Millennium Technology Conference (Day 1)
Today I have been at the Technology Awards over in Dipoli, Otaniemi.
I was the only person there probably under 30 and definitely the only one wearing shorts and a T-shirt instead of a black suit.
There was a couple of good speeches, one by Chris Llewellyn-Smith about energy topics and his hopes for fission. He has quite a few credentials, and if he is saying resources such as oil will run out I believe him. I think his figure was roughly 40 years from now(!).
Today I voted green for the EU vote as they are dead against software patents as I am. It pains me that those idiots are against nuclear power. As for the short term, it is the ecologically best way to go about meeting energy requirements.
Another good speech was by David Cox about DNA and related topics. One thing I was reminded about was that it isn’t just our DNA. It’s the enviroment we live in. So if I was cloned… ;) Also he compares genealogy to astrology. :) Another interesting comment was how <50% of drugs won’t work the same for everybody. Oh well…
As for the rest… the Finnish Prime minister was really boring. And Sari Baldauf gave one of those “business presentations at a technology conference”. Why O why… zzzzz
Oh yeah, I briefly met TBL. He was going on about the RDF to a journalist from the Economist I think. I find it really hard to get excited about the semantic web nowadays… :/ Hopefully I’ll get chat to him again.
I was a bit pissed off that there was not any good food. And that wireless internet was not working either. I was invited over to Espoo city council for dinner tonight, but no one could tell me if they were going to show the football match between England and France for certain. Hence, I am not going. There is no way I miss a game like that.
Summary: Millennium Technology Conference = old people with money
Dinner tomorrow at Helsinki city hall sounds good, but I need a “white tie”. Oh no…
There were juicy quotes today:
- “Should we spend more money on R&D?”
- ” It’s incredibly difficult to predict, especially for the future.”
I hope tomorrow will be better. Although I need to cram for a statistics exam on Tuesday. Argh.