Steven Johnson

Drawing on the story of disease and urban terror from his 2006 bestseller, The Ghost Map, Johnson will launch dConstruct with a keynote address on the information networks that form on the sidewalks and public spaces of urban life. He’ll examine the many ways that those social systems are migrating to the emerging platform of the geoweb. The rise of location-aware devices and increasingly mainstream geotagging presents an unique opportunity to unite the real and virtual worlds, and bring new life to the troubled newspaper industry. But that opportunity is going to require innovative new tools for navigating the geoweb, which the keynote will explore in some detail — including a first look at some new projects under development at outside.in.