It’s often assumed that a time-traveller would be uniquely placed to profit from their knowledge of events, things that to them were historical but to their new contemporaries would be yet to occur, investing in little-known technologies that were destined for greatness, or remaining aloof from ill-fated fashions. But what about the other qualities one needs to do well? What about character, or luck?

A man sits at a corner table in the company of nothing but his thoughts and a third gin: his downcast eyes are looking beyond the tabletop and his lips twitch as he rehearses the choices that led him to his present position. Arriving in what was to him then history, he found himself more informed than his peers on almost every area of human endeavour: paralysed by the choices available to him, he invested his efforts in a reckless and haphazard manner, investing money in this new technology, travelling to that soon-to-be-pivotal region of the world, advising influential individuals to take advantage of the other recent development. Spreading his resources so broadly prevented him nurturing any one of his enterprises as they deserved, and soon he became aware of his reputation as a dilletante and shyster, a diverting accquaintance with an uncanny knack of guessing how things might fall out, but not one you would wish to have as a partner. Now you see him desparate and confused, at a loss to explain how he has squandered the best possible advantage a man might want in the world.

(It doesn’t end badly for our friend, by the way: he discovers that relinquishing the idea that he has a special advantage allows him to behave in a calmer and more trustworthy way, and by the end of his life he sometimes smiles to think that the distinction he is most proud of is no longer his time-traveller status but his champion carrot cake).

Knowing things that other people don’t yet is all very well, but it wouldn’t do on its own: you’d still need something like character to succeed, and that’s timeless.

I’m reading a review of Nordhaus’ book on the economics of various policy responses to global warming by Freeman Dyson, and it’s making me wonder, what did other civilisations on the brink of collapse say about their future? Are there Cambodian editorials somewhere, making passing comments like “of course, not having any food or money to defend ourselves against aggressive neighbours is difficult, but we are confident new irrigation and metallurgy technology will address these, and building Angkor Wat will show our empire continues to rise unchallenged“? Or stones from Greenland saying “we’ll never need to learn to hunt like the Inuit because we’ll have so much trade going on any day now”? How many people have spent time writing “well, anyway, something will turn up and it’ll be alright” shortly before being proved wrong? I’d love to read them.

The problem with saying “something will turn up – it usually does” is that you’re not working from a complete sample: the only cases we know about are the ones where something did turn up. We don’t hear about all the times something failed to turn up. There might be just as many of them.

Spoke at geeKyoto yesterday: had a wonderful time and left feeling energised and inspired. Lots of different things to think about, a few changes I want to make to the way I live, and (hopefully) the start of some really interesting conversations: there were some really bright and talented people I felt privileged to be around. Full marks to messrs. Simpkins and Hammersley – thank you both!

I’ve got longer notes from the day that I need to digest before I put up here: broad themes that seem to stand out right now are a faith in the power of making the invisible visible (so a lot of talk about data visualisation and open data), the importance of community in effecting social change and a refreshing lack of faith in technological fixes that are unsupported by changes in behaviour. Two things that seemed to arise from a lot of people’s talks that I need to think more about: all the failures that people described (in regulating emissions, or in delivering aid or technology) seemed to be more about management and process than technology or access to data, despite this last point being a central article of faith for the conference, and I wonder if that might be a more productive (though more boring, perhaps) thing to think about. And the second was this idea of “community” – it seems to come loaded with a set of ideas about the sort of people in the community, that they’re nice people like us, whereas of course plenty of revolting people form communities as well. Minor point, really.

Anyway. My bit didn’t make anyone leave, which is my usual measure of success, but I think there were a few points that I might have offered people in a more structured and articulate way. It was a good experience to speak to a different audience, though, having spent the last couple of years talking mainly to education conferences and policy types, and I’ve got a few points to consider for the next time I talk in front of people. Learning, learning, always learning. For what it’s worth, I’ve put my slides up here if you’re interested. And I was really pleased to discover, during a vanity google, a twitter survey on a question that Ben posed afterwards, from Jemimah Knight: really interesting responses, will have to give them a bit of a mull.

So. Notes to come on speakers and ideas but short version: it’s brilliant, go to the next one.

Bangkok,
originally uploaded by kokeshi.

I’m in another hotel, one that looks a lot like the other ones I’ve been in recently, where I had a drink in the bar downstairs, and listened to someone sing My Funny Valentine while I thought about someone a long way away, and I will be very disappointed if tomorrow I don’t have to film a Suntory commercial.

The drive from the airport was incredible, everything very brand new indeed, apart from the taxi touts whose only concession to their new environment seems to be a suit. The airport follows the kind of grey-steel-and-curved-glass-with-blue-highlights template that makes me think of Canary Wharf, although the curves follow a Thai line rather than a Waterloo-style bulge, making it quite distinctive. That, and the fifteen-foot high multicolored statues of figures from Thai myth that gaze down unsmilingly upon you before Immigration.

Between the city centre and the airport they’re building a “skytrain” extension, I think: they’ve got what looks like part of a trainline on a series of concrete pillars that follow the motorway, on the other side of the latticework advertising hoardings, rising high above the bungalow shops and bars that make infrequent splashes of light in the shadowy palms. At first, I thought the tiny, one-floor buildings were vestiges of the recent past managing somehow to continue in the shadow of the future, but then I realised, passing the grey concrete pillars that still lacked a trainline, that they’d decided to skip the future and go straight to building the past: in the ghostly light of the giant advertising hoardings, the pillars looked like ruins from a post-oil age; Roman witnesses to the Saxons busy beneath them, relics of an age where ambitious new transport links were necessary and laudable, instead of hubristic and doomed.

This trip also made me realise how much I love 3G: I had a moment of worry when I realised I hadn’t even thought about a visa: google in the departure lounge told me not to worry. And despite doing no research at all on any aspect of being in Thailand, by the time I stepped out of the car at the hotel I knew what the exchange rate was and which banks I could use. The best thing is, it didn’t occur to me that anything was unusual about this until a minute ago, when I imagined telling myself 5 years ago that not only would I own a phone, using it to access the internet thousands of miles from home wouldn’t even give me pause for thought. I love living in the future, even if some of it looks like relics already.

Below is the promotional video produced by the IDA to communicate their vision of iN2015, or the masterplan which will see Singapore become an Intelligent Nation in ten years’ time. Aside from the obvious confusion of “technologically advanced” for “intelligent”, what strikes you about it? I can’t really comment, but I thought you might be interested.

(If anyone wants to show this to Sasha as well, I’d love to know what she thinks)