Sorry for my Long Absence

Although it’s been a while since my last blog post, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing. For one, I’ve finally discovered Web 2.0 and joined the Facebook / Twitter crowd (as you can see by the tweets on the left).  Facebook / Twitter provides quicker feedback and can be done from a phone when on the bus or waiting in line.  Blog posts require an interesting idea or noteworthy event.  There are many interesting articles now that address web 2.0 culture.  One of my favorites is a series by Moses Ma who is a friend of many of my friends, but I have not yet met in person.  The first of his series begins here:  http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-tao-innovation/200903/understanding-the-psychology-twitter. 

I’ve also become a blogger for the Huffington Post.  Meeting Arianna Huffington again was another perk for being at TED.  As it turns out, she has an interest in consciousness and invited me to contribute to her site.  Blogging there feels more like a community with co-bloggers to read and riff off of, an encouraging and supportive editor, etc.  It’s been fun so far!  For my Huffington Post entries, look here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gino-yu.  Russell Bishop who is training me to write at another level.  Nury Vittachi, a friend and colleague at the University, has also taught me a lot about the commercial aspects of becoming a writer.  If you're in it for the money, the real money isn't in blogging, but its still in newspaper columns and syndication.

I am co-hosting a workshop on Meaningful Media with Stephen Schafer and John Stewart on June 10th (http://www.asiaconsciousness.org/meaningfulmedia.html).  We’ve also started a blog on the topic (http://meaningfulmedia.blogspot.com).  Mail me if you are interested in attending as it is invitation only and space is limited.  The Meaningful Media workshop is part of a larger Asia Consciousness Festival that is really taking shape, though time consuming.  We have over 30 events across a two-week period.  For the Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference, we have over 250 plenary, concurrent, and poster presentations.  Many interesting people will be in town and it will be very stimulating (http://www.asiaconsciousness.org).  We are hosting another Phusikoi event on May 2nd (http://www.phusikoi.org).  The About Consciousness team have also organized many film screenings as part of the build-up (http://www.aboutconsciousness.net/web/event.php).

I’ve also been teaching game development at the University that has also been taking time.  This semester has been a lot of fun with many industry visitors including Brian Jobling, Josh Rose, Louis-Guy Dumais, Trevor Chan, and Mark Leung.  The students really appreciate the industry perspective, though none may want to get into games anymore after hearing all the horror stories.  In addition to game development, I'm proud to be supervising several projects our MSc students are developing.

By far, the biggest news is that my wife and I are expecting our fourth child sometime in the next month or so.  She was conceived when my wife and I were in New York last year for the Creative Leadership Summit.  If you’ve got any good name suggestions (English or Chinese), please send them to me!  

TED!

I had a great time at TED, and follow on meetings in Los Angeles with many of the people I met. It was my second TED, and both Lorraine Justice and Jose Rueda were with me (we were the only ones from Hong Kong). I ended up sharing a room with Michael Highland who spent time in Hong Kong working at our lab. The TED talks have been covered by many of the blogs on the Internet and in the press and will gradually make their way onto the TED website over the next few months. I spent a large part of the conference sitting in the front, left side (facing the stage). In fact, I was stung on the cheek by one of the mosquitos that Bill Gates unleashed in his talk. My awesome seats were courtesy of Steve Goodling who I met at TED U. Steve was part of the team that brought TED to the City of Long Beach.

For me this year, TED was more about what was happening around the sessions rather than the content of the sessions themselves. I ended up at some amazing breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and meeting new friends at the parties and after-parties. There was also the after-after party at Patti and Danny Hillis’ place as well as the after-conference, BIL, that was held at the nearby Cal State Long Beach. One of the major after-highlights were the impromptu concerts conducted by Eric Lewis in the lobby of the Westin. I had the pleasure of witnessing his last encore lying underneath the grand piano as he played. Sound was amazing and it was an unforgettable experience (check him out on Youtube as his album isn't out yet). The piece he played is on his website http://www.ericlewisgroove.com/ titled "(Here) In Your Arms."

On the second night of TED, I was invited to a dinner by Tony Tjan and Jason Pontin (Tony also blogs about it here - http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/tjan/2009/02/ted-diary-cars-20-and-a-tianan.html). One of the topics of discussion before meals were served was Tiananmen. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the “massacre” and Li Lu, who was at Tiananmen during the event got up and gave a talk. I ended up speaking after him and ended up singing excerpts from the musical I wrote in ’93 on the topic. It was quite intimidating as Tony Award Winner Glenn Close was also at the dinner (not to mention Alan Hassenfeld, Craig Mundie, or Steve Jurvetson). The songs and singing were well received and I got a few e-mail complements afterwards. I was also invited to a lunch on the following day with Tony Tjan and a few of his friends.

