Pop!Tech: Living Dangerously by Bubbling up...

Danger is mindblowing. Not just in that it is at the route of creativity, as well as potential destruction, but it is at the interface of human existence and consciousness in a manner which paradoxically enables us to compose a view of our significance, and our insignificance, in a universal context.

Brian Eno, the creative musician, artist and innovator from Oxfordshire (U.K.) paired with genius SimCity games creator Will Wright were the one-two punch that launched Pop!Tech with a bang in an opening session described as "Emergence".

Eno said we are only begining to comprehend the meaning of Charles Darwin's insights - including that we are not necessarily 'on the top of the pyramid' and humans are not therefore a privileged species among 100 million species in a universe of 100 trillion stars.

Culture has become, however, the way in which humans express and understand ourselves, as religion has done in the past.

"Artists are in the position of creating something and then surrendering to it," Eno said, noting how artists need to reach a state of release to free their works - to the world and out of their control.

Eno spoke with a backdrop of his projected work "77 Million paintings" in which a few hundred images morph in that many millions of possible permuations.

Wright enthralled the audience with a demonstration of the fantastic new gaming environment, Spore, which enables people to create worlds starting with new species, one of which he created in about 20 mouseclicks, and then go out into the universe exploring and meeting creatures created by others.

Wright notes games producers are increasingly building a model of game players, not just allowing players to delve into their own models of games, turning the tables a bit on the classic view of man and machine - so that games can adapt to embrace a user, rather than a user having to struggle with a "mechanical" machine.