The Race For New Fuels

with Frances Arnold, Founder, Gevo, Inc.

Fuel, fuel, fuel. Our world runs on it, and today's fuels are awfully dirty. We're in a race now to replace them - those from coal and gasoline - with clean, advanced biofuels and other renewable energy sources. Frances Arnold has been at the forefront of that race, leading a team at Caltech that specializes in synthetic biology - the reprogramming of bacteria DNA to create new 'super-bacteria' that eat organic materials like grass and trees, and convert them to biofuel. She has launched several cutting-edge start-up companies over the past decade, and her most recent one, Gevo, just received a high-profile investment from Virgin Fuels (Richard Branson), and Khosla Ventures (Vinod Khosla). Join us for a presentation on how reprogrammed bacteria are going to change your world.


Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 - 7:30PM  
Location TBD

The Future of Consumerism

with Benjamin Barber, author of the new book Consumed

Barber's apt sequel to his best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed, offers a vivid portrait of a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers - and where the primary goal is no longer to manufacture goods but needs. Kidults, rejuveniles, twixters, adultescents - these pop neologisms signal more than just a passing trend; they point to a new culture of consumerism that encourages adults to remain as infantile as possible, at the same time that it trains children to consume from an ever younger age.

Disturbing, provocative, and compelling, Consumed examines phenomena as seemingly disparate as adolescent fashion trends for adults, megachurches, declining voter participation, the privatization of the public sphere, branding, and the new twenty-four-hour shopper to show how the freedoms of the free market have undermined the freedoms of the deliberative adult citizen. Barber asserts that in place of the Protestant ethnic once associated with capitalism - encouraging self-restraint, preparation for the future, protection of and self-sacrifice for children and community, and other characteristics of adulthood - we are constantly being seduced into an "infantilist" ethic of consumption. With brilliance and depth, Barbar confronts the likely consequences for our children, our liberty, and our citizenship, and shows finally how citizens can resist and overcome the "civic schizophrenia" in which our impulses as consumers are forever in conflict with our convictions as citizens.

(TBD)
The Home of Screenwriter/Producer Mike Werb
West Hollywood