For the first few days of September, Tactical Tech was in Linz, Austria for this year's Ars Electronica 2012 Festival -- a "festival for art, technology and society". The title of this year's event was The Big Picture: New Concepts for a New World. We saw a lot there that we liked! Here are some of our picks of the things we found interesting:
Password Hacker Station

The Faceless Project -- interrogating the culture of surveillance *

Newstweek -- a device for manipulating news being read by other people at wireless hotspots 

Data Dealer -- making big money on data (in German)

The Europe vs Facebook initiative

Face to Facebook – a social experiment involving stealing facebook profiles, filtering them with face-recognition software, and posting them on a custom-made dating website

Did You Know? A video on the social, political and economic effects of technological development (try this link if you live in germany)

SADproject.tv -- Surveillance Awareness Database Project

And from the festival prize winners:

Kubatana.net – an online comunity for Zimbabwean activists 

Syrian People Know Their Way -- a community of young Syrian digital artists, designers, bloggers and activists

Safecast – a US-based project focussing on outreach efforts in Japan:

iHub – an innovative digital community base

d in Kenya

http://prix2012.aec.at/prixwinner/7444/ " target="_blank">Free Universal Construction Kit – enabling children to extend their existing toys beyond their normal limitations

Occupy George – using money to spread ideas  (see our own article on this, here

Energy parasites – a project focusing on energy use and re-use.

Children's toy construction kit (Image from F.A.T)