Bran Ferren: To create for the ages, let's combine art and engineering

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

profoundly affected how I think about

art, design and engineering.

As background, I was fortunate enough to grow up

in a family of loving 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 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 Cortlandt 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 Norden 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 here, just the same statuary stuff

that we'd seen all over Rome.

In fact, it looked like the Appian Way

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 exactly its 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 had never crossed my mind.

I mean, to me, 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,

20,000 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 Michelangelo, 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.

The smartphone 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 100 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 Kira,

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)