down the avenue: Un-Tech Gathering: Oh So Hard

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April 06, 2006

Un-Tech Gathering: Oh So Hard

A friend of mine wrote about an Un-Tech Gathering I had recently. I decided not to blog about it because nearly everyone who reads this blog is in the 'tech business.'

He summarized it well however in a post called Luddite for a Night. Can I please add: involve me in as many luddite-like events as possible. If they're out there, let me know about them.

I threw a bunch of non-technology related questions in a hat to help people stay on track. (I was surprised how hard people found it to avoid the topic altogether) and everyone who came 'did' have a life outside of tech. Is it once again the Silicon Valley tech flu?

A few of the questions:

If you could change genders for one week, what would be the first thing you would do?

If you could have lunch with anyone living or dead, male and female, who would it be and what would you ask?

If your could participate in any event in history, what would it be, and what role would you play?

When you were a child, what did a parent or teacher say to you to change the course of your life?

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Comments

1: Look in the mirror. - followed by 'exploration' ;)

2: Leonardo Da Vinci : "Was is *you* in the picture?"

3: Conception of Adolf Hitler : Be the VERY noisy neighbours - or set off the fire alarm.

4: "Goodbye"

Posted by: kosso | Apr 6, 2006 2:02:12 PM

1. Some exploration of cource, then perhaps some observation of how reactions and interactions differ and change.

2. If I can, two people. Isaac Asimov who was perhaps the most influential writer I read while growing up, but whom I never had the chance to meet. I'd want to meet him and just talk - figuring the conversation would be wide ranging and very engaging, I'd probably see what he thought of some of my ideas. The other more personal would be to go back in time, but as myself, and play a real game of chess with my granfather - he tought me to play chess when I was 4 but we never played a "real" game on the level I am now capable of playing.

3. It might be a bit violent, but I would really like to see what the actuality of life in the Ottoman empire was like, in say around the mid-1600's or so, many elements of modern life starting to show up (even some English traders) but a very complex world - the "new world" had been discovered, but as well trade was expanding around the globe. A messy time to be sure, but one I'd like to see.

4. I have a weird memory, so don't recall a specific conversation from my childhood, but one thing which my parents did growing up was family dinners most nights where we discussed things over dinner, often in conversations that would last for hours, ranging from something we had read to a problem from my mom's or more often my father's work. This dialogue, brainstoruming,and converstaion has shaped me thoughout my life.

Posted by: Shannon Clark | Apr 6, 2006 3:03:40 PM

I'm glad you wrote about this! I encourage you to make the blog that you want to read, not that we want to read.

OK, so:

I know everybody says sex, but honestly, the first thing I'd want to do is go out to my local coffee shop and see how people treated me differently because I was a guy.

My maternal grandmother. She had eleven children, and now that I have two, I have come to regard her as a miraculous and mysterious figure. I want advice.

This is a difficult one. The first thing that came to mind is to be on a team with Bartali or Coppi -- legendary Italian cyclists that dominated pro cycling in the late forties and early fifties -- going up the side of a mountain during a race. It would be amazing to be Fausto Coppi for ten minutes (maybe that's related to #1).

Why choose?. A friend said this to me in a supermarket when I was trying to decide between two pints of ice cream. I know it sounds stupid, but it had never occurred to me before that I could get everything I wanted some of the time, or that abundance was ok. (I didn't eat them all at once -- there's a difference between abundance and gluttony, I get it. They were just in the icebox until they got consumed by people in our house, including me). That's probably the most positive lifechanging statement. Those are rarer than negative lifechanging statements, though.

Posted by: Lisa Williams | Apr 7, 2006 6:17:24 AM

1. Buy a whole bunch of expensive shoes; isn't that what all women do?

2. God - and ask him/her/it/them, "Nipples for men? What's up with that?"

3. Monday, February 11th, 1963, Studio 2, EMI Studios, London, while the Beatles record the entire "Please Please Me" album in one day. I would be producer George Martin.

4. "We've got enough saxophone players already. How'd you like to try the bassoon?"

Posted by: Nat Hefferman | Apr 7, 2006 1:39:38 PM