Juan Enriquez in TED Talks made an original connection between four different topics: big data, tattoos, immortality, and the Greeks. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project , and has published extensively on both technical and sociological topics. He is the former CEO of the Urban Development Corporation of Mexico City and chief of staff. He is currently the CEO of Excel Medical Ventures, a venture capital firm, and the president and CEO of Biotechonomy , a research and investment firm that helps fund new genomics ventures.
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So, let's take four topics that obviously go together: big data, tattoos, immortality, and the Greeks. Right?
Now, the thing about tattoos is that, without a word, tattoos really do speak. So you don't have to say much. And tattoos tell us a lot of stories. If I may ask a sneaky question, how many of you have tattoos? A few, but not most. What if Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, cell phones, Foursquare, Yelp, Travel Advisor, all of the things you interact with every day turned out to be electronic tattoos? And what if they provided as much information about who and what you are as any tattoo would?
What's ended up happening in the last few decades is this kind of coverage that exists as a head of state or a big celebrity, is now being applied to you every day by all these people who are tweeting, blogging, following you, monitoring your hypocrisy score and what you're doing to yourself. And electronic tattoos are also screaming. And as you think about the implications of that, it's becoming more and more difficult to hide from them, among other things, because it's not just electronic tattoos, it's facial recognition that's getting better and better. So you can take a picture with an iPhone and find all the names, although, again, sometimes mistakes are made. (Laughter) But, what that means is that you can in a typical image of a bar like this, take a picture of, say, this guy over there, find out the name and download all the records (for him), before you even say a word or talk to anyone, because everyone turns out to be absolutely covered in electronic tattoos.
So, there are companies like face.com that now has about 18 billion faces online. Here's what happened to that company. [The company was sold to Facebook on June 18, 2012…] There are other companies that put a camera like this — this is not related to Facebook — they take a picture of you, they associate it with social networks, they find that you really like wearing black dresses, so maybe the person in the store comes up to you and says, "Hey, I have five black dresses that would look amazing on you.".
And what if Andy was wrong? That's Andy's theory. [In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.] What if we reverse that? What if we're anonymous for only 15 minutes? Well, then, because of electronic tattoos, maybe all of you and all of us will be closer to immortality, because these tattoos will last much longer than our bodies, and if that's the case, then what we need to do is take four lessons from the Greeks and one lesson from a Latin American.
Why the Greeks? The Greeks, then, thought about what happens when gods, humans, and immortality come together for a long period of time.
So lesson one: Sisyphus. Remember him? He did something horrible, he was condemned to forever push his rock up, it would roll down, push it up again, roll down again. It's like your reputation. Once you get this electronic tattoo, you're going to be up and down for a long time, so as you visit these pages, just be careful what you post.
Second myth: Orpheus, great guy, charms everyone around him, great host, great singer, lost his beloved, charms everyone on the way to the underworld, the only person who charmed everyone in the underworld, charms the gods of the underworld, they free his beloved on the condition that he not look at her until they get out. So, he walks out and walks and walks and can't resist. He looks at her and loses her forever. With all this data out there, maybe it would be a good idea not to look too far back into the past of those you love.
Lesson Three: Atalanta. Amazing runner. She would challenge anyone. If you won, she would marry you. If you lost, you died. How did Hippomenes win her? Well, he had all these wonderful little golden apples, and when she was ahead, he would throw a little golden apple. She would pass him, and he would throw a little golden apple. She would keep getting distracted. In the end, he won the race. Just remember the purpose of all those little golden apples as they come and find you and you want to post them or tweet them or send a message late at night.
And then, of course, there's Narcissus. No one here could ever be accused of or be familiar with Narcissus. But, as you contemplate Narcissus, don't fall in love with your reflection.
Last lesson, from a Latin American: This is the great poet Jorge Luis Borges. When he was threatened by the thugs of the military junta in Argentina, he turned around and said, "Oh, come on, how else can you threaten, except death?" The interesting thing, the really interesting thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality. And that, of course, is what we are all threatened with today, because of electronic tattoos.
Thank you.
