Flashes | February 2016 | Jason Silva

FEBRUARY 2016 ISSUE 16

A M o n t h ly M a g a z i n e o n K n o w l e d g e a n d D e v e lo p m e n t b y t h e M o h amm e d B i n R a s h i d A l M ak to u m F o u n d at i o n

Innovation Roadmap

2015 Year of Innovation 30 National Initiatives Focus on: Renewable energy, Transport, Education, Health, Technology, Water, Space

Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives 28 Organisations 116 Countries 1,400 Programs Educating 20 million children Treating 30 million people AED2 billion Investments

United Arab Emirates Mars Mission

Enter Mars’ Orbit in 2021

Dubai Smart City

Arabic Language Award

100 Initiatives

Patron of the Arts Award

100 Govt.

Services will go smart in the next three years

Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation Al-Azhar Restoration of Rare Documents

Mohammed Bin Rashid Award for Young Business Leaders

Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park Green Economy for Sustainable Development

Decade of Vision HH Sheikh Mohammed’s exceptional achievements in the last 10 years Arab Social Media Influencers Summit Drones for Good World Drone Prix

Positive use of Social Media

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation Mohammed bin Rashid Knowledge Award Knowledge-based Societies, Education, Entrepreneurship, and Research and Development

Dubai Expo 2020 Connecting Minds, Creating the Future

Museum of the Future An incubator for ideas A driver for innovation Destination for inventors and entrepreneurs

AED10

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Interview

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J a so n L u is S ilva

TECHNOOPTIMISM

Media artist and TV personality Jason Luis Silva speaks to Flashes on the metaphysics of the imagination in the 21st Century

During the Second Session on Day Three of the Knowledge Summit 2015 on ‘Innovation in Brain Games’, Jason Luis Silva, American media artist and TV personality, and a specialist in Brain Games, created an enthusiastic response among the attendees. Silva is also the host of National Geographic Channel’s No 1 rated and Emmy-nominated series Brain Games, seen in over 100 countries.

In addition, Silva is also the creator of Shots of Awe, a short film series of ‘trailers for the mind’ that serve as “philosophical espresso shots” exploring innovation, technology, creativity, futurism and the metaphysics of the imagination.

In Shots of Awe, Silva chases his inspiration addiction as he explores these topics and more. Every week he looks at the complex systems of society, technology and human existence and discusses the truth and beauty of science in a form of existential jazz.

Shots of Awe’, in Silva’s own words, is a film where “science, philosophy and inspiration collide.”

“To be human is to be trans-human,” he says.

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Interview

Jason Silva creates an enthusiastic response among the attendees at the Knowledge Summit 2015.

The City of Dubai itself is a concretisation of the human imagination.”

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On the main topic of Innovation at the Knowledge Summit, he said Innovation and Technology were embodiments of the human imagination. “The City of Dubai itself is a concretisation of the human imagination.”

“We use technology to extend the boundaries of who we are; we build tools, and, in turn, these tools change us as human beings. Technology has always been part of the human journey. The difference now is the exponential technological change in a digitalised world. This has significant implications for human beings, whose brains are linear and local, living in an age of exponential change.”

For example, biotechnology with the advances in the field “is our new playground.”

“We have biological software with which we can rewrite/reprogramme diseases. The next IT revolution will be in biology, with sensors in our bodies monitoring life in real time. All of this is coming… the overlapping and simultaneous revolution happening in Nanotechnology, Genetics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will throw up non-biological props that can extend our reality.”

Silva presented some of his award-winning videos like Future of Us and Shots of Awe to illustrate and reinforce his thesis that there is no duality to Nature and technology. “We have to dream bigger than before, to alleviate suffering and create new forms of imagination. With the lens of human imagination, we have to believe that anything is possible” Silva says that he wants to spread a message of optimism and hope. There is the shadow of the ‘Future’ that hovers over the ‘Now’ – the present as a possibility of the Future. The sense of infinite possibility and the perception of vastness that we can cultivate will leave us as human beings with increased feelings of well-being and compassion, which in itself is anti-inflammatory for our bodies, and will make us healthy and creative.”

Silva screened another one of his popular videos, shot on his iPhone, which has reached a million people. “We have the capacity to create a better world. Technology is an extension of ourselves – minds turned inside out,” he claims.

Another idea that Silva passionately proposes is that of redefining the concept of

J a so n L u is S ilva

the “Billionaire in the 21st Century” as someone whose ideas can reach out to and influence a billion people in a positive way.

Silva spoke exclusively to Flashes following his session at the Knowledge Summit.

Excerpts from the interview:

How do you see the exponential technologies helping us to tackle climate change? Are you optimistic?

Yes, I am extremely optimistic, because these exponential technologies are now falling into the physical world through things like nanotechnology. And the power of solar technology is doubling in capacity every year. These things tend to compound, you know. The Sun sends more energy per day than what we need to power the Earth for a year. If we can grab just one per cent of that, we’ll be just fine! So all this talk about fossil fuels etc. Again, it’s a case of future blindness, and it’s not thinking exponentially. We are only a few doublings away from getting all our energy from solar alone.

There is also the clean nuclear energy. That is what Bill Gates is advocating – he is the chairman of a company called TeraPower, that he helped launch in 2006, that’s talking about using a sort of very clean, perfectly safe version of nuclear energy that is very different from the alarmist Chernobyl-like ideas from the past. So there are a lot of things that can be used to replace coal, and that can be used to address climate change.

It’s a no-brainer. So in my view, investing in these exponential technologies is one of the quickest ways to bankrupt dirty technologies.

We are facing a vast information overload. Will exponential technology take on a curatorial role to tackle this?

Haven’t you seen my videos? They are very spiritual! What is without is within. I think with technology, what we are doing is turning our mind inside out. I cannot think of anything more spiritual than to actualise the human dream of flying through the sky with an airplane; I cannot think of anything more spiritual than two minds to be able to send messages across time and space, through a technologically-mediated wormhole, called Facetime on an iPhone, that allows two people to share their love, passion and poetry across unfathomably vast oceans. To me, that is spirituality.

Yes, it has to! Two things are happening. There is the rise of Anticipatory Design that is creating algorithms that we are offloading decision-making to. Right now we are facing the paralysis of choice. There are a thousand choices to pick from when you open Netflix or YouTube. We are overwhelmed by the choices and we don’t have the RAM to process this because there are too many options.

Anticipatory Design will help us to offload decisions to virtual assistants like Siri to make suggestions to us and it will be the equivalent of a curated vacation, where you pay a lot of money to have them create an itinerary for you so that you don’t even have to waste time deciding what activities to do. It’s the same reason why Steve Jobs wore the same clothing every day. Arbitrary choices are less necessary. I just want the guaranteed experience of novelty, surprise and serendipity. Artificial Intelligence will easily give me that.

Number two, of course, is Information Diet and Curation, which is serendipity – when you are looking for something and end up finding something else and you realise that what you found is more conducive to your needs than what you were looking for. That moment of unexpected surprise, unexpected cross-linking. I think AI will be able to deliver that to us, making our lives feel magical. Because every moment will be flooded by surprise and serendipity.

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You put a lot of faith in technology.

But isn’t there a lack of spirituality in the polemics that you hold forth so eloquently?

Jason Silva pits animal against human and unleashes your imagination.

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