We (Lorraine, Jose, and myself) hosted a dinner of our own, “Game Developers at TED” which drew 25 or so people. It was also a great event that included Louis Castle, David Perry, Noah Falstein, Larry Holland, Keith Boesky, Henk Rogers, Ben Sawyer, Marc Prensky, Stewart Bonn, and Raj Kapoor, among many others. John Abele, Dean Kaman, and Marc Hodosh also joined. There are so many great ideas at TED, and video games are the new media to get ideas out to the younger generation. Game developers at TED have a role to play, especially when it comes to behavior modification. This was also the message I communicated to Al Gore during his “working breakfast.” Addressing this opportunity and potential is why we are also rebranding our laboratory, MERECL, to PLAYLAB to focus specifically on “Meaningful Games.” I hope that we start a TED tradition with this meal and look forward to hosting another dinner at next year’s TED.

The best part of TED, of course, is meeting new people and forming new friendships. There are so many inspiring people in attendance and not just only on the stage. Everyone is open and approachable. Interactions standing in line, during one of the many parties, or walking from one venue to another become fascinating learning experiences. This year’s TED made it easier as well with each person’s “talk to me about these three things” listed on their badge. I had a good laugh with Robert Thurman who I sat next to for a breakfast. We both had “joy” listed as a conversation topic. I also met him the day before in the lobby of the Westin where Goldie Hawn and Donna Karan were also talking about their efforts to bring mindfulness training to schools. I became friends with Patrick Newell who founded the International School in Tokyo after meeting him at the gala party. I also had a great conversation with Michael Martin who is involved in “meaningful media” using music to “change the world.” Chris Traub, based in Taiwan, sent me a mail before TED and we were able to find each other and meet up for a conversation on meditation and spirituality (though we have yet to finish). I hope to visit with many of the people I met during the coming year. I have more people to visit next time I’m in New York!

After TED, I spent an afternoon at the BIL conference. It felt very different from the polish of TED, but there were a lot of interesting memes being passed around. In one of the presentations, the presenter released butterflies into the audience. I was amazed that Bill Gates could inspire such performance art. I had a surreal moment at the BIL event when I asked a stranger to borrow their iPhone (to call my ride), dialed my friend’s number, and had his name show up on the iPhone. It really is a small world.

After BIL, I was able to catch up with friends and family in LA. I also had the opportunity to visit some of the people I met at TED including the guys at Participant Productions, William Morris, Paula Wagner, and Brian Boesky. I got a sense of the media industry and the role of agents in putting deals together (or not). I also met with some friends I made on previous trips, potential clients, and Carl Bressler, a person that three other friends told me I had to meet. Carl, in turn, knows lots of people in LA and just hanging with him for a few days felt like an extension of TED. My sister drove up from San Diego with my nephew and brother-in-law.

Overall, it was a great trip. I am still following up on all of the potential collaborations and projects that resulted from the chance encounters. Its a great time to be alive and working in the field of media and consciousness! If you are in Hong Kong on the 21st, we are hosting another Phusikoi event (http://www.phusikoi.org).

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to TED I Go

Am a the airport heading to TED. This year marks its 25th anniversary and its move from Monterrey to Long Beach (it switched places with The-EG event). I've been corresponding with a lot of people in anticipation of the event, with several informal meetings planned. I've been invited to one dinner and will also be hosting one (for game developers). I'm part of a group from Hong Kong this year that also includes Jose Rueda, who I work with at MERECL / Playlab, and Lorraine Justice, our department head at the University. Will also be attending parts of the Bil Conference (http://www.bilconference.com) this year. Bil and TED, a most excellent adventure! My friend Bill Lin (was the best man at my wedding) will also be at Bil with his girlfriend who I am looking forward to meeting.

I will be in Los Angeles for a few days, and possibly heading to Las Vegas for DICE. Please shoot me a mail if you are in LA and would like to meet!

Upon my return to Hong Kong, we are planning our second Phusikoi event on Feb. 21st at the PolyU (http://www.phusikoi.org for details). The event is shaping up nicely and our organizational team is growing! Among many others, Ho Hon Wong will be talking about the Religion and Spirituality Center at the HKIEd and the conference that they are organizing, the Asia-Pacific Confernce on Children's Spirituality (an event I'll be speaking at). Feb. is looking to be a fun month!

