Podcast appearances and mentions of Danny Hillis

The 10,000-year clock is a visionary timepiece being built inside a mountain in West Texas. Designed by Danny Hillis and funded by Jeff Bezos, it ticks once a year, with a century hand that moves every 100 years and a cuckoo that appears only once every millennium. Crafted from marine-grade stainless steel and high-tech ceramics, it’s built to last for 10,000 years, surviving temperature changes and humidity. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 451 dissects a clip from The Tim Ferriss Show featuring inventor Danny Hillis as he shares an entertaining story about working his way into Marvin Minsky's AI Lab at MIT. How? By living out our leadership tagline, “You are owed nothing. Deliver value first.” He proactively solved problems and sought ways to be genuinely useful. Listeners will gain insights into: 1.Building meaningful professional relationships 2.The importance of expertise and problem-solving 3.How to approach mentorship and career development 4.The universal principle of delivering value before expecting anything in return The story demonstrates that success isn't about self-promotion, but about genuinely helping others and consistently adding value. Construction professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone seeking career growth will find practical wisdom in this episode's core message of selfless contribution and strategic relationship-building.    This episode is brought to you by The Simple Sales Pipeline® —the most efficient way to organize and value any construction sales rep's roster of customers and prospects in under 30 minutes once every 30 days. *** If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback will help us on our mission to bring the construction community closer together. If you have suggestions for improvements, topics you'd like the show to explore, or have recommendations for future guests, do not hesitate to contact us directly at info@bradleyhartmannandco.com.  

Get more notes at https://podcastnotes.org NEW Premium Notes​​5 Ways Stem Cells Will TRANSFORM What It Means To Be Healthy | The Gabby Reece Show​​ ​​Christian Drapeau (@stemcellchristian) is a pioneer in stem cell research. And the first to propose stem cells as the body's innate repair system. Christian Drapeau discusses the transformative potential of stem cells in health and healing. They explore the basics of stem cells, their role in the body, the evolution of stem cell research, and the impact of aging on stem cell efficacy.​The Roman Caesars' Guide to Ruling | Barry Strauss on The Art of Manliness with Brett McKay (#1047)​​ ​​How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Lately, this question has gone viral, leaving many women wondering why their husband or boyfriend is reflecting on Roman history so often. The truth lies in the Empire's enduring allure: its epic tales of power, war, ambition, innovation, and dramatic leadership. In these Premium Podcast Notes, we turn to historian Barry Strauss who gives a detailed overview of his book, Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine, unpacking the themes that make Rome's legacy a timeless source of fascination.​Podcast Notes Book Collection: 2024 Edition (UPDATED AND COMPLETE with 200+ Books)​After reviewing all 400+ Podcast Notes we wrote in 2024, we selected a comprehensive reading list of over 200 books. Whether you're a new parent, hopeful entrepreneur, tech geek, history buff, or just a general bookworm, there's truly something for everyone!Top Takeaways Of The Week​5 Ways Stem Cells Will TRANSFORM What It Means To Be Healthy | The Gabby Reece Show ​​​Stem Cells With Age: ​By age 30, you've lost 90% of red marrow stem cells; as stem cells disappear from the body, the loss becomes increasingly apparent over time​Stem cell sources:​ Bone marrow, fat tissue, blood, umbilical cord​Yamanaka factor:​ Take old cells and turn them into cells with characteristics of young cells​Why We Lose Them:​ “Over the past 150 years, we've gained an extra 50 years of lifespan. I don't think we have the biology to have an extra 50 years naturally with full blossoming health. We need to kind of hack and tap and leverage things in our body.” – Christian Drapeau​Stem cells from blood​ (like PRP) are very potent; they're dormant so need to be ‘awakened'. This is likely the future of stem cells and relatively new to use; the task now is to learn how to isolate and grow them for use ​Stem cells from the umbilical cord​: The most potent – but not as mainstream because of three notable concerns:* (1) Risk of contaminated stem cells is high which can lead to sepsis;* (2) They're difficult to isolate cleanly;* (3) You can obtain genetic material from a donor who may have been a carrier for a disease that you may develop in the future​Tips to Supported Stem Cells:​* Red lights might help with bodily repair, possibly by aiding blood circulation* Pulsed magnetic frequency (PMF) has been well-documents to boost stem cell frequency* Exercise releases stem cells – but this might be because if you trigger tissue damage, your body will trigger a response* Quality sleep supports the proliferation of brain stem cells* Meditation has a healing component – 20 minutes of meditation has been shown to encourage stem cell release* Plants for health: Shilajit, black seed (periodically), natto, kava (hard to source)​The Roman Caesars' Guide to Ruling | Barry Strauss on The Art of Manliness with Brett McKay (#1047) ​​​The Rise of Octavian/Augustus Caesar:​ Octavian, born Gaius Octavius, was Julius Caesar's grand-nephew and was adopted posthumously as part of Caesar's will — which was technically illegal, but law was pretty loose during civil war​How to Win the Game of Thrones:​ Augustus simply killed off a lot of his enemies, between several civil wars and the execution of about 100 Roman senators​Augustus' Expansion​: Octavian added Egypt, northwestern Spain, and Switzerland to the Roman Empire​The Infamy of Nero:​ Nero was less interested in the empire itself and more interested in the celebrity of being Emperor* He was egotistical and also very vain about his singing and chariot racing ability* He competed in the Panhellenic Games and “won” every event​The Truth About Nero's Fiddling While Rome Burned: ​There's a rumor that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but the fiddle technically hadn't been invented yet. However, he may have played a lyre, which is a harp-like instrument.* There are even rumors that claim Nero started the fire, with the intent to engage in a massive urban renewal project​Marcus Aurelius, the Ivory Tower Emperor: ​Marcus Aurelius was a great philosopher but not a great emperor* Marcus Aurelius had no military experience or experience outside Italy, he was completely unprepared to become empowered — a common theme in the Roman Empire system* He let is son Commodus follow him as emperor​Commodus, The Villain:​ The first man born to be emperor* Commodus was arrogant, entitled, and irresponsible* Competed as a gladiator* He offered bread and circuses to the people but killed many senators* Eventually, the senate carries out a plot to kill CommodusDr. Laurie Santos: How​ ​To Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Huberman LabHappiness Operates on 3 Timescales: (1) The immediate timescale of happiness; (2) The intermediate timescale of happiness where we introduce a story; (3) Meaning which is the full pictureTips to Approach Happiness on All 3 Levels:* Engage in activities that fit with values and strengths;* Infuse strengths into work & leisure;* Do for others* Ask others for helpExtrinsic rewards: A tangible, visible reward for achieving somethingIntrinsic rewards: Reward comes from within, feeling progress, purpose, etc.On the lower end of the income spectrum, money affects happiness: If you struggle to put food on the table, keep a roof over your head – more money almost has a linear relationship with happinessStop being a Sad Loner: One of the biggest levers you can pull to improve happiness is to get more social connection“The two things that predict whether you're happy or not so happy are how much time you spend with friends and family members and how much you are physical around other people. The more of that you do, the happier you're going to be.” – Laurie SantosDopamine Must Be Earned, Not Given: “Be wary of any dopamine hit not preceded by effort to achieve it.” – Andrew HubermanPrediction error: Introverts predict social connection will be negative, when in actuality they get report a great experience; extroverts predict social connection will be ok, and anticipation is highNegativity bias: We're built to notice the risky, potentially scary stuff; our brain goes there automatically which makes sense evolutionarilyToxic Positivity: The notion that something is wrong if you're feeling anything but happy or ‘good vibes'; negative emotions are a cue from our body to take action in some direction to fixDog vs. Cat People: If you crave unconditional love, you are probably more of a dog person; cats are more independentHedonic adaptation: We get used to things; you can't be happy all the time because you become sensitized* “Every good thing in life becomes boring after some time.” – Laurie Santos* Tip: Imagine the negative things and obstacles; use worse things as a comparison to realize how good things are – don't ruminate on it but use your imagination to appreciate what you have* Tip #2: Space out positive experiences to come back to them over timeBanister effect: Believe something is positive; be optimistic enough to think something is doable then ask yourself the question ‘what will get in the way?' so you problem-solveArrival fallacy: The idea, “I'll be happy when…” – the thing we arrive at doesn't feel as good once we get there and we chase the next thingMicky Malka – Building ​Ribbit ​| Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy Ep. 400​ ​Life and business principles from Micky Malka:* 1. Never forget where you came from* 2. Fewer decisions is best* 3. Be genuine to yourself and those around youLessons learned from the Robinhood saga* Being the CEO is a very lonely existence* Develop and craft a flexible mindset so that you can be comfortable taking risk* When you truly understand the variables at play, you will be more comfortable with taking ‘risk'* Mistakes made in a single day can damage a company's brand for years to comeTechnologies have their own grid complexes* The electrical grid consists of towers, power meters, transformers, and more* The internet is a grid of data and knowledge* The monetary system has its own grid as well, consisting of the different financial layers and rails which include Visa, Mastercard, SWIFT, etcStablecoins: US dollar stablecoins are travel checks in today's world; they are instant dollars that the individual can control and move, anytime, and for zero* Stablecoins provided people with access to US dollars who previously did not have access to dollars and who were forced to use their local (and weaker) fiat currency* Today, US-dollar stablecoins do a similar monthly volume to that of Visa and MastercardWhat Got You Here, Won't Get You There: Burn the bridge that got you here; whatever got you here will not get you to the next phaseGet the full notes at Podcastnotes.org Thank you for subscribing. 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For the 50th episode, Michael Glenn and Colin Fowler revisit a number of their past guests to check in with them and see how each of their endeavors have progressed in the intervening years.Timestamps:03:43 – Lisa Wallace from Episode 8: From Potato Farms to Server Farms11:57 – Bob Cousins from Episode 9: Meet the Inventor of the Year21:36 – Craig Grossman from Episode 19: Something Big About Something Small32:35 – Danny Hillis from Episode 3: Pursuit of Curiosity: Inside an Inventor's Mind44:11 – Lisa Myers from Episode 43: A Mother of Invention53:25 – Eric Bartsch from Episode 32: Electric Aviation Takes Off1:06:48 – Monica Plath from Episode 16: Tech Takes Toddlers to Task1:19:53 – Dr. Stephen Thaler from Episode 1: Are All Inventors Humans?

