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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2010 Looking to the future with smarts, money BY MARCUSWOHLSEN
san francisco — In the movie “The SocialNetwork,” the charac- ter of Peter Thiel is played as a slick Master of the Universe, a techindustryking andkingmaker with the savvy to see that a $500,000investment inFacebook couldmintmillions later. Reality is a littlemore rumpled. On a recent December night,
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Thiel walked, slightly stooped, across a San Francisco stage to make a pitch to an invitation-only audience of Silicon Valley lumi- naries—investors andinnovators who had scored sometimes huge fortunes through a mix of skill, vision and risk-taking. The billionaire PayPal co-
founder didn’t tell themabout the next big startup.Hewanted them to buy into a bigger idea: the future. A future when computers will
communicate directly with the human brain. Seafaring pioneers will found newfloating nations in the middle of the ocean. Science will conquer aging, and deathwill become a curable disease. Ifanythingcantransformthese
wild dreams into plausible reali- ties, he believes it is the entrepre- neurs of Silicon Valley — the minds and money that have con- jured the technological marvels thathavealreadyalteredeveryday life. “Dowe try to pursue ideas that
are weird and have optimism about the future, or dowe give up on all new things and compro- mise?” he asked.
A breakthrough Sitting before him in the audi-
ence were, among others, Face- book co-founder Dustin Mosko- vitz,Yelpco-founder andCEOJer- emy Stoppelman and technology publishing guru TimO’Reilly. As venture capital in Silicon
Valley chases the next big mobile app or group discount service, Thielwas asking for themto fund technological breakthroughs that some believe in fervently and oth- ers see as sheer fantasy. He even has a name for it:
Breakthrough philanthropy. Insteadof justgivingtohelpthe
less fortunate here and now, Thiel said, his fellowmoguls should put their money toward seemingly far-fetched ventures that he be- lieves could improve the lives of everyone for good. Gathered on the stage were eight groups that Thiel thinks are
on the right path. One was the Singularity Insti-
tute, whose members believe in the near-inevitability of the arriv- alwithin the next century of com- puters smarter than the humans who created them. The institute works to ensure
that self-programming machines will createaworldthat looksmore like “Star Trek,” less like “The Terminator.” Anotherwas the SENS Founda-
tion, a group of biomedical re- searchers seekingapathtoradical lifeextensionbasedonthecontro- versial aging theoriesof computer scientist-turned-gerontologist Aubrey deGrey. And the Seasteading Institute,
led by Patri Friedman, the grand- son of famed economist Milton Friedman. It looks to establish distant ocean colonies to serve as laboratories for experimenting with newforms of government or “startup countries.” “As innovators, you are the best
at finding and nurturing the right big ideas that can change the world,” Friedman told the audi- ence. The history of Silicon Valley is
filled with such ideas. The smart- phone, the Web, the search en- gine, the personal computer itself — those all seemed far-fetched until they became commonplace. To raise money from the
wealthy, flatteryisatime-honored strategy. Witness the names em- blazoned across hospital wings and university buildings. But building important buildings has never seemed to especially inter- est SiliconValley’s elite.
They have “the right kind of
cultural DNA to at the very least pay attention,” said Greg Biggers, a longtime software executive who recently founded a startup, Genomera, that lets members conducthealthstudiesusingtheir own genetic data. Biggers said Silicon Valley en-
trepreneurs would probably be receptive toThiel’sunconvention- almessage because they succeed- ed by not conforming to others’ expectationsofwhatwaspossible. “This is a roomful of people
whobuckedthesystem,”hesaidas hemingled, glass ofwine in hand.
‘A core idea’ Charles Rubin, a Duquesne
University political science pro- fessor and blogger who has writ- ten critically about some of the movements endorsed by Thiel, said these visions of the future align closely with the Silicon Val- ley outlook. All share theviewthat “scientif-
icknowledge andtechnical capac- ity will continue to increase at an accelerating rate,” Rubin said. “This isacore ideathatpractically defines what Silicon Valley is all about: ceaseless innovation.” Thielhimself seems tothriveon
flouting convention, sometimes in ways that have led to harsh criticism. In September, he announced a
programdesigned to discover the nextMarkZuckerberg,Facebook’s founder, by paying $100,000 each to 20youngpeopleunder 20years old to skip college for two years to learn about entrepreneurship. Jacob Weisberg, editor of the
The most cherished kind of gift
Lt. Landon Jones, 26, is embraced by his mother, Virlena Jones, 55, while being welcomed home by family and friends at Bush Intercontinental Airport inHouston. “It’s always good to be in Texas,” said Jones, returning home from a seven- month deployment with theMarine Corps Batallion Landing Team 14.
MAYRA BELTRAN/HOUSTON CHRONICLE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
onlinemagazine Slate, excoriated Thiel for theprogramandwhathe sees as its underlying impetus. “Thiel’s philosophy demands
attentionnotbecause it is original or interesting in any way — it’s puerile libertarianism, infused with futurist fantasy — but be- cause it epitomizes an ugly side of Silicon Valley’s politics,”Weisberg wrote. Thiel is not a traditional con-
servative — he has donated to Republican candidates but also to California’s marijuana-legaliza- tion ballot measure. But he does seem to believe in a trickle-down theory of technology. Unlike the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, which has poured billions into providing ba- sic health care for some of the world’s most impoverished peo- ple, Thiel said he wants to priori- tize major scientific advances he thinks will spread to benefit hu- manity as awhole. His faithappears groundedina
pervasiveSiliconValleybelief that motivates gifted individuals to achieve on a grand scale, nomat- ter the apparent hurdles—death included. But even Thiel admitted he has
noideahowlongthat lastobstacle will take to overcome. “Iwouldlike to say that Iwould
still bedoing this evenif I thought therewasnochance Iwouldbene- fit fromthis inanyway,” he said in an interview. “I think we have to work on these things even if they take centuries.”
—Associated Press
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