Summary: Tiffany Shlain, celebrated filmmaker and renowned founder of The Webby Awards, wants you to GET CONNECTED. And she has a fascinating story to tell. In her new film Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death and Technology, she rallies audiences to participate in a “Declaration of Interdependence” that celebrates human connection throughout time and the role that technology and social media has in shaping our future. You can see the trailer here: Here’s what she says in her director’s statement about the film: I hope that “Connected,” will help create a global conversation about what it means to be connected in the 21st century. I believe that by engaging people to talk about connectedness in their own lives and in the world, the ripple effect of these conversations will have far reaching impact. Appreciating that this is a huge subject, I employ many tactics (humor, animation, archival and my own personal story) to attempt to untangle what interdependence and connectedness mean in terms of the history of the human species and moving forward. Through this journey, I wield a large magnifying glass to look at some of the absurd and beautiful behaviors of our species and our world. While the core components of humans desire to be “connected,” have not changed since we first appeared on this planet, I believe a new zeitgeist is emerging through all these new technologies that are making our world smaller and more intertwined. In Part 1 of our interview, we talk about Tiffany’s upbringing, the work of her father (the late surgeon and author Leonard Shlain), her early career as a filmmaker and how she founded the Webbys. Tiffany is an incredibly inspiring storyteller and we hope you enjoy hearing what she has to say. Check out one of her TED talks for last year: Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments about what you do to stay connected. Stay tuned for Part 2. Brad and Noam
