WEBVTT 00:00:00.454 --> 00:00:02.793 I was in New York during Hurricane Sandy, 00:00:02.793 --> 00:00:05.127 and this little white dog called Maui[?] 00:00:05.127 --> 00:00:06.918 was staying with me. 00:00:06.918 --> 00:00:09.390 Half the city was dark because of a power cut, 00:00:09.390 --> 00:00:11.691 and I was living on the dark side. 00:00:11.691 --> 00:00:13.723 Now, Maui was terrified of the dark, 00:00:13.723 --> 00:00:15.827 so I had to carry him up the stairs, 00:00:15.827 --> 00:00:18.915 actually down the stairs first, for his walk, 00:00:18.915 --> 00:00:20.803 and then bring him back up. 00:00:20.803 --> 00:00:23.784 I was also hauling gallons of bottles of water 00:00:23.784 --> 00:00:25.900 up to the seventh floor every day. 00:00:25.900 --> 00:00:27.533 And through all of this, 00:00:27.533 --> 00:00:29.576 I had to hold a torch between my teeth. 00:00:29.576 --> 00:00:32.404 The stores nearby were out of flashlights, 00:00:32.404 --> 00:00:35.157 batteries, and bread. 00:00:35.157 --> 00:00:37.728 For a shower, I walked 40 blocks 00:00:37.728 --> 00:00:39.871 to a branch of my gym. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:39.871 --> 00:00:43.104 But these were not the major preoccupations of my day. 00:00:43.104 --> 00:00:46.358 It was just as critical for me to be the first person in 00:00:46.358 --> 00:00:49.466 at a cafe near by with extension cords and chargers 00:00:49.466 --> 00:00:51.669 to juice my multiple devices. 00:00:51.669 --> 00:00:54.224 I started to prospect under the benches of bakeries 00:00:54.224 --> 00:00:57.619 and the entrances of pastry shops for plug points. 00:00:57.619 --> 00:00:59.495 I wasn't the only one. 00:00:59.495 --> 00:01:03.213 Even in the rain, people stood between Madison and 5th Avenue 00:01:03.213 --> 00:01:05.646 under their umbrellas charging their cell phones 00:01:05.646 --> 00:01:07.683 from outlets on the street. 00:01:07.683 --> 00:01:09.526 Nature had just reminded us 00:01:09.526 --> 00:01:12.256 that it was stronger than all our technology, 00:01:12.256 --> 00:01:15.525 and yet here we were, obsessed about being wired. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:15.525 --> 00:01:17.432 I think there's nothing like a crisis 00:01:17.432 --> 00:01:20.330 to tell you what's really important and what's not, 00:01:20.330 --> 00:01:24.066 and Sandy made me realize that our devices 00:01:24.066 --> 00:01:26.418 and their connectivity matter to us 00:01:26.418 --> 00:01:30.936 right up there with food and shelter. 00:01:30.936 --> 00:01:34.330 The self as we once knew it no longer exists, 00:01:34.330 --> 00:01:36.946 and I think that an abstract, digital universe 00:01:36.946 --> 00:01:39.178 has become a part of our identity, 00:01:39.178 --> 00:01:43.522 and I want to talk to you about what I think that means. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:43.522 --> 00:01:46.365 I'm a novelist, and I'm interested in the self 00:01:46.365 --> 00:01:48.834 because the self and fiction have a lot in common. 00:01:48.834 --> 00:01:52.290 They're both stories, interpretations. 00:01:52.290 --> 00:01:54.697 You and I can experience things without a story. 00:01:54.697 --> 00:01:56.686 We might run up the stairs too quickly 00:01:56.686 --> 00:01:58.605 and we might get breathless. 00:01:58.605 --> 00:02:00.903 But the larger sense that we have of our lives, 00:02:00.903 --> 00:02:04.263 the slightly more abstract one, is indirect. 00:02:04.263 --> 00:02:07.614 Our story of our life is based on direct experience, 00:02:07.614 --> 00:02:09.447 but it's embellished. 00:02:09.447 --> 00:02:12.125 A novel needs scene after scene to build, 00:02:12.125 --> 00:02:15.212 and the story of our life needs an arc as well. 00:02:15.212 --> 00:02:17.964 It needs months and years. 00:02:17.964 --> 00:02:20.982 Discrete moments from our lives are its chapters. 