Toward a Science of Consciousness Coming to Hong Kong

This June, the School of Design is hosting a Conference, Toward a Science of Consciousness. As I bring this up in conversation, I often get a response of "aren't you in the School of Design? What does that have to do with consciousness?" My answer is "Everything!" Design is about creating experiences. Consciousness is the substrate from which experience is created. TSC brings together many different disciplines including philosophy, psychology, neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and spirituality to understand many simple things that we as designers take fore granted. What is the experience of the color red? Why do some sounds and colors seem to sound / look good together, while others don't? How do images and sounds trigger emotions? Where do my design ideas really come from?

At the heart of the Science of Consciousness is what is known as the mind-body problem. What is the relationship between the mind, my subjective experience, and my physical body. With today's medicine, we understand how most of systems of the body work such as the heart, digestion, respiratory, etc. and we know that there is a relationship between the brain and thinking. But is the mind created by the brain? How? What are the biological mechanisms? The mind and body seem very much related. When I experience an emotion it influences my facial expression and body language. Certain material substances (e.g., drugs) can alter my perception of reality. How? We can build incredible tools and technologies, decode the human genome, peer into the quantum world and the farthest reaches of the galaxy, but we still don't know how it is that we can experience reality. I can't tell you how it is that both you and I know that the PolyU logo is red, or what red really even is (It gets stranger than that! http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist.html).

Now, how does all this relate to design you may continue to ask. Well, what is good design? Function? Form? Texture? Aesthetic? Related to culture? Symbols (semiotics)? Adherence to certain rules (golden ratio)? Is it all subjective (coke or pepsi) or can there be universal rules like, say, gravity or physical properties of hydrogen? How are subjective experiences (mind) created from physical properties (body)?

Can there be a science of design?

Did you know that the image of a logo can affect one's perceived taste of a beverage? (http://www.60secondmarketer.com/60SecondArticles/Branding/cokevs.pepsitast.html)

Did you know that there are theories which explain how we experience good visual art (http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/01/cognitive-science-of-art-ramachandrans.html), neuroasethetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroesthetics).

Did you know that imagination and perception use the same neural circuits? (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/129/rewiring-the-creative-mind.html) - A basis for mindful design?

Did you know that there are parts of your brain that don't know the difference between you doing something and you watching someone do something (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.html) - explains how movies and video games are so engaging!

These are just some of the recent findings related to the efforts to develop an understanding, toward a science of consciousness. If you are alive and conscious, you have just as much say as anyone to explain your experience. If you have any ideas, theories, I encourage you to submit an abstract to our Conference (http://www.asiaconsciousness.org/TSC).


We will have many of the world's leading Consciousness Researchers here for the event. Among the participants include:

David Chalmers - the philosopher who coined the term "The hard problem of consciousness" and the challenge of bridging first-person and 3rd-person experience.

Stuart Hameroff - A leading proponent of quantum consciousness. He has also been featured in many films including "What the Bleep."

Hakwan Lau - Hong Kong local graduate, cognitive neuroscientist now at Columbia University working on neural correlates

Ken Mogi - Sony researcher focusing on a neural basis of qualia.

Susan Greenfield - Author and Cambridge researcher who created the BBC Brain Story Series.

Ovid Tzeng - Leading authority on cognitive neuroscientific studies of Chinese Language.

Victor Lamme - Leading authority in vision and visual perception.

Jonathan Schooler - Leading researcher in consciousness, memory, and the relationship between language and thought, problem-solving, and decision making.

Marilyn Schlitz - CEO of the Noetic Institute and researcher on psi, psychophysiology, cross cultural healing, creativity, and consciousness.

Ben Goertzel - Leader in the the machine consciousness movement.

Allan Combs - Integral consciousness researcher and editor of the Journal of Conscious Evolution.

If you feel that TSC may be too heavy for you, we are planning a whole "Asia Consciousness Festival" from June 5th to June 18th (http://www.asiaconsciousness.org). The Festival will include workshops, movie screenings, art exhibits, etc. around the theme of consciousness. We are open to contributions. Please participate!

Happy Holidays!

Its been a busy month with the conclusion of another semester and the holidays quickly upon us. Earlier in the month, I spoke at the Culturemondo round-table in Taipei (http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=812263&lang=eng_news). I had a wonderful time in Taipei and visited the Consciousness Research Group at Yang Ming University. I also visited the Psychology Department at the National Taiwan University and met Jenyi Chao who happened to be moving to Hong Kong next month.

I met many new friends at Culturemondo and caught up with old friends that I hadn’t seen in a while. Joy Tang, who founded OneVillage (http://www.onevillagefoundation.org/ovf/), and one of her partners in Ghana, Kafui Prebbie (http://www.kafui.com/), were highlights. It is always fun hanging out with Joy as she knows many interesting people in Taipei. I spent a few days with Kafui in Hong Kong, where he also gave a talk to our students.

