WEBVTT 00:00:00.546 --> 00:00:02.793 I was in New York during Hurricane Sandy, 00:00:02.793 --> 00:00:05.033 and this little white dog called Maui 00:00:05.033 --> 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 --> 00:00:11.614 and I was living on the dark side. 00:00:11.614 --> 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 --> 00:00:25.883 up to the seventh floor every day. 00:00:25.883 --> 00:00:27.456 And through all of this, 00:00:27.456 --> 00:00:29.760 I had to hold a torch between my teeth. 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:32.404 The stores nearby were out of flashlights 00:00:32.404 --> 00:00:35.341 and batteries and bread. 00:00:35.341 --> 00:00:38.004 For a shower, I walked 40 blocks 00:00:38.004 --> 00:00:39.978 to a branch of my gym. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:39.978 --> 00:00:43.057 But these were not the major preoccupations of my day. 00:00:43.057 --> 00:00:46.358 It was just as critical for me to be the first person in 00:00:46.358 --> 00:00:49.650 at a cafe nearby with extension cords and chargers 00:00:49.650 --> 00:00:51.499 to juice my multiple devices. 00:00:51.499 --> 00:00:54.224 I started to prospect under the benches of bakeries 00:00:54.224 --> 00:00:57.849 and the entrances of pastry shops for plug points. 00:00:57.849 --> 00:00:59.418 I wasn't the only one. 00:00:59.418 --> 00:01:03.182 Even in the rain, people stood between Madison and 5th Avenue 00:01:03.182 --> 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 --> 00:01:09.940 Nature had just reminded us 00:01:09.940 --> 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 --> 00:01:17.401 I think there's nothing like a crisis 00:01:17.401 --> 00:01:20.590 to tell you what's really important and what's not, 00:01:20.590 --> 00:01:24.152 and Sandy made me realize that our devices 00:01:24.152 --> 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 --> 00:01:34.253 The self as we once knew it no longer exists, 00:01:34.253 --> 00:01:36.745 and I think that an abstract, digital universe 00:01:36.745 --> 00:01:39.270 has become a part of our identity, 00:01:39.270 --> 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 --> 00:01:52.151 They're both stories, interpretations. 00:01:52.151 --> 00:01:54.604 You and I can experience things without a story. 00:01:54.604 --> 00:01:56.686 We might run up the stairs too quickly 00:01:56.686 --> 00:01:58.373 and we might get breathless. 00:01:58.373 --> 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 --> 00:02:07.383 Our story of our life is based on direct experience, 00:02:07.383 --> 00:02:09.277 but it's embellished. 00:02:09.277 --> 00:02:12.125 A novel needs scene after scene to build, 00:02:12.125 --> 00:02:15.273 and the story of our life needs an arc as well. 00:02:15.273 --> 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 --> 00:02:25.517 It's the whole book. 00:02:25.517 --> 00:02:28.860 It's not only about the heartbreak and the happiness, 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:31.039 the victories and the disappointments, 00:02:31.039 --> 00:02:33.244 but it's because how because of these, 00:02:33.244 --> 00:02:36.397 and sometimes, more importantly, in spite of these, 00:02:36.397 --> 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 --> 00:02:44.965 Our story, therefore, needs two dimensions of time: 00:02:44.965 --> 00:02:47.980 a long arc of time that is our lifespan, 00:02:47.980 --> 00:02:50.483 and the timeframe of direct experience 00:02:50.483 --> 00:02:51.936 that is the moment. 00:02:51.936 --> 00:02:54.066 Now the self that experiences directly 00:02:54.066 --> 00:02:55.967 can only exist in the moment, 00:02:55.967 --> 00:02:58.729 but the one that narrates needs several moments, 00:02:58.729 --> 00:03:00.843 a whole sequence of them, 00:03:00.843 --> 00:03:03.088 and that's why our full sense of self 00:03:03.088 --> 00:03:06.020 needs both immersive experience 00:03:06.020 --> 00:03:08.465 and the flow of time. 00:03:08.465 --> 00:03:11.614 Now, the flow of time is embedded in everything, 00:03:11.614 --> 00:03:14.182 in the erosion of a grain of sand, 00:03:14.182 --> 00:03:17.974 in the budding of a little bud into a rose. 00:03:17.974 --> 00:03:20.509 Without it, we would have no music. 