Good morning.
When I was a little boy,
I had an experience that changed my life,
and is in fact why I'm here today.
That one moment, one moment,
profoundly affected how I think about
art, design, and engineering.
As background, I was fortunate enough to grow up
in a family of lovely and talented artists
in one of the world's great cities.
My dad, John Ferren, who died when I was 15,
was an artist by both passion and profession,
as is my mom, Rae.
He was one of the New York school
abstract expressionists who,
together with his contemporaries,
invented American modern art,
and contributed to moving the American zeitgeist
towards modernism in the 20th century.
Isn't it remarkable that, after thousands of years
of people doing mostly representational art,
that modern art, comparatively speaking,
is about 15 minutes old,
yet now pervasive.
As with many other important innovations,
those radical ideas required no new technology,
just fresh thinking and a willingness to experiment,
plus resiliency in the face of near-universal criticism
and rejection.
In our home, art was everywhere.
It was like oxygen,
around us and necessary for life.
As I watched him paint,
dad taught me that art
was not about being decorative,
but it was a different way of communicating ideas,
and in fact one that could bridge the worlds
of knowledge and insight.
Given this rich artistic environment,
you'd assume that I would have been compelled
to go into the family business,
but no.
I followed the path of most kids
who are genetically programmed
to make their parents crazy.
I had no interest in becoming an artist,
certainly not a painter.
What I did love was electronics and machines,
taking them apart, building new ones,
and making them work.
Fortunately, my family also had engineers in it,
and with my parents,
these were my first role models.
What they all had in common
was they worked very, very hard.
My grandpa owned and operated a sheet metal
kitchen cabinet factory in Brooklyn.
On weekends, we would go together to Cortland Street
which was New York City's radio row.
There we would explore massive piles
of surplus electronics,
and for a few bucks bring home treasures
like Norton bombsights
and parts from the first IBM tube-based computers.
I found these objects both useful and fascinating.
I learned about engineering and how things worked
not at school
but by taking apart and studying
these fabulously complex devices.
I did this for hours every day,
apparently avoiding electrocution.
Life was good.
However, every summer, sadly,
the machines got left behind
while my parents and I traveled overseas
to experience history, art, and design.
We visited the great museums and historic buildings
of both Europe and the Middle East,
but to encourage my growing interest
in science and technology,
they would simply drop me off in places
like the London Science Museum,
where I would wander endlessly for hours by myself
studying the history of science and technology.
Then, when I was about nine years old,
we went to Rome.
On one particularly hot summer day,
we visited a drum-shaped building that from the outside
was not particularly interesting.
My dad said it was called the Pantheon,
a temple for all of the gods.
It didn't look all that special from the outside,
as I said, but when we walked inside,
I was immediately struck by three things.
First of all, it was pleasantly cool
despite the oppressive heat outside.
It was very dark, the only source of light
being an big open hole in the roof.
Dad explained that this wasn't a big open hole,
but it was called the Oculus,
an eye to the heavens.
And there was something about this place,
I didn't know why, that just felt special.
As we walked to the center of the room,
I looked up at the heavens through the Oculus.
This was the first church that I'd been to
that provided an unrestricted view
between God and man.
But I wondered, what about when it rained?
Dad may have called this an Oculus,
but it was in fact a big hole in the roof.
I looked down and saw floor drains
had been cut into the stone floor.
As I became more accustomed to the dark,
I was able to make out details of the floor
and the surrounding walls.
No big deal, just the same statuary stuff
that we'd seen all over Rome.
In fact, it looked like the Appian Way
of marble salesman showed up
with his sample book, showed it to Hadrian,
and Hadrian said, "We'll take all of it."
(Laughter)
But the ceiling was amazing.
It looked like a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome.
I'd seen these before,
and Bucky was friends with my dad.
It was modern, high-tech, impressive,
a huge 142-foot clear span
which not coincidentally was its exact height.
I loved this place.
It was really beautiful and unlike anything I'd ever seen before,
so I asked my dad, "When was this built?"
He said, "About 2,000 years ago."
And I said, "No, I mean, the roof."
You see, I assumed that this was a modern roof
that had been put on because the original
was destroyed in some long-past war.
He said, "It's the original roof."
That moment changed my life,
and I can remember it as if it were yesterday.
For the first time, I realized people were smart
2,000 years ago. (Laughter)
This has never crossed my mind.
I mean, to me, you know, the pyramids at Giza,
we visited those the year before,
and sure they're impressive, nice enough design,
but look, give me an unlimited budget,
20 to 40,000 laborers, and about 10 to 20 years
to cut and drag stone blocks across the countryside,
and I'll build you pyramids too.