Collaborating with one of our students (Matt Bailey) and a local artist (Maggie Blue), we also hosted the first of a bi-monthly event to promote consciousness (with a press write-up http://www.timeout.com.hk/around-town/features/17269/the-awakening.html). It was a daylong event that included talks, yoga, drumming, film screenings, kirtan, and dancing. The next event will be on Feb. 21st. If you are interested, there is a Facebook group.
There is still time to submit an abstract for Toward a Science of Consciousness that will be held in Hong Kong in June (http://www.asiaconsciousness.org/TSC). It is shaping up to be a memorable event. We will be announcing the plenary speakers shortly.

We’re rebranding our lab, MERECL, to Playlab (will need to write another song) after moving to Kowloon Tong (http://www.playlab.hk/Home.html) with an emphasis on Meaningful Games. We are starting up several exciting new game related projects. If you are a game programmer or artist looking for a great group to work with, please contact us!

The holidays are an opportunity to spend time with family and catching up with friends and on reading. Some of the recent books include Tribes by Seth Godin (one of the TED books that was sent this month), and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (a book that nicely complements Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond). I’m really proud of my kids who performed wonderfully in their holiday shows, and speech competitions. We had a fun time at home this holiday season watching films, shopping, playing, and spending quality time together.

Keeping Up and Catching Up

I've recently jumped into social networking on the Internet. A lot of my friends and many of the students in the program that I teach in keep up to date with through social networking services. I have an i-phone which makes taking and uploading pictures a snap, and the one-sentence "twitters" are a lot easier to author than blog posts. Its a great way of keeping track of people who are always on the move these days.

The size of social network membership bases have made them great for hunting down people from your past. I've been having a great time re-acquainting myself with friends from college, travels, etc. that I've lost contact with over the years. Its still a bit tough finding the right person for common names (like John Wong), but luckily, I've had many friends who had unusual names (something to think about when naming your children). For those that I haven't heard from in a while, its been great catching up and seeing how their lives have progressed (kids, careers, perspectives).

Mythology, Meaning, Motivation, and Action

As someone with a keen interest in the relationship between the mental and physical world, especially the role of media and how media influences one's perspective on reality, the recent financial crisis and presidential elections in the United States have been very interesting to watch. Today's news are a form of mythology, and it is interesting how rapidly these myths are transmitted around the world and affect people's perception and attitudes. There was another story in the news that 8 out of 10 people say that their perception of the economy is a significant cause of stress. On the flip-side, the election of Barak Obama brought many African Americans to tears (of joy), with the older generation still able to recall the days of segregation less than fifty years ago.

I come from the perspective that language and media, just as science and religion, are methods for communicating conscious experience through the realm of the mind. If you examine what is around where you are sitting, standing, or lying right now, there are physical objects that you experience around you that take up space and time. Things are as they are. How you feel about what you see, whether they are agreeable to you, whether you like or dislike what you are experiencing at the time, etc. are in the realm of the mind. Just as the physical world seems to be made of structures and acted upon by forces (gravity, electro-magnetism, etc.), the mind is also made of structures (ideas connected by emotional attachments).

Emotions keep you physically safe. If a hungry lion walked into the room, most people would experience fear, triggering a "fight, flight, or freeze" response that will keep you as physically safe as possible given the circumstances. Emotional attachments to ideas (or "feelings") are not so clear, especially when negative or destructive emotions are involved. These become especially dangerous when they motivate action.

Media and especially the news stories do not evoke good feelings. A story, for example, of how an eight year old kid shot and killed two adults half-way around the world may not have any bearing on your physical well-being, but when you bring in empathy and consider the future of the family and those that were killed, what does it do to how you feel? From the perspective of your physical immediate surroundings, what sort of impact does such a story have? Serves as a good example for a blog entry? Gossip material? What happens when this story spreads (and I am guilty of this just by bringing it up)? How different is this vs. the role of mythology?

Anyone that has gone on an extended vacation or retreat knows that it is possible to survive and not make a conscious (in some cases obsessive) effort to find out about the latest news. There is a great line in "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd that reads:

The lunatic is in the hall

The lunatics are in my hall

The paper holds their folded faces to the floor

And every day the paperboy brings more

I am not saying that you should completely avoid the news. What I am hoping to do is to make you more aware of how the news influences you emotionally (hence biochemically) and affects your perception and subsequent actions. There is also the flip-side of advertising and desire (how does porn work?).

For most people, if you just stop right now and look at or meditate on what is around you, most people will find that they are fine. There is really nothing to fear, physically. So where does the fear that you may experience come from? And how does this arise? This is why practices such as meditation, mindfulness, and presence are so beneficial.