Danny Hillis is an inventor, scientist, author, and engineer. While completing his doctorate at MIT, he pioneered the parallel computers that are the basis for the processors used for AI and most high-performance computer chips. He is now a founding partner with Applied Invention, working on new ideas in cybersecurity, medicine, and agriculture.Kevin Kelly is the founding executive editor of WIRED magazine, the former editor and publisher of the Whole Earth Review, and a bestselling author of books on technology and culture, including Excellent Advice for Living. Subscribe to Kevin's newsletter, Recomendo, at recomendo.com. Sponsors:Momentous high-quality supplements: https://livemomentous.com/tim (code TIM for 20% off)Eight Sleep's Pod 4 Ultra sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating: https://eightsleep.com/tim (save between $400 and $600 on the Pod 4 Ultra)AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://DrinkAG1.com/Tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.)*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim's email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim's books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's guest is Tamiko Thiel – lead product designer of The Connection Machine – a revolutionary massively parallel artificial intelligence supercomputer which was developed in the 1980s. Originally conceived by Danny Hillis from MIT's artificial intelligence lab where he was studying under Marvin Minsky, Danny got an incredibly talented team together including Richard Feynman, Brewster Kale, Tamiko, and others to create what would become the fastest and most effective supercomputer of the time. And it's this part of her career that we focus on today.However, Tamiko went on to become a pioneering digital artist who has worked in the realm of virtual reality for the past thirty years, starting in 1994 when she worked with Steven Spielberg on the Starbright World project where they created an online interactive 3D virtual world for seriously ill children.Tamiko also received a Bachelor of Science degree in Product Design Engineering, from Stanford University in 1979 and received a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 1983, with a focus on human-machine design and computer graphics, as well as a diploma from the Academy of fine arts in Munich, Germany. In today's conversation we dig deep into that special time in history when all the so-called experts said what Danny, Tamiko and co. were working on at Thinking Machines couldn't be done and where… they proved them all wrong.Enjoy!--------------Image of Tamiko copyright Tamiko ThielTamiko website / LinkedIn /  InstagramI am not on social media this year but stay in touch via my Newsletter / YouTube--------------Tamiko in London March 2024The Travels of Mariko Horo interactive virtual reality installationBy Tamiko Thiel, 2006/2017, with original music by Ping JinIn "GLoW: ILLUMINATING INNOVATION"Bush House Arcade, King's College, Strand, LondonExhibition: 08 March - 20 April 2024Panel and opening event: 07 March, 6:30pmLocation: Great Hall, King's Building, Strand, King's College LondonThe CM-1 t-shirt and Tamiko's Travels of Mariko Horo mesh top will be shown in the following, with information on how to order them (from my web shops: http://tamikothiel.com/cm/cm-tshirt.html)Curiosity Cabinet, King's College171 Strand/Corner of Surrey St., Londonhttps://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/curiosity-cabinet-showcases-antiquities-and-oddities-on-the-strand

Ranking da programação em 2023, polêmicas da Unity, universo de Toy Story em campo na NFL e parabéns à Danny Hillis. Esses são alguns dos destaques do Decode, que nessa edição tem a participação de André David, Érika Caramello e Juliana Amoasei. Decodifique novas conexões André David: [ @andrefdavid ] Érika Caramello: [ @ecaramello ] Juliana Amoasei: [ @juliana-amoasei ] Saiba mais sobre a Dyxel Gaming e a Alura, que dispensa apresentações!

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Would you like to receive a daily, random quote by email from my Little Box of Quotes? https://constantine.name/lboq A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms. I kept them on the first version of my web site, where they were displayed randomly. But as time went on, I realized I wanted them where I would see them. Eventually I copied the fledgeling collection onto 3×5 cards and put them in a small box. As I find new ones, I add cards. Today, there are more than 1,000 quotes and the collection continues to grow. Hello, I'm Craig Constantine

Would you like to receive a daily, random quote by email from my Little Box of Quotes?https://constantine.name/lboqA long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms. I kept them on the first version of my web site, where they were displayed randomly. But as time went on, I realized I wanted them where I would see them. Eventually I copied the fledgeling collection onto 3×5 cards and put them in a small box. As I find new ones, I add cards. Today, there are nearly 1,000 quotes and the collection continues to grow.My mission is creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion. This podcast is a small part of what I do. Drop by https://constantine.name for my weekly email, podcasts, writing and more.

Alexander Rose is an industrial designer and has been working with The Long Now Foundation and computer scientist Danny Hillis since 01997 to build a monument scale, all mechanical 10,000 Year Clock. Alexander speaks about the work of The Long Now Foundation all over the world at venues ranging from the TED conference to corporations and government agencies.For more information on Alexander Rose and The Long Now Foundation, visit https://longnow.org— Highlights —(0:01:40) What will people say about who you were, and your legacy in 10,000 years?(0:03:10) What are some of the stories that most intrigue you about ourselves, and our planet?(0:05:20) Thinking about time in five digits (i.e. 02021).(0:07:56) What is the concept behind the Layers of Time?(0:12:05) How to find balance between long term and short term decisions.(014:20) Adversity breeds longevity.(0:19:17) How to build businesses for the long now.(0:21:45) The traits of a long term, successful team.(0:23:10) People who have made an impact on Alexander.(0:26:06) Stewart Brand's impact in the world.(0:29:00) The evolution of technology.(0:32:31) How do crisis, such as the current pandemic, affect the long now(0:35:45) Alexander's advice to younger generations.--- Show Your Support ---Thanks for tuning in for this edition of Through Conversations Podcast!If you find this episode interesting, don't miss out on new conversations and subscribe to the podcast at any podcast feed you use, and leave me a review.Consider sharing it with someone you think can enjoy this episode.--- Keep The Conversation Going ---Instagram:@thruconvpodcastTwitter: @ThruConvPodcastWebsite: throughconversations.com--- Credits ---Our New, Awesome Music by Joe Lyle.  More info can be found at https://joelyledrums.comHosted, Produced by Alex Levy.

Colin and Michael talk with Danny Hillis, an early pioneer in parallel computing, knowledge graph based search engines, and cancer diagnosis, among many other achievements. Danny discusses how his curiosity spurred him to tackle and elegantly solve technical problems across often unrelated disciplines.

25 Visions for the Future of Our Species We now have the tools to transform ourselves and our species. Greater health and longevity, enhanced brains, and engineered fertility are in the works. What’s just over the horizon is even more astonishing. We call this the neobiological frontier. The book is a collection of 25 essays, interviews, and works of fiction and art offering a big-picture perspective on the profound changes made possible by the merging of biology and technology. The book brings together today's smartest and most creative inventors, thinkers, and scientists to tell us their vision of the future. This book is a 2020 time capsule for future humans. Neo.Life: 25 Visions for the Future of Our Species covers these powerful new biotechnologies and ideas in non-technical language, with beautiful full-color images and a fresh design by National Design Award winner Jennifer Morla. This book makes a compelling foundation for the discussions we’ll be having about these technologies for years to come, and as one observer said, it is definitely coffee table worthy, no matter which planet that table is on. Meet George Church, one of the most prodigious bioengineers of our time, in conversation with Ramez Naam, a computer scientist, clean tech investor, and science fiction author. George maintains a list of genes that could be edited to make humans healthier or more suited to future environmental conditions, including life off-planet. He’s also got an idea to send a single-cell biological probe to faraway worlds that could be programmed to beam information back to Earth. Consider neuroscientist David Eagleman’s ideas about how embryo selection could change the way we parent our children. Dive into an imagined future with inventor Danny Hillis as he guides you through the possibilities and pitfalls of designing your child from scratch using gene editing technology. Will you “supersize” them, or give them an extra appendage? If you bestow a color or pattern, keep in mind that it might be trendy today but look dated 10 years from now. Discover filmmaker and artist Lynn Hershman Leeson’s ideas about identity in her antibody-as-art project that will change how you think about life-science technologies. Hear from Osh Agabi, the Swiss-Nigerian roboticist-neuroscientist who’s built a brain on a chip, literally blending silicon and neurons. He envisions using his technology to allow us to connect our consciousnesses together in a sort of giant empathy web. Read Juan Enriquez, who has been thinking and writing about self-directed evolution for a long time. In his creative brief, he imagines a future with a far greater diversity of human species, and considers the implications. Ponder the risks and ethical implications of this new frontier with CRISPR scientist and film producer Samira Kiani, who outlines the safety checks she’s developing to control gene edits. And hear from biosecurity policy expert Megan Palmer, who shares how her experiences led to social responsibility programs for synthetic biologists. BOOK DETAILS Designed by Jennifer Morla Hardcover, 7 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches 160 pages, 25 color illustrations Smyth sewn, with silver Litho foil-stamped cover Contributors: Oshiorenoya Agabi, Christina Agapakis, Siranush Babakhanova, Seth Bannon, George Church, Emma Conley, Zoe Cormier, Zack Denfeld, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, David Eagleman, Juan Enriquez, Kristen Fortney, Joel Garreau, Daisy Ginsberg, Danny Hillis, Samira Kiani, Cathrine Kramer, Becky Lyon, Hannu Rajaniemi, Lux Alptraum, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Ramez Naam, Megan Palmer, Nicola Patron, Robert Plomin, Steve Ramirez, Sissel Tolaas, Bowen Zhao, Changle Zhou.