But no amount of brute force
gets you the dome of the Pantheon,
not 2,000 years ago, nor today.
And incidentally, it is still the largest
unreinforced concrete dome that's ever been built.
To build the Pantheon took some miracles.
By miracles, I mean things that are
technically barely possible,
very high risk, and might not be
actually accomplishable at this moment in time,
certainly not by you.
For example, here are some of the Pantheon's miracles.
To make it even structurally possible,
they had to invent super-strong concrete,
and to control weight,
varied the density of the aggregate
as they worked their way up the dome.
For strength and lightness, the dome structure
used five rings of coffers,
each of diminishing size,
which imparts a dramatic forced perspective
to the design.
It was wonderfully cool inside
because of its huge thermal mass,
natural convection of air rising up
through the Oculus,
and a Venturi effect when wind blows across
the top of the building.
I discovered for the first time that light itself
has substance.
The shaft of light beaming through the Oculus
was both beautiful and palpable,
and I realized for the first time
that light could be designed,
further, that of all of the forms of design,
visual design,
they were all kind of irrelevant without it,
because without light, you can't see any of them.
I also realized that I wasn't the first person
to think that this place was really special.
It survived gravity, barbarians, looters, developers,
and the ravages of time to become
what I believe is the longest
continuously occupied building in history.
Largely because of that visit,
I came to understand that,
contrary to what I was being told in school,
the worlds of art and design
were not in fact incompatible
with science and engineering.
I realized, when combined,
you could create things that were amazing
that couldn't be done in either domain alone.
But in school, with few exceptions,
they were treated as separate worlds,
and they still are.
My teachers told me that I had to get serious
and focus on one or the other.
However, urging me to specialize
only caused me to really appreciate those polymaths
like Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
Benjamin Franklin,
people who did exactly the opposite.
And this led me to embrace
and want to be in both worlds.
So then how do these projects of unprecedented creative vision and technical complexity
like the Pantheon actually happen?
Someone themselves, perhaps Hadrian,
needed a brilliant creative vision.
They also needed the storytelling and leadership skills
necessary to fund and execute it,
and a mastery of science and technology
with the ability and knowhow
to push existing innovations even farther.
It is my belief that to create these rare game changers
requires you to pull off at least five miracles.
The problem is, no matter how talented,
rich, or smart you are,
you only get one to one and a half miracles.
That's it. That's the quota.
Then you run out of time, money, enthusiasm,
whatever.
Remember, most people can't even imagine
one of these technical miracles,
and you need at least five to make a Pantheon.
In my experience, these rare visionaries
who can think across the worlds of art,
design, and engineering,
have the ability to notice
when others have provided enough of the miracles
to bring the goal within reach.
Driven by the clarity of their vision,
they summon the courage and determination
to deliver the remaining miracles
and they often take what other people think to be
insurmountable obstacles
and turn them into features.
Take the Oculus of the Pantheon.
By insisting that it be in the design,
it meant you couldn't use much of the structural technology
that had been developed for Roman arches.
However, by instead embracing it
and rethinking weight and stress distribution,
they came up with a design that only works
if there's a big hole in the roof.
That done, you now get the aesthetic
and design benefits of light cooling
and that critical direct connection with the heavens.
Not bad.
These people not only believed
that the impossible can be done,
but that it must be done.
Enough ancient history.
What are some recent examples of innovations
that combine creative design
and technological advances in a way so profound
that they will be remembered
a thousand years from now?
Well, putting a man on the moon was a good one,
and returning him safely to earth wasn't bad either.
Talk about one giant leap:
it's hard to imagine a more profound moment
in human history
than when we first left our world
to set foot on another.
So what came after the moon?
One is tempted to say that today's pantheon
is the internet,
but I actually think that's quite wrong,
or at least it's only part of the story.
The internet isn't a Pantheon.
It's more like the invention of concrete:
important, absolutely necessary
to build the Pantheon,
and enduring,
but entirely insufficient by itself.
However, just as the technology of concrete
was critical in realization of the Pantheon,
new designers will use the technologies of the internet
to create novel concepts that will endure.
Smart phone is a perfect example.
Soon the majority of people on the planet
will have one,
and the idea of connecting everyone
to both knowledge and each other will endure.
So what's next?
What imminent advance will be the equivalent of the Pantheon?
Thinking about this,
I rejected many very plausible
and dramatic breakthroughs to come,
such as curing cancer.
Why? Because Pantheons are anchored
in designed physical objects,
ones that inspire by simply seeing
and experiencing them,
and will continue to do so indefinitely.
It is a different kind of language, like art.
