PreMoney speech
Altman tells the investing conference that Y Combinator is going to continue its scale. Its focus:
The sort of core belief that there are a lot more people that could be starting these huge [startup companies] and that YC can help them and that we can give them this huge advantage and…help connect them to people
![[PREMONEY 2014] Y Combinator: The Sequel — Sam Altman On The Future Of The Original Accelerator](https://newslines.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F489JA4ERzUY%2F0.jpg)
Clinton praises O’Malley
At the annual meeting for the Clinton Global Initiative, O’Malley appears on stage with Bill Clinton to announce O’Malley’s involvement with a project of CGI called the Mid-Atlantic Infrastructure Exchange (MAX). Clinton praises O’Malley as “a terrific governor of Maryland” and notes his education reforms in particular [remarks related to O’Malley begin around 5:00 in the video]:
Maryland at least twice during [O’Malley’s] two-term tenure has been voted the best run state in the country.
The former president predicts O’Malley’s lieutenant governor will succeed him:
Showing that the people of Maryland like where they’re going and believe in what they’re doing.
Simon Anholt
Anholt poses the question “Which country does the most good?” In his talk, the policy advisor ranks countries on how much “good” they do in the ever-expanding process of globalization. This is part of an international survey that he calls “The Good Country Index”. It is Anholt’s hope that this will help inspire countries to cease living like their own little island and instead decide to reach out and expand for the good of humanity.
Your reputation is only rented. And if you find ways to keep paying the rent, it helps you to stay where you are.
Renata Salecl
Philosopher Salecl states that in a modern, capitalist driven world, we are trained to take our own personal choices too seriously. She lectures that personal choices can allow us to be lead to feelings of guilt, uncertainty and inadequacy. In a world focused on obtaining perfection, these feelings cause us to become politically immobile and self-centered. Rather than become focused on these negative feelings towards ourselves, Salecl insists that we start focusing more on the choices we are making as a collective society.
Why do we still rely on the idea of the self-made man, which capitalism is based on? As psychoanalysts know, people don’t have a passion for knowledge; they have a passion for ignorance.
Heather Barnett
Barnett presents a talk on creating a semi-intellgent slime mold using Physarum polycephalum. While this single celled organism has no brain nor central nervous system, it shows a primitive form of memory, problem-solving skills and the apparent ability to make decisions.
It is also quite beautiful and makes therefore for a great creative collaborator. Although ultimately I cannot control the final outcome, it is a rather independent organism.
Maya Angelou funeral
Obama speaks at Maya Angelou’s private memorial service. In her speech, she mentions how Angelou taught women self-worth and was an inspiration in her own life.
That was the power of Maya Angelou’s words, words so powerful they carried a little black girl from the south side of Chicago all the way to the White House.
Radio Ink keynote
McAfee delivers the keynote speech at Radio Ink’s Convergence conference. He says that Google is trying matchmaking services:
I don’t want the perfect mate. I don’t want Google to search 5 billion women to find the perfect one. I would shoot myself in six months.
He says privacy is difficult due to the access to personal data that companies like Google and organizations like the NSA have:
Privacy is a choice. If everybody here knew everything about everybody else, there would be fistfights in the hall. The only way we can live together as a society is if we deceive each other. Tragic, but true […] If you have something to hide in this world, you’re screwed
Speak out against racism
Obama encourages students to speak out against racism in a high school ‘senior recognition day” speech in Kansas. She tells students to monitor when racial comments are heard, especially in their household. When a comment is heard, she encourages students to challenge that person. She notes that there are limitations to the law when dealing with racism, so it is up to individuals to make a change. She informs them that segregation is occurring in some areas, and gives several ideas on how students can support diversity for the future.
But no matter what you do, the point is to never be afraid to talk about these issues, particularly the issue of race.
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Appiah, philosopher and cultural theorist, asks the question “Is religion good or bad?” He begins by challenging his audience to consider whether religion is even a thing at all.
What I want you to think about next time somebody wants to make some vast generalization about religion is that maybe there isn’t such a thing as a religion, such a thing as religion, and that therefore what they say cannot possibly be true.
Ruth Chang
Chang, a philosopher, challenges the way we look at and make hard decisions in our lives. She outlines a way to take a new perspective so that we can view these difficult decisions in a more pleasing light.
Far from being sources of agony and dread, hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition, that the reasons that govern our choices as correct or incorrect sometimes run out, and it is here, in the space of hard choices, that we have the power to create reasons for ourselves to become the distinctive people that we are. And that’s why hard choices are not a curse but a godsend.
