sxsw day 2 - the surveillance industrial complex, embeddables and the renaissance of science
OK. Today left me feeling a bit weirded out. The live interview with Julian Assange turned very quickly into a monologue due to an epic Skype fail (he couldn’t hear the poor presenter from The Barbarian Group) and had to rely on painfully typed questions. Ever tried to type in front of a meeting? You should try in front of an audience of 3500…
There is no doubt he is an extremely intelligent, articulate and passionate man. He has a point of view about the power of the state (surveillance industrial complex) and the power of digital to challenge injustice and in some instances bring justice to those previously denied it.
It was a very odd keynote in many ways (did I mention the Skype #fail). Firstly because he’s an Australian cypherpunk, convicted hacker and now global whistle blower. Secondly because he’s an entrepreneur. That’s right, he described wikileaks as a media company - one that had maintained it’s staffing and revenues despite the onslaught of the state department, the CIA and the NSA.
The thought had never entered my head until that moment and it still doesn’t sit very well with how he, and wikileaks, have been portrayed by the media.
Two things of note for me out of the session (you can read a report on it here: http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/08/julian-assange-to-sxsw-crowd-even-billionaire-pierre-omidyar-sees-that-theres-no-real-liberty/ ).
How insular have we become about “digital” when we are faced with the trials of delivering comms for clients. It has come to define digital for us. The truth is very different. Fundamentally it is changing the face of geo-politics at a rapid pace. It is upending not just industries like communication, but also governments and their less than transparent ways. The irony is that the the brands we deal with are probably more transparent than our governments.
One of his key points was that the NSA was caught off guard in terms of their PR response. Their previous strategy was to deny the existence of the organisation - No Such Association, or so the joke goes. Clearly when Snowden leaked the NSA documents, the ability to deny the existence of the NSA disappeared - effectively leaving them speechless about what to do next. Assange credits this with helping to create the global backlash we’ve seen and in his words, wikileaks was able to outmanouver and defeat them. At least in terms of getting Snowden away to Russia…
By the end of the keynote I started to feel kind of uncomfortable. This was pretty heavy left leaning stuff for an interactive conference - dare I say it, particularly in the States. I couldn’t help wondering at one point if all our photos had been taken by some hidden übercamera and filed away in a NSA database somewhere, tagged “sympathiser”.
Moving on from being watched all the time, I though some light relief might be in order. Time to talk about embedded nanotech inside your body. Sounds like something out of an Iain M Banks (RIP) or Alister Renyolds novel - but apparently it’s not that far away.
Teams at Google are currently working on implantable screens embedded in contact lenses, and others on flexible microsensors that can tell your blood glucose levels and other key medical statistics.
Apparently this stuff is child’s play with what is really coming down the line. I sat through a Future 15 session (think 15 minute brain fry for the good ones) hosted by a 20 yr old who was talking about genetically targeted nanobots like, we’d discuss the weather. Going under the catchy name of bionanotechnology, he is proposing that we sequence the genetic structure of your individual disease (cancer in this case), develop a genetically targeted nano toxin attached to a binding protein and let them loose in your body. The protein is specifically looking for a exact genetic sequence and is able to move in and out of cells, causing cell death in the infected ones, moving on without harming non-infected ones. By doing this, he hopes to be able to create non-toxic cancer treatments that work even if the disease has metastasised.
All of it powered by phenomenal digital computation power.
Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson is probably the world’s most famous Astrophysicist - and definitely a renaissance man. He’s also the guy that killed Pluto’s status as a planet. He is also hugely entertaining and this was a great keynote, with the audience laughing and getting into his showmanship throughout the hour and a quarter. If you have Sky (and NatGeo channel he is the new face of legendary science show Cosmos which is launching shortly).
If you interested a bit of a writeup is here.
Some very insightful moments about what science really is, how to embrace curiosity and why it keeps you young. His purpose in life appears to be challenging people to think rationally and scientifically with an open mind. He said that he thought that the tide had turned in sciences favour again, and that we were truly headed into a new renaissance.
Adam Savage is on in a keynote shortly echoing the same thoughts, arguing that the distinction between art and science is misunderstood and false. It promises to be a compelling keynote as well.
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