I gave a talk on Friday evening at the Pacific Asia Art Museum on “Buddhist Geeks: Uniting Technology and Wisdom.” The talk was a broad look at the way that the development of global Buddhism and the exponential growth of information technology (particularly through the development of the personal computer and internet) are converging, and what they have to offer one another.
The talk was part of the museum’s Active Cultures series, where they mash-up two speakers, first having each of them present—the person I co-presented with spoke about the development of modern music in Indonesia—and then after having the presenters in dialogue with the audience. The audience asked some very geeky questions, and they were really interested in seeing the relationship between our seemingly disparate topics.
It was a really fun event, and my talk went well, especially after realizing that the original talk I prepared was two times too long! I was able to whittle it down to 30 minutes, and was grateful for having practiced beforehand.
Having a chance to check out their asian gallery was also pretty cool. We saw some kick ass pieces there, including this gorgeous yab-yum statue and a funky Vietnamese Buddha (who is holding a mudra that is similar to one I’ve seen in a Shingon practice I did for a short time). If you’re ever in Pasadena I’d highly recommend checking it out.
I’m going to be giving the talk again after Thanksgiving at InsightLA and am planning on recording that one, so that I can perhaps sync the recorded talk with the slide presentation and put that out on video.
UPDATE: I was able to create a synced video recording of the talk given at InsightLA, which is embedded above.
