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What is retro-futurism?

Bruce McCall

{0: 'Bruce McCall'}

{0: ['humorist']}

{0: 'Illustrator and humorist Bruce McCall paints our imagined future -- a supercharged, streamlined fantasyland that teeters on the edge of hysteria. '}

2008-05-12

2009-03-19

Serious Play 2008

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'entertainment', 'humor', 'media', 'Best of the Web']

{1410: 'Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.', 1471: 'Design, explained.', 435: 'Great design is serious, not solemn', 436: 'Design and discovery', 182: 'The illustrated woman', 510: 'A theory of everything'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_mccall_what_is_retro_futurism/

Bruce McCall paints a retro-future that never happened -- full of flying cars, polo-playing tanks and the RMS Tyrannic, "The Biggest Thing in All the World." At Serious Play '08, he narrates a brisk and funny slideshow of his faux-nostalgic art.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. I was born in a Scots Presbyterian ghetto in Canada, and dropped out of high school. I don't own a cell phone, and I paint on paper using gouache, which hasn't changed in 600 years. But about three years ago I had an art show in New York, and I titled it "Serious Nonsense." So I think I'm actually the first one here — I lead. I called it "Serious Nonsense" because on the serious side, I use a technique of painstaking realism of editorial illustration from when I was a kid. I copied it and I never unlearned it — it's the only style I know. And it's very kind of staid and formal. And meanwhile, I use nonsense, as you can see. This is a Scottish castle where people are playing golf indoors, and the trick was to bang the golf ball off of suits of armor — which you can't see there. This was one of a series called "Zany Afternoons," which became a book. This is a home-built rocket-propelled car. That's a 1953 Henry J — I'm a bug for authenticity — in a quiet neighborhood in Toledo. This is my submission for the L.A. Museum of Film. You can probably tell Frank Gehry and I come from the same town. My work is so personal and so strange that I have to invent my own lexicon for it. And I work a lot in what I call "retrofuturism," which is looking back to see how yesterday viewed tomorrow. And they're always wrong, always hilariously, optimistically wrong. And the peak time for that was the 30s, because the Depression was so dismal that anything to get away from the present into the future ... and technology was going to carry us along. This is Popular Workbench. Popular science magazines in those days — I had a huge collection of them from the '30s — all they are is just poor people being asked to make sunglasses out of wire coat hangers and everything improvised and dreaming about these wonderful giant radio robots playing ice hockey at 300 miles an hour — it's all going to happen, it's all going to be wonderful. Automotive retrofuturism is one of my specialties. I was both an automobile illustrator and an advertising automobile copywriter, so I have a lot of revenge to take on the subject. Detroit has always been halfway into the future — the advertising half. This is the '58 Bulgemobile: so new, they make tomorrow look like yesterday. This is a chain gang of guys admiring the car. That's from a whole catalog — it's 18 pages or so — ran back in the days of the Lampoon, where I cut my teeth. Techno-archaeology is digging back and finding past miracles that never happened — for good reason, usually. The zeppelin — this was from a brochure about the zeppelin based, obviously, on the Hindenburg. But the zeppelin was the biggest thing that ever moved made by man. And it carried 56 people at the speed of a Buick at an altitude you could hear dogs bark, and it cost twice as much as a first-class cabin on the Normandie to fly it. So the Hindenburg wasn't, you know, it was inevitable it was going to go. This is auto-gyro jousting in Malibu in the 30s. The auto-gyro couldn't wait for the invention of the helicopter, but it should have — it wasn't a big success. It's the only Spanish innovation, technologically, of the 20th century, by the way. You needed to know that. The flying car which never got off the ground — it was a post-war dream. My old man used to tell me we were going to get a flying car. This is pitched into the future from 1946, looking at the day all American families have them. "There's Moscow, Shirley. Hope they speak Esperanto!" Faux-nostalgia, which I'm sort of — not, say, famous for, but I work an awful lot in it. It's the achingly sentimental yearning for times that never happened. Somebody once said that nostalgia is the one utterly most useless human emotion — so I think that’s a case for serious play. This is emblematic of it — this is wing dining, recalling those balmy summer days somewhere over France in the 20s, dining on the wing of a plane. You can't see it very well here, but that's Hemingway reading some pages from his new novel to Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford until the slipstream blows him away. This is tank polo in the South Hamptons. The brainless rich are more fun to make fun of than anybody. I do a lot of that. And authenticity is a major part of my serious nonsense. I think it adds a huge amount. Those, for example, are Mark IV British tanks from 1916. They had two machine guns and a cannon, and they had 90 horsepower Ricardo engines. They went five miles an hour and inside it was 105 degrees in the pitch dark. And they had a canary hung inside the thing to make sure the Germans weren't going to use gas. Happy little story, isn't it? This is Motor Ritz Towers in Manhattan in the 30s, where you drove up to your front door, if you had the guts. Anybody who was anybody had an apartment there. I managed to stick in both the zeppelin and an ocean liner out of sheer enthusiasm. And I love cigars — there's a cigar billboard down there. And faux-nostalgia works even in serious subjects like war. This is those wonderful days of the Battle of Britain in 1940, when a Messerschmitt ME109 bursts into the House of Commons and buzzes around, just to piss off Churchill, who's down there somewhere. It's a fond memory of times past. Hyperbolic overkill is a way of taking exaggeration to the absolute ultimate limit, just for the fun of it. This was a piece I did — a brochure again — "RMS Tyrannic: The Biggest Thing in All the World." The copy, which you can't see because it goes on and on for several pages, says that steerage passengers can't get their to bunks before the voyage is over, and it's so safe it carries no insurance. It's obviously modeled on the Titanic. But it's not a cri de coeur about man's hubris in the face of the elements. It's just a sick, silly joke. Shamelessly cheap is something, I think — this will wake you up. It has no meaning, just — Desoto discovers the Mississippi, and it's a Desoto discovering the Mississippi. I did that as a quick back page — I had like four hours to do a back page for an issue of the Lampoon, and I did that, and I thought, "Well, I'm ashamed. I hope nobody knows it." People wrote in for reprints of that thing. Urban absurdism — that's what the New Yorker really calls for. I try to make life in New York look even weirder than it is with those covers. I've done about 40 of them, and I'd say 30 of them are based on that concept. I was driving down 7th Avenue one night at 3 a.m., and this steam pouring out of the street, and I thought, "What causes that?" And that — who’s to say? The Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan in New York — it's a very somber place. I thought I could jazz it up a bit, have a little fun with it. This is a very un-PC cover. Not in New York. I couldn't resist, and I got a nasty email from some environmental group saying, "This is too serious and solemn to make fun of. You should be ashamed, please apologize on our website." Haven't got around to it yet but — I may. This is the word side of my brain. (Laughter) I love the word "Eurotrash." (Laughter) That's all the Eurotrash coming through JFK customs. This was the New York bike messenger meeting the Tour de France. If you live in New York, you know how the bike messengers move. Except that he's carrying a tube for blueprints and stuff — they all do — and a lot of people thought that meant it was a terrorist about to shoot rockets at the Tour de France — sign of our times, I guess. This is the only fashion cover I've ever done. It's the little old lady that lives in a shoe, and then this thing — the title of that was, "There Goes the Neighborhood." I don't know a hell of a lot about fashion — I was told to do what they call a Mary Jane, and then I got into this terrible fight between the art director and the editor saying: "Put a strap on it" — "No, don't put a strap on it" — "Put a strap on it — "Don't put a strap on it" — because it obscures the logo and looks terrible and it's bad and — I finally chickened out and did it for the sake of the authenticity of the shoe. This is a tiny joke — E-ZR pass. One letter makes an idea. This is a big joke. This is the audition for "King Kong." (Laughter) People always ask me, where do you get your ideas, how do your ideas come? Truth about that one is I had a horrible red wine hangover, in the middle of the night, this came to me like a Xerox — all I had to do was write it down. It was perfectly clear. I didn't do any thinking about it. And then when it ran, a lovely lady, an old lady named Mrs. Edgar Rosenberg — if you know that name — called me and said she loved the cover, it was so sweet. Her former name was Fay Wray, and so that was — I didn't have the wit to say, "Take the painting." Finally, this was a three-page cover, never done before, and I don't think it will ever be done again — successive pages in the front of the magazine. It's the ascent of man using an escalator, and it's in three parts. You can't see it all together, unfortunately, but if you look at it enough, you can sort of start to see how it actually starts to move. (Applause) Pretty elegant. Nothing like a crash to end a joke. That completes my oeuvre. I would just like to add a crass commercial — I have a kids' book coming out in the fall called "Marvel Sandwiches," a compendium of all the serious play that ever was, and it’s going to be available in fine bookstores, crummy bookstores, tables on the street in October. So thank you very much.

How to grow fresh air

Kamal Meattle

{0: 'Kamal Meattle'}

{0: ['business owner and activist']}

{0: "With its air-filtering plants and sustainable architecture, Kamal Meattle's office park in New Delhi is a model of green business. Meattle himself is a longtime activist for cleaning up India's air."}

2009-02-05

2009-03-20

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'mn', 'ms', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'ur', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['architecture', 'cities', 'environment', 'garden', 'science', 'technology', 'plants']

{104: 'Cradle to cradle design', 74: 'The route to a sustainable future', 18: "Biomimicry's surprising lessons from nature's engineers", 556: "Why we're storing billions of seeds", 2127: 'Humble plants that hide surprising secrets', 976: 'The roots of plant intelligence'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_how_to_grow_fresh_air/

Researcher Kamal Meattle shows how an arrangement of three common houseplants, used in specific spots in a home or office building, can result in measurably cleaner indoor air.

Some 17 years ago, I became allergic to Delhi's air. My doctors told me that my lung capacity had gone down to 70 percent, and it was killing me. With the help of IIT, TERI, and learnings from NASA, we discovered that there are three basic green plants, common green plants, with which we can grow all the fresh air we need indoors to keep us healthy. We've also found that you can reduce the fresh air requirements into the building, while maintaining industry indoor air-quality standards. The three plants are Areca palm, Mother-in-Law's Tongue and money plant. The botanical names are in front of you. Areca palm is a plant which removes CO2 and converts it into oxygen. We need four shoulder-high plants per person, and in terms of plant care, we need to wipe the leaves every day in Delhi, and perhaps once a week in cleaner-air cities. We had to grow them in vermi manure, which is sterile, or hydroponics, and take them outdoors every three to four months. The second plant is Mother-in-law's Tongue, which is again a very common plant, and we call it a bedroom plant, because it converts CO2 into oxygen at night. And we need six to eight waist-high plants per person. The third plant is money plant, and this is again a very common plant; preferably grows in hydroponics. And this particular plant removes formaldehydes and other volatile chemicals. With these three plants, you can grow all the fresh air you need. In fact, you could be in a bottle with a cap on top, and you would not die at all, and you would not need any fresh air. We have tried these plants at our own building in Delhi, which is a 50,000-square-feet, 20-year-old building. And it has close to 1,200 such plants for 300 occupants. Our studies have found that there is a 42 percent probability of one's blood oxygen going up by one percent if one stays indoors in this building for 10 hours. The government of India has discovered or published a study to show that this is the healthiest building in New Delhi. And the study showed that, compared to other buildings, there is a reduced incidence of eye irritation by 52 percent, respiratory systems by 34 percent, headaches by 24 percent, lung impairment by 12 percent and asthma by nine percent. And this study has been published on September 8, 2008, and it's available on the government of India website. Our experience points to an amazing increase in human productivity by over 20 percent by using these plants. And also a reduction in energy requirements in buildings by an outstanding 15 percent, because you need less fresh air. We are now replicating this in a 1.75-million-square-feet building, which will have 60,000 indoor plants. Why is this important? It is also important for the environment, because the world's energy requirements are expected to grow by 30 percent in the next decade. 40 percent of the world's energy is taken up by buildings currently, and 60 percent of the world's population will be living in buildings in cities with a population of over one million in the next 15 years. And there is a growing preference for living and working in air-conditioned places. "Be the change you want to see in the world," said Mahatma Gandhi. And thank you for listening. (Applause)

High-altitude wind energy from kites!

Saul Griffith

{0: 'Saul Griffith'}

{0: ['inventor']}

{0: 'Inventor Saul Griffith looks for elegant ways to make real things, from low-cost eyeglasses to a kite that tows boats. His latest projects include open-source inventions and elegant new ways to generate power.'}

2009-02-06

2009-03-23

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['alternative energy', 'energy', 'engineering', 'environment', 'future', 'wind energy']

{176: 'A flight on solar wings', 51: 'Winning the oil endgame', 193: 'Using biology to rethink the energy challenge', 723: 'My solar-powered adventure', 379: 'Nature vs. humans', 1260: 'A plane you can drive'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/saul_griffith_high_altitude_wind_energy_from_kites/

In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy.

If you're at all like me, this is what you do with the sunny summer weekends in San Francisco: you build experimental kite-powered hydrofoils capable of more than 30 knots. And you realize that there is incredible power in the wind, and it can do amazing things. And one day, a vessel not unlike this will probably break the world speed record. But kites aren't just toys like this. Kites: I'm going to give you a brief history, and tell you about the magnificent future of every child's favorite plaything. So, kites are more than a thousand years old, and the Chinese used them for military applications, and even for lifting men. So they knew at that stage they could carry large weights. I'm not sure why there is a hole in this particular man. (Laughter) In 1827, a fellow called George Pocock actually pioneered the use of kites for towing buggies in races against horse carriages across the English countryside. Then of course, at the dawn of aviation, all of the great inventors of the time — like Hargreaves, like Langley, even Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, who was flying this kite — were doing so in the pursuit of aviation. Then these two fellows came along, and they were flying kites to develop the control systems that would ultimately enable powered human flight. So this is of course Orville and Wilbur Wright, and the Wright Flyer. And their experiments with kites led to this momentous occasion, where we powered up and took off for the first-ever 12-second human flight. And that was fantastic for the future of commercial aviation. But unfortunately, it relegated kites once again to be considered children's toys. That was until the 1970s, where we had the last energy crisis. And a fabulous man called Miles Loyd who lives on the outskirts of San Francisco, wrote this seminal paper that was completely ignored in the Journal of Energy about how to use basically an airplane on a piece of string to generate enormous amounts of electricity. The real key observation he made is that a free-flying wing can sweep through more sky and generate more power in a unit of time than a fixed-wing turbine. So turbines grew. And they can now span up to three hundred feet at the hub height, but they can't really go a lot higher, and more height is where the more wind is, and more power — as much as twice as much. So cut to now. We still have an energy crisis, and now we have a climate crisis as well. You know, so humans generate about 12 trillion watts, or 12 terawatts, from fossil fuels. And Al Gore has spoken to why we need to hit one of these targets, and in reality what that means is in the next 30 to 40 years, we have to make 10 trillion watts or more of new clean energy somehow. Wind is the second-largest renewable resource after solar: 3600 terawatts, more than enough to supply humanity 200 times over. The majority of it is in the higher altitudes, above 300 feet, where we don't have a technology as yet to get there. So this is the dawn of the new age of kites. This is our test site on Maui, flying across the sky. I'm now going to show you the first autonomous generation of power by every child's favorite plaything. As you can tell, you need to be a robot to fly this thing for thousands of hours. It makes you a little nauseous. And here we're actually generating about 10 kilowatts — so, enough to power probably five United States households — with a kite not much larger than this piano. And the real significant thing here is we're developing the control systems, as did the Wright brothers, that would enable sustained, long-duration flight. And it doesn't hurt to do it in a location like this either. So this is the equivalent for a kite flier of peeing in the snow — that's tracing your name in the sky. And this is where we're actually going. So we're beyond the 12-second steps. And we're working towards megawatt-scale machines that fly at 2000 feet and generate tons of clean electricity. So you ask, how big are those machines? Well, this paper plane would be maybe a — oop! That would be enough to power your cell phone. Your Cessna would be 230 killowatts. If you'd loan me your Gulfstream, I'll rip its wings off and generate you a megawatt. If you give me a 747, I'll make six megawatts, which is more than the largest wind turbines today. And the Spruce Goose would be a 15-megawatt wing. So that is audacious, you say. I agree. But audacious is what has happened many times before in history. This is a refrigerator factory, churning out airplanes for World War II. Prior to World War II, they were making 1000 planes a year. By 1945, they were making 100,000. With this factory and 100,000 planes a year, we could make all of America's electricity in about 10 years. So really this is a story about the audacious plans of young people with these dreams. There are many of us. I am lucky enough to work with 30 of them. And I think we need to support all of the dreams of the kids out there doing these crazy things. Thank you. (Applause)

An escape from poverty

Jacqueline Novogratz

{0: 'Jacqueline Novogratz'}

{0: ['investor and advocate for moral leadership']}

{0: 'Jacqueline Novogratz works to enable human flourishing. Her organization, Acumen, invests in people, companies and ideas that see capital and networks as means, not ends, to solving the toughest issues of poverty.'}

2009-02-02

2009-03-24

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'bn', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['activism', 'business', 'culture', 'global issues', 'poverty', 'women', 'work']

{157: 'Patient capitalism', 152: 'Aid versus trade', 270: 'The "bottom billion"', 91: "Invest in Africa's own solutions", 1076: 'Inspiring a life of immersion', 970: 'How Mr. Condom made Thailand a better place for life and love'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jacqueline_novogratz_an_escape_from_poverty/

Jacqueline Novogratz tells a moving story of an encounter in a Nairobi slum with Jane, a former prostitute, whose dreams of escaping poverty, of becoming a doctor and of getting married were fulfilled in an unexpected way.

I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean? So often, we look at dollar terms — people making less than a dollar or two or three a day. And yet the complexity of poverty really has to look at income as only one variable. Because really, it's a condition about choice, and the lack of freedom. And I had an experience that really deepened and elucidated for me the understanding that I have. It was in Kenya, and I want to share it with you. I was with my friend Susan Meiselas, the photographer, in the Mathare Valley slums. Now, Mathare Valley is one of the oldest slums in Africa. It's about three miles out of Nairobi, and it's a mile long and about two-tenths of a mile wide, where over half a million people live crammed in these little tin shacks, generation after generation, renting them, often eight or 10 people to a room. And it's known for prostitution, violence, drugs: a hard place to grow up. And when we were walking through the narrow alleys, it was literally impossible not to step in the raw sewage and the garbage alongside the little homes. But at the same time it was also impossible not to see the human vitality, the aspiration and the ambition of the people who live there: women washing their babies, washing their clothes, hanging them out to dry. I met this woman, Mama Rose, who has rented that little tin shack for 32 years, where she lives with her seven children. Four sleep in one twin bed, and three sleep on the mud and linoleum floor. And she keeps them all in school by selling water from that kiosk, and from selling soap and bread from the little store inside. It was also the day after the inauguration, and I was reminded how Mathare is still connected to the globe. And I would see kids on the street corners, and they'd say "Obama, he's our brother!" And I'd say "Well, Obama's my brother, so that makes you my brother too." And they would look quizzically, and then be like, "High five!" And it was here that I met Jane. I was struck immediately by the kindness and the gentleness in her face, and I asked her to tell me her story. She started off by telling me her dream. She said, "I had two. My first dream was to be a doctor, and the second was to marry a good man who would stay with me and my family, because my mother was a single mom, and couldn't afford to pay for school fees. So I had to give up the first dream, and I focused on the second." She got married when she was 18, had a baby right away. And when she turned 20, found herself pregnant with a second child, her mom died and her husband left her — married another woman. So she was again in Mathare, with no income, no skill set, no money. And so she ultimately turned to prostitution. It wasn't organized in the way we often think of it. She would go into the city at night with about 20 girls, look for work, and sometimes come back with a few shillings, or sometimes with nothing. And she said, "You know, the poverty wasn't so bad. It was the humiliation and the embarrassment of it all." In 2001, her life changed. She had a girlfriend who had heard about this organization, Jamii Bora, that would lend money to people no matter how poor you were, as long as you provided a commensurate amount in savings. And so she spent a year to save 50 dollars, and started borrowing, and over time she was able to buy a sewing machine. She started tailoring. And that turned into what she does now, which is to go into the secondhand clothing markets, and for about three dollars and 25 cents she buys an old ball gown. Some of them might be ones you gave. And she repurposes them with frills and ribbons, and makes these frothy confections that she sells to women for their daughter's Sweet 16 or first Holy Communion — those milestones in a life that people want to celebrate all along the economic spectrum. And she does really good business. In fact, I watched her walk through the streets hawking. And before you knew it, there was a crowd of women around her, buying these dresses. And I reflected, as I was watching her sell the dresses, and also the jewelry that she makes, that now Jane makes more than four dollars a day. And by many definitions she is no longer poor. But she still lives in Mathare Valley. And so she can't move out. She lives with all of that insecurity, and in fact, in January, during the ethnic riots, she was chased from her home and had to find a new shack in which she would live. Jamii Bora understands that and understands that when we're talking about poverty, we've got to look at people all along the economic spectrum. And so with patient capital from Acumen and other organizations, loans and investments that will go the long term with them, they built a low-cost housing development, about an hour outside Nairobi central. And they designed it from the perspective of customers like Jane herself, insisting on responsibility and accountability. So she has to give 10 percent of the mortgage — of the total value, or about 400 dollars in savings. And then they match her mortgage to what she paid in rent for her little shanty. And in the next couple of weeks, she's going to be among the first 200 families to move into this development. When I asked her if she feared anything, or whether she would miss anything from Mathare, she said, "What would I fear that I haven't confronted already? I'm HIV positive. I've dealt with it all." And she said, "What would I miss? You think I will miss the violence or the drugs? The lack of privacy? Do you think I'll miss not knowing if my children are going to come home at the end of the day?" She said "If you gave me 10 minutes my bags would be packed." I said, "Well what about your dreams?" And she said, "Well, you know, my dreams don't look exactly like I thought they would when I was a little girl. But if I think about it, I thought I wanted a husband, but what I really wanted was a family that was loving. And I fiercely love my children, and they love me back." She said, "I thought that I wanted to be a doctor, but what I really wanted to be was somebody who served and healed and cured. And so I feel so blessed with everything that I have, that two days a week I go and I counsel HIV patients. And I say, 'Look at me. You are not dead. You are still alive. And if you are still alive you have to serve.'" And she said, "I'm not a doctor who gives out pills. But maybe me, I give out something better because I give them hope." And in the middle of this economic crisis, where so many of us are inclined to pull in with fear, I think we're well suited to take a cue from Jane and reach out, recognizing that being poor doesn't mean being ordinary. Because when systems are broken, like the ones that we're seeing around the world, it's an opportunity for invention and for innovation. It's an opportunity to truly build a world where we can extend services and products to all human beings, so that they can make decisions and choices for themselves. I truly believe it's where dignity starts. We owe it to the Janes of the world. And just as important, we owe it to ourselves. Thank you. (Applause)

Cool tricks your phone can do

David Pogue

{0: 'David Pogue'}

{0: ['technology columnist']}

{0: 'David Pogue is the personal technology columnist for the <em>New York Times</em> and a tech correspondent for CBS News. He\'s also one of the world\'s bestselling how-to authors, with titles in the For Dummies series and his own line of "Missing Manual" books. '}

2008-12-12

2009-03-25

EG 2008

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'technology', 'Best of the Web']

{190: 'The anthropology of mobile phones', 7: 'Simplicity sells', 1725: '10 top time-saving tech tips', 1518: 'Your phone company is watching', 964: 'The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone', 439: 'Tools for a better world'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_pogue_cool_tricks_your_phone_can_do/

In this engaging talk from the EG'08 conference, New York Times tech columnist David Pogue rounds up some handy cell phone tools and services that can boost your productivity and lower your bills (and your blood pressure).