00:03:20.509 --> 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 --> 00:03:27.218 regret or nostalgia about the past, 00:03:27.218 --> 00:03:30.718 hope or dread about the future. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:30.718 --> 00:03:34.663 I think that technology has altered that flow of time. 00:03:34.663 --> 00:03:37.186 The overall time that we have for our narrative, 00:03:37.186 --> 00:03:39.360 our lifespan, has been increasing, 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.477 but the smallest measure, the moment, has shrunk. 00:03:42.477 --> 00:03:44.813 It has shrunk because our instruments enable us 00:03:44.813 --> 00:03:48.073 in part to measure smaller and smaller units of time, 00:03:48.073 --> 00:03:51.343 and this in turn has given us a more granular understanding 00:03:51.343 --> 00:03:53.216 of the material world, 00:03:53.216 --> 00:03:54.652 and this granular understanding 00:03:54.652 --> 00:03:56.955 has generated reams of data 00:03:56.955 --> 00:03:59.316 that our brains can no longer comprehend 00:03:59.316 --> 00:04:02.751 and for which we need more and more complicated computers. 00:04:02.751 --> 00:04:05.025 All of this to say that the gap 00:04:05.025 --> 00:04:07.606 between what we can perceive and what we can measure 00:04:07.606 --> 00:04:09.528 is only going to widen. 00:04:09.528 --> 00:04:12.564 Science can do things with and in a picosecond, 00:04:12.564 --> 00:04:15.267 but you and I are never going to have the inner experience 00:04:15.267 --> 00:04:18.453 of a millionth of a millionth of a second. 00:04:18.453 --> 00:04:22.495 You and I answer only to nature's rhythm and flow, 00:04:22.495 --> 00:04:25.434 to the sun, the moon and the seasons, 00:04:25.434 --> 00:04:28.174 and this is why we need that long arc of time 00:04:28.174 --> 00:04:30.403 with the past, the present and the future 00:04:30.403 --> 00:04:32.167 to see things for what they are, 00:04:32.167 --> 00:04:34.010 to separate signal from noise 00:04:34.010 --> 00:04:36.566 and the self from sensations. 00:04:36.566 --> 00:04:40.175 We need time's arrow to understand cause and effect, 00:04:40.175 --> 00:04:41.930 not just in the material world, 00:04:41.930 --> 00:04:45.220 but in our own intentions and our motivations. 00:04:45.220 --> 00:04:49.210 What happens when that arrow goes awry? 00:04:49.210 --> 00:04:52.694 What happens when time warps? NOTE Paragraph 00:04:52.694 --> 00:04:54.643 So many of us today have the sensation 00:04:54.643 --> 00:04:56.887 that time's arrow is pointing everywhere 00:04:56.887 --> 00:04:59.152 and nowhere at once. 00:04:59.152 --> 00:05:01.839 This is because time doesn't flow in the digital world 00:05:01.839 --> 00:05:05.828 in the same way that it does in the natural one. 00:05:05.828 --> 00:05:08.528 We all know that the Internet has shrunk space 00:05:08.528 --> 00:05:09.758 as well as time. 00:05:09.758 --> 00:05:12.071 Far away over there is now here. 00:05:12.071 --> 00:05:14.800 News from India is a stream on my smartphone app 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:17.679 whether I'm in New York or New Delhi. 00:05:17.679 --> 00:05:19.114 And that's not all. 00:05:19.114 --> 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 --> 00:05:28.788 and it warps the past. 00:05:28.788 --> 00:05:30.938 With no distinction left between the past, 00:05:30.938 --> 00:05:34.210 the present and the future, and the here or there, 00:05:34.210 --> 00:05:38.026 we are left with this moment everywhere, 00:05:38.026 --> 00:05:40.450 this moment that I'll call the digital now. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:40.450 --> 00:05:42.618 Just how can we prioritize 00:05:42.618 --> 00:05:44.977 in the landscape of the digital now? 00:05:44.977 --> 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 --> 00:05:50.768 with Twitter streams that are already trending 00:05:50.768 --> 00:05:52.745 and news from other time zones. 00:05:52.745 --> 00:05:55.455 This isn't the now of a shooting pain in your foot 00:05:55.455 --> 00:05:57.943 or the second that you bite into a pastry 00:05:57.943 --> 00:06:01.280 or the three hours that you lose yourself in a great book. 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:03.132 This now bears very little physical 00:06:03.132 --> 00:06:06.073 or psychological reference to our own state. 