Late Night Thought:

Ever wake up at 4am and have a thought that won't leave? It was more elaborate than this, but the gist was:

"Life is the transition from one person's dream into another person's memory."

New Community about Digital Video

In yet another exploration of the use and power of blogs and communities (particularly when combined with other - traditional - forms of media), i've made a ning community for people who might be interested in this topic to share the videos they have created, or tips for each other. I may be "the expert" but i'm mostly just the guy messing around with this stuff and sharing what I learn. So here's a link to a digital video community on ning, I call it Making Movies with Mike:

http://powerdv.ning.com/

Anyway, I'm likely revising The Little Digital Video Book this spring, so i'm engaged in a particularly heavy period of rethinking home video and personal video, particularly in a world with YouTube and camcorders in our phones. This is all part of my process.

Nora York: "What I Want"

I've been attracted to this song since i first heard it from TED. But over the year it has sunk in more and more, and i've shared it with my kids who are mesmermized by the lyrics, and starting to discuss them, which begin:

I want what I can't have;
Need what I can't want;
Have, but I don't have
what I want.

I love the song, but i have deeply savored, not without some irony, watching my 5 year old daughter memorize more and more of the Sir Thomas Wyatt (The elder) poem that York uses to introduce her song:

I FIND no peace, and all my war is done ;
I fear and hope,
I burn, and freeze like ice ;
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise ;
And nought I have, and all the world I seize upon.
...

Social Networks

Is it possible that i'm involved in online communities MORE since leaving Netflix? Last month, for instance, I wrote the blog and started exploring NING... and did the usual explorations of experience on Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, blah blah...

But you lie in an ICU for a few days, where your laptop is your only solid form of communication... and you are hungry to connect with other stroke patients, or to provide updates to friends and family. It's a strange transformation: Neflix was FULL of smart, interesting, fun people who I shared with every day. Now I'm a NORMAL person, and i'm home a lot, and finding ways to connect and share are far more challenging.

But I will say this: after years of both research and experience, I'm nearly certain that large social networks* really only serve one of two purposes: to get you a job or to get you laid. That's about it. Linkedin. The former. Facebook, MySpace, HotorNot... the latter. I'd guess all big network success stories fall into one of these two camps. Consequently, I don't think Facebook will ever really be ideal for finding a job, and Linkedin will perhaps always be marginal at finding you a date.

(* Smaller online communities are different - focused and useful in different ways, and i'm not talking about those.)

Hold on. I must digress. I'm not the first to suggest this, but i support the notion that the core activity in any social network is simply connecting to other people. You connect and connect and find people and invite them to connect... and once you've sort of burnt out on this, there doesn't seem to be much other point. You're there to connect. Facebook is great because it's a universal directory of humans. Great for connecting. Once that is done... well... no one is really sure. If you suddenly find yourself single these networks are quite the resource, i'm certain. And if you are slowly (or rapidly) thinking about getting a job... as I seem to be...

I joined Linkedin about 4 years ago. I think they had just started and a friend said "let's try it." Later, when I was at Netflix, it seemed pretty good for helping source new employees, or researching them in some way. I continued adding connections.

So there i am on Linkedin. After 4 years of investment... of connecting for no good reason, I've got about 150 "friends" there. Business connections of various kinds. And as Linkedin is quick to point out, those 150 people have friends, and those people have friends, and that circle represents about 1.5 million people. Friends of friends. And today I care. I'm surfing around, thinking about what people are doing and what seems interesting and who might need my unusual set of skills.

But the point is that it really confirms my fundamental belief that all these communities only are deeply useful in a couple of specific cases. It just so happens that these are powerful and common situations (needing to date or to work). And so here I am. Surfing through my networks, playing on ning and glancing at Facebook, and checking in at Linkedin every day. You can build this stuff all day, but you really need to be on the other side to see these products clearly.

