Inventing the Impossible

Panel Overview and Context

• Event Format: A crowdsourced panel discussion hosted by Ken Rakowski, featuring a hacker, futurist, inventor, and magician to explore the concept of "inventing the impossible."
• Historical Precedent for Disruption:
  • Raytheon's 1947 microwave radar took 50 years to become a consumer standard after a $5,000 cost barrier.
  • The 1982 Sony Walkman ($730) took 20 years to become ubiquitous.
  • Jeffrey Hahn's 2006 touch screen demonstration preceded the iPhone by five years to reach global standardization.
• Current Exponential Trends:
  • Internet data growth: 30 hours of video and 62,000 hours of music uploaded/listened to per minute.
  • Brain-computer interfaces: Dr. Philip Lowe and Stephen Hawking have patented technology to detect brain intent, rendering "precog" concepts from science fiction scientifically plausible.

Salim Ismail: Singularity University

• Core Mission: To bring together leading thinkers and ambitious young leaders to solve massive global problems by leveraging exponential technology.
• Student Selection Criteria:
  • Cohort size: 80 students from 35–40 countries, with an average age of 30 and a high rate of graduate degrees.
  • Demographic balance: Minimum 40% female participation, exceeding typical applicant ratios.
  • Cognitive diversity: Mixed groups of deep tech experts (AI, nanotech) and non-technical roles (investors, artists, policy thinkers) to avoid groupthink.
• Educational Output:
  • Challenge: Students must develop products or services capable of impacting one billion people within ten years.
  • Alumni network: Approximately 1,300 graduates spread across 85 countries.
• Specific Student Projects:
  • Peace-building: An Israeli student created an outsourcing platform requiring teams to be 50% Israeli and 50% Palestinian to foster economic interdependency.
  • Global Surveillance: A student team launched a nanosatellite mesh network three days prior to the panel to provide real-time video with one-meter resolution globally.
  • Food Security: Lab-grown meat and leather projects aim to address the demand of an additional 50 billion farm animals needed by the global middle class.
• Critique of Industry Forecasting:
  • Mobile industry analysts historically underestimated growth, predicting 16% annual growth in 2002, 14% in 2004, and 10% in 2008, while actual growth continued to double.
  • Linear regulatory and educational systems are currently misaligned with exponential technological acceleration.

Nolan Bushnell: Education and Creativity

• Predicted Disruption: Predicts an "explosive destruction" of the traditional education model over the next three to five years due to a "perfect storm" of cheap computers, effective software, and public demand.
• Efficiency Projections:
  • Current software allows teaching academic subjects 10 times faster than traditional methods.
  • Goal: Compress four years of high school curriculum into six months.
• Physiological Factors:
  • Research indicates that brain performance is influenced by diet (e.g., sardines, dark chocolate, green tea) and exercise, with plans to quantify optimal learning conditions via data.
• Shift to Creativity:
  • Emphasizes that future economic value lies in creativity and problem-solving rather than rote academic knowledge like calculus.
  • Advocates for "Maker Faire" style project-based learning to maintain student enthusiasm and utilize modern technology.

Pablo (Pablos): Intellectual Ventures

• Energy Crisis Metric:
  • Current global energy consumption equals 3.5 "cubic miles of oil" (energy required to power the planet).
  • Projections: Need an additional 1.4 to 1.8 cubic miles by 2050, totaling 5 cubic miles if alternative energy scaling is included.
• Nuclear Innovation:
  • Developed reactors that burn nuclear waste to provide baseload, carbon-free energy.
  • Claims 99.3% efficiency compared to current 0.7% efficiency of uranium enrichment.
  • Proposed use of the 700,000 metric tons of US nuclear waste stockpile to power the planet for hundreds of years.
• Vaccine Cold Chain Solution:
  • Deployed a "super thermos" device in Senegal that keeps vaccines cold for six months without external power, addressing the 20% failure rate of current $2 styrofoam coolers.
• Metamaterials for Connectivity:
  • Created flat-panel, electronically steerable antennas using metamaterials to enable gigabit wireless internet on planes and boats.
  • Technology replaces physically steerable satellite dishes, allowing for spectrum reuse and eliminating cell phone congestion issues.

Marco Tempest: Cyber Illusionism

• Methodology: Uses magic as a "sandbox" to prototype future technologies that do not yet exist, focusing on user experience rather than current hardware limitations.
• Collaborative Model:
  • Contrasts traditional secrecy with open-source collaboration, sharing IP and code with the community to build collective capability.
  • Emphasizes "tinkering" and building before over-analyzing to accelerate innovation.
• Live Demonstrations:
  • Performed live card tricks using "illusion glasses" to simulate augmented reality data overlays (similar to Google Glass).
  • Verified that all effects were performed live without pre-recording, utilizing gesture recognition and projection.

Cross-Disciplinary Discussion and Future Outlook

• Crowdfunding Impact (JOBS Act):
  • Crowdfunding platforms (Kickstarter, Indiegogo) have eliminated "market risk" for startups; success validates demand before production.
  • Case study: The Pebble Watch raised $10 million on Kickstarter, surpassing its initial $100,000 goal, demonstrating that market validation reduces the necessity of traditional venture capital for early-stage validation.
  • Venture capital focus is shifting from funding market validation to assessing execution risk and team capability.
• Education Reform Strategy:
  • Proposed transition from "push" to "pull" learning environments, where AI software handles content delivery (facts), freeing teachers to act as mentors for one-on-one critical thinking.
• Space Exploration Reality:
  • Salim Ismail predicts human space travel remains decades away due to biological fragility.
  • Near-term focus: Bioengineering Mars (terraforming via bacterial seeds) and leveraging low Earth orbit for infrastructure rather than immediate colonization.
• Concept of "Cheat Codes":
  • Speakers agree on the necessity of "cheating" by internalizing Moore's Law, inventing on a 5–10 year horizon, and leveraging free energy sources (e.g., using wave energy to cool ocean surfaces and weaken hurricanes).
• Intellectual Property Models:
  • Marco Tempest notes the effectiveness of MIT Media Lab's communal IP model, where sharing ownership attracts talent and accelerates the creation of "impossible" technologies.