Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (17 page)

*

*

*

*

Dad’s TEDTalk
was
a really big deal. All the kids at school knew about it. Ms. Goodyear had Dad come to give the whole school a live demonstration. It’s hard to believe Audrey Griffin had never heard of it.

*

4:30 PM AFTERNOON BREAK

Half hour to go until Session 10: “Code and Mind,” the last one of the day. The gals at the Vosges chocolate booth really outdid themselves for this break, passing out truffles with bacon. Hot buzz: at the end of Session 9, while Mark Zuckerberg droned on about some education initiative that nobody gave a shit about, the Vosges girls started frying their bacon, and the smell wafted into the auditorium. This got everyone murmuring excitedly, “Do you smell bacon? I smell bacon.” Chris bolted out and must have torn into the Vosges girls, who now have mascara
dripping down their cheeks. Chris has always had his *detractors* and this sure didn’t help.

4:45 PM PEOPLE FILING INTO AUDITORIUM FOR SESSION 10

• Ben Affleck having his picture taken with Murray Gell-Mann. Dr. Gell-Mann arrived this morning, driving up to the valet in his Lexus with New Mexico plates reading
QUARK.
Nice touch, nice man.

• While we were on break, the stage was transformed into a living room, or maybe a college dorm. La-Z-Boy recliner, TV set, microwave, vacuum. A robot, too!

• Jesus Christ, there’s a robot onstage. It’s a cute one—four feet high, anthropomorphic. Hourglass shape. Dare I say, a sexy robot? Hmmm, program says next speaker is a dancer from Madagascar discussing her creative process. What’s the robot for, then? Will there be some kind of African-lesbian-robot-living-room dance? Stay tuned, this might get good.

• Guy with eye patch and Nehru jacket who gave deranged talk last year about floating cities just sat down where Al Gore usually sits. No reserved seats at TED, natch, but Al Gore has sat in the third row, right aisle, dating back to Monterey, and everyone knows it. You don’t just go plop down in Al Gore’s spot.

• Jane doing housekeeping announcements. Gift bag pickup closes tonight. Last chance to test-drive Tesla. Luncheon tomorrow with (the awesome) E. O. Wilson for an update on his TED wish, the Encyclopedia of Life.

• Al Gore just entered, talking with Sergey Brin’s parents. They’re so cute and tiny and don’t speak great English.

•
All eyes on the veep, waiting to see how he reacts to the fact that his seat is taken. Nehru jacket offers to move, but Al Gore declines. Nehru hands Al Gore a business card! What a dirty trick. He’s practically booed by the audience, but nobody will admit to being that interested. Al Gore takes business card with a smile. I heart Al Gore.

5 PM CHRIS TAKES THE STAGE

Announces that before the African lady, there will be a surprise talk, a mind-bender, he promises, on brain-computer interface. People snap out of their truffle-and-bacon haze. Chris introduces Elgin Branch from… wait for it… Microsoft Research. Research
is
the only half-decent group at MS, but really? Microsoft? Audience deflating. Energy dissipating.

5:45 PM HOLY CRAP

Disregard snarkiness of 5 PM post. Give me a second… I’m going to need some time…

7 PM SAMANTHA 2

Thanks for your patience. This talk won’t post on the TED website for a month. In the meantime, let me try to do it justice. Big shout-out to my blogging pal TEDGRRRL for letting me transcribe her phone video.

5 PM
Branch puts on headset. On the big screen:

ELGIN BRANCH

(You’ve gotta feel for these guys who have only five minutes. They’re all rushing and nervous.)

5:01 PM
Branch: “Twenty-five years ago, my first job was testing code for a research team at Duke. They were attempting to merge mind and computer.”

5:02 PM
Clicker doesn’t work. Branch hits it again. And again. Branch looking around. “This isn’t working,” he says to everyone and no one.

5:03 PM
Branch bravely soldiering on without video. “They sat two rhesus monkeys in front of a video screen with joysticks, which controlled a little animated ball. Every time the monkeys used the joysticks to move the ball in a basket, they were rewarded with a treat.” He clicks again and again and looks around. Nobody is coming to help. This is ridiculous! The guy’s a good sport. David Byrne stormed offstage this morning when his audio blew.

5:05 PM
Branch: “That was supposed to be a video of the pioneering Duke study. In it, you’d see a pair of monkeys with two hundred electrodes implanted into their brains’ motor cortex. They look like those grow-her-hair Barbies with the crown of their heads cut open and a bunch of wires cascading down. It’s pretty grisly. It’s probably best that I can’t show you. Anyway, it was an early instance of brain-computer interface, or BCI.” He clicks the clicker again. “I had a really good slide explaining how it worked.”

IMHO, the guy should be angrier about this! It’s a technology conference, and they can’t get the clickers to work?

5:08 PM
Branch: “After the monkeys had mastered using the joysticks to move the balls, the researchers disconnected the joysticks. The monkeys fiddled with the joysticks for a couple seconds, but recognized they no longer worked. They still wanted their treats, so they sat there, staring at the screen, and
thought about
moving the balls into the baskets. At this point, the electrodes implanted into their motor cortexes were activated. They diverted the monkeys’ ‘thoughts’ to a computer, which we had programmed to interpret their brain signals and act on their thoughts. The monkeys realized they could move
the ball just by
thinking about it—
and they received their treats. The most amazing thing, when you watch the video—” Branch squints into the spotlight. “Do we have the video? It would be great to see the video. Anyway, what’s remarkable is how quickly the monkeys mastered moving the balls with their thoughts. It took them about fifteen seconds.”

