IdeaFestival

Honoring Randy Pausch

Editor's note: Jeffrey Manber is a writer, commercial space pioneer, former IF speaker and a principle in the new movie Apollo's Orphans. These are his thoughts on the passing of the Randy Pausch, of "last lecture" fame.

I wonder how many of us harbor the idea of floating weightless in space as one of those little life-long dreams so important to who we truly are. I’m thinking about this given the news that Randy Pausch the professor whose “last lecture” made him a symbol for the wisdom of everyday life experiences,  passed away on July 25^th from pancreatic cancer.

His lecture, delivered at Carnegie Mellon on Sept. 18, 2007, has become of course, first a YouTube phenomena and later a best seller book. His down-to-earth advice on growing up (he was grateful for being allowed to paint pictures on his walls), thoughts of his wife, on never giving up no matter how many brick walls must be confronted, struck a chord with millions of viewers and readers.

Amongst the remaining wishes of his life the professor mentioned wanting to experience floating in the weightlessness of zero-gravity. And there we are, confronted once again that for so many of us, there is something special about the frontier of space, a place as filled with gigantic planets and inconceivable forces, as with the wonder of floating and flying and running along alien surfaces.

Dr. Pausch realized that particular dream: NASA allowed him on one of their KC-135 zero-gravity missions. Even there he had to overcome yet another metaphoric brick wall. When his students in a virtual reality program won the right to fly aboard a KC-135 flight, it was understood that faculty members were not allowed. So Dr. Pausch applied as a journalist covering the mission to experience the thrill of zero-gravity.

Taken for granted was his desire to play for a football team; work with Disney, or to take part in a Star Trek film. Yet for those who came of age in the glory of the Apollo program, there remains a life-long wonder of what was then accomplished. Let us hope that this feeling towards space travel, and the desire to personally experience it, never becomes extinguished.

NASA does these sort of things badly, but an educational zero-gravity program named after Dr. Randy Pausch would be a fitting memorial for a man who moved so many with his clear-eyed list of the priorities of life.

Jeffrey

Nigerian Ninja seeks Kentucky connection

If the capacity to be touched by those at an enormous distance is distinctive of our species, then our inability to be touched by all equally is our fallen state. Caring beyond reason about those we don't know is destined to remain an exceptional condition.

That "exceptional condition" is David Weinberger's take on mediated ethics. Ethan Zuckerman expanded on that idea last week with a very thoughtful post on media attention, national "brands" and the need for Nigeria to find its Ninjas, suggesting that Weinberger's "fallen state" has a lot to do with a collective unwillingness to challenge a comfortable story. We have a built-in context that constantly competes with new information. Ethan:

...[W]e’re more inclined to pay attention to Japan because we’ve got some context - a weird, non-representative context, for sure - while we have almost no context for stories about Nigeria. The context we do have for Nigeria - 419 scams - tends to be pretty corrosive, and may make us likelier to pick up only the stories that portray Nigeria as wildly corrupt and criminal.

Tell me about it, Ethan. As someone who has over the years grown to love my adopted home of Kentucky, I'm often disappointed to read or watch stories that deploy Kentucky shorthand. The kind, for instance, where national politicians parachute into a certain knobby region of the country to demonstrate compassion. Message: They CARE.

I guess some Martin County front porches get all the action.

Despite producing world class actors, actresses and perhaps the most widely recognized athlete in history, mention Kentucky and for most people the context of backwardness springs to mind. Sure, there are problems. But problems are not all that Kentucky has. And changing that perception - changing the context - making a new story - is one reason why the IdeaFestival is important to me.

The other: keying the words Kentucky, Nigeria and Ninja into the same sentence. You can't find that word combination just anywhere.

Wayne

Worlds from algorithms

Characterizing it as the "science design movement," the current issue of SEED features a number of articles related to the convergence between disciplined observation - science - and design.

While fractal art has gained popularity, the use of the term "fractal architecture" in a Salon video featuring Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, and Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, attracted me.

Paola Antonelli:

What is really amazing to me right now is how contemporary architects are using the idea that is behind fractals, the idea of a rule that lets them work at different scales indifferently, at least until the moment when the real design application, the reality of the client or manufacturer wanting a building or a toaster, sets in. I am thinking, for instance, of Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch, who you may remember spoke right after you when we had the salon at MoMA. They are two architects that have founded their practice on understanding algorithms and finding ways to take scientific concepts and translate them for architecture's benefit and evolution. So, it seems to me that it is not only and simply about the formal beauty of fractals, it is the idea of growth that your theory has really given to architects and designers. And now we're seeing the algorithm become the principle, and the subject of research, for so many architects today. They're hoping that they can ultimately input an algorithm, give it a push, and then all of a sudden an object, a building, a city, and a world will grow out of it.

I'll add a couple of thoughts:

Natural objects such as ferns and blood vessels can be described in the language of fractals, which means that their unfolding can be described as an algorithmic progression. Fractals, interestingly, can produce nearly limitless two-dimensional shapes, but a finite number of things in three dimensions.

