>> it is clear that you own your data, but it is not clear that somebody with the opprobrious search and seizure warrants cannot just make off with it, too. and, of course, you know, here is the scary one. the fbi says there is an attack coming out of those few racks over there, and they walked out with several companies entire computer set up just because some guy in one of those was doing a bad thing. that is scary. >> unfortunately, we have time for only one last question. weber has the microphone, please. then maybe it is a mistake, but i have the microphone. i came to this lecture trying to find a definition of what cloud computing is. maybe i understand a little better, but i still do not have its in the simple terminology

that i understand. my other question is from my point of view as a user of computing services, i have recently had the experience with a couple of banks going through a total change of their website, which caused me no end of aggravation to try to continue my accessing of my data, and i had the feeling, and i think you kind of touched on this, that for maybe financial reasons or because you technology people are so influential in the world you convinced these banks they had to do this, it just really made my life miserable for a couple of weeks trying to figure out how to use their new system. i mean, it seems to me that -- you know, i had the impression that technology people are sort of making work for themselves by

influencing institutions that they need to change what they have already in place. i still go by the old model -- if it is not broken, do not fix it. so i am opposing these questions to the senate panel. >> those are great observations. i am in my mid-40's by now, and there are programming languages used regularly that just did not exist five years ago. when you hear these guys talk, it is like gobbledygook to me. you get old with your music. you get old with your skills sets. it is just the way it is. because we are a technology- driven society, and we have completely inverted the traditional way back societies were built when -- where when you were older, what you learned was survival skill, and you were right. that is the problem.

the young guys are right, and the old guys take it in the net. cloud computing -- let me try a simple one for you. used to be in the old days that everybody had their own electricity generating plant. people would generate electricity locally for their own production means for their own factory. that got turned into a utility. the economics and study of that is very interesting. there's a fabulous book called "the big switch" which basically tracks that history. think of what clout is doing to computing is being analogous. instead of having to own and run your own software and hardware and computer systems, these things simply become services that you acquired by some horribly complicated plug. so it becomes viable economically -- the economics are compelling.

you can consume by plugging in. you have to plug, yes, it is still the case that you know too much, but it is really that, that turning computation into a utility that can be consumed as opposed to requiring human to surround previous manifestations of the technology. >> i thank the panel for coming here today. we also thank our audience here for those listening and viewing. now, this meeting of the commonwealth club of california commemorating its 108th year of discussion is adjourned. [applause]

good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the commonwealth club in formed division, connect your intellect. that is our tagline. i am the president of the inform board. tonight, we have larry hardy. the founder of burning man and he is here to talk about the amazing place and phenomenon known as black rock city. he is one of the original

planners and architects. we are going to talk about the path of burning man, the future as well. before we jump into the question that had to do with what is going on, tell us about your new headquarters and how that came to be, why the move into the heart of san francisco? >> well, we were on third street, in what is left of san francisco's industrial district , and we got lonely, really. [laughter]

we saw real estate values dropping precipitously. as far as we were concerned, that was a good thing because it enabled us to move into market street. the city had encouraged us to do so, too, as they were very much interested in revitalizing market, 6th and market, which is essentially part of the tenderloin. we thought there were a lot of opportunities there. we know something about making urban environments vital.

given the present political move, people are open to new ideas. that is true across the country. our burners are being asked to come into centers of various cities for aetna. -- right now. whehowever, as soon as things gt better, they are escorted out. but we might begin to break that cycle. it is just wonderful to walk out on the street and see the world walking by. >> are you giving the twitter deal? >> yes, we are. we just founded a new nonprofit.

black rock arts foundation, which is dedicated to spreading interactive, a collaborative art throughout the world. now we have founded but we call the burning and project. -- what we call the burning man project. it eventually leads to the event itself. this is a wonderful opportunity. the thing about burning man, when you look at the variety of people that go there, when you look at this environment, where all the normal boundaries are down in every department of human knowledge and endeavor.

if you ask what possible application that we have created that may be useful loud in the desert, -- what would it have an application to? education, urban planning, disaster relief. needless to say, we are ambitious than we think we can affect the course of things. we hope to in this century. >> i wanted to dig a bit more into that. i would love it if you could maybe help contrast the radical levels of participation and involvement that you see at burning man with the current status of san francisco.

for a city that has so many creative and imaginative folks, perhaps there could be more to be done on the civic involvement front here. >> we formed a relationship with mayor newsom a while back. i met him at his office and presented to him -- major artistic genre at black rock. and this is portable monumentality. we told him there are great

portable monument works of art all around the bay area. not so much in san francisco, but certainly in oakland. in the east bay. there are some facilities left in the city. being an acute politician, he soon realized what that meant. it was the answer to a political problem. if you put a piece of art in a neighborhood, community members will bicker about it endlessly. if it is only there to be there three months, that is something else coming in deed. i could see a light bulb above his head when we said that. -- something else, indeed.

one could just create art paths out of durable materials upon which you could amount to such works of art. then the entire city, given the supply of createive talent, the whole city could be a revolving work of art. that would be wonderful. that is what black rock city is. why not transpose that to san francisco? i think the city is now looking at doing art paths for that purpose. it would not be hard, given the abundance of -- after so many years in the desert, there is a huge backlog of brilliant art.

