Dropping Knowledge

On May 10, 1933 Nazi youth groups burned around 20,000 books from the Humboldt University in the Bebelplatz in Berlin. I remember standing there, in driving rain last April, wondering what force of cultural life could heal this scarred memory of anti-intellectual destruction.

Well, I think I've found it.

"On September 9, 2006, 112 of the world's most compelling thinkers, artists, writers, scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers and humanitarians from around the world will come together in Berlin, Germany, as guests of dropping knowledge.

Seated around the worlds largest table in historic Bebelplatz square, these inspiring individuals, renowned for their lasting creative or social contribution, will engage with 100 questions out of the thousands donated to dropping knowledge by the international public.

Using dropping knowledge's question-rating system, the public identified 500 questions as those most likely to initiate open dialog on a social topic of most relevance to them. This group of questions will yield the final 100 Questions - representing a truly global sampling of cultures, themes and ideas - to be asked at the Table of Free Voices and beyond."

Browse the questions, answers and participant profiles. Below, a beautiful short-film explaining the concept and showcasing powerful questions and images of the world they relate to. I recommend watching it when you have the time and space to reflect. Download, or watch online.

A Rise and Fall Upon the Way

I sit next to my window- looking out between the bare trees at the quiet canals reflecting the vast afternoon sky and my thoughts turn back to the castle in Vienna, the sun rising on that perfect winter morning. I think of those hours and days and now weeks since our time together and the challenges, frustrations and new realities we have since been called to face. Some have written of the difficulty of reflection after conference- the frustration of attempting to continue their journey on this path of leadership. Perhaps for many there is the dawning of quiet doubt in the mind, of what was experienced, of what was learnt and seen in these few days only two weeks ago...

Read/Listen to the full piece...

Richard Feynman

I just finished a series of four lectures on quantum physics, given in plain(ish) English by the incredible Dr Richard Feynman (1918–1988). Feynman's genius won him the Nobel prize for physics, saw him publishing revelatory dissenting opinion while investigating the Challenger disaster and publicly envisioning nano-technology in the 50's.


His engaging, authentic and accessible style made him a legendary lecturer and watching him speak in this series is a pleasure in itself, let alone the fact that he makes one of the most complex aspects of our physical reality comprehensible for the non-scientist.

I've never been able to figure out how to explain Quantum Electro Dynamics and I thought that this was an opportunity to try a poor, unhappy audience to see whether it was at all possible to explain this subject in a finite number of lectures. And I chose to come to a part of the world as far distant as possible from my home so that if I were not quite successful I wouldn't have to suffer so directly.

Richard Feynman, University of Auckland, 1979.

Feynman lived a remarkable life; from his work in the Manhattan Project and the anguish the atomic bomb caused, to his passion for translating Mayan hieroglyphs and latin drumming. He was a a true Renaissance man- simple and complex in all the best ways.

"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" is a 50 minute interview with him in later life, revealing much of his history and life philosophy, available on GoogleVideo. His blackboards at his death.

"I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."

Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Get Happy

Not that I'm saying you'd be any happier where I grew up in Manchester, where two of my three uncles have been fired at with Uzis..."

"What," Ricard interrupts, "is an Uzi?"

"It's a machine gun."

"Ah." The monk pauses. "I understand what you're saying. I believe that, if I had to live where you live, I could. By choice, I would not move there. But if you allow exterior circumstances to determine your state of mind, then of course you will suffer; you become like a sponge, or like a chameleon. I have lived in difficult areas. I lived in Old Delhi for almost a year. That really is a miserable place. And yet sometimes I felt so light there. It was like - how can I put this - different weather."

Robert Chalmers interviews Matthieu Ricard- a Buddhist monk, confidant of the Dalai Lama and neurologically speaking, a most remarkable man.
Full article in The Independent online edition

2006 World Press Photo

Migrants wait for transportation, Tenerife, Spain, 7 September 2006. By Arturo Rodríguez, Spain, The Associated Press. "Spot News: 2nd prize singles"

Arturo was a recipient of the 2006 World Press Photo awards, announced yesterday. Davide Monteleone of Italy has a very powerful series on the Israeli bombings of Lebanon that is well worth reflecting upon. "Spot News: 1st prize stories".

Mixed Reality

Sitting in a Harvard lecture on Secondlife, while virtually sitting in virtual Harvard in Secondlife.

From Virtual Worlds, Real People and Learning, a presentation (ppt slides and mp3) given by John Lester at the New Media Consortium. John is the Community and Education Manager at Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. The presentation gives a good introduction to Second Life, how people interact with and through it, and a few of the learning possibilities people are utilising. For deeper enquiry into the education potential of SL try the Second Life Education Wiki.

The picture is also great example of what I think should be called World 3*; a virtual world with common touch points to the real- synchronous places, individuals and events. With a palmpc, Googlemaps, GPS and World 3 the possibilities for mixed mode experiences are truly magnificent- and I'm sure most lie beyond our capacity to predict. It's awesome we get to live in this period of rapidly unfolding consumer technology and new potentials.

* From Karl Popper's philosophical theory of reality that includes three interacting worlds.

Benefits Beyond Calculation

This morning I listened to a podcast featuring Dr Edward O. Wilson, Pelligrino University Research Professor, scientific humanist and sociobiologist. He was joined by Harvard theologian Harvey Cox to consider the fate of the creation. Below is an extract from Dr Wilson's speech on the state of the biosphere and an empowering call to reasonable action.

"What are doing about it?... We are engaged in mapping the hotspots of the world... areas like the forest of Madagascar, the western gap, rainforest of West Africa, Sri Lanka, New Calendonia, the rainforest of Hawaii- the extinction capital of America, and so on...

34 of these richest of the hotspots cover only 2.3% of the land surface of the world, but they have within them nearly half of all the known species of plants and animals. Save them by whatever means its takes and you can save a lot of the Life.

Add to them some major core areas of the remaining tropical rainforest wilderness Amazon, Congo and New Guinea and your covering 70% of the known species. And how much would it cost to do that, one payment of approximately 30 Billion dollars... 1/1000th of the annual world domestic product of 30 Trillion dollars...

We can solve this problem, but we haven't got the will yet... The cost is not very high and the benefits are beyond calculation, I repeat the benefits are beyond calculation.

A civilisation able to envision God in an Afterlife is surely going to find a way to save the integrity of this magnificent planet and the life it harbours. I will close by a quote from my friend the late John Sawhill, president of the Nature Conservancy...

"Society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.""

The Adoration of the Adoration

I have just returned from an incredible few days in Florence with Monika. Soon I shall write the gushing, hyperbolic prose of a new-worlder decended briefly upon this examplar of the Renaissance. For now, I post a picture that had me completely transfixed within the 430 year old Uffizi Gallery; Leonardo's unfinished Adoration of the Magi.

(click to enlarge)

Minority Report Technology

A multi-touch driven computer screen. Now all we need are the precogs.
(Thanks Tom W)

Easter Island

Stone statues of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) by a Dutch photographer, Wouter Velthuis.
This is my way of saying that RSS and Atom feeds are now available on my blog.

Part I: The New Physics

In August 1939- a month before the outbreak of WWII, Einstein signed a letter authored by Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, advising him to fund research into the possibility of using nuclear fission as a weapon in the event that Nazi Germany may also be conducting such research.

"This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable – though much less certain – that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory."

The letter speaks of two rising worlds- the new field of subatomic physics that had been revealed in the last 40 years and a new enemy in Nazi Germany who had already seized power in Austria and part of the Czech Republic. The two worlds would be inseparably flung together, in a reaction that would change the world.

Read the full piece...