about their decades covering the industry. Levy is a senior writer at Wired and the author of seven books on everything from computer hackers and cryptography to the inside stories of the iPod's invention and Google's birth. Markoff is a senior writer for The New York Times who began writing about technology in 1976. The Computer History Museum's John Hollar moderated the conversation, which delved into the seminal breakthroughs and personalities of tech history.

In partnership with Campus Tel Aviv (powered by Google Entrepreneurs), Techonomy will facilitate a series of conversations on June 5th in Tel Aviv about Israel's emerging role as a tech superpower. The two-hour event will begin with a talk by Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick, followed by a panel discussion entitled "Can Israel Be the Tech Capital for the Next Five Billion?" The panel will include Israeli innovation experts Yosi Abramowitz of Energiya Global Capital, TheMarker's Guy Rolnik, GetTaxi's Shahar Waiser, and Yahal Zilka of Magma VC. Kirkpatrick will moderate the discussion.

At a Dell Women's Entrepreneurship Network dinner, Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick spoke with XO Group co-founder Carley Roney about her company's trajectory since 1996. Roney says barriers to entry are much lower for startups today than when she and her husband David Liu were launching The Knot, XO's signature enterprise. "Now you can iterate more quickly and test things and segment," says Roney. "None of those things were possible at the time." With resources scarce, Roney says her team had to launch with a clear business plan.

Techonomy asked Forbes CEO Mike Perlis, Thomson Reuters's ex-CEO Tom Glocer, and Huffington Post CEO Jimmy Maymann: Is content king, or has it been trumped by distribution? In this video, one of them says that if media models don't shift, we could end up in a world of mindless cat videos.

Techonomy is pleased to announce the publication of its Spring 2013 Report, a full-color 60-page booklet that surveys our activities over the last year, and points to our plans for 2013. The book includes transcripts from our conferences in Detroit and Tucson, original articles by journalists and industry leaders, and a look at our online publishing. With this publication, we affirm our belief that print is not dead. But we've also made the contents available digitally. For a link to the flipbook and PDF download, click on the "more" button.

This is a must-see conference highlight. Rock legend Richard Thompson, OBE, covers Britney Spears's "Ooops!... I Did it Again" at Techonomy 2012 in Tucson, Ariz.

Techonomy 2012 kicks off in a few hours, gathering technology and business leaders in Tucson's Tortolita Mountains to discuss the possibilities of accelerating technological progress. This video overview of Techonomy Detroit is a great way to learn more about Techonomy's mission: the belief that technology can make the world a happier, healthier, wealthier, and more peaceful place.

Thought leaders gather in the Tortolita Mountains near Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 11-13, to discuss the role of technology in business and social progress.

Techonomy Media today announces its annual conference, Techonomy 2012, a unique three-day multidisciplinary gathering at The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain in Tucson, Arizona, taking place November 11-13, 2012.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Steve Case, CEO of Revolution LLC, discusses the current state of entrepreneurship in the US, and what needs to happen to encourage growth and innovation. He says that changes to immigration law, access to capital, and changes in regulation are necessary to fuel entrepreneurship.

In this conversation from the "21st Century Individuals vs. 20th Century Organization" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick talks to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey about how social networks allow governments and businesses to track and respond to public reactions to policies, plans, and products. Dorsey emphasizes that networks like Twitter allow real-time tracking of public opinion, creating an immediate feedback loop between service providers, including governments, and their citizen-clients.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, talks about how the video of Neda Soltan's murder, captured on a mobile phone, changed American foreign policy in a matter of hours. Without empowerment technology, he says, the seriousness and immediacy of what was happening during the Iranian uprising in 2009 would likely have gone unnoticed by foreign leaders.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel Partners, discusses whether technology can help people create jobs for themselves. Instead of working for Facebook or Google when they leave school, Breyer says, recent college graduates are more often leveraging technology to create new companies, like Etsy and Zaarly.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Sean Parker, Managing Partner at Founders Fund and a co-founder of Napster, argues that startup culture pulls critical talent into meaningless endeavors, instead of concentrating it on ideas that have true potential.