00:02:20.982 --> 00:02:23.572 But the story is not about these chapters. 00:02:23.572 --> 00:02:25.564 It's the whole book. 00:02:25.564 --> 00:02:29.037 It's not only about the heartbreak and the happiness, 00:02:29.037 --> 00:02:31.209 the victories and the disappointments, 00:02:31.209 --> 00:02:33.244 but it's because how because of these, 00:02:33.244 --> 00:02:36.444 and sometimes more importantly in spite of these, 00:02:36.444 --> 00:02:38.492 we find our place in the world 00:02:38.492 --> 00:02:41.572 and we change it and we change ourselves. 00:02:41.572 --> 00:02:45.092 Our story, therefore, needs two dimensions of time: 00:02:45.092 --> 00:02:47.980 a long arc of time that is our lifespan, 00:02:47.980 --> 00:02:50.576 and the timeframe of direct experience 00:02:50.576 --> 00:02:52.198 that is the moment. 00:02:52.198 --> 00:02:54.143 Now the self that experiences directly 00:02:54.143 --> 00:02:56.167 can only exist in the moment, 00:02:56.167 --> 00:02:58.915 but the one that narrates needs several moments, 00:02:58.915 --> 00:03:00.843 a whole sequence of them, 00:03:00.843 --> 00:03:03.119 and that's why our full sense of self 00:03:03.119 --> 00:03:06.020 needs both immersive experience 00:03:06.020 --> 00:03:08.296 and the flow of time. 00:03:08.296 --> 00:03:11.614 Now, the flow of time is embedded in everything, 00:03:11.614 --> 00:03:13.906 in the erosion of a grain of sand, 00:03:13.906 --> 00:03:17.974 in the budding of a little bud into a rose. 00:03:17.974 --> 00:03:20.386 Without it, we would have no music. 00:03:20.386 --> 00:03:22.547 Our own emotions and state of mind 00:03:22.547 --> 00:03:24.660 often encode time, 00:03:24.660 --> 00:03:27.265 regret or nostalgia about the past, 00:03:27.265 --> 00:03:30.688 hope or dread about the future. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:30.688 --> 00:03:34.663 I think that technology has altered that flow of time. 00:03:34.663 --> 00:03:37.310 The overall time that we have for our narrative, 00:03:37.310 --> 00:03:39.360 our lifespan, has been increasing, 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.371 but the smallest measure, the moment, has shrunk. 00:03:42.371 --> 00:03:45.291 It has shrunk because our instruments enable us 00:03:45.291 --> 00:03:48.166 in part to measure smaller and smaller units of time, 00:03:48.166 --> 00:03:51.343 and this in turn has given us a more granular understanding 00:03:51.343 --> 00:03:53.386 of the material world, 00:03:53.386 --> 00:03:55.053 and this granular understanding 00:03:55.053 --> 00:03:56.955 has generated reams of data 00:03:56.955 --> 00:03:59.440 that our brains can no longer comprehend 00:03:59.440 --> 00:04:02.569 and for which we need more and more complicated computers. 00:04:02.569 --> 00:04:05.078 All of this to say that the gap 00:04:05.078 --> 00:04:07.777 between what we can perceive and what we can measure 00:04:07.777 --> 00:04:09.715 is only going to widen. 00:04:09.715 --> 00:04:12.257 Science can do things with and in a picosecond, 00:04:12.257 --> 00:04:15.314 but you and I are never going to have the inner experience 00:04:15.314 --> 00:04:18.192 of a millionth of a millionth of a second. 00:04:18.192 --> 00:04:22.680 You and I answer only to nature's rhythm and flow, 00:04:22.680 --> 00:04:25.481 to the sun, the moon, and the seasons, 00:04:25.481 --> 00:04:28.236 and this is why we need that long arc of time 00:04:28.236 --> 00:04:30.403 with the past, the present, and the future 00:04:30.403 --> 00:04:32.321 to see things for what they are, 00:04:32.321 --> 00:04:34.257 to separate signal from noise 00:04:34.257 --> 00:04:36.690 and the self from sensations. 00:04:36.690 --> 00:04:40.129 We need time's arrow to understand cause and effect, 00:04:40.129 --> 00:04:41.977 not just in the material world, 00:04:41.977 --> 00:04:45.099 but in our own intensions and our motivations. 