IdeaFestival

Agenda, speakers for IdeaFestival '10 after Derby

Sometime in the next several days the IdeaFestival will release its 2010 agenda and presenters, and debut an attractive new, and much improved, web site. 

The timing got me to thinking. 

As an annual post-Derby event, public release of the IdeaFestival agenda could be the second act in a distinctly Louisville two-fer, a cognitive call to the post that follows the horses.

Like the infield goings-on, the mix of ideas and people at the IdeaFestival is a heady experience - it's impossible to know what you'll encounter. You'll leave, however, with a buzz, a new and unexpected thought, a flash of insight. In a world where everything but creativity has become a commodity, that's a payoff that could last a lifetime.

"Push" author Sapphire, co-producer of "Avatar," Jon Landau, and the man who committed the "artistic crime of the century," Philippe Petit, might be among the incredible and talented people who be on hand in Louisville this fall.

But I'm not saying.

Wayne

Eyjafjallajökull means

Author of This Will Change Everything and Edge Foundation president John Brockman invited Edge community members, who span the range of intellectual pursuit, to react to the ash cloud from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano and to tell him, in 250 words or less, something he "didn't already know and wasn't going to read in the newspapers."

Futurist and business strategist Peter Schwartz, and mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein pointed out that no forecasts for large scale disruption of air travel because of volcanic ash clouds had been made, and so Eyjafjallajökull was a true Black Swan event.

Emanuel Derman simply said, "more efficient, more vulnerable."

But there was one very human point to be made.

Breaking: The Internet is good for something

As it turns out, everybody holds a piece to the puzzle.

Building a platform that loosely organized the successful hunt for ten hidden balloons across the United States, Riley Crane recently appeared on Colbert to describe how collective intelligence won a prize offered by DARPA. The agency - no doubt feeling sheepish about its role in bringing the Internet to life - wanted to know forty years later how the Web might be used to solve real problems.

It took eight hours to find all of the balloons.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Riley Crane
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Hat tip: MacArthur Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning

Wayne

"Every breakthrough seems impossible - until it happens"

Louisville's Keith Robbins filmed this panel featuring philosopher Sandy Goldberg, architect Emiliano Gandolfi, game designer Jane McGonigal and the artistic director for Diavolo, Jacques Heim at the 2008 IdeaFestival discussing breakthroughs, the importance of failure and their sources of creativity. In addition to some great conversation, this ten minute video features a favorite quote of mine.

Wayne

Fishing for extremophiles

In contrast to the mesophiles - that would be you and me! - that live in the temperate climes that prevail over most of our world, what life forms may lie in the dark hidden lakes of the Antarctic? Nature:

Over the past 40 years, radar imagery has revealed around 150 freshwater lakes of various sizes and ages beneath the massive Antarctic ice sheet. Some have been isolated from the outside world for millions of years, raising the possibility that they hold unique life forms. The dark, nutrient-deprived environment of the lakes could resemble conditions on Jupiter's moon Europa, which is assumed to hold a large ocean beneath its frozen surface.

Three projects designed to carefully sample the lakes, at least one of which is as large as Lake Ontario, will happen beginning next year. Hat tip: Alan Boyle

Wayne

Wikipedia: extremophile

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30685567@N03/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Dry Moon, barren idea: "Millions of tons" of water ice discovered

The Moon is dry, barren place of little consequence.

Not so fast.

Finding "more than 40 small craters with water ice," a NASA radar, Mini-SAR, that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has confirmed the presence of substantial water ice deposits, perhaps as much as 600 million metric tons, enough to sustain a moon base or, if the oxygen were converted to fuel, to power rockets for thousands of years.

Those permanently shadowed crater walls haven't seen sunlight in billions of years and are as cold as the surface of Pluto.

'The emerging picture from the multiple measurements and resulting data of the instruments on lunar missions indicates that water creation, migration, deposition and retention are occurring on the moon,' said Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. 'The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.'

The NASA news release is here.

These results follow the work of a mission late last year that crashed a rocket hull into a cold, dark crater. Orbiting craft analyzed the ejected plume of material, which strongly suggested the presence of water ice on the moon’s surface.

Wayne

Image source: NASA

"Skinput"

Based on a method of registering internal acoustics, watch what happens when human skin becomes the input device.

Our minds are of course always processing environmental data and coming up with disproportionate responses - the coo of a swaddled baby often triggers those feelings and that sheltering embrace - so this method of taking external information and calculating a logical response is, to me, not unnatural. We've had a very, very long time to come to terms with environmental signals, and given the enormous flood of new data being created every day, the instinctive surface of our skin is as a good a place as any for appointing those previously hidden cues.

Some have referred to it as a sixth sense.

Wayne

Wikipedia: prosthesis

Shakespeare wrestled water scarcity in Louisville

If you bought a pass to see Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber, cooperative biologist Bert Hölldobler, journalist Dana Canady, Anthony Bourdain or any of the fantastic presenters at the 2009 IdeaFestival, you helped fight water scarcity in India, Nigeria and China!

Seeking worthwhile projects that might demonstrate how small investments can have big outcomes, an IdeaFestival offshoot, Butterfly Capital, partnered with the Abundance Farming Project last year to help AFP distribute a starch-based organic granule to rural farmers in areas of the world that are experiencing sporadic rainfall. The material, called Zeba, can absorb hundreds of times its mass in water and then slowly release it throughout the growing season. It's so absorbent that a teaspoon will hold an entire LITER of water. More importantly, when applied around plant roots, Zeba can provide life sustaining water for crops, contribute to food security and provide extra income for families.

The mission of the Abundance Farming Project is to help these families grow their way out of poverty.

You have helped! A percentage of revenue from sold 2009 access passes was donated to the project following the festival, and Paul Osterlund recently informed IF that the funds were used to start new field trials.

The festival is currently looking for investment candidates. If you have one in mind, please tell us about it in the comments below, or reply @ideafestival on Twitter.

Wayne

Wikipedia: Butterfly effect

Richard Florida: Creativity, the fundamental business force

Describing how he arrived at the idea of a "creative class" and placing it in economic and historical context, Richard Florida talks about the fundamental economic force reshaping modern economies today - an ability to innovate, or to add creative value based, in part, on mental alacrity and a certain social IQ, but more importantly, in a larger willingness to view people as a potential to be maximized instead of costs to be minimized. Put another way, while it's certainly true that many agricultural or industrial activities can and will continue to provide jobs, today it's human creativity that is adding wealth.

A link to a text summary may be found here.
Wayne

Going rogue, the physics of finance

Can economic systems also act like natural systems? The interdisciplinary practice of econophysics looks for the parallels between the two, and like the recently uncovered fact that rogue light bursts can occur in optical fiber, or the confirmation of towering, unpredicted ocean waves, recent research that suggests the equity markets may also exhibit similar characteristics, the kind of unexpected and devastating events Nassim Nicholas Taleb called "Black Swans" at the 2008 IdeaFestival. Put one way, they are the infrequent but inevitable consequence of open non-linear systems.

Put another, life is unpredictable.

Wayne