Street Talk An Urban Computing Happening Friday 16 July 2004 Converge-Diverge 9:00am - 5:00pm Intel Research Berkeley Urban After 6:30 pm - ??? Rx Gallery

Street Talk is a one day event to be held at Intel Research Berkeley focused on understand how the rapidly emerging fabric of mobile and wireless computing will influence, disrupt, expand, and be integrated into the social patterns existent within our public urban landscapes. Urban Computing captures a unique, synergistic moment – expanding urban populations, rapid adoption of Bluetooth mobile devices, and widespread influence of wireless technologies across our urban landscapes. The United Nations has recently reported that 48 percent of the world's population currently live in urban areas and that this number is expected to exceed the 50 percent mark by 2007, thus marking the first time in history that the world will have more urban residents than rural residents. Current studies project Bluetooth-enabled devices to reach 1.4 billion units in 2005 alone. Nearly 400 million new mobile phones are scheduled to be sold worldwide this year alone. WiFi hardware is being deployed at the astonishing rate of one every 4 seconds globally. We are gathering for an event to expose, deconstruct, and understand the challenges of this newly emerging moment in urban history and its dramatic influence on technology usage and adoption.