My DNA (courtesy of 23andme)

Well, i got the results of my genetic map experiment. And it was both fun (in a narcissistic way) and somewhat unsatisfying. Maybe it would be better if my entire family was involved here, although i'm not sure it warrants the cost. Maybe in time it will be worthwhile as more is known about the gene markers i have and their connection to medical issues. I'm not sure. I had some ideas for their user interface, but it sounded like they already have an update in the works. So here i am with the data. It wouldn't have predicted my stroke. And even on the things where i have a very slightly higher chance from average of some problem - everyone is quick to point out that in most cases environment is a strong or stronger factor than genetic predisposition.

I'm still pouring through the data. In the meantime, I'll leave y'all with my material and paternal ancestory. According to the data, my mother's DNA seems to be in folks all over Europe and Asia if you go back 40,000 years; my father's seems to be concentrated in western Europe (although this may only be looking back 17,000 years. It's hard to know what to think of this.

[NOTE: Louise and Danny thought this might be interesting too - if you like this genetic stuff: The National Geographic Genographic Project https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/

Oh, and dad: this data is for you, being an eye doctor and all...

TED Courses: For Parents (Creativity)

Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do (TED 07)



Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? (TED 06)





Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law (TED 07)

TED Course: Design

Stefan Sagmeister: Yes, design can make you happy (TED 04)



Vik Muniz: Art with wire, thread, sugar, chocolate (TED 03)

TED Course: Music, Entertainment, Stories

Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006



Nora York: "What I Want"



Ze Frank: What's so funny about the Web? (TED 04)







Ben Dunlap: The story of a passionate life (TED 07)



J.J. Abrams: The mystery box (TED 07)



Rives: Is 4 a.m. the new midnight? (TED 07)

TED Course: Business and Marketing

Jeff Bezos: After the gold rush, there's innovation ahead (TED 03)




Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights (TED 03)

TED Course: For My Kids

Bill Stone: Journey to the center of the Earth ... and beyond! (TED 07) For My 8 year old son.




David Bolinsky: Fantastic voyage inside a cell (TED 07) For my son.




Jennifer Lin: Magical improv from 14-year-old pianist (TED 04) For my kids




Frans Lanting: A lyrical view of life on Earth (TED 05)




Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures (TED 07)



Pilobolus: A performance merging dance and biology (TED 05)



Al Seckel: Your brain is badly wired -- enjoy it! (TED 04)

TED Course: Product Management/UX

Malcolm Gladwell: What We Can Learn From Spaghetti Sauce (TED 04)




Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen (TED 06)




David Pogue: When it comes to tech, simplicity sells (TED 06)

TED Course: Humanity and Ecology

Wade Davis: Cultures at the far edge of the world (TED 03)




William McDonough: The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle (TED 05) -- Note: His TED 04 Talk is better, but not currently available. This one is still worthy...



Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy? (TED 04)




ALSO:
Juan Enriquez: Decoding the future with genomics (TED 03)

TED Curriculum: Preface

Over my years at Netflix, i would occasionally assemble small sets of TED presentations from the years i had attended, with some central theme, and show them in the theater. Now I'm hanging out with my kids more, and i'm also culling my TED experiences for particularly good presentations for them. And it made me think that I'd show the "festivals" here for those who were interested. I'm grouping them by some kind of overarching theme, which should be clear in the heading. Here goes...

Hand Shadows

my father sent me this.

TED recap, volume 5

Saturday had two sessions.

Session 11: HOW DARE WE BE OPTIMISTIC?
Paul Collier, Al Gore and Nellie McKay. People seemed to love Collier, but it didn’t do much for me. But Al Gore did. He delivered. When he was here a few years ago, his presentation was the kernel of what would become the movie An Inconvenient Truth. He had done it a bunch of times by TED, and would do it a bunch more before making the movie. Today’s talk was new, and his first at delivering it. It was the foundation of an economic model, and realistic implementation strategy, for changing the world vis a vis our ecological global catastrophe. This could be work I could give myself to. I know revolutions are young people’s games – but if I could figure out how to support myself through this, I would sure like to join his team. Few times (if ever) in my life have I listened to someone who made me want to follow them into battle. It’s hard to reconcile this guy with the boring plank that was in the white house and lost to bush. It’s amazing what passion (and being out of the political process) can do for a guy.
(And Nellie McKay is a political satirist disgusted as a singer-songwriter. You have to listen to her piece on feminists to begin to appreciate her.)