00:04:45.099 --> 00:04:49.318 What happens when that arrow goes awry? 00:04:49.318 --> 00:04:52.403 What happens when time warps? NOTE Paragraph 00:04:52.403 --> 00:04:54.643 So many of us today have the sensation 00:04:54.643 --> 00:04:56.872 that time's arrow is pointing everywhere 00:04:56.872 --> 00:04:58.983 and nowhere at once. 00:04:58.983 --> 00:05:01.839 This is because time doesn't flow in the digital world 00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:05.936 in the same way that it does in the natural one. 00:05:05.936 --> 00:05:08.528 We all know that the internet has shrunk space 00:05:08.528 --> 00:05:09.975 as well as time. 00:05:09.975 --> 00:05:12.095 Far away over there is now here. 00:05:12.095 --> 00:05:15.006 News from India is a stream on my smartphone app 00:05:15.006 --> 00:05:17.803 whether I'm in New York or New Delhi. 00:05:17.803 --> 00:05:19.331 And that's not all. 00:05:19.331 --> 00:05:21.583 Your last job, your dinner reservations from last year, 00:05:21.583 --> 00:05:24.859 your former friends, lie on a flat plain with today's friends, 00:05:24.859 --> 00:05:26.994 because the internet also archives, 00:05:26.994 --> 00:05:28.819 and it warps the past. 00:05:28.819 --> 00:05:30.938 With no distinction left between the past, 00:05:30.938 --> 00:05:34.081 the present, and the future, and the here or there, 00:05:34.081 --> 00:05:38.026 we are left with this moment everywhere, 00:05:38.026 --> 00:05:40.543 this moment that I'll call the digital now. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:40.543 --> 00:05:42.618 Just how can we prioritize 00:05:42.618 --> 00:05:44.917 in the landscape of the digital now? 00:05:44.917 --> 00:05:46.882 This digital now is not the present, 00:05:46.882 --> 00:05:48.935 because it's always a few seconds ahead, 00:05:48.935 --> 00:05:50.876 with Twitter streams that are already trending 00:05:50.876 --> 00:05:52.899 and news from other time zones. 00:05:52.899 --> 00:05:55.455 This isn't the now of a shooting pain in your foot 00:05:55.455 --> 00:05:57.883 or the second that you bite into a pastry 00:05:57.883 --> 00:06:01.028 or the three hours that you lose yourself in a great book. 00:06:01.028 --> 00:06:03.132 This now bears very little physical 00:06:03.132 --> 00:06:06.052 or psychological reference to our own state. 00:06:06.052 --> 00:06:08.333 Its focus, instead, is to distract us 00:06:08.333 --> 00:06:10.283 at every turn on the road. 00:06:10.283 --> 00:06:12.485 Every digital landmark is an invitation 00:06:12.485 --> 00:06:14.918 to leave what you are doing now to go somewhere else 00:06:14.918 --> 00:06:16.797 and do something else. 00:06:16.797 --> 00:06:18.543 Are you reading an interview by an author? 00:06:18.543 --> 00:06:21.063 Why not buy his book? Tweet it. Share it. 00:06:21.063 --> 00:06:23.850 Like it. Find other books exactly like his. 00:06:23.850 --> 00:06:26.274 Find other people reading those books. 00:06:26.274 --> 00:06:28.547 Travel can be liberating, 00:06:28.547 --> 00:06:30.570 but when it is incessant, we become 00:06:30.570 --> 00:06:32.797 permanent exiles without repose. 00:06:32.797 --> 00:06:35.494 Choice is freedom, but not when it's constantly 00:06:35.494 --> 00:06:37.681 for its own sake. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:37.681 --> 00:06:40.299 Not just is the digital now far from the present, 00:06:40.299 --> 00:06:42.515 but it's in direct competition with it, 00:06:42.515 --> 00:06:45.173 and this is because not just am I absent from it, 00:06:45.173 --> 00:06:46.560 but so are you. 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.015 Not just are we absent from it, but so is everyone else. 00:06:49.015 --> 00:06:52.871 And therein lies its greatest convenience and horror. 00:06:52.871 --> 00:06:55.575 I can order foreign language books in the middle of the night, 00:06:55.575 --> 00:06:57.374 shop for Parisian macarons, 00:06:57.374 --> 00:06:59.863 and leave video messages that get picked up later. 