Search Results for: Tim elkington

Clocks went back today: spent the additional time in bed reading Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. That in turn led me to dig back into the history of the New Riders of the Purple Sage, a band which I knew of and which was featured in the V&A Sixties exhibition, but which I’m pretty sure I hadn’t heard before.

Strikingly parallel to (and presumably an influence on) the Byrds in their Clarence White era and the Flying Burrito Brothers, two of my favourite bands.

Lily Rosenzweig came to lunch, during which a cameraman came to shoot a picture of Bruce McLean‘s garden next door from our top floor. Spied Bruce popping up behind an image of the garden when he and Rosie first moved in, in the Sixties.

 

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.

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.

Across to Kleinwort Benson’s offices in St George Street W1 this morning, for a meeting of the WWF Council of Ambassadors. It kicked off with a sampling of a new virtual reality system WWF plans to use in fund-raising.

Stunningly persuasive conjuring of an alternate reality, a forest with birds flitting and lizards scurrying by, but I felt slightly dizzy for 30 minutes afterwards. Probably my vertigo problem again.

Felt even groggier after several presentations on the data from the next Living Planet Index work – we’re going to Hell in a hand basket, it sometimes seems.

Then back to 2 Bloomsbury Place for a session with Ingvild Sørensen of the UN Global Compact, before we all decamped for an Innovation Arts session, building towards the Breakthrough Symposium we’re planning for Cambridge in November. Then on to UBS, but that can be the subject of a separate entry.