Session 12: AND THE POINT?
John Francis was cool. Almost Forrest Gumpishly, he went out for a walk in 1983 and didn’t stop (didn’t ride in a motorized vehicle) for 22 years. For 17 of those years, without SPEAKING. Listening to him speak now got me thinking about listening better. I liked his face. The joy and peace in his face seemed almost more genuine and deep than that of Ravi Shankar. Interesting.
Jonathan Haidt was for me, perhaps the most important speaker. More than Jill Taylor, even. I think the applications of his talk – both on the nature of the political spectrum and human morality, was actually life-changing. If there is one talk that I will spend a great deal of time rethinking over the next weeks and months, it was this one. Amazingly, he didn’t even get a standing ovation. The TED crowd is odd in its giving of this honor. Some who don’t deserve it sometimes get one, like an Oscar, for maybe the wrong reasons. But Jonathan was fantastic, and perhaps only in the context of some of the flashier surrounding talks did his not merit, but that was unfortunate. He was great. His talk will be one I show around for years to come.

For me, this was the fitting end of TED. Yes, Bob Geldof spoke. But I didn’t care. I didn’t like his talk and was ready to go and begin the long silence of processing. Of integrating the learnings into my life.



I wonder what will stick. Will I meditate in the mornings? Will I spend time each week home schooling my kids in what I know, what I’m passionate about? Will I walk 3 miles a day? Will I communicate differently – with moral consistency, with more listening? How can I help save the planet? How will my family change our consumption? How will I integrate a balance between work, love, and play – particularly right now, while I am not working, while I am trying not to die, while I am thinking about the next steps in my life in this moment of change.

Please excuse me if I’m silent for a few days after this. Lots to think about.

TED recap, volume 4

FRIDAY.

Session 7: HOW DO WE CREATE?
I was all excited to hear John Knoll speak. I mean, I had interviewed him briefly for my book Droidmaker, I’m a fellow Lucasfilm dude and I continue to marvel that he also co-invented Photoshop. Still, while I LOVED the visual presentations of what he has done in movie special effects, I was neither impressed with his talk nor with my interactions with him following it. I will say: the examples from Saving Private Ryan and Pirates of the Caribbean still make my brain reel. (The storming of the beach at Normandy – with the thousands of soldiers and everything – was done with a few guys on the beach. You HAVE to see the process shots of these sequences!)
I also had mixed feelings about author Amy Tan’s presentation. It was good, but not great. She had some cool points. (“Making something out of nothing” and “Uncertainty is a good thing.”) I need to think about hers more. It was one of few where I took notes. Yves Behar I liked. An entrepreneurial industrial designer – good looking and innovative – I still have never been a huge fan of his “Jawbone” earpiece, and I hadn’t used his other products, but it was cool to hear him present his works. His most memorable quote: “Advertising is the price companies pay to be unoriginal.” \
Robert Lang – I kid you not – is a genius of world-changing proportions, who has applied mathematics to origami. I could barely follow some of his explanations – harder for me than the particle physics for some reason. But the application of his origami goes from vein stints to solar sails. Stunning stuff. Tod Machover was impressive and inspiring. He’s a leader at the MIT Media Lab – a composer and inventor, and you’d really need to see his presentation to appreciate his work. Of all the people I met at TED, my son was most thrilled that I met the inventor of Guitar Hero. For Machover, it pretty much felt like an epiphenomena of his other important work. The first thing he said stuck with me. “Music is better if you MAKE it.”

