The Birth of Bohemian Technologists

In 1862 the artist Paul Cezanne sat on the stairs of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in confusion and despair as he read the results of his entrance exam. This man, who many artists and art historians consider the founder of modern art, had just failed his entrance exam to the school, which at the time was considered the only secure way in France of achieving a career as a painter. He certainly didn’t fail because he wasn’t good enough, but because he was too different. Without that diploma a painter became an independent, living a bohemian life of struggle. With a diploma from The Beaux-Art he could gain a patron upon graduation, and live a comfortable life as a painter. There were several things in Cezanne’s favor though, which could have cheered him up that day. Firstly he had been practicing art in a small atelier in Monmartre with three other artists who were also not educated at the Beaux Arts, but who shared a desire to learn, while at the same time break with convention in order to represent the world around them in a unique way. These artists were Monet, Renoir and the mentor figure to them all Camille Pissarro, who at the age of 34 was older and in some ways wiser than the rest. Pissarro had traveled, experienced poverty, but had also experienced that wonderful sense of freedom that comes with having a work of art recognized and appreciated as being of an original vision. Together, and with other similar groups in music and theatre, the art world in Paris was transformed from one which required a formal diploma, to one in which training involved periods of apprenticeship, self-education, friendship of peers and a society that was beginning, like the artist, to see things differently.

Last year I was asked to be a mentor for the Thiel 20 under 20 program, which the entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel started with a group of highly interesting and intelligent people to challenge the common wisdom of today. This wisdom is not initially about being an artist, but about something we hold as much more obvious, which is the need for engineers and scientists to receive degrees. I admire Peter, and was honored to be asked to be a mentor, but more than anything, I was surprised. I am an entrepreneur, and have been since I was a teenager having started a DJ company, then producing plays and movies, musical events and finally tech companies. That was a long time ago though for many of those efforts, and most people, including myself had forgotten that. By the time I was approached by the Thiel Foundation I had a Ph.D. myself for many years, and was not only a CEO of start-up, but also a Research Professor at Columbia University, one of the oldest Ivy League establishment universities in the country. I had become in some ways the scientific equivalent of the Beaux-Art teacher rather than the bohemian. That is until I thought about it more.  In reality my peers were not just professors, but were hackers, makers and designers with only the smallest amount of formal education. I loved being comfortable in both environments, but was at my best sketching out an idea over coffee, and that wasn’t always at the university. It was often at Starbucks, or on trains and planes. It was sometime in lobbies waiting to pitch a VC who no doubt wouldn’t see my sketch in the same way I would. I worked a lot with my Dad, and still do. He is college educated with a degree in mathmatics, but as he would admit, trained not at school but on the job of building technology companies.

 It was when I accepted to be a mentor that I also accepted that employment as an engineer, scientist and entrepreneur is much like the employment of the impressionists. It was that new realization that not only made me think of the Thiel Foundation and universities differently, but about the possibility of a creative revolution in science and engineering that may now be just starting to occur.

As any of you who have read my writing before know, I am a serious guy about science, and not so impressed with the latest app or social network, no matter how cool it is. That is because it is just cool. Instead I am more interested in enabling major technological changes, which are indeed cool, but also lead to life extension and better health care, better and more reliable power, space travel, efficient urbanization, complimentary Artificial Intelligence and contemporary scalable manufacturing which doesn’t exploit workers but rather challenges and engages them. I have been impressed with the early DIY movements in biology and 3-D printing which I am many others have already written about.The reason though that I talk about 20 under 20, is that I think that the world needs a real, physical atelier of young innovators, who are too impatient to go through the system, but instead want to reach out and try things. This program does this. This is also what I want to accomplish at Nanotronics, the  imaging company that I started (with my Dad by the way). I want to mix Ph.D.s, and seasoned engineers without advanced degrees with creative 19 year olds, knowing that it is likely that the 19 year old will teach the elder doctor as much as the reverse. I also want, as Peter does, to put people together as a group to face this new challenge of not having a guaranteed patron, the way that Pissarro, and others put artists together in 19^th Century France.

The artists I mentioned here were responsible for a lot that we consider important and modern in art. They reduced the reliance on line and traditional perspective. They blurred backgrounds. They used contemporary knowledge of optics to force the viewer to blend colors, creating a complete experience that was different than before. They did this because the Beaux Art didn’t welcome that style, and because they wanted to make a living immediately. Many also didn’t have the resources to wait. Our university system can be much the same. It is expensive and takes a long time to for a student to graduate. This is not to say that I don’t love traditional research and even teaching at a university. I do, and grow from it as I hope my students do as well. It is also terrific and where basic research is done. I also have this feeling however that the impressionists of our time, and the bohemians have the intellectual abilty to innovate in big and important ways don’t have to be from the University. I think that like the advancement of color theory in the 19h century, knowledge of scientific advancements is available to anyone. There are two things that those artists had though that is still rare, that anyone not going through the system must also have. That is a great talent, and a great deal of courage.

Perhaps when we look back at this period in technological innovation Peter Thiel will not be remembered as a founder of Pay Pal or the first investor in Facebook. Instead he will be remembered the way Pissarro is remembered in art.; as an enabler of change.