Slides from my talk to the Warburg Pincus TMT CEO Retreat at Auberge du Soleil.

1. Towards a Global Brain
Tim O’Reilly
O’Reilly Media
Warburg Pincus TMT CEO Retreat
October 11, 2011
Monday, October 24, 11

2. “The skill of writing is to
create a context in which
other people can think.”
-Edwin Schlossberg
Monday, October 24, 11

3. The Google Autonomous Vehicle
Monday, October 24, 11

4. The extraordinary convergence
of computing and human potential
Monday, October 24, 11

5. Towards a global brain
Monday, October 24, 11

6. The advent of global consciousness?
Monday, October 24, 11

7. Monday, October 24, 11

8. A few key assertions
§ We are building a network-mediated global mind
§ It is not skynet
§ It is us, augmented
Monday, October 24, 11

9. “global consciousness is
that thing responsible for
deciding that pots
containing decaffeinated
coffee should be orange”
– Danny Hillis (via Jeff Bezos)
– http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/03/16/etech_3.html
Monday, October 24, 11

10. Artificial Intelligence
“the science and engineering
of making intelligent machines”
-John McCarthy, 1956
Monday, October 24, 11

11. Intelligence Augmentation
“One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind
follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind
decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected
from storage.
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized
private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex"
will do.”
– Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945
Monday, October 24, 11

12. Monday, October 24, 11

13. Monday, October 24, 11

14. A device that knows
where I am better than I
do, a knowing assistant
telling me where to go
and how to get there.
Monday, October 24, 11

15. Beyond information
retrieval: real time
connection with other
people and what they
know.
Monday, October 24, 11

16. Man-Computer Symbiosis
“The hope is that, in not too many years, human
brains and computing machines will be coupled
together very tightly, and that the resulting
partnership will think as no human brain has ever
thought and process data in a way not approached by
the information-handling machines we know today.”
– Licklider, J.C.R., "Man-Computer Symbiosis", IRE Transactions on
Human Factors in Electronics, vol. HFE-1, 4-11, Mar 1960. Eprint
Monday, October 24, 11

17. Harnessing Collective Intelligence
Monday, October 24, 11

18. Monday, October 24, 11

19. wikipedia
Monday, October 24, 11

20. Monday, October 24, 11

21. Monday, October 24, 11

22. A device with eyes and
ears, with a sense of
place, and motion, and
proximity, with memory
of what it’s seen and
where it’s been, senses
sharper than our own.
Monday, October 24, 11

23. The spread of sensors
§ sensor platform slide
Monday, October 24, 11

24. Monday, October 24, 11

25. 2005: Stanley Wins the DARPA Grand Challenge
Monday, October 24, 11

26. The “intelligent” devices of the future are cloud-connected
“We don’t have better algorithms. We just have more
data.” - Peter Norvig, Chief Scientist, Google
Monday, October 24, 11

27. Government as Platform
Monday, October 24, 11

28. Monday, October 24, 11

29. Monday, October 24, 11

30. Vending Machine Government
Vending Machine Gov concept from Donald Kettl:
The Next Government of the United States
Monday, October 24, 11

31. We Need to Do More Than Shake the Vending Machine!
http://image06.webshots.com/6/2/57/50/190125750NgQXwu_ph.jpg
Monday, October 24, 11

32. Monday, October 24, 11

33. Monday, October 24, 11

34. The global brain is us,
connected and augmented
Monday, October 24, 11

35. Algorithmic Regulation
Monday, October 24, 11

36. Monday, October 24, 11

37. Monday, October 24, 11

38. Monday, October 24, 11

39. for profit colleges
Monday, October 24, 11

40. “Would you be willing to cross
the street with information that
was five minutes old?”
-Jeff Jonas
Monday, October 24, 11

41. Vannevar Bush’s Memex - 1945
Monday, October 24, 11

42. Monday, October 24, 11

43. “Your job as a parent is to prepare
your child for the future.”
Monday, October 24, 11

44. If the global brain is still a child,
what should we be teaching it?
How should we be rearing it?
Monday, October 24, 11

45. Predictive analytics in information applications
mirrors human learning
Monday, October 24, 11

46. Our algorithms and the goals we set for them
mirror human vices and virtues
Monday, October 24, 11

47. We are all Khaled Said
Monday, October 24, 11

48. “Access to all the world’s information”
“How can applications be better
when they are social?”
“Changing the world by spreading
the knowledge of innovators”
Monday, October 24, 11

49. Monday, October 24, 11

50. Monday, October 24, 11

51. How can we make the emerging global
consciousness not only smarter
and more resilient, but more moral?
Monday, October 24, 11

52. "The best minds of my generation are thinking
about how to make people click ads."
-Jeff Hammerbacher
Monday, October 24, 11

53. “Virtue is remembering what you really want”
-James O’Reilly
Monday, October 24, 11

54. Monday, October 24, 11

55. We’ve got one world. We’d better get it right.
Monday, October 24, 11