Steven "Emergence" Johnson has some fascinating highlights from the TED conference (which wasn't blogged, hardly at all, probably because they didn't invite many bloggers).
On a lighter note, Marvin Minsky walked through a couple of half-serious ideas for combating the population explosion — ideas that he seemed a little surprised that no one was yet exploring. My favorite: make people smaller! If we're going to be able to genetically engineer ourselves, maybe we should work on shrinking ourselves down so the planet can fit more of us. As Minsky pointed out, a 6-inch person is a thousand times smaller, volume-wise, than a normal-sized one. Of course, he didn't get into the crucial corollary problem we'd have to solve if we pulled this off — namely, Giant Killer Squirrels — but I'm sure with time we could solve that one too.
The first day ended with a one-two punch that you probably won't see again. DJ Spooky as an opening act for Freeman Dyson. I loved Dyson's idea that if the universe doesn't turn out to be teeming with life, perhaps then it should be up to us to plant the seeds, by sending out extremophile sunflowers capable of thriving in the cold vacuum of space.