These other vital contributions that extend life
and relieve suffering are, of course, critical,
and fantastic,
but they're part of the continuum of
our overall knowledge and technology,
like the internet.
So what is next?
Perhaps counterintuitively,
I'm guessing it's a visionary idea
from the late 1930s
that's been revived every decade since:
autonomous vehicles.
Now you're thinking, give me a break?
How can a fancy version of cruise control
be profound?
Look, much of our world
has been designed around roads and transportation.
These were as essential to the success
of the Roman Empire
as the interstate highway system
to the prosperity and development
of the United States.
Today, these roads that interconnect our world
are dominated by cars and trucks
that have remained largely unchanged
for a hundred years.
Although perhaps not obvious today,
autonomous vehicles will be the key technology
that enables us to redesign our cities
and, by extension, civilization.
Here's why:
once they become ubiquitous,
each year, these vehicles will save
tens of thousands of lives in the United States alone
and a million globally.
Automotive energy consumption and air pollution
will be cut dramatically.
Much of the road congestion
in and out of our cities will disappear.
They will enable compelling new concepts
in how we design cities, work,
and the way we live.
We will get where we're going faster
and society will recapture vast amounts
of lost productivity
now spent sitting in traffic basically polluting.
But why now? Why do we think this is ready?
Because over the last 30 years,
people from outside the automotive industry
have spent countless billions
creating the needed miracles,
but for entirely different purposes.
It took folks like DARPA, universities,
and companies completely outside of the automotive industry
to notice that if you were clever about it,
autonomy could be done now.
So what are the five miracles needed for autonomous vehicles?
One, you need to know
where you are and exactly what time it is.
This was solved neatly by the GPS system,
Global Positioning System,
that the U.S. Government put in place.
You need to know where all the roads are,
what the rules are, and where you're going.
The various needs of personal navigation systems,
in car navigation systems,
and web based maps address this.
You must have near-continuous communication
with high-performance computing networks
and with others nearby
to understand their intent.
The wireless technologies developed for mobile devices,
with some minor modifications,
are completely suitable to solve this.
You'll probably want some restricted roadways
to get started
that both society and its lawyers
agree are safe to use for this.
This will start with the HOV lanes
and move from there.
But finally, you need to recognize
people, signs, and objects.
Machine vision, special sensors, and high performance computing
can do a lot of this,
but it turns out a lot is not good enough
when your family is on board.
Occasionally, humans will need to do sense-making.
For this, you might actually have to wake up
your passenger and ask them what the hell
that big lump is in the middle of the road.
Not so bad, and it will give us a sense of purpose
in this new world.
Besides, once the first drivers explain
to their confused car
that the giant chicken at the fork in the road
is actually a restaurant,
and it's okay to keep driving,
every other car on the surface of the earth
will know that from that point on.
Five miracles, mostly delivered,
and now you just need a clear vision
of a better world filled with autonomous vehicles
with seductively beautiful and new functional designs
plus a lot of money and hard work
to bring it home.
The beginning is now only a handful of years away,
and I predict that autonomous vehicles
will permanently change our world
over the next several decades.
In conclusion, I've come to believe
that the ingredients for the next Pantheons
are all around us,
just waiting for visionary people
with the broad knowledge,
multidisciplinary skills,
and intense passion
to harness them to make their dreams a reality.
But these people don't spontaneously
pop into existence.
They need to be nurtured and encouraged
from when they're little kids.
We need to love them and help them
discover their passions.
We need to encourage them to work hard
and help them understand that failure
is a necessary ingredient for success,
as is perseverance.
We need to help them to find their own role models,
and give them the confidence to believe in themselves
and to believe that anything is possible,
and just as my grandpa did when he took me shopping for surplus
and just as my parents did
when they took me to science museums,
we need to encourage them to find their own path,
even if it's very different from our own.
But a cautionary note:
we also need to periodically pry them away
from their modern miracles,
the computers, phones, tablets,
game machines, and TVs,
take them out into the sunlight
so they can experience both the natural
and design wonders of our world,
our planet and our civilization.
If we don't, they won't understand
what these precious things are
that someday they will be resopnsible
for protecting and improving.
We also need them to understand
something that doesn't seem adequately appreciated
in our increasingly tech-dependent world,
that art and design
are not luxuries,
nor somehow incompatible
with science and engineering.
They are in fact essential to what makes us special.
Someday, if you get the chance,
perhaps you can take your kids
to the actual Pantheon,
as we will our daughter Kyra,
to experience firsthand
the power of that astonishing design,
which on one otherwise unremarkable day in Rome
reached 2,000 years into the future
to set the course for my life.
Thank you.
(Applause)