Last night’s panel discussion at the Jewish Technology Business Network turned out well. This is remarkable not because of the caliber of the panelists (Larry Weber, Chris Meyer, Cliff Conneighton) but because we didn’t have a topic. Moderator Scott Kirsner (columnist for the Boston Globe, contributing editor to Wired and Fast Company) did an excellent job of pulling the discussion together. The audience seemed happy.

Beforehand Chris Meyer said that Arthur Miller (the lawyer and moderator, not the playwright and Monroe husband) once told him that there are only two rules for a good panel discussion: Have fun, and no dead air.

Chris, in the course of the evening, had some quotable quotes:

“As they say in the AI industry, as soon as something works, it’s not AI any more.”

“No one has ever seen a bubble from the inside” — Lester Thurow

He also asked the audience whether the “mass of the US economy” has increased or decreased in the past century. And he meant literally how much the goods weigh. His point was that it’s decreased because we’ve miniatured and strengthened, and that’s going to happen again, radically, as nanotech emerges.

Finally, Larry Weber said that TV viewership is at an all-time low. Interesting.

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