If you’ve heard of the 10,000 Year Clock, you know Danny. He’s a computer scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. Danny founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and was a fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.

 In his latest book, Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last, David Edwards unveils elements essential to the creative process employed by the world’s best innovators. As a creator, writer, and educator, Edwards attributes his deep and persistent love affair with creativity to his father who took time to play with him, take his five-year-old world seriously, and believe in his dreams. Consequently, as an adult, Edwards has created breathable insulin, edible food packaging, and digital scents. Edwards is the founder of Le Laboratoire in Paris, France and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts where his culture lab includes the experimental restaurant Café ArtScience. KEY POINTS Creating is highly expressive! It’s a way we learn, discover, and communicate. We need to create beautiful solutions to our challenges—solutions that are so compelling that we adopt them. Combining art and science is a process. Culture labs – a place for experimenting using the creator’s cycle (ideation, experimentation, and exhibition or expression) Within the culinary experience, Edwards finds rich opportunities to push the boundaries of serving and eating food, making it not just interesting but truly delicious. Healthcare needs to move out of the clinic and into everyday lives for it to be accessible. Aesthetics of creation have become essential to things that matter now and to those that will last over the long haul. Being mindfully aware of our own environment helps us see things afresh and can lead to surprising expression. Major creators tend to be quite generous, such as Danny Hillis, inveterate inventor of the universal “pinch-to-zoom” technology on smartphones. Richard Garriott, early game developer who wanted to embed morality into games The Grassroots Creators Movement (GCM) is giving all of us the ability to express ourselves. Makers and "Maker Faires" have proliferated.  QUOTES FROM EDWARDS “Most things we create will not matter.” “Changing the human condition today will be harder than it was in ages past.” “Creation stirs within us the profound biological sense that we are not alone, that we are wired for relationships, and that we rely on each other for our mutual well-being.” “Making things that matter—not just to you or me—is fundamental to the survival of the human condition. It’s something our biology has programmed us to do.” “Creating what matters and has not existed before starts with what matters to us. We don’t create…by coercion. We create because we feel like it.” “Creators love frontiers because a frontier has no boundary.” “There’s nothing as fun as creating tomorrow.” “As creators, we all need a Florence…What we most lack is the oxygen, or culture, which can give people everywhere the confidence that what matters to them can matter to many others, and the guidance that point their aspirations in fruitful directions.” “Over the last decade, people have started to make things without being told they should and on a scale never seen before.” BUY Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last RECOMMENDATIONS Watch David Edwards’s TEDTalk, “Eating Better with Digital Scent.” Learn more about the World Frontier Forum here. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit   