I'm the weekly tech critic for the New York Times. I review gadgets and stuff. And mostly what good dads should be doing this time of year is nestling with their kids and decorating the Christmas tree. What I'm mostly doing this year is going on cable TV and answering the same question: "What are the tech trends for next year?" And I'm like, "Didn't we just go through this last year?" But I'm going to pick the one that interests me most, and that is the completed marriage of the cell phone and the Internet. You know, I found that volcano on Google Images, not realizing how much it makes me look like the cover of Dianetics. (Laughter) Anyway, this all started a few years ago, when they started carrying your voice over the Internet rather than over a phone line, and we've come a long way since that. But that was interesting in itself. This is companies like Vonage. Basically you take an ordinary telephone, you plug it into this little box that they give you and the box plugs into your cable modem. Now, it works just like a regular phone. So you can pick up the phone, you hear a dial tone, but its just a fake-out. It's a WAV file of a dial tone, just to reassure you that the world hasn't ended. It could be anything. It could be salsa music or a comedy routine — it doesn't matter. The little box has your phone number. So that's really cool — you can take it to London or Siberia, and your next door neighbor can dial your home number and your phone will ring, because it's got everything in the box. They've got every feature known to man in there, because adding a new feature is just software. And as a result of Voice Over IP — I hate that term — Voice Over Internet — land-line home-phone service has gone down 30 percent in the last three years. I mean, no self-respecting college kid has home phone service anymore. This is what college kids are more likely to have. It's the most popular VOIP service in the world: It's Skype. It's a free program you download for your Mac or PC, and you make free phone calls anywhere in the world The downside is that you have to wear a headset like a nerd. It's not your phone — it's your computer. But nonetheless, if you're a college kid and you have no money, believe me, this is better than trying to use your cell phone. It's really cute seeing middle-aged people like me, try out Skype for the first time, which is usually when their kid goes away for a semester abroad. They don't want to pay the international fees, so they're like, "Timmy! Is that you?" (Laughter) It's really cute. But I — at least it was when I did it — (Laughter) I think where VOIP is really going to get interesting is when they start putting it on cell phones. Imagine if you had an ordinary cell phone, and any time you were in a wireless hotspot — free calls anywhere in the world, never pay the cellular company a nickel. It'd be really, really cool — and yet, even though the technology for this has been available for five years, incredibly, the number of standard cell phones offered by US carriers with free VOIP is zero! I can't figure out why! (Laughter) Actually, I need to update that. There's one now. And it's so interesting that I thought I would tell you about it. It comes from T-Mobile. And I am not paid by T-Mobile. I'm not plugging T-Mobile. The New York Times has very rigid policies about that. Ever since that Jayson Blair jerk ruined it for all of us. (Laughter) Basically, the reason you haven't heard about this program is because it was introduced last year on June 29. Does anyone remember what else happened on June 29 last year? It was the iPhone. The iPhone came out that day. I'm like, can you imagine being the T-Mobile PR lady? You know? "Hi, we have an announcement to — WAH!!!" (Laughter) But it's actually really, really cool. You have a choice of phones, and we're not talking smartphones — ordinary phones, including a Blackberry, that have Wi-Fi. The deal is, any time you're in a Wi-Fi hotspot, all your calls are free. And when you're out of the hotspot, you're on the regular cellular network. You're thinking, "Well, how often am I in a hotspot?" The answer is, "All the time!" Because they give you a regular wireless router that works with the phone, for your house. Which is really ingenious, because we all know that T-Mobile is the most pathetic carrier. They have coverage like the size of my thumbnail. (Laughter) But it's a hundred million dollars to put up one of those towers. Right? They don't have that kind of money. Instead they give each of us a seven-dollar-and-95-cent box. They're like a stealth tower installation program. We're putting it in our homes for them! Anyway, they have Wi-Fi phones in Europe. But the thing that T-Mobile did that nobody's done before is, when you're on a call an you move from Wi-Fi into cellular range, the call is handed off in mid-syllable, seamlessly. I'll show you the advanced technologies we use at the New York Times to test this gear. This is me with a camcorder on a phone going like this. (Laughter) As I walk out of the house from my Wi-Fi hotspot into the cellular network on a call with my wife — look at the upper left. That's the Wi-Fi signal. (Video): Jennifer Pogue: Hello? David Pogue: Hi babes, it's me. JP: Oh, hi darling, how are you? DP: You're on Wi-Fi. How does it sound? JP: Oh, it sounds pretty good. Now, I'm leaving the house. DP: I'm going for a walk — do you mind? JP: No not at all. I'm having a great day with the kids. DP: What are you guys doing? Right there! It just changed to the cellular tower in mid-call. I don't know why my wife says I never listen to her. I don't get that. (Laughter) The bottom line is that the boundaries, because of the Internet plus cell phone, are melting. The cool thing about the T-Mobile phones is that although switching technologies is very advanced, the billing technology has not caught up. So what I mean is that you can start a call in your house in the Wi-Fi hotspot, you can get in your car and talk until the battery's dead — which would be like 10 minutes — (Laughter) And the call will continue to be free. Because they don't, they haven't — well, no, wait! Not so fast. It also works the other way. So if you start a call on your cellular network and you come home, you keep being billed. Which is why most people with this service get into the habit of saying, "Hey, I just got home. Can I call you right back?" Now you get it. It's also true that if you use one of these phones overseas, it doesn't know what Internet hotspot you're in. On the Internet nobody knows you're a dog, right? Nobody knows you're in Pakistan. You can make free unlimited calls home to the US with these phones. So, very, very interesting. This is another favorite of mine. Does anyone here have a working cell phone that's on, with coverage, who can make a call right now without a lot of fussing? OK. Would you call me please right now? [Phone number given.] And don't you all call me at three a.m. asking me to fix your printer. (Laughter) I have two cell phones, so this going to be very odd, if it works. I should know not to do technology demos in front of an audience. It's just, like, absurd. This one is going off. And — oh, I have the ringer off. Tsh! Great. Anyway, this one is also going off. So they're both ringing at the same time. Excuse me one second. Hello? Oh. Where are you calling from? No, no just kidding. There he is. Thank you very much for doing that. I didn't even know it was you — I was looking at this guy. Oh great! Yeah. Yeah you can all stop calling now! (Laughter) All right! We've made the point. All right. Ringer off. Everyone wants in on the action. (Laughter) So this is Grand Central at work — it's a — oh, for gods sake! (Laughter) I have your numbers now! (Laughter) You will pay. Grand Central is this really brilliant idea where they give you a new phone number, and then at that point one phone number rings all your phones at once. Your home phone, your work phone, your cell phone, your yacht phone (this is the EG crowd). (Laughter) The beauty of that is you never miss a call. I know a lot of you are like, "Ooh, I don't want to be reached at any hour." But the beauty is it's all going through the internet, so you get all of these really cool features — like you can say, I want these people to be able to call me only during these hours. And I want these people to hear this greeting, "Hi boss, I'm out making us both some money. Leave a message." And then your wife calls, and, "Hi honey, leave me a message." Very, very customizable. Google bought it, and they've been working on it for a year. They're supposed to come out with it very shortly in a public method. By the way, this is something that really bothers me. I don't know if you realize this. When you call 411 on your cell phone, they charge you two bucks. Did you know that? It's an outrage. I actually got a photograph of the Verizon employee right there. I'm going to tell you how to avoid that now. What you're going to use is Google Cellular. It's totally free — there's not even ads. If you know how to send a text message, you can get the same information for free. I'm about to change your life. So here's me doing it. You send a text message to the word "Google," which turns out to be 46645. Leave off the last "e" for savings. Anyway, so lets say you need a drugstore near Chicago. You type "pharmacy Chicago," or the zip code. You hit send, and in five seconds, they will send you back the two closest drugstores, complete with name address and phone number. Here it comes. And it's already written down — so, like, if you're driving, you don't have to do one of these things, "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh." It works with weather, too. You can say "Weather," and the name of the city you're going to travel to. And then in five seconds, they send you back the complete weather forecast for that town. Shortly I'll tell you why I was in Milan. Here we go. And those are just the beginning. These are all the different things that you can text to Google and they will — yeah! You're all trying to write this down. That's cute. I do have an email address. You can just ask me. It's absolutely phenomenal. The only downside is that it requires you to know how to text — send a text message. Nobody over 40 knows how to do that. So I'm going to teach you something even better. This is called Google Info. They've just launched this voice-activated version of the same thing. It's speech recognition like you've never heard before. So lets say I'm in Monterey, and I want what? I want to find what? Bagels. OK. Google: Say the business and the city and state. DP: Bagels, Monterey, California. I got the Chinese line. (Laughter) Google: Bagels, Monterey, California. Top eight results: Number one, Bagel Bakery on El Dorado Street. To select number one, you can press one or say "number one." Number two: Bagel Bakery, commissary department. Number Two. Number Two. Two. (Laughter) Why do I listen to people in the audience? Well anyway — oh! Here we go! Google: ... commissary department on McClellan Avenue, Monterey. I'll connect you, or say "details," or "go back." DP: He's connecting me! He doesn't even tell me the phone number. He's just connecting me directly. It's like having a personal valet. Google: Hold on. (Laughter) DP: Hi, could I have 400 with a schmear? No, no, no — just kidding, no no. So anyway, you never even find out the number. It's just so amazing. And it has incredible, incredible accuracy. This is even more amazing. Put this in your speed dial. This you can ask by voice any question. Who won the 1958 World Series? What's the recipe for a certain cocktail? It's absolutely amazing — and they text you back the answer. I tried this this morning just to make sure it's still alive. "Which actors have played James Bond?" They text me back this: "Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig." Right! And then I was trying to pretend I was like a Valley girl. I'm like, "What's the word that means you know, like, when the sun, the moon and the earth are, like, all in a line?" Just to see how the recognition was. They texted me back, "It's called a syzygy." Which I knew, because it's the word that won me the Ohio spelling bee in 1976. You know, there's a lot of people wondering, "How on earth are they going to make money doing this?" And the answer is: look at the last line. They put this teeny-weeny little ad, about 10 characters long. And a lot of people also want to know, "How does it work? How can it be so good? It's as though there is a human being on the other end of the line." Because there is one! They have 10,000 people who are being paid 20 cents per answer. As you can imagine, it's college kids and old people. That's who can afford to do that. But it's a human being on the line. And it's gotten me out of so many tough positions like, "When's the last flight out of Chicago?" You know. It's just absolutely amazing. Another thing that really bothers me about cell phones today — this is probably my biggest pet peeve in all of technology. When I call to leave you a message, I get 15 seconds of instructions from a third-grade teacher on Ambien! (Laughter) "To page this person ... " Page? What is this, 1975? Nobody has pagers anymore. "You may begin speaking at the tone. When you have finished recording, you may hang up." No! (Laughter) And then it gets worse: when I call to retrieve my messages, first of all: "You have 87 messages. To listen to your messages ... " Why else am I calling? (Laughter) Of course I want to listen to the messages! (Laughter) Oh! You all have cell phones too. So last year I went to Milan, Italy, and I got to speak to an audience of cellular executives from 200 countries around the world. And I said as a joke — as a joke, I said, "I did the math. Verizon has 70 million customers. If you check your voicemail twice a day, that's 100 million dollars a year. I bet you guys are doing this just to run up our airtime, aren't you?" No chuckle. They're like this — (Laughter) Where is the outrage, people? Rise up! (Laughter) Sorry. I'm not bitter. (Laughter) So now I'm going to tell you how to get out of that. There are these services that transcribe your voicemail into text. And they send it either to your email or as text messages to your phone. It is a life-changer. And by the way, they don't always get the words right, because it's over the phone and all that. So they attach the audio file at the bottom of the email so you can listen to double-check. The services are called things like Spinvox, Phonetag — this is the one I use — Callwave. A lot of people say, "How are they doing this? I don't really want people listening in to my calls." The executives at these companies told me, "Well we use a proprietary B-to-B, best-of-breed, peer-to-peer soluti — " you know. I think basically it's like these guys in India with headsets, you know, listening in. The reason I think that is that on the first day I tried one of these services, I got two voicemail messages. One was from a guy named Michael Stevenson, which shouldn't be that hard to transcribe, and it was misspelled. The other was from my video producer at the Times, whose name is Vijaiy Singh, with the silent 'h'. Nailed that one. (Laughter) So you be the judge. (Laughter) Anyway, this service, Callwave, promises that it's all software — nobody is listening to your messages. And they also promise that they're going to transcribe only the gist of your messages. (Laughter) So I thought I'd see how that goes. This is me testing it out. (Video): Hello, this is Michael. Hope you're doing well. I'm fine here. Everything's good. Hey, I was walking along the street and the sky was blue. And your daughter broke her leg at soccer practice. I'm going to have a sandwich for lunch. She's in room — emergency room 53W. OK, talk to you later — bye. (Laughter) I love my job. (Laughter) So a couple minutes later, this I got by email. It's a very good transcription. But a couple minutes after that, I got the text message version. Now remember, a text message can only be 160 characters long. So it had better be the gist of the gist, right? I'm not kidding you. The message said, "Was walking along the street" and "sky was blue" and "emergency"! (Laughter) What the f — ? (Laughter) Well I guess that was the gist. (Laughter) And lastly, I just have to talk about this one. This is my favorite of all time. It's called Popularitydialer.com. Basically, you're going to go on some iffy date, or a potentially bad meeting. So you go and you type in your phone number, and at the exact minute where you want to be called — (Laughter) And at that moment your phone will ring. And you're like, "I'm sorry. I've got to take this." The really beautiful thing is, you know how when somebody's sitting next to you, sometimes they can sort of hear a little bit of the caller. So they give you a choice of what you want to hear on the other end. Here's the girlfriend. Phone: Hey you, what's going on? DP: I'm kinda, like, giving a talk right now. Phone: Well, that's good. DP: What are you doing? Phone: I was just wondering what you were up to. DP: Right, I can't really talk right now. This is the — I love this — the boss call. Phone: Hey, this is Mr. Johnson calling from the office. DP: Oh, hi, sir. Phone: Did you complete that thing about a month ago? That photocopier training? DP: Oh — sorry I forgot. Phone: Yeah, well so when was the last time you used the photocopier? DP: It was like three weeks ago. Phone: Well, I don't know if you heard, you might have heard from Lenny, but — (Laughter) I think the biggest change when Internet met phone was with the iPhone. Not my finest moment in New York Times journalism. It was when in the fall of 2006, I explained why Apple would never do a cell phone. (Laughter) I looked like a moron. However, my logic was good, because — I don't know if you realize this, but — until the iPhone came along, the carriers — Verizon, AT&T, Cingular — held veto power over every aspect of every design of every phone. I know the people who worked on the Treo. They went around to these carriers and said, "Look at these cool features." And Verizon is like, "Hmm, no. I don't think so." It was not very conducive to innovation. What I didn't anticipate was that Steve Jobs went around and said, "Tell you what — I'll give you a five-year exclusive if you'll let me design this phone in peace — and you won't even see it till it's done." Actually, even so, he was turned down by Verizon and others. Finally Cingular said OK. I'm going to talk about the effect of the iPhone. Please don't corner me at the party tonight and go, "What are you? An Apple fan boy?" - you know. I'm not. You can see what I said about it. It's a flawed masterpiece. It's got bad things and good things. Lets all acknowledge that right now. But it did change a few things. The first thing it changed was that all those carriers saw that they sold 10 million of these things in a year. And they said, "Oh my gosh, maybe we've been doing it wrong. Maybe we should let phone designers design the phones." (Applause) Another thing was that it let 10 million people, for the first time, experience being online all the time. Not using these 60-dollar-a-month cellular cards for their laptops. I don't understand why we're not there yet. When I'm an old man, I'm going to tell my grandchildren, "When I was your age, if I wanted to check my email, I used to drive around town looking for a coffee shop. I did!" (Laughter) "We had wireless base stations that could broadcast — yay, about 150 feet across." (Laughter) It's absurd. We have power outlets in every room of every building. We have running water. What's the problem? Anyway — but this teaches people what it's like. You have to go to YouTube and type in "iPhone Shuffle." This guy did a mock video of one that's one inch square, like the real iPod Shuffle. It's like, "It only has one button. Touch it and it dials a number at random." (Laughter) "Who the hell is this?" (Laughter) But the other thing it did is it opened up this idea of an app store. It downloads right to the phone. And you can use the tilt sensor to steer this car using this game. These programs can use all the components of the iPhone — the touch screen. This is the Etch-A-Sketch program — the theme of EG 2008. You know how you erase it? Of course. You shake it. Right, of course. We shake it to erase, like this. They have 10,000 of these programs. This is the translator program. They have every language in the world. You type in what you want, and it gives you the translation. This is amazing. This is Midomi. A song is running through your head — you sing it into the thing: do do do do do, da da da da da da, da dum ... OK, you tap, "Done" and it will find out the song and play it for you. I know. It's insane, right? This is Pandora. Free Internet radio. Not just free Internet radio — you type in a band or a song name. It will immediately play you that song or that band. It has a thumbs-up and a thumbs-down. You say if you like this song or not. If you like it, it tries another song on you from a different band, with the same instrumentation, vocals, theme and tempo. If you like that one, or don't like it, you do thumbs-up and thumbs-down. Over time it tailors the songs so that it completely stops playing bad songs. It eventually only plays songs you like. This is Urbanspoon. You're in a city. It knows from GPS where you're standing. You want to find a place to eat. You shake it. It proposes a restaurant. It gives you the price, and the location and ratings. Video: I'm not going all the way to Flushing. Anyway, just amazing, amazing things. Of course, its not just about the iPhone. The iPhone broke the dyke, the wall. But now it's everybody else. So Google has done their own Android operating system that will soon be on handsets — phones from 34 companies. Touch screen — very, very nice. Also with its own app store, where you can download programs. This is amazing. In the wake of all this, Verizon, the most calcified, corporate, conservative carrier of all, said, "You can use any phone you want on our network." I love the Wired headline: Pigs Fly, Hell Freezes Over and Verizon Opens Up Its Network — No. Really. So everything is changing. We've entered a new world of innovation, where the cell phone becomes your laptop, customized the way you want it. Every cell phone is unique. There is software that you can add on. Can I do one more one-minute song? Thank you. (Applause) Just to round it up — this is the new Apple Power Music Stand. It's only three pounds, or 12 if you install Microsoft Office. (Laughter) Sorry, that was mean. This is a song I did for the New York Times website as a music video. Ladies and gentlemen, for seven blissful hours it was the number one video on YouTube. (To the tune of "My Way") And now the end is near. I'm sick to death of this old cell phone. Bad sound, the signal's weak, the software stinks. A made-in-Hell phone. I've heard there's something new — a million times more rad than my phone. I too will join the cult. I want an iPhone. Concerns — I have a few. It's got some flaws; we may just face it. No keys, no memory card, the battery's sealed — you can't replace it. But God, this thing is sweet. A multitouch, iPod, Wi-Fi phone. You had me from, "Hello." I want an iPhone. I want to touch its precious screen. I want to wipe the smudges clean. I want my friends to look and drool. I want to say, "Look — now I'm cool" I stood in line and I'll get mine. I want an iPhone. For what is a man? What has he got? If not iPhone, then he's got squat. It's all the things a phone should be. Who cares if it's AT&T? I took a stand, paid half a grand! And I got an iPhone! (Applause) Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause)

The difference between winning and succeeding

John Wooden

{0: 'John Wooden'}

{0: ['coach']}

{0: 'John Wooden, affectionately known as Coach, led UCLA to record wins that are still unmatched in the world of basketball. Throughout his long life, he shared the values and life lessons he passed to his players, emphasizing success that’s about much more than winning. '}

2001-02-01

2009-03-26

TED2001

en

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['culture', 'education', 'leadership', 'life', 'poetry', 'sports', 'work']

{66: 'Do schools kill creativity?', 70: '8 secrets of success', 202: '5 dangerous things you should let your kids do', 23583: '3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion', 2568: "How Argentina's blind soccer team became champions", 2638: 'What I learned from 100 days of rejection'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_the_difference_between_winning_and_succeeding/

With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father's wisdom.

I coined my own definition of success in 1934, when I was teaching at a high school in South Bend, Indiana, being a little bit disappointed, and [disillusioned] perhaps, by the way parents of the youngsters in my English classes expected their youngsters to get an A or a B. They thought a C was all right for the neighbors' children, because they were all average. But they weren't satisfied when their own — it would make the teacher feel that they had failed, or the youngster had failed. And that's not right. The good Lord in his infinite wisdom didn't create us all equal as far as intelligence is concerned, any more than we're equal for size, appearance. Not everybody could earn an A or a B, and I didn't like that way of judging, and I did know how the alumni of various schools back in the '30s judged coaches and athletic teams. If you won them all, you were considered to be reasonably successful — not completely. Because I found out — we had a number of years at UCLA where we didn't lose a game. But it seemed that we didn't win each individual game by the margin that some of our alumni had predicted — (Laughter) And quite frequently I really felt that they had backed up their predictions in a more materialistic manner. (Laughter) But that was true back in the 30s, so I understood that. But I didn't like it, I didn't agree with it. I wanted to come up with something I hoped could make me a better teacher, and give the youngsters under my supervision, be it in athletics or the English classroom, something to which to aspire, other than just a higher mark in the classroom, or more points in some athletic contest. I thought about that for quite a spell, and I wanted to come up with my own definition. I thought that might help. And I knew how Mr. Webster defined it, as the accumulation of material possessions or the attainment of a position of power or prestige, or something of that sort, worthy accomplishments perhaps, but in my opinion, not necessarily indicative of success. So I wanted to come up with something of my own. And I recalled — I was raised on a small farm in Southern Indiana, and Dad tried to teach me and my brothers that you should never try to be better than someone else. I'm sure at the time he did that, I didn't — it didn't — well, somewhere, I guess in the hidden recesses of the mind, it popped out years later. Never try to be better than someone else, always learn from others. Never cease trying to be the best you can be — that's under your control. If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to the things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control. Then I ran across this simple verse that said, "At God's footstool to confess, a poor soul knelt, and bowed his head. 'I failed!' he cried. The Master said, 'Thou didst thy best, that is success.'" From those things, and one other perhaps, I coined my own definition of success, which is: Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you're capable. I believe that's true. If you make the effort to do the best of which you're capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that's success, and I don't think others can judge that; it's like character and reputation — your reputation is what you're perceived to be; your character is what you really are. And I think that character is much more important than what you are perceived to be. You'd hope they'd both be good, but they won't necessarily be the same. Well, that was my idea that I was going to try to get across to the youngsters. I ran across other things. I love to teach, and it was mentioned by the previous speaker that I enjoy poetry, and I dabble in it a bit, and love it. There are some things that helped me, I think, be better than I would have been. I know I'm not what I ought to be, what I should be, but I think I'm better than I would have been if I hadn't run across certain things. One was just a little verse that said, "No written word, no spoken plea can teach our youth what they should be; nor all the books on all the shelves — it's what the teachers are themselves." That made an impression on me in the 1930s. And I tried to use that more or less in my teaching, whether it be in sports, or whether it be in the English classroom. I love poetry and always had an interest in that somehow. Maybe it's because Dad used to read to us at night, by coal oil lamp — we didn't have electricity in our farm home. And Dad would read poetry to us. So I always liked it. And about the same time I ran across this one verse, I ran across another one. Someone asked a lady teacher why she taught, and after some time, she said she wanted to think about that. Then she came up and said, "They ask me why I teach, and I reply, 'Where could I find such splendid company?' There sits a statesman, strong, unbiased, wise; another Daniel Webster, silver-tongued. A doctor sits beside him, whose quick, steady hand may mend a bone, or stem the life-blood's flow. And there a builder; upward rise the arch of a church he builds, wherein that minister may speak the word of God, and lead a stumbling soul to touch the Christ. And all about, a gathering of teachers, farmers, merchants, laborers — those who work and vote and build and plan and pray into a great tomorrow. And I may say, I may not see the church, or hear the word, or eat the food their hands may grow, but yet again I may; And later I may say, I knew him once, and he was weak, or strong, or bold or proud or gay. I knew him once, but then he was a boy. They ask me why I teach and I reply, 'Where could I find such splendid company?'" And I believe the teaching profession — it's true, you have so many youngsters, and I've got to think of my youngsters at UCLA — 30-some attorneys, 11 dentists and doctors, many, many teachers and other professions. And that gives you a great deal of pleasure, to see them go on. I always tried to make the youngsters feel that they're there to get an education, number one; basketball was second, because it was paying their way, and they do need a little time for social activities, but you let social activities take a little precedence over the other two, and you're not going to have any very long. So that was the idea that I tried to get across to the youngsters under my supervision. I had three rules, pretty much, that I stuck with practically all the time. I'd learned these prior to coming to UCLA, and I decided they were very important. One was "Never be late." Later on I said certain things — the players, if we were leaving for somewhere, had to be neat and clean. There was a time when I made them wear jackets and shirts and ties. Then I saw our chancellor coming to school in denims and turtlenecks, and thought, it's not right for me to keep this other [rule] so I let them just — they had to be neat and clean. I had one of my greatest players that you probably heard of, Bill Walton. He came to catch the bus; we were leaving for somewhere to play. And he wasn't clean and neat, so I wouldn't let him go. He couldn't get on the bus, he had to go home and get cleaned up to get to the airport. So I was a stickler for that. I believed in that. I believe in time; very important. I believe you should be on time, but I felt at practice, for example — we start on time, we close on time. The youngsters didn't have to feel that we were going to keep them over. When I speak at coaching clinics, I often tell young coaches — and at coaching clinics, more or less, they'll be the younger coaches getting in the profession. Most of them are young, you know, and probably newly-married. And I tell them, "Don't run practices late, because you'll go home in a bad mood, and that's not good, for a young married man to go home in a bad mood. When you get older, it doesn't make any difference, but —" (Laughter) So I did believe: on time. I believe starting on time, and I believe closing on time. And another one I had was, not one word of profanity. One word of profanity, and you are out of here for the day. If I see it in a game, you're going to come out and sit on the bench. And the third one was, never criticize a teammate. I didn't want that. I used to tell them I was paid to do that. That's my job. I'm paid to do it. Pitifully poor, but I am paid to do it. Not like the coaches today, for gracious sakes, no. It's a little different than it was in my day. Those were three things that I stuck with pretty closely all the time. And those actually came from my dad. That's what he tried to teach me and my brothers at one time. I came up with a pyramid eventually, that I don't have the time to go on that. But that helped me, I think, become a better teacher. It's something like this: And I had blocks in the pyramid, and the cornerstones being industriousness and enthusiasm, working hard and enjoying what you're doing, coming up to the apex, according to my definition of success. And right at the top, faith and patience. And I say to you, in whatever you're doing, you must be patient. You have to have patience to — we want things to happen. We talk about our youth being impatient a lot, and they are. They want to change everything. They think all change is progress. And we get a little older — we sort of let things go. And we forget there is no progress without change. So you must have patience, and I believe that we must have faith. I believe that we must believe, truly believe. Not just give it word service, believe that things will work out as they should, providing we do what we should. I think our tendency is to hope things will turn out the way we want them to much of the time, but we don't do the things that are necessary to make those things become reality. I worked on this for some 14 years, and I think it helped me become a better teacher. But it all revolved around that original definition of success. You know, a number of years ago, there was a Major League Baseball umpire by the name of George Moriarty. He spelled Moriarty with only one 'i'. I'd never seen that before, but he did. Big league baseball players — they're very perceptive about those things, and they noticed he had only one 'i' in his name. You'd be surprised how many also told him that that was one more than he had in his head at various times. (Laughter) But he wrote something where I think he did what I tried to do in this pyramid. He called it "The Road Ahead, or the Road Behind." He said, "Sometimes I think the Fates must grin as we denounce them and insist the only reason we can't win, is the Fates themselves have missed. Yet there lives on the ancient claim: we win or lose within ourselves. The shining trophies on our shelves can never win tomorrow's game. You and I know deeper down, there's always a chance to win the crown. But when we fail to give our best, we simply haven't met the test, of giving all and saving none until the game is really won; of showing what is meant by grit; of playing through when others quit; of playing through, not letting up. It's bearing down that wins the cup. Of dreaming there's a goal ahead; of hoping when our dreams are dead; of praying when our hopes have fled; yet losing, not afraid to fall, if, bravely, we have given all. For who can ask more of a man than giving all within his span. Giving all, it seems to me, is not so far from victory. And so the Fates are seldom wrong, no matter how they twist and wind. It's you and I who make our fates — we open up or close the gates on the road ahead or the road behind." Reminds me of another set of threes that my dad tried to get across to us: Don't whine. Don't complain. Don't make excuses. Just get out there, and whatever you're doing, do it to the best of your ability. And no one can do more than that. I tried to get across, too, that — my opponents will tell you — you never heard me mention winning. Never mention winning. My idea is that you can lose when you outscore somebody in a game, and you can win when you're outscored. I've felt that way on certain occasions, at various times. And I just wanted them to be able to hold their head up after a game. I used to say that when a game is over, and you see somebody that didn't know the outcome, I hope they couldn't tell by your actions whether you outscored an opponent or the opponent outscored you. That's what really matters: if you make an effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be. Not necessarily what you'd want them to be but they'll be about what they should; only you will know whether you can do that. And that's what I wanted from them more than anything else. And as time went by, and I learned more about other things, I think it worked a little better, as far as the results. But I wanted the score of a game to be the byproduct of these other things, and not the end itself. I believe it was one great philosopher who said — no, no — Cervantes. Cervantes said, "The journey is better than the end." And I like that. I think that it is — it's getting there. Sometimes when you get there, there's almost a let down. But it's the getting there that's the fun. As a basketball coach at UCLA, I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end, the end result. I liked to go up and sit in the stands and watch the players play, and see whether I'd done a decent job during the week. There again, it's getting the players to get that self-satisfaction, in knowing that they'd made the effort to do the best of which they are capable. Sometimes I'm asked who was the best player I had, or the best teams. I can never answer that. As far as the individuals are concerned — I was asked one time about that, and they said, "Suppose that you, in some way, could make the perfect player. What would you want?" And I said, "Well, I'd want one that knew why he was at UCLA: to get an education, he was a good student, really knew why he was there in the first place. But I'd want one that could play, too. I'd want one to realize that defense usually wins championships, and who would work hard on defense. But I'd want one who would play offense, too. I'd want him to be unselfish, and look for the pass first and not shoot all the time. And I'd want one that could pass and would pass. (Laughter) I've had some that could and wouldn't, and I've had some that would and could. (Laughter) So, yeah, I'd want that. And I wanted them to be able to shoot from the outside. I wanted them to be good inside too. (Laughter) I'd want them to be able to rebound well at both ends, too. Why not just take someone like Keith Wilkes and let it go at that. He had the qualifications. Not the only one, but he was one that I used in that particular category, because I think he made the effort to become the best. There was a couple. I mention in my book, "They Call Me Coach," two players that gave me great satisfaction, that came as close as I think anyone I ever had to reach their full potential: one was Conrad Burke, and one was Doug McIntosh. When I saw them as freshmen, on our freshmen team — freshmen couldn't play varsity when I taught. I thought, "Oh gracious, if these two players, either one of them" — they were different years, but I thought about each one at the time he was there — "Oh, if he ever makes the varsity, our varsity must be pretty miserable, if he's good enough to make it." And you know, one of them was a starting player for a season and a half. The other one, his next year, played 32 minutes in a national championship game, Did a tremendous job for us. The next year, he was a starting player on the national championship team, and here I thought he'd never play a minute, when he was — so those are the things that give you great joy, and great satisfaction to see. Neither one of those youngsters could shoot very well. But they had outstanding shooting percentages, because they didn't force it. And neither one could jump very well, but they kept good position, and so they did well rebounding. They remembered that every shot that's taken, they assumed would be missed. I've had too many stand around and wait to see if it's missed, then they go and it's too late, somebody else is in there ahead of them. They weren't very quick, but they played good position, kept in good balance. And so they played pretty good defense for us. So they had qualities that — they came close to — as close to reaching possibly their full potential as any players I ever had. So I consider them to be as successful as Lewis Alcindor or Bill Walton, or many of the others that we had; there were some outstanding players. Have I rambled enough? I was told that when he makes his appearance, I was supposed to shut up. (Laughter) (Applause)

The jungle search for viruses

Nathan Wolfe

{0: 'Nathan Wolfe'}

{0: ['virus hunter']}

{0: "Armed with blood samples, high-tech tools and a small army of fieldworkers, Nathan Wolfe hopes to re-invent pandemic control -- and reveal hidden secrets of the planet's dominant lifeform: the virus."}

2009-02-05

2009-03-26

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sv', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['AIDS', 'Africa', 'bacteria', 'biodiversity', 'biology', 'disease', 'exploration', 'global issues', 'health', 'microbiology', 'science']

{69: 'Dreams from endangered cultures', 58: 'My wish: Help me stop pandemics', 445: 'Solving medical mysteries', 46518: 'How do viruses jump from animals to humans?', 963: 'Why I am an HIV/AIDS activist', 340: 'How humans and animals can live together'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_wolfe_the_jungle_search_for_viruses/

Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe is outwitting the next pandemic by staying two steps ahead: discovering deadly new viruses where they first emerge -- passing from animals to humans among poor subsistence hunters in Africa -- before they claim millions of lives.

When most people think about the beginnings of AIDS, they're gonna think back to the 1980s. And certainly, this was the decade in which we discovered AIDS and the virus that causes it, HIV. But in fact this virus crossed over into humans many decades before, from chimpanzees, where the virus originated, into humans who hunt these apes. This photo was taken before the Great Depression in Brazzaville, Congo. At this time, there were thousands of individuals, we think, that were infected with HIV. So I have a couple of really important questions for you. If this virus was in thousands of individuals at this point, why was it the case that it took us until 1984 to be able to discover this virus? OK now, more importantly, had we been there in the '40s and '50s, '60s, had we seen this disease, had we understood exactly what was going on with it, how might that have changed and completely transformed the nature of the way this pandemic moved? In fact, this is not unique to HIV. The vast majority of viruses come from animals. And you can kind of think of this as a pyramid of this bubbling up of viruses from animals into human populations. But only at the very top of this pyramid do these things become completely human. Nevertheless, we spend the vast majority of our energy focused on this level of the pyramid, trying to tackle things that are already completely adapted to human beings, that are going to be very very difficult to address — as we've seen in the case of HIV. So during the last 15 years, I've been working to actually study the earlier interface here — what I've labeled "viral chatter," which was a term coined by my mentor Don Burke. This is the idea that we can study the sort of pinging of these viruses into human populations, the movement of these agents over into humans; and by capturing this moment, we might be able to move to a situation where we can catch them early. OK, so this is a picture, and I'm going to show you some pictures now from the field. This is a picture of a central African hunter. It's actually a fairly common picture. One of the things I want you to note from it is blood — that you see a tremendous amount of blood contact. This was absolutely key for us. This is a very intimate form of connection. So if we're going to study viral chatter, we need to get to these populations who have intensive contact with wild animals. And so we've been studying people like this individual. We collect blood from them, other specimens. We look at the diseases, which are in the animals as well as the humans. And ideally, this is going to allow us to catch these things early on, as they're moving over into human populations. And the basic objective of this work is not to just go out once and look at these individuals, but to establish thousands of individuals in these populations that we would monitor continuously on a regular basis. When they were sick, we would collect specimens from them. We would actually enlist them — which we've done now — to collect specimens from animals. We give them these little pieces of filter paper. When they sample from animals, they collect the blood on the filter paper and this allows us to identify yet-unknown viruses from exactly the right animals — the ones that are actually being hunted. (Video) Narrator: Deep in a remote region of Cameroon, two hunters stalk their prey. Their names are Patrice and Patee. They're searching for bush meat; forest animals they can kill to feed their families. Patrice and Patee set out most days to go out hunting in the forest around their homes. They have a series of traps, of snares that they've set up to catch wild pigs, snakes, monkeys, rodents — anything they can, really. Patrice and Patee have been out for hours but found nothing. The animals are simply gone. We stop for a drink of water. Then there is a rustle in the brush. A group of hunters approach, their packs loaded with wild game. There's at least three viruses that you know about, which are in this particular monkey. Nathan Wolfe: This species, yeah. And there's many many more pathogens that are present in these animals. These individuals are at specific risk, particularly if there's blood contact, they're at risk for transmission and possibly infection with novel viruses. Narrator: As the hunters display their kills, something surprising happens. They show us filter paper they've used to collect the animals' blood. The blood will be tested for zoonotic viruses, part of a program Dr. Wolfe has spent years setting up. NW: So this is from this animal right here, Greater Spot-Nosed Guenon. Every person who has one of those filter papers has at least, at a minimum, been through our basic health education about the risks associated with these activities, which presumably, from our perspective, gives them the ability to decrease their own risk, and then obviously the risk to their families, the village, the country, and the world. NW: OK, before I continue, I think it's important to take just a moment to talk about bush meat. Bush meat is the hunting of wild game. OK? And you can consider all sorts of different bush meat. I'm going to be talking about this. When your children and grandchildren sort of pose questions to you about this period of time, one of the things they're gonna ask you, is how it was they we allowed some of our closest living relatives, some of the most valuable and endangered species on our planet, to go extinct because we weren't able to address some of the issues of poverty in these parts of the world. But in fact that's not the only question they're going to ask you about this. They're also going to ask you the question that when we knew that this was the way that HIV entered into the human population, and that other diseases had the potential to enter like this, why did we let these behaviors continue? Why did we not find some other solution to this? They're going to say, in regions of profound instability throughout the world, where you have intense poverty, where populations are growing and you don't have sustainable resources like this, this is going to lead to food insecurity. But they're also going to ask you probably a different question. It's one that I think we all need to ask ourselves, which is, why we thought the responsibility rested with this individual here. Now this is the individual — you can see just right up over his right shoulder — this is the individual that hunted the monkey from the last picture that I showed you. OK, take a look at his shirt. You know, take a look at his face. Bush meat is one of the central crises, which is occurring in our population right now, in humanity, on this planet. But it can't be the fault of somebody like this. OK? And solving it cannot be his responsibility alone. There's no easy solutions, but what I'm saying to you is that we neglect this problem at our own peril. So, in 1998, along with my mentors Don Burke and Colonel Mpoudi-Ngole, we went to actually start this work in Central Africa, to work with hunters in this part of the world. And my job — at that time I was a post-doctoral fellow, and I was really tasked with setting this up. So I said to myself, "OK, great — we're gonna collect all kinds of specimens. We're gonna go to all these different locations. It's going to be wonderful." You know, I looked at the map; I picked out 17 sites; I figured, no problem. (Laughter) Needless to say, I was drastically wrong. This is challenging work to do. Fortunately, I had and continue to have an absolutely wonderful team of colleagues and collaborators in my own team, and that's the only way that this work can really occur. We have a whole range of challenges about this work. One of them is just obtaining trust from individuals that we work with in the field. The person you see on the right hand side is Paul DeLong-Minutu. He's one of the best communicators that I've really ever dealt with. When I arrived I didn't speak a word of French, and I still seemed to understand what it was he was saying. Paul worked for years on the Cameroonian national radio and television, and he spoke about health issues. He was a health correspondent. So we figured we'd hire this person — when we got there he could be a great communicator. When we would get to these rural villages, though, what we found out is that no one had television, so they wouldn't recognize his face. But — when he began to speak they would actually recognize his voice from the radio. And this was somebody who had incredible potential to spread aspects of our message, whether it be with regards to wildlife conservation or health prevention. Often we run into obstacles. This is us coming back from one of these very rural sites, with specimens from 200 individuals that we needed to get back to the lab within 48 hours. I like to show this shot — this is Ubald Tamoufe, who's the lead investigator in our Cameroon site. Ubald laughs at me when I show this photo because of course you can't see his face. But the reason I like to show the shot is because you can see that he's about to solve this problem. (Laughter) Which — which he did, which he did. Just a few quick before and after shots. This was our laboratory before. This is what it looks like now. Early on, in order to ship our specimens, we had to have dry ice. To get dry ice we had to go to the breweries — beg, borrow, steal to get these folks to give it to us. Now we have our own liquid nitrogen. I like to call our laboratory the coldest place in Central Africa — it might be. And here's a shot of me, this is the before shot of me. (Laughter) No comment. So what happened? So during the 10 years that we've been doing this work, we actually surprised ourselves. We made a number of discoveries. And what we've found is that if you look in the right place, you can actually monitor the flow of these viruses into human populations. That gave us a tremendous amount of hope. What we've found is a whole range of new viruses in these individuals, including new viruses in the same group as HIV — so, brand new retroviruses. And let's face it, any new retrovirus in the human population — it's something we should be aware of. It's something we should be following. It's not something that we should be surprised by. Needless to say in the past these viruses entering into these rural communities might very well have gone extinct. That's no longer the case. Logging roads provide access to urban areas. And critically, what happens in central Africa doesn't stay in Central Africa. So, once we discovered that it was really possible that we could actually do this monitoring, we decided to move this from research, to really attempt to phase up to a global monitoring effort. Through generous support and partnership scientifically with Google.org and the Skoll Foundation, we were able to start the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and begin work in four different sites in Africa and Asia. Needless to say, different populations from different parts of the world have different sorts of contact. So it's not just hunters in Central Africa. It's also working in live animal markets — these wet markets — which is exactly the place where SARS emerged in Asia. But really, this is just the beginning from our perspective. Our objective right now, in addition to deploying to these sites and getting everything moving, is to identify new partners because we feel like this effort needs to be extended to probably 20 or more sites throughout the world — to viral hotspots — because really the idea here is to cast an incredibly wide net so that we can catch these things, ideally, before they make it to blood banks, sexual networks, airplanes. And that's really our objective. There was a time not very long ago when the discovery of unknown organisms was something that held incredible awe for us. It had potential to really change the way that we saw ourselves, and thought about ourselves. Many people, I think, on our planet right now despair, and they think we've reached a point where we've discovered most of the things. I'm going tell you right now: please don't despair. If an intelligent extra-terrestrial was taxed with writing the encyclopedia of life on our planet, 27 out of 30 of these volumes would be devoted to bacteria and virus, with just a few of the volumes left for plants, fungus and animals, humans being a footnote; interesting footnote but a footnote nonetheless. This is honestly the most exciting period ever for the study of unknown life forms on our planet. The dominant things that exist here we know almost nothing about. And yet finally, we have the tools, which will allow us to actually explore that world and understand them. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Poetry of youth and age

C.K. Williams

{0: 'C.K. Williams'}

{0: ['poet']}

{0: 'Often called a social poet, C.K. Williams was fascinated by the characters of modern civilization and their interactions. '}

2001-02-09

2009-03-30

TED2001

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'entertainment', 'literature', 'poetry', 'society', 'storytelling', 'writing']

{453: 'Your elusive creative genius', 182: 'The illustrated woman', 347: 'Once upon a time, my mother ...', 562: 'Odes to vice and consequences', 1625: "Please don't take my Air Jordans", 1398: 'Everyday moments, caught in time'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/c_k_williams_poetry_of_youth_and_age/

Poet C.K. Williams reads his work at TED2001. As he colors scenes of childhood resentments, college loves, odd neighbors and the literal death of youth, he reminds us of the unique challenges of living.

