Patt Morrison Asks: Tiffany Shlain, wired in

Like one of those faster-than-light particles that's gone before you can see it, filmmaker and tech innovator Tiffany Shlain zips from the virtual to the real and back again. The Bay Area native whom Newsweek named one of the women shaping the 21st century has been into technology since she and Silicon Valley were both kids. Fifteen years ago, she founded the Webby Awards; well before Twitter, no acceptance speech could be longer than five words. She delivered more than that last year in a commencement speech at her alma mater UC Berkeley, exhorting students to embrace the quality that she claims as her own guiding light: "moxie" -- a long-ago patent medicine turned soft drink whose name has become synonymous with the human recipe for being "bold ... and a little outrageous."

Patt Morrison

November 26, 2011