Presencing: Mapping our World in 2030

Corbett | March 14, 2008 9:19 PM

Today was my first time to Three on the Bund. I wanted to get a chance to hear the famous economist Jeffrey Sachs, the controversial President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, and two other distinguished panelists from Columbia University's International Advisory Committee discuss the topic "Presencing: Mapping Our World in 2030."

You don't normally get to see people at this level speak at all, and today it was for free - in Shanghai. I sat right in the front row next to an important Turkish businessman and Dean of some department (I'm sorry, I didn't ask). There were about 80 smart looking people in a stylish white curtained room, with lots of attractive young women in black walking around who I think were staff. Either way, it was a kind of culture shock from the construction and spitting and normal Shanghai street life just one floor below.

Jeffery Sachs sure can express ideas clearly. They kept plugging his latest book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, which I went to the reception counter (again - attractive young women in black) to try to buy. No one knew what I was talking about.

Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.

Peter Jungen, the Chairman of the European Enterprise Institute said some very interesting things, and you could kind of feel the Chinese in the room fluster when he said that the rise of capitalism was making the world a better place for it's inhabitants. If that were on CNN they'd have blacked it out for sure.

Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.

Later in the evening, I took Brock out to hear some music at the bar at Jean Georges, where I had my first cocktail with cumin in it called The Fez, and we ran into Peter, so we bought him a drink and had a nice chat about capitalism, Marx, Chinese entrepreneurs, his investments, and attractive young women in black.

Category: Ramble

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