00:06:59.863 --> 00:07:01.806 At all times, I can operate 00:07:01.806 --> 00:07:04.150 at a different rhythm and pace from you, 00:07:04.150 --> 00:07:05.990 while I sustain the illusion 00:07:05.990 --> 00:07:09.180 that I'm tapped into you in real time. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:09.180 --> 00:07:11.267 Sandy was a reminder 00:07:11.267 --> 00:07:13.340 of how such an illusion can shatter. 00:07:13.340 --> 00:07:15.220 There were those with power and water, 00:07:15.220 --> 00:07:16.978 and those without. 00:07:16.978 --> 00:07:18.956 There are those who went back to their lives, 00:07:18.956 --> 00:07:21.027 and those who are still displaced 00:07:21.027 --> 00:07:23.084 after so many months. 00:07:23.084 --> 00:07:25.988 For some reason, technology seems to perpetuate 00:07:25.988 --> 00:07:29.235 the illusion for those who have it that everyone does, 00:07:29.235 --> 00:07:32.109 and then, like an ironic slap in the face, 00:07:32.109 --> 00:07:34.382 it makes it true. 00:07:34.382 --> 00:07:36.212 For example, it's said that there are more people 00:07:36.212 --> 00:07:38.991 in India with access to cell phones that toilets. 00:07:38.991 --> 00:07:41.475 Now if this rift, which is already so great 00:07:41.475 --> 00:07:43.199 in many parts of the world, 00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:46.004 between the lack of infrastructure and the spread of technology, 00:07:46.004 --> 00:07:47.889 isn't somehow bridged, 00:07:47.889 --> 00:07:49.863 there will be ruptures between the digital 00:07:49.863 --> 00:07:51.732 and the real. 00:07:51.732 --> 00:07:55.676 For us as individuals who live in the digital now 00:07:55.676 --> 00:07:58.155 and spend most of our waking moments in it, 00:07:58.155 --> 00:08:00.532 the challenge is to live in two streams of time 00:08:00.532 --> 00:08:03.276 that are parallel and almost simultaneous. 00:08:03.276 --> 00:08:07.670 How does one live inside distraction? NOTE Paragraph 00:08:07.670 --> 00:08:09.450 We might think that those younger than us, 00:08:09.450 --> 00:08:13.034 those who are born into this, will adapt more naturally. 00:08:13.034 --> 00:08:16.186 Possibly, but I remember my childhood. 00:08:16.186 --> 00:08:17.845 I remember my grandfather revising 00:08:17.845 --> 00:08:19.768 the capitals of the world with me. 00:08:19.768 --> 00:08:22.810 Buda and Pest were separated by the Danube, 00:08:22.810 --> 00:08:25.509 and Vienna had a Spanish riding school. 00:08:25.509 --> 00:08:28.731 If I were a child today, I could easily learn this information 00:08:28.731 --> 00:08:30.803 with apps and hyperlinks, 00:08:30.803 --> 00:08:32.684 but it really wouldn't be the same, 00:08:32.684 --> 00:08:34.901 because much later, I went to Vienna, 00:08:34.901 --> 00:08:36.978 and I went to the Spanish riding school, 00:08:36.978 --> 00:08:40.234 and I could feel my grandfather right beside me. 00:08:40.234 --> 00:08:42.727 Night after night, he took me up on the terrace 00:08:42.727 --> 00:08:45.413 up on his shoulders, and pointed out Jupiter 00:08:45.413 --> 00:08:48.103 and Saturn and the Great Bear to me. 00:08:48.103 --> 00:08:51.428 And even here, when I look at the Great Bear, 00:08:51.428 --> 00:08:54.040 I get back that feeling of being a child, 00:08:54.040 --> 00:08:56.717 hanging onto his head and trying to balance myself 00:08:56.717 --> 00:08:58.876 on his shoulder, 00:08:58.876 --> 00:09:02.106 and I can get back that feeling of being a child again. 00:09:02.106 --> 00:09:04.588 What I had with my grandfather was wrapped 00:09:04.588 --> 00:09:07.645 so often in information and knowledge and fact, 00:09:07.645 --> 00:09:09.715 but it was about so much more 00:09:09.715 --> 00:09:13.476 than information or knowledge or fact. 00:09:13.476 --> 00:09:15.629 Time-warping technology challenges 00:09:15.629 --> 00:09:17.581 our deepest core, 00:09:17.581 --> 00:09:21.302 because we are able to archive the past 00:09:21.302 --> 00:09:24.528 and some of it becomes hard to forget, 00:09:24.528 --> 00:09:27.027 even as the current moment 00:09:27.027 --> 00:09:29.812 is increasingly unmemorable. 