I thought I would read poems I have that relate to the subject of youth and age. I was sort of astonished to find out how many I have actually. The first one is dedicated to Spencer, and his grandmother, who was shocked by his work. My poem is called "Dirt." My grandmother is washing my mouth out with soap; half a long century gone and still she comes at me with that thick cruel yellow bar. All because of a word I said, not even said really, only repeated. But "Open," she says, "open up!" her hand clawing at my head. I know now her life was hard; she lost three children as babies, then her husband died too, leaving young sons, and no money. She'd stand me in the sink to pee because there was never room in the toilet. But oh, her soap! Might its bitter burning have been what made me a poet? The street she lived on was unpaved, her flat, two cramped rooms and a fetid kitchen where she stalked and caught me. Dare I admit that after she did it I never really loved her again? She lived to a hundred, even then. All along it was the sadness, the squalor, but I never, until now loved her again. When that was published in a magazine I got an irate letter from my uncle. "You have maligned a great woman." It took some diplomacy. This is called "The Dress." It's a longer poem. In those days, those days which exist for me only as the most elusive memory now, when often the first sound you'd hear in the morning would be a storm of birdsong, then the soft clop of the hooves of the horse hauling a milk wagon down your block, and the last sound at night as likely as not would be your father pulling up in his car, having worked late again, always late, and going heavily down to the cellar, to the furnace, to shake out the ashes and damp the draft before he came upstairs to fall into bed — in those long-ago days, women, my mother, my friends' mothers, our neighbors, all the women I knew — wore, often much of the day, what were called housedresses, cheap, printed, pulpy, seemingly purposefully shapeless light cotton shifts that you wore over your nightgown and, when you had to go look for a child, hang wash on the line, or run down to the grocery store on the corner, under a coat, the twisted hem of the nightgown always lank and yellowed, dangling beneath. More than the curlers some of the women seemed constantly to have in their hair in preparation for some great event — a ball, one would think — that never came to pass; more than the way most women's faces not only were never made up during the day, but seemed scraped, bleached, and, with their plucked eyebrows, scarily masklike; more than all that it was those dresses that made women so unknowable and forbidding, adepts of enigmas to which men could have no access, and boys no conception. Only later would I see the dresses also as a proclamation: that in your dim kitchen, your laundry, your bleak concrete yard, what you revealed of yourself was a fabulation; your real sensual nature, veiled in those sexless vestments, was utterly your dominion. In those days, one hid much else as well: grown men didn't embrace one another, unless someone had died, and not always then; you shook hands or, at a ball game, thumped your friend's back and exchanged blows meant to be codes for affection; once out of childhood you'd never again know the shock of your father's whiskers on your cheek, not until mores at last had evolved, and you could hug another man, then hold on for a moment, then even kiss (your fathers bristles white and stiff now). What release finally, the embrace: though we were wary — it seemed so audacious — how much unspoken joy there was in that affirmation of equality and communion, no matter how much misunderstanding and pain had passed between you by then. We knew so little in those days, as little as now, I suppose about healing those hurts: even the women, in their best dresses, with beads and sequins sewn on the bodices, even in lipstick and mascara, their hair aflow, could only stand wringing their hands, begging for peace, while father and son, like thugs, like thieves, like Romans, simmered and hissed and hated, inflicting sorrows that endured, the worst anyway, through the kiss and embrace, bleeding from brother to brother, into the generations. In those days there was still countryside close to the city, farms, cornfields, cows; even not far from our building with its blurred brick and long shadowy hallway you could find tracts with hills and trees you could pretend were mountains and forests. Or you could go out by yourself even to a half-block-long empty lot, into the bushes: like a creature of leaves you'd lurk, crouched, crawling, simplified, savage, alone; already there was wanting to be simpler, wanting, when they called you, never to go back. (Applause) This is another longish one, about the old and the young. It actually happened right at the time we met. Part of the poem takes place in space we shared and time we shared. It's called "The Neighbor." Her five horrid, deformed little dogs who incessantly yap on the roof under my window. Her cats, God knows how many, who must piss on her rugs — her landing's a sickening reek. Her shadow once, fumbling the chain on her door, then the door slamming fearfully shut, only the barking and the music — jazz — filtering as it does, day and night into the hall. The time it was Chris Connor singing "Lush Life" — how it brought back my college sweetheart, my first real love, who — till I left her — played the same record. And head on my shoulder, hand on my thigh, sang sweetly along, of regrets and depletions she was too young for, as I was too young, later, to believe in her pain. It startled, then bored, then repelled me. My starting to fancy she'd ended up in this fire-trap in the Village, that my neighbor was her. My thinking we'd meet, recognize one another, become friends, that I'd accomplish a penance. My seeing her, it wasn't her, at the mailbox. Gray-yellow hair, army pants under a nightgown, her turning away, hiding her ravaged face in her hands, muttering an inappropriate "Hi." Sometimes there are frightening goings-on in the stairwell. A man shouting, "Shut up!" The dogs frantically snarling, claws scrabbling, then her — her voice hoarse, harsh, hollow, almost only a tone, incoherent, a note, a squawk, bone on metal, metal gone molten, calling them back, "Come back darlings, come back dear ones. My sweet angels, come back." Medea she was, next time I saw her. Sorceress, tranced, ecstatic, stock-still on the sidewalk ragged coat hanging agape, passersby flowing around her, her mouth torn suddenly open as though in a scream, silently though, as though only in her brain or breast had it erupted. A cry so pure, practiced, detached, it had no need of a voice, or could no longer bear one. These invisible links that allure, these transfigurations, even of anguish, that hold us. The girl, my old love, the last lost time I saw her when she came to find me at a party, her drunkenly stumbling, falling, sprawling, skirt hiked, eyes veined red, swollen with tears, her shame, her dishonor. My ignorant, arrogant coarseness, my secret pride, my turning away. Still life on a rooftop, dead trees in barrels, a bench broken, dogs, excrement, sky. What pathways through pain, what junctures of vulnerability, what crossings and counterings? Too many lives in our lives already, too many chances for sorrow, too many unaccounted-for pasts. "Behold me," the god of frenzied, inexhaustible love says, rising in bloody splendor, "Behold me." Her making her way down the littered vestibule stairs, one agonized step at a time. My holding the door. Her crossing the fragmented tiles, faltering at the step to the street, droning, not looking at me, "Can you help me?" Taking my arm, leaning lightly against me. Her wavering step into the world. Her whispering, "Thanks love." Lightly, lightly against me. (Applause) I think I'll lighten up a little. (Laughter) Another, different kind of poem of youth and age. It's called "Gas." (Laughter) Wouldn't it be nice, I think, when the blue-haired lady in the doctor's waiting room bends over the magazine table and farts, just a little, and violently blushes. Wouldn't it be nice if intestinal gas came embodied in visible clouds, so she could see that her really quite inoffensive pop had only barely grazed my face before it drifted away. (Laughter) Besides, for this to have happened now is a nice coincidence. Because not an hour ago, while we were on our walk, my dog was startled by a backfire and jumped straight up like a horse bucking. And that brought back to me the stable I worked on weekends when I was 12, and a splendid piebald stallion, who whenever he was mounted would buck just like that, though more hugely of course, enormous, gleaming, resplendent. And the woman, her face abashedly buried in her "Elle" now, reminded me — I'd forgotten that not the least part of my awe consisted of the fact that with every jump he took the horse would powerfully fart. Phwap! Phwap! Phwap! Something never mentioned in the dozens of books about horses and their riders I devoured in those days. All that savage grandeur, the steely glinting hooves, the eruptions driven from the creature's mighty innards, breath stopped, heart stopped, nostrils madly flared, I didn't know if I wanted to break him, or be him. (Laughter) (Applause) This is called "Thirst." Many — most of my poems actually are urban poems. I happen to be reading a bunch that aren't. "Thirst." Here was my relation with the woman who lived all last autumn and winter, day and night, on a bench in the 103rd Street subway station, until finally one day she vanished. We regarded each other, scrutinized one another. Me shyly, obliquely, trying not to be furtive. She boldly, unblinkingly, even pugnaciously, wrathfully even, when her bottle was empty. I was frightened of her. I felt like a child. I was afraid some repressed part of myself would go out of control, and I'd be forever entrapped in the shocking seethe of her stench. Not excrement merely, not merely surface and orifice going unwashed, rediffusion of rum, there was will in it, and intention, power and purpose — a social, ethical rage and rebellion — despair too, though, grief, loss. Sometimes I'd think I should take her home with me, bathe her, comfort her, dress her. She wouldn't have wanted me to, I would think. Instead, I'd step into my train. How rich I would think, is the lexicon of our self-absolving. How enduring, our bland fatal assurance that reflection is righteousness being accomplished. The dance of our glances, the clash, pulling each other through our perceptual punctures, then holocaust, holocaust, host on host of ill, injured presences, squandered, consumed. Her vigil somewhere I know continues. Her occupancy, her absolute, faithful attendance. The dance of our glances, challenge, abdication, effacement, the perfume of our consternation. (Applause) This is a newer poem, a brand new poem. The title is "This Happened." A student, a young woman in a fourth-floor hallway of her lycee, perched on the ledge of an open window chatting with friends between classes; a teacher passes and chides her, "Be careful, you might fall," almost banteringly chides her, "You might fall," and the young woman, 18, a girl really, though she wouldn't think that, as brilliant as she is, first in her class, and "Beautiful, too," she's often told, smiles back, and leans into the open window, which wouldn't even be open if it were winter — if it were winter someone would have closed it ("Close it!") — leans into the window, farther, still smiling, farther and farther, though it takes less time than this, really an instant, and lets herself fall. Herself fall. A casual impulse, a fancy, never thought of until now, hardly thought of even now ... No, more than impulse or fancy, the girl knows what she's doing, the girl means something, the girl means to mean, because it occurs to her in that instant, that beautiful or not, bright yes or no, she's not who she is, she's not the person she is, and the reason, she suddenly knows, is that there's been so much premeditation where she is, so much plotting and planning, there's hardly a person where she is, or if there is, it's not her, or not wholly her, it's a self inhabited, lived in by her, and seemingly even as she thinks it she knows what's been missing: grace, not premeditation but grace, a kind of being in the world spontaneously, with grace. Weightfully upon me was the world. Weightfully this self which graced the world yet never wholly itself. Weightfully this self which weighed upon me, the release from which is what I desire and what I achieve. And the girl remembers, in this infinite instant already now so many times divided, the sadness she felt once, hardly knowing she felt it, to merely inhabit herself. Yes, the girl falls, absurd to fall, even the earth with its compulsion to take unto itself all that falls must know that falling is absurd, yet the girl falling isn't myself, or she is myself, but a self I took of my own volition unto myself. Forever. With grace. This happened. (Applause) I'll read just one more. I don't usually say that. I like to just end. But I'm afraid that Ricky will come out here and shake his fist at me. This is called "Old Man," appropriately enough. "Special: big tits," Says the advertisement for a soft-core magazine on our neighborhood newsstand. But forget her breasts. A lush, fresh-lipped blond, skin glowing gold, sprawls there, resplendent. 60 nearly, yet these hardly tangible, hardly better than harlots, can still stir me. Maybe a coming of age in the American sensual darkness, never seeing an unsmudged nipple, an uncensored vagina, has left me forever infected with an unquenchable lust of the eye. Always that erotic murmur, I'm hardly myself if I'm not in a state of incipient desire. God knows though, there are worse twists your obsessions can take. Last year in Israel, a young ultra-orthodox Rabbi guiding some teenage girls through the Shrine of the Shoah forbade them to look in one room. Because there were images in it he said were licentious. The display was a photo. Men and women stripped naked, some trying to cover their genitals, others too frightened to bother, lined up in snow waiting to be shot and thrown into a ditch. The girls, to my horror, averted their gaze. What carnal mistrust had their teacher taught them. Even that though. Another confession: Once in a book on pre-war Poland, a studio portrait, an absolute angel, an absolute angel with tormented, tormenting eyes. I kept finding myself at her page. That she died in the camps made her — I didn't dare wonder why — more present, more precious. Died in the camps, that too people — or Jews anyway — kept from their children back then. But it was like sex, you didn't have to be told. Sex and death, how close they can seem. So constantly conscious now of death moving towards me, sometimes I think I confound them. My wife's loveliness almost consumes me. My passion for her goes beyond reasonable bounds. When we make love, her holding me everywhere all around me, I'm there and not there. My mind teems, jumbles of faces, voices, impressions, I live my life over, as though I were drowning. Then I am drowning, in despair at having to leave her, this, everything, all, unbearable, awful. Still, to be able to die with no special contrition, not having been slaughtered, or enslaved. And not having to know history's next mad rage or regression, it might be a relief. No. Again, no. I don't mean that for a moment. What I mean is the world holds me so tightly — the good and the bad — my own follies and weakness that even this counterfeit Venus with her sham heat, and her bosom probably plumped with gel, so moves me my breath catches. Vamp. Siren. Seductress. How much more she reveals in her glare of ink than she knows. How she incarnates our desperate human need for regard, our passion to live in beauty, to be beauty, to be cherished by glances, if by no more, of something like love, or love. Thank you. (Applause)

Can design save newspapers?

Jacek Utko

{0: 'Jacek Utko'}

{0: ['newspaper designer']}

{0: 'Could good design save the newspaper -- at least for now? Jacek Utko thinks so -- and his lively, engaging designs for European papers prove that it works.'}

2009-02-05

2009-03-31

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'kk', 'ko', 'lt', 'lv', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'creativity', 'culture', 'design', 'media', 'typography']

{75: 'Why we should invest in a free press', 390: 'The power and the danger of online crowds', 324: 'How photography connects us', 436: 'Design and discovery', 1977: 'My life in typefaces', 207: 'Treat design as art'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jacek_utko_can_design_save_newspapers/

Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might.

Newspapers are dying for a few reasons. Readers don't want to pay for yesterday's news, and advertisers follow them. Your iPhone, your laptop, is much more handy than New York Times on Sunday. And we should save trees in the end. So it's enough to bury any industry. So, should we rather ask, "Can anything save newspapers?" There are several scenarios for the future newspaper. Some people say it should be free; it should be tabloid, or even smaller: A4; it should be local, run by communities, or niche, for some smaller groups like business — but then it's not free; it's very expensive. It should be opinion-driven; less news, more views. And we'd rather read it during breakfast, because later we listen to radio in a car, check your mail at work and in the evening you watch TV. Sounds nice, but this can only buy time. Because in the long run, I think there is no reason, no practical reason for newspapers to survive. So what can we do? (Laughter) Let me tell you my story. 20 years ago, Bonnier, Swedish publisher, started to set newspapers in the former Soviet Bloc. After a few years, they had several newspapers in central and eastern Europe. They were run by an inexperienced staff, with no visual culture, no budgets for visuals — in many places there were not even art directors. I decided to be — to work for them as an art director. Before, I was an architect, and my grandmother asked me once, "What are you doing for a living?" I said, "I'm designing newspapers." "What? There's nothing to design there. It's just boring letters" (Laughter) And she was right. I was very frustrated, until one day. I came to London, and I've seen performance by Cirque du Soleil. And I had a revelation. I thought, "These guys took some creepy, run-down entertainment, and put it to the highest possible level of performance art." I thought "Oh my God, maybe I can do the same with these boring newspapers." And I did. We started to redesign them, one by one. The front page became our signature. It was my personal intimate channel to talk to the readers. I'm not going to tell you stories about teamwork or cooperation. My approach was very egotistic. I wanted my artistic statement, my interpretation of reality. I wanted to make posters, not newspapers. Not even magazines: posters. We were experimenting with type, with illustration, with photos. And we had fun. Soon it started to bring results. In Poland, our pages were named "Covers of the Year" three times in a row. Other examples you can see here are from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and central European countries. But it's not only about the front page. The secret is that we were treating the whole newspaper as one piece, as one composition — like music. And music has a rhythm, has ups and downs. And design is responsible for this experience. Flipping through pages is readers experience, and I'm responsible for this experience. We treated two pages, both spreads, as a one page, because that's how readers perceive it. You can see some Russian pages here which got many awards on biggest infographic competition in Spain. But the real award came from Society for Newspaper Design. Just a year after redesigning this newspaper in Poland, they name it the World's Best-Designed Newspaper. And two years later, the same award came to Estonia. Isn't amazing? What really makes it amazing: that the circulation of these newspapers were growing too. Just some examples: in Russia, plus 11 after one year, plus 29 after three years of the redesign. Same in Poland: plus 13, up to 35 percent raise of circulation after three years. You can see on a graph, after years of stagnation, the paper started to grow, just after redesign. But the real hit was in Bulgaria. And that is really amazing. Did design do this? Design was just a part of the process. And the process we made was not about changing the look, it was about improving the product completely. I took an architectural rule about function and form and translated it into newspaper content and design. And I put strategy at the top of it. So first you ask a big question: why we do it? What is the goal? Then we adjust the content accordingly. And then, usually after two months, we start designing. My bosses, in the beginning, were very surprised. Why am I asking all of these business questions, instead of just showing them pages? But soon they realized that this is the new role of designer: to be in this process from the very beginning to the very end. So what is the lesson behind it? The first lesson is about that design can change not just your product. It can change your workflow — actually, it can change everything in your company; it can turn your company upside down. It can even change you. And who's responsible? Designers. Give power to designers. (Applause) But the second is even more important. You can live in a small poor country, like me. You can work for a small company, in a boring branch. You can have no budgets, no people — but still can put your work to the highest possible level. And everybody can do it. You just need inspiration, vision and determination. And you need to remember that to be good is not enough. Thank you.

Extreme wingsuit flying

Ueli Gegenschatz

{0: 'Ueli Gegenschatz'}

{0: ['aerialist']}

{0: 'Ueli Gegenschatz took flight just about every way a human can: paragliding, skydiving, BASE jumping (from the Eiffel Tower), and most breathtakingly: by donning a wingsuit and soaring.'}

2009-02-06

2009-04-01

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['adventure', 'design', 'entertainment', 'exploration', 'extreme sports', 'flight', 'invention', 'sports', 'technology']

{89: 'Why did I ski to the North Pole?', 176: 'A flight on solar wings', 499: 'The jungle search for viruses', 1402: 'From mach-20 glider to hummingbird drone', 627: 'A leap from the edge of space', 2119: 'A flying camera ... on a leash'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/ueli_gegenschatz_extreme_wingsuit_flying/

Wingsuit jumping is the leading edge of extreme sports -- an exhilarating feat of almost unbelievable daring, where skydivers soar through canyons at over 100MPH. Ueli Gegenschatz talks about how (and why) he does it, and shows jawdropping film.

I started with paragliding. Paragliding is taking off from mountains with a paraglider, with the possibility to fly cross-country, distance, just with the use of thermals to soar. Also different aerobatic maneuvers are possible with a paraglider. From there I started with skydiving. In this picture you can see there is a four-way skydive, four people flying together, and on the left hand side it's the camera flier with the camera mounted to his helmet so he can film the whole jump, for the film itself and also for the judging. From regular, relative skydiving I went on to freeflying. Freeflying is more the three-dimensional skydiving. You can see the skydiver with the red suit, he's in a stand-up position. The one with the yellow-green suit, he's flying head-down. And that's me in the background, carving around the whole formation in freefall also, with the helmet cam to film this jump. From freeflying I went on to skysurfing. Skysurfing is skydiving with a board on the feet. You can imagine with this big surface of a skysurfing board, there is a lot of force, a lot of power. Of course I can use this power for example for nice spinning — we call it "helicopter moves." From there I went on to wingsuit flying. Wingsuit flying is a suit, that I can make fly, just only with my body. If I put some tension on my body, tension on my suit, I can make it fly. And as you see the fall rate is much much slower because of the bigger surface. With a proper body position I'm able to really move forward to gain quite some distance. This is a jump I did in Rio de Janeiro. You can see the Copacabana on the left-hand side. From there with all the skills and knowledge from paragliding and all the different disciplines in skydiving, I went on to BASE jumping. BASE jumping is skydiving from fixed objects, like buildings, antennae, bridges and earth — meaning mountains, cliffs. It's for sure — for me — it's the ultimate feeling of being in free fall, with all the visual references. So my goal soon was to discover new places that nobody had jumped before. So in summer 2000 I was the first to BASE jump the Eiger North Face in Switzerland. Two years after this, I was the first to BASE jump from Matterhorn, a very famous mountain that probably everybody knows in here. 2005 I did a BASE jump from the Eiger, from the Monk and from the Jungfrau, three very famous mountains in Switzerland. The special thing on these three jumps were, I hiked them all and climbed them all in only one day. In 2008 I jumped the Eiffel Tower in Paris. (Laughter) So with all this knowledge, I also wanted to get into stunts. So with some friends we started to do different tricks, like for example this jump here, I jumped from a paraglider. Or here — everybody was freezing, pretty much, except me, because it was very cold in Austria where we did this filming. Everybody sitting in a basket, and I was on top of the balloon, ready to slide down with my skysurf board. Or this jump, from a moving truck on the highway. (Laughter) Extreme sports on top level like this is only possible if you practice step by step, if you really work hard on your skills and on your knowledge. Of course you need to be in physical, very good, condition, so I'm training a lot. You need to have the best possible equipment. And probably the most important is you have to work on your mental skills, mental preparation. And all this to come as close as possible to the human dream of being able to fly. So for 2009, I'm training hard for my two new projects. The first one, I want to set a world record in flying from a cliff with my wingsuit. And I want to set a new record, with the longest distance ever flown. For my second project, I have a sensational idea of a jump that never has been done before. So now, on the following movie you will see that I'm much better in flying a wingsuit than speaking in English. Enjoy, and thank you very much. (Applause) (Applause) June Cohen: I have some questions. I think we all might have some questions. Question one: so does that actually feel the way the flying dream does? Because it looks like it might. Ueli Gegenschatz: Pretty much. I believe this is probably the closest possibility to come to the dream of being able to fly. JC: I know the answer to this, but how do you land? UE: Parachute. We have to open a parachute just seconds before, I would say, impact. (Laughter) It's not possible to land a wingsuit yet. JC: Yet. But people are trying. Are you among those — you're not going to commit — are you among those trying to do it? UE: It's a dream. It's a dream. Yeah. We're still working on it and we're developing the wingsuits to get better performance, to get more knowledge. And I believe soon. JC: All right. Well we will watch this space. But I have two more questions. What is the — there was exhaust coming out of the back of the wingsuit. Was that a propelled wingsuit that you were wearing? UE: Nope. It's just smoke. JC: Coming off of you? (Laughter) UE: Hopefully not. (Laughter) JC: That seems dangerous. UE: No, smoke is for two reasons, you can see the speed, you can see the way where I was flying. That's reason number one. And reason number two: it's much easier for the camera guy to film If I'm using smoke. JC: Ah, I see. So the wingsuit is set up to deliberately release smoke so that you can be tracked. One more question. What do you do to to cover your face? Because I just keep thinking of going that fast and having your whole face smushed backwards. Are you in a helmet? Are you in goggles? UE: The purest and the best feeling would be with only goggles. JC: And is that how you usually fly? UE: Usually I'm wearing a helmet. In the mountains I'm always wearing a helmet because of landings — usually it's difficult — it's not like regular skydiving where you have like the big landings. So you have to be prepared. JC: Right. Now is there anything you don't do? Do people come to you with projects and say, "We want you to do this!" and do you ever say, "No, no I'm not going to." UE: Oh of course, of course. Some people have crazy ideas and — (Laughter) JC: ...a round of applause... (Applause) UE: Thank you very much. (Applause)

The Airstream, restyled

Christopher C. Deam

{0: 'Christopher C. Deam'}

{0: ['designer']}

{0: 'A fascination with clean lines, modern materials and tiny houses made Christopher C. Deam the perfect designer to rethink the Airstream trailer right down to its aluminum skin.'}

2002-02-02

2009-04-02

TED2002

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['creativity', 'design', 'exploration', 'materials', 'transportation']

{436: 'Design and discovery', 385: 'Toys and materials from the future', 5: 'Great cars are great art', 122: 'Human-centered design', 1926: 'Paper beats plastic? How to rethink environmental folklore', 207: 'Treat design as art'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_c_deam_the_airstream_restyled/

In this low-key, image-packed talk from 2002, designer Christopher C. Deam talks about his makeover of an American classic: the Airstream travel trailer.

I was asked by Wilsonart International, a plastic laminate company, which is the largest plastic laminate company in the world — they asked me to design a trade show booth for exhibition at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, in 2000. So looking at their three main markets for their product which were basically transportation design, interiors and furniture, we came up with the solution of taking an old Airstream trailer and gutting it, and trying to portray laminate, and a trailer, in kind of a fresh, new contemporary look. When this trailer showed up at my shop in Berkeley, I'd actually never stepped foot in an Airstream trailer, or any other trailer. So I can be somebody that can look at this in a totally fresh perspective and see if I can optimize it in its most idealistic fashion. I decided I had to do some research and really figure out what had gone wrong somewhere along the history of Airstream. What I discovered in these interiors is that there was a disconnect between the exterior shell and the interior architecture of the pieces. In that the shell was originally conceived as a lightweight, modern, futuristic, high-tech pod for hurtling down the freeway, and the interiors were completely out of sync with that. In fact it appeared like they referenced a mountain cabin. That seemed really like a crisis to me, that they had never been able to develop a vocabulary about escape, and about travel, and modernity in this trailer that was consistent with the shell. We really needed to do some archeology in the trailer itself to figure out what's authentic in an Airstream trailer, and what feels like it has true purpose and utility. We stripped out all the vinyl and zolatone paint that was covering up this just fantastic aluminum shell. We took off all the visible hardware and trim that was kind of doing the country cabin thing. I literally drew on the walls of the trailer, mocked it up in cardboard, we'd come in and cut, decide things were wrong, pull it out, put it back in. The main goal was to smooth out the interior, and begin to speak about motion, and mobility, and independence. The biggest difficulty on one of these trailers is that when you're designing there's actually no logical place to stop and start materials because of the continuous form of the trailer. There's no such things as two walls and a ceiling coming together, where you can change materials and shapes. So that became a challenge. Compounding that, the material of choice, laminate, that I was trying to highlight, only bends in two dimensions. It's a compound curve interior. What I had to devise was a way of fooling the eye into believing that all these panels are curved with the shell. What I came up with was a series of second skins that basically float over the aluminum shell. And what I was trying to do there was direct your eye in the space, so that you would perceive the geometry in a different way, and that the casework wouldn't break up the space. They also gave us a way to run power and rewire the trailer without tearing out the skin, so they function as an electrical chase. That's the trailer, pretty much finished. That trailer led to another commission, to participate in whats called Tokyo Designers Block. Its a week of furniture design events in Tokyo, in October. Teruo Kurosaki, who owns a furniture company called Idee, he asked me to ship him two trailers to Tokyo. He said one he would like to make a real trailer, functioning, and we would sell that one. Trailer number two, you have a blank slate, you can to anything you want. We came up with a fantasy scenario of a DJ traveling around the States, that would collect records and go on tours. This trailer housed two turntables, mixer, wet bar, fridge, integrated sound system. It's got a huge couch, fits quite a few people, and basically we'd had a great time with this. And so in this trailer I took it upon myself to think about travel, and escape, in an idiosyncratic sense. A lot of these ideas migrated into the production trailers for Airstream. This brings us up to the time that I started consulting to Airstream. They came to me and said, "Well, what can we do to freshen this thing up? And do you think kids, you know, skateboarders, surfers, rock climbers, would use these things?" And I said, "Well, not in that interior." (Laughter) Anyway, I went out to Airstream about six times during the process of building this prototype, and it's called the Bambi prototype. I thought, "Finally, oh yeah great, big company, I'm gonna work with somebody with money for tooling and molding." And I walked in their prototype facility, and it's exactly like my shop, only bigger — same tools, same things. So the problem became — and they set this dilemma to me — that you have to design the interior using only our existing technology, and there's no money for tooling or molding. The trailers themselves are actually hand-built. All the casework is hand-scribed in, uniquely, so you can't just cut 100 parts for 100 trailers, you have to cut them big, and every single one is hand-fit. They didn't want to go to a componentized system. And there it is, that's the Bambi 16. (Applause)

Military robots and the future of war

P.W. Singer

{0: 'P.W. Singer'}

{0: ['military analyst']}

{0: 'In P.W. Singer\'s most recent book, "Wired for War," he studies robotic and drone warfighters -- and explores how these new war machines are changing the very nature of human conflict. He has also written on other facets of modern war, including private armies and child soldiers.'}

2009-02-04

2009-04-03

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['design', 'drones', 'future', 'global issues', 'robots', 'technology', 'violence', 'war']

{33: "Let's rethink America's military strategy", 171: 'An Iraq war movie crowd-sourced from soldiers', 355: 'Robots will invade our lives', 1766: "The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot", 1999: 'Why veterans miss war', 1875: 'Meet the robots for humanity'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/p_w_singer_military_robots_and_the_future_of_war/

In this powerful talk, P.W. Singer shows how the widespread use of robots in war is changing the realities of combat. He shows us scenarios straight out of science fiction -- that now may not be so fictitious.

