Tiffany Shlain: Net's growth like brain

"Brain Power," which is also launching as an e-book, looks at how the Internet is still very much in the early stages of growth and, much like a young child's brain, needs nurturing to reach its full potential.

Shlain founded the Webby Awards before returning to her roots as a filmmaker in recent years, so it's no surprise that technology is something she thinks about constantly.

Lately, she has been experimenting with "cloud filmmaking," creating films such as "Brain Power" that weave together footage crowdsourced from people around the world.

In a recent interview, Shlain talked about cloud filmmaking, her next project, and how she gets away from technology once a week.

The film looks at the history of connectedness, from the Big Bang to the Industrial Revolution to today.

What's the potential of everyone on the planet being connected online?

There's so many ways that crowdsourcing (has been used for) scientific breakthroughs, fundraising and idea sharing, but what we were really interested in was, could we collaboratively make a film with people from all over the world?

People that I'll never meet send artwork and videos that they've often recorded on their cell phones.

Again, we'll ask people from around the world to contribute.

With crowdsourcing and the Internet, there is some grumbling from writers, artists, photographers, musicians, filmmakers and so forth about ownership and copyright and people stealing their work.

"Connected" has been used at 200 universities around the world, and people pay to screen it at conferences.

The other side of the company is making these cloud films, so I just feel like our model right now is working well.

For these cloud films, we're not making money from them.

With each release, more people are understanding what we're doing.

People know we're not making money from them, and we're giving them away for free.

People love to participate and everyone is so creative, so we're creating a framework for everyone to make something together.

With these films, I'm still directing them, and we still have a lens in which we're making it, but the power of the films come from the fact that so many people are contributing.

Originally the film was about child brain development.

[...] as I was talking to these neuroscientists, the language they were using about the brain development, it was like I was talking to all my colleagues about the Internet.

[...] we get all the different parts of the world connected - there are about 2 billion people online and there are 7 billion people on the planet - we're still at the stage where we won't see the full potential of the Internet.

Ellen Lee is a freelance writer.