Lovely article here about what I do (or attempt to do). Written by possibly the most interesting person I met this year (I don’t get out that much). She’s called Ephrat and she writes something called Quartz (QZ.com), which slightly reminds me of Aeon. Anyway, she was a fireball. The best 15-minute conversation of 2017.

Ephrat also sent me a fascinating article about trees. This resonated with me beacuse a 400-year old oak tree in my garden lost a limb in late September. The limb must have weighed 4-5 tonnes, but it somehow managed to land in precisely the one spot where it didn’t do any damage. It missed two cars, a garage, a wall, a greenhouse, a hedge etc. Most importanly it missed me (my office is right under it).It almost felt like the tree had decided where to place itself.

I wish I’d had more time to speak to Ephrat in San Jose. I briefly mentioned something to her that’s not a million miles off the trees using communication networks idea. Someone once came up to me after a talk and said “there’s a global gamechanger that I think you missed.” I was expecting the person to say Iran or something, but his response was far more interesting and profound. “What if we found a way to communicate with the animals…and what if they weren’t happy with us?”.

Everything just seems to circle back to Douglas Adams.

One of my seriously old books….