By Helaina Hovitz

Gary He/Insider Images for Internet Week New York

The weeklong event, headquartered at the Metropolitan Pavilion (125 West 18th Street), kicks off on May 20th. Panels, events, meetups, classes, exhibits, screenings and parties will also take place citywide, focusing on topics like beauty and fashion, sports, healthcare, food, and art.

“Tech is playing an increasingly stronger role at everyone’s job, even if you don’t work in technology. Everyone has to be comfortable with it at a baseline,” saidFestival Director Caroline Waxler, adding that it’s also a great opportunity to take a look at how tech impacts our local economy.

Eyebeam, a free gallery in West Chelsea, will be hosting an interactive art group show at IWNYC headquarters that focuses on the future of relationships in a wired world.

“We try to appeal to a broad audience by having a wide range of exhibitions that appeal to a broader audience. You don’t need to be a coder to understand what’s going on,” said Meredith Niemczyk, Eyebeam’s Communications Director. “For example, Addie Wagenknecht and Pablo Garcia went into sex chat rooms asking sexcam people to recreate classic poses from Renaissance works of art in order to question idea of what is art is, especially now in a tech age where we’re bombarded by imagery that’s sexual but also commercial.”

Eyebeam’s events will also include a workshop called “Creating your own Subnode: Networking with Raspberry Pi + Node.js” and ”Paintshop” an anonymous digital canvas that anyone can access and interact with online.

If you sign up for WalkaboutNYC, you’ll be able to tour offices of companies like Open Sky and GroupMe (May 17th 11:30 a.m. – 6 p.m., RSVP required).

According to the event’s co-founder, Danny Wen, most of the participating offices shift away from “that cubicle land where everyone kind of goes away and into their own world,” and instead sport social areas with treats and entertainment like video games and ping pong.

“Each company will have a different feel and culture. You can sense it in the first minute,” said Wen, adding that his office just got a piano.

Big name IWNYC keynote speakers will include Joan Rivers, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, Executive Vice President of NBC Universal Lauren Zalaznick, andthe designers from Proenza Schouler, among others.

IWNYC is co-presented by Made in New York and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and Crain Communications.

Sign up for or RSVP to all available events at www.internetweekny.com.

Top Internet Week Highlights

• The Moth hosts Tech-Themed Open Mic Storytelling Competition: Stoytelling juggernaut The Moth hosts a special technology-themed edition of its famed open mic storytelling competition. Show up just to watch, or prepare a 5-minute story about the technology that drives your life from smart phones and pacemakers to Google and GPS. (May 23rd 7 p.m. – 9:45 p.m. Housing Works Bookstore and Café)
• Technology + Art Exhibit at ITP Spring Show 2013: Students at the celebrated Tisch ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) present an exhibition of interactive media work, exploring the wonderland between technology and art. (May 20th, 5 – 9 p.m. & Tuesday, May 21st, 4 – 8 p.m., ITP at NYU)
• Eyebeam Art + Technology Center Group Show – Future of Online Relationships: An interactive art group show exploring the future of online relationships curated by New York City’s celebrated Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. (May 20-23rd, IWNY Headquarters)
• Mobile Storytelling Exhibit, Film Festival, Hack-a-Thon at Soho Gallery for Digital Art:  Soho Gallery for Digital Art hosts a weeklong series of events on Mobile Storytelling, using photos, video, and multimedia from mobile devices to tell the best New York story. Highlights include the world’s shortest film festival, a hack-a-thon, a photo walk, a juried exhibit, panels, and workshops. (May 20-27th,  Soho Gallery For Digital Art)
• Pitch Your Startup to Investors hosted by The Hatchery: Pitch your startup to entrepreneurs, investors, and the tech community at The Hatchery’s fast-paced, Shark Tank-style public pitching event. (May 22nd, 6 – 8:30 p.m. Chadbourne, RSVP required)
• Watch, Reblog, Repeat – Web Comedy Panel at Peoples Improv Theater: Producers of New York’s best online comedy content explore how to create material that people don’t just watch, but also share. Moderated by JVTM Comedy, producers of the web hit Ground Control. (May 21st  8 – 9 p.m. The Peoples Improv Theater)
• Future of Media Panel at NYU: Editors, producers, and publishers from the world’s top media outlets discuss how traditional media is being affected by the rise of digital media. (May 23rd, 1 – 2 p.m., NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute Television Studio, 7th floor)
•  NYC Chinatown Dumpling Tour: New York City tech investor and entrepreneur Mark Birch takes InternetWeek New York festival-goers to Chinatown to search for the best Chinese dumplings in New York City. (May 22nd, 6 – 8 p.m. Various locations in Chinatown, NY, RSVP required)
• NYC Tech Picnic: Enjoy the spring weather and spend time outdoors with fellow geeks and entrepreneurs. (May 19th, 2 – 6 p.m., Chelsea Piers, Pier 64)

By Helaina Hovitz

Photo by Stephanie Mei-Ling

Last Thursday, April 4, an Internet Week New York preview party was held at Design Within Reach’s newly renovated Soho Studio at 110 Greene Street.

