John Elkington

 

Yesterday, I finished Apex, the third novel in the Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam, who met briefly at the VERGE event we both spoke at a few weeks back in Santa Clara. Given to me a couple of months back by Sam (Lakha).

It’s a long time since I have enjoyed a science fiction series so much, here both because of the basic notion of a drug (Nexus) that connects human minds in a 2040s version of the Internet and because of the fast-paced narrative involving characters one actually cares about.

Including, weirdly, by the end, the AI devil incarnate.

Confess I ended the book in tears. The closest books I have read, in terms of conjuring an alternate reality, have been Frank Herbert’s Dune – and a few of the sequels. 30 years after his death, Herbert still ranks as the sci-fi author I have learned most from, to date.

Here’s an interview by Anjali Ramachandran of Other Valleys, just posted – which nicely captures some of the stuff in my brain at the moment.

Had a wonderful conversation with Esther Dyson at the Zouk Capital dinner on Monday. Yesterday she sent me a link to this image of Richard and I at the B Team launch several years back, from the BBC coverage.

Feels a lifetime ago. And my main memory of chairing the event was that, whereas I had imagined the event might follow the piratical rules of a Blackbeard (or at least Yellowbeard), it sometimes felt more like the Royal Navy in the days of the lash and yardarm.

Probably dictated by the need to beam out the launch to tight timescales to hundreds of parallel events around the world …

Covestro were certainly taking their “Colourful” mission seriously at this year’s K-Fair in Düsseldorf. (Their other two core values are “Curious” and “Courageous”.) Exciting to be part of it. Very impressed by the student projects that formed a core part of the Covestro exhibits.

Got to meet Bertrand Piccard of the Solar Impulse for the first time, over lunch, and then did a lively session in the afternoon on “Sustainability’ with Richard Northcote of Covestro, Martin Stuchtey of SystemIQ and Jean-Marc de Royere of Air Liquide.

Had an email today from someone making a documentary on the life and music of Shawn Phillips. Brought back memories of an extraordinary night back in 1970.

Six of us were driving through Italy en route to Greece and Skiathos, when we arrived in Positano. Hippy days and we must have looked like ruffians. Up came a quintessential hipster, blond hair down to his waist. Shawn Phillips. We hit it off immediately and he invited us to his home later that night.

Three of us went, Ian (Lovell), Rex (Gowar) and I. Up endless steps to what seemed like the very top of Positano. There, in a huge largely unfurnished room equipped with large speakers, and with gothic windows looking down across to the town to the Mediterranean, Shawn played us the tapes of what would become his albums Contribution and Second Contribution. And maybe also of Collaboration.

His recording band including people like Stevie Winwood, Crhis Wood and Jim Capaldi of Traffic. (One link I discovered while researching this blog was to The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Paul Buckmaster played a key role in producing some of Shawn’s music – and also that Stones song. Fiona, our next door neighbour in Barnes until she died, was part of the choir that backed the Stones on You Can’t Always, I assume recorded round the corner at Olympic Studios.)

In any event, a key memory of that long-ago Positano evening is of Shawn’s black cat, or at least a black cat, suddenly jumping up in the middle of a track with a very pronounced bass line and, quite literally, starting to dance. Unforgettable.