Russ Altman: Today, on The Future of Everything the future of Silicon Valley. Periodically, in human history every now and then there is an unusual mix of opportunity, capital, talent, technology in a geographical region that concentrates this and creates perhaps an unusual period of creativity, invention and sometimes great impact on a global scale. Far beyond, what you might expect from that local geography. I like to think about the Italian Art Renaissance in the 15th and 16th century, focused in Florence. So, removed from Rome, the seat of Italian power and the church power. The Medici family and others provided capital. There was a network of business connections there was a good supply of marble, and paint supplies. And, things were advancing, and then a few masters Giotto, da Vinci, Michelangelo emerged from this pool of kind of opportunity as masters. They integrated the lessons from the past, they added their own vision and there was this revolution in art that seemed to advance from static 2-D depictions, mostly of bible scenes to dynamic three-dimensional art that many people, even today are captivated by. Books have been written about Florence. Why then? Why there? We're not gonna do that today. But I love that it is related to the Bubonic plague. And the fact that one-third of European people died from this terrible disease. But that took pressure off the farmers who could then produce extra food. Yadda yadda yadda. Now, we have the growth of Silicon Valley. Now, I don't wanna push this too hard. This was not an art, and it's not clearly about art, or about cultural things. But there was digital technologies and there's a somewhat parallel story. Removed from the seats of power in Washington D.C and New York. The power and influence. There was this West Coast place which actually even 50 years ago was mostly fruit farms. But companies arose, Hewlett Packard, Intel. There was this University, Stanford University. Disclaimer: I'm an employee of Stanford University that provided a growing technological work force in both engineering and science. These masters weren't artists — far from it. Although, well we could discuss that. But they were industrialists. You had Hewlett and Packard, you had the Gordon Moore, and the Intel founders. Steve Jobs and then of course Jerry Yang from Yahoo!, Sergey Brin, Larry Page. And recently now we know about the founders of Facebook, Uber, Twitter, etc. A remarkable concentration of talent, opportunity, technology. Creating a singularity, you could argue that in this area that was just a fruit farming area. So, Silicon Valley perhaps has helped usher in an era of AI, machine learning and the gig economy. Now, as I said I don't want to oversell this analogy and let's also remember what happened to Florence. It did not maintain its preeminence in art. Wars and important changing trade patterns reduced the available capital, reduced it as the center of the world in many ways. The reformation changed the religious dynamics. The Catholic church had various reactions against humanism. The pendulum and perhaps the luck of Florence ran out. And Florence became once again a local geographic region. It's great to visit, it's great to eat there but it is not really particularly, the center of anything right now. What does the future hold for Silicon Valley? John Markoff is a fellow, former fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study and Behavioral Sciences. He's a current fellow and research affiliate at the Human-centered Artificial Intelligence Institute at Stanford. He has been a science writer at the New York Times for more than 20, 30 years. He's covered the general computer industry, Silicon Valley in particular during this time that I just described of great innovation and disruption both in good and bad ways. John, you have written that Silicon Valley may be over optimistic, both at the rate of expected future progress, and also the benefits that that progress will bring to society. Perhaps it's peddling some things. How do you see this manifesting? And is it a byproduct of hyperbolic marketing, purely? Or does it indicate potentially the beginning of the end for this period of Silicon Valley flourishing innovation. John Markoff: Boy, I love your analogy to Florence. Because I think about that a lot and I think about it particularly in the context of fragility. How fragile is the Valley. Nothing lasts forever. Clearly the arc of technological innovation in the last couple of centuries has been from east to west. There's always the implication that it may continue to go west perhaps to China. You know, the question of where Silicon Valley came from is a really interesting one as well — you brought that up — what's new, I mean I always thought there's a lot of serendipity. I mean Shockley came here — Russ Altman: Right. John Markoff: — famously because his mother was here. What if his mother had been in Iowa? Russ Altman: Exactly. John Markoff: And then there's this wonderful thing that David Brock who's the staff historian at Computer History Museum recently discovered, Shockley didn't come here to build the transistor. He created a transistor company, but when he left Bell labs in the early 50s he was super — there was an automation phase. It's kind of an interesting thing considering where we are today. Russ Altman: Yes, yes. John Markoff: An automation fad, and he came here to build a robot. He got money from Beckman, who was his investor. And it devolved down, first, into a company whose first intent was to build a company to build a robot eye. Because he wanted to build an automated factory. So, Silicon Valley's roots are actually in robotics and AI. Which I think is not known, largely. Russ Altman: No, that is not generally appreciated. John Markoff: And it's just a wonderful sort of — it devolved down into transistor company and then of course the traders left and they went to Fairchild. Russ Altman: Right, right. John Markoff: And all of that happened. But then — so, I guess you know when I was a reporter in 2006 I was spending a lot of time in Europe. And it looked like innovation in mobile software was moving to Europe. Nokia, and Sion were there. Russ Altman: Yes. John Markoff: And I had this sense, that the ball was moving overseas in that direction. And then the iPhone happened. In 2007, the mobile platform came to the Valley. Russ Altman: You're right, we all had Nokia phones in 2005, 2006. John Markoff: At some point. That's right. Russ Altman: And it was like where the heck is Nokia. Why don't I see signs on it when I drive down 101. John Markoff: Yeah. Absolutely. Russ Altman: It was not a thing from Silicon Valley. John Markoff: So, the way I think about it, there are a couple things. It's really interesting to me to think about where the next IT platform might come from. Will it come from Silicon Valley? It's not guaranteed. I mean, there's lots of speculation it might be augmented reality, it might be speech. There clearly will be something after, if you walk down the street in San Francisco half the population is looking at the palm of their hand. Russ Altman: Yes. John Markoff: That can't be the end of user interface. There has to be something after that. So what'll it be? John Markoff: The sooner — the other thing I have to say is the visionaries are almost always wrong. It'll surprise us. It'll come out of left field. It might come from China. Russ Altman: So what about this idea, where does it, where does this idea come from that the marketing from Silicon Valley in terms of the pace of progress has been a little bit misleading and perhaps the data doesn't support — John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: The looking back at how fast things have been and how fast they're going to be. John Markoff: I can't tell you in my career how many press releases I've gotten that have the word “revolution” in them. Russ Altman: Yeah. John Markoff: And in fact I think the reality of Silicon Valley is there have been a couple of big ideas. Personal computing, networks, ubiquitous computing, and then there's been a lot of great engineering. This is an engineering center. But big ideas that actually break paradigms only come along, every once in a while. We had a free ride for 50 years on Moore's law. What I would argue is because not only did things get exponentially faster, but cost fell exponentially as well. And that drove the creation of new markets at regular intervals. It was kind of a free ride. Russ Altman: Very interesting. John Markoff: Computing, went through these different stages, mobile phones in a sense happened because of cost and other related factors. Not because of brilliant innovation often. Russ Altman: This is The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, I'm speaking with John Markoff about innovation in the last couple of decades. How much of it, I guess, how much of it was designed and deserves credit, so let's — and, how much of it was free luck and a free ride. So let's dig a little bit deeper. So Moore's law, in what sense — First of all for those who are not familiar Moore's law is the general idea that computing every 18 months, computing power roughly doubles. In a remarkable turn of events for the last 20 or 30 years, that actually has been true. There is a profound concern now that engineers will not be able to maintain that. And that that will lead to putting the brakes on a lot of things. I guess what you mean by we've, they've been lucky and been getting a free ride is that they didn't have to worry about being particularly clever in their software or even in their hardware because they could count on Moore's law giving them vastly greater computer power very soon. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: But what is the world like when that flattens out? John Markoff: Well — Russ Altman: Is that the concern? John Markoff: Yeah. That's the concern, so basically the cost of Silicon stopped falling at an exponential rate around 2015 because we'd hit that wall we all knew was coming. And that's not to say it's over; there may be some way around or some new acceleration. But for the moment things have slowed down dramatically. So we're in this new era. And I had this wonderful moment about two and half years ago it was actually Engineering School Industrial Partners Program here. Everybody was wringing their hands about how we'd hit the wall. I ran into this Harvard computer architect and he was just wild with enthusiasm. Because he said “Now it's our turn.” Russ Altman: Interesting. John Markoff: You'll make, and that's in fact what we've seen. What we've seen is new architectural designs most of them in terms of chips that do AI kinds of algorithms better but that's where the innovation has been. So, that is — we're not saying that innovation is over but it's not in the lock step acceleration model of Moore's law. It's based on human ingenuity. Russ Altman: And this could be one of the changes that opens up the world and allows other places, other institutional structures to kind of take over in the innovation leadership. John Markoff: Absolutely, for example lets hypothetically, everything in AI is now about big data. So that argues that those with most data win. Google, Amazon, Apple, China. Russ Altman: Yes. John Markoff: As in a nation-state. But what if there is an algorithmic that break through that works off of small data. That changes the entire playing field. Russ Altman: Right. John Markoff: So it could — there's interesting stuff happening in AI approaches that may not be based on the current state of the art neuro-nets and deep learning. Russ Altman: Fantastic. So okay, so you've written a lot about, you know I love — I love that you're a journalist. I should say as a disclaimer to anybody listening I am not a journalist. My mother sometimes calls, My mother is only person I know, for sure listens to this show. Hi mom, I know you're listening. She'll call me every now again and said “You let that guy off the hook. You're a bad journalist.” And I had to say mom, I'm an enthusiast. I'm not a journalist. But as a journalist, I love you're trained to look at situations and kinda cut the B.S. from what's really happening. And you've looked for example at AI and jobs. What's your impression, there are a lot technologists saying Well, don't worry about this, we're gonna everybody will adapt. And they're forging ahead. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: When you look at it from your journalistic trained eye, what do you see as the reality? John Markoff: Okay. Couple of things. I had to come around to that view. I was part of that, in fact I helped create that current sort of period of anxiety that we're in about jobs and technology. I began writing about the impact of AI and white collar around 2010, 2011. And I was in that camp. Then I had an important sort of interaction with Danny Kahneman, who is the behavioral economist. Russ Altman: Very famous. John Markoff: I was on this rant about how automation would come to China and It would lead to disruption because of the loss of jobs. And he stopped me and he said you don't get it. He said, in China they'll be lucky if the robots come just in time. And I said what do you mean? He walked me through the demography of modern China. I began looking around the world. And all of sudden I realized that the most important things happening in the world today are demography not technology. Russ Altman: Ah. John Markoff: All over the world except for Africa and the Middle East, the world is aging at a rapid rate. And he's really right. The issue is care and dependency. So I changed the question I asked as a journalist. I used to ask when will there be self driving cars? Not anymore. I ask when will there be an robot that can safely give a shower to an aging human? And nobody has a good answer. Russ Altman: This is The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, I'm speaking with John Markoff who just changed the question. This is great. So, demography is driving technology is kinda the core concept that you just alluded to. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: Does that change our level of optimism? Should we now think, well, self-driving cars and AI for care of elderly? I think what you implied is not only should we be rooting for that we need for it to come soon or we for example might not have the work force to — John Markoff: That's right Russ Altman: — to take care of our parents and ourselves in the next 20 to 30 years. John Markoff: Absolutely. I mean Rod Brooks, who's a pioneering roboticist, says with a bit of humor, that self-driving cars will be the first elder care robots. Which actually may be true. And if you think about that, if self-driving cars did show up, they could give people who are sort of bound to home new mobility. And that would be a very great thing. Russ Altman: I Just had a very good friend say that their parents are driving and they don't think they're safe, and how people all over, certainly all over the country and probably all over the world, are trying to decide how do you have these tough conversations about many issues — John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: — where there is a very important and difficult loss of autonomy associated with aging. You want to obviously support the elderly in a caring, loving way. But, they can be a danger to themselves and to others. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: And this is not a solved problem. And its only getting worse. John Markoff: The world is gonna look so different in a half century. Already, more people in the world as a whole are older than 65 , than under five. By the middle of the century the number of people over 80 globally will double and will go up seven fold by the end of the century. That's the most important factor in the world. Russ Altman: So as you look at this, do you now worry so now I'm flipping my perspective a little bit. Do you worry that with this challenge to Moore's law and the difficulty in getting that next doubling every 18 months that this is happening at kind of a perfect storm of just when we need Moore's law the most, because were not, we do not have robots to help take care of my parents. John Markoff: Exactly. Russ Altman: Or to drive them around. I need them to exist soon. And now at the same time were having some technological resets. Is this a potential crisis? John Markoff: Well, I think that the — there is a crisis, I think, in elder care. We do have to think about that as a society. The other question about markets and sort of the work force. The work force is not gonna change as fast as some people worry because of this slowing down. How many job categories, census job categories, have gone away in the last three decades? One. Elevator operators. The kind of rapid change. In 1995 when Jeremy Rifkin wrote the End of Work, the American economy grew more than it ever had grown in history in the next decade. Russ Altman: Right. John Markoff: The whole thing about jobs going away here we are in a full employment economy. We've had a half century of the micro-processor and a decade of deep learning. So something else is going on. It's a more, and I think what the deal is, it's very easy to point to jobs that might go away. It's much more difficult to look at jobs that might be created. We have a very difficult time understanding what the future is gonna look like. Russ Altman: I hate to be Mr. Renaissance, but I have spent time in Florence. And in fact the thing I was saying about the Bubonic plague. The farmers said we're in big trouble now because there's nobody to eat our food but they did not suffer because this middle class emerged of merchants, and people who created jobs and industries and guilds that didn't even exist a hundred years before. There was plenty of economic churn to support these folks. It's an exactly the example that you're referring to. Actually amazingly good things in many ways happened when you had some free time. So I've often wondered is the AI, robotic revolution if it ever happens. Is that actually gonna free up people to do things that we've had on our to-do list for a long time, that really society needs. Fantastic. We should now talk about the work force. You referred to that a little bit. What is the challenge in training young people for the future that is hard to predict? John Markoff: Boy, let's see if there are good examples. You know, the nature of education has changing in interesting ways. Sebastian Thrun and others at Stanford predicted that were gonna have this new kind of education and universities would go away. Universities don't appear— Russ Altman: The MOOC, the massive — John Markoff: That's right, online classroom. And MOOCs exist now, and universities are still thriving. The visionaries are always wrong. Russ Altman: We don't know. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: This is The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, more with John Markoff about the future of technology and computing, next on SiriusXM insight 121. Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, I'm speaking with John Markoff, about technology, history of technology and computation and the future of technology and computation. John, you're currently working on a biography about Stewart Brands, who was associated with the he was a Stanford graduate student and he's associated with the Whole Earth Catalog. I think you believe this to be a critical, kind of historical moment in time. So tell us about the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brands, and why we should care. John Markoff: Yeah, okay. First of all, Stewart was a Stanford student. He studied biology here in the 1950's. He's associated with a couple of very important events, that were instrumental in creating what I think of as a California perspective or world view, ideology. One of them was the Whole Earth Catalog. Before that there was something called the Trips Festival. Which was the most visible and most successful of these things that Ken Kesey organized called the acid tests. Russ Altman: Ken Kesey was a famous LSD guy. John Markoff: He participated in these experiments in Menlo park. They were financed by the CIA. Then the drug kinda leaked out into the surrounding community. And people like Stewart began experimenting with it. Some formally, and some recreationally. My generation experienced LSD as a recreational drug. But it was part of a cultural shift. And the Trips Festival which happened in January of 1966 in San Francisco at the Longshoremen's Hall. It was organized by Stewart was important because it was the moment that the 10,000 hippies in the Bay area realized that there were 10,000 hippies. It created a community. There was a direct line to Haight-Ashbury and to the counter culture. It also led directly — Russ Altman: Into the summer of 1968. John Markoff: Summer of love, that's right. All of that grew out of that moment, in a very direct sense. They hired to help organize it, this guy who had been a publicist for the Mime Troupe by the name of Bill Graham. Russ Altman: Pretty famous guy. John Markoff: He became famous, Bill Graham at that moment realized that there was money in music and the day after the Trips Festival he went out and leased the Filmore. So it led also directly to the San Francisco music scene. So it was the spark. So dial the clock forward a couple of years— Russ Altman: What, just one quick question. What did they do at the Trips Festival? Was it a discussion, was it music? John Markoff: It was all — it was several things. Stewart showed this multi-media slide show he'd produced called “America Needs Indians.” Which was important in the creation of the American environmental movement of the 1970's. He showed that for the last time. But then a couple of rock groups like Big Brother before Janice, the Grateful Dead, not the Warlocks, let's see who else played — three different rock groups played. And it was really the sort of the moment that you know the rock, the San Francisco rock concerts — Russ Altman: By any chance was it Jefferson Airplane? John Markoff: No, Jefferson Airplane wasn't there they played before at the Family Dog — Russ Altman: Okay they were a favorite of mine. John Markoff: Favorite of mine too. As a matter of fact, I used them to title a book that I wrote. Yeah, so all that sort of happened the culture sort of emerged. But by that time, Stewart who was the bridge between the beat culture, which had been in North Beach in the 50's and early 60's and hippe culture. He was done with that. He moved down the peninsula he came down here to help organize an education conference festival that never really happened. And after that failure, this is sort of Silicon Valley cultural thing about fail fast. He had a mentor his name was Dick Raymond, who had something called the Portola Institute was just up the road here in Menlo park and Stewart got this idea, and it was largely because his friends were going off to communes. That he would create a catalog, perhaps a little bit like the Sears robot catalog. Russ Altman: Which was a dominant thing in the 60's and 70's. John Markoff: That's right there was no Google. Russ Altman: I remember spending hours in the Sears catalog. John Markoff: That's right. And there was no Google. How could you find interesting things? So he came up with this notion of a catalog of tools. And his idea was a truck store, that he would drive around to the communes. And he would sell them stuff they need. Well, he did that about two times and then he realized that communes had no money. So that wasn't gonna work. So he pivoted, in a classic kind of Silicon Valley way Russ Altman: This is great. John Markoff: And he created this catalog that went from 1,000 copies in the fall of 1968, to winning the national book award in 1972. It really became the bible of my generation. And I can't tell you how many people I've run into, that said you know I saw something in the catalog, and my life took a right hand turn, or a left hand turn. That it really changed people's lives. Russ Altman: This is The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman. I'm speaking with John Markoff about the Whole Earth Catalog. Okay so tell us more. How did it impact the world? Does it connect at all to the Silicon Valley that then emerged? John Markoff: Okay, it's super complicated. And I'm now writing Stewart's biography, I'm trying to — Russ Altman: Take your time because we have at least four minutes. John Markoff: So in 1962, Stewart's had just gotten out of the army and he was visiting the computer center at Stanford. And he saw something that really stuck with him. He saw these two kids sitting in front of a graphical computer display. Remember they didn't exist at that point. Russ Altman: This is very experimental. John Markoff: Having what he thought of as an out of body experience and what they were doing is they were playing a game called Space War. Which was the first video game. That had been invented by at MIT and had been imported to Stanford and I would argue that that was the first inkling of a something called “cyber space.” Stewart saw it first. And he kept that in the back of his mind. In 1972 he shut down the Whole Earth Catalog, and he was sort of becoming a journalist. He wrote this really important article for Rolling Stone which dealt with the two laboratories on both sides of Stanford campus. One was the Stanford Artificial Intelligence laboratory and the other was Xerox Park, which had just opened. And that was the first window, that people like me had that there was this thing called the internet coming and there was this thing called personal computing coming. Stewart saw it first. And he alerted the world to it. So he was sort of playing the role of a journalist at that point. But you sort of dial the world even farther forward and he set up this thing called The Well in 1985 in Sausalito, and there too, it's complicated. Because there was this explosion of what do you call it sort of digital utopianism. And he was part of that digital utopian movement. Russ Altman: So he bought in. John Markoff: Absolutely. Russ Altman: So he moved from the counter culture, beats, hippies he came literally south 20 miles started seeing computers, starting thinking about the future and that is a direct connection then. And does that spirit? Maybe you've written this, and I apologize. I've read that the Whole Earth Catalog embodied a spirit that is still traceable to current Silicon Valley utopianism. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: Is that an overstatement? John Markoff: It is a debated statement. There are two recent books this is where Stewart becomes kinda Rashomon. Franklin Foer's “World Without Mind” — so there's a Zeitgeist shift that's happened. In 2016 Silicon Valley went from being able to do no wrong, to being able to do no right. Russ Altman: It was an amazing turnaround. John Markoff: Just turned. And the two books that best sort of capture this are Foer's book. And he goes right back to Stewart and sort of — Stewart is patient zero. I think he gets it wrong. Russ Altman: Okay that might've been what I — John Markoff: And then there's Johnathan Taplan's book. It's called “Move Fast and Break Things.” Very similar book, but he has a more sophisticated understanding of what happened. He goes back to the digital utopians and Stewart was one of them. But there was a second wave and those are the digital libertarians. And it went from utopianism to libertarianism and I think that's the sort of arch. Stewart started as sort of sympathetic with Ayn Rand but he ended up in the middle of the 1970's working in Jerry Brown's administration — first administration. And he came away with this sense of the value of good government. So it's just wrong to think of Stewart as a complete libertarian. Russ Altman: I see. John Markoff: That's not what he is. Russ Altman: So there's another trail that says were gonna build this utopia. And you guys are preventing us from doing it. We are now libertarians because we want to be able to just build it. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: He wasn't necessarily part of that strand — John Markoff: No. Russ Altman: But responsible, maybe, I don't wanna overstate it, responsible use of — what would be the word — stewardship of this technology in an advancing — John Markoff: He was very optimistic but Stewart was always someone who saw nuance and paradox. He is seen as the person who said information wants to be free. That's not what he said. At the first hackers conference — Russ Altman: Aha. John Markoff: What he said was, information wants to be free and information wants to be very expensive. That's Stewart. Understanding the nuance — Russ Altman: That's interesting because that information wants to be free you can trace directly to statements of the Google founders and the Facebook founders. That's one of their mantras. John Markoff: Yeah. Russ Altman: And as we know, they have not always been led well by that mantra. And they've gotten themselves into very sticky, thorny situations because you need to moderate that with other considerations. John Markoff: And Stewart is an optimist. He was particularly an optimist about technology having an important role and impact on the world. There's this arc — the first sentence of Whole Earth Catalogs was “We are as gods, and we might as well get good at it.” Russ Altman: Wow. John Markoff: So 20 years ago with Danny Hillis, who's this computer scientist, he set up this organization called the Long Now foundation to build a clock. A mechanical clock to run for 10,000 years as a demonstration of long-term thinking. It's almost finished. Jeff Bezos picked up the tab, it exists. It's in Texas. Russ Altman: So were building it. Is it a pendulum? John Markoff: It is not a pendulum — is it a pendulum? Let me think. Is it a pendulum? Yes. It's a pendulum. Russ Altman: It's a physical device. It's not like an atomic clock. We're not counting cesium vibrations. John Markoff: No, it will run from air flow and being wound by people for millennia. We hope. But Stewart now has got this de-extinction group called Revive and Restore. Which is sort of him trying to sort of deliver on that original vision of we are as gods. This notion of sort of humans and technology. And they're trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. Or more importantly — Russ Altman: These are like the seed banks and the DNA banking so that we can track species that are either extinct or going extinct. John Markoff: Or modifying species like Coral to make them more resilient in endangered niches in the environment. Russ Altman: It'll be a great book. It's coming out I'm sure as soon as you can finish it. Thank you for listening to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, if you missed any of this episode listen any time on demand with the SiriusXM app.

