Stay of Execution

TED Sounds Great

I've been enjoying the posts by various bloggers about this year's TED conference.  It sounds great.  I found the summaries of Helen Fisher's talk about love, Jim Crupi's talk about modern military strategy, Tony Robbin's breakdown of human drive into six basic emotional needs, Burt Rutan's talk about breakthroughs in aviation, and Penny Boston's talk about life forms in unlikely places particularly thought-provoking.  Wish there were podcasts available.   

Bloggers posting about it include by Ethan Zuckerman, Ory Okollah, Renee Blodgett, Bruno Guissani, and Tom Guarriello.  I find Ethan's posts the most comprehensive, although he arrived partway through. 

Legal Training

On Friday night there was a dinner for PopTech speakers and organizers.  I asked one of them to give me a thumbnail sketch of his talk and almost immediately started challenging him.  We had a friendly but fairly probing back-and-forth.  It took the form of me questioning him, and him answering me, and me finding fault with his answers, and asking him to try again.  It was a bit like a professor grilling a law student with the Socratic method.  I liked what he had to say, and agreed with it at core, but thought he was being imprecise with his language, and wanted to push around to find the edges of his philosophy.  The topic was property, and I was trying to get him to drill down into the rights and obligations he thought were appropriate, and those he wanted to reject.  You can't just dismiss the concept of "property," after all.  It's a bundle of rights, and all that.   He was gracious about my challenges, assuring me he enjoyed being pushed, and although the subject matter was fairly abstract, the tone was warm and friendly. 

There was a small group involved in the conversation, although the primary back and forth was the two of us.  One of the fellows in the circle was a first-year law student, listening with big ears.  (Another was my friend S, who pulled me aside afterwards and said, "I love your mind.  I just love to watch you think."   That compliment, along with the conversation itself, was one of the highlights of my weekend.  I haven't gotten to think, where other people could watch and join in, for a long time.  I enjoy it.)  Partway through the conversation I began to wonder if I was being a legalistic ass.  Still, I didn't want to let go of my questions.  I didn't think his answers were clear.  I also began to notice that I found him very attractive.  I realized the attraction was distracting me, and I couldn't be sure whether I really liked his ideas or just his eyes.  I had to concentrate on what we were saying, while fighting the urge to reach out and touch his arm. 

Sunday Afternoon

I woke up this morning at 7:15, after going to bed at 3 AM.  The final party was a big one, and I spent most of it torn between the desire to pour myself another glass of wine and jump onto the dance floor or find a ride home and read my book.  I did neither, really, and instead lost my jacket and spent a long time looking for it, went outside and had a somewhat strange conversation with my friend the ukelele player (who told me I'd been in an R-rated dream he'd had the night before) and an exuberant and drunken Serbian man who'd played an instrumental role in toppling Miloslovic.  I wandered upstairs and watched people dancing from the balcony; I wandered downstairs and ended up in a long conversation about depression with someone who's struggling with it. 

I headed out of town pretty early, because I was supposed to coach some of my sailors at a regatta down in Portland.  But it was too windy to sail, so instead I wound up scrubbing the keel of a Yngling for an upcoming frostbite series I'll be sailing in.  It was tedious work, wet and cold and repetitive, getting rid of the barnacle footings, fingers gripping a 3M scrubby pad and gently but firmly scouring back and forth on the surface of the keel.  Removing hard-stuck growth on a boat is a lot like scrubbing a pan that you've burned food into.  It felt good: the wind on my cheeks, my feet on the ground, my cold fingers on the wet foamy film on the keel, feeling the rough pattern of barnacle footings and hard dried growth as I worked to scrub it out.  All this brain time makes me appreciate the clear immediacy of a physical task like that. 

I'm skipping book group right now.  I only bought Monica Ali's Brick Lane on Friday afternoon, and it was absurd to think I'd read the whole thing while at PopTech.  It's unfinished, in my suitcase.  The dogs are snoring, one on the white dogbed and one on the green one.  There's a chicken carcass and some vegetables simmering in a pot on the stove, for chicken soup.  It's nice to be home. 

PopTech: Faith

Good presentation by Sam Harris, a compelling speaker, and a book out called The End of Faith.  I can't decide what I think about his message, which is utterly dismissive of religion.  I think his basic message is that the idea of "tolerance" has effectively made it taboo to challenge people's religious beliefs, or to discuss the idea that some religions are better (in terms of the health and welfare of their believers, their impact on human life, etc.) than others.  He argues that this is nonsense, and that we can and must challenge religion.  He says that belief not rooted in reason has no place in our society. 

What's hard for me is that I buy what he's saying, and yet I yearn for faith and I don't want that yearning to be stupid.  I don't have faith; I haven't found an organization that resonates.  But I find ritual and reverence and mystery beautiful and moving in a way that reason and logic aren't.  I admire people who make a regular, social, public commitment to make time to think about magic and mystery and how to be a better human being, what lasts when we're gone.  Isn't that what religion is?  I know it's been warped and there are a lot of lousy manifestations.  I haven't found a faith that makes sense to me.  The practices of Buddhism come the closest.  Yet I admire people who believe, who have found homes in religion, who have people they come together with to meditate, to find sacred, to examine the way they live, and to make a renewed vow to do better.  I envy them.  Is there room in Sam Harris's world for this kind of beauty, for the yearning in my heart to find balance, peace, kindness, majesty, reverence?  I'll have to read the book.  (Well, first, I'll talk to him at dinner.)

PS.  My dad, seated beside me, is photographing the conference at a great clip, and uploading his pics to www.flickr.com and to his blog, if you want some images of what's happening.  Official conference photos are here.

