Welcome back to Day 2 at Pop!Tech. There won't be nearly as many updates today as I am working on a story for tomorrow's paper.

First up this morning was a discussion on "The Pursuit of Happiness," something we know I would all define as "chasing bacon."

What's important to understand about Pop!Tech - and granted, I'm figuring it out on the fly - is that the sessions/workshops are kind of like an umbrella or tent.

In this case, "The Pursuit of Happiness," wasn't some sort of "channel your ultimate power" self-help primer with motivational speakers.

Instead, it was Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor, Carl Honoré, an author who has invested in the "slow movement," and artist Jonathan Harris.

So it's a little bit like a old joke - "a professor, author and artist walk into a bar..."

Gilbert, who has written about happiness and the brain, instead talked about how we process threats or danger. In this case, why does your brains spark to action when a baseball is hurtling towards you, or you hear a gun shot, but you don't see global warming as a threat?

Gilbert had an interesting opportunity last year to make a statement ... on a Starbucks coffee cup as part of a promotion. Here's what he said:
"The human brain is the only object in the know universe that can predict its own future and tell its own fortune. The fact that we can make decisions and even as we foresee their disastrous consequences is the great unsolved mystery of human behavior. When you hold your fate in your hands, why would you ever make a fist?"

The way the brain works, Gilbert says, is that we perceive immediate threats easier than future threats. This is largely due to the visceral reactions we have to things. For example, someone getting hit by a car is bad because of the ways it makes us feel and because it is immediate.

The joke he made was, "If climate change was caused by gay sex or eating puppies, Americans would be massing in the streets" asking the government to do something about it.

The problem with trying to make global warming a threat is that it's pervasive and causes gradual change, he said. What makes it dangerous is that it does not set off the brain's alarms, he said.

"It leaves us sleeping in a burning bed," he said.

Honoré, who wrote, "In Praise of Slowness," says we all need to take it down a notch. If you think about where society is going, in technology, business, education and our daily lives - the goal is to speed everything up.

Speed dial. Speed reading. Speed walking. Speed dating.

"Collectively we have forgotten to unplug," he said.

It may sound a little new agey, but think about it. Food is fast, we eat it fast - often in front of the TV or at our desks (guilty), and if everything we're doing is at high speed, the only time you stop is when things go bad - like getting sick, getting canned from work, or getting dead.

The idea of stopping to smell the roses, as cliché as it sounds, lets you stop and appreciate your relationships, do better work and stay healthy, he said.

Finally, Harris, spoke about storytelling, which all comes down to conveying how we live our lives.

Check out his Web site, which shows recent photo projects he's worked on. It's not a typical photo essay, as he breaks down stories to their bare essentials. What he shows is that often there are various threads and themes throughout a single story.

Harris, also, as I found out, is the guy behind "we feel fine," which you may remember showed up in The Scanner a few weeks back.

As always, remember if you're curious you can get a live window into what's going on here at Pop!Tech on the videostream.

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