Alexander (Zander) Rose is the Executive Director of the Long Now Foundation and the Founder/Curator of The Interval. They have facilitated projects such as the 10,000 Year Clock, The Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Alexander shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the first prototype of which is in the Science Museum of London, and the monument scale version is now under construction in West Texas. http://longnow.org https://theinterval.org https://twitter.com/longnow https://twitter.com/zander ******* Simulation interviews the greatest minds alive to inspire you to build the future ► http://simulationseries.com Design Merch, Get Paid, Spread Thought-Provoking Questions ► https://yoobe.me/simulation ******* Subscribe across platforms ► Youtube ► http://bit.ly/SimYoTu iTunes ► http://bit.ly/SimulationiTunes Instagram ► http://bit.ly/SimulationIG Twitter ► http://bit.ly/SimulationTwitter Spotify ► http://bit.ly/SpotifySim ******* Facebook ► http://bit.ly/SimulationFB Soundcloud ► http://bit.ly/SimulationSC LinkedIn ► http://bit.ly/SimulationLinkedIn Patreon ► http://bit.ly/SimulationPatreon Crypto ► http://bit.ly/SimCrypto PayPal ► https://paypal.me/simulationseries ******* Nuance-driven Telegram chat ► http://bit.ly/SimulationTG Allen's TEDx Talk ► http://bit.ly/AllenTEDx Allen's IG ► http://bit.ly/AllenIG Allen's Twitter ► http://bit.ly/AllenT ******* List of Thought-Provoking Questions ► http://simulationseries.com/the-list Get in Touch ► simulationseries@gmail.com