Session 8: WHAT IS OUT THERE?
Brian Cox is the particle physicist that you’d love if you didn’t love Garrett. He is one of the young minds building that massive particle accelerator at CERN, but I wasn’t that moved by his talk. I think my favorite talk of this part of the show was Robert Ballard. He’s famous for finding the Titanic and the Bismarck, but he pretty much lives under water and is a passionate scientist and advocate for oceanic research. I remembered being a kid and putting a map of the world on my wall, one with all the water out of the oceans so you could see the midatlantic ridge and all those undersea mountain ranges. He had it too. I was disappointed to learn, however, that the majority of the feature on this map were completely fictional – just ‘suggestions’ of what is down there. With all the talk about space exploration, he made a great case for a better spending of money on the undersea world right here. I’m a believer.
Paul Stamets was next. I had never heard of him, nor do I expect to any time soon. He’s a mycologist – he studies mushrooms and fungi. I think he has a chip on his shoulder because he was anxious to prove he was important (very uncool at TED to show slides of your patents), and yet I was stunned by his talk – on the power of mushrooms to change the planet, to fix things, to rid us of viruses, to clean up oil spills, and on and on. People either loved or hated his presentation. I loved it. I’m ready to plant mushrooms everywhere and save the world. Folks I was with preferred Joshua Klein. Innovative, curious. Can-do. For me he’s like Kaki King – gave me a bit of a kick to think differently.. where everyone sees a problem try seeing the opportunity, the positive in it. I’ll just say this: Crows.

Session 9: WHAT WILL TOMORROW BRING?
This was perhaps the weakest of the whole TED. Maybe it was the time of day (2-4pm on Friday, the third day), but it was the hump, and I had a hard time staying awake. Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote The Black Swan, a book I thought was interesting. But I think he’s a lousy writer, and a lousy presenter. He is not a good communicator, but unfortunately, he has great things to communicate. If you can tease that stuff out from the matrix in which it lies, you’ll be changed by his message. That’s all I’ll say about Taleb. Read Fooled By Randomness, if you can. I could hardly concentrate through the rest of this session. Even TED needs a weak link.

Session 10: WHAT STIRS US?
Ahhhh… If Session 9 was the bottom, Session 10 was the top.
Helen Fisher studies romantic love. How can that not be interesting. She was asked at one point if her scientific reductionism of love and romance took anything about it away from her. “I know what goes into a chocolate cake,” she said, “but it tastes just as good to eat.” I went and bought one of her books after this. David Griffin, the director of photography at National Geographic – I expected to be dull. It was not. He was not. He took us through the photographer’s assignments and provided a new appreciation for their photography (and I already have a real appreciation for photography). Chris Abani made me cry. That’s all I’ll say. His poignant tale of being imprisoned left me shocked and moved. Chris is a big guy, a really big guy, but he’s like a little boy in this enormous body. I put my hand on his shoulder later that evening, to thank him for sharing his story. He smiled so sweetly. I felt like I was touching this gentle wild animal, an elephant perhaps, with no evil in him – just enduring the winds of misfortune as best he could. And he did so beautifully. And finally, Ben Zander.

Let me say this about Zander. Only once before when I was heading to TED did my sister ever send me a note that a “friend” of hers was presenting and that I should introduce myself. It was three years ago and her friend was a leading theoretical physicist. I didn’t understand too much of what he said about the space-time continuum… so when she sent me another similar email a week ago that said I “just had to introduce myself to Ben Zander” I was unsure what to expect. I only knew she and her husband were having dinner with him next month and that he was “energetic”. I forgot his name even, but when Ben Zander took the stage on Friday night, the last presenter of day, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, I calculated that this must be the guy she said to meet. So this is what I will now say: of all the presentations I’d seen at TED over the past years, few if any had the excitement and wonder as this man – who’s enthusiasm for classical music was narcotic, and his ability to transfer that to a crowd, remarkable. He said that many would be happy to see interest in classical music go from 3% to 4% of the population. He wanted to see it go to 100%. He had us weeping to Chopin, laughing at his "one-cheek" piano playing, and then a thousand of us standing and singing Ode To Joy in German at the top of our lungs. Now, to be fair, I had heard that he has delivered this exact presentation before, and not only before, but for a decade – and all over the world. But it doesn’t’ take anything away from it, and I guess I’d say that if you ever have a chance to see this, please do.

At the party later that evening, I introduced myself, and he was warm and engaging. But as soon as we connected, he was pulled off in a dozen directions – everyone wanted to hug or kiss or be photographed with the maestro. And they did.

TED recap, volume 3

THURSDAY.