Secondly, I really appreciate Mandelbrot's description of the movement of a cognitive discipline like math toward its biological and physical roots, a point recently driven home in Pulse, a book about the "coming age" of biologically inspired design, which makes just that point about economics. There is no denying the essential natural processes that can be found in presumptively cognitive pursuits.

A transcript of the Antonelli-Mandelbrot exchange is here.

Paola, by the way, also created the MOMA exhibit, "Design and the Elastic Mind," mentioned previously.

Wayne

Wikipedia: fractals

Pangea Day: image and story

Jehane Noujaim's TED Wish was to change the world through film. The result is Pangea Day, "a worldwide search to find films of unique power." 

Wayne

MacArthur fellows announced

The 2007 MacArthur Fellows have been announced. They include an education strategist, a "translator/poet/publisher," a molecular biologist, a spider silk biologist, a Medieval historian, a neuroroboticist specializing in prosthetics and a choreographer, among several others.

Each of these individuals will receive a no-strings-attached $500,000 stipend to pursue his or her creative vision.

Wayne

Cameron Sinclair confirmed for IF '07

Architect and author of "Design Like You Give a Damn," Cameron Sinclair, has been confirmed for the 2007 ideaFestival. He is the founder of the Architecture for Humanity & the Open Architecture Network.

As always, for a complete list of 2007 participants see this page.

Wayne

SciFi: "literature of change"

What is science fiction? From a "literature of change" to a device to explore "cognitive estrangement" or a "mythos of scientism," (or, conversely, to attack scientism), Machina Memorialis supplies several thoughtful definitions from prominent writers in the genre and links to many, many more.

My favorite quote in the larger list is attributed to Damon Knight:

What we get from science fiction---what keeps us reading it, in spite of our doubts and occasional disgust---is not different from the thing that makes mainstream stories rewarding, but only expressed differently. We live on a minute island of known things. Our undiminished wonder at the mystery which surrounds us is what makes us human. In science fiction we can approach that mystery, not in small, everyday symbols, but in bigger ones of space and time.

Wayne

An artist-scientist dream team

In the current issue of Seed, Chuck Hoberman - designer, architect, artist, and engineer best known for inventing the Hoberman Sphere, a geodesic globe that can expand up to five times its diameter, meets with Harvard physicist Lisa Randall, famous for her work on extra dimensionality, to discuss the idea of shape.

A brief video with highlights from the discussion may be found here, a transcript, here.

On the menu: what it means to see. I found it interesting near the end of the video that for Hoberman, shape should to be functional above all else, whereas Randall seems to indicate that aesthetic values also come into play when evaluating the fitness of scientific ideas. It thought it might have been the reverse.

But her hesitancy to endorse practicality above all else, if indeed it was that, brought to my mind cosmologist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne's suggestion that "if you've got some ugly equations, you almost certainly haven't got it right." Of course, any discussion of our mental models and what they can access (or not) touches on the much older ideas expressed in Plato's theory of forms. Whether real or not we cannot comprehend, at least not now, all of reality at one time. An even deeper and related question might be why is there something rather than nothing? Because oblivion is unstable?

Heck if I know.

Elsewhere in Seed - it's a terrific issue - editor Jonah Lehrer fantasizes about other artist-scientist dream teams:

What are my dream art-science pairings? I'd put Richard Serra in a room with Edward Witten, and have them discuss the possibilities of 10 dimensions and curved space. Richard Powers would talk with Gerald Edelman about the strange nature of the self. Ian McEwan and Richard Axel would discuss scientific descriptions of consciousness. John Updike could talk with Steven Pinker about the uses of language. My list goes on and on. What artists and scientists would you pair together, and what problem would they work on?

Wayne

Virtual philanthropy

In addition to its focus on digital learning, MacArthur is also looking at what philanthropy means in virtual worlds, granting $550,000 to University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication to explore the issue.

MacArthur also links to a New York Times article (free registration required) on same.

Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman

Wayne

John Gaeta interview posted

Photo: Geoff Oliver Bugbee, www.geoffbugbee.com

Chaz Rough at PodFactory has posted the latest IF podcast.

Fresh from a sit down interview as part of the 2006 ideaFestival formal agenda, pictured above, Oscar winner John Gaeta follows up with a few quick remarks on the future of screens.

Some quick hits from the ten minute audio:

• He's pleasantly surprised by the quality and production value he sees in some YouTube content.
• Film marketing could be turned on its head. The step by step product roll out of products based on feature films could be reversed. Who knows what other media, like World of Warcraft, might spawn films?
• The gaming industry wants to open up the medium to the casual gamer. The Wii paddle helps move that along.
  
• Television will find levels of engagement to keep its audience.
• Asked about his current (October, 2006) projects, he says he has recently directed two short films. In one, some gaming platforms were used to generate visual effects. Another short took its inspiration from Japanese cinema.

Have a listen. IF podcasts may also be found to the upper left of IFblog.

Wayne