WIRED ICON Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, orbital enthusiast GOES LONG The 10,000-year clock1 Inventor and computer scientist Danny Hillis spent the 1980s and early '90s designing machines worthy of the new millennium. But by 1995 he realized that he had never given much thought to what lay on the other side of the year 2000.

Our guest this week is Bran Ferren. Bran is the former President of Research and Development of Walt Disney Imagineering and is now the Chief Creative Officer of Applied Minds, which he co-founded in 2000 with Danny Hillis. For show notes visit: https://kk.org/cooltools/bran-ferren-chief-creative-officer-of-applied-minds

In this perspective-shifting talk, Danny Hillis prompts us to approach global issues like climate change with creative scientific solutions. Taking a stand for solar geoengineering, he looks at controversial solutions with open-minded curiosity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny Hillis nous pousse à changer notre perspective pour réfléchir aux problèmes d'envergure mondiale comme le changement climatique et de suivre des pistes scientifiques et créatives pour trouver des solutions. Il plaide en faveur d'une géo-ingénierie solaire. Il analyse des solutions controversées avec un esprit ouvert et curieux.

In this perspective-shifting talk, Danny Hillis prompts us to approach global issues like climate change with creative scientific solutions. Taking a stand for solar geoengineering, he looks at controversial solutions with open-minded curiosity.

Nesta palestra de mudar a perspectiva, Danny Hillis, nos encoraja a ver os problemas globais, como as mudanças climáticas, com soluções científicas criativas. Tomando uma posição ao lado da geoengenharia solar, ele analisa soluções controversas com uma curiosidade receptiva.

En esta charla que podría cambiar nuestra perspectiva, Danny Hillis nos impulsa a considerar soluciones científicas creativas para problemas globales como el cambio climático. Defendiendo el papel de la geoingeniería solar, echa un vistazo a soluciones controvertidas con curiosidad y una mente abierta.

في محادثة لقلب المفاهيم، يشجعنا داني هيليس لمعالجة القضايا العالمية مثل التغير المناخي بحلول علمية إبداعية. إذ يتخذ موقفًا إلى جانب الهندسة الجيولوجية الشمسية، يبحثُ في حلول مثيرة للجدل بفضولٍ منفتح.

이 관점을 뒤집는 강연에서, 대니 힐리스는 우리에게 기후 변화와 같은 전 세계적 문제에 대해서 창의적인 과학적 해결법을 가지고 접근하기를 촉구합니다. 태양 기후 조작 기술을 옹호하는 입장에서, 그는 논란이 되는 해결법을 개방적인 호기심을 가지고 바라봅니다.

David Eagleman gives the keynote talk on "The Brain and The Now" at the Long Now Member Summit and is joined onstage after his talk by Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis for further discussion and Q&A.; 02016 marks The Long Now Foundation's 20th year and we are holding our first Summit to showcase and connect with our amazing community, on Tuesday October 4, 02016 from noon to 11:30pm, at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

Our guest this week is Luke Khanlian. Luke is a Design Engineer working on a mechanical clock intended to tick for 10,000 years. Starting as a mechanic’s apprentice at age 15, he began to accumulate tools and skills that would lead him to a career in Special Effects for film and television. In the early 2000's Luke saw an opportunity steer towards Robotics and Rapid Prototyping. While competing in robot combat events, working on film effects and trying to get a small 3d Scanning and Printing business off the ground, Luke landed a job at Applied Minds (a research and development company with close ties to the entertainment industry). For someone interested in all aspects of designing and building things, this was a dream job. After working on many amazing projects, he started to focus primarily on Danny Hillis's ambitious 10,000 Year Clock Project. It was big step from creating temporary things in the shortest possible time, to monumental objects that will potentially outlast this civilization. In addition to trying to be a good engineer, Luke is also trying to teach his kids that with a few skills and a bit of imagination they can modify, improve and ultimately create their own environment; they can tailor the objects in their lives to suit themselves.

Conversation with Danny Hillis Inventor of the Connection Machine, Co-Founder of the Long Now Foundation and visiting professor at the Media Lab. Talking about Turning, the universe and other things. [EP-EN-6]

