ValleyZen - At the Intersection of Zen, Modern Life and Technology

The first time I met Apple Co-Founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was in 1976 when they came to my office to talk about a company they were starting. Back then, Wozniak and Jobs were leaders in the two strongest directions of Collective Intelligence– building tools to achieve extensions of the human being, and facilitating the collection of human thoughts in a shared repository. Indirectly, the two Steves were followers of Doug Engelbart, the leader in the field of Collective Intelligence. Doug Engelbart’s concept of the use of a mouse was implemented by Apple to revolutionize a new human machine interface…

Logitech Co-Founder Daniel Borel is celebrating the creation of ONE BILLION mice. “That’s enough (end on end) to stretch to the moon and back,” he told a packed Stanford Memorial Auditorium gathered to honor the 40th anniversary of Douglas Engelbart’s landmark 1968 “DEMO” at SRI that signaled the dawn of interactive computing.

Don’t Miss ValleyZen’s exclusive VIDEO interview with Daniel Borel:

At Iwo Jima, more than 20,000 Japanese troops perished on the black sand. This is their story.

Yesterday we met and talked with Clint Eastwood at a screening of his masterpiece, Letters from Iwo Jima, a film about the famous Pacific struggle told from the Japanese soldiers’ point of view. The movie is the companion to Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, created from the American point of view.

As we watched the film and listened to Eastwood, we were struck by…

Watch a video with Jim Barnett, Founder & CEO of Turn, Inc. Jim Barnett’s Zen insights are interesting for entrepreneurs , business people, or anyone implementing a big vision.

Don’t Miss Jim Barnett on:

• 19 years of morning meditation
• Riding up King’s Mountain to clear his mind
• Simplicity in advertising
• On naming his company “TURN”
• Performance and simplicity behind Turn
• On building a culture of honesty and Zen authenticity
• Why he doesn’t care about reference checks in hiring…
Keep Reading

Run, don’t walk, or better yet take your flying machine to see LEONARDO: 500 Years into the Future. This 30,000 square foot exhibit is at the Tech Museum for a limited time and ends on January 4th. ValleyZen was so impressed with our first visit that we returned and took some friends with us again yesterday. Why you should make it a must on your todo list of mind-expanding activities for 2008:

# 10 Rack up Renaissance Frequent Flyer Miles…

The Tech Awards show that “Big changes come from simple solutions” said Tech President Peter Friess —opening an elegant black tie gala for the premier annual humanitarian awards programs in the world. Over 1500 Tech Museum friends & donors gathered to honor 25 global innovators (Laureates) who were carefully selected from hundreds of applications received from 68 countries. $250,000 in cash awards were distributed on one evening.

“We are gathering all the intellectual capital of all these prestigious laureates…

ValleyZen was invited to the third Singularity Summit 2008 – a conference discussing “The Singularity” a point at which machines will be able to surpass human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil, CEO of Kurzweil Technologies and author of The Singularity is Near headlined the conference along with technological and academic heavyweights like Intel CTO Justin Rattner, X PRIZE Foundation Founder, Chair & CEO Peter Diamandis, Investor/Entrepreneur Esther Dyson, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms Director Neil Gershenfeld, CEO of Novamente, director of research at SIAI, Ben Goertzel, and over a dozen others.

At a private reception hosted the night before the conference at the Tech Museum, we spoke with Ben Goertzel. Drue asked Ben if a machine could reach enlightenment. Please check out his response. It’s sure to provoke you…

ValleyZen was invited to attend the National Women’s Leadership Initiative National Issues Conference. Billed as “the pinnacle event of the general election to highlight the importance of women’s leadership,” it drew women from all 50 states. Mega donors as well as high-level policy makers and senior campaign advisors converged on the Chicago Sheraton Towers to focus on “issues…

On Sunday, famed video game developer Richard Garriott launched into space aboard a Soyuz TMA spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. For more than $30 million, he has become the sixth private citizen to travel into orbit.

The Russian rocket lifted off on schedule at 1:01 p.m. (3:01 a.m. EDT), carrying precious cargo including a revolutionary experiment in art —the first in-space art exhibition. Highlighting the importance of private space travel to future generations, Garriott is hosting this zero-gravity art exhibition. Included is an original brush painting by Drue Kataoka, created for this historic
mission…

Yesterday, the Dow Jones fell below 10,000 points. Stress and risk are everywhere: the financial crisis, the deepening recession, the threat of losing one’s job and savings. Staying afloat in a sea of red ink is hard.

Sourcing from the ancient wisdom of Zen provides timeless lessons in a world of chaos. As a Sumi-e artist, the Zen principles are alive in my brush every moment. I take lessons from my brush. Here are three:

1. Spare your brush strokes

Less is more. In my Sumi-e paintings, I strive for maximum…