Singularity Summit Summary

August 19, 2010 Leave a comment

As I’m sure you’ve gathered based on the copious amounts of tweets and blog posts that have clogged your proverbial tubes, this past weekend was Singularity Summit.   I told you we’d discuss the future of humanity, waxing poetic on everything from mechanical brains, to life-and-death, to human and artificial intelligence.  And discuss we did.

The weekend was incredibly well-organized in terms of content.  Appropriately, we started out with an overview of the Scientific Method, which was essentially a survey of the history of science.  The first day delved into the intersection of humans and computers, focusing specifically on artificial intelligence.  The program contained a number of talks about adding technology to the human brain.  We heard from the world’s First Cyborg and learned how to become Superhuman with haptic interfaces. We heard from the infamous Ray Kurzweil.  The day finished off with a tantalizing preview of the topics to be discussed on Day Two, with discussions on the real power of cells and the emulation of biological systems.

Day Two took a definitively more biological approach to the future of humanity.  We looked at the idea of aging as an illness and talked more broadly about the future of the environment.  We heard from our first female speakers, who discussed limb regeneration and DNA.  More discussion of artificial intelligence ensued, this time from the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology.

The final talk was given by James Randi, well-known skeptic of pseudoscience and the paranormal.  He asked if there really was any such thing as a “Scientific Consensus.”  In providing a more general discussion, as did the first talk on the Scientific Method, this capstone talk perfectly wrapped up a weekend of intelligent, and sometimes conflicting, speculation.

In comparison to the World Futures 2010 conference, this was a much smaller event.  That’s probably due to the specificity of the topic.  “The future of humans and technology” is much a broader topic than “The Future.”

The demographic at Singularity Summit was much younger.  It was also much more male.  That being said, the networking at Singularity Summit was far superior, although that perhaps was due to hooking into the conference’s Twitter stream.

The best parts of conferences like these are the networking opportunities, the new ideas, and the book suggestions.  It’s rare in day-to-day life to feel overwhelmed with new, exciting information.  After a weekend filled with eye-opening theories, I now have a very deep book list that I can’t wait to get started on, new people in interesting fields to get to know, and many, many fresh ideas to research.

Overall, not a bad way to spend a weekend.

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How to Start Your Own Blog

April 23, 2010 1 Comment

Facebook is apparently actually useful for networking and staying in touch — one of my classmates from Phillips Academy, Andover sent me a message the other day asking about my blogging habits.  She’s thinking of starting her own blog and wanted to know what suggestions I had.  So far, LinkedIn hasn’t even been this useful in the “sharing ideas” category.

In what turned out to be a rather long-winded reply to a quick question, I came up with three suggestions.

1. Pick something you’re interested in, have opinions on, or at least want to stay up-to-date on.  That way you’ll have at least some motivation to post on a regular basis.

2. Commit to a posting schedule.  My personal commitment is to post at least once a week on a weekday, even if it’s just a blurb on a video I like, or a quick post on a Friday afternoon.  That way, as they say in HP, you  hold yourself accountable to an objective metric.  Also, you can keep the blog looking up-to-date.  Don’t worry — you don’t have to post every day!

3.  Keep it short.  The most compelling blog posts are about 200 or 300 words.

Also, if you’re thinking of starting your own blog, pick a preexisting blog interface that’s popular and easy-to-use.  I chose WordPress, but there are a lot of other ones out there that work just as well.  That way you don’t have to create your own website, deal with hosting, figure out how to update the thing … or pay for it.  WordPress, and many other hosts, are free to use.

Why should you even bother starting your own blog?  This could be an entire post – or book – on its own.  But, for an overview, see item number one: You’re interested in the topic, you have opinions on it, or you want to learn more about it.  Also, it’s a great career and networking tool — my boss loves that I blog, and I can share the URL to my blog at networking events.

If you want more suggestions on this topic, there are a lot of good websites out there that can provide more detailed guidance on how to start your own blog.

Good luck!

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Rejected? Make Your Own Success.

April 13, 2010 Leave a comment

Last year, my peers — still in college at the time — asked me why I wasn’t going straight from undergraduate to graduate school.  I wrote this response, explaining that MBA candidates need to have at least a few years of real-world work experience under their belt before applying to business school.