PopTech: To Read

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta
The Selfish Gene -- Richard Dawkins
The End of Faith -- Sam Harris
Shadow Cities -- Rob Neuwirth
Emergence -- Stephen Johnson (also Everything Bad is Good for You)

That's all for now, but I suspect there are more that this conference has/will put on my list

PopTech: Remarkable

Cameron Sinclair's work is extraordinary.  It makes me want to go change the world.  And yesterday in a short conversation he mentioned he'd be in Portland tomorrow night on a layover for his flight out, and I offered to have dinner with him.  I didn't know who he was at the time.  Serendipity. 

It meshes with Rob Neuwirth's earlier presentation, Suketu Mehta's talk, Peter Diamandis' philosophy (although turned on its head, a bit), and Yochai Benkler's point about social production, distributed creativity, and shared projects.  My head is hurting because I need to let some of this sink in.  But, wow.  There are some great people changing the world with really good ideas.  Why aren't I one of them?

P.S. You've got to listen to some of these presentations.  Streaming audio at IT Conversations; podcasts to be available in a week or two. 

PopTech: Crush

Every year at PopTech I find myself smitten with someone.  Sometimes a few people.  I meet people at a conference and they're surrounded by a swirl of excitement and energy and interest.  I'm learning and thinking and I see everyone as someone who can teach me a lot, who is ready to have a big conversation.  And we're in this quaint and picturesque little village, blue sky and yellow leaves drifting down onto the green town square.  I feel smitten just being here.  The only question each year is who will personify that for me.  Last year it was Howard Fishman's onstage confidence and offstage thoughtfulness that made the biggest impression on me.  I sought him out. 

This year's crush is very smart, but that doesn't distinguish him from most folks here.  He had my attention immediately, though, and I started trying to figure out why.  The answer is boring.  He looks like an old flame, and like a strong crush I had before that.  Something about eyes, head shape, hair, work with a subconscious crush trigger I have.  I guess we can't help these things.  Still, I'd like to believe I were more discerning and enlightened than that.  Apparently not.

PopTech: Brain Fade

I really groove on all the people who are around here, and I tend to move through the conference on a high-energy bubble.  I smile at everyone and start up conversations without any self-consciousness.  For the most part, people here aren't badge snobs, who look at your job title before they decide whether to talk to you.  There are a few of those, and I find them tiresome.  (I don't put anything on my badge, and some people light up when they find I am a sailing coach, while others look puzzled.  I usually keep the lawyer side of me in my back pocket, and pull it out if it seems relevant.  To some people it makes a big difference -- they reassess me as smarter after they discover I used to practice law.)  Mostly, the great thing about this conference is the mingling, and the open spirit that people bring to it.  The venture capitalists and the musicians and the schoolteachers are sitting together at lunch having arguments about global warming.   

In any case, I ride this social high for a while but by about now my brain is getting full and I feel overstimulated.  I'm zoning out on the talk about Flock right now (which is a little more of a product demo than we usually have here, albeit a cool product) because I'm still thinking about Yochai Benkler's presentation a few minutes ago, and also thinking about Peter Diamandis's theme from yesterday, about incentives and competition as a driver for social innovation.  I want to let ideas settle, and really absorb them.  But instead there are parties to go to and new people to meet and still more things to see and learn tomorrow.  I get tired in anticipation. 

PopTech: Six Degrees

Last night I drove around like a high schooler, with three cars following behind us, looking for a party.  We even stopped at the convenience store and I bought a six pack of PBR.  We found the party, in an oceanfront home owned by a Google employee.  The orange moon was rising over Islesboro, shining in the ripples of the bay.  I kicked acorns off the back deck and they bounced on the rocks at the edge of the water.  I talked about hair, and satisfying careers, with a ukelele player who stopped teaching college to go to hair school.  I went inside to find my dad bragging about me to a couple of people, and changed the subject as soon as I could.  Mike Hawley found the piano and started playing songs; someone else started to sing. 

This morning I talked to a Ghanian blogger and a Bombay-born diamond wholesaler who now lives in New Jersey.  The diamond wholesaler and I had an interesting conversation about bankruptcy, and he promised to find me at lunch and convince me that the diamond trade isn't as bad as I've been hearing.

The title of this post is because Mark Lynas is discussing, degree by degree, what global warming will mean to the world.  It is terrifying, and sad.  No more polar bears by 2080.

Inspiring

Earlier today we watched Dr. Todd Kuiken and patient Jesse Sullivan.  Jesse was a lineman for an electric company who touched a live wire and was hit twice with major voltage.  He had to have both arms amputated.  Dr. Kuiken has been working with him on prostheses that are extraordinary.  They've wired nerves into his chest that control the prosthetic arm with his thoughts.  I can't do this justice -- the technology was amazing, and Jesse is inspiring.  Standing ovation, and my eyes filled with tears.  I'll link to a picture once they're live, but I'm amazed by this world.  Here's an article about Jesse at the Reconstruction Institute of Chicago. 

[Right now Marcia McNutt, a smart and hip and inspiring deep sea explorer, is scaring me by talking about the increasingly acid composition of the ocean.  By the end of this century, she says, the ocean will be more acidic than it has ever been in 400 million years.  Think acid rain, but in the ocean, dissolving the calcium-based shells of molluscs.... Yikes. Whoah.  She switched gears from the gloom and doom to show us a worm with no mouth, no stomach, and no digestive system that eats whale's bone marrow.  There are some amazing critters down deep in the ocean.  Glorious mystery.]