New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, stopped by the show to chat with me about his journey from travel journalist to famed futurist. Mr. Kelly’s storied and winding career has taken him around the world in search of visions of the new digital frontier. Kevin is a renowned TED speaker and author of multiple bestsellers including his latest, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a title that offers an optimistic roadmap of how new technologies will shape humanity. Dubbed “the Most Interesting Man in the World” by Tim Ferris, Mr. Kelly began writing on the internet near its inception and never looked back. He has taken gigs including Editor for the Whole Earth Review, and presently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine, a magazine he co-founded in 1993, and where he served as Executive Editor until 1999. Join us for this two-part interview, and if you’re a fan of the show, please click “subscribe” to automatically see new interviews, and help other writers find us. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of the file Kevin Kelly and I discuss: Why the Author Can’t Write on the Road The Importance of Delegation as a Writer The Cool Tools Kevin Kelly Uses to Get Words on the Page A Futurist’s Expansive Definition of Creativity How Lateral Thinking Can Improve Your Writing Why Steven Spielberg Asked Mr. Kelly to Predict the Future Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Kevin Kelly’s Personal Website The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future – Kevin Kelly 1,000 True Fans The Act of Creation – Arthur Koestler Oblique Strategies Writer Emergency Pack – John August Kevin Kelly on Google+ Kevin Kelly on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How Wired Magazine’s Senior Maverick Kevin Kelly Writes: Part Two Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer, but for now I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us. Attendee 1: For me, it’s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it’s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference, for me, is being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to other people who are here for the first time, people who have been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference, for me, is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily. Seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps me pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree. One of the biggest reasons we host the conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers — people like you — more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It’s really fun. I think it’s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I’m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it’s a single-track conference where you don’t get distracted by “Which session should I go to?” And, “Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything — the speakers have been awesome — but I think the coolest aspect for me has been connecting with those people who are putting it on and the other attendees. Jerod Morris: That’s it for now. There’s a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit. I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/summit. Kelton Reid: These are The Writer Files, a tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of working writers from online content creators to fictionists, journalists, entrepreneurs, then beyond. I’m your host, Kelton Reid, writer, podcaster, and mediaphile. Each week we’ll discover how great writers keep the ink flowing, the cursor moving, and avoid writer’s block. New York Times best-selling author and co-founder of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, stopped by the show this week and chatted with me about his journey from travel journalist to famed futurist. Mr. Kelly’s storied and winding career has taken him around the world in search of visions of the new digital frontier. He’s a renowned TED speaker and author of multiple best-sellers, including his latest, at The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a title that offers an optimistic roadmap of how new technologies will shape humanity. Dubbed, “The Most Interesting Man in The World” by Tim Ferriss, Mr. Kelly began writing on the Internet near its inception and never looked back, taking gigs including editor for The Whole Earth Review and, presently, Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine, a magazine he co-founded in 1993 where he served as executive editor until 1999. Join us for this two-part interview. If you are a fan of the show, please click “subscribe” to automatically see new interviews with your favorite authors and help other writers to find us. If you missed the first half of this show, you can find it at Writerfiles.FM in the show notes. In part two of the file, Kevin and I discuss why the author can’t write on the road, the importance of delegation as a writer, the Cool Tools Kevin Kelly uses to get words onto the page, a futurist’s expansive definition of creativity, how lateral thinking can improve your writing, and the day Steven Spielberg asked Mr. Kelly to predict the future. Why the Author Can’t Write on the Road Kelton Reid: Do you have an office? Once you’ve traveled the world and gotten all the stuff you need — researched all the stuff — do you go back to the office then, or do you feel like you can write on the road? Kevin Kelly: I cannot write on the road at all. I can’t even write on planes. I can’t even write in hotel rooms. I do all my writing here. I have this magnificent studio. I call it a studio, it’s two stories. It’s in California. It’s all white. It’s got a huge ceiling. There are two stories of books. I have all my toys — my Lego wall here. I have a Styro Bot. I built it for me and my way of working. Camille’s just right over there. I have another assistant too, who does the website stuff. I have my big, huge whiteboard. I’ve got everything. I have a standing — and a ball, so I can move from standing to sitting within seconds. I need to be here to get my writing done, and I have the privilege of being able to control my time that way. I don’t know if I need to, but that’s how I choose to. That works for me. You’re right about the travel. When I’m traveling there’s two kinds — there’s the traveling for doing talks … My livelihood is basically giving talks in China. Most of my fans are in China. I have 20 times the number of fans in China than I do in the U.S., so I go to China to do talks. Because I have this obsession with Asia, I usually will piggyback other trips either in China or elsewhere around Asia when I go because I’m photographing the disappearing Asia. When I’m in photograph mode I can do nothing else. It’s really weird, but I become totally a camera. I’m just a camera. I’m a walking camera. I started off in the 1970s doing that. That’s what my first thing was. Instead of going to college, I went to Asia as a photographer and I was photographing the stuff. I was a camera. I worked from the beginning of daylight to the end of daylight as a camera. Still when I go to Asia — the same thing, I am just there. Then, when I’m in the hotel, I’m downloading, backing up all my stuff. Doing the minimum amount of e-mail that I need to do. Then I’m in bed. Then the next day, I’m just a camera. I find it really hard to — I’m happy if I can do my e-mail. I can’t write then. When I come back, then I can shift. I’ll leave the camera off to the side and then I can try and write. Kelton Reid: That sounds cool. It sounds like you’ve got these processes in place that help you to process, crunch all the information you see and then you get back to the designated writing space to get into the flow. The Importance of Delegation as a Writer Kevin Kelly: The other thing that I learned to do at Wired, working through the magazine, was delegate and hire. For 10 years I did Cool Tools myself. Five days a week, I was editing. I wasn’t writing all those reviews, but I was soliciting, getting them in, editing everybody, sending it back, going rounds of approval, posting it and finding the pictures, and doing the access information. At some point — it made money from the very beginning. “Okay, so I’m going to hire editors to do this.” I was overseeing a publisher, but they were doing the work. That’s the other thing that I have learned to do, is to hire out. That’s the one thing I wish I’d learned earlier in life, to hire people better than yourself as a way of extending your reach. Cool Tools — Marcus is running that, basically. Silver Cord — my partner in that is running that. I don’t have a partner yet in True Films, but Claudia — who is here — is helping me now. That’s the idea. The way that I found to leverage my ideas and perspective is to hire whenever I can. The Cool Tools Kevin Kelly Uses to Get Words on the Page Kelton Reid: That’s cool. For scaling and probably peace of mind too. To harness your skills and your creativity. Speaking of Cool Tools, let’s talk a little bit about the Cool Tools that you use to actually get words onto the page, if you don’t mind. I’d love to know. I know you’ve got some organizational hacks in place, it sounds like, but are you a Mac guy or are you a PC guy? When you’re actually sitting down to get words onto the page, what are you using there? Kevin Kelly: There’s a joke. I’ll actually just show you a picture of my — I have a beige, boring minivan, but the back window is covered with little white apples, like a million of them. I have been an Apple user from the Apple 2e. We did a famous Wired cover about praying for Apple because there was a brief spell before Jobs came back that I thought I was going to have to actually make the big switch to Windows. I was within two months of doing that, but he came back in time and saved the day. Yeah, I’m a total Mac — we’re a Mac household. I have an iPhone. I work on a Mac — they call it a Mac Tower. It’s a behemoth machine that sits below me. I have two cinema screens: one at sitting height and one at standing height. I can just toggle between them. I have a little, tiny, 11-inch Mac Air that I take with me when I travel. It’s big enough just to do e-mail and primitive web. I have my PowerPoint speeches mounted, and that’s it. I’m not a very mobile person, the first smart phone I had was Apple 6. I’m old-school in that sense. E-mail’s the best way to reach me. I work on a desktop. I’m not mobile. When I take pictures I have to process them. I use Lightroom, which I think is fantastic. I don’t even need Photoshop. I just use Lightroom for managing my gazillion … By the way, I have them all backed up to not only Google, but I’m a insane, radical, extreme backer-upper. My photos are backed up on three clouds and three different hard disks beyond the cards that I have. I also have them backed up in three different places while I travel. Needless to say, I have never lost an image. Kelton Reid: Is that known as RAID? Kevin Kelly: Yeah, exactly. I have my own version of RAID. Right, exactly. The tools I use for writing — eventually I get into Microsoft Word. I don’t always start there. Believe it or not, I sometimes start writing in my e-mail because it’s so simple and I’m not going to lose it. I can keep it up. I used to mail it to myself as a backup. That was long before I had Time Machine. Sometimes the first notes will be in all kinds of things. Sometimes it’ll be in Google Docs. Sometimes it’ll be in my e-mail. Sometimes it’ll be in Notes. Eventually it gets to Microsoft. When I’m writing a bigger piece I actually will move things, at some point, into Scrivener. Scrivener is this really cool software that’s used by people doing long-form writing, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, or sometimes screenplays. It’s a card-based organizing metaphor, so things have cards and you can move these cards around. The cards can have an indefinite amount of text in them, and you can put them in hierarchies or you can keep them flat, but the idea is that you can move all this stuff around. It takes the place of the old way where we actually did cut and paste. Had things in piles and moved piles around on the floor, or index cards on your desktop. It does that. And it’s really good for organizing lots of things in lots of parts. I’ve used that for the last two books, and I would definitely use it again for any other book I did. I think that’s on both Mac and Windows. I’m using Scrivener, but at some point it’ll make its way into a Word doc in the final form. That’s just because, in my experience working with magazines and book publishers, this is the universal format. It just has to reach there at some point. Kelton Reid: The track changes and traditional publishing. Kevin Kelly: Yeah, exactly. Kelton Reid: I skipped over a big one, but here is one for you. You probably are rubbing elbows with writers — and you have been for much of your career — do you believe in writer’s block? Kevin Kelly: I don’t. If you mean do I experience writer blocks, that’s all I can say. I’ve never really talked to the other writers about writer’s block, so I can’t say whether they have it or not. I have never had them volunteer conversation about it. I was just hanging out last week with all these science fiction authors — very published successes — and this never came up. I have not experienced it myself. In talking to them about their work habits and stuff, some of them have pretty regular, “write every day” kind of things where they’ll write about something every day. Maybe it’s not about what their book is, but they’ll do something. It has not been an issue in my experience. Kelton Reid: Cool. That’s good. Knock on wood. Kevin Kelly: Yeah. A Futurist’s Expansive Definition of Creativity Kelton Reid: All right. Let’s get into creativity a little bit. I know we’ve got a few more minutes here. I think creativity is probably inherent to a lot of what you do, but it might not be labeled as creativity when you’re getting into technology and looking to the future. Do you think that you could define creativity for us? Kevin Kelly: My image of creativity is a diagram in a book called The Act of Creation by Koestler. It’s an old book. It was his attempt to try and figure out what creativity is. His diagram was very simple: take two index cards that are inserted into each other so they form — from the end — a profile of a cross. So there are two planes that are intersecting, you have a flat plane and a vertical plane. You have two planes that are intersecting. His idea was that all creativity is basically taking two unrelated planes and making them intersect. That’s the visual image that I have of creativity, which is you are making a connection, an intersection between things that have not intersected before. Jokes are kind of like that. A joke is when you take two things that don’t seem to be related and you bring them together in some way that’s plausible and it’s funny. New ideas, new innovations are the same kind of thing where you recombine existing mechanisms in a way that haven’t been combined before. Brian Arthur’s and Paul Romer — two separate guys with two separate theories, but they’re both the same, which is that the fountain of all innovation is just a recombination. In fact, the origin of all wealth is actually recombination. You’re just recombining things. This idea of intersecting things that had not intersected before is my definition of creativity. There are, of course, rules. You can’t just take any random thing, the new intersection has to work in some way. It has to be plausible, interesting, whatever — but fundamentally, that’s the act. When I see something creative, it’s usually because someone has — we talked about the other metaphor of a leap somewhere. They have stepped off something and they’re stepping somewhere else, but there are actually two legs. They actually have a leg in the departure point and a leg in the arrival point. Those two things have not been bridged before. That’s my image of an intersection of two unrelated ideas. Kelton Reid: I like it. I like it a lot. I think that we’re getting close here. I have a couple of other questions for you, but — Kevin Kelly: Let me just say one thing about the creativity. Kelton Reid: Oh, I’m sorry. How Lateral Thinking Can Improve Your Writing Kevin Kelly: No, because I’ve gotten to work with many of what I would consider some of the most creative people working today, alive today. People who are technically geniuses like Danny Hillis, artistically genius like Brian Eno, and cultural genius like Stewart Brand. It’s really been interesting to watch them operate. I think they have trained their minds to do this. They’re doing the thing I’m saying with these unrelated planes intersecting, but they do them in different ways. Brian Eno, he’s the most lateral thinker I know. Lateral meaning that he’s associating ideas coming from off to the side. We have a tendency to proceed in a linear way, or a way in which there’s the obvious things in front of you that you may want to combine. He has an ability to reach off to the side into something that is unexpected, trying to make that association that will work. He’s particularly good at reaching behind his back or off to the side — that’s what I meant by laterally — to bring something in. That ability to, in some senses, dismiss or ignore the obvious ones and to reach for the unobvious but yet still works, is something that I think actually they train. Brian Eno has a famous set of cards called Oblique Strategies that he and a partner use to make music. These were prompts that they would pick up at random to force themselves to do this lateral thinking. They were prompts like, “Take the most obvious thing and ignore it,” or “What about the middle? Emphasize the middle.” They were almost random things. Often, that action would not be the thing that worked, but that would lead them to this other unobvious next step that would work. That’s one way. Those cards are actually very valuable and useful for anything. I have a deck right here. I have my own internal ones of when you’re in a situation — say when you’re stuck, you use these things as prompts, exercises to force yourself to think about these other approaches. It’s very handy. I think, internally, that’s what Brian and other are doing, is actually have a set of little things that they’re running through, sometimes unconsciously, as they try and prompt themselves to take this lateral approach. Then there are others like Marvin Minsky and Danny Hillis who are very technical. I think they do something very similar, particularly Marvin, which is pretend that they’re not human. They try to approach this as if they were seeing it for the first time, as if they were coming from another planet, as if they were pretending they were, often, a robot. “How would a robot do this?” To try and do the same thing of looking at it with fresh eyes, looking at it in a way that no ordinary human would look at it, not as a way an ordinary human would look at it. Then Stuart Brand, who also has this ability, I think his little heuristic that he also trained himself to do was to force himself — each time he approached something he would force himself to try and find a different perspective on it, including using the words that he used to describe something. He would never, ever repeat himself. If he was talking about something he knew, he would require that he use different words when talking about it this time to this person, even though he’d been talking about it for a thousand times before. That constraint would require him — because of the new words — to see it differently. Then he would have an insight just because he forced himself to use different words. Those are some of the ways that I’ve seen some of the most creative people I know use this on a daily basis. They have trained themselves to be better at this on an ongoing basis — not just when they’re sitting down, but as a habit. Kelton Reid: For sure. Yeah, I know screenwriter John August has a similar set of prompts like the Oblique Strategies that he uses for screenwriters which has proven to be very helpful. I think writers can use that in whatever way they think to kick-start their writing for sure. Side note, I love Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. I actually listen to it while I’m writing. I find that it helps because it’s kind of meandering and ambient, of course. I’ve got to slip this one in here. I know that in The Inevitable and Understanding the Technological Forces That Will Shape Our World, you’ve talked about VR quite a bit. I heard you say you were reading Ready Player One, which is Ernie Cline’s journey into VR. What is it? The OASIS? Kevin Kelly: Correct. Kelton Reid: Interesting intersection there. I think you’ve worked with Steven Spielberg in the past, and he is adapting that book into a movie. Have you heard anything about that? Kevin Kelly: I have not heard — either from Ernie or elsewhere — about what state the Spielberg Ready Player One is in. I’ve heard different rumors about whether it’s actually going to be in VR or not. I think there is likely to be some VR component, probably a VR game version. But no, I don’t know anything more about it other than what has been published. I think that it’s an ideal Spielberg movie for many reasons, not the least of all the references to the seventies and eighties that I’m sure he’d be very good at. Kelton Reid: Right. I thought it was interesting that it takes place in 2044 and he actually tapped you to help him predict 2054 in Minority Report. Why Steven Spielberg Asked Mr. Kelly to Predict the Future Kevin Kelly: Right, yeah. Kelton Reid: I thought maybe he had tapped you again. Kevin Kelly: No. It was just not me, it was a group of us, and as far as I know he hasn’t reached out in that sense to do that — which was a very amazing experience. There was a set of people, including the people I just mentioned, except I don’t think Brian was there. Doug Copeland and some other — Jaron Lanier — were present, and our job was to make this world comprehensive. It was really interesting because we did a lot of arm waving about these things. Spielberg is sitting in the room and he’s there with his little pencil and pad. He says, “Okay, what are people sleeping on? What do the beds look like? How about for breakfast, what are people having for breakfast?” That requirement to be that specific was very galvanizing because you couldn’t just talk about general things. He wanted to know what the beds looked like. So you began to think, “What do they look like? Are they any different? The same? Are they waterbeds?” That was so profound for me, because that really changed how I try to think about the future now. Kelton Reid: How cool. I really appreciate you taking time out to chat with us about your process. The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our World, a very optimistic roadmap of the future. Really cool stuff. It’s out now and we can find it out there. You link to it at kk.org and it’s on Amazon. I’ll link to your Google Plus Page as well and your Twitter handle. Is there any other sign-offs for writers you want to drop on us before you go to the next interview? Kevin Kelly: No, other than I do suggest that you look at the Cool Tools book that I did, which was self published. It’s this huge, oversized, thick, heavy, five pound, massive catalog of possibilities. There are some good writer tools besides Scrivener. There are some other resources for people making things and being creative — tools not just like the wrenches and pipes, but things like Elance, or what they would call Upwork these days. How to hire someone for help. Where to get a logo or book cover done. Check out that, that’s available on Amazon as well. Kelton Reid: Mr. Kelly, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Best of luck with all of your press rounds, and hopefully you’ll come back and talk to us again another time. Kevin Kelly: Sure thing. Thanks for the attention. Appreciate it. Kelton Reid: Thank you. Thanks so much for joining me for this half of A Tour Through The Writer’s Process. If you enjoy The Writer Files Podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, drop by WriterFiles.FM. You can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