Session 3: WHAT IS LIFE?
Venter is using genes to build new sources of fuel. And other stuff. Say what you will about his ego or whatever, this guy is remarkable. Paul Rothemund folds DNA. He actually MAKES things out of DNA. Not biological things. To him its just a big molecule that you can play with. He is actually doing origami with strands of DNA and making images, maps, and even a working circuit. Mind blowing. Susan Blackmore is a psychologist, but she was one of my favorite talks. She discusses MEMEs, about how we copy stuff we see, about Darwin and the importance of his ideas. I want to go read her book. But everything she said resonated nicely with me. And then Doris Kearns Goodwin. She was fantastic. A historian, who speaks about Abe Lincoln like she knew him. She’s an incredible storyteller, and spent her time taking us into the minds of LBJ and Lincoln. I went to the bookstore to get one of her books, but freaked when I saw how thick it was. I’m shallow, I guess. Shit. But her insights even in the short talk were inspiring me to learn more about Lincoln.

Session 4: IS BEAUTY TRUTH?
This was a rather weak session… Isaac Mizrahi was all over the map and just didn’t work for me. As I mentioned earlier, I liked Garrett Lisi, but learned his views are highly controversial in advanced physics circles. As he said in his talk, the CERN Supercollider which comes online later this year will probably prove him a genius or not. The guy from the Guggenheim museums was interesting, but not really powerful or offering me insight.

Session 5: WILL EVIL PREVAIL?
Redlender discussed disaster medicine and I’ve mostly forgotten what he said. I got freaked out a bit by Emerson (terrorism investigator). Samantha Power… okay. But it was Phillip Zimbardo that stole the session. He’s a social psychologist, yes, but his book (and talk) about The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, was fantastic. He spoke quickly, a bit hard to follow at times, but the message was clear. IT is all too easy for institutions to get us to be evil. Anyone can do it. He showed unforgivably disturbing photos from Abu Ghrabe prison, and gave a cautionary tale of the need for true heroes in the world – regular people (without superpowers) who stand up to institutions and the masses to do what they feel is right. I didn’t buy his book, but I’d recommend his talk.

Session 6: HOW CAN WE CHANGE THE WORLD?
This was the TED PRIZE session, with long and moving presentations from Neil Turok (mathematician who wants to turn Africa around), Dave Eggers (entrepreneurial author who wants to turn kids’ education around) and Karen Armstrong (nun who wants to get religions on the same page).

TED recap, volume 2

Home from TED.

I’d like to sit cross-legged in a cave somewhere, in the dark, for about a week to process the experiences of the past 4 days. And recapping it here doesn’t begin to do it justice. I’m going to do something here right now, not sure what, just to help myself organize thoughts. Come along for the ride if you are so inclined.

Session 2: WHAT IS OUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE.
This was an okay session. A particle physicist, a comedian (john hodgman – who was deadpan and quite funny), a paleontologist who makes a good case for the rarity of life such as ours in the universe, spiritual teacher Ravi Shankar, who really wasn’t all that great a presenter, and musician Kaki King. I’ve forgotten most of this session but have been left with the humor and skill of Kaki. Just watching her play a guitar from the top reminds me how rigid I can be in my thinking. I don’t love her music, but I love watching her play. Anyway, she has a wonderful humor.

Kaki on YouTube.

The Big Party

As you can likely tell from these random notes, I maxed out on reportage sometime yesterday. As Chris Anderson suggested on Friday morning "Day 3 is when TED crosses over into an endurance event..." The remarkable moments start accelerating and the meaninglessness of commenting on them, or the futility of trying to capture these ephemeral sparks of magic, overwhelms. I'll take some time over the next few days to articulate some of the highlights of my own TED experience, but i assure you it will not be complete. TED ends today around noon. Al Gore presents this morning, which may or may not be worldchanging. Oh yea. I'm reminded Tom Reily's comment from the stage, as he focused his attraction toward Gore yesterday: "A Nobel Prize is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

Last night was the final party of TED. A stunning event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I had a number of really phenomenal conversations, but in hindsight, i guess i chose to settle on a few deeper interactions rather than quantity. As I walked through the crowds, i recall a sense of "oh, great - another fuckin' bazillionare genius standing there... 'Hi, what fantastic thing did you invent?"