I thought I'd begin with a scene of war. There was little to warn of the danger ahead. The Iraqi insurgent had placed the IED, an Improvised Explosive Device, along the side of the road with great care. By 2006, there were more than 2,500 of these attacks every single month, and they were the leading cause of casualties among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The team that was hunting for this IED is called an EOD team— Explosives Ordinance Disposal—and they're the pointy end of the spear in the American effort to suppress these roadside bombs. Each EOD team goes out on about 600 of these bomb calls every year, defusing about two bombs a day. Perhaps the best sign of how valuable they are to the war effort, is that the Iraqi insurgents put a $50,000 bounty on the head of a single EOD soldier. Unfortunately, this particular call would not end well. By the time the soldier advanced close enough to see the telltale wires of the bomb, it exploded in a wave of flame. Now, depending how close you are and how much explosive has been packed into that bomb, it can cause death or injury. You have to be as far as 50 yards away to escape that. The blast is so strong it can even break your limbs, even if you're not hit. That soldier had been on top of the bomb. And so when the rest of the team advanced they found little left. And that night the unit's commander did a sad duty, and he wrote a condolence letter back to the United States, and he talked about how hard the loss had been on his unit, about the fact that they had lost their bravest soldier, a soldier who had saved their lives many a time. And he apologized for not being able to bring them home. But then he talked up the silver lining that he took away from the loss. "At least," as he wrote, "when a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother." That scene sounds like science fiction, but is battlefield reality already. The soldier in that case was a 42-pound robot called a PackBot. The chief's letter went, not to some farmhouse in Iowa like you see in the old war movies, but went to the iRobot Company, which is named after the Asimov novel and the not-so-great Will Smith movie, and... um... (Laughter)... if you remember that in that fictional world, robots started out carrying out mundane chores, and then they started taking on life-and-death decisions. That's a reality we face today. What we're going to do is actually just flash a series of photos behind me that show you the reality of robots used in war right now or already at the prototype stage. It's just to give you a taste. Another way of putting it is you're not going to see anything that's powered by Vulcan technology, or teenage wizard hormones or anything like that. This is all real. So why don't we go ahead and start those pictures. Something big is going on in war today, and maybe even the history of humanity itself. The U.S. military went into Iraq with a handful of drones in the air. We now have 5,300. We went in with zero unmanned ground systems. We now have 12,000. And the tech term "killer application" takes on new meaning in this space. And we need to remember that we're talking about the Model T Fords, the Wright Flyers, compared to what's coming soon. That's where we're at right now. One of the people that I recently met with was an Air Force three-star general, and he said basically, where we're headed very soon is tens of thousands of robots operating in our conflicts, and these numbers matter, because we're not just talking about tens of thousands of today's robots, but tens of thousands of these prototypes and tomorrow's robots, because of course, one of the things that's operating in technology is Moore's Law, that you can pack in more and more computing power into those robots, and so flash forward around 25 years, if Moore's Law holds true, those robots will be close to a billion times more powerful in their computing than today. And so what that means is the kind of things that we used to only talk about at science fiction conventions like Comic-Con have to be talked about in the halls of power and places like the Pentagon. A robots revolution is upon us. Now, I need to be clear here. I'm not talking about a revolution where you have to worry about the Governor of California showing up at your door, a la the Terminator. (Laughter) When historians look at this period, they're going to conclude that we're in a different type of revolution: a revolution in war, like the invention of the atomic bomb. But it may be even bigger than that, because our unmanned systems don't just affect the "how" of war-fighting, they affect the "who" of fighting at its most fundamental level. That is, every previous revolution in war, be it the machine gun, be it the atomic bomb, was about a system that either shot faster, went further, had a bigger boom. That's certainly the case with robotics, but they also change the experience of the warrior and even the very identity of the warrior. Another way of putting this is that mankind's 5,000-year-old monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down in our very lifetime. I've spent the last several years going around meeting with all the players in this field, from the robot scientists to the science fiction authors who inspired them to the 19-year-old drone pilots who are fighting from Nevada, to the four-star generals who command them, to even the Iraqi insurgents who they are targeting and what they think about our systems, and what I found interesting is not just their stories, but how their experiences point to these ripple effects that are going outwards in our society, in our law and our ethics, etc. And so what I'd like to do with my remaining time is basically flesh out a couple of these. So the first is that the future of war, even a robotics one, is not going to be purely an American one. The U.S. is currently ahead in military robotics right now, but we know that in technology there's no such thing as a permanent first move or advantage. In a quick show of hands, how many people in this room still use Wang Computers? (Laughter) It's the same thing in war. The British and the French invented the tank. The Germans figured out how to use it right, and so what we have to think about for the U.S. is that we are ahead right now, but you have 43 other countries out there working on military robotics, and they include all the interesting countries like Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran. And this raises a bigger worry for me. How do we move forward in this revolution given the state of our manufacturing and the state of our science and mathematics training in our schools? Or another way of thinking about this is, what does it mean to go to war increasingly with soldiers whose hardware is made in China and software is written in India? But just as software has gone open-source, so has warfare. Unlike an aircraft carrier or an atomic bomb, you don't need a massive manufacturing system to build robotics. A lot of it is off the shelf. A lot of it's even do-it-yourself. One of those things you just saw flashed before you was a raven drone, the handheld tossed one. For about a thousand dollars, you can build one yourself, equivalent to what the soldiers use in Iraq. That raises another wrinkle when it comes to war and conflict. Good guys might play around and work on these as hobby kits, but so might bad guys. This cross between robotics and things like terrorism is going to be fascinating and even disturbing, and we've already seen it start. During the war between Israel, a state, and Hezbollah, a non-state actor, the non-state actor flew four different drones against Israel. There's already a jihadi website that you can go on and remotely detonate an IED in Iraq while sitting at your home computer. And so I think what we're going to see is two trends take place with this. First is, you're going to reinforce the power of individuals against governments, but then the second is that we are going to see an expansion in the realm of terrorism. The future of it may be a cross between al Qaeda 2.0 and the next generation of the Unabomber. And another way of thinking about this is the fact that, remember, you don't have to convince a robot that they're gonna receive 72 virgins after they die to convince them to blow themselves up. But the ripple effects of this are going to go out into our politics. One of the people that I met with was a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan, and he put it this way: "I like these systems because they save American lives, but I worry about more marketization of wars, more shock-and-awe talk, to defray discussion of the costs. People are more likely to support the use of force if they view it as costless." Robots for me take certain trends that are already in play in our body politic, and maybe take them to their logical ending point. We don't have a draft. We don't have declarations of war anymore. We don't buy war bonds anymore. And now we have the fact that we're converting more and more of our American soldiers that we would send into harm's way into machines, and so we may take those already lowering bars to war and drop them to the ground. But the future of war is also going to be a YouTube war. That is, our new technologies don't merely remove humans from risk. They also record everything that they see. So they don't just delink the public: they reshape its relationship with war. There's already several thousand video clips of combat footage from Iraq on YouTube right now, most of it gathered by drones. Now, this could be a good thing. It could be building connections between the home front and the war front as never before. But remember, this is taking place in our strange, weird world, and so inevitably the ability to download these video clips to, you know, your iPod or your Zune gives you the ability to turn it into entertainment. Soldiers have a name for these clips. They call it war porn. The typical one that I was sent was an email that had an attachment of video of a Predator strike taking out an enemy site. Missile hits, bodies burst into the air with the explosion. It was set to music. It was set to the pop song "I Just Want To Fly" by Sugar Ray. This ability to watch more but experience less creates a wrinkle in the public's relationship with war. I think about this with a sports parallel. It's like the difference between watching an NBA game, a professional basketball game on TV, where the athletes are tiny figures on the screen, and being at that basketball game in person and realizing what someone seven feet really does look like. But we have to remember, these are just the clips. These are just the ESPN SportsCenter version of the game. They lose the context. They lose the strategy. They lose the humanity. War just becomes slam dunks and smart bombs. Now the irony of all this is that while the future of war may involve more and more machines, it's our human psychology that's driving all of this, it's our human failings that are leading to these wars. So one example of this that has big resonance in the policy realm is how this plays out on our very real war of ideas that we're fighting against radical groups. What is the message that we think we are sending with these machines versus what is being received in terms of the message. So one of the people that I met was a senior Bush Administration official, who had this to say about our unmanning of war: "It plays to our strength. The thing that scares people is our technology." But when you go out and meet with people, for example in Lebanon, it's a very different story. One of the people I met with there was a news editor, and we're talking as a drone is flying above him, and this is what he had to say. "This is just another sign of the coldhearted cruel Israelis and Americans, who are cowards because they send out machines to fight us. They don't want to fight us like real men, but they're afraid to fight, so we just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them." The future of war also is featuring a new type of warrior, and it's actually redefining the experience of going to war. You can call this a cubicle warrior. This is what one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq War while never leaving Nevada. "You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car and you drive home and within 20 minutes, you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework." Now, the psychological balancing of those experiences is incredibly tough, and in fact those drone pilots have higher rates of PTSD than many of the units physically in Iraq. But some have worries that this disconnection will lead to something else, that it might make the contemplation of war crimes a lot easier when you have this distance. "It's like a video game," is what one young pilot described to me of taking out enemy troops from afar. As anyone who's played Grand Theft Auto knows, we do things in the video world that we wouldn't do face to face. So much of what you're hearing from me is that there's another side to technologic revolutions, and that it's shaping our present and maybe will shape our future of war. Moore's Law is operative, but so's Murphy's Law. The fog of war isn't being lifted. The enemy has a vote. We're gaining incredible new capabilities, but we're also seeing and experiencing new human dilemmas. Now, sometimes these are just "oops" moments, which is what the head of a robotics company described it, you just have "oops" moments. Well, what are "oops" moments with robots in war? Well, sometimes they're funny. Sometimes, they're like that scene from the Eddie Murphy movie "Best Defense," playing out in reality, where they tested out a machine gun-armed robot, and during the demonstration it started spinning in a circle and pointed its machine gun at the reviewing stand of VIPs. Fortunately the weapon wasn't loaded and no one was hurt, but other times "oops" moments are tragic, such as last year in South Africa, where an anti-aircraft cannon had a "software glitch," and actually did turn on and fired, and nine soldiers were killed. We have new wrinkles in the laws of war and accountability. What do we do with things like unmanned slaughter? What is unmanned slaughter? We've already had three instances of Predator drone strikes where we thought we got bin Laden, and it turned out not to be the case. And this is where we're at right now. This is not even talking about armed, autonomous systems with full authority to use force. And do not believe that that isn't coming. During my research I came across four different Pentagon projects on different aspects of that. And so you have this question: what does this lead to issues like war crimes? Robots are emotionless, so they don't get upset if their buddy is killed. They don't commit crimes of rage and revenge. But robots are emotionless. They see an 80-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair the same way they see a T-80 tank: they're both just a series of zeroes and ones. And so we have this question to figure out: How do we catch up our 20th century laws of war, that are so old right now that they could qualify for Medicare, to these 21st century technologies? And so, in conclusion, I've talked about what seems the future of war, but notice that I've only used real world examples and you've only seen real world pictures and videos. And so this sets a great challenge for all of us that we have to worry about well before you have to worry about your Roomba sucking the life away from you. Are we going to let the fact that what's unveiling itself right now in war sounds like science fiction and therefore keeps us in denial? Are we going to face the reality of 21st century war? Is our generation going to make the same mistake that a past generation did with atomic weaponry, and not deal with the issues that surround it until Pandora's box is already opened up? Now, I could be wrong on this, and one Pentagon robot scientist told me that I was. He said, "There's no real social, ethical, moral issues when it comes to robots. That is," he added, "unless the machine kills the wrong people repeatedly. Then it's just a product recall issue." And so the ending point for this is that actually, we can turn to Hollywood. A few years ago, Hollywood gathered all the top characters and created a list of the top 100 heroes and top 100 villains of all of Hollywood history, the characters that represented the best and worst of humanity. Only one character made it onto both lists: The Terminator, a robot killing machine. And so that points to the fact that our machines can be used for both good and evil, but for me it points to the fact that there's a duality of humans as well. This week is a celebration of our creativity. Our creativity has taken our species to the stars. Our creativity has created works of arts and literature to express our love. And now, we're using our creativity in a certain direction, to build fantastic machines with incredible capabilities, maybe even one day an entirely new species. But one of the main reasons that we're doing that is because of our drive to destroy each other, and so the question we all should ask: is it our machines, or is it us that's wired for war? Thank you. (Applause)

Scenes from "My Architect"

Nathaniel Kahn

{0: 'Nathaniel Kahn'}

{0: ['filmmaker']}

{0: 'Nathaniel Kahn is an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated maker of documentary films. His journey to understand his distant father -- the legendary modern architect Louis Kahn -- became the film "My Architect." '}

2002-02-02

2009-04-06

TED2002

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['architecture', 'children', 'design', 'entertainment', 'film', 'storytelling']

{219: 'Building uniqueness', 221: 'The story of Project Orion', 231: 'My days as a young rebel', 282: 'What happens when you lose everything', 1476: 'The shared wonder of film', 13: 'A master architect asks, Now what?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/nathaniel_kahn_scenes_from_my_architect/

Nathaniel Kahn shares clips from his documentary "My Architect," about his quest to understand his father, the legendary architect Louis Kahn. It's a film with meaning to anyone who seeks to understand the relationship between art and love.

One thing I wanted to say about film making is — about this film — in thinking about some of the wonderful talks we've heard here, Michael Moschen, and some of the talks about music, this idea that there is a narrative line, and that music exists in time. A film also exists in time; it's an experience that you should go through emotionally. And in making this film I felt that so many of the documentaries I've seen were all about learning something, or knowledge, or driven by talking heads, and driven by ideas. And I wanted this film to be driven by emotions, and really to follow my journey. So instead of doing the talking head thing, instead it's composed of scenes, and we meet people along the way. We only meet them once. They don't come back several times, so it really chronicles a journey. It's something like life, that once you get in it you can't get out. There are two clips I want to show you, the first one is a kind of hodgepodge, its just three little moments, four little moments with three of the people who are here tonight. It's not the way they occur in the film, because they are part of much larger scenes. They play off each other in a wonderful way. And that ends with a little clip of my father, of Lou, talking about something that is very dear to him, which is the accidents of life. I think he felt that the greatest things in life were accidental, and perhaps not planned at all. And those three clips will be followed by a scene of perhaps what, to me, is really his greatest building which is a building in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He built the capital over there. And I think you'll enjoy this building, it's never been seen — it's been still photographed, but never photographed by a film crew. We were the first film crew in there. So you'll see images of this remarkable building. A couple of things to keep in mind when you see it, it was built entirely by hand, I think they got a crane the last year. It was built entirely by hand off bamboo scaffolding, people carrying these baskets of concrete on their heads, dumping them in the forms. It is the capital of the country, and it took 23 years to build, which is something they seem to be very proud of over there. It took as long as the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately it took so long that Lou never saw it finished. He died in 1974. The building was finished in 1983. So it continued on for many years after he died. Think about that when you see that building, that sometimes the things we strive for so hard in life we never get to see finished. And that really struck me about my father, in the sense that he had such belief that somehow, doing these things giving in the way that he gave, that something good would come out of it, even in the middle of a war, there was a war with Pakistan at one point, and the construction stopped totally and he kept working, because he felt, "Well when the war is done they'll need this building." So, those are the two clips I'm going to show. Roll that tape. (Applause) Richard Saul Wurman: I remember hearing him talk at Penn. And I came home and I said to my father and mother, "I just met this man: doesn't have much work, and he's sort of ugly, funny voice, and he's a teacher at school. I know you've never heard of him, but just mark this day that someday you will hear of him, because he's really an amazing man." Frank Gehry: I heard he had some kind of a fling with Ingrid Bergman. Is that true? Nathaniel Kahn: If he did he was a very lucky man. (Laughter) NK: Did you hear that, really? FG: Yeah, when he was in Rome. Moshe Safdie: He was a real nomad. And you know, when I knew him when I was in the office, he would come in from a trip, and he would be in the office for two or three days intensely, and he would pack up and go. You know he'd be in the office till three in the morning working with us and there was this kind of sense of the nomad in him. I mean as tragic as his death was in a railway station, it was so consistent with his life, you know? I mean I often think I'm going to die in a plane, or I'm going to die in an airport, or die jogging without an identification on me. I don't know why I sort of carry that from that memory of the way he died. But he was a sort of a nomad at heart. Louis Kahn: How accidental our existences are really and how full of influence by circumstance. Man: We are the morning workers who come, all the time, here and enjoy the walking, city's beauty and the atmosphere and this is the nicest place of Bangladesh. We are proud of it. NK: You're proud of it? Man: Yes, it is the national image of Bangladesh. NK: Do you know anything about the architect? Man: Architect? I've heard about him; he's a top-ranking architect. NK: Well actually I'm here because I'm the architect's son, he was my father. Man: Oh! Dad is Louis Farrakhan? NK: Yeah. No not Louis Farrakhan, Louis Kahn. Man: Louis Kahn, yes! (Laughter) Man: Your father, is he alive? NK: No, he's been dead for 25 years. Man: Very pleased to welcome you back. NK: Thank you. NK: He never saw it finished, Pop. No, he never saw this. Shamsul Wares: It was almost impossible, building for a country like ours. In 30, 50 years back, it was nothing, only paddy fields, and since we invited him here, he felt that he has got a responsibility. He wanted to be a Moses here, he gave us democracy. He is not a political man, but in this guise he has given us the institution for democracy, from where we can rise. In that way it is so relevant. He didn't care for how much money this country has, or whether he would be able to ever finish this building, but somehow he has been able to do it, build it, here. And this is the largest project he has got in here, the poorest country in the world. NK: It cost him his life. SW: Yeah, he paid. He paid his life for this, and that is why he is great and we'll remember him. But he was also human. Now his failure to satisfy the family life, is an inevitable association of great people. But I think his son will understand this, and will have no sense of grudge, or sense of being neglected, I think. He cared in a very different manner, but it takes a lot of time to understand that. In social aspect of his life he was just like a child, he was not at all matured. He could not say no to anything, and that is why, that he cannot say no to things, we got this building today. You see, only that way you can be able to understand him. There is no other shortcut, no other way to really understand him. But I think he has given us this building and we feel all the time for him, that's why, he has given love for us. He could not probably give the right kind of love for you, but for us, he has given the people the right kind of love, that is important. You have to understand that. He had an enormous amount of love, he loved everybody. To love everybody, he sometimes did not see the very closest ones, and that is inevitable for men of his stature. (Applause)

A prediction for the future of Iran

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

{0: 'Bruce Bueno de Mesquita'}

{0: ['political scientist']}

{0: 'A consultant to the CIA and the Department of Defense, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has built an intricate computer model that can predict the outcomes of international conflicts with bewildering accuracy.'}

2009-02-07

2009-04-07

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['global issues', 'math', 'prediction', 'technology', 'war']

{33: "Let's rethink America's military strategy", 358: 'Politics and religion are technologies', 177: 'The case for optimism', 1839: 'Iran and Israel: Peace is possible', 1636: 'Israel and Iran: A love story?', 1364: '2600 years of history in one object'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_a_prediction_for_the_future_of_iran/

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada ... After a crisp explanation of how he does it, he offers three predictions on the future of Iran.

What I'm going to try to do is explain to you quickly how to predict, and illustrate it with some predictions about what Iran is going to do in the next couple of years. In order to predict effectively, we need to use science. And the reason that we need to use science is because then we can reproduce what we're doing; it's not just wisdom or guesswork. And if we can predict, then we can engineer the future. So if you are concerned to influence energy policy, or you are concerned to influence national security policy, or health policy, or education, science — and a particular branch of science — is a way to do it, not the way we've been doing it, which is seat-of-the-pants wisdom. Now before I get into how to do it let me give you a little truth in advertising, because I'm not engaged in the business of magic. There are lots of thing that the approach I take can predict, and there are some that it can't. It can predict complex negotiations or situations involving coercion — that is in essence everything that has to do with politics, much of what has to do with business, but sorry, if you're looking to speculate in the stock market, I don't predict stock markets — OK, it's not going up any time really soon. But I'm not engaged in doing that. I'm not engaged in predicting random number generators. I actually get phone calls from people who want to know what lottery numbers are going to win. I don't have a clue. I engage in the use of game theory, game theory is a branch of mathematics and that means, sorry, that even in the study of politics, math has come into the picture. We can no longer pretend that we just speculate about politics, we need to look at this in a rigorous way. Now, what is game theory about? It assumes that people are looking out for what's good for them. That doesn't seem terribly shocking — although it's controversial for a lot of people — that we are self-interested. In order to look out for what's best for them or what they think is best for them, people have values — they identify what they want, and what they don't want. And they have beliefs about what other people want, and what other people don't want, how much power other people have, how much those people could get in the way of whatever it is that you want. And they face limitations, constraints, they may be weak, they may be located in the wrong part of the world, they may be Einstein, stuck away farming someplace in a rural village in India not being noticed, as was the case for Ramanujan for a long time, a great mathematician but nobody noticed. Now who is rational? A lot of people are worried about what is rationality about? You know, what if people are rational? Mother Theresa, she was rational. Terrorists, they're rational. Pretty much everybody is rational. I think there are only two exceptions that I'm aware of — two-year-olds, they are not rational, they have very fickle preferences, they switch what they think all the time, and schizophrenics are probably not rational, but pretty much everybody else is rational. That is, they are just trying to do what they think is in their own best interest. Now in order to work out what people are going to do to pursue their interests, we have to think about who has influence in the world. If you're trying to influence corporations to change their behavior, with regard to producing pollutants, one approach, the common approach, is to exhort them to be better, to explain to them what damage they're doing to the planet. And many of you may have noticed that doesn't have as big an effect, as perhaps you would like it to have. But if you show them that it's in their interest, then they're responsive. So, we have to work out who influences problems. If we're looking at Iran, the president of the United States we would like to think, may have some influence — certainly the president in Iran has some influence — but we make a mistake if we just pay attention to the person at the top of the power ladder because that person doesn't know much about Iran, or about energy policy, or about health care, or about any particular policy. That person surrounds himself or herself with advisers. If we're talking about national security problems, maybe it's the Secretary of State, maybe it's the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, maybe the ambassador to the United Nations, or somebody else who they think is going to know more about the particular problem. But let's face it, the Secretary of State doesn't know much about Iran. The secretary of defense doesn't know much about Iran. Each of those people in turn has advisers who advise them, so they can advise the president. There are lots of people shaping decisions and so if we want to predict correctly we have to pay attention to everybody who is trying to shape the outcome, not just the people at the pinnacle of the decision-making pyramid. Unfortunately, a lot of times we don't do that. There's a good reason that we don't do that, and there's a good reason that using game theory and computers, we can overcome the limitation of just looking at a few people. Imagine a problem with just five decision-makers. Imagine for example that Sally over here, wants to know what Harry, and Jane, and George and Frank are thinking, and sends messages to those people. Sally's giving her opinion to them, and they're giving their opinion to Sally. But Sally also wants to know what Harry is saying to these three, and what they're saying to Harry. And Harry wants to know what each of those people are saying to each other, and so on, and Sally would like to know what Harry thinks those people are saying. That's a complicated problem; that's a lot to know. With five decision-makers there are a lot of linkages — 120, as a matter of fact, if you remember your factorials. Five factorial is 120. Now you may be surprised to know that smart people can keep 120 things straight in their head. Suppose we double the number of influencers from five to 10. Does that mean we've doubled the number of pieces of information we need to know, from 120 to 240? No. How about 10 times? To 1,200? No. We've increased it to 3.6 million. Nobody can keep that straight in their head. But computers, they can. They don't need coffee breaks, they don't need vacations, they don't need to go to sleep at night, they don't ask for raises either. They can keep this information straight and that means that we can process the information. So I'm going to talk to you about how to process it, and I'm going to give you some examples out of Iran, and you're going to be wondering, "Why should we listen to this guy? Why should we believe what he's saying?" So I'm going to show you a factoid. This is an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency of the percentage of time that the model I'm talking about is right in predicting things whose outcome is not yet known, when the experts who provided the data inputs got it wrong. That's not my claim, that's a CIA claim — you can read it, it was declassified a while ago. You can read it in a volume edited by H. Bradford Westerfield, Yale University Press. So, what do we need to know in order to predict? You may be surprised to find out we don't need to know very much. We do need to know who has a stake in trying to shape the outcome of a decision. We need to know what they say they want, not what they want in their heart of hearts, not what they think they can get, but what they say they want, because that is a strategically chosen position, and we can work backwards from that to draw inferences about important features of their decision-making. We need to know how focused they are on the problem at hand. That is, how willing are they to drop what they're doing when the issue comes up, and attend to it instead of something else that's on their plate — how big a deal is it to them? And how much clout could they bring to bear if they chose to engage on the issue? If we know those things we can predict their behavior by assuming that everybody cares about two things on any decision. They care about the outcome. They'd like an outcome as close to what they are interested in as possible. They're careerists, they also care about getting credit — there's ego involvement, they want to be seen as important in shaping the outcome, or as important, if it's their druthers, to block an outcome. And so we have to figure out how they balance those two things. Different people trade off between standing by their outcome, faithfully holding to it, going down in a blaze of glory, or giving it up, putting their finger in the wind, and doing whatever they think is going to be a winning position. Most people fall in between, and if we can work out where they fall we can work out how to negotiate with them to change their behavior. So with just that little bit of input we can work out what the choices are that people have, what the chances are that they're willing to take, what they're after, what they value, what they want, and what they believe about other people. You might notice what we don't need to know: there's no history in here. How they got to where they are may be important in shaping the input information, but once we know where they are we're worried about where they're going to be headed in the future. How they got there turns out not to be terribly critical in predicting. I remind you of that 90 percent accuracy rate. So where are we going to get this information? We can get this information from the Internet, from The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, lots of sources like that, or we can get it from asking experts who spend their lives studying places and problems, because those experts know this information. If they don't know, who are the people trying to influence the decision, how much clout do they have, how much they care about this issue, and what do they say they want, are they experts? That's what it means to be an expert, that's the basic stuff an expert needs to know. Alright, lets turn to Iran. Let me make three important predictions — you can check this out, time will tell. What is Iran going to do about its nuclear weapons program? How secure is the theocratic regime in Iran? What's its future? And everybody's best friend, Ahmadinejad. How are things going for him? How are things going to be working out for him in the next year or two? You take a look at this, this is not based on statistics. I want to be very clear here. I'm not projecting some past data into the future. I've taken inputs on positions and so forth, run it through a computer model that had simulated the dynamics of interaction, and these are the simulated dynamics, the predictions about the path of policy. So you can see here on the vertical axis, I haven't shown it all the way down to zero, there are lots of other options, but here I'm just showing you the prediction, so I've narrowed the scale. Up at the top of the axis, "Build the Bomb." At 130, we start somewhere above 130, between building a bomb, and making enough weapons-grade fuel so that you could build a bomb. That's where, according to my analyses, the Iranians were at the beginning of this year. And then the model makes predictions down the road. At 115 they would only produce enough weapons grade fuel to show that they know how, but they wouldn't build a weapon: they would build a research quantity. It would achieve some national pride, but not go ahead and build a weapon. And down at 100 they would build civilian nuclear energy, which is what they say is their objective. The yellow line shows us the most likely path. The yellow line includes an analysis of 87 decision makers in Iran, and a vast number of outside influencers trying to pressure Iran into changing its behavior, various players in the United States, and Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and Russia, European Union, Japan, so on and so forth. The white line reproduces the analysis if the international environment just left Iran to make its own internal decisions, under its own domestic political pressures. That's not going to be happening, but you can see that the line comes down faster if they're not put under international pressure, if they're allowed to pursue their own devices. But in any event, by the end of this year, beginning of next year, we get to a stable equilibrium outcome. And that equilibrium is not what the United States would like, but it's probably an equilibrium that the United States can live with, and that a lot of others can live with. And that is that Iran will achieve that nationalist pride by making enough weapons-grade fuel, through research, so that they could show that they know how to make weapons-grade fuel, but not enough to actually build a bomb. How is this happening? Over here you can see this is the distribution of power in favor of civilian nuclear energy today, this is what that power block is predicted to be like by the late parts of 2010, early parts of 2011. Just about nobody supports research on weapons-grade fuel today, but by 2011 that gets to be a big block, and you put these two together, that's the controlling influence in Iran. Out here today, there are a bunch of people — Ahmadinejad for example — who would like not only to build a bomb, but test a bomb. That power disappears completely; nobody supports that by 2011. These guys are all shrinking, the power is all drifting out here, so the outcome is going to be the weapons-grade fuel. Who are the winners and who are the losers in Iran? Take a look at these guys, they're growing in power, and by the way, this was done a while ago before the current economic crisis, and that's probably going to get steeper. These folks are the moneyed interests in Iran, the bankers, the oil people, the bazaaries. They are growing in political clout, as the mullahs are isolating themselves — with the exception of one group of mullahs, who are not well known to Americans. That's this line here, growing in power, these are what the Iranians call the quietists. These are the Ayatollahs, mostly based in Qom, who have great clout in the religious community, have been quiet on politics and are going to be getting louder, because they see Iran going in an unhealthy direction, a direction contrary to what Khomeini had in mind. Here is Mr. Ahmadinejad. Two things to notice: he's getting weaker, and while he gets a lot of attention in the United States, he is not a major player in Iran. He is on the way down. OK, so I'd like you to take a little away from this. Everything is not predictable: the stock market is, at least for me, not predictable, but most complicated negotiations are predictable. Again, whether we're talking health policy, education, environment, energy, litigation, mergers, all of these are complicated problems that are predictable, that this sort of technology can be applied to. And the reason that being able to predict those things is important, is not just because you might run a hedge fund and make money off of it, but because if you can predict what people will do, you can engineer what they will do. And if you engineer what they do you can change the world, you can get a better result. I would like to leave you with one thought, which is for me, the dominant theme of this gathering, and is the dominant theme of this way of thinking about the world. When people say to you, "That's impossible," you say back to them, "When you say 'That's impossible,' you're confused with, 'I don't know how to do it.'" Thank you. (Applause) Chris Anderson: One question for you. That was fascinating. I love that you put it out there. I got very nervous halfway through the talk though, just panicking whether you'd included in your model, the possibility that putting this prediction out there might change the result. We've got 800 people in Tehran who watch TEDTalks. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: I've thought about that, and since I've done a lot of work for the intelligence community, they've also pondered that. It would be a good thing if people paid more attention, took seriously, and engaged in the same sorts of calculations, because it would change things. But it would change things in two beneficial ways. It would hasten how quickly people arrive at an agreement, and so it would save everybody a lot of grief and time. And, it would arrive at an agreement that everybody was happy with, without having to manipulate them so much — which is basically what I do, I manipulate them. So it would be a good thing. CA: So you're kind of trying to say, "People of Iran, this is your destiny, lets go there." BBM: Well, people of Iran, this is what many of you are going to evolve to want, and we could get there a lot sooner, and you would suffer a lot less trouble from economic sanctions, and we would suffer a lot less fear of the use of military force on our end, and the world would be a better place. CA: Here's hoping they hear it that way. Thank you very much Bruce. BBM: Thank you. (Applause)

How bacteria "talk"

Bonnie Bassler

{0: 'Bonnie Bassler'}

{0: ['molecular biologist']}

{0: 'Bonnie Bassler studies how bacteria can communicate with one another, through chemical signals, to act as a unit. Her work could pave the way for new, more potent medicine.'}

2009-02-06

2009-04-08

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'gl', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'mr', 'ms', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['MacArthur grant', 'bacteria', 'biology', 'communication', 'disease', 'evolution', 'health', 'human origins', 'microbiology', 'science']

{519: 'The beautiful math of coral', 499: 'The jungle search for viruses', 259: 'Can we domesticate germs?', 37137: "To detect diseases earlier, let's speak bacteria's secret language", 2245: 'Programming bacteria to detect cancer (and maybe treat it)', 27105: 'How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_how_bacteria_talk/

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.

