Liveblogs are the old new media. We must create a new new media to harness the new ideas of innovation for a, well, we'll figure out what we'll use the innovation for once we finish disrupting. So, rather than live-blogging today's TEDxDetroit like we were still operating in the old Web 2.0 paradigms of the last decade, let's live stream of consciousness because ideas this big cannot be constrained to a mere blog.
10:15 AM: I made a deliberate effort to wait until the first hour of presentations before starting the running commentary, so I could kind of take in the ethos of this TED/TEDx thing without worrying about what was happening on my computer screen.
But now we are through that first hour, one thought about what has transpired. The presentation from Jackie Victor for Avalon Breads talked quite a bit about the James and Grace Lee Boggs charter school. I think it's interesting that a school named for revolutionary Marxists would capture the imagination of a room filled with techno-utopians.
There has developed a popular view of Grace Lee Boggs as as this kindly old lady who likes to help children plant tomatoes. However, if you take the time to listen to her, you'll know she's a self-described revolutionary inspired by Marxist philosophy. Her goal is foment a revolution--albeit a non-violent one--that would overthrow the exist social order of liberal democracy and regulated capitalism.
Though Boggs' end goals are far different from the libertarian techno-utopians who drive events like TEDxDetroit, the process goal of overthrowing liberal democracy and regulated capitalism are the same. From Peter Thiel's floating Galt Gultch to Dan Gilbert's rent-a-cops patrolling public streets to the claim that government exists to help business as opposed to providing vital public services to all, there is a movement to usurp the social order that has served the nation for 230+ years. Common cause between a Boggs and a Thiel exists when it comes to the means, even if their desire ends are different.
Now, look, I know most of the people aren't dreaming of a OCP-led Delta City built on top of Detroit. Matt Naimi also spoke in this first hour, to solid applause, about how the childhood lessons of sharing informs the ideal of contributing to a larger society. But, all too often, they cheerlead for the things that move of closer to Verhoeven-imagined dystopia. As a Burkean sitting inside the proverbial Jacobin Club right now, I'd like these bright-eyed disrupters take a moment to consider what status quos they seek to challenge and why those institutions became the status quo in the first place.
10:40 AM: "Real success is rock bottom and the taste of it..." - Ishita Gupta. God, I love mixed metaphors.
10:55 AM: TEDx currently is taking a break. There are a three sets of double doors out of the Riverview Ballroom, where this shindig is taking place. Only one set was propped open and there was something of a bottleneck exiting the room. So, here is my idea worth sharing: Walk around the crowd and go through the closed door. Trust me, this method will greatly reduce your egress time.
11:55 AM: We're back. Ryan Landau, from the office supplier Chalkfly, is talking about how donating their product to teachers helps build brand loyalty. It seems like smart business strategy, for sure. I do wonder about the long-term ethics of so strongly co-mingling charity and marketing. After all, if everyone followed this donor-->"brand ambassadors"-->customers model, doesn't that effectively cancel out the competitive advantage? Landau seems like a pretty sincere, passionate guy so that likely wouldn't dissuade his giving strategy, but for those who see the giving/marketing connection primarily from the marketing side of the equation are a different story. Also, and here's something I'd like people at things like TEDxDetroit to actually think about: Why do teachers require corporate largesse for classroom supplies like pens and paper?
12:00 PM: The current speaker has three superhero names. Three. My superhero name is Jeff and my superpower is a rational intellect that informs me I have no superpowers.
12:10 PM: Greg Gage, a neuroscientist, is currently on stage doing experiments on a cockroach with a device he designed to show teach kids about brain functions. It's kind of the coolest thing I've seen in a long time.
12:25 PM: And we're back to someone whose job title is "chief storyteller." Come back Greg Gage. I want more cool science experiments and less affect or false nostalgia.
12:40 PM: Video throwback to a old TED talk about a woman talking about how she explained sex to her daughter. 1. When I have kids, I'll let them learn about sex from the streets because parent/child sex talks are always awful. 2. I can't even begin to imagine the mortification of my adolescent self if he learned my parents told a room of strangers about that sex talk. The whole thing is leaving me a little queasy as I type this. Oh, good a jazz quintet. Let us never speak of parent-child sex talks ever again.
12:55 PM: Bicycling is a thing that sometimes happens in Detroit. Ok. Now there's an adorable little kid on the stage. I want an entire TED where everyone on stage and in the audience is like 12 and under. Grown-ups can watch the livestream. Even odds, the kids would be way more engaging.
2:35 PM: We're in the midst of a lunch break. Matt Naimi and Greg Gage were far and away the best presenters this morning.
I want to doubleback to this seemingly random comment: "Bicycling is a thing that sometimes happens in Detroit."
Here's the back story: Norman Witte, a web guy at Crain's, presented about his experiences living carless in Detroit. The problem is, and this is a criticism of TED culture more than Norman, it was kind of neutered. There were no policy suggestions, no examples of things that need to change culturally to improve bike/pedestrian community in the city and region. Just the usual examination that Detroit isn't really a place where non-auto commuting is accepted socially or in terms of public policy.
