SXSW Day 2: Naked UK’s Rob Meldrum talks robots, nano-technology and space exploration
By Rob Meldrum, innovation director, Naked UK
Two days in and I’m starting to get used to the craziness of SXSW. Waking earlier than I should on a Saturday the day started with robots. A fantastic talk from Carl Bass: he spoke about the role of robots in our lives and the future; how we need to change our behavior in order to continue to grow with new technology rather than against it. Oh and he also suggested that we’ve been living with robots for years: we only call them robots until we work out how they work and then we give them a name. Like a train.
Then it was onto more robot chat with Dimitri Grishin, who suggested there are three key reasons why robot development is happening right now; components are far cheaper; the testing process is easier; and it’s simple to start a company. He also spoke of the concept of ‘the economies of un-scale’: it used to be that to make money you had to scale, whereas now you can make money with technology at a micro level.
The talk I really wanted to go to was a reading from Andy Goodman of his book “Embeddables: the next evolution of wearable tech”. I was not disappointed. There were so many themes and insights within it. My favourite was the concept that by having controllable nano-technology inside of us could mean that the technology would be able to actually change us. It could alter our moods and could even be thought of as the new psychedelic. Trippy.
My highlight of the day however was the keynote with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. I must admit I knew little about him, but he was incredibly inspiring. He threw out pearls of wisdom such as “We define ourselves as intelligent because we came up with the test for that”, “Don’t Believe. Question”, “Some lessons need to be learned first hand” and “We should learn how science works, rather than learning science itself”. He wrapped up a mesmerizing hour with a request: he wants us all to take a cosmic perspective. He said “we’re not special because we’re different. We’re special because we’re the same.” He fully deserved his standing ovation…