Did you know that our most fundamental principles for managing information and knowledge are based on old assumptions? This year’s opening keynote presents new perspectives for the digital era.

SPEAKER: David Weinberger (US), PhD & writer, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University
MODERATOR: Mads Brügger (DK), journalist & television host, DR

The digital world of today has challenged the basic principles of media business. Previously, they depended on the limitations of the physical world: That there was a right way to order things and that the people who own stuff also control how it is organized. Now that we are rapidly digitizing information of every sort, we’re inventing new principles of organization. This leads to decisive changes in the media industries that used to have authority and power because of their mastery of the old principles.
In this talk, Dr. David Weinberger will look at the digital revolution and change: not just the old order of things, but the very nature of order itself, and what this means for business.

One third of the survey respondents point to Jonathan Harris’ presentation “Surveillance, Self-Exposure and Storytelling” as the best session. Another 10% has it listed as the third best session. And had Jonathan Harris received two more votes as the second best session, he would have beat David Weinberger to it and completed a full trilogy of audience devotion.

Of course it should be remembered that Harris and Weinberger were the opening keynotes and as such didn’t share their timeslot with any other sessions, i.e. they enjoyed the attention of every conference guest. But still the numbers are very convincing. Congratulations, Jonathan and David, on winning the hearts of the audience!

Jonathan Harris asked us not to webcast his session, but as I wrote before you can watch the presentation of his awe-inspiring 2006 project, We Feel Fine, at the TED website. At Harris’ own site you can read more about his latest work. Among other things The Whale Hunt project that he also presented at New Media Days; a photographic experiment of human storytelling from a computer’s perspective.

David Weinberger enlightening us about “Media in a Miscellaneous World” and many more presentations from New Media Days 08 are available as webcasts from our main site – and soon podcasts too.

Unfortunately the Minister of Culture, Carina Christensen, had cancelled, but instead Brügger shared his thoughts on corresponding with Morten Lund, Danish Skype-entrepreneur gone bankrupt, symbolically framed by classic Danish children story, Mis med de blå øjne.

David Weinberger then took stage: “It is all about connection. Content has been in our culture for years and years. The solution to an overwhelming amount of data is to connect it through meta-data. Change of content is only important because we are experiencing a deeper change in the nature of meta-data.”

The internet is a an abundance. But it’s an abundance of good as well as bad – the latter we’re used to handle, but how do we handle the abundance of good? We need to tag it, but not try to control it.

Information principles we have to change:
1. Leaf on many branches: Tag information as much as possible.
2. Messiness as a virtue: Messy metadata increases the significance of the content.
3. Everything is metadata, all content is connection.
4. Unowned order: The owner of online stuff doesn’t own the order or metadata of that stuff. Very unlike the physical world.

Consequences of easying up on control and increase the metadata/connections: Ecosystem of recommendations and more intelligence being distributed inbetween web-users.

Next up: Jonathan Harris on Surveillance, Self-Exposure and Story Telling.