WIRED NextFest: day 2
So I went back in to the city today, primarily to go to a presentation called “Using Technology to Inspire Leadership and Action”. Ok, maybe they could have used technology to inspire a better title, but I actually wanted to go to it.
First, however, I had an extra hour and a half to wander some more around the NextFest show floor. I saw a few things I had missed last night:
- I met Lisa Nowak, a real live astronaut, who was just up in space this summer on STS-121. She offered me a signed photo, which took me a bit by surprise. I guess that’s a hazard of being a True Celebrity. I took the photo, though.
- I got a thermal photograph of myself from Xerox, printed using their new solid ink technology. It certainly looks good.
- I shook hands with a $100,000 fully articulated, 5-fingered, teleoperated robot hand.
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I moved individual atoms around. This was maybe the coolest toy I’ve played with on this trip: IBM had an internet interface to their (located in California), and they let individual people (me!) mess around with it. The scientist who was demoing it (a real science type, not marketing) was great, and took the time to explain the technology to me. I literally moved individual atoms around a couple of nanometers at a time. To someone who spent his college years doing physics (as I did) that is just so amazingly cool.
Then it was time to attend the talk. It was a panel, hosted by Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of WIRED magazine and author of The Long Tail. I talked with him later and was delighted to find that he’s a fan of my game MindRover. He plays it with his son.
He did a good job of running the panel.
On the panel were:
- Edie Weiner, a “futurist”
- , the program manager for Ecomagination at GE Energy
- , former NASA astronaut and now a professor at MIT
- Dr. Michio Kaku, a physicist into string theory
- Neal Lane, former science advisor to Pres. Clinton
- Mary McDonnell, actress and star of Battlestar Galactica
- , chairman of the Global Business Network
Every last one of them had something interesting to say. Some highlights:
Brass on business: companies need to start learning to do more with less; GE is trying to lead the way, but all companies have to begin to think of the environment as a way to make money.
Hoffman on space: 1/3 of NASA’s budget is based on getting humans into orbit. It costs $10,000 a pound to put something into orbit. John Glenn literally cost his weight in gold. We should try to let private enterprise push as much of that as possible.
Lane: policy is a boring word but necessary. Smart people should try to get involved with policy in order to help government come to good decisions. (I wanted to talk to him about my game but he bolted right after the panel ended.)
Weiner: the four things that matter are BANG: Bits, Atoms, Neurons, and Genes. Science fiction paves the way for our imagination to accept the future more readily.
Kaku: String Theory is after a Theory of Everything: “An equation one inch long that allows us to see the mind of God.”
Kaku: There are 3 (well, 5) types of civilizations: Type 1 is a planetary civilization that is pushing the boundaries of a single planet or possibly two. Type 2 has developed interstellar travel and has colonized nearby stars (the Star Trek universe). Type 3 dominates a galaxy (the Star Wars universe). Type 4 has transcended space like Q in Star Trek.
Earth is currently a Type 0 civilization: we’re not quite planetary yet. But we’re about to be. The internet is the beginnings of a Type 1 communications system. The EU is the beginnings of a Type 1 government. There are powerful forces that fear the creation of a Type 1 civilization. “Out of the 5000 generations of humanity, the one now alive is the most important. We have the potential to become a Type 1 civilization, but we could still fail.”
We have spent the past 100 years consuming the fuel stored on the planet over the course of millions of years. We have maybe 100 years to transition to a very different way of existence. If we don’t succeed in finding our way past these challenges, there is no second chance.
All in all, the trip was worthwhile.