Some are guided by their hearts and their enthusiasms, going to sessions they know they will love. Some are guided by their work, going to the sessions they know they will learn from. Some are guided by ambition–where can their contribution stand out? To help this process, most sessions have fairly straightforward titles, often built around questions that will go unanswered. (“B2B: Who Really Wins?” “What Is Consciousness?”)
Some sessions, though, seek instead to tease and mystify. Every year the program is generously sprinkled with sessions whose titles just make you want to say “What on earth is that all about?” Here is our pick of this year’s gnomic crop, with pointers to what might lie within.
Session 57: Teleportation and Other Ways Quantum Physics Might Improve Your Life Perhaps this one lets you go to all the others simultaneously.
Session 86: And How Would Aristotle Run Your Organization? In Greek.
Session 101: The Opposition Is the People Sounds intriguingly Brechtian (extra marks to the organizers for Orwellian numbering)
Session 116: Integration or Disintegration Or, as Aristotle would say, coming into being or passing away (though he’d say it in Greek).
Session 135: Should We Be Frightened by Food? All food? Or just gnomic crops?
Session 145: Will You See It Coming? To which the only answer must be: what?
Session 166: When Will We Know It All? When teleportation lets us go to all the sessions, stupid.
Session 208: Taming the “Devil” Inside Let’s hear it for the Domesticated Demons of Davos
Session 222: Mind If I Take a Look at Your Cerebrum? It depends; are there any demons in there?
Session 242: Ode to the Algorithm A cover version of Grace Jones’s Slave to the Algorithm
Session 255: Did You Say Communication? A minor masterpiece of Reflexivity, this one: full marks.