00:06:06.073 --> 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 --> 00:06:12.454 Every digital landmark is an invitation 00:06:12.454 --> 00:06:14.869 to leave what you are doing now to go somewhere else 00:06:14.869 --> 00:06:16.488 and do something else. 00:06:16.488 --> 00:06:18.481 Are you reading an interview by an author? 00:06:18.481 --> 00:06:21.121 Why not buy his book? Tweet it. Share it. 00:06:21.121 --> 00:06:23.850 Like it. Find other books exactly like his. 00:06:23.850 --> 00:06:26.718 Find other people reading those books. 00:06:26.718 --> 00:06:28.762 Travel can be liberating, 00:06:28.762 --> 00:06:30.523 but when it is incessant, we become 00:06:30.523 --> 00:06:32.750 permanent exiles without repose. 00:06:32.750 --> 00:06:35.494 Choice is freedom, but not when it's constantly 00:06:35.494 --> 00:06:37.541 for its own sake. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:37.541 --> 00:06:40.129 Not just is the digital now far from the present, 00:06:40.129 --> 00:06:42.791 but it's in direct competition with it, 00:06:42.791 --> 00:06:45.173 and this is because not just am I absent from it, 00:06:45.173 --> 00:06:46.266 but so are you. 00:06:46.266 --> 00:06:49.057 Not just are we absent from it, but so is everyone else. 00:06:49.057 --> 00:06:52.747 And therein lies its greatest convenience and horror. 00:06:52.747 --> 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 --> 00:06:59.831 and leave video messages that get picked up later. 00:06:59.831 --> 00:07:01.806 At all times, I can operate 00:07:01.806 --> 00:07:04.042 at a different rhythm and pace from you, 00:07:04.042 --> 00:07:05.959 while I sustain the illusion 00:07:05.959 --> 00:07:09.487 that I'm tapped into you in real time. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:09.487 --> 00:07:11.096 Sandy was a reminder 00:07:11.096 --> 00:07:13.201 of how such an illusion can shatter. 00:07:13.201 --> 00:07:15.065 There were those with power and water, 00:07:15.065 --> 00:07:16.561 and those without. 00:07:16.561 --> 00:07:18.894 There are those who went back to their lives, 00:07:18.894 --> 00:07:20.931 and those who are still displaced 00:07:20.931 --> 00:07:23.286 after so many months. 00:07:23.286 --> 00:07:25.988 For some reason, technology seems to perpetuate 00:07:25.988 --> 00:07:29.434 the illusion for those who have it that everyone does, 00:07:29.434 --> 00:07:32.062 and then, like an ironic slap in the face, 00:07:32.062 --> 00:07:34.180 it makes it true. 00:07:34.180 --> 00:07:35.857 For example, it's said that there are more people 00:07:35.857 --> 00:07:38.991 in India with access to cell phones than toilets. 00:07:38.991 --> 00:07:41.413 Now if this rift, which is already so great 00:07:41.413 --> 00:07:42.875 in many parts of the world, 00:07:42.875 --> 00:07:46.230 between the lack of infrastructure and the spread of technology, 00:07:46.230 --> 00:07:47.812 isn't somehow bridged, 00:07:47.812 --> 00:07:49.863 there will be ruptures between the digital 00:07:49.863 --> 00:07:52.038 and the real. 00:07:52.038 --> 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 --> 00:08:00.332 the challenge is to live in two streams of time 00:08:00.332 --> 00:08:03.276 that are parallel and almost simultaneous. 00:08:03.276 --> 00:08:07.376 How does one live inside distraction? NOTE Paragraph 00:08:07.376 --> 00:08:09.326 We might think that those younger than us, 00:08:09.326 --> 00:08:12.940 those who are born into this, will adapt more naturally. 00:08:12.940 --> 00:08:16.078 Possibly, but I remember my childhood. 00:08:16.078 --> 00:08:17.782 I remember my grandfather revising 00:08:17.782 --> 00:08:20.044 the capitals of the world with me. 00:08:20.044 --> 00:08:22.794 Buda and Pest were separated by the Danube, 00:08:22.794 --> 00:08:25.569 and Vienna had a Spanish riding school. 00:08:25.569 --> 00:08:28.468 If I were a child today, I could easily learn this information 00:08:28.468 --> 00:08:30.633 with apps and hyperlinks, 00:08:30.633 --> 00:08:32.544 but it really wouldn't be the same, 00:08:32.544 --> 00:08:34.824 because much later, I went to Vienna, 00:08:34.824 --> 00:08:36.792 and I went to the Spanish riding school, 00:08:36.792 --> 00:08:40.157 and I could feel my grandfather right beside me. 00:08:40.157 --> 00:08:42.727 Night after night, he took me up on the terrace, 00:08:42.727 --> 00:08:45.505 on his shoulders, and pointed out Jupiter 00:08:45.505 --> 00:08:48.733 and Saturn and the Great Bear to me. 00:08:48.733 --> 00:08:51.428 And even here, when I look at the Great Bear, 00:08:51.428 --> 00:08:54.184 I get back that feeling of being a child, 00:08:54.184 --> 00:08:56.562 hanging onto his head and trying to balance myself 00:08:56.562 --> 00:08:58.782 on his shoulder, 00:08:58.782 --> 00:09:01.982 and I can get back that feeling of being a child again. 