Bacteria are the oldest living organisms on the earth. They've been here for billions of years, and what they are are single-celled microscopic organisms. So they're one cell and they have this special property that they only have one piece of DNA. So they have very few genes and genetic information to encode all of the traits that they carry out. And the way bacteria make a living is that they consume nutrients from the environment, they grow to twice their size, they cut themselves down in the middle, and one cell becomes two, and so on and so on. They just grow and divide and grow and divide — so a kind of boring life, except that what I would argue is that you have an amazing interaction with these critters. I know you guys think of yourself as humans, and this is sort of how I think of you. This man is supposed to represent a generic human being, and all of the circles in that man are all the cells that make up your body. There's about a trillion human cells that make each one of us who we are and able to do all the things that we do. But you have 10 trillion bacterial cells in you or on you at any moment in your life. So, 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells on a human being. And, of course, it's the DNA that counts, so here's all the A, T, Gs and Cs that make up your genetic code and give you all your charming characteristics. You have about 30,000 genes. Well, it turns out you have 100 times more bacterial genes playing a role in you or on you all of your life. So at the best, you're 10 percent human; more likely, about one percent human, depending on which of these metrics you like. I know you think of yourself as human beings, but I think of you as 90 or 99 percent bacterial. (Laughter) And these bacteria are not passive riders. These are incredibly important; they keep us alive. They cover us in an invisible body armor that keeps environmental insults out so that we stay healthy. They digest our food, they make our vitamins, they actually educate your immune system to keep bad microbes out. So they do all these amazing things that help us and are vital for keeping us alive, and they never get any press for that. But they get a lot of press because they do a lot of terrible things as well. So there's all kinds of bacteria on the earth that have no business being in you or on you at any time, and if they are, they make you incredibly sick. And so the question for my lab is whether you want to think about all the good things that bacteria do or all the bad things that bacteria do. The question we had is: How could they do anything at all? I mean, they're incredibly small. You have to have a microscope to see one. They live this sort of boring life where they grow and divide, and they've always been considered to be these asocial, reclusive organisms. And so it seemed to us that they're just too small to have an impact on the environment if they simply act as individuals. So we wanted to think if there couldn't be a different way that bacteria live. And the clue to this came from another marine bacterium, and it's a bacterium called "Vibrio fischeri." What you're looking at on this slide is just a person from my lab holding a flask of a liquid culture of a bacterium, a harmless, beautiful bacterium that comes from the ocean, named Vibrio fischeri. And this bacterium has the special property that it makes light, so it makes bioluminescence, like fireflies make light. We're not doing anything to the cells here, we just took the picture by turning the lights off in the room, and this is what we see. And what's actually interesting to us was not that the bacteria made light but when the bacteria made light. What we noticed is when the bacteria were alone, so when they were in dilute suspension, they made no light. But when they grew to a certain cell number, all the bacteria turned on light simultaneously. So the question that we had is: How can bacteria, these primitive organisms, tell the difference from times when they're alone and times when they're in a community, and then all do something together? And what we figured out is that the way they do that is they talk to each other, and they talk with a chemical language. So this is now supposed to be my bacterial cell. When it's alone, it doesn't make any light. But what it does do is to make and secrete small molecules that you can think of like hormones, and these are the red triangles. And when the bacteria are alone, the molecules just float away, and so, no light. But when the bacteria grow and double and they're all participating in making these molecules, the molecule, the extracellular amount of that molecule, increases in proportion to cell number. And when the molecule hits a certain amount that tells the bacteria how many neighbors there are, they recognize that molecule and all of the bacteria turn on light in synchrony. And so that's how bioluminescence works — they're talking with these chemical words. The reason Vibrio fischeri is doing that comes from the biology — again, another plug for the animals in the ocean. Vibrio fischeri lives in this squid. What you're looking at is the Hawaiian bobtail squid. It's been turned on its back, and what I hope you can see are these two glowing lobes. These house the Vibrio fischeri cells. They live in there, at high cell number. That molecule is there, and they're making light. And the reason the squid is willing to put up with these shenanigans is because it wants that light. The way that this symbiosis works is that this little squid lives just off the coast of Hawaii, just in sort of shallow knee-deep water. And the squid is nocturnal, so during the day, it buries itself in the sand and sleeps. But then at night, it has to come out to hunt. So on bright nights when there's lots of starlight or moonlight, that light can penetrate the depth of the water the squid lives in, since it's just in those couple feet of water. What the squid has developed is a shutter that can open and close over the specialized light organ housing the bacteria. And then it has detectors on its back so it can sense how much starlight or moonlight is hitting its back. And it opens and closes the shutter so the amount of light coming out of the bottom, which is made by the bacterium, exactly matches how much light hits the squid's back, so the squid doesn't make a shadow. So it actually uses the light from the bacteria to counter-illuminate itself in an antipredation device, so predators can't see its shadow, calculate its trajectory and eat it. So this is like the stealth bomber of the ocean. (Laughter) But then if you think about it, this squid has this terrible problem, because it's got this dying, thick culture of bacteria, and it can't sustain that. And so what happens is, every morning when the sun comes up, the squid goes back to sleep, it buries itself in the sand, and it's got a pump that's attached to its circadian rhythm. And when the sun comes up, it pumps out, like, 95 percent of the bacteria. So now the bacteria are dilute, that little hormone molecule is gone, so they're not making light. But, of course, the squid doesn't care, it's asleep in the sand. And as the day goes by, the bacteria double, they release the molecule, and then light comes on at night, exactly when the squid wants it. So first, we figured out how this bacterium does this, but then we brought the tools of molecular biology to this to figure out, really, what's the mechanism. And what we found — so this is now supposed to be my bacterial cell — is that Vibrio fischeri has a protein. That's the red box — it's an enzyme that makes that little hormone molecule, the red triangle. And then as the cells grow, they're all releasing that molecule into the environment, so there's lots of molecule there. And the bacteria also have a receptor on their cell surface that fits like a lock and key with that molecule. These are just like the receptors on the surfaces of your cells. So when the molecule increases to a certain amount, which says something about the number of cells, it locks down into that receptor and information comes into the cells that tells the cells to turn on this collective behavior of making light. Why this is interesting is because in the past decade, we have found that this is not just some anomaly of this ridiculous, glow-in-the-dark bacterium that lives in the ocean — all bacteria have systems like this. So now what we understand is that all bacteria can talk to each other. They make chemical words, they recognize those words, and they turn on group behaviors that are only successful when all of the cells participate in unison. So now we have a fancy name for this: we call it "quorum sensing." They vote with these chemical votes, the vote gets counted, and then everybody responds to the vote. What's important for today's talk is we know there are hundreds of behaviors that bacteria carry out in these collective fashions. But the one that's probably the most important to you is virulence. It's not like a couple bacteria get in you and start secreting some toxins — you're enormous; that would have no effect on you, you're huge. But what they do, we now understand, is they get in you, they wait, they start growing, they count themselves with these little molecules, and they recognize when they have the right cell number that if all of the bacteria launch their virulence attack together, they're going to be successful at overcoming an enormous host. So bacteria always control pathogenicity with quorum sensing. So that's how it works. We also then went to look at what are these molecules. These were the red triangles on my slides before. This is the Vibrio fischeri molecule. This is the word that it talks with. And then we started to look at other bacteria, and these are just a smattering of the molecules that we've discovered. What I hope you can see is that the molecules are related. The left-hand part of the molecule is identical in every single species of bacteria. But the right-hand part of the molecule is a little bit different in every single species. What that does is to confer exquisite species specificities to these languages. So each molecule fits into its partner receptor and no other. So these are private, secret conversations. These conversations are for intraspecies communication. Each bacteria uses a particular molecule that's its language that allows it to count its own siblings. Once we got that far, we thought we were starting to understand that bacteria have these social behaviors. But what we were really thinking about is that most of the time, bacteria don't live by themselves, they live in incredible mixtures, with hundreds or thousands of other species of bacteria. And that's depicted on this slide. This is your skin. So this is just a picture — a micrograph of your skin. Anywhere on your body, it looks pretty much like this. What I hope you can see is that there's all kinds of bacteria there. And so we started to think, if this really is about communication in bacteria, and it's about counting your neighbors, it's not enough to be able to only talk within your species. There has to be a way to take a census of the rest of the bacteria in the population. So we went back to molecular biology and started studying different bacteria. And what we've found now is that, in fact, bacteria are multilingual. They all have a species-specific system, they have a molecule that says "me." But then running in parallel to that is a second system that we've discovered, that's generic. So they have a second enzyme that makes a second signal, and it has its own receptor, and this molecule is the trade language of bacteria. It's used by all different bacteria, and it's the language of interspecies communication. What happens is that bacteria are able to count how many of "me" and how many of "you." And they take that information inside, and they decide what tasks to carry out depending on who's in the minority and who's in the majority of any given population. Then, again, we turned to chemistry, and we figured out what this generic molecule is — that was the pink ovals on my last slide, this is it. It's a very small, five-carbon molecule. And what the important thing is that we learned is that every bacterium has exactly the same enzyme and makes exactly the same molecule. So they're all using this molecule for interspecies communication. This is the bacterial Esperanto. (Laughter) So once we got that far, we started to learn that bacteria can talk to each other with this chemical language. But we started to think that maybe there is something practical that we can do here as well. I've told you that bacteria have all these social behaviors, that they communicate with these molecules. Of course, I've also told you that one of the important things they do is to initiate pathogenicity using quorum sensing. So we thought: What if we made these bacteria so they can't talk or they can't hear? Couldn't these be new kinds of antibiotics? And of course, you've just heard and you already know that we're running out of antibiotics. Bacteria are incredibly multi-drug-resistant right now, and that's because all of the antibiotics that we use kill bacteria. They either pop the bacterial membrane, they make the bacterium so it can't replicate its DNA. We kill bacteria with traditional antibiotics, and that selects for resistant mutants. And so now, of course, we have this global problem in infectious diseases. So we thought, what if we could sort of do behavior modifications, just make these bacteria so they can't talk, they can't count, and they don't know to launch virulence? So that's exactly what we've done, and we've sort of taken two strategies. The first one is, we've targeted the intraspecies communication system. So we made molecules that look kind of like the real molecules, which you saw, but they're a little bit different. And so they lock into those receptors, and they jam recognition of the real thing. So by targeting the red system, what we are able to do is make species-specific, or disease-specific, anti-quorum-sensing molecules. We've also done the same thing with the pink system. We've taken that universal molecule and turned it around a little bit so that we've made antagonists of the interspecies communication system. The hope is that these will be used as broad-spectrum antibiotics that work against all bacteria. And so to finish, I'll show you the strategy. In this one, I'm just using the interspecies molecule, but the logic is exactly the same. So what you know is that when that bacterium gets into the animal — in this case, a mouse — it doesn't initiate virulence right away. It gets in, it starts growing, it starts secreting its quorum-sensing molecules. It recognizes when it has enough bacteria that now they're going to launch their attack, and the animal dies. And so what we've been able to do is to give these virulent infections, but we give them in conjunction with our anti-quorum-sensing molecules. So these are molecules that look kind of like the real thing, but they're a little different, which I've depicted on this slide. What we now know is that if we treat the animal with a pathogenic bacterium — a multi-drug-resistant pathogenic bacterium — in the same time we give our anti-quorum-sensing molecule, in fact, the animal lives. And so we think that this is the next generation of antibiotics, and it's going to get us around, at least initially, this big problem of resistance. What I hope you think is that bacteria can talk to each other, they use chemicals as their words, they have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that we're just now starting to learn about. Of course, what that allows bacteria to do is to be multicellular. So in the spirit of TED, they're doing things together because it makes a difference. What happens is that bacteria have these collective behaviors, and they can carry out tasks that they could never accomplish if they simply acted as individuals. What I would hope that I could further argue to you is that this is the invention of multicellularity. Bacteria have been on the earth for billions of years; humans, couple hundred thousand. So we think bacteria made the rules for how multicellular organization works. And we think by studying bacteria, we're going to be able to have insight about multicellularity in the human body. So we know that the principles and the rules, if we can figure them out in these sort of primitive organisms, the hope is that they will be applied to other human diseases and human behaviors as well. I hope that what you've learned is that bacteria can distinguish self from other. So by using these two molecules, they can say "me" and they can say "you." And again, of course, that's what we do, both in a molecular way, and also in an outward way, but I think about the molecular stuff. This is exactly what happens in your body. It's not like your heart cells and kidney cells get all mixed up every day, and that's because there's all of this chemistry going on, these molecules that say who each of these groups of cells is and what their tasks should be. So again, we think bacteria invented that, and you've just evolved a few more bells and whistles, but all of the ideas are in these simple systems that we can study. And the final thing is, just to reiterate that there's this practical part, and so we've made these anti-quorum-sensing molecules that are being developed as new kinds of therapeutics. But then, to finish with a plug for all the good and miraculous bacteria that live on the earth, we've also made pro-quorum-sensing molecules. So we've targeted those systems to make the molecules work better. So remember, you have these 10 times or more bacterial cells in you or on you, keeping you healthy. What we're also trying to do is to beef up the conversation of the bacteria that live as mutualists with you, in the hopes of making you more healthy, making those conversations better, so bacteria can do things that we want them to do better than they would be on their own. Finally, I wanted to show you — this is my gang at Princeton, New Jersey. Everything I told you about was discovered by someone in that picture. And I hope when you learn things, like about how the natural world works — I just want to say that whenever you read something in the newspaper or you hear some talk about something ridiculous in the natural world, it was done by a child. So science is done by that demographic. All of those people are between 20 and 30 years old, and they are the engine that drives scientific discovery in this country. And it's a really lucky demographic to work with. (Applause) I keep getting older and older, and they're always the same age. And it's just a crazy, delightful job. And I want to thank you for inviting me here, it's a big treat for me to get to come to this conference. (Applause) Thanks. (Applause)

A theory of everything

Emily Levine

{0: 'Emily Levine'}

{0: ['philosopher-comic']}

{0: 'Humorist, writer and trickster Emily Levine riffs on science and the human condition.'}

2002-02-02

2009-04-09

TED2002

en

['ar', 'bg', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['cognitive science', 'comedy', 'entertainment', 'humor', 'philosophy', 'science', 'technology']

{1126: 'On being wrong', 182: 'The illustrated woman', 1365: 'Comedy is translation', 527: 'A one-woman global village', 708: 'The art of the interview', 801: 'Science can answer moral questions'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_levine_a_theory_of_everything/

Philosopher-comedian Emily Levine talks (hilariously) about science, math, society and the way everything connects. She's a brilliant trickster, poking holes in our fixed ideas and bringing hidden truths to light. Settle in and let her ping your brain.

I am going to talk about myself, which I rarely do, because I — well for one thing, I prefer to talk about things I know nothing about. And secondly, I'm a recovering narcissist. (Laughter) I didn't know I was a narcissist actually. I thought narcissism meant you loved yourself. And then someone told me there is a flip side to it. So it's actually drearier than self-love; it's unrequited self-love. (Laughter) I don't feel I can afford a relapse. But I want to, though, explain how I came to design my own particular brand of comedy because I've been through so many different forms of it. I started with improvisation, in a particular form of improvisation called theater games, which had one rule, which I always thought was a great rule for an ethic for a society. And the rule was, you couldn't deny the other person's reality, you could only build on it. And of course we live in a society that's all about contradicting other peoples' reality. It's all about contradiction, which I think is why I'm so sensitive to contradiction in general. I see it everywhere. Like polls. You know, it's always curious to me that in public opinion polls the percentage of Americans who don't know the answer to any given question is always two percent. 75 percent of Americans think Alaska is part of Canada. But only two percent don't know the effect that the debacle in Argentina will have on the IMF's monetary policy — (Laughter) seems a contradiction. Or this ad that I read in the New York Times: "Wearing a fine watch speaks loudly of your rank in society. Buying it from us screams good taste." (Laughter) Or this that I found in a magazine called California Lawyer, in an article that is surely meant for the lawyers at Enron. "Surviving the Slammer: Do's and Don'ts." (Laughter) "Don't use big words." (Laughter) "Learn the lingua franca." (Laughter) Yeah. "Lingua this, Frankie." (Laughter) And I suppose it's a contradiction that I talk about science when I don't know math. You know, because — and by the way to I was so grateful to Dean Kamen for pointing out that one of the reasons, that there are cultural reasons that women and minorities don't enter the fields of science and technology — because for instance, the reason I don't do math is, I was taught to do math and read at the same time. So you're six years old, you're reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and it becomes rapidly obvious that there are only two kinds of men in the world: dwarves and Prince Charmings. And the odds are seven to one against your finding the prince. (Laughter) That's why little girls don't do math. It's too depressing. (Laughter) Of course, by talking about science I also may, as I did the other night, incur the violent wrath of some scientists who were very upset with me. I used the word postmodern as if it were OK. And they got very upset. One of them, to his credit, I think really just wanted to engage me in a serious argument. But I don't engage in serious arguments. I don't approve of them because arguments, of course, are all about contradiction, and they're shaped by the values that I have questions with. I have questions with the values of Newtonian science, like rationality. You're supposed to be rational in an argument. Well rationality is constructed by what Christie Hefner was talking about today, that mind-body split, you know? The head is good, body bad. Head is ego, body id. When we say "I," — as when Rene Descartes said, "I think therefore I am," — we mean the head. And as David Lee Roth sang in "Just a Gigolo," "I ain't got no body." That's how you get rationality. And that's why so much of humor is the body asserting itself against the head. That's why you have toilet humor and sexual humor. That's why you have the Raspyni Brothers whacking Richard in the genital area. And we're laughing doubly then because he's the body, but it's also — Voice offstage: Richard. Emily Levine: Richard. What did I say? (Laughter) Richard. Yes but it's also the head, the head of the conference. That's the other way that humor — like Art Buchwald takes shots at the heads of state. It doesn't make quite as much money as body humor I'm sure — (Laughter) but nevertheless, what makes us treasure you and adore you. There's also a contradiction in rationality in this country though, which is, as much as we revere the head, we are very anti-intellectual. I know this because I read in the New York Times, the Ayn Rand foundation took out a full-page ad after September 11, in which they said, "The problem is not Iraq or Iran, the problem in this country, facing this country is the university professors and their spawn." (Laughter) So I went back and re-read "The Fountainhead." (Laughter) I don't know how many of you have read it. And I'm not an expert on sadomasochism. (Laughter) But let me just read you a couple of random passages from page 217. "The act of a master taking painful contemptuous possession of her, was the kind of rapture she wanted. When they lay together in bed it was, as it had to be, as the nature of the act demanded, an act of violence. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred. It was the unendurable. Not a caress, but a wave of pain. The agony as an act of passion." So you can imagine my surprise on reading in The New Yorker that Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, claims Ayn Rand as his intellectual mentor. (Laughter) It's like finding out your nanny is a dominatrix. (Laughter) Bad enough we had to see J. Edgar Hoover in a dress. Now we have to picture Alan Greenspan in a black leather corset, with a butt tattoo that says, "Whip inflation now." (Laughter) And Ayn Rand of course, Ayn Rand is famous for a philosophy called Objectivism, which reflects another value of Newtonian physics, which is objectivity. Objectivity basically is constructed in that same S&M way. It's the subject subjugating the object. That's how you assert yourself. You make yourself the active voice. And the object is the passive no-voice. I was so fascinated by that Oxygen commercial. I don't know if you know this but — maybe it's different now, or maybe you were making a statement — but in many hospital nurseries across the country, until very recently anyway, according to a book by Jessica Benjamin, the signs over the little boys cribs read, "I'm a boy," and the signs over the little girls cribs read, "It's a girl." Yeah. So the passivity was culturally projected onto the little girls. And this still goes on as I think I told you last year. There's a poll that proves — there was a poll that was given by Time magazine, in which only men were asked, "Have you ever had sex with a woman you actively disliked?" And well, yeah. Well, 58 percent said yes, which I think is overinflated though because so many men if you just say, "Have you ever had sex ... " "Yes!" They don't even wait for the rest of it. (Laughter) And of course two percent did not know whether they'd had — (Laughter) That's the first callback, of my attempted quadruple. (Laughter) So this subject-object thing, is part of something I'm very interested in because this is why, frankly, I believe in political correctness. I do. I think it can go too far. I think Ringling Brothers may have gone too far with an ad they took out in the New York Times Magazine. "We have a lifelong emotional and financial commitment to our Asian Elephant partners." (Laughter) Maybe too far. But you know — I don't think that a person of color making fun of white people is the same thing as a white person making fun of people of color. Or women making fun of men is the same as men making fun of women. Or poor people making fun of rich people, the same as rich people. I think you can make fun of the have but not the have-nots, which is why you don't see me making fun of Kenneth Lay and his charming wife. (Laughter) What's funny about being down to four houses? (Laughter) And I really learned this lesson during the sex scandals of the Clinton administration or, Or as I call them, the good ol' days. (Laughter) When people I knew, you know, people who considered themselves liberal, and everything else, were making fun of Jennifer Flowers and Paula Jones. Basically, they were making fun of them for being trailer trash or white trash. It seems, I suppose, a harmless prejudice and that you're not really hurting anybody. Until you read, as I did, an ad in the Los Angeles Times. "For sale: White trash compactor." (Laughter) So this whole subject-object thing has relevance to humor in this way. I read a book by a woman named Amy Richlin, who is the chair of the Classics department at USC. And the book is called "The Garden of Priapus." And she says that Roman humor mirrors the construction of Roman society. So that Roman society was very top/bottom, as ours is to some degree. And so was humor. There always had to be the butt of a joke. So it was always the satirist, like Juvenal or Martial, represented the audience, and he was going to make fun of the outsider, the person who didn't share that subject status. And in stand-up of course, the stand-up comedian is supposed to dominate the audience. A lot of heckling is the tension of trying to make sure that the comedian is going to be able to dominate, and overcome the heckler. And I got good at that when I was in stand up. But I always hated it because they were dictating the terms of the interaction, in the same way that engaging in a serious argument determines the content, to some degree, of what you're talking about. And I was looking for a form that didn't have that. And so I wanted something that was more interactive. I know that word is so debased now by the use of it by Internet marketers. I really miss the old telemarketers now, I'll tell you that. (Laughter) I do, because at least there you stood a chance. You know? I used to actually hang up on them. But then I read in "Dear Abby" that that was rude. So the next time that one called I let him get halfway through his spiel and then I said, "You sound sexy." (Laughter) He hung up on me! (Laughter) But the interactivity allows the audience to shape what you're going to do as much as you shape their experience of the world. And that's really what I'm looking for. And I was sort of, as I was starting to analyze what exactly it is that I do, I read a book called "Trickster Makes This World," by Lewis Hyde. And it was like being psychoanalyzed. I mean he had laid it all out. And then coming to this conference, I realized that most everybody here shared those same qualities because really what trickster is is an agent of change. Trickster is a change agent. And the qualities that I'm about to describe are the qualities that make it possible to make change happen. And one of these is boundary crossing. I think this is what so, in fact, infuriated the scientists. But I like to cross boundaries. I like to, as I said, talk about things I know nothing about. (Phone Ringing) I hope that's my agent, because you aren't paying me anything. (Laughter) And I think it's good to talk about things I know nothing about because I bring a fresh viewpoint to it, you know? I'm able to see the contradiction that you may not be able to see. Like for instance a mime once — or a meme as he called himself. He was a very selfish meme. And he said that I had to show more respect because it took up to 18 years to learn how to do mime properly. And I said, "Well, that's how you know only stupid people go into it." (Laughter) It only takes two years to learn how to talk. (Laughter) (Applause) And you know people, this is the problem with quote, objectivity, unquote. When you're only surrounded by people who speak the same vocabulary as you, or share the same set of assumptions as you, you start to think that that's reality. Like economists, you know, their definition of rational, that we all act out of our own economic self-interest. Well, look at Michael Hawley, or look at Dean Kamen, or look at my grandmother. My grandmother always acted in other people's interests, whether they wanted her to or not. (Laughter) If they had had an Olympics in martyrdom, my grandmother would have lost on purpose. (Laughter) "No, you take the prize. You're young. I'm old. Who's going to see it? Where am I going? I'm going to die soon." (Laughter) So that's one — this boundary crossing, this go-between which — Fritz Lanting, is that his name, actually said that he was a go-between. That's an actual quality of the trickster. And another is, non-oppositional strategies. And this is instead of contradiction. Where you deny the other person's reality, you have paradox where you allow more than one reality to coexist, I think there's another philosophical construction. I'm not sure what it's called. But my example of it is a sign that I saw in a jewelry store. It said, "Ears pierced while you wait." (Laughter) There the alternative just boggles the imagination. (Laughter) "Oh no. Thanks though, I'll leave them here. Thanks very much. I have some errands to run. So I'll be back to pick them up around five, if that's OK with you. Huh? Huh? What? Can't hear you." (Laughter) And another attribute of the trickster is smart luck. That accidents, that Louis Kahn, who talked about accidents, this is another quality of the trickster. The trickster has a mind that is prepared for the unprepared. That, and I will say this to the scientists, that the trickster has the ability to hold his ideas lightly so that he can let room in for new ideas or to see the contradictions or the hidden problems with his ideas. I had no joke for that. I just wanted to put the scientists in their place. (Laughter) But here's how I think I like to make change, and that is in making connections. This is what I tend to see almost more than contradictions. Like the, what do you call those toes of the gecko? You know, the toes of the gecko, curling and uncurling like the fingers of Michael Moschen. I love connections. Like I'll read that one of the two attributes of matter in the Newtonian universe — there are two attributes of matter in the Newtonian universe — one is space occupancy. Matter takes up space. I guess the more you matter the more space you take up, which explains the whole SUV phenomenon. (Laughter) And the other one though is impenetrability. Well, in ancient Rome, impenetrability was the criterion of masculinity. Masculinity depended on you being the active penetrator. And then, in economics, there's an active producer and a passive consumer, which explains why business always has to penetrate new markets. Well yeah, I mean why we forced China to open her markets. And didn't that feel good? (Laughter) And now we're being penetrated. You know the biotech companies are actually going inside us and planting their little flags on our genes. You know we're being penetrated. And I suspect, by someone who actively dislikes us. (Laughter) That's the second of the quadruple. Yes of course you got that. Thank you very much. I still have a way to go. (Laughter) And what I hope to do, when I make these connections, is short circuit people's thinking. You know, make you not follow your usual train of association, but make you rewire. It literally — when people say about the shock of recognition, it's literally re-cognition, rewiring how you think — I had a joke to go with this and I forgot it. I'm so sorry. I'm getting like the woman in that joke about — have you heard this joke about the woman driving with her mother? And the mother is elderly. And the mother goes right through a red light. And the daughter doesn't want to say anything. She doesn't want to be like, "You're too old to drive." And the mother goes through a second red light. And the daughter says, as tactfully as possible, "Mom, are you aware that you just went through two red lights?" And the mother says, "Oh! Am I driving?" (Laughter) And that's the shock of recognition at the shock of recognition. That completes the quadruple. (Laughter) I just want to say two more things. One is, another characteristic of trickster is that the trickster has to walk this fine line. He has to have poise. And you know the biggest hurdle for me, in doing what I do, is constructing my performance so that it's prepared and unprepared. Finding the balance between those things is always dangerous because you might tip off too much in the direction of unprepared. But being too prepared doesn't leave room for the accidents to happen. I was thinking about what Moshe Safdie said yesterday about beauty because in his book, Hyde says that sometimes trickster can tip over into beauty. But to do that you have to lose all the other qualities because once you're into beauty you're into a finished thing. You're into something that occupies space and inhabits time. It's an actual thing. And it is always extraordinary to see a thing of beauty. But if you don't do that, if you allow for the accident to keep on happening, you have the possibility of getting on a wavelength. I like to think of what I do as a probability wave. When you go into beauty the probability wave collapses into one possibility. And I like to explore all the possibilities in the hope that you'll be on the wavelength of your audience. And the one final quality I want to say about trickster is that he doesn't have a home. He's always on the road. I want to say to you Richard, in closing, that in TED you've created a home. And thank you for inviting me into it. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Our antisocial phone tricks

Renny Gleeson

{0: 'Renny Gleeson'}

{0: ['skeptimist']}

{0: 'Renny Gleeson helps navigate brands through fresh concepts, such as viral marketing and social media, to find the pulse of the modern consumer. '}

2009-02-06

2009-04-10

TED2009

en

['ar', 'arq', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'mk', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['communication', 'social media', 'society', 'telecom']

{87: 'Nerdcore comedy', 1518: 'Your phone company is watching', 1409: 'Connected, but alone?', 51101: 'The incredible chemistry powering your smartphone', 1050: 'We are all cyborgs now', 694: 'Learn to use the 13th-century astrolabe'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/renny_gleeson_our_antisocial_phone_tricks/

In this funny (and actually poignant) 3-minute talk, social strategist Renny Gleeson breaks down our always-on social world -- where the experience we're having right now is less interesting than what we'll tweet about it later.

What I wanted to talk to you about today is two things: one, the rise of a culture of availability; and two, a request. So we're seeing a rise of this availability being driven by mobile device proliferation, globally, across all social strata. We're seeing, along with that proliferation of mobile devices, an expectation of availability. And, with that, comes the third point, which is obligation — and an obligation to that availability. And the problem is, we're still working through, from a societal standpoint, how we allow people to be available. There's a significant delta, in fact, between what we're willing to accept. Apologies to Hans Rosling — he said anything that's not using real stats is a lie — but the big delta there is how we deal with this from a public standpoint. So we've developed certain tactics and strategies to cover up. This first one's called "the lean." And if you've ever been in a meeting where you play sort of meeting "chicken," you're sitting there, looking at the person, waiting for them to look away, and then quickly checking the device. Although you can see the gentleman up on the right is busting him. "The stretch." OK, the gentleman on the left is saying, "Screw you, I'm going to check my device." But the guy, here, on the right, he's doing the stretch. It's that reeeee-e-e-each out, the physical contortion to get that device just below the tabletop. Or, my favorite, the "Love you; mean it." (Laughter) Nothing says "I love you" like "Let me find somebody else I give a damn about." Or, this one, coming to us from India. You can find this on YouTube, the gentleman who's recumbent on a motorcycle while text messaging. Or what we call the "sweet gravy, stop me before I kill again!" That is actually the device. What this is doing is, we find a — (Laughter) a direct collision — we find a direct collision between availability — and what's possible through availability — and a fundamental human need — which we've been hearing about a lot, actually — the need to create shared narratives. We're very good at creating personal narratives, but it's the shared narratives that make us a culture. And when you're standing with someone, and you're on your mobile device, effectively what you're saying to them is, "You are not as important as, literally, almost anything that could come to me through this device." Look around you. There might be somebody on one right now, participating in multi-dimensional engagement. (Laughter) Our reality right now is less interesting than the story we're going to tell about it later. This one I love. This poor kid, clearly a prop — don't get me wrong, a willing prop — but the kiss that's being documented kind of looks like it sucks. This is the sound of one hand clapping. So, as we lose the context of our identity, it becomes incredibly important that what you share becomes the context of shared narrative, becomes the context in which we live. The stories that we tell — what we push out — becomes who we are. People aren't simply projecting identity, they're creating it. And so that's the request I have for everybody in this room. We are creating the technology that is going to create the new shared experience, which will create the new world. And so my request is, please, let's make technologies that make people more human, and not less. Thank you.