5:10 PM
Branch squints into the audience. “They tell me I have one minute left.”

5:10 PM
Chris jumps onstage and apologizes. He’s pissed about the clicker. We all are. This Branch guy is nice and low-key. And he’s said nothing about the robot!

5:12 PM
Branch: “The job ended. Years later, I found my way to Microsoft. In robotics.” Crowd cheers. Branch squints. “What?” He obviously has no idea how excited we’ve all become about that damn robot.

5:13 PM
Branch: “I went to work on the voice-activated personal robot you see in front of you.” A rumble from the audience. Who cares if Craig Venter just announced he’d synthesized arsenic-based life in a test tube. Give us a
Jetsons-
style robot any day!

5:13 PM
Branch continues, “Let’s say I’m in the mood for some popcorn. I say, ‘Samantha!’ ” The robot lights up. “We named her Samantha after the character on
Bewitched
.” Laughter. “Samantha, please bring me some popcorn.” You have to see this guy Branch. He’s very sweet and unassuming—wearing jeans, T-shirt, and no shoes. He looks like he just rolled out of bed.

5:14 PM
Samantha glides to the microwave, opens the door, and removes a bag of popcorn. Branch: “We had to pre-pop that, like one of the cooking shows.” The robot rolls to Branch and hands him a bag of popcorn. Applause. Branch: “Thank you, Samantha.” Robot replies, “You’re welcome.” Laughter. Branch: “It’s cute, basic, voice-activated technology.”

5:17 PM
A voice from the front row says, “Can I have some of that?” It’s David Pogue. Branch: “Okay, ask her.” Pogue: “Samantha, bring me some popcorn.” The robot doesn’t move. Branch: “Say please.” Pogue: “Come on!” Laughter. Branch: “I’m serious. My daughter was eight when I was working on Samantha and she accused me of being a bully. So I programmed it in. Please. It’s literally the magic word.” Pogue: “Samantha, bring me some popcorn…
please?
” Hilarity ensuing! The robot rolls to the edge of the stage and reaches out, but drops the bag of popcorn before Pogue can grab it. It spills all over the stage.

5:19 PM
Branch: “It’s Microsoft. We had some bugs.” A thunderclap of laughter from the audience. Branch looks offended. “It wasn’t that funny.”

5:21 PM
Branch: “We taught Samantha five hundred commands. We could have taught her five hundred more, but what kept holding us back was her thousands of moving parts. She lacked marketplace agility and was too expensive to scale up. Eventually, the Samantha project was canceled.” Everyone in the audience goes
awww
. Branch: “What are you people? A bunch of geeks?” Instant TED classic!

5:23 PM
A guy meanders onto the stage carrying a new clicker. Halfway across, he stops and hitches up his pants. Branch: “Take your time.” Huge laughter.

5:24 PM
Branch: “So Samantha was canceled. But then I remembered those monkeys at Duke. And I thought, Hmmm, the complicating factor in creating a personal robot is the robot itself. Maybe we could just
lose the robot
.”

5:25 PM
Branch’s clicker finally works, so he starts the slideshow. First image is monkeys with wires coming out of their heads. Audience gasps, some scream. Branch: “Sorry, sorry!” Branch turns off slideshow.

5:26 PM
Branch: “According to Moore’s law, the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated surface doubles every two years. So in twenty years’ time, what once was that horrible image… became this…” He clicks through to a slide showing a person’s shaved head with what looks like a computer chip under the skin.

5:26 PM
Branch: “Which became this…” He holds up a football helmet with a Seahawks sticker on it. On the inside are electrodes with wires coming out. “You could just put it on and nothing had to be wired into your brain.”

5:27 PM
Branch puts down the helmet and reaches into his pocket. “Which became this.” He holds up something that looks like a Band-Aid. “TEDsters, meet Samantha 2.”

5:27 PM
Branch sticks the Band-Aid on his forehead, just under his hairline. He sits down in the La-Z-Boy. Branch: “I’m going to throw in something real-time for the skeptics.” He pulls the lever and the chair reclines.

5:29 PM
Weird sound. A vacuum has started up! It’s moving on its own, coming over and vacuuming up popcorn. Branch is lying down with his eyes open, concentrating on the popcorn. Vacuum turns off. Branch turns to face the TV.

5:31 PM
TV turns on by itself. Channels changing. It stops at a Lakers game.

5:31 PM
Big screen changes to Outlook. A blank email opens. The cursor goes to the TO: field. It’s writing on its own! BERNADETTE. The cursor jumps to the message field: TED TALK WENT WELL. CLICKER DIDN’T WORK. TOO BAD NOBODY HERE KNOWS POWERPOINT. DAVID POGUE IS KIND OF UNCOORDINATED. P.S.: LAKERS LEADING BY 3 AT THE HALF.

The place is on its feet. What can best be described as a roar is coming from the audience. Branch gets up and pulls the “Band-Aid” off his forehead and holds it up.

5:32 PM
Branch: “In March, we ship Samantha 2 to Walter Reed hospital. Go to the Microsoft website today and watch a video of paralyzed veterans using Samantha 2 to cook for themselves in a smart kitchen, watch TV, work on a computer, even care for a pet. At Samantha 2, our goal is to help our wounded veterans live independent and productive lives. The possibilities are endless. Thank you.”

The audience goes ape-shit. Chris has taken the stage and is hugging Branch. Nobody can believe what they just saw.

*

Voilà. There it is, Samantha 2.

*

*