The spring 2009 Technology Horizons conference will explore the topic of The Future of Video. The event will take place the week of May 11th with panelist and speakers exploring what the world would look and feel like with video as our dominate form of communication. The Future of Video will kick off with an exciting dinner party the night before the full-day program.

The ascent and currency of visual media signals a transformation on the order of the shift from manuscript to print. As the web continues its metamorphosis from a text vehicle to an image (moving image) vehicle, spurred on by the availability and adoption of such technologies as the phonecam, the webcam, voice (and video) over Internet protocol (VOIP), tiny handheld cameras like the Flip Video, and online video platforms like YouTube, it seems ever-more likely that video will overtake the written word as the predominant communication form for coming generations.

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

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

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

Throughout antiquity and through the middle ages, even when reading alone, the written word was “read” aloud, audibly. Those who read silently were remarkable, viewed askance by their peers. We will be looking for the equivalent of ancient ‘silent readers’ in today’s media landscape, pointing to tomorrow’s “innate” habits and practices. We will seek out the ways individuals and groups turn toward electronic recording and communication of sight and sound in search of something more personal, more meaningful, and more immediate.

For more information about the Future of Video conference, please contact Sean Ness, (650) 233-9517, sness@iftf.org.