Scholarships/Donations

One core tenet of IdeaFestival programming is to remain accessible ( open-source) in terms of pricing, especially when compared with other world-class national and global thought-leader events. We believe that it is our responsibility to share these innovators, leading thinkers and influencers with as wide of an audience as possible. We hear consistently from our speakers that we have one of the most diverse and unique audiences of any event of our type with participation from all ages, all walks of life, from Louisville and far beyond.

Each year, the number of requests for free or subsidized student and community tickets continues to rise. As a result, we are launching a scholarship program for IdeaFestival 2012 to help ensure that participation remains affordable for all. Student all-access passes cost $199 per student to attend all four days of the Festival.

Please click here to make a tax-exempt donation to support the new IF Scholarship Fund so we can continue to keep IdeaFestival accessible for all. A donation of any amount is welcome.

Nicholas Carr, Digital Jeremiah

Easily one of my favorite critics of wired culture is Nicholas Carr, who is at the top of his game in a couple of recent posts from Rough Type, aka, the "realtime chronicles."

Get used to the sarcasm. As someone who has been on the barbed end of it because of a brief flirtation with the kind of digital utopianism he routinely mocks, and as an introvert who has an inexhaustible desire for less stimulation from the devices he carries, I've certainly come to appreciate it.

Up first, Carr share an insight gleaned from a forthcoming book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - an IdeaFestival speaker in 2008, by the way - on the nature of information in the land of circuits: the more you look at the data, the more noise you're likely to encounter. The fault lies with us.

In my mind this statistical truism sheds light on so much of contemporary culture, which has never been so connected. And yet - and yet - through a combination of our own frailties and an interminable news cycle we've become, with good reason, jejune, skeptical about the information on offer. Yeah, there's a bit of noise in the signal.

I won't go so far as to say that the news is for suckers, but comics have certainly found it useful. Having left The Onion, Baratunde Thurston has started a new company, Cultivated Wit, devoted to the proposition that truths that can't shared in earnest might be delivered in a punchline. He's on to something; the facts ain't what it used to be. I'm looking forward to hearing Baratunde at IdeaFestival 2012.

Carr also goes after a certain modern promise. Our wetware, having co-evolved with its world over an endless expanse of time, crowns its bearers with creaturely intimacies - the scent of an apple orchard, the warmth of a lover, the jeweled depths of a truly dark sky. It is hard won knowledge. And thanks to neuroscience we also know that the synaptic leaps that make that knowledge possible take place before any conscious understanding. Our own minds lag the real world.

"But there's hope...." Taking a shot at one well known cyber evangalist and some-over-the-top language about the promise of personal technology, Carr goes on to dryly and pointedly mock the idea that our digital devices will ever anticipate our wants. Our apps have a hopeless task, not the least because knowing what we want is part of the problem.

He's not for everyone, but we need voices like Carr's. He doesn't prophesy against the wired world, just the dingbat-ery that its intimate embrace will ever have a pulse.

Wayne

 Image: Some rights reserved by Ben Husmann

Star Trails and Wonder Making

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. Saint Augustine

Taken by Expedition 31 flight engineer Don Pettit from aboard the ISS, NASA has posted a number of star trail images that are simply gorgeous.

See more here.

From Brian Greene to Michio Kaku to Sean Carroll, the IdeaFestival has a long history of hosting mind blowing speakers on the nature physical reality. And while you might be tempted to come to the IdeaFestival this year to hear one of Time's 100 most influential people, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, you might also consider buying that all-access pass to encounter poet Nikky Finney.

Wonder-making is what they do.

Between now and then, check out these star poems.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by NASA_JSC_Photo

Baratunde on careers: In world of many voices, find yours

How are the IdeaFestival and the future of careers alike? Both emphasize fresh thinking, even when, maybe particularly when, it's about oneself. "Change is the new normal."

Baratunde Thurston at Big Think:

...that may still mean that you’re a writer. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to be a reporter for this newspaper. It maybe means you’re a storyteller, and the way you connect with communities and expose clarity to confusing situations and put words and images together to convey knowledge to people, that’s what you do. You’re not a reporter for the Sacramento Bee--not to pick on the Sacramento Bee. You’re a storyteller. You’re an informer....

I don’t think we’re ever going to reset to a new plateau or a new normal of any significant length. By the time you get used to the way things work, the way things work will change because we’re on that Moore’s Law arc, because the tools that we use to connect to one another and drive everything advance far too quickly, and because we have too many minds plugged into the matrix who have a voice now, not just to consume, but to produce.

To see Baratunde, "Little Bets" author Peter Sims, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, "Bully" filmmaker Cynthia Lowen, and many other fresh thinkers, purchase your all-pass today. Please be aware that the price for an all-access pass to IdeaFestival 2012 will go up after June 30.

I hope to see you at the IdeaFestival!

Wayne

No more Mr. Nice Guy

For the quiet person the one constant in the world is not change, it's noise. Too much and his interior life, his source of energy, suffers.

Keep that in mind. You don't need to be Catholic or even particularly religious to get something out of this email exchange between a reporter and Trappist monks who "seek the aid of," and sometimes struggle with, silence.

The silence does make me aware of my inner workings, however, what we call in the monastery, 'self-knowledge.' I can't pretend that I'm always a nice guy, always patient, always calm and receptive. I have to admit that I can be abrupt, cold to offenders, or would often prefer efficiency to the messiness of other people's moods. Silence seems to keep me from idealizing myself.

I've become very attuned to the sound of bird-song, the wind, water running through the pipes, identifying unseen monks by the sound of their footsteps—just paying attention to my surroundings.

I loved the payoff. Isn't close attention to her environment a requirement for every successful entrepreneur, artist or scientist?

Wayne

Image of escaping lightening bugs: Some rights reserved by JefferyTurner