A new ecosystem for electric cars

Shai Agassi

{0: 'Shai Agassi'}

{0: ['green auto pioneer']}

{0: "Shai Agassi wants to put you behind the wheel of an electric car -- but he doesn't want you to sacrifice convenience (or cash) to do it. "}

2009-02-05

2009-04-13

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['alternative energy', 'business', 'cars', 'energy', 'global issues', 'green', 'technology', 'infrastructure']

{492: 'High-altitude wind energy from kites!', 1: 'Averting the climate crisis', 411: 'The future of cars', 1174: 'A future beyond traffic gridlock', 1109: "Google's driverless car", 1506: 'The future race car -- 150mph, and no driver'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_a_new_ecosystem_for_electric_cars/

Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi says it's electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

So how would you run a whole country without oil? That's the question that sort of hit me in the middle of a Davos afternoon about four years ago. It never left my brain. And I started playing with it more like a puzzle. The original thought I had: this must be ethanol. So I went out and researched ethanol, and found out you need the Amazon in your backyard in every country. About six months later I figured out it must be hydrogen, until some scientist told me the unfortunate truth, which is, you actually use more clean electrons than the ones you get inside a car, if you use hydrogen. So that is not going to be the path to go. And then sort of through a process of wandering around, I got to the thought that actually if you could convert an entire country to electric cars, in a way that is convenient and affordable, you could get to a solution. Now I started this from a point of view that it has to be something that scales en masse. Not how do you build one car, but how do you scale this so that it can become something that is used by 99 percent of the population? The thought that came to mind is that it needs to be as good as any car that you would have today. So one, it has to be more convenient than a car. And two, it has be more affordable than today's cars. Affordable is not a 40,000 dollar sedan, right? Alright? That's not something that we can finance or buy today. And convenient is not something that you drive for an hour and charge for eight. So we're bound with the laws of physics and the laws of economics. And so the thought that I started with was how do you do this, still within the boundary of the science we know today — no time for science fair, no time for playing around with things or waiting for the magic battery to show up. How do you do it within the economics that we have today? How do you do it from the power of the consumer up? And not from the power of an edict down. On a random visit to Tesla on some afternoon, I actually found out that the answer comes from separating between the car ownership and the battery ownership. In a sense if you want to think about it this is the classic "batteries not included." Now if you separate between the two, you could actually answer the need for a convenient car by creating a network, by creating a network before the cars show up. The network has two components in them. First component is you charge the car whenever you stop — ends up that cars are these strange beasts that drive for about two hours and park for about 22 hours. If you drive a car in the morning and drive it back in the afternoon the ratio of charge to drive is about a minute for a minute. And so the first thought that came to mind is, everywhere we park we have electric power. Now it sounds crazy. But in some places around the world, like Scandinavia, you already have that. If you park your car and didn't plug in the heater, when you come back you don't have a car. It just doesn't work. Now that last mile, last foot, in a sense, is the first step of the infrastructure. The second step of the infrastructure needs to take care of the range extension. See we're bound by today's technology on batteries, which is about 120 miles if you want to stay within reasonable space and weight limitations. 120 miles is a good enough range for a lot of people. But you never want to get stuck. So what we added is a second element to our network, which is a battery swap system. You drive. You take your depleted battery out. A full battery comes on. And you drive on. You don't do it as a human being. You do it as a machine. It looks like a car wash. You come into your car wash. And a plate comes up, holds your battery, takes it out, puts it back in, and within two minutes you're back on the road and you can go again. If you had charge spots everywhere, and you had battery swap stations everywhere, how often would you do it? And it ends up that you'd do swapping less times than you stop at a gas station. As a matter of fact, we added to the contract. We said that if you stop to swap your battery more than 50 times a year we start paying you money because it's an inconvenience. Then we looked at the question of the affordability. We looked at the question, what happens when the battery is disconnected from the car. What is the cost of that battery? Everybody tells us batteries are so expensive. What we found out, when you move from molecules to electrons, something interesting happens. We can go back to the original economics of the car and look at it again. The battery is not the gas tank, in a sense. Remember in your car you have a gas tank. You have the crude oil. And you have refining and delivery of that crude oil as what we call petrol or gasoline. The battery in this sense, is the crude oil. We have a battery bay. It costs the same hundred dollars as the gas tank. But the crude oil is replaced with a battery. Just it doesn't burn. It consumes itself step after step after step. It has 2,000 life cycles these days. And so it's sort of a mini well. We were asked in the past when we bought an electric car to pay for the entire well, for the life of the car. Nobody wants to buy a mini well when they buy a car. In a sense what we've done is we've created a new consumable. You, today, buy gasoline miles. And we created electric miles. And the price of electric miles ends up being a very interesting number. Today 2010, in volume, when we come to market, it is eight cents a mile. Those of you who have a hard time calculating what that means — in the average consumer environment we're in in the U.S. 20 miles per gallon that's a buck 50, a buck 60 a gallon. That's cheaper than today's gasoline, even in the U.S. In Europe where taxes are in place, that's the equivalent to a minus 60 dollar barrel. But e-miles follow Moore's Law. They go from eight cents a mile in 2010, to four cents a mile in 2015, to two cents a mile by 2020. Why? Because batteries life cycle improve — a bit of improvement on energy density, which reduces the price. And these prices are actually with clean electrons. We do not use any electrons that come from coal. So in a sense this is an absolute zero-carbon, zero-fossil fuel electric mile at two cents a mile by 2020. Now even if we get to 40 miles per gallon by 2020, which is our desire. Imagine only 40 miles per gallon cars would be on the road. That is an 80 cent gallon. An 80 cent gallon means, if the entire Pacific would convert to crude oil, and we'd let any oil company bring it out and refine it, they still can't compete with two cents a mile. That's a new economic factor, which is fascinating to most people. Now this would have been a wonderful paper. That's how I solved it in my head. It was a white paper I handed out to governments. And some governments told me that it's fascinating that the younger generation actually thinks about these things. (Laughter) Until I got to the true young global leader, Shimon Peres, President of Israel, and he ran a beautiful manipulation on me. First he let me go to the prime minister of the country, who told me, if you can find the money you need for this network, 200 million dollars, and if you can find a car company that will build that car in mass volume, in two million cars — that's what we needed in Israel — I'll give you country to invest the 200 million into. Peres thought that was a great idea. So we went out, and we looked at all the car companies. We sent letters to all the car companies. Three of them never showed up. One of them asked us if we would stay with hybrids and they would give us a discount. But one of them Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault and Nissan, when asked about hybrids said something very fascinating. He said hybrids are like mermaids. When you want a fish you get a woman and when you need a woman you get a fish. (Laughter) And Ghosn came up and said, "I have the car, Mr. Peres; I will build you the cars." And actually true to form, Renault has put a billion and a half dollars in building nine different types of cars that fit this kind of model that will come into the market in mass volume — mass volume being the first year, 100 thousand cars. It's the first mass-volume electric car, zero-emission electric car in the market. I was running, as Chris said, to be the CEO of a large software company called SAP And then Peres said, "Well won't you run this project?" And I said, "I'm ready for CEO" And he said, "Oh no no no no no. You've got to explain to me, what is more important than saving your country and saving the world, that you would go and do?" And I had to quit and come and do this thing called A Better Place. We then decided to scale it up. We went to other countries. As I said we went to Denmark. And Denmark set this beautiful policy; it's called the IQ test. It's inversely proportional to taxes. They put 180 percent tax on gasoline cars and zero tax on zero-emission cars. So if you want to buy a gasoline car in Denmark, it costs you about 60,000 Euros. If you buy our car it's about 20,000 Euros. If you fail the IQ test they ask you to leave the country. (Laughter) We then were sort of coined as the guys who run only in small islands. I know most people don't think of Israel as a small island, but Israel is an island — it's a transportation island. If your car is driving outside Israel it's been stolen. (Laughter) If you're thinking about it in terms of islands, we decided to go to the biggest island that we could find, and that was Australia. The third country we announced was Australia. It's got three centers — in Brisbane, in Melbourne, in Sydney — and one freeway, one electric freeway that connects them. The next island was not too hard to find, and that was Hawaii. We decided to come into the U.S. and pick the two best places — the one where you didn't need any range extension. Hawaii you can drive around the island on one battery. And if you really have a long day you can switch, and keep on driving around the island. The second one was the San Francisco Bay Area where Gavin Newsom created a beautiful policy across all the mayors. He decided that he's going to take over the state, unofficially, and then officially, and then created this beautiful Region One policy. In the San Francisco Bay Area not only do you have the highest concentration of Priuses, but you also have the perfect range extender. It's called the other car. As we stared scaling it up we looked at what is the problem to come up to the U.S.? Why is this a big issue? And the most fascinating thing we've learned is that, when you have small problems on the individual level, like the price of gasoline to drive every morning. You don't notice it, but when the aggregate comes up you're dead. Alright? So the price of oil, much like lots of other curves that we've seen, goes along a depletion curve. The foundation of this curve is that we keep losing the wells that are close to the ground. And we keep getting wells that are farther away from the ground. It becomes more and more and more expensive to dig them out. You think, well it's been up, it's been down, its been up, it's going to keep on going up and down. Here is the problem: at 147 dollars a barrel, which we were in six months ago, the U.S. spent a ton of money to get oil. Then we lost our economy and we went back down to 47 — sometimes it's 40, sometimes it's 50. Now we're running a stimulus package. It's called the trillion-dollar stimulus package. We're going to revive the economy. Hopefully it happens between now and 2015, somewhere in that space. What happens when the economy recovers? By 2015 we would have had at least 250 million new cars even at the pace we're going at right now. That's another 30 percent demand on oil. That is another 25 million barrels a day. That's all the U.S. usage today. In other words at some point when we've recovered we go up to the peak. And then we do the OPEC stimulus package also known as 200 dollars a barrel. We take our money and we give it away. You know what happens at that point? We go back down. It's going to go up and down. And the downs are going to be much longer and the ups are going to be much shorter. And that's the difference between problems that are additive, like CO2, which we go slowly up and then we tip, and problems that are depletive, in which we lose what we have, which oscillate, and they oscillate until we lose everything we've got. Now we actually looked at what the answer would be. Right? Remember in the campaign: one million hybrid cars by 2015. That is 0.5 percent of the U.S. oil consumption. That is oh point oh well percent of the rest of the world. That won't do much difference. We looked at an MIT study: ten million electric cars on the global roads. Ten million out of 500 million we will add between now and then. That is the most pessimistic number you can have. It's also the most optimistic number because it means we will scale this industry from 100 thousand cars is 2011, to 10 million cars by 2016 — 100 x growth in less than five years. You have to remember that the world today is bringing in so many cars. We have 10 million cars by region. That's an enormous amount of cars. China is adding those cars — India, Russia, Brazil. We have all these regions. Europe has solved it. They just put a tax on gasoline. They'll be the first in line to get off because their prices are high. China solves it by an edict. At some point they'll just declare that no gasoline car will come into a city, and that will be it. The Indians don't even understand why we think of it as a problem because most people in India fill two or three gallons every time. For them to get a battery that goes 120 miles is an extension on range, not a reduction in range. We're the only ones who don't have the price set right. We don't have the industry set right. We don't have any incentive to go and resolve it across the U.S. Now where is the car industry on that? Very interesting. The car industry has been focused just on themselves. They basically looked at it and said, "Car 1.0 we'll solve everything within the car itself." No infrastructure, no problem. We forgot about the entire chain around us. All this stuff that happens around. We are looking at the emergence of a car 2.0 — a whole new market, a whole new business model. The business model in which the money that is actually coming in, to drive the car — the minutes, the miles if you want, that you are all familiar with — subsidize the price of the car, just like cellphones. You'll pay for the miles. And some of it will go back to the car maker. Some of it will go back to your own pocket. But our cars are actually going to be cheaper than gasoline cars. You're looking at a world where cars are matched with windmills. In Denmark, we will drive all the cars in Denmark from windmills, not from oil. In Israel, we've asked to put a solar farm in the south of Israel. And people said, "Oh that's a very very large space that you're asking for." And we said, "What if we had proven that in the same space we found oil for the country for the next hundred years?" And they said, "We tried. There isn't any." We said, "No no, but what if we prove it?" And they said, "Well you can dig." And we decided to dig up, instead of digging down. These are perfect matches to one another. Now all you need is about 10 percent of the electricity generated. Think of it as a project that spans over about 10 years. That's one percent a year. Now when we're looking at solving big problems, we need to start thinking in two numbers. And those are not 20 percent by 2020. The two numbers are zero — as in zero footprint or zero oil — and scale it infinity. And when we go to COP15 at the end of this year we can't stop thinking of padding CO2. We have to start thinking about giving kickers to countries that are willing to go to this kind of scale. One car emits four tons. And actually 700 and change million cars today emit 2.8 billion tons of CO2. That's, in the additive, about 25 percent of our problem. Cars and trucks add up to about 25 percent of the world's CO2 emissions. We have to come and attack this problem with a focus, with an effort that actually says, we're going to go to zero before the world ends. I actually shared that with some legislators here in the U.S. I shared it with a gentleman called Bobby Kennedy Jr., who is one of my idols. I told him one of the reasons that his uncle was remembered is because he said we're going to send a man to the moon, and we'll do it by the end of the decade. We didn't say we're going to send a man 20 percent to the moon. And there will be about a 20 percent chance we'll recover him. (Laughter) He actually shared with me another story, which is from about 200 years ago. 200 years ago, in Parliament, in Great Britain, there was a long argument over economy versus morality. 25 percent — just like 25 percent emissions today comes from cars — 25 percent of their energy for the entire industrial world in the U.K. came from a source of energy that was immoral: human slaves. And there was an argument. Should we stop using slaves? And what would it do to our economy? And people said, "Well we need to take time to do it. Let's not do it immediately. Maybe we free the kids and keep the slaves. And after a month of arguments they decided to stop slavery, and the industrial revolution started within less than one year. And the U.K. had 100 years of economic growth. We have to make the right moral decision. We have to make it immediately. We need to have presidential leadership just like we had in Israel that said we will end oil. And we need to do it not within 20 years or 50 years, but within this presidential term because if we don't, we will lose our economy, right after we'd lost our morality. Thank you all very much. (Applause)

To upgrade is human

Gregory Stock

{0: 'Gregory Stock'}

{0: ['author', 'thinker']}

{0: "Dr. Gregory Stock's levelheaded look at the hotpoints where tech and ethics connect (or short circuit) have made him a popular guest on TV and radio. He directs the Program on Science, Technology, and Society at UCLA."}

2003-02-02

2009-04-14

TED2003

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['biology', 'biotech', 'children', 'evolution', 'genetics', 'science', 'technology']

{463: 'The next species of human', 227: 'On the verge of creating synthetic life', 39: 'A roadmap to end aging', 351: 'Health and the human mind', 38: 'The accelerating power of technology', 80: 'The life code that will reshape the future'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/gregory_stock_to_upgrade_is_human/

In this prophetic 2003 talk -- just days before Dolly the sheep was stuffed -- biotech ethicist Gregory Stock looked forward to new, more meaningful (and controversial) technologies, like customizable babies, whose adoption might drive human evolution.

The future of life, where the unraveling of our biology — and bring up the lights a little bit. I don't have any slides. I'm just going to talk — about where that's likely to carry us. And you know, I saw all the visions of the first couple of sessions. It almost made me feel a little bit guilty about having an uplifting talk about the future. It felt wrong to do that in some way. And yet, I don't really think it is because when it comes down to it, it's this larger trajectory that is really what is going to remain — what people in the future are going to remember about this period. I want to talk to you a little bit about why the visions of Jeremy Rivkins, who would like to ban these sorts of technologies, or of the Bill Joys who would like to relinquish them, are actually — to follow those paths would be such a tragedy for us. I'm focusing on biology, the biological sciences. The reason I'm doing that is because those are going to be the areas that are the most significant to us. The reason for that is really very simple. It's because we're flesh and blood. We're biological creatures. And what we can do with our biology is going to shape our future and that of our children and that of their children — whether we gain control over aging, whether we learn to protect ourselves from Alzheimer's, and heart disease, and cancer. I think that Shakespeare really put it very nicely. And I'm actually going to use his words in the same order that he did. (Laughter) He said, "And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe. And then from hour to hour we rot and rot. And thereby hangs a tale." Life is short, you know. And we need to think about planning a little bit. We're all going to eventually, even in the developed world, going to have to lose everything that we love. When you're beginning to rot a little bit, all of the videos crammed into your head, all of the extensions that extend your various powers, are going to being to seem a little secondary. And you know, I'm getting a little bit gray — so is Ray Kurzweil, so is Eric Drexler. This is where it's really central to our lives. Now I know there's been a whole lot of hype about our power to control biology. You just have to look at the Human Genome Project. It wasn't two years ago that everybody was talking about — we've found the Holy Grail of biology. We're deciphering the code of codes. We're reading the book of life. It's a little bit reminiscent of 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and everybody was about to race out toward the stars. And we've all seen "2001: A Space Odyssey." You know it's 2003, and there is no HAL. And there is no odyssey to our own moon, much less the moons of Jupiter. And we're still picking up pieces of the Challenger. So it's not surprising that some people would wonder whether maybe 30 or 40 years from now, we'll look back at this instant in time, and all of the sort of talk about the Human Genome Project, and what all this is going to mean to us — well, it will really mean precious little. And I just want to say that that is absolutely not going to be the case. Because when we talk about our genetics and our biology, and modifying and altering and adjusting these things, we're talking about changing ourselves. And this is very critical stuff. If you have any doubts about how technology affects our lives, you just have to go to any major city. This is not the stomping ground of our Pleistocene ancestors. What's happening is we're taking this technology — it's becoming more precise, more potent — and we're turning it back upon ourselves. Before it's all done we are going to alter ourselves every bit as much as we have changed the world around us. It's going to happen a lot sooner than people imagine. On the way there it's going to completely revolutionize medicine and health care; that's obvious. It's going to change the way we have children. It's going to change the way we manage and alter our emotions. It's going to probably change the human lifespan. It will really make us question what it is to be a human being. The larger context of this is that are two unprecedented revolutions that are going on today. The first of them is the obvious one, the silicon revolution, which you all are very, very familiar with. It's changing our lives in so many ways, and it will continue to do that. What the essence of that is, is that we're taking the sand at our feet, the inert silicon at our feet, and we're breathing a level of complexity into it that rivals that of life itself, and may even surpass it. As an outgrowth of that, as a child of that revolution, is the revolution in biology. The genomics revolution, proteomics, metabolomics, all of these "omics" that sound so terrific on grants and on business plans. What we're doing is we are seizing control of our evolutionary future. I mean we're essentially using technology to just jam evolution into fast-forward. It's not at all clear where it's going to take us. But in five to ten years we're going to start see some very profound changes. The most immediate changes that we'll see are things like in medicine. There is going to be a big shift towards preventative medicine as we start to be able to identify all of the risk factors that we have as individuals. But who is going to pay for all this? And how are we going to understand all this complex information? That is going to be the IT challenge of the next generation, is communicating all this information. There's pharmacogenomics, the combination of pharmacology and genetics: tailoring drugs to our individual constitutions that Juan talked about a little bit earlier. That's going to have amazing impacts. And it's going to be used for diet as well, and nutritional supplements and such. But it's going to have a big impact because we're going to have niche drugs. And we aren't going to be able to support the kinds of expenses that we have to create blockbuster drugs today. The approval process is going to fall apart, actually. It's too slow. It's too risk-averse. And it is really not suited for the future that we're moving into. Another thing is that we're just going to have to deal with this knowledge. It's really wonderful when we hear, "Oh, 99.9 percent of the letters in the code are the same. We're all identical to each other. Isn't it wonderful?" And look around you and know that what we really care about is that little bit of difference. We look the same to a visitor from another planet, maybe, but not to each other because we compete with each other all time. And we're going to have to come to grips with the fact that there are differences between us as individuals that we will know about, and between subpopulations of humans as well. To deny that that's the case is not a very good start on that. A generation or so away there are going to be even more profound things that are going to happen. That's when we're going to begin to use this knowledge to modify ourselves. Now I don't mean extra gills or something — something we care about, like aging. What if we could unravel aging and understand it — begin to retard the process or even reverse it? It would change absolutely everything. And it's obvious to anyone, that if we can do this, we absolutely will do this, whatever the consequences are. The second is modifying our emotions. I mean Ritalin, Viagra, things of that sort, Prozac. You know, this is just clumsy little baby steps. What if you could take a little concoction of pharmaceuticals that would make you feel really contented, just happy to be you. Are you going to be able to resist that if it doesn't have any overt side effects? Probably not. And if you don't, who are you going to be? Why do you do what you do? We're sort of circumventing evolutionary programs that guide our behavior. It's going to be very challenging to deal with. The third area is reproduction. The idea that we're going to chose our children's genes, as we begin to understand what genes say about who we are. That's the focus of my book "Redesigning Humans," where I talk about the kinds of choices we'll make, and the challenges it's going to present to society. There are three obvious ways of doing this. The first is cloning. It didn't happen. It's a total media circus. It will happen in five to 10 years. And when it does it's not going to be that big a deal. The birth of a delayed identical twin is not going to shake western civilization. But there are more important things that are already occurring: embryo screening. You take a six to eight cell embryo, you tease out one of the cells, you run a genetic test on that cell, and depending on the results of that test you either implant that embryo or you discard it. It's already done to avoid rare diseases today. And pretty soon it's going to be possible to avoid virtually all genetic diseases in that way. As that becomes possible this is going to move from something that is used by those who have infertility problems and are already doing in vitro fertilization, to the wealthy who want to protect their children, to just about everybody else. And in that process that's going to morph from being just for diseases, to being for lesser vulnerabilities, like risk of manic depression or something, to picking personalities, temperaments, traits, these sorts of things. Of course there is going to be genetic engineering. Directly going in — it's a little bit further away, but not that far away — going in and altering the genes in the first cell in an embryo. The way I suspect it will happen is using artificial chromosomes and extra chromosomes, so we go from 46 to 47 or 48. And one that is not heritable because who would want to pass on to their children the archaic enhancement modules that they got 25 years earlier from their parents? It's a joke; of course they wouldn't want to do that. They'll want the new release. Those kinds of loose analogies with (Laughter) computers, and with programming, are actually much deeper than that. They are really going to come to operate in this realm. Now not everything that can be done should be done. And it won't be done. But when something is feasible in thousands of laboratories all over the world, which is going to be the case with these technologies, when there are large numbers of people who see them as beneficial, which is already the case, and when they're almost impossible to police, it's not a question of if this is going to happen, it's when and where and how it's going to happen. Humanity is going to go down this path. And it's going to do so for two reasons. The first is that all these technologies are just a spin-off of mainstream medical research that everybody wants to see happen. It is being funded very very — in a big way. The second is, we're human. That's what we do. We try and use our technology to improve our lives in one way or another. To imagine that we're not going to use these technologies when they become available, is as much a denial of who we are as to imagine that we'll use these technologies and not fret and worry about it a great deal. The lines are going to blur. And they already are between therapy and enhancement, between treatment and prevention, between need and desire. That's really the central one, I believe. People can try and ban these things. They undoubtedly will. They have. But ultimately all this is going to do is just shift development elsewhere. It's going to drive these things from view. It's going to reserve the technology for the wealthy because they are in the best position to circumvent any of these sorts of laws. And it's going to deny us the information that we need to make wise decisions about how to use these technologies. So, sure, we need to debate these things. And I think it's wonderful that we do. But we shouldn't kid ourselves and think that we're going to reach a consensus about these things. That is simply not going to happen. They touch us too deeply. And they depend too much upon history, upon philosophy, upon religion, upon culture, upon politics. Some people are going to see this as an abomination, as the worst thing, as just awful. Other people are going to say, "This is great. This is the flowering of human endeavor." The one thing though that is really dangerous about these sorts of technologies, is that it's easy to become seduced by them. And to focus too much on all the high-technology possibilities that exist. And to lose touch with the basic rhythms of our biology and our health. There are too many people that think that high-technology medicine is going to keep them, save them, from overeating, from eating a lot of fast foods, from not getting any exercise. It's not going to happen. In the midst of all this amazing technology, and all these things that are occurring, it's really interesting because there is sort of a counter-revolution that is going on: a resurgence of interest in remedies from the past, in nutraceuticals, in all of these sorts of things that some people, in the pharmaceutical industry particularly, like to brand as non-science. But this whole effort is generated, is driven, by IT as well because that is how we're gathering all this information, and linking it, and integrating it together. There is a lot in this rich biota that is going to serve us well. And that's where about half of our drugs come. So we shouldn't dismiss this because it's an enormous opportunity to use these sorts of results, or these random loose trials from the last thousand years about what has impacts on our health. And to use our advanced technologies to pull out what is beneficial from this sea of noise, basically. In fact this isn't just abstract. I just formed a biotechnology company that is using this sort of an approach to develop therapeutics for Alzheimer's and other diseases of aging, and we're making some real progress. So here we are. It's the beginning of a new millennium. If you look forward, I mean future humans, far before the end of this millennium, in a few hundred years, they are going to look back at this moment. And from the beginning of today's sessions you'd think that they're going to see this as this horrible difficult, painful period that we struggled through. And I don't think that's what's going to happen. They're going to do like everybody does. They are going to forget about all that stuff. And they are actually going to romanticize this moment in time. They are going to think about it as this glorious instant when we laid down the very foundations of their lives, of their society, of their future. You know it's a little bit like a birth. Where there is this bloody, awful mess happens. And then what comes out of it? New life. Actually as was pointed out earlier, we forget about all the struggle there was in getting there. So to me, it's clear that one of the foundations of that future is going to be the reworking of our biology. It's going to come gradually at first. It's going to pick up speed. We're going to make lots of errors. That's the way these things work. To me it's an incredible privilege to be alive now and to be able to witness this thing. It is something that is a unique instant in the history of all of life. It will always be remembered. And what's extraordinary is that we're not just observing this, we are the architects of this. I think that we should be proud of it. What is so difficult and challenging is that we are also the objects of these changes. It's our health, it's our lives, it's our future, it's our children. And that is why they are so very troubling to so many people who would pull back in fear. I think that our choice in the choice of life, is not whether we're going to go down this path. We are, definitely. It's how we hold it in our hearts. It's how we look at it. I think Thucydides really spoke to us very clearly in 430 B.C. He put it nicely. Again, I'll use the words in the same order he did. "The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, both glory and danger alike. And yet notwithstanding, they go out and they meet it." Thank you. (Applause)

Smash fear, learn anything

Tim Ferriss

{0: 'Tim Ferriss'}

{0: ['investor', 'human guinea pig', 'author']}

{0: 'Tim Ferriss is an early-stage tech investor, best-selling author and podcaster.'}

2008-12-05

2009-04-15

EG 2008

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['dance', 'fear', 'language', 'life', 'productivity', 'work', 'Best of the Web']

{2799: 'Why you should define your fears instead of your goals', 271: 'Archeology, animal photography, BBQ ...', 96: 'Why we do what we do', 1336: "Extreme swimming with the world's most dangerous jellyfish", 51997: 'What open water swimming taught me about resilience', 1986: 'Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss_smash_fear_learn_anything/

From the EG conference: Productivity guru Tim Ferriss' fun, encouraging anecdotes show how one simple question -- "What's the worst that could happen?" -- is all you need to learn to do anything.