Eventually, 400 guests mingled easily as they sipped on ginger-flavored cocktails and Saporo beer, but those who arrived painfully on time at 7 p.m. were faced with an awkward, half hour free-for-all in the enormous space, not sure where to go or what to do, likely appearing, to those looking in, to be shopping for furniture.

“I didn’t know what to expect or what to do when I got here. It feels really insider-y,” said Lisa Niedermeyer, whose nonprofit, Fractured Atlas, hopes to host a panel called Revenge of the Art Geek. “I think they kind of assume you were here last year.”

Though it was never explained to the crowd trickling in, the main aim of the party was to get people to vote for the festival’s panel entrants, 228 in all (voting will remain open through April 10th at InternetWeekNY.com). Promising contenders include “Will The Internet Save the Publishing Industry?” “I’m Tired of Being So White” and “Combating Device Schizophrenia: Get Your Message Heard Across Screens.”

Photo by Stephanie Mei-Ling

A DJ spinning trippy futuristic songs eventually abandoned his post and joined the crowd shortly before 8:30 p.m., when a preview panel called Sex, Drugs, Drones, and Codes was set to begin. The panel was kicked off by Daniel Pinchback, editorial director of website Reality Sandwich and author of Breaking Open the Head. Pinchback briefly talked about the resurgence of the Internet in psychedelics, highlighting the ways in which the Internet is “fostering a psychedelic renaissance.”

Next up was Matt Stinchcomb, former employee of Soho’s Rockstar Games and currently Etsy’s VP of Brand & Social Responsibility, who preferred to keep his Internet Week panel a secret but did his best to garner interest, saying, “I’m not gonna tell you what it’s about, but you guys are really gonna like it.”

Brian Anderson, an editor for Motherboard, proceeded to give a speech on drones that honed in on the lack of attention given to the topic. “More people are losing sleep and commenting on articles about chocolate milk than non-consensual surveillance,” he said.

“It’s compelling to see him so passionate about it, but at the end you’re like, what exactly is a drone?” said one baffled audience member to her date.

A drone is, by simplest definition, an unmanned aircraft or other floating device used for surveillance and bomb/missile launching, but can also be something like “that stupid little vacuum robot,” Anderson explained.

Ears perked up during columnist Kelly Bourdet’s panel run-down, which will be, essentially, on pornography. “Everyone — well, many people –  watch porn, and yet it’s not part of our every day conversation. The panel will discuss how the Internet proliferates porn and how it affects us,” she said, adding that the first picture to ever be uploaded to the Internet was a Playboy centerfold. “Iceland wants to make porn illegal. What do we want to do about this medium, as children, teens, and adults?” she posed rhetorically to the audience.

Her panel will also discuss how technology affects our modern day relationships.

Co-presented by Made in New York, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and Crain Communications, Internet Week is a weeklong event headquartered at the Metropolitan Pavilion (125 West 18th Street). There will also be Meetups, exhibits, screenings, parties, and more taking place at venues across the city. Vice Media will curate an expanded panel and classroom series exploring hot-button topics like sex, drugs, drones, pirating, and social media reporting from conflict zones. Flagship events like the 17th Annual Webby Awards, The Webutante Ball, and Time Inc.’s 10 NYC Startups to Watch will be joined by a roster of new partners participating in the festival for the first time.

Big name speakers will include WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, Executive Vice President of NBC Universal Lauren Zalaznick, and, for some reason, Joan Rivers.

The event is expected to draw 45,000 people to 400 panels and will, hopefully, impress one of the panelists’ more critical members.

“I think it’s silly to have a week where we talk about the Internet,” said Anderson after closing out the panel preview. “It’s what we do every day.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is pushing for high-tech investment in New York, has touted the University of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. (Photos from College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering)

New York City isn’t the only part of the state that has been attracting a growing number of high-tech companies.

In upstate areas struggling to rebound from the recession and recover from the longer-term decline in manufacturing, the state has been recruiting companies like Yahoo! and IBM to add or expand operations, create new jobs and assist in rebuilding the economy.

To read the full article, please visit cityandstateny.com.

Edwin Olson, Technomancer at the University of Michigan, has summoned this Mecha-Legion because two Central Processing Units work better than one, and 16 work wonders. On conjuring the blight of mankind, Olson explains:

“Compared to a human, a single robot is a terrible searcher and decision maker. When you have a complex task, the only way robots win is if you can get a lot of them to work together.”

Complex tasks, indeed. Now, while they don’t have guns or Mythril #DeathSpikes firing piston-like across their Carbon Fiber flanks, I don’t figure it’d be all that hard to nail some on.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

Mars via Wiki Commons

Now that the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity has landed safely on the set of 2000′s #SummerFlop, Red Planet, the Global Nerd Consortium can finally CUT TO:

INT. A CRAMPED AND STERILE SCIENCE LAB - NIGHT

Two mild-mannered molecular Biomancers are hunched over a petri dish. A single bead of sweat runs down ASIAN WIZARD's brow.

BLOND WIZARD

Eureka!

