Off to a Great Start

By | September 8, 2007
6 Comments

The Singularity Summit kicked off this evening with a reception hosted by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel. The venue was pretty nice. Here’s a rough approximation of the view from the roof/balcony.

Yeah. I’ve seen worse.

One could argue that, as of this year, the Singularity Summit has come into its own. The event made the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle. Singularity Institute Executive Director Tyler Emerson tells me that 1,000 attendees are expected for the conference sessions over the next two days. With the speakers they’ve lined up, I’m not surprised.

I completed five mini video interviews this evening. So far, I’ve spoken exclusively to attendees (although one speaker has agreed to do an interview with me on Sunday.) A big part of what makes this such an exciting event is the attendees. They are a very smart bunch, with some fascinating perspectives on the Singularity — and they aren’t afraid to share.

Three topics that aren’t the Singularity that I kept stumbling upon people talking about:

Cryonics — Some of this from Alcor folks, but not all.

Star Wars — I’m just telling you what I heard.

Burning Man — There’s apparently a lot of crossover between the Singularity crowd and the Burning Man crowd. We need to understand this phenomenon better. Next year, I’m sending Stephen and El Jefe on a road trip to see what the heck Burning Man is all about.

I hope I find some time to interview the speakers, but on the other hand — they’re all getting a chance to be heard, anyway. Hearing more from the attendees might help round out our understanding of the event.

Well, we’ll see what tomorrow has in store. (Later today, really.) I can’t wait.

  • Be Afraid (Matthew Bailey)

    Dang… Not used to the new MacBook yet (Great start though)!…

    Great Event today, nice meeting you, and your blog looks pretty cool…

    What the heck is the “Star Wars” stuff? Do you mean the movie or the Missile Defense Shield (Formerly known by Reagan as “Star Wars”)?

    I hope you don’t think I am a racist for my comments about Islam, BTW… I only mean the scary ones, like scary Christians… The more sensible ones (like my Brother in Law) are really cool… It is just the other ones tend to scare me more than most… I just need to find out how much I should worry about the “scary” ones, and how prevalent they are…

    As to my Army of Robot Supermen, when I am finished putting that army together, I shall invite you to be the first to inteview the head of that army – It will probably literally be a head too ;-) … See you tomorrow…

    OH! I put a temporary link to the speculist in a post, I will work on implanting one in the HTML on my profile sometime next week… I need to re-read the instructions for editing HTML for my mac… It seems to be just a touch different than my former Toshiba/PC/Windows IE browser changes… I tried it once, but for some reason it didn’t save the changes???

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Matthew –

    It was definitely the movie that people were talking about at the opening reception. But by the time you and I did our interview, folks had found plenty of other stuff to talk about.

    From your comments, I took you to be much more the dangerous megalomaniac than racist, but we’ll let the viewers judge for themselves. ;-) Most the readers of this blog grasp the notion that religion and race are two different things.

    I can’t help you on the Mac stuff, I’m afraid, but maybe one of our Mac-based readers can make a suggestion.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Upon further discussion, MAtthew pointed out that his desire for an army of robotic supermen — in a post-Singularity world — is about the equivalent of keeping a gun in his home for protection in this day and age. Not the least bit megalomaniacal.

    I stand corrected.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    The view – hey… they filmed part of “So I married an Ax Murderer” there.

  • MDarling

    Though I support attendance and recognize the inexplicable nature of some experiences-
    this does a good job of explaining Burning Man.
    http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/faq_what_is.html

    (pardon for not knowing how to embed the link)

  • MDarling

    As for films- I used to live on the other side of that view- sort of (I suspect that the picture Phil posted was stock photo image of the POFA- SF evenings are hardly ever that clear and the light is too perfect for normal conditions. Also there is no sign of the scaffolds that were up just a few weeks ago when I was at that spot)
    and I can tell you that dozens of films have used that location. The Rock, the Bachelor, and Twisted come to mind.

    And- related to the Star Wars theme at the venue across the street- the new ILM hq is just across the st, not really visible from the spot where the photo was taken- but perhaps from Thiel’s rooftop. (it would have been northwest -just a bit left of the Palace dome.)