It’s that time of year again — graduation is on the horizon.  I’m watching my peers as they try to find their own paths in the real world.  Many of them planned to go straight to graduate school.  However, this year, like last year, graduate school applications are higher than normal.  Acceptance rates are down.  A lot of qualified candidates aren’t securing places at the schools they thought they would attend.

The alternative, finding a job, isn’t easy either.  This article from the Wall Street Journal calls the outlook for new college graduates “grim.”  For would-be-workers between 16 and 29, the unemployment rate in March was 15.2%.  That’s the highest it’s been since 1948, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, there are a few bright spots for college grads.   For those between 20 and 24 with undergraduate degrees, the unemployment rate was 7.2% in March, down from 7.6% a year earlier.  This is “below the 21.9% jobless rate for those in the same age group with high-school degrees only.”

Slight improvement, to be sure.  But just like last year, prospects aren’t looking that great.

What are students planning to do after graduation?  ”We are seeing more students coming into the office talking about what we call the ‘gap-year opportunities,’ ” Rebecca Sparrow, director of Cornell University’s career services, told the Wall Street Journal.  Recruiting at Cornell is down slightly this year. Sparrow will often direct students to look at programs such as AmeriCorps and Teach for America.

If you’ve been rejected to a graduate school, you’re in good company.  Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, and Tom Brokaw were also rejected from top-tier colleges; obviously, they didn’t throw in the towel.

Truly successful people make their own success.  This is a chance to make your own opportunity.  Besides, “Had Jobs and Dell been given a great opportunity, there would be a lot more Jobs and Dells.”

And, if you’re a new graduate and want to move to Sacramento, HP is hiring.

Graduating this year?  What are your plans?  Want to write about it?  Post below or send me an e-mail if you want to be featured on the blog.

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The First Law of Crayola Crayons

March 27, 2010 Leave a comment

Have you ever been overwhelmed by a restaurant menu with far too many options?  The Cheesecake Factory is notorious for this — they hand out a Bible-sized booklet of different dishes you can choose from.  Most of us feel a little lost examining these menu treatises.  Behavioral Economic theory explains why.

According to behavioural economics, when there are too many options to choose from in any given setting, our decision-making capabilities break down.  We humans tend not to make logical decisions when presented with more than about six choices, because our brain can’t handle comparing so many at one time.  After about six choices, we use fairly illogical heuristics and rules of thumb to eliminate options and attempt to whittle down the field to a smaller, more manageable, number of choices.

 

Case in point: see the above chart.  This chart shows the number of Crayola Crayon colors, starting in 1903, when there were only 8 colors.  Today, when we open a box of crayons, we find 120 colors to choose from.  This chart is showing what writer Steven Von Worley called Crayola’s Law: “The Number of Crayola colors doubles every 28 years.”

Robert Krulwich, from NPR, does the math.

“By that logic, (a multiplication rate of 2.56 percent a year) by 2050, your toddlers will be presented with a Crayola box the size of a blimp, containing 330 crayons. And when they want yellow, they will need a half-hour (or a Valium) to figure out which yellow.”

I just hope the same rule doesn’t apply to the Cheesecake Factory Menu.

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I’m geeky, you’re geeky, she’s geeky

February 2, 2010 Leave a comment

Everyone knows a girl or two who’s a little geeky.  Maybe that girl watches Star Trek or is an avid player of Halo.  Maybe she majored in engineering, or types l1k3 th15.

She’s Geeky is an organization that hosts get-togethers, called “unconferences,”  for geeky women to network and share ideas.  This weekend, I wrangled a group of ladies from the HP Young Employee Network to attend one of these unconferences in Mountain View, at the Computer History Museum, a paragon of Silicon Valley geekiness.

This conference attracted about 80 women from a diverse array of STEM fields –  Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and from a broad range of IT companies, like Adobe, Google, and, of course, HP.  To kick off the day, each woman introduced herself and gave a reason that she was geeky, such as owning the complete series of Battlestar Galactica or preferring to code software on a Saturday night rather than go out.  I consider myself fairly geeky, but I was definitely out-geeked by many of the women there.  For example, one of the woman was using what she called a Hackintosh to take notes – a Dell netbook that she had hacked to run the Mac operating system. Read more of this post

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