00:09:29.812 --> 00:09:32.460 We want to clutch, and we are left instead 00:09:32.460 --> 00:09:35.124 clutching at a series of static moments. 00:09:35.124 --> 00:09:37.721 They're like soap bubbles that disappear when we touch them. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:37.721 --> 00:09:40.514 By archiving everything, we think that we can store it, 00:09:40.514 --> 00:09:42.479 but time is not data. 00:09:42.479 --> 00:09:44.521 It cannot be stored. 00:09:44.521 --> 00:09:46.706 You and I know exactly what it means like 00:09:46.706 --> 00:09:48.612 to be truly present in a moment. 00:09:48.612 --> 00:09:49.904 It might have happened while we were 00:09:49.904 --> 00:09:51.632 playing an instrument, 00:09:51.632 --> 00:09:53.356 or looking into the eyes of someone we've known 00:09:53.356 --> 00:09:55.556 for a very long time. 00:09:55.556 --> 00:09:58.510 At such moments, our selves are complete. 00:09:58.510 --> 00:10:00.949 The self that lives in the long narrative arc 00:10:00.949 --> 00:10:02.908 and the self that experiences the moment 00:10:02.908 --> 00:10:04.361 become one. 00:10:04.361 --> 00:10:06.164 The present encapsulates the past 00:10:06.164 --> 00:10:08.549 and a promise for the future. 00:10:08.549 --> 00:10:10.718 The present joins a flow of time 00:10:10.718 --> 00:10:12.806 from before and after. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:12.806 --> 00:10:16.271 I first experienced these feelings with my grandmother. 00:10:16.271 --> 00:10:18.641 I want to learn to skip, and she found an old rope 00:10:18.641 --> 00:10:20.223 and she tucked up her sari 00:10:20.223 --> 00:10:21.690 and she jumped over it. 00:10:21.690 --> 00:10:24.096 I wanted to learn to cook, and she kept me in the kitchen, 00:10:24.096 --> 00:10:28.498 cutting, cubing, and chopping for a whole month. 00:10:28.498 --> 00:10:30.967 My grandmother taught me that things happen 00:10:30.967 --> 00:10:34.611 in the time they take, that time can't be fought, 00:10:34.611 --> 00:10:36.599 and because it will pass and it will move, 00:10:36.599 --> 00:10:39.511 we owe the present moment our full attention. 00:10:39.511 --> 00:10:41.879 Attention is time. 00:10:41.879 --> 00:10:44.231 One of my yoga instructors once said 00:10:44.231 --> 00:10:46.551 that love is attention, 00:10:46.551 --> 00:10:48.415 and definitely from my grandmother, 00:10:48.415 --> 00:10:52.757 love and attention were one and the same thing. 00:10:52.757 --> 00:10:55.324 The digital world cannibalizes time, 00:10:55.324 --> 00:10:58.552 and in doing so, I want to suggest 00:10:58.552 --> 00:11:00.472 that what it threatens 00:11:00.472 --> 00:11:02.855 is the completeness of ourselves. 00:11:02.855 --> 00:11:05.290 It threatens the flow of love. 00:11:05.290 --> 00:11:07.218 But we don't need to let it. 00:11:07.218 --> 00:11:09.038 We can choose otherwise. 00:11:09.038 --> 00:11:10.794 We've seen again and again 00:11:10.794 --> 00:11:13.067 just how creative technology can be, 00:11:13.067 --> 00:11:15.202 and in our lives and in our actions, 00:11:15.202 --> 00:11:18.823 we can choose those solutions and those innovations 00:11:18.823 --> 00:11:22.346 and those moments that restore the flow of time 00:11:22.346 --> 00:11:25.920 instead of fragmenting it. 00:11:25.920 --> 00:11:28.500 We can slow down and we can tune in 00:11:28.500 --> 00:11:31.419 to the ebb and flow of time. 00:11:31.419 --> 00:11:35.120 We can choose to take time back. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:35.120 --> 00:11:37.320 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:37.320 --> 00:11:41.320 (Applause)