magnificent piece is done by armies of artists working together. so that is an obvious things that could be instituted. i also pulled him that we did not have any trash cans in our city. we did not really continue that dialogue. [laughter] >> the question that everyone in san francisco is asking now, i'm going to ask you as a formality. are you going this year? have you ever missed one? have you ever wanted to? >> no. [laughter] at one time, i was very much needed -- i am still needed,

from time to time. although, if i and my partners have done our job, we should not be needed that much. i am like anyone else out there. it is a big place. it is hyperactive. not only are there 100 things, but they are all happening at one time. thousands of things happening at one time. i feel dwarfed by it. it is humbling. i have an idea of what is coming up, but you have to realize, burning man is very much a spontaneous creation, and the emergent phenomenon. that means you do not really know what is going to be there. we fund art, but that is only a

fraction of the art that happens. we had a guy a few years ago show up unannounced with a 10- story modular skyscraper. i just want to see what is going to happen. [laughter] >> speaking of what is going to happen, looking at the activities going on around the monumental art, the people that are in this emancipated state of mind, how does it stack up to the average city, as far as number of injuries and such, in

that window of time? >> it is a remarkably safe place, actually. there is no pavement. [laughter] and you cannot drive your car. that eliminates most injuries right there. it may feel like the world is coming to an end when the dust rises and the colts the world, but it is not. it is true, your habitation could blow away if you do not secure it. but that is not the end of the world. [laughter] in terms of public safety, it is very -- and we have emergency response times that would be the envy of any city that size.

we are very well organized. you are more likely to fall in your bathtub and break your hip. there are some typical injuries, but mild. we have had a couple of deaths, but from natural causes, one from an accident at the event site. of course, what city hasn't? we used to scare people with that. in the old days, just to let people know, this required hardihood. we put down that people had died here. well, they have died everywhere.

and we still scare some people a bit. people are not used to this unmediated environment. as long as you drink water, you are probably going to be ok. there is not a lot of criminal activity. everyone is really over provided for. to meet the survival challenge, they oversupplied. superfluous goods that people end up giving away to one another. there is really not a lot of crime. there is too much to do. [laughter] >> could you talk more about that factor, that there is an abundance of good, which is

interesting, being in the desert. the economic system that is up there. we talked a long time ago for a "for a magazine" story. one of the things that you said is that commerce, in an of itself, is not the enemy. it is the backbone of civilization. >> to be against commerce is to be against your clothing. who would be against commerce? we just said we are living in a world that has been overly come modified. where everything has been turned into a commodity value. people do not have the identities. we are world full of brands and

no identity. you can read your entire life -- you can do your business and go about in the world using your credit card and never really look anyone in the eye. a world in which things have been comodified, things that should never have been. you cannot put a price on love. you cannot put a price on things that make life meaningful. but this isn't a consumer culture. even though we know we cannot keep it up. if the chinese adopt our lifestyle, we are all goners, we know that. it is not the third world anymore, it is the developing world.

well, they are developing and they want things, too. the 21st century will be about competing for resources. there are not enough in a consuming world when there is no limit of appetite. it is a philosophic position. it would be interesting for people to live in a world as people did at the beginning of the modern era and centuries before. people were not relentlessly comodified, the way they are now. people should live in an environment where nothing is bought and sold, just to see what it is like.

you know what that is like, within families. there are family that fight about inherited, property, but in any decent family, you are not buying and selling to one another, you are giving. that is a gift economy. it is predicated on the idea that some things have an unconditional value. you cannot put a price on it. we just said, everything is a gift in our city. you cannot buy or sell anything. there is no advertising. you are not surrounded by this nattering pandemonium of commercial messages, which is so

relentless. and lo and behold, we discovered, had a certain point in a community, when everyone is giving, -- people began to have experiences that were revelatory. they began to feel like they were in touch with that unconditional reality, which perhaps in their youth they identified as their life's goal. it creates a world in which --

just saturated with meaningful encounter. and it seems to have been contagious because people have now left our event and they have left our world and they continued to do activities. they did not go to a festival and say their appetite. they came back and tried to change their world. that is why we are starting this burning man project. we think there is a law that we can do together. try it sometime. try living for eight days without buying, selling, listening to an ad, and tell yourself, disco to give things to people. see what that is like. it is quite remarkable, the

effect it has. i could go on forever about this. it is quite a novelty. we do not say that you can live like that all the time, but going back to my original criticism of society. we are going to moderate the appetite of the consumer, which is going to destroy us. then we are born to have to try to find satisfaction in life that did not involve high levels of consumption. we think that kind of meditation will lead you to those things. of course, there is also what coco chanel said, the best things in life are priceless, but the next best thing is cost lot of money. that is true, too.

>> two exceptions to that system, coffee and ice. how did that come to be? >> our history is full of spontaneous actions. we are careful planners today, but none of this was really planned. a lot of it was on the basis of intuition and passion. the ice is obvious. there is no refrigeration.

unless you have a recreational vehicle. you need to preserve food. and we sell it, rather than give it away. we want people to try to prepare themselves and think through everything they need to survive. that is the other part, survival and gifting, an interesting combination. coffee, we had a cafe. it was a pretty elegant location

and we thought it was pretty funny. but as the city grew, just as any city, we need public gathering places, places where people could go who did not know others. you know, one reason tourists go to union square, and they go to a public place where they can belong without knowing anybody. every city needs space like that. we realized at our scale, we needed a civic plaza. we thought about bands, but as soon as you put them up on stage, you have these consuming crowds listening to the band. the longer they stood there the