Naomi Oreskes
Oreskes, a historian of science, presents a talk on why it is that we should trust scientists. She presents the question of Faith vs. Science and then outlines three main problems that can be found in the world of scientific inquiry and how these issues can and should be addressed.
But it shouldn’t be blind trust any more than we would have blind trust in anything. Our trust in science, like science itself, should be based on evidence, and that means that scientists have to become better communicators. They have to explain to us not just what they know but how they know it, and it means that we have to become better listeners.
Ge Wang
Wang, founding director of the Standard Laptop Orchestra and the Standard Mobile Phone Orchestra, shows an example of how computers and programming languages can be used to create music. With his program he is able to take household materials and turn them into instruments that musicians can then make music with.
Stella Young
Young, a disability activist, leads a talk on what she calls “inspiration porn” – society’s habit of making disabled people into inspirational figures. She challenges our culture to raise their expectations of what disabled men and women are capable of doing and to look upon disability as the “norm” and not the exception.
Disability doesn’t make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.
Andrew Solomon
Solomon, a writer on politics, psychology and culture, presents a talk on life’s adversities and how we can experience growth through the most difficult times in our lives.
The gay activist Harvey Milk was once asked by a younger gay man what he could do to help the movement, and Milk said, “Go out and tell someone.” There’s always somebody who wants to confiscate our humanity, and there are always stories that restore it. If we live out loud, we can trounce the hatred and expand everyone’s lives.
Chris Kluwe
Kluwe, a former Minnesota Vikings punter, talks about a new version of augmented reality where the audience watching from home can get a sense that they are actually right there on the field with the players. He states that it is a new way for the fans to participate in the action, however, there are even more important uses for the technology.
But the question I ask you is, is that’s all that we’re content to use augmented reality for? Are we going to use it solely for our panem, our circenses, our entertainment as normal? Because I believe that we can use augmented reality for something more. I believe we can use augmented reality as a way to foster more empathy within the human species itself, by literally showing someone what it looks like to walk a mile in another person’s shoes.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgMOJC5R4F
Jon Mooallem
Mooallem tells the story of how Theodore Roosevelt spared the life of a black bear and thus inspired the creation of what is now called the “teddy bear”. The author explains how stories like this effect the existence and survival of various animals around the world.
In a world of conservation reliance, those stories have very real consequences, because now, how we feel about an animal affects its survival more than anything that you read about in ecology textbooks. Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an ecological force.
Kitra Cahana
Cahana, a photojournalist and self-proclaimed vagabond, presents a brief look into her life on the road where she uses her art to show the lifestyle of nomads, hitchhikers, vagrants and tramps.Through her eyes and her camera she gives her audience a small idea of what it is like to live a wandering existence.
Until we live in a society where every human is assured dignity in their labor so that they can work to live well, not only work to survive, there will always be an element of those who seek the open road as a means of escape, of liberation and, of course, of rebellion.
Stephen Friend
Friend, an open science advocate, presents a talk on the reason why some family members will contract certain inherited diseases through genetics while others will remain healthy. He talks about the project he is currently working on – the Resilience Project – which is a massive effort to collect genetic materials that may help decode inherited disorders.
Most of us spend our lives, when it comes to health and disease, acting as if we’re voyeurs. We delegate the responsibility for the understanding of our disease, for the treatment of our disease, to anointed experts. In order for us to get this project to work, we need individuals to step up in a different role and to be engaged, to realize this dream, this open crowd-sourced project.
Sting
Sting gives a presentation on the early life he spent in a shipyard and the way it would eventually come to influence his music as he found inspiration in the lives of his fellow shipyard workers. He also talks about his upcoming Broadway musical and presents several selections from the work.
The fact is, whether you’re a rock star or whether you’re a welder in a shipyard, or a tribesman in the upper Amazon, or the queen of England, at the end of the day, we’re all in the same boat.
Ray Kurzweil
Kurzweil tells about the evolution of the neocortex in mammals and how this part of the brain has helped to expand our way of thinking and reasoning beyond the point that our earlier ancestors would have been capable of. Now the neocortex is about to evolve again and he theorizes over what this new growth will bring about.
And so, over the next few decades, we’re going to do it again. We’re going to again expand our neocortex, only this time we won’t be limited by a fixed architecture of enclosure. It’ll be expanded without limit. That additional quantity will again be the enabling factor for another qualitative leap in culture and technology.