In many ways, artificial intelligence has become the norm. From autopilot on airplanes to language translation, we've come to accept once novel concepts as just something thinking machines do. What we have ultimately learned is that human thinking is just one way of thinking. So, how far will artificial intelligence go? This episode features a conversation between Danny Hillis and Alexis Madrigal. Hillis is an inventor, scientist, author and engineer. He is co-founder of Applied Minds, a research and development company that creates a range of new products and services in software, entertainment, electronics, biotechnology, and mechanical design. Madrigal is the Silicon Valley bureau chief for Fusion, where he hosts and produces a television show about the future. He is the tech critic for NPR's "FreshAir," a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and a former staff writer at Wired.

Brian Eno delivered the first SALT talk exactly ten years ago. He gave The Long Now Foundation its name, contributed in no end of artistic and financial ways, and designed the chimes for the 10,000-year Clock. Danny Hillis instigated and co-founded Long Now and designed its series of Clocks, culminating currently in the 500-foot one being built inside a west Texas mountain. In the course of their collaboration, Eno and Hillis became fast friends. Thousands of years pass a decade at a time. The idea and works of Long Now have been active for two decades (1/500th of 10,000 years). Between the conception and initial delivery of a deep idea, much transpires. If the idea resonates with people, it gains a life of its own. Allies assemble, and shape things. Public engagement shapes things. Funding or its absence shapes things. Refinements of the idea emerge, branch off, and thrive or don’t. Initial questions metastasize into potent new questions. Over time, the promotion of “long-term thinking” begins to acquire a bit of its own long term to conjure with. Eno and Hillis have spent 20 years thinking about long-term thinking and building art for it, with ever increasing fascination. What gets them about it?

Topic covered on today's episode of Mind Set Daily "What Would We Do If The Internet Crashed?" If we all lose access to the Internet. If that were to happen, would we have a Plan B? In the 1970s and 1980s, a generous spirit suffused the internet, whose users were few and far between. But today, the net is ubiquitous, connecting billions of people, machines and essential pieces of infrastructure — leaving us vulnerable to cyber-attack or meltdown. Internet pioneer Danny Hillis argues that the Internet wasn’t designed for this kind of scale, and sounds a clarion call for us to develop a Plan B: a parallel system to fall back on should — or when — the Internet crashes. Dear Netizens, for your point of view. If our digital universe went away--what would you do? Do you believe it's even possible? Just think about it... Find out more by listening to this episode! Link: What Would We Do If The Internet Crashed? Support Mind Set Central Suscribe or donate

Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor Fred Guterl about the technological "Entanglement" and the attempts to build the other, hardier Internet

Danny Hillis at the Entertainment Gathering.

Danny Hillis is the next speaker in the Seminars About Long-term Thinking series, Friday, September 10, 7pm, at the Fort Mason Conference Center in San Francisco. His topic is "Progress on the 10,000-year Clock."

This is not a concert. Brian Eno will be speaking about "The Long Now." His talk will be the first of a monthly series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking, sponsored by The Long Now Foundation. His talks are usually as amazing as his music. The on-going lectures in this new series will be every second Friday at Fort Mason. Future speakers include Peter Schwartz, George Dyson, Laurie Anderson, Rusty Schweickart, Paul Hawken, Daniel Janzen, and Danny Hillis.