It was my first time at such a Summit, and I was surprised that I understood a majority of what was said.

I had the most trouble understanding a large part of what Gershenfeld and Rattner presented, and its ironic that you found their lectures to be the most fascinating! It seemed to me that you needed to have worked at Intel or AMD to understand most of Rattner’s presentation.

I am glad I wasn’t the only one who thought Marshall Brain’s presentation was the weakest. He has had that same stuff on his website for a few years, and has milked it for all its worth — via the Adsense ads on his website and publicity in the media. He also wrote “how to make a million dollars” or something like that, so you have to give him kudos regarding his entrepreneurial abilities. At this point, if he says that he was wrong, his lucrative website content becomes somewhat meaningless.

I thought Miller was not that great — just funny and maybe the most pleasing to the eye of all the speakers for the relatively few ladies who attend these things.

I am glad Kurzweil didn’t go over too many of the old slides from his book and instead analyzed some of the points made by the speakers. As usual, Kurzweil sounded very intelligent (and correct) and was understandable to the average person like myself.

The one-sided debate between Kurzweil and Horgan was meaningless and a repetition of the old argument regarding “exponential” versus “complexity”. Horgan seemed like a great person to be around, but maybe Bill McKibben or Bill Joy would be more interesting to listen to in a debate with Kurzweil.

@commandersprocket. Yes, technological change is constantly changing the job mix. But there is no single point of shift. It’s a constant, noisy forcing function. That’s why I think you need to check your understanding of the Great Depression. The shift towards an industrial economy was very far on its way and it occurred in fits and starts.

I absolutely agree that we should try and help people over transitions, but I hardly think Keynesian fiscal policy is the answer. That merely creates a larger role for the government, which ultimately stifles flexibility and innovation.

I think the issue of jobs is very real. And the reference to the last technology/economic paradym shift is absolutely valid. I have an informal theory that when we go through those technology/economic shifts we do loose jobs, and it takes time and effort to get those jobs back. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the last “great depression” happened at the early stages of shift from agricultural to industrial economies. I think that it’s natural to shift toward Keynesian economics during times like this (like the New Deal) to help get over the “valley” of job loss. (ultimately that job loss is a very very good thing as it leads to a dramatically more productive populace). But it also brings social upheaval, life will be as fundamentally different as factory work is from pre-industrial farm work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6600965.stm?ls

The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for 10 seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life – the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain. [2007]

The rat brain simulation is 3.5 times bigger and I believe Modha said it was working and also at one tenth of real time

@A. T. Murray. There were no real demonstrations. Each presenter had only 20 minutes. Some people showed short videos as I mentioned. I’m going to post about my general impression of the state of the art tomorrow.