ASIAN WIZARD

At last. We've created a cellular organism that can survive the harsh conditions of Space Planet Mars.

#FutureOfStuff: Well I could be confused on the whole “Survival Of The Fittest” thing, but if you make a lifeform that can survive on Mars, couldn’t it totally kick our asses on Earth too? Let’s just hope they keep that little bug locked up tight till we’re ready to essentially Skeet all over Mars’ barren womb.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

#WhutItDo: The next big thing in annoying baby photos is here. Thankfully, it’s both tasteless and subtly disturbing. A group of Cyber Wizards in Japan have created this truly stunning process for the 3D modeling and printing of super lifelike anatomical models for the benefit of science. But since, like, who cares, and all, they use the technique for making gross little statues of unborn babies. Ew.

#FutureOfStuff: As tech advances we will conceive of increasingly realistic ways to display our larvae to innocent bystanders in the biological #DriveBy that is gestation.

Bed bug via Wiki Commons.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

#WhutItDo: SRI International is, like, my favorite wizard’s nest. These brains helped invent stuff like SIRI, the computer mouse, and those awesome gloves from Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Now the dudes are turning their magic against the Bed Bug menace. In a blog post, Rajeev Vaidyanathan, Bed Bug Wizard at SRI, was all, like, “[M]ost of the news coverage about bed bugs tends to focus on hotels or retailers, giving us the impression that we are at the highest risk for infestation when we visit these places. In reality, the most vulnerable populations live in low-income housing. They are the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly who may not be able to feel the bites, veterans, and those in homeless shelters, hospitals and psychiatric clinics. The bottom line is that we are failing these communities.”

The plan is to collect the critters one by one and flush them down a tiny toilet that cost a trillion $$$ in R&D—I assume. Why is the toilet tiny? Because they didn’t need a normal sized one. But, seriously: they’re going to cast Sequence Genome on the little devils and roll for perception till they can figure out something that works.

#TheFutureOfStuff: Well if Bed Bugs turn out to be super invincible, at least now we know—thanks to SRI’s supreme research skills—that we could just get rid of poor people. ZING!

Today’s Tech Brief: Nerds Love Holograms, Invent Ways To Touch Them
#WhutItDo: Well this is awesome: If I could read Japanese, I’d try to summarize what these nerds are
doing with all those electronics and funky boxes and ugly finger accessories. But since I can’t I’ll just say
that it looks like they’re abusing a fairy.

#FutureOfStuff: If you can’t think of potential uses for totally rad interactive holograms, I feel sorry for
you. Go watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. Or just show this video to a hentai fan and prepare to be
disturbed.

It’s hard to believe there was once a world before The Segway. Back when the only time humans could both stand around and move simultaneously was on an escalator. Now—in no way overestimating the market for such devices—the Robomancers over at Honda have invented something called the UNI-CUB Personal Mobility Device. With promotional language like “For Individuals. For Society. Honda Introduces a new kind of mobility.” [SPOILER ALERT: It's a stool with wheels.]

#FutureOfStuff: Ever seen Wall-E? The future will be indolent.

.@BYTES1GHz is a single serving of undigested tech for the unfocused and/or unconcerned. Don’t be disappoint. Like. Enjoy.

Criminally overlooked in retail despite its unique qualities, Binary is in many ways similar to Blade Runner: in the future, cybernetic technology is so advanced that it becomes possible to create robots that are indistinguishable from humans. After a U.S. attack by a so-called “hollow child,” an international spec-ops team is sent to Japan to apprehend the creator of the world’s most advanced robotics technology, under violation of an international treaty banning the research and development of sentient intelligence in machines. Only unlike Blade Runner’s replicants, hollow children have no idea they’re not human.

There’s plenty of commentary that can spark just from this setup: humanity playing God, ethics in technology or even, as Binary was developed by a Japanese team, issues Japan has historically grappled with regarding its military stance or its own cultural identity. It’s a bit unexpected for a game whose surface-level description could be summed up as using automatic weapons to destroy robots.

Binary’s self-awareness is likely its most fascinating aspect. On a design level, this manifests in the AI of your enemies, all Japanese-manufactured cybernetic soldiers (nicknamed “scrapheads”). Thematically tying in with the idea of evolution, they dynamically react to changing battle conditions, adapting as situations warrant by, say, shooting malfunctioning teammates or picking up weapons even if primary shooting limbs have been blown off.

Yet hollow children aren’t self-aware. They are ignorant to the reality that they’re actually machines. The only thing that separates them from the scrapheads on the battlefield is a layer of artificial skin and implanted memories. And if these androids lived as humans for so long, what can it even mean to be alive?

It’s almost impossible to get into the meat of Binary without revealing too much about the narrative, which twists unexpectedly while raising heavy questions about natural selection and the dichotomy between real and artificial life. Interestingly, the developers also acknowledge the cultural stereotypes Japan usually affords foreign culture, lending a touch of Zoltan Korda’s Sahara to the proceedings—all this in the body of a dumb sci-fi shooter.

Binary Domain is available now on PS3 and Xbox 360.

Steve Haske is a Portland-based journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @afraidtomerge.