This is Tim Ferriss circa 1979 A.D. Age two. You can tell by the power squat, I was a very confident boy — and not without reason. I had a very charming routine at the time, which was to wait until late in the evening when my parents were decompressing from a hard day's work, doing their crossword puzzles, watching television. I would run into the living room, jump up on the couch, rip the cushions off, throw them on the floor, scream at the top of my lungs and run out because I was the Incredible Hulk. (Laughter) Obviously, you see the resemblance. And this routine went on for some time. When I was seven I went to summer camp. My parents found it necessary for peace of mind. And at noon each day the campers would go to a pond, where they had floating docks. You could jump off the end into the deep end. I was born premature. I was always very small. My left lung had collapsed when I was born. And I've always had buoyancy problems. So water was something that scared me to begin with. But I would go in on occasion. And on one particular day, the campers were jumping through inner tubes, They were diving through inner tubes. And I thought this would be great fun. So I dove through the inner tube, and the bully of the camp grabbed my ankles. And I tried to come up for air, and my lower back hit the bottom of the inner tube. And I went wild eyed and thought I was going to die. A camp counselor fortunately came over and separated us. From that point onward I was terrified of swimming. That is something that I did not get over. My inability to swim has been one of my greatest humiliations and embarrassments. That is when I realized that I was not the Incredible Hulk. But there is a happy ending to this story. At age 31 — that's my age now — in August I took two weeks to re-examine swimming, and question all the of the obvious aspects of swimming. And went from swimming one lap — so 20 yards — like a drowning monkey, at about 200 beats per minute heart rate — I measured it — to going to Montauk on Long Island, close to where I grew up, and jumping into the ocean and swimming one kilometer in open water, getting out and feeling better than when I went in. And I came out, in my Speedos, European style, feeling like the Incredible Hulk. And that's what I want everyone in here to feel like, the Incredible Hulk, at the end of this presentation. More specifically, I want you to feel like you're capable of becoming an excellent long-distance swimmer, a world-class language learner, and a tango champion. And I would like to share my art. If I have an art, it's deconstructing things that really scare the living hell out of me. So, moving onward. Swimming, first principles. First principles, this is very important. I find that the best results in life are often held back by false constructs and untested assumptions. And the turnaround in swimming came when a friend of mine said, "I will go a year without any stimulants" — this is a six-double-espresso-per-day type of guy — "if you can complete a one kilometer open water race." So the clock started ticking. I started seeking out triathletes because I found that lifelong swimmers often couldn't teach what they did. I tried kickboards. My feet would slice through the water like razors, I wouldn't even move. I would leave demoralized, staring at my feet. Hand paddles, everything. Even did lessons with Olympians — nothing helped. And then Chris Sacca, who is now a dear friend mine, had completed an Iron Man with 103 degree temperature, said, "I have the answer to your prayers." And he introduced me to the work of a man named Terry Laughlin who is the founder of Total Immersion Swimming. That set me on the road to examining biomechanics. So here are the new rules of swimming, if any of you are afraid of swimming, or not good at it. The first is, forget about kicking. Very counterintuitive. So it turns out that propulsion isn't really the problem. Kicking harder doesn't solve the problem because the average swimmer only transfers about three percent of their energy expenditure into forward motion. The problem is hydrodynamics. So what you want to focus on instead is allowing your lower body to draft behind your upper body, much like a small car behind a big car on the highway. And you do that by maintaining a horizontal body position. The only way you can do that is to not swim on top of the water. The body is denser than water. 95 percent of it would be, at least, submerged naturally. So you end up, number three, not swimming, in the case of freestyle, on your stomach, as many people think, reaching on top of the water. But actually rotating from streamlined right to streamlined left, maintaining that fuselage position as long as possible. So let's look at some examples. This is Terry. And you can see that he's extending his right arm below his head and far in front. And so his entire body really is underwater. The arm is extended below the head. The head is held in line with the spine, so that you use strategic water pressure to raise your legs up — very important, especially for people with lower body fat. Here is an example of the stroke. So you don't kick. But you do use a small flick. You can see this is the left extension. Then you see his left leg. Small flick, and the only purpose of that is to rotate his hips so he can get to the opposite side. And the entry point for his right hand — notice this, he's not reaching in front and catching the water. Rather, he is entering the water at a 45-degree angle with his forearm, and then propelling himself by streamlining — very important. Incorrect, above, which is what almost every swimming coach will teach you. Not their fault, honestly. And I'll get to implicit versus explicit in a moment. Below is what most swimmers will find enables them to do what I did, which is going from 21 strokes per 20-yard length to 11 strokes in two workouts with no coach, no video monitoring. And now I love swimming. I can't wait to go swimming. I'll be doing a swimming lesson later, for myself, if anyone wants to join me. Last thing, breathing. A problem a lot of us have, certainly, when you're swimming. In freestyle, easiest way to remedy this is to turn with body roll, and just to look at your recovery hand as it enters the water. And that will get you very far. That's it. That's really all you need to know. Languages. Material versus method. I, like many people, came to the conclusion that I was terrible at languages. I suffered through Spanish for junior high, first year of high school, and the sum total of my knowledge was pretty much, "Donde esta el bano?" And I wouldn't even catch the response. A sad state of affairs. Then I transferred to a different school sophomore year, and I had a choice of other languages. Most of my friends were taking Japanese. So I thought why not punish myself? I'll do Japanese. Six months later I had the chance to go to Japan. My teachers assured me, they said, "Don't worry. You'll have Japanese language classes every day to help you cope. It will be an amazing experience." My first overseas experience in fact. So my parents encouraged me to do it. I left. I arrived in Tokyo. Amazing. I couldn't believe I was on the other side of the world. I met my host family. Things went quite well I think, all things considered. My first evening, before my first day of school, I said to my mother, very politely, "Please wake me up at eight a.m." So, (Japanese) But I didn't say (Japanese). I said, (Japanese). Pretty close. But I said, "Please rape me at eight a.m." (Laughter) You've never seen a more confused Japanese woman. (Laughter) I walked in to school. And a teacher came up to me and handed me a piece of paper. I couldn't read any of it — hieroglyphics, it could have been — because it was Kanji, Chinese characters adapted into the Japanese language. Asked him what this said. And he goes, "Ahh, okay okay, eehto, World History, ehh, Calculus, Traditional Japanese." And so on. And so it came to me in waves. There had been something lost in translation. The Japanese classes were not Japanese instruction classes, per se. They were the normal high school curriculum for Japanese students — the other 4,999 students in the school, who were Japanese, besides the American. And that's pretty much my response. (Laughter) And that set me on this panic driven search for the perfect language method. I tried everything. I went to Kinokuniya. I tried every possible book, every possible CD. Nothing worked until I found this. This is the Joyo Kanji. This is a Tablet rather, or a poster of the 1,945 common-use characters as determined by the Ministry of Education in 1981. Many of the publications in Japan limit themselves to these characters, to facilitate literacy — some are required to. And this became my Holy Grail, my Rosetta Stone. As soon as I focused on this material, I took off. I ended up being able to read Asahi Shinbu, Asahi newspaper, about six months later — so a total of 11 months later — and went from Japanese I to Japanese VI. Ended up doing translation work at age 16 when I returned to the U.S., and have continued to apply this material over method approach to close to a dozen languages now. Someone who was terrible at languages, and at any given time, speak, read and write five or six. This brings us to the point, which is, it's oftentimes what you do, not how you do it, that is the determining factor. This is the difference between being effective — doing the right things — and being efficient — doing things well whether or not they're important. You can also do this with grammar. I came up with these six sentences after much experimentation. Having a native speaker allow you to deconstruct their grammar, by translating these sentences into past, present, future, will show you subject, object, verb, placement of indirect, direct objects, gender and so forth. From that point, you can then, if you want to, acquire multiple languages, alternate them so there is no interference. We can talk about that if anyone in interested. And now I love languages. So ballroom dancing, implicit versus explicit — very important. You might look at me and say, "That guy must be a ballroom dancer." But no, you'd be wrong because my body is very poorly designed for most things — pretty well designed for lifting heavy rocks perhaps. I used to be much bigger, much more muscular. And so I ended up walking like this. I looked a lot like an orangutan, our close cousins, or the Incredible Hulk. Not very good for ballroom dancing. I found myself in Argentina in 2005, decided to watch a tango class — had no intention of participating. Went in, paid my ten pesos, walked up — 10 women two guys, usually a good ratio. The instructor says, "You are participating." Immediately: death sweat. (Laughter) Fight-or-flight fear sweat, because I tried ballroom dancing in college — stepped on the girl's foot with my heel. She screamed. I was so concerned with her perception of what I was doing, that it exploded in my face, never to return to the ballroom dancing club. She comes up, and this was her approach, the teacher. "Okay, come on, grab me." Gorgeous assistant instructor. She was very pissed off that I had pulled her from her advanced practice. So I did my best. I didn't know where to put my hands. And she pulled back, threw down her arms, put them on her hips, turned around and yelled across the room, "This guy is built like a god-damned mountain of muscle, and he's grabbing me like a fucking Frenchman," (Laughter) which I found encouraging. (Laughter) Everyone burst into laughter. I was humiliated. She came back. She goes, "Come on. I don't have all day." As someone who wrestled since age eight, I proceeded to crush her, "Of Mice and Men" style. And she looked up and said, "Now that's better." So I bought a month's worth of classes. (Laughter) And proceeded to look at — I wanted to set competition so I'd have a deadline — Parkinson's Law, the perceived complexity of a task will expand to fill the time you allot it. So I had a very short deadline for a competition. I got a female instructor first, to teach me the female role, the follow, because I wanted to understand the sensitivities and abilities that the follow needed to develop, so I wouldn't have a repeat of college. And then I took an inventory of the characteristics, along with her, of the of the capabilities and elements of different dancers who'd won championships. I interviewed these people because they all taught in Buenos Aires. I compared the two lists, and what you find is that there is explicitly, expertise they recommended, certain training methods. Then there were implicit commonalities that none of them seemed to be practicing. Now the protectionism of Argentine dance teachers aside, I found this very interesting. So I decided to focus on three of those commonalities. Long steps. So a lot of milongueros — the tango dancers will use very short steps. I found that longer steps were much more elegant. So you can have — and you can do it in a very small space in fact. Secondly, different types of pivots. Thirdly, variation in tempo. These seemed to be the three areas that I could exploit to compete if I wanted to comptete against people who'd been practicing for 20 to 30 years. That photo is of the semi-finals of the Buenos Aires championships, four months later. Then one month later, went to the world championships, made it to the semi-final. And then set a world record, following that, two weeks later. I want you to see part of what I practiced. I'm going to jump forward here. This is the instructor that Alicia and I chose for the male lead. His name is Gabriel Misse. One of the most elegant dancers of his generation, known for his long steps, and his tempo changes and his pivots. Alicia, in her own right, very famous. So I think you'll agree, they look quite good together. Now what I like about this video is it's actually a video of the first time they ever danced together because of his lead. He had a strong lead. He didn't lead with his chest, which requires you lean forward. I couldn't develop the attributes in my toes, the strength in my feet, to do that. So he uses a lead that focuses on his shoulder girdle and his arm. So he can lift the woman to break her, for example. That's just one benefit of that. So then we broke it down. This would be an example of one pivot. This is a back step pivot. There are many different types. I have hundreds of hours of footage — all categorized, much like George Carlin categorized his comedy. So using my arch-nemesis, Spanish, no less, to learn tango. So fear is your friend. Fear is an indicator. Sometimes it shows you what you shouldn't do. More often than not it shows you exactly what you should do. And the best results that I've had in life, the most enjoyable times, have all been from asking a simple question: what's the worst that can happen? Especially with fears you gained when you were a child. Take the analytical frameworks, the capabilities you have, apply them to old fears. Apply them to very big dreams. And when I think of what I fear now, it's very simple. When I imagine my life, what my life would have been like without the educational opportunities that I had, it makes me wonder. I've spent the last two years trying to deconstruct the American public school system, to either fix it or replace it. And have done experiments with about 50,000 students thus far — built, I'd say, about a half dozen schools, my readers, at this point. And if any of you are interested in that, I would love to speak with you. I know nothing. I'm a beginner. But I ask a lot of questions, and I would love your advice. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin

{0: 'JoAnn Kuchera-Morin'}

{0: ['composer']}

{0: 'Composer JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is the director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UC Santa Barbara.'}

2009-02-05

2009-04-15

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'math', 'science', 'technology', 'visualizations']

{92: "The best stats you've ever seen", 236: 'A look inside the brain in real time', 129: "How PhotoSynth can connect the world's images", 23986: 'The uncertain location of electrons', 1428: 'Just how small is an atom?', 24131: "Schrödinger's cat: A thought experiment in quantum mechanics"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/joann_kuchera_morin_stunning_data_visualization_in_the_allosphere/

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

The AlloSphere: it's a three-story metal sphere in an echo-free chamber. Think of the AlloSphere as a large, dynamically varying digital microscope that's connected to a supercomputer. 20 researchers can stand on a bridge suspended inside of the sphere, and be completely immersed in their data. Imagine if a team of physicists could stand inside of an atom and watch and hear electrons spin. Imagine if a group of sculptors could be inside of a lattice of atoms and sculpt with their material. Imagine if a team of surgeons could fly into the brain, as though it was a world, and see tissues as landscapes, and hear blood density levels as music. This is some of the research that you're going to see that we're undertaking at the AlloSphere. But first a little bit about this group of artists, scientists, and engineers that are working together. I'm a composer, orchestrally-trained, and the inventor of the AlloSphere. With my visual artist colleagues, we map complex mathematical algorithms that unfold in time and space, visually and sonically. Our scientist colleagues are finding new patterns in the information. And our engineering colleagues are making one of the largest dynamically varying computers in the world for this kind of data exploration. I'm going to fly you into five research projects in the AlloSphere that are going to take you from biological macroscopic data all the way down to electron spin. This first project is called the AlloBrain. And it's our attempt to quantify beauty by finding which regions of the brain are interactive while witnessing something beautiful. You're flying through the cortex of my colleague's brain. Our narrative here is real fMRI data that's mapped visually and sonically. The brain now a world that we can fly through and interact with. You see 12 intelligent computer agents, the little rectangles that are flying in the brain with you. They're mining blood density levels. And they're reporting them back to you sonically. Higher density levels mean more activity in that point of the brain. They're actually singing these densities to you with higher pitches mapped to higher densities. We're now going to move from real biological data to biogenerative algorithms that create artificial nature in our next artistic and scientific installation. In this artistic and scientific installation, biogenerative algorithms are helping us to understand self-generation and growth: very important for simulation in the nanoscaled sciences. For artists, we're making new worlds that we can uncover and explore. These generative algorithms grow over time, and they interact and communicate as a swarm of insects. Our researchers are interacting with this data by injecting bacterial code, which are computer programs, that allow these creatures to grow over time. We're going to move now from the biological and the macroscopic world, down into the atomic world, as we fly into a lattice of atoms. This is real AFM — Atomic Force Microscope — data from my colleagues in the Solid State Lighting and Energy Center. They've discovered a new bond, a new material for transparent solar cells. We're flying through 2,000 lattice of atoms — oxygen, hydrogen and zinc. You view the bond in the triangle. It's four blue zinc atoms bonding with one white hydrogen atom. You see the electron flow with the streamlines we as artists have generated for the scientists. This is allowing them to find the bonding nodes in any lattice of atoms. We think it makes a beautiful structural art. The sound that you're hearing are the actual emission spectrums of these atoms. We've mapped them into the audio domain, so they're singing to you. Oxygen, hydrogen and zinc have their own signature. We're going to actually move even further down as we go from this lattice of atoms to one single hydrogen atom. We're working with our physicist colleagues that have given us the mathematical calculations of the n-dimensional Schrödinger equation in time. What you're seeing here right now is a superposition of an electron in the lower three orbitals of a hydrogen atom. You're actually hearing and seeing the electron flow with the lines. The white dots are the probability wave that will show you where the electron is in any given point of time and space in this particular three-orbital configuration. In a minute we're going to move to a two-orbital configuration, and you're going to notice a pulsing. And you're going to hear an undulation between the sound. This is actually a light emitter. As the sound starts to pulse and contract, our physicists can tell when a photon is going to be emitted. They're starting to find new mathematical structures in these calculations. And they're understanding more about quantum mathematics. We're going to move even further down, and go to one single electron spin. This will be the final project that I show you. Our colleagues in the Center for Quantum Computation and Spintronics are actually measuring with their lasers decoherence in a single electron spin. We've taken this information and we've made a mathematical model out of it. You're actually seeing and hearing quantum information flow. This is very important for the next step in simulating quantum computers and information technology. So these brief examples that I've shown you give you an idea of the kind of work that we're doing at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to bring together, arts, science and engineering into a new age of math, science and art. We hope that all of you will come to see the AlloSphere. Inspire us to think of new ways that we can use this unique instrument that we've created at Santa Barbara. Thank you very much. (Applause)

9 life lessons from rock climbing

Matthew Childs

{0: 'Matthew Childs'}

{0: ['marketer', 'rock climber']}

{0: 'Matthew Childs is an advertising lead at Razorfish. He is a lifelong rock climber and climbing guide.'}

2009-02-05

2009-04-17

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'mn', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['adventure', 'entertainment', 'environment', 'nature']

{502: 'Extreme wingsuit flying', 89: 'Why did I ski to the North Pole?', 141: "Inside the world's deepest caves", 25671: 'How I climbed a 3,000-foot vertical cliff -- without ropes', 791: 'Medical miracle on Everest', 23918: 'If superpowers were real: Super strength'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/matthew_childs_9_life_lessons_from_rock_climbing/

In this talk from TED University 2009, veteran rock climber Matthew Childs shares nine pointers for rock climbing. These handy tips bear on an effective life at sea level, too.

It's pretty simple. There are nine, sort of, rules that I discovered after 35 years of rock climbing. Most of them are pretty basic. Number one: don't let go — very sure success method. But really, truly — often you think about letting go way before your body does. So hang in there, and you come up with some pretty peculiar solutions. Number two: hesitation is bad. This is a friction climb, up in Tuolumne Meadows, in the Yosemite high country. Friction climbing doesn't have any sort of hard positive edges. You're climbing on little dimples and nubbins in the rock. The most friction you have is when you first put your hand or your foot on the rock. And then from that point on, you're basically falling. So momentum is good. Don't stop. Rule number three: have a plan. This is a climb called the Naked Edge, in El Dorado Canyon, outside of Boulder. This climber is on the last pitch of it. He's actually right about where I fell. There is about 1,000 feet of air below him. And all the hard pitches are actually below him. Often what happens is you're planning so hard for like, "How do I get through the hardest part? How do I get through the hardest part?" And then what happens? You get to the last pitch. It's easy. And you're completely flamed out. Don't do it. You have to plan ahead to get to the top. But you also can't forget that each individual move you have to be able to complete. This is a climb called the Dike Route, on Pywjack Dome, up in the Yosemite high country. The interesting thing about this climb is it's not that hard. But if you're the leader on it, at the hardest move, you're looking at about 100 foot fall, onto some low angle slabs. So you've got to focus. You don't want to stop in the middle like Coleridge's Kubla Kahn. You've got to keep going. Rule number five: know how to rest. It's amazing. The best climbers are the ones that in the most extreme situations can get their bodies into some position where they can rest, regroup, calm themselves, focus, and keep going. This is a climb in the Needles, again in California. Fear really sucks because what it means is you're not focusing on what you're doing. You're focusing on the consequences of failing at what you're doing because any given move should require all your concentration and thought processes to execute it effectively. One of the things in climbing is, most people sort of take it straight on. And they follow the most obvious solution. This is the Devils Tower in Wyoming, which is a columnar basalt formation that most of you probably know from "Close Encounters." With this, typically crack climbers would put their hands in and their toes in and just start climbing. The cracks are too small to get your toes into so the only way to climb is using your fingertips in the cracks, and using opposing pressure and forcing yourself up. Rule number eight: strength doesn't always equal success. In the 35 years I've been a climbing guide and taught on indoor walls, and stuff like that, the most important thing I've learned was, guys will always try to do pull-ups. Beginning guys, it's like, they thrash, they thrash, they get 15 feet up — and they can do about 15 pull-ups right — And then they just flame out. Women are much more in balance because they don't have that idea that they're going to be able to do 100 pull-ups. They think about how to get the weight over their feet because it's sort of natural — they carry you all day long. So balance is really critical, and keeping your weight on your feet, which is your strongest muscle. And of course there is rule number nine. I came up with rule number nine after I actually didn't plan for a fall, and went about 40 feet and cracked a rib. Once you get to that point where you know it's going to happen, you need to start thinking about how you're going to let go because that is the critical piece of not getting hurt — how you're going to fall onto the rope, or if you're climbing without a rope, fall to a place where you can actually control the fall. So don't hang on till the bitter end. Thank you very much. (Applause)

The beautiful math of coral

Margaret Wertheim

{0: 'Margaret Wertheim'}

{0: ['figurer']}

{0: 'By masterminding a project to model a coral reef armed only with crochet hooks, Margaret Wertheim hopes to bring some of the most complicated mathematical models embodied in our universe into the minds (and hands) of the masses.'}

2009-02-06

2009-04-20

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sl', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'design', 'math', 'oceans', 'science', 'visualizations', 'marine biology', 'coral reefs']

{198: 'The fractals at the heart of African designs', 371: 'An 8-dimensional model of the universe', 206: 'Underwater astonishments', 2823: 'Why I still have hope for coral reefs', 2385: "How we're growing baby corals to rebuild reefs", 49398: 'A love story for the coral reef crisis'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_wertheim_the_beautiful_math_of_coral/

Margaret Wertheim leads a project to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician -- celebrating the amazements of the reef, and deep-diving into the hyperbolic geometry underlying coral creation.

I'm here today, as June said, to talk about a project that my twin sister and I have been doing for the past three and half years. We're crocheting a coral reef. And it's a project that we've actually been now joined by hundreds of people around the world, who are doing it with us. Indeed thousands of people have actually been involved in this project, in many of its different aspects. It's a project that now reaches across three continents, and its roots go into the fields of mathematics, marine biology, feminine handicraft and environmental activism. It's true. It's also a project that in a very beautiful way, the development of this has actually paralleled the evolution of life on earth, which is a particularly lovely thing to be saying right here in February 2009 — which, as one of our previous speakers told us, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. All of this I'm going to get to in the next 18 minutes, I hope. But let me first begin by showing you some pictures of what this thing looks like. Just to give you an idea of scale, that installation there is about six feet across, and the tallest models are about two or three feet high. This is some more images of it. That one on the right is about five feet high. The work involves hundreds of different crochet models. And indeed there are now thousands and thousands of models that people have contributed all over the world as part of this. The totality of this project involves tens of thousands of hours of human labor — 99 percent of it done by women. On the right hand side, that bit there is part of an installation that is about 12 feet long. My sister and I started this project in 2005 because in that year, at least in the science press, there was a lot of talk about global warming, and the effect that global warming was having on coral reefs. Corals are very delicate organisms, and they are devastated by any rise in sea temperatures. It causes these vast bleaching events that are the first signs of corals of being sick. And if the bleaching doesn't go away — if the temperatures don't go down — reefs start to die. A great deal of this has been happening in the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in coral reefs all over the world. This is our invocation in crochet of a bleached reef. We have a new organization together called The Institute for Figuring, which is a little organization we started to promote, to do projects about the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. And I went and put a little announcement up on our site, asking for people to join us in this enterprise. To our surprise, one of the first people who called was the Andy Warhol Museum. And they said they were having an exhibition about artists' response to global warming, and they'd like our coral reef to be part of it. I laughed and said, "Well we've only just started it, you can have a little bit of it." So in 2007 we had an exhibition, a small exhibition of this crochet reef. And then some people in Chicago came along and they said, "In late 2007, the theme of the Chicago Humanities Festival is global warming. And we've got this 3,000 square-foot gallery and we want you to fill it with your reef." And I, naively by this stage, said, "Oh, yes, sure." Now I say "naively" because actually my profession is as a science writer. What I do is I write books about the cultural history of physics. I've written books about the history of space, the history of physics and religion, and I write articles for people like the New York Times and the L.A. Times. So I had no idea what it meant to fill a 3,000 square-foot gallery. So I said yes to this proposition. And I went home, and I told my sister Christine. And she nearly had a fit because Christine is a professor at one of L.A.'s major art colleges, CalArts, and she knew exactly what it meant to fill a 3,000 square-foot gallery. She thought I'd gone off my head. But she went into crochet overdrive. And to cut a long story short, eight months later we did fill the Chicago Cultural Center's 3,000 square foot gallery. By this stage the project had taken on a viral dimension of its own, which got completely beyond us. The people in Chicago decided that as well as exhibiting our reefs, what they wanted to do was have the local people there make a reef. So we went and taught the techniques. We did workshops and lectures. And the people in Chicago made a reef of their own. And it was exhibited alongside ours. There were hundreds of people involved in that. We got invited to do the whole thing in New York, and in London, and in Los Angeles. In each of these cities, the local citizens, hundreds and hundreds of them, have made a reef. And more and more people get involved in this, most of whom we've never met. So the whole thing has sort of morphed into this organic, ever-evolving creature, that's actually gone way beyond Christine and I. Now some of you are sitting here thinking, "What planet are these people on? Why on earth are you crocheting a reef? Woolenness and wetness aren't exactly two concepts that go together. Why not chisel a coral reef out of marble? Cast it in bronze." But it turns out there is a very good reason why we are crocheting it because many organisms in coral reefs have a very particular kind of structure. The frilly crenulated forms that you see in corals, and kelps, and sponges and nudibranchs, is a form of geometry known as hyperbolic geometry. And the only way that mathematicians know how to model this structure is with crochet. It happens to be a fact. It's almost impossible to model this structure any other way, and it's almost impossible to do it on computers. So what is this hyperbolic geometry that corals and sea slugs embody? The next few minutes is, we're all going to get raised up to the level of a sea slug. (Laughter) This sort of geometry revolutionized mathematics when it was first discovered in the 19th century. But not until 1997 did mathematicians actually understand how they could model it. In 1997 a mathematician at Cornell, Daina Taimina, made the discovery that this structure could actually be done in knitting and crochet. The first one she did was knitting. But you get too many stitches on the needle. So she quickly realized crochet was the better thing. But what she was doing was actually making a model of a mathematical structure, that many mathematicians had thought it was actually impossible to model. And indeed they thought that anything like this structure was impossible per se. Some of the best mathematicians spent hundreds of years trying to prove that this structure was impossible. So what is this impossible hyperbolic structure? Before hyperbolic geometry, mathematicians knew about two kinds of space: Euclidean space, and spherical space. And they have different properties. Mathematicians like to characterize things by being formalist. You all have a sense of what a flat space is, Euclidean space is. But mathematicians formalize this in a particular way. And what they do is, they do it through the concept of parallel lines. So here we have a line and a point outside the line. And Euclid said, "How can I define parallel lines? I ask the question, how many lines can I draw through the point but never meet the original line?" And you all know the answer. Does someone want to shout it out? One. Great. Okay. That's our definition of a parallel line. It's a definition really of Euclidean space. But there is another possibility that you all know of: spherical space. Think of the surface of a sphere — just like a beach ball, the surface of the Earth. I have a straight line on my spherical surface. And I have a point outside the line. How many straight lines can I draw through the point but never meet the original line? What do we mean to talk about a straight line on a curved surface? Now mathematicians have answered that question. They've understood there is a generalized concept of straightness, it's called a geodesic. And on the surface of a sphere, a straight line is the biggest possible circle you can draw. So it's like the equator or the lines of longitude. So we ask the question again, "How many straight lines can I draw through the point, but never meet the original line?" Does someone want to guess? Zero. Very good. Now mathematicians thought that was the only alternative. It's a bit suspicious isn't it? There is two answers to the question so far, Zero and one. Two answers? There may possibly be a third alternative. To a mathematician if there are two answers, and the first two are zero and one, there is another number that immediately suggests itself as the third alternative. Does anyone want to guess what it is? Infinity. You all got it right. Exactly. There is, there's a third alternative. This is what it looks like. There's a straight line, and there is an infinite number of lines that go through the point and never meet the original line. This is the drawing. This nearly drove mathematicians bonkers because, like you, they're sitting there feeling bamboozled. Thinking, how can that be? You're cheating. The lines are curved. But that's only because I'm projecting it onto a flat surface. Mathematicians for several hundred years had to really struggle with this. How could they see this? What did it mean to actually have a physical model that looked like this? It's a bit like this: imagine that we'd only ever encountered Euclidean space. Then our mathematicians come along and said, "There's this thing called a sphere, and the lines come together at the north and south pole." But you don't know what a sphere looks like. And someone that comes along and says, "Look here's a ball." And you go, "Ah! I can see it. I can feel it. I can touch it. I can play with it." And that's exactly what happened when Daina Taimina in 1997, showed that you could crochet models in hyperbolic space. Here is this diagram in crochetness. I've stitched Euclid's parallel postulate on to the surface. And the lines look curved. But look, I can prove to you that they're straight because I can take any one of these lines, and I can fold along it. And it's a straight line. So here, in wool, through a domestic feminine art, is the proof that the most famous postulate in mathematics is wrong. (Applause) And you can stitch all sorts of mathematical theorems onto these surfaces. The discovery of hyperbolic space ushered in the field of mathematics that is called non-Euclidean geometry. And this is actually the field of mathematics that underlies general relativity and is actually ultimately going to show us about the shape of the universe. So there is this direct line between feminine handicraft, Euclid and general relativity. Now, I said that mathematicians thought that this was impossible. Here's two creatures who've never heard of Euclid's parallel postulate — didn't know it was impossible to violate, and they're simply getting on with it. They've been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. I once asked the mathematicians why it was that mathematicians thought this structure was impossible when sea slugs have been doing it since the Silurian age. Their answer was interesting. They said, "Well I guess there aren't that many mathematicians sitting around looking at sea slugs." And that's true. But it also goes deeper than that. It also says a whole lot of things about what mathematicians thought mathematics was, what they thought it could and couldn't do, what they thought it could and couldn't represent. Even mathematicians, who in some sense are the freest of all thinkers, literally couldn't see not only the sea slugs around them, but the lettuce on their plate — because lettuces, and all those curly vegetables, they also are embodiments of hyperbolic geometry. And so in some sense they literally, they had such a symbolic view of mathematics, they couldn't actually see what was going on on the lettuce in front of them. It turns out that the natural world is full of hyperbolic wonders. And so, too, we've discovered that there is an infinite taxonomy of crochet hyperbolic creatures. We started out, Chrissy and I and our contributors, doing the simple mathematically perfect models. But we found that when we deviated from the specific setness of the mathematical code that underlies it — the simple algorithm crochet three, increase one — when we deviated from that and made embellishments to the code, the models immediately started to look more natural. And all of our contributors, who are an amazing collection of people around the world, do their own embellishments. As it were, we have this ever-evolving, crochet taxonomic tree of life. Just as the morphology and the complexity of life on earth is never ending, little embellishments and complexifications in the DNA code lead to new things like giraffes, or orchids — so too, do little embellishments in the crochet code lead to new and wondrous creatures in the evolutionary tree of crochet life. So this project really has taken on this inner organic life of its own. There is the totality of all the people who have come to it. And their individual visions, and their engagement with this mathematical mode. We have these technologies. We use them. But why? What's at stake here? What does it matter? For Chrissy and I, one of the things that's important here is that these things suggest the importance and value of embodied knowledge. We live in a society that completely tends to valorize symbolic forms of representation — algebraic representations, equations, codes. We live in a society that's obsessed with presenting information in this way, teaching information in this way. But through this sort of modality, crochet, other plastic forms of play — people can be engaged with the most abstract, high-powered, theoretical ideas, the kinds of ideas that normally you have to go to university departments to study in higher mathematics, which is where I first learned about hyperbolic space. But you can do it through playing with material objects. One of the ways that we've come to think about this is that what we're trying to do with the Institute for Figuring and projects like this, we're trying to have kindergarten for grown-ups. And kindergarten was actually a very formalized system of education, established by a man named Friedrich Froebel, who was a crystallographer in the 19th century. He believed that the crystal was the model for all kinds of representation. He developed a radical alternative system of engaging the smallest children with the most abstract ideas through physical forms of play. And he is worthy of an entire talk on his own right. The value of education is something that Froebel championed, through plastic modes of play. We live in a society now where we have lots of think tanks, where great minds go to think about the world. They write these great symbolic treatises called books, and papers, and op-ed articles. We want to propose, Chrissy and I, through The Institute for Figuring, another alternative way of doing things, which is the play tank. And the play tank, like the think tank, is a place where people can go and engage with great ideas. But what we want to propose, is that the highest levels of abstraction, things like mathematics, computing, logic, etc. — all of this can be engaged with, not just through purely cerebral algebraic symbolic methods, but by literally, physically playing with ideas. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Rethinking the way we sit down

Niels Diffrient

{0: 'Niels Diffrient'}

{0: ['designer']}

{0: "Design legend Niels Diffrient is the creator of the Freedom Chair, a radical rethink of the way we sit today. Throughout his career, he's been a pioneer of ergonomic design -- studying the human body (in all its shapes and sizes) and how to make it comfortable."}

2002-02-02

2009-04-21

TED2002

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'design', 'technology', 'work']

{414: 'The playful search for beauty', 503: 'The Airstream, restyled', 43: 'Design is in the details', 1260: 'A plane you can drive', 176: 'A flight on solar wings', 1402: 'From mach-20 glider to hummingbird drone'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/niels_diffrient_rethinking_the_way_we_sit_down/

Design legend Niels Diffrient talks about his life in industrial design (and the reason he became a designer instead of a jet pilot). He details his quest to completely rethink the office chair starting from one fundamental data set: the human body.