00:09:01.982 --> 00:09:04.449 What I had with my grandfather was wrapped 00:09:04.449 --> 00:09:07.691 so often in information and knowledge and fact, 00:09:07.691 --> 00:09:09.715 but it was about so much more 00:09:09.715 --> 00:09:13.505 than information or knowledge or fact. 00:09:13.505 --> 00:09:15.629 Time-warping technology challenges 00:09:15.629 --> 00:09:17.581 our deepest core, 00:09:17.581 --> 00:09:21.348 because we are able to archive the past 00:09:21.348 --> 00:09:24.589 and some of it becomes hard to forget, 00:09:24.589 --> 00:09:27.193 even as the current moment 00:09:27.193 --> 00:09:29.812 is increasingly unmemorable. 00:09:29.812 --> 00:09:32.552 We want to clutch, and we are left instead 00:09:32.552 --> 00:09:35.015 clutching at a series of static moments. 00:09:35.015 --> 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 --> 00:09:44.612 It cannot be stored. 00:09:44.612 --> 00:09:46.628 You and I know exactly what it means like 00:09:46.628 --> 00:09:48.532 to be truly present in a moment. 00:09:48.532 --> 00:09:49.749 It might have happened while we were 00:09:49.749 --> 00:09:51.508 playing an instrument, 00:09:51.508 --> 00:09:53.356 or looking into the eyes of someone we've known 00:09:53.356 --> 00:09:55.540 for a very long time. 00:09:55.540 --> 00:09:58.571 At such moments, our selves are complete. 00:09:58.571 --> 00:10:00.639 The self that lives in the long narrative arc 00:10:00.639 --> 00:10:02.722 and the self that experiences the moment 00:10:02.722 --> 00:10:04.114 become one. 00:10:04.114 --> 00:10:06.056 The present encapsulates the past 00:10:06.056 --> 00:10:08.487 and a promise for the future. 00:10:08.487 --> 00:10:10.455 The present joins a flow of time 00:10:10.455 --> 00:10:12.698 from before and after. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:12.698 --> 00:10:16.255 I first experienced these feelings with my grandmother. 00:10:16.255 --> 00:10:18.594 I wanted to learn to skip, and she found an old rope 00:10:18.594 --> 00:10:19.946 and she tucked up her sari 00:10:19.946 --> 00:10:21.674 and she jumped over it. 00:10:21.674 --> 00:10:24.328 I wanted to learn to cook, and she kept me in the kitchen, 00:10:24.328 --> 00:10:28.436 cutting, cubing and chopping for a whole month. 00:10:28.436 --> 00:10:30.843 My grandmother taught me that things happen 00:10:30.843 --> 00:10:34.564 in the time they take, that time can't be fought, 00:10:34.564 --> 00:10:36.397 and because it will pass and it will move, 00:10:36.397 --> 00:10:39.511 we owe the present moment our full attention. 00:10:39.511 --> 00:10:42.155 Attention is time. 00:10:42.155 --> 00:10:44.338 One of my yoga instructors once said 00:10:44.338 --> 00:10:46.581 that love is attention, 00:10:46.581 --> 00:10:48.415 and definitely from my grandmother, 00:10:48.415 --> 00:10:52.741 love and attention were one and the same thing. 00:10:52.741 --> 00:10:55.324 The digital world cannibalizes time, 00:10:55.324 --> 00:10:58.704 and in doing so, I want to suggest 00:10:58.704 --> 00:11:00.378 that what it threatens 00:11:00.378 --> 00:11:02.808 is the completeness of ourselves. 00:11:02.808 --> 00:11:05.166 It threatens the flow of love. 00:11:05.166 --> 00:11:07.187 But we don't need to let it. 00:11:07.187 --> 00:11:08.655 We can choose otherwise. 00:11:08.655 --> 00:11:10.732 We've seen again and again 00:11:10.732 --> 00:11:12.962 just how creative technology can be, 00:11:12.962 --> 00:11:15.202 and in our lives and in our actions, 00:11:15.202 --> 00:11:19.191 we can choose those solutions and those innovations 00:11:19.191 --> 00:11:22.299 and those moments that restore the flow of time 00:11:22.299 --> 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 --> 00:11:31.172 to the ebb and flow of time. 00:11:31.172 --> 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)