TED likes to avoid anything "political" because innovators have little patience for such things. They are above it. The problem is, you can't talk about how we share the public road without it being an overtly political conversation. When someone says they or their thing is apolitical or nonpolitical or above politics, they're kind of missing the point that politics is how we as a society decide how things work in the public space. TED, as a culture, doesn't get that. That's why they wouldn't post this TED Talk on their website.
2:50 PM: That's a shame because if we're going to sit around and talk about big ideas, this is more important than how we imagine ourselves as superheroes. And, when someone is brought in to talk about biking, they should be saying stuff like: Those fatasses in city hall need to paint more bike lanes.
Ask and ye shall receive. Dr. Partha Nandi is talking about the physical, financial, and educational barriers between people and the basic health care that literally prevents death. One billion people on the planet lack adequate health care, 50 million in the U.S. alone. And, no, Google Glass will not solve that problem. However, he says, technology can be a tool to provide responsible, medically-correct health care education.
3:00 PM: New York Times reporter Jaclyn Trop asks what is news? Based on the New York Times, news is defined as trend pieces declaring something that one millennial is doing as evidence that all millennials are doing the same thing.
3:09 PM: "Slows is a magical restaurant," says Amy Kaherl. Louis C.K. responds thusly. Seriously, can we take a second to just stop and think what words like "magic" actually mean? No restaurant, even one as great as Slows, is magical. Not even metaphorically.
3: 25 PM: There is an improv beat boxer guy on stage right now. He asked an audience member for a word he could use to improv a tune around. The word given was balloon. Had he asked me, I would have said antidisestablishmentarianism.
3:36 PM: The best TED talks are focused on an idea. The worst TED talks are focused on the speaker's biography. Most people's lives aren't really very interesting.
3:55 PM: Jacques Panis of Shinola is giving a pretty interesting history of the decline of manufacturing in the United States. Apparently, Detroit was the nation's stove-making capital in the 1800s. Did not know that.
4:00 PM: "Manufacturing left the country, but the people did not." -- Jacques Panis. This, of course, is the great economic quandary of our age. If we're honest, as consumers, we are better off with the globalized, automated manufacturing supply chain. More stuff, more varieties of stuff are available to us at lower prices (in real dollars) than ever before. But it leaves us with a huge, structural surplus of labor. We'll see if niche manufacturing of high-and-middle-end lifestyle items help to bridge the gap between the needs of our consumer economy and labor economy.
4:26 PM: Apologies for the overshare, but I just used the men's room. And I deliberately did not employ the shake-and-fold method for paper towel usage after washing my hands.
5:07 PM: Garret Koehler and Kevin Krease of the X Games bid are on stage. I kind of want these guys to produce and star in an Odd Couple-like show where they have to (I don't know?) jointly raise a kid or fix-up and operate an apartment house together. Garret tried to skateboard on stage, fails, and shouts fuck. Garrett and Kevin are easily the nicest and most genuine guys in the entire downtown scene.
5:27 PM: Vectorform's Jason Vazzano is telling us about a couple who were married wearing Google Glass. Weddings are the worst, generally. But that one sounds especially insufferable.
5:31 PM: With Natural User Environment/Interface, Vazzano says that wearable technology allows us to "actually" interact with and control our environment. Don't we already do that now? It's called, you know, "life."
5:40 PM: PMP Vazzano's speech was the most techno-utopian presentation of the day. And I don't see anything about wearable technology that is anything particularly different from the sensors Mercury astronauts wore 50 years ago. Here's the problem with the supposed promise of wearable technology: Just because you can get a real time reading of your serotonin levels doesn't mean you can self-diagnose your mental health. Human beings aren't simple mechanical devices like cars. The chemistry of life tells us a complex organism is more than the sum of its parts. Also, I no more want to wear a computer than I want to wear a hammer.
5:43 PM: You are a bunch of self-centered, selfish people who cannot make a decision, says Charlie LeDuff. Shit just got real.
5:50 PM: There's a war between the public and private sector, LeDuff says, noting that most private sector workers don't receive a pension. It's kind of a fair point because I didn't see AFSCME crying about gutting private sector industry. But things like TED are funded by the people who gutted private sector pensions, so no, you don't get to whine about cops pensions in this room.
LeDuff also says we should raise taxes to pay for the Afghanistan/Iraq Wars. That didn't really receive much in the way of applause.
5:58 PM: The band playing right now, My Pal Val, is pretty good. That is all.
6:21 PM: Batch Brewing's Stephen Roginson argues that prohibition pretty much destroyed the local beer industry until the late-1980s/early-1990s. Have you punched a WCTU member today?
6:28 PM: Roginson advocates for small brewers to be able to self-distribute their own beer. Yes. Because the beer distribution system is a terrible thing.
6:30 PM: Les Gold is going full-Tony Robbins. "How much do you want it," he asks? His show is great, but I wish they'd end this with the beer guys. They were more interesting.
6:32 PM: This is sufficient. Later.
