Guns ‘n LEGOs

The clothes reflect the culture clash.

Søren Lund, Director of the LEGO Group, takes pride in 350 billion LEGOs built so far… 52 bricks per person on Earth. Question: If you have six 2×4 rectangular LEGO blocks, how many ways can they be connected together?

Next to him is Col. Geoff Ling, M.D. and Iraq veteran, the Manager of “Revolutionizing Medical Devices” at DARPA. He spoke about “Mending the Wounded at War” with:
• bidirectional neural interfaces to prosthetic arms
• Predictive Health and Disease (PHD) to “predict the onset of sickness in advance”, medicate, and “never get sick.”
• Pharmacy on Demand (POD) to synthesize “myriad medications from simple atomic precursors.”

Delivered with a Marine’s Who-ahh enthusiasm and staccato, several people in the audience were visibly squirming and creeping out.

The next speaker, Nobel Laureate James Watson, could not resist reacting: “We have a term for that in the Midwest, and it’s bullshit.”

Also on stage: Tony Scott, CIO of Disney, Liz Littlefield, Director of World Bank and Claudia Kotchka, VP Strategy P&G.