In the "Government in an Integrated World" session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft, discusses how he thinks governance will have to change to accommodate rapid technological and social change. The world is now so interdependent, he says, that a 'sick' country is felt by the rest of the world.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel Corporation, talks about how Apple has come to dominate its corner of the technology market.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jeffery Katzenberg, Co-Founder and CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, discusses how DreamWorks keeps the cost of its productions steady, despite changing technologies.

In this video from the "21st Century Individuals vs. 20th Century Organizations" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick asks Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to explain the success of Twitter's business model. The ad-driven model works, says Dorsey, because Twitter introduces users to people and products they're already inclined to like.

Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, demonstrates new interactive iPad software developed by his company that can recognize objects in the real world and super-impose digital interactivity on top of them.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, highlights why he thinks trashing the dollar will never stabilize the US economy.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Sean Parker, Managing Partner of Founders Fund and a co-founder of Napster, talks about how he believes technology will revolutionize the music industry, and how companies like Spotify and Napster already have.

In this short talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Anil Chitrakar, founder of Conservation Camps for Children, gives four examples of how technology and social incentives are changing the lives of Nepalese.

Kendall Collins, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Saleforce Chatter, discusses how the correlation between productivity and social networks can be used to reproduce and leverage the traits of successful employees. While enterprise social networks are not a substitute for measuring business performance, he says there is a correlation between a successful employee's productivity and their connectivity on networks.

Kendall Collins, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Saleforce Chatter, discusses how the correlation between productivity and social networks can be used to reproduce and leverage the traits of successful employees. While enterprise social networks are not a substitute for measuring business performance, he says there is a correlation between a successful employee's productivity and their connectivity on networks.

In this talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon Ariz., Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, discusses three examples of how technology can solve tough environmental challenges—such as a wind farm using radar as air traffic control for birds.

In this 10-minute talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, discusses how new techonoloy is helping to monitor and protect fisheries from over fishing. Data collection using video cameras and powerful software is helping local fisheries in Canada sustain their fish populations by calculating yearly fishing limits for fishermen.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT, argues that technology is a major driver of economic growth and productivity. Any lag in productivity, he says, is due to our inability to keep up with the changes in technology. This is Brynjolfsson's argument in a debate with Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University.

Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, talks about how the rapid acceleration of technology impacts business and social change.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel Partners, argues that technology is fueling a new type of direct democracy. He cites the city of Rio De Janeiro as an example of how a local government has used technology to make life safer for its citizens.

In this video from the "21st Century Individuals vs. 20th Century Organizations" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick asks Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and co-founder and CEO of Square, how he juggles two full-time jobs. What it all comes down to, says Dorsey, is a lot of discipline and structure, not to mention a 16-hour workday.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jeffery Katzenberg, Co-Founder and CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, details how new software that Dreamworks developed with Intel is revolutionizing the way his studio makes moves by allowing animation rendering in realtime. He says the software has the potential to change a number of industries, from design to oil.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Sean Parker, Managing Partner of Founders Fund, discusses Votizen and Causes, two companies helping to empower the individuals in the political sphere.

In this video from the "Revolutions in Progress" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff discusses what he sees as an emerging model for business. Entrepreneurs under 30 are revolutionizing the way that companies do business, he says, from embracing and developing new technologies to doing away with the old bureaucratic structure. These new 20-something CEOs will change the way we do business, says Benioff.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, says reforming monetary policy, healthcare, and education will dramatically improve the US economy.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel Partners, talks about how best to invest in innovative technology, assuming job creation as a primary consideration. By investing in a platform like Etsy, Breyer says, you help create jobs and a marketplace for people all over the world.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talks to Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft, about how technology could reform the healthcare industry by giving healthcare providers access to huge amounts of data and statistics they currently don't have.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talks to Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, about how technology is changing the realms of transparency and privacy. Lynch claims that evolving technology will make it nearly impossible for anyone's actions to go unnoticed.

