The thesis of his upcoming book, Our New Selves, is that we’re at a hinge in history because for the first time technology is being applied inwardly more than outwardly. Are we engineering new types of humans? He says that every super power in the comics is either here now or will be “before your mortgage is paid off.”

[I got swept up in the backchannel chat and have obviously done a crappy job blogging this talk. Sorry.]

Gladwell: Not all the superpowers ar here yet. E.g., we can’t know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. [Also, no creepy stretchiness.]

Garreau: We’re developing infallible lie detectors.

Gladwell: If I don’t know if I’m telling a lie, how can you know?

de Waal: The people in the fields you (Garreau) are talking about don’t know enough about primate behavior. Anger can be beneficial. Alter that, for example, and who knows what you will screw up?

Metcalfe: The guy who designed the Pepsi Challenge is in our audience. Was Malcolm’s characterization accurate?

Guy: Yeah, about 75%.

Malcolm: My point is that things are more complex than these tests often think. E.g., people react to the packaging as if they’re reacting to the product. It’s better to observe human behavior than test it or ask for explicit explanations.

de Waal: I don’t trust questionnaires at all. Observation!

de Waal: I get jittery about proposal to change human nature because we know so little about it and everything is tied to something else.

Metcalfe: Do you, Dr. de Waal, think that we should behave more like chimps.

de Waal: [laughs] No, we’re all unique. For example, we have pair-bonding and families, which chimps don’t. We should be aware of our primate tendencies.

Jonathan Coulton is doing songs to close out sessions. He was great last year and now is singing a love song to his Mac.

Categories: Uncategorized dw