After reading Scoble’s take and Ethan Zuckerman’s post on BIL (the emergent, self-organizing, and anarchic companion conference to TED), I was motivated to register myself, Min Guo, and natural language processing scientist Boris Galitsky (who also works for Kango) for the conference. Boris will likely give a talk about machine understanding of feelings and sentiment, which is what we are doing at Kango.
Here is the speakers at this moment (full speakers list on the wiki):
- Open source-style security for the physical world – Christine Peterson
- The Genocide of the Curious Mind – Martin Codrington
- Millicomputing: The Coolest CPUs and the Flashiest Storage – Adrian Cockcroft
- Advancement of the TED Prize – Bill Erickson
- Brainstorming A Vision – Tyler Emerson
- How to Be a Successful Heretic – Aubrey de Grey
- An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything – A Garrett Lisi
- Hacking the Human Fantastic – Todd Huffman
- Short Film Fest – Aileen Mapes
- Photography for Everyman – Jason Youn
- Coworking to Coliving – Digital Utopia – Cody Marx Bailey & Bill Erickson
- Darknets – fascist gated associations, or intentional community – Baron RK Von Wolfsheild, CSA, CTO. Qtask, Inc.
- Always the Next Human – Quinn Norton
- Motivation Psychology. Learning Optimism. – Kai Chang
- The BIL Social Graph Experiment – Nikhil Nilakantan
- Social Bonding – Jonathan Sheffi and Lexi Bright
- Growing Up Gifted: The State of the Art of Raising Brilliant Minds – KV Fitzpatrick
- The Rise of the Machines and the End of Transit – Brad Templeton
- Stem Cells- Everything You Wanted To Know But Were Afraid to Ask – Daniel Kraft
- Breathing and Other of Life’s Little Secrets – Ilsa Bartlett
- Telephone Pictionary and the Future of Computational Semantics – Rion Snow
- Why Virtual Worlds are Good for the Soul – Lisa Galarneau
My thought is to quasi-live-blog the conference onto CN Reviews and then David Feng and our other CN Reviews readers can comment on the potential implications to China (of which I am certainly not an expert). For example:
- Genocide of the Curious Mind – How can you better cultivate curiosity and innovation among Chinese employees and companies?
- Millicomputing – What types of extremely small computing devices are most relevant to China?
- Darknets – private networks and individual freedom. Any potential for increased freedom of thought and speech in protected private networks? How could this also be negative?
- End of Transit – what advances in transit technology could be applied to China in the future
- Why Virtual Worlds are Good for the Soul? – are all those high school educated, male, internet bar users playing MMORPGs doing anything socially or personally redeeming?
Go to the schedule and see if there is something you would like us to report on.
What should we make sure we attend? What questions are worth asking?
Some of the topics you highlighted for discussion of relevance to China definitely have potential. Given the specific (though broad) topics of CN Reviews, I’d lean towards speaking topics more relevant to technology, business, and social interaction. I’d probably avoid things like stem cells, short film fest or anything that sounds like a motivational speaker. While Kai Chang’s topic title sounds like the latter, I’d probably sit in just to see if his ideas on motivation and optimism could be applied to the widely criticized Chinese (even) “white-collar” labor force. This, of course, relates to the often frustrating disconnect between Western-trained managers and Chinese subbordinates when it comes to prompting initiative and increasing work efficiency/effectiveness.
As for questions to ask, well, the easy suggestion is the obvious: Given the increasing prominence of China politically and economically, how does anything they say apply to China? While the United States still remains the largest market and there’s still plenty of money to be made in exploiting, optimizing, or revolutionizing that market, we may be giving up a huge opportunity if we do not devote some mindshare towards using existing leadership to mold global markets (including China) towards our interests and modus operandi. The consequence of only discussing and preparing for markets we already understand and are familiar with is divergent evolution. Future success depends on global integrative macro-evolution, even the homogenization of what is still today a diverse global and cultural marketplace. To do that, we can’t have tunnel vision.
That said, international or global scale and scope may not be what this conference is about…but it would be interesting to prompt such considerations if only to see how far along the overall concept of increasing globalization the speakers and attendees are. After all, they definitely represent a subset of the “progressive elements” in United States culture and business. If these people aren’t concerned or ready to deal with the China-question, then maybe that says something about the United States and its awareness of a rising global competitor. Are we going to see xenophobic fear and skepticism (no less aided by increasing media reports) or are we going to see a culture that can and–more importantly–is eager to rise to the challenge?
@Kai, thanks for the thoughts. I have to believe that Kai Chang’s topic is incredibly culturally specific to the US or the West. Agree with your point that there is a chance for US businesses and technology leaders to “mold global markets toward our interests”…Western capitalism is incredibly open to everyone who wants to play, and the multilateral rules of the game that were put in place by the US and Allies after WW2 have made it possible for everyone including Japan, China, etc. to get into the game.
Yes I agree that it will be interesting to inject some global awareness into the discussion. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of xenophobia…its a pretty educated crowd. But maybe some lack of awareness…thanks
I regret using the word “xenophobia” as that would probably be more applicable to the larger, less educated masses that have weathered the past year of made-in-China hysteria and even the recent news of Chinese espionage.
To clarify, I’m curious to see if that crowd will show us a readiness and eagerness to deal with the China challenge OR if they’ll prove to be aloof, uninterested, or even apathetic to what I consider to be an increasingly relevant dynamic of our times. After all, technology is the crux upon which globalization is ramping up. For example, it was sometimes disheartening to read some of the comment responses when TechCrunch suggested that China is, in some ways, more open or free technologically than the United States. While Americans have much to be proud of, continued dominance rests upon humility coupled with competitiveness, not complacent elitism. Underestimating or dismissing any potential competitor is a risky gamble…and not one I’d want to see Americans take.
My worries may be completely unwarranted with this crowd, but I’m only expounding on this simply to explain my suggestion to ask questions that refocus the subject topic of speakers with China and in mind.
I want to throw up a link to this article questioning when China will overtake the US economically because it touches upon some of the issues raised above, especially:
Great article Kai. I think we are facing a multilateral world with China becoming a major “responsible stakeholder”. Hence my motivation to start CN Reviews. But in general, if I had to be a country, I’d rather be the US than China (with 1 billion peasants and the aftereffects of the 1 child policy) and I’m still bullish on the US relative to the EU! Thanks again for the comments.