In this talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Michael Woelk, CEO of Picarro, introduces state-of-the-art technology that his company has developed to map methane and CO2 emissions in real-time. Picarro has invented scientific equipment that can fit inside a mini-van and monitor emissions from polluters and regulators just by driving by.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas, discusses how Egyptians used the Internet to advertise and broadcast their revolution, and how it affected the outcome of the uprising. Had Mubarak not shut down the Internet and mobile service networks during the uprising, says Cohen, he might have had a better chance of staying in power.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Angel Cabrera, President of the Thunderbird School of Global Management, describes why the current model of higher education, with its misleading rankings and inflated tuition, is unsustainable.

In this video from Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Gary Hamel, director of Management Lab, challenges companies to let employees have the same financial and creative flexibility on the job that that they have at home. Why, he asks, can a woman in Bangladesh get a micro-loan more readily than the average frontline employee at a global 1000 company can get a small amount of money for something experimental?

In this video from Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Forbes editor Randall Lane talks to Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the International Telecommuniation Union, about why it was important for the Union to establish access to broadband Internet as an international human right. Touré addresses whether the use of social media as a tool for political engagement, and resistance, will make it increasingly difficult to enforce such rights.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon., Ariz., Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! and former Vice President of Consumer Products at Google, describes an exercise her team participated in to bring Google's users closer to the product. Programmers and product developers were paired with Google users to inform the Google employees of real user experience. This kind of conversation, says Mayer, is essential to helping improve customer service and product development.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel Corporation, explains how endowing a company with a distinct personality, and literally giving it a human face, can be a powerful business decision. A 2008 ad campaign that featured Hesse as a spokesperson for Sprint on television helped improve the company's reputation.

In this video from the session "The Brain and the Data: How Accurately Can We Predict?" at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talks to TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadivé about how better software might have prevented the global financial crisis. With a constant and real-time feedback loop, suggests Ranadivé, the Fed's monitoring of the financial system could be largely automated, and potentially much more accurate and responsive.

In this short talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Andrew Hessel, Co-Chair of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology at Singularity University, describes how his work engineering the genome has shifted his views on human reproduction in a very personal way.

In this video from Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Bret Hartman, CTO of RSA, talks about lessons his company learned when they faced a major cyber attack in early 2011. Hartman addresses the technological, legal, and political barriers to protecting our security, and discusses the severity of intellectual property theft as a global problem.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Techonomy's Adam Ludwig asks Deborah Hopkins, Chairman of Venture Capital Initiatives and Chief Information Officer at Citi, about the shift from vertical business models to horizontal ones. While it's clear that the top-down approach to business is dying, she says, it doesn't mean it's easy for businesses to adopt new ways.

In this 10-minute talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Bertil Chappuis, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company Inc., outlines five US trends in mobile, social media, video, and communication that were identified by iConsumer, the company's consumer insight asset.

Daniel Debow, co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, describes how the old hierarchal model of business is being replaced by a model that resembles the social graph, the networking model popularized by Facebook that describes how people, places, trends, and other factors relate to each other.

In this video from the "21st Century Individuals vs. 20th Century Organizations" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talks to Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey about what we can expect from Square in the next five years. The mobile app, which allows anyone to accept credit card payments to their phones or devices, has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with customers. The pay-by-voice system that Dorsey refers to in the video, now known as Pay With Square, is already being used at 75,000 shops around the country.

In this video from the "Revolutions in Progress" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of Intuit, discusses how technology can revolutionize education in the same way it has transformed the music and entertainment industries. Digital technology has given musicians and artists a global reach that was unfathomable 100 years ago. Why not treat education in the same way, suggests Cook, and give students access to the best teachers and lessons available using new technologies? Roger McNamee, Managing Director of Elevation Partners, moderated the session.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks, talks about how his company fosters 'disruptive innovation.'

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Sean Parker, Managing Partner at Founders Fund and a co-founder of Napster, asserts that the collapse of currencies worldwide, starting in European countries, will improve markets more than investing in new technologies.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Sean Parker, Managing Partner of Founders Fund and a co-founder of Napster, talks about tensions between the theory and practice of direct democracy.