When I was five years old I fell in love with airplanes. Now I'm talking about the '30s. In the '30s an airplane had two wings and a round motor, and was always flown by a guy who looked like Cary Grant. He had high leather boots, jodhpurs, an old leather jacket, a wonderful helmet and those marvelous goggles — and, inevitably, a white scarf, to flow in the wind. He'd always walk up to his airplane in a kind of saunter, devil-may-care saunter, flick the cigarette away, grab the girl waiting here, give her a kiss. (Laughter) And then mount his airplane, maybe for the last time. Of course I always wondered what would happen if he'd kissed the airplane first. (Laughter) But this was real romance to me. Everything about flying in those years, which was — you have to stop and think for a moment — was probably the most advanced technological thing going on at the time. So as a youngster, I tried to get close to this by drawing airplanes, constantly drawing airplanes. It's the way I got a part of this romance. And of course, in a way, when I say romance, I mean in part the aesthetics of that whole situation. I think the word is the holistic experience revolving around a product. The product was that airplane. But it built a romance. Even the parts of the airplane had French names. Ze fuselage, ze empanage, ze nessal. You know, from a romance language. So that it was something that just got into your spirit. It did mine. And I decided I had to get closer than just drawing fantasy airplanes. I wanted to build airplanes. So I built model airplanes. And I found that in doing the model airplanes the appearance drawings were not enough. You couldn't transfer those to the model itself. If you wanted it to fly you had to learn the discipline of flying. You had to learn about aeronautics. You had to learn what made an airplane stay in the air. And of course, as a model in those years, you couldn't control it. So it had to be self-righting, and stay up without crashing. So I had to give up the approach of drawing the fantasy shapes and convert it to technical drawings — the shape of the wing, the shape of the fuselage and so on — and build an airplane over these drawings that I knew followed some of the principles of flying. And in so doing, I could produce a model that would fly, stay in the air. And it had, once it was in the air, some of this romance that I was in love with. Well the act of drawing airplanes led me to, when I had the opportunity to choose a course in school, led me to sign up for aeronautical engineering. And when I was sitting in classes — in which no one asked me to draw an airplane — to my surprise. I had to learn mathematics and mechanics and all this sort of thing. I'd wile away my time drawing airplanes in the class. One day a young man looked over my shoulder, he said, "You draw very well. You should be in the art department." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well for one thing, there are more girls there." (Laughter) So my romance was temporarily shifted. (Laughter) And I went into art because they appreciated drawing. Studied painting; didn't do very well at that. Went through design, some architecture. Eventually hired myself out as a designer. And for the following 25 years, living in Italy, living in America, I doled out a piece of this romance to anybody who'd pay for it — this sense, this aesthetic feeling, for the experience revolving around a designed object. And it exists. Any of you who rode the automobiles — was it yesterday? — at the track, you know the romance revolving around those high performance cars. Well in 25 years I was mostly putting out pieces of this romance and not getting a lot back in because design on call doesn't always connect you with a circumstance in which you can produce things of this nature. So after 25 years I began to feel as though I was running dry. And I quit. And I started up a very small operation — went from 40 people to one, in an effort to rediscover my innocence. I wanted to get back where the romance was. And I couldn't choose airplanes because they had gotten sort of unromantic at that point, even though I'd done a lot of airplane work, on the interiors. So I chose furniture. And I chose chairs specifically because I knew something about them. I'd designed a lot of chairs, over the years for tractors and trucks and submarines — all kinds of things. But not office chairs. So I started doing that. And I found that there were ways to duplicate the same approach that I used to use on the airplane. Only this time, instead of the product being shaped by the wind, it was shaped by the human body. So the discipline was — as in the airplane you learn a lot about how to deal with the air, for a chair you have to learn a lot about how to deal with the body, and what the body needs, wants, indicates it needs. And that's the way, ultimately after some ups and downs, I ended up designing the chair I'm going to show you. I should say one more thing. When I was doing those model airplanes, I did everything. I conceived the kind of airplane. I basically engineered it. I built it. And I flew it. And that's the way I work now. When I started this chair it was not a preconceived notion. Design nowadays, if you mean it, you don't start with styling sketches. I started with a lot of loose ideas, roughly eight or nine years ago. And the loose ideas had something to do with what I knew happened with people in the office, at the work place — people who worked, and used task seating, a great many of them sitting in front of a computer all day long. And I felt, the one thing they don't need, is a chair that interferes with their main reason for sitting there. So I took the approach that the chair should do as much for them as humanly possible or as mechanistically possible so that they didn't have to fuss with it. So my idea was that, instead of sitting down and reaching for a lot of controls, that you would sit on the chair, and it would automatically balance your weight against the force required to recline. Now that may not mean a lot to some of you. But you know most good chairs do recline because it's beneficial to open up this joint between your legs and your upper body for better breathing and better flow. So that if you sit down on my chair, whether you're five feet tall or six foot six, it always deals with your weight and transfers the amount of force required to recline in a way that you don't have to look for something to adjust. I'll tell you right up front, this is a trade off. There are drawbacks to this. One is: you can't accommodate everybody. There are some very light people, some extremely heavy people, maybe people with a lot of bulk up top. They begin to fall off the end of your chart. But the compromise, I felt, was in my favor because most people don't adjust their chairs. They will sit in them forever. I had somebody on the bus out to the racetrack tell me about his sister calling him. He said she had one of the new, better chairs. She said, "Oh I love it." She said, "But it's too high." (Laughter) So he said, "Well I'll come over and look at it." He came over and looked at it. He reached down. He pulled a lever. And the chair sank down. She said, "Oh it's wonderful. How did you do that?" And he showed her the lever. Well, that's typical of a lot of us working in chairs. And why should you get a 20-page manual about how to run a chair? (Laughter) I had one for a wristwatch once. 20 pages. Anyway, I felt that it was important that you didn't have to make an adjustment in order to get this kind of action. The other thing I felt was that armrests had never really been properly approached from the standpoint of how much of an aid they could be to your work life. But I felt it was too much to ask to have to adjust each individual armrest in order to get it where you wanted. So I spent a long time. I said I worked eight or nine years on it. And each of these things went along sort of in parallel but incrementally were a problem of their own. I worked a long time on figuring out how to move the arms over a much greater arc — that is up and down — and make them a lot easier, so that you didn't have to use a button. And so after many trials, many failures, we came up with a very simple arrangement in which we could just move one arm or the other. And they go up easily. And stop where you want. You can put them down, essentially out of the way. No arms at all. Or you can pull them up where you want them. And this was another thing that I felt, while not nearly as romantic as Cary Grant, nevertheless begins to grab a little bit of aesthetic operation, aesthetic performance into a product. The next area that was of interest to me was the fact that reclining was a very important factor. And the more you can recline, in a way, the better it is. The more the angle between here and here opens up — and nowadays, with a screen in front of you, you don't want to have your eye drop too far in the recline, so we keep it at more or less the same level — but you transfer weight off your tailbones. Would everybody put their hand under their bottom and feel their tailbone? (Laughter) You feel that bone under there? (Laughter) Just your own. (Laughter) There's two of them, one on either side. All the weight of your upper torso — your arms, your head — goes right down through your back, your spine, into those bones when you sit. And that's a lot of load. Just relieving your arms with armrests takes 20 percent of that load off. Now that, if your spine is not held in a good position, will help bend your spine the wrong way, and so on. So to unload that great weight — if that indeed exists — you can recline. When you recline you take away a lot of that load off your bottom end, and transfer it to your back. At the same time, as I say, you open up this joint. And breathability is good. But to do that, if you have any amount of recline, it gets to the point where you need a headrest because nearly always, automatically hold your head in a vertical position, see? As I recline, my head says more or less vertical. Well if you're reclined a great deal, you have to use muscle force to hold your head there. So that's where a headrest comes in. Now headrest is a challenge because you want it to adjust enough so that it'll fit, you know, a tall guy and a short girl. So here we are. I've got five inches of adjustment here in order to get the headrest in the right place. But then I knew from experience and looking around in offices where there were chairs with headrests that nobody would ever bother to reach back and turn a knob and adjust the headrest to put it in position. And you need it in a different position when you're upright, then when you're reclined. So I knew that had to be solved, and had to be automatic. So if you watch this chair as I recline, the headrest comes up to meet my neck. Ideally you want to put the head support in the cranial area, right there. So that part of it took a long time to work out. And there is a variety of other things: the shape of the cushions, the gel we put. We stole the idea from bicycle seats, and put gel in the cushions and in the armrests to absorb point load — distributes the loading so you don't get hard spots. You cant hit your elbow on bottom. And I did want to demonstrate the fact that the chair can accommodate people. While you're sitting in it you can adjust it down for the five-footer, or you can adjust it for the six-foot-six guy — all within the scope of a few simple adjustments. (Applause)

Comics of bygone New York

Ben Katchor

{0: 'Ben Katchor'}

{0: ['cartoonist']}

{0: 'The first MacArthur-winning cartoonist, Ben Katchor has collected both cult and mainstream hat tips for his wry, poetic creations that find uncanny humor (and color) in the commonplace deeds of a bygone New York City.'}

2002-02-28

2009-04-22

TED2002

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['New York', 'art', 'cities', 'humor', 'books', 'comedy']

{432: 'The visual magic of comics', 400: 'Tidying up art', 215: 'An illustrated journey through Rome', 359: 'The Blur Building and other tech-empowered architecture', 219: 'Building uniqueness', 20259: "The genius behind some of the world's most famous buildings"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_katchor_comics_of_bygone_new_york/

In this captivating talk from the TED archive, cartoonist Ben Katchor reads from his comic strips. These perceptive, surreal stories find the profound hopes and foibles of history (and modern New York) preserved in objects like light switches and signs.

I'm going to read a few strips. These are, most of these are from a monthly page I do in and architecture and design magazine called Metropolis. And the first story is called "The Faulty Switch." Another beautifully designed new building ruined by the sound of a common wall light switch. It's fine during the day when the main rooms are flooded with sunlight. But at dusk everything changes. The architect spent hundreds of hours designing the burnished brass switchplates for his new office tower. And then left it to a contractor to install these 79-cent switches behind them. We know instinctively where to reach when we enter a dark room. We automatically throw the little nub of plastic upward. But the sound we are greeted with, as the room is bathed in the simulated glow of late-afternoon light, recalls to mind a dirty men's room in the rear of a Greek coffee shop. (Laughter) This sound colors our first impression of any room; it can't be helped. But where does this sound, commonly described as a click, come from? Is it simply the byproduct of a crude mechanical action? Or is it an imitation of one half the set of sounds we make to express disappointment? The often dental consonant of no Indo-European language. Or is it the amplified sound of a synapse firing in the brain of a cockroach? In the 1950s they tried their best to muffle this sound with mercury switches and silent knob controls. But today these improvements seem somehow inauthentic. The click is the modern triumphal clarion proceeding us through life, announcing our entry into every lightless room. The sound made flicking a wall switch off is of a completely different nature. It has a deep melancholy ring. Children don't like it. It's why they leave lights on around the house. (Laughter) Adults find it comforting. But wouldn't it be an easy matter to wire a wall switch so that it triggers the muted horn of a steam ship? Or the recorded crowing of a rooster? Or the distant peel of thunder? Thomas Edison went through thousands of unlikely substances before he came upon the right one for the filament of his electric light bulb. Why have we settled so quickly for the sound of its switch? That's the end of that. (Applause) The next story is called "In Praise of the Taxpayer." That so many of the city's most venerable taxpayers have survived yet another commercial building boom, is cause for celebration. These one or two story structures, designed to yield only enough income to cover the taxes on the land on which they stand, were not meant to be permanent buildings. Yet for one reason or another they have confounded the efforts of developers to be combined into lots suitable for high-rise construction. Although they make no claim to architectural beauty, they are, in their perfect temporariness, a delightful alternative to the large-scale structures that might someday take their place. The most perfect examples occupy corner lots. They offer a pleasant respite from the high-density development around them. A break of light and air, an architectural biding of time. So buried in signage are these structures, that it often takes a moment to distinguish the modern specially constructed taxpayer from its neighbor: the small commercial building from an earlier century, whose upper floors have been sealed, and whose groundfloor space now functions as a taxpayer. The few surfaces not covered by signs are often clad in a distinctive, dark green-gray, striated aluminum siding. Take-out sandwich shops, film processing drop-offs, peep-shows and necktie stores. Now these provisional structures have, in some cases, remained standing for the better part of a human lifetime. The temporary building is a triumph of modern industrial organization, a healthy sublimation of the urge to build, and proof that not every architectural idea need be set in stone. That's the end. (Laughter) And the next story is called, "On the Human Lap." For the ancient Egyptians the lap was a platform upon which to place the earthly possessions of the dead — 30 cubits from foot to knee. It was not until the 14th century that an Italian painter recognized the lap as a Grecian temple, upholstered in flesh and cloth. Over the next 200 years we see the infant Christ go from a sitting to a standing position on the Virgin's lap, and then back again. Every child recapitulates this ascension, straddling one or both legs, sitting sideways, or leaning against the body. From there, to the modern ventriloquist's dummy, is but a brief moment in history. You were late for school again this morning. The ventriloquist must first make us believe that a small boy is sitting on his lap. The illusion of speech follows incidentally. What have you got to say for yourself, Jimmy? As adults we admire the lap from a nostalgic distance. We have fading memories of that provisional temple, erected each time an adult sat down. On a crowded bus there was always a lap to sit on. It is children and teenage girls who are most keenly aware of its architectural beauty. They understand the structural integrity of a deep avuncular lap, as compared to the shaky arrangement of a neurotic niece in high heels. The relationship between the lap and its owner is direct and intimate. I envision a 36-story, 450-unit residential high-rise — a reason to consider the mental health of any architect before granting an important commission. The bathrooms and kitchens will, of course, have no windows. The lap of luxury is an architectural construct of childhood, which we seek, in vain, as adults, to employ. That's the end. (Laughter) The next story is called "The Haverpiece Collection" A nondescript warehouse, visible for a moment from the northbound lanes of the Prykushko Expressway, serves as the temporary resting place for the Haverpiece collection of European dried fruit. The profound convolutions on the surface of a dried cherry. The foreboding sheen of an extra-large date. Do you remember wandering as a child through those dark wooden storefront galleries? Where everything was displayed in poorly labeled roach-proof bins. Pears dried in the form of genital organs. Apricot halves like the ears of cherubim. In 1962 the unsold stock was purchased by Maurice Haverpiece, a wealthy prune juice bottler, and consolidated to form the core collection. As an art form it lies somewhere between still-life painting and plumbing. Upon his death in 1967, a quarter of the items were sold off for compote to a high-class hotel restaurant. (Laughter) Unsuspecting guests were served stewed turn-of-the-century Turkish figs for breakfast. (Laughter) The rest of the collection remains here, stored in plain brown paper bags until funds can be raised to build a permanent museum and study center. A shoe made of apricot leather for the daughter of a czar. That's the end. Thank you. (Applause)

Does racism affect how you vote?

Nate Silver

{0: 'Nate Silver'}

{0: ['statistician']}

{0: 'Math whiz and baseball fan Nate Silver was mainly known for predicting outcomes in fantasy ballgames -- until his technique hit a home run calling the outcome of the 2008 election primaries. '}

2009-02-07

2009-04-22

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['cities', 'politics', 'race', 'statistics', 'urban planning']

{67: 'How juries are fooled by statistics', 29: 'The freakonomics of crack dealing', 143: 'Flip your thinking on AIDS in Africa', 23780: 'Does your vote count? The Electoral College explained', 2726: 'How racism makes us sick', 2691: 'The racial politics of time'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/nate_silver_does_racism_affect_how_you_vote/

Nate Silver has data that answers big questions about race in politics. For instance, in the 2008 presidential race, did Obama's skin color actually keep him from getting votes in some parts of the country? Stats and myths collide in this fascinating talk that ends with a remarkable insight.

I want to talk about the election. For the first time in the United States, a predominantly white group of voters voted for an African-American candidate for President. And in fact Barack Obama did quite well. He won 375 electoral votes. And he won about 70 million popular votes more than any other presidential candidate — of any race, of any party — in history. If you compare how Obama did against how John Kerry had done four years earlier — Democrats really like seeing this transition here, where almost every state becomes bluer, becomes more democratic — even states Obama lost, like out west, those states became more blue. In the south, in the northeast, almost everywhere but with a couple of exceptions here and there. One exception is in Massachusetts. That was John Kerry's home state. No big surprise, Obama couldn't do better than Kerry there. Or in Arizona, which is John McCain's home, Obama didn't have much improvement. But there is also this part of the country, kind of in the middle region here. This kind of Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, West Virginia region. Now if you look at '96, Bill Clinton — the last Democrat to actually win — how he did in '96, you see real big differences in this part of the country right here, the kind of Appalachians, Ozarks, highlands region, as I call it: 20 or 30 point swings from how Bill Clinton did in '96 to how Obama did in 2008. Yes Bill Clinton was from Arkansas, but these are very, very profound differences. So, when we think about parts of the country like Arkansas, you know. There is a book written called, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" But really the question here — Obama did relatively well in Kansas. He lost badly but every Democrat does. He lost no worse than most people do. But yeah, what's the matter with Arkansas? (Laughter) And when we think of Arkansas we tend to have pretty negative connotations. We think of a bunch of rednecks, quote, unquote, with guns. And we think people like this probably don't want to vote for people who look like this and are named Barack Obama. We think it's a matter of race. And is this fair? Are we kind of stigmatizing people from Arkansas, and this part of the country? And the answer is: it is at least partially fair. We know that race was a factor, and the reason why we know that is because we asked those people. Actually we didn't ask them, but when they conducted exit polls in every state, in 37 states, out of the 50, they asked a question, that was pretty direct, about race. They asked this question. In deciding your vote for President today, was the race of the candidate a factor? We're looking for people that said, "Yes, race was a factor; moreover it was an important factor, in my decision," and people who voted for John McCain as a result of that factor, maybe in combination with other factors, and maybe alone. We're looking for this behavior among white voters or, really, non-black voters. So you see big differences in different parts of the country on this question. In Louisiana, about one in five white voters said, "Yes, one of the big reasons why I voted against Barack Obama is because he was an African-American." If those people had voted for Obama, even half of them, Obama would have won Louisiana safely. Same is true with, I think, all of these states you see on the top of the list. Meanwhile, California, New York, we can say, "Oh we're enlightened" but you know, certainly a much lower incidence of this admitted, I suppose, manifestation of racially-based voting. Here is the same data on a map. You kind of see the relationship between the redder states of where more people responded and said, "Yes, Barack Obama's race was a problem for me." You see, comparing the map to '96, you see an overlap here. This really seems to explain why Barack Obama did worse in this one part of the country. So we have to ask why. Is racism predictable in some way? Is there something driving this? Is it just about some weird stuff that goes on in Arkansas that we don't understand, and Kentucky? Or are there more systematic factors at work? And so we can look at a bunch of different variables. These are things that economists and political scientists look at all the time — things like income, and religion, education. Which of these seem to drive this manifestation of racism in this big national experiment we had on November 4th? And there are a couple of these that have strong predictive relationships, one of which is education, where you see the states with the fewest years of schooling per adult are in red, and you see this part of the country, the kind of Appalachians region, is less educated. It's just a fact. And you see the relationship there with the racially-based voting patterns. The other variable that's important is the type of neighborhood that you live in. States that are more rural — even to some extent of the states like New Hampshire and Maine — they exhibit a little bit of this racially-based voting against Barack Obama. So it's the combination of these two things: it's education and the type of neighbors that you have, which we'll talk about more in a moment. And the thing about states like Arkansas and Tennessee is that they're both very rural, and they are educationally impoverished. So yes, racism is predictable. These things, among maybe other variables, but these things seem to predict it. We're going to drill down a little bit more now, into something called the General Social Survey. This is conducted by the University of Chicago every other year. And they ask a series of really interesting questions. In 2000 they had particularly interesting questions about racial attitudes. One simple question they asked is, "Does anyone of the opposite race live in your neighborhood?" We can see in different types of communities that the results are quite different. In cites, about 80 percent of people have someone whom they consider a neighbor of another race, but in rural communities, only about 30 percent. Probably because if you live on a farm, you might not have a lot of neighbors, period. But nevertheless, you're not having a lot of interaction with people who are unlike you. So what we're going to do now is take the white people in the survey and split them between those who have black neighbors — or, really, some neighbor of another race — and people who have only white neighbors. And we see in some variables in terms of political attitudes, not a lot of difference. This was eight years ago, some people were more Republican back then. But you see Democrats versus Republican, not a big difference based on who your neighbors are. And even some questions about race — for example affirmative action, which is kind of a political question, a policy question about race, if you will — not much difference here. Affirmative action is not very popular frankly, with white voters, period. But people with black neighbors and people with mono-racial neighborhoods feel no differently about it really. But if you probe a bit deeper and get a bit more personal if you will, "Do you favor a law banning interracial marriage?" There is a big difference. People who don't have neighbors of a different race are about twice as likely to oppose interracial marriage as people who do. Just based on who lives in your immediate neighborhood around you. And likewise they asked, not in 2000, but in the same survey in 1996, "Would you not vote for a qualified black president?" You see people without neighbors who are African-American who were much more likely to say, "That would give me a problem." So it's really not even about urban versus rural. It's about who you live with. Racism is predictable. And it's predicted by interaction or lack thereof with people unlike you, people of other races. So if you want to address it, the goal is to facilitate interaction with people of other races. I have a couple of very obvious, I suppose, ideas for maybe how to do that. I'm a big fan of cities. Especially if we have cites that are diverse and sustainable, and can support people of different ethnicities and different income groups. I think cities facilitate more of the kind of networking, the kind of casual interaction than you might have on a daily basis. But also not everyone wants to live in a city, certainly not a city like New York. So we can think more about things like street grids. This is the neighborhood where I grew up in East Lansing, Michigan. It's a traditional Midwestern community, which means you have real grid. You have real neighborhoods and real trees, and real streets you can walk on. And you interact a lot with your neighbors — people you like, people you might not know. And as a result it's a very tolerant community, which is different, I think, than something like this, which is in Schaumburg, Illinois, where every little set of houses has their own cul-de-sac and drive-through Starbucks and stuff like that. I think that actually this type of urban design, which became more prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s — I think there is a relationship between that and the country becoming more conservative under Ronald Reagan. But also here is another idea we have — is an intercollegiate exchange program where you have students going from New York abroad. But frankly there are enough differences within the country now where maybe you can take a bunch of kids from NYU, have them go study for a semester at the University of Arkansas, and vice versa. Do it at the high school level. Literally there are people who might be in school in Arkansas or Tennessee and might never interact in a positive affirmative way with someone from another part of the country, or of another racial group. I think part of the education variable we talked about before is the networking experience you get when you go to college where you do get a mix of people that you might not interact with otherwise. But the point is, this is all good news, because when something is predictable, it is what I call designable. You can start thinking about solutions to solving that problem, even if the problem is pernicious and as intractable as racism. If we understand the root causes of the behavior and where it manifests itself and where it doesn't, we can start to design solutions to it. So that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Reporting crisis via texting

Erik Hersman

{0: 'Erik Hersman'}

{0: ['technologist']}

{0: 'Erik Hersman harnesses Africa’s boundless spirit of innovation by creating platforms to improve daily lives both inside and outside the continent.'}

2009-02-06

2009-04-22

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['Africa', 'activism', 'communication', 'disaster relief', 'global issues', 'technology']

{79: 'How mobile phones can fight poverty', 190: 'The anthropology of mobile phones', 403: "A tour of Nollywood, Nigeria's booming film industry", 1770: 'Meet BRCK, Internet access built for Africa', 1944: "You don't need an app for that", 154: 'Why invest in Africa'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/erik_hersman_reporting_crisis_via_texting/

At TEDU 2009, Erik Hersman presents the remarkable story of Ushahidi, a GoogleMap mashup that allowed Kenyans to report and track violence via cell phone texts following the 2008 elections, and has evolved to continue saving lives in other countries.

So I'm here to tell you a story of success from Africa. A year and a half ago, four of the five people who are full time members at Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, were TED Fellows. A year ago in Kenya we had post-election violence. And in that time we prototyped and built, in about three days, a system that would allow anybody with a mobile phone to send in information and reports on what was happening around them. We took what we knew about Africa, the default device, the mobile phone, as our common denominator, and went from there. We got reports like this. This is just a couple of them from January 17th, last year. And our system was rudimentary. It was very basic. It was a mash-up that used data that we collected from people, and we put it on our map. But then we decided we needed to do something more. We needed to take what we had built and create a platform out of it so that it could be used elsewhere in the world. And so there is a team of developers from all over Africa, who are part of this team now — from Ghana, from Malawi, from Kenya. There is even some from the U.S. We're building for smartphones, so that it can be used in the developed world, as well as the developing world. We are realizing that this is true. If it works in Africa then it will work anywhere. And so we build for it in Africa first and then we move to the edges. It's now been deployed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's being used by NGOs all over East Africa, small NGOs doing their own little projects. Just this last month it was deployed by Al Jazeera in Gaza. But that's actually not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the next big thing, because what we're finding out is that we have this capacity to report eyewitness accounts of what's going on in real time. We're seeing this in events like Mumbai recently, where it's so much easier to report now than it is to consume it. There is so much information; what do you do? This is the Twitter reports for over three days just covering Mumbai. How do you decide what is important? What is the veracity level of what you're looking at? So what we find is that there is this great deal of wasted crisis information because there is just too much information for us to actually do anything with right now. And what we're actually really concerned with is this first three hours. What we are looking at is the first three hours. How do we deal with that information that is coming in? You can't understand what is actually happening. On the ground and around the world people are still curious, and trying to figure out what is going on. But they don't know. So what we built of course, Ushahidi, is crowdsourcing this information. You see this with Twitter, too. You get this information overload. So you've got a lot of information. That's great. But now what? So we think that there is something interesting we can do here. And we have a small team who is working on this. We think that we can actually create a crowdsourced filter. Take the crowd and apply them to the information. And by rating it and by rating the different people who submit information, we can get refined results and weighted results. So that we have a better understanding of the probability of something being true or not. This is the kind of innovation that is, quite frankly — it's interesting that it's coming from Africa. It's coming from places that you wouldn't expect. From young, smart developers. And it's a community around it that has decided to build this. So, thank you very much. And we are very happy to be part of the TED family. (Applause)

How ideas trump crises

Alex Tabarrok

{0: 'Alex Tabarrok'}

{0: ['economist']}

{0: 'With the hit economic blog MarginalRevolution.com, co-author Alex Tabarrok generates more hits than a summer hailstorm, and sheds light into the darkest corners of the dismal science.'}

2009-02-07

2009-04-27

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sv', 'ta', 'tl', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'china', 'cities', 'culture', 'economics', 'future', 'global issues', 'happiness', 'health', 'history']

{63: 'The era of open innovation', 62: 'Global priorities bigger than climate change', 487: 'Our buggy moral code', 1719: 'The death of innovation, the end of growth', 1220: 'Does democracy stifle economic growth?', 1851: "Africa's next boom"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_tabarrok_how_ideas_trump_crises/

The "dismal science" truly shines in this optimistic talk, as economist Alex Tabarrok argues free trade and globalization are shaping our once-divided world into a community of idea-sharing more healthy, happy and prosperous than anyone's predictions.

The first half of the 20th century was an absolute disaster in human affairs, a cataclysm. We had the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War and the rise of the communist nations. And each one of these forces split the world, tore the world apart, divided the world. And they threw up walls — political walls, trade walls, transportation walls, communication walls, iron curtains — which divided peoples and nations. It was only in the second half of the 20th century that we slowly began to pull ourselves out of this abyss. Trade walls began to come tumbling down. Here are some data on tariffs: starting at 40 percent, coming down to less than 5 percent. We globalized the world. And what does that mean? It means that we extended cooperation across national boundaries; we made the world more cooperative. Transportation walls came tumbling down. You know in 1950 the typical ship carried 5,000 to 10,000 tons worth of goods. Today a container ship can carry 150,000 tons; it can be manned with a smaller crew; and unloaded faster than ever before. Communication walls, I don't have to tell you — the Internet — have come tumbling down. And of course the iron curtains, political walls have come tumbling down. Now all of this has been tremendous for the world. Trade has increased. Here is just a little bit of data. In 1990, exports from China to the United States: 15 billion dollars. By 2007: over 300 billion dollars. And perhaps most remarkably, at the beginning of the 21st century, really for the first time in modern history, growth extended to almost all parts of the world. So China, I've already mentioned, beginning around 1978, around the time of the death of Mao, growth — ten percent a year. Year after year after year, absolutely incredible. Never before in human history have so many people been raised out of such great poverty as happened in China. China is the world's greatest anti-poverty program over the last three decades. India, starting a little bit later, but in 1990, begetting tremendous growth. Incomes at that time less than $1,000 per year. And over the next 18 years have almost tripled. Growth of six percent a year. Absolutely incredible. Now Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa — Sub-Saharan Africa has been the area of the world most resistant to growth. And we can see the tragedy of Africa in the first few bars here. Growth was negative. People were actually getting poorer than their parents, and sometimes even poorer than their grandparents had been. But at the end of the 20th century, the beginning of the 21st century, we saw growth in Africa. And I think, as you'll see, there's reasons for optimism, because I believe that the best is yet to come. Now why. On the cutting edge today it's new ideas which are driving growth. And by that I mean it's products for which the research and development costs are really high, and the manufacturing costs are low. More than ever before it is these types of ideas which are driving growth on the cutting edge. Now ideas have this amazing property. Thomas Jefferson, I think, really expressed this quite well. He said, "He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself, without lessening mine. As he who lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening me." Or to put it slightly differently: one apple feeds one man, but an idea can feed the world. Now this is not new. This is practically not new to TEDsters. This is practically the model of TED. But what is new is that the greater function of ideas is going to drive growth even more than ever before. This provides a reason why trade and globalization are even more important, more powerful than ever before, and are going to increase growth more than ever before. And to explain why this is so, I have a question. Suppose that there are two diseases: one of them is rare, the other one is common, but if they are not treated they are equally severe. If you had to choose, which would you rather have: the common disease or the rare disease? Common, the common — I think that's absolutely right, and why? Because there are more drugs to treat common diseases than there are to treat rare diseases. The reason for this is incentives. It costs about the same to produce a new drug whether that drug treats 1,000 people, 100,000 people, or a million people. But the revenues are much greater if the drug treats a million people. So the incentives are much larger to produce drugs which treat more people. To put this differently: larger markets save lives. In this case misery truly does love company. Now think about the following: if China and India were as rich as the United States is today, the market for cancer drugs would be eight times larger than it is now. Now we are not there yet, but it is happening. As other countries become richer the demand for these pharmaceuticals is going to increase tremendously. And that means an increase incentive to do research and development, which benefits everyone in the world. Larger markets increase the incentive to produce all kinds of ideas, whether it's software, whether it's a computer chip, whether it's a new design. For the Hollywood people in the audience, this even explains why action movies have larger budgets than comedies: it's because action movies translate easier into other languages and other cultures, so the market for those movies is larger. People are willing to invest more, and the budgets are larger. Alright. Well if larger markets increase the incentive to produce new ideas, how do we maximize that incentive? It's by having one world market, by globalizing the world. The way I like to put this is: one idea. Ideas are meant to be shared, so one idea can serve one world, one market. One idea, one world, one market. Well how else can we create new ideas? That's one reason. Globalize trade. How else can we create new ideas? Well, more idea creators. Now idea creators, they come from all walks of life. Artists and innovators — many of the people you've seen on this stage. I'm going to focus on scientists and engineers because I have some data on that, and I'm a data person. Now, today, less than one-tenth of one percent of the world's population are scientists and engineers. (Laughter) The United States has been an idea leader. A large fraction of those people are in the United States. But the U.S. is losing its idea leadership. And for that I am very grateful. That is a good thing. It is fortunate that we are becoming less of an idea leader because for too long the United States, and a handful of other developed countries, have shouldered the entire burden of research and development. But consider the following: if the world as a whole were as wealthy as the United States is now there would be more than five times as many scientists and engineers contributing to ideas which benefit everyone, which are shared by everyone. I think of the great Indian mathematician, Ramanujan. How many Ramanujans are there in India today toiling in the fields, barely able to feed themselves, when they could be feeding the world? Now we're not there yet. But it is going to happen in this century. The real tragedy of the last century is this: if you think about the world's population as a giant computer, a massively parallel processor, then the great tragedy has been that billions of our processors have been off line. But in this century China is coming on line. India is coming on line. Africa is coming on line. We will see an Einstein in Africa in this century. Here is just some data. This is China. 1996: less than one million new university students in China per year; 2006: over five million. Now think what this means. This means we all benefit when another country gets rich. We should not fear other countries becoming wealthy. That is something that we should embrace — a wealthy China, a wealthy India, a wealthy Africa. We need a greater demand for ideas — those larger markets I was talking about earlier — and a greater supply of ideas for the world. Now you can see some of the reasons why I'm optimistic. Globalization is increasing the demand for ideas, the incentive to create new ideas. Investments in education are increasing the supply of new ideas. In fact if you look at world history you can see some reasons for optimism. From about the beginnings of humanity to 1500: zero economic growth, nothing. 1500 to 1800: maybe a little bit of economic growth, but less in a century than you expect to see in a year today. 1900s: maybe one percent. Twentieth century: a little bit over two percent. Twenty-first century could easily be 3.3, even higher