In this short talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Pamela Passman, CEO and President of the Center for Responsible Enterprise and Change, suggests we work harder to protect intellectual property in the digital age. If we can change the way we respect and honor workers' rights, she says, we can also change the way we value ideas and software.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! and former Vice President of Consumer Products at Google, compares the Apple and Google methods of product development. Whereas Apple launches frequently and always hits its mark, she says, Google is more tentative in its product releases, getting feedback from consumers before finalizing its products.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz. Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks, describes the different structural models businesses must evolve through, and the challenges they face in doing so. Moving from a hierarchical structure to a more networked workflow, he says, is against a lot of manager's intuition, yet essential to the development of a company.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., CEO of Yahoo! and former Vice President of Consumer Products at Google, describes how an open work environment in offices encourages networking and idea sharing. She says Google works hard to encourage a networked workplace, as opposed to a hierarchical one.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick asks Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel Corporation, how the corporate landscape has changed since the rise of consumer empowerment through social media and the Internet.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Daniel Debow, co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, talks about how social software is revolutionizing business in the same way the telephone and email once did by allowing people to streamline and improve their communications.

In this debate from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, argues that technology is not the main driving force behind the economy. In fact, says Cowen, economic growth has been the slowest during notable technological booms.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College, argues that high tuition can be justified at institutions that stimulate innovation and produce replicable results. At Harvey Mudd, which has only 750 students, 40 percent of computer science students are female, something Klawe says should serve as a model for the rest of the country.

Ozon.ru is Russia's biggest online retailer, but its business is built on an offline foundation. In this video from Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Ozon.ru CEO Maelle Gavet discusses how cultural quirks unique to Russia require offline, person-to-person customer service to drive online commerce. Gavet has succeded in building Ozon's brand by embracing robust offline systems.

In this video from the "Revolutions in Progress" session at Techonomy 2011, in Tucson, Ariz., Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of Intuit, tells two stories about how scientific experimentation helped institutions find innovative solutions to complex problems. First, he describes how junior-level staff at his company created a text-message notification system for farmers in India to alert them about crop prices in nearby markets. Senior management initially doubted the tool's viability, but it went on to significantly improve the livelihood of over 400,000 Indian farmers. Second, he profiles the Chinese city of Shenzhen, where in the 1980s government officials allowed local markets, instead of communist government regulations, to dictate economic growth, providing a successful model for the rest of China.

In this video from the session "The Brain and the Data: How Accurately Can We Predict?" at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick talks to TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadivé about a new model for data access and organization that gives data context, and removes information into more accessible options like cloud storage.

In this short talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Miles Beckett, CEO of EQAL, talks about how he took charge of his life by quitting medicine to do what he really loves. After years of medical training and practice, Beckett realized that in order to be happy, he needed to embrace his creativity. He launched the webisode series Lonelygirl15 in 2006, and went on to create EQAL, a media company that manages brands and celebrities.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Daniel Debow, co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, explains to Techonomy's Adam Ludwig how companies should be strategic in the way they use the existing value structure of enterprise social networks—and argues that the output of these networks is measurable.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Daniel Debow, co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, talks about how his company has embraced social networks as a tool to evaluate employee's true productivity and value to the business. Instead of yearly employee reviews, he says Rypple has been able to leverage social networks to regulate best practices and reward good work within his team.

In this video from the "21st Century Individuals vs. 20th Century Organizations" session at Techonomy 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick asks Jack Dorsey about the similarities, and differences, between his two companies, Twitter and Square. Both are utilities, says Dorsey, and both are defined by the user.

In this session from Techonomy 2011, in Tuscon, Ariz., Daniel Debow, co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, argues that while money is an important indicator of success and value to employees, there are other factors, like recognition, that play a large role in employee satisfaction. Enterprise social networks can help companies reward employees in non-monetary ways, Debow suggests.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Sean Parker, Managing Partner at Founders Fund and a co-founder of Napster, highlights some of the potential negative consequences of social networks.

In this session from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel Corporation, argues that even though consumers now play a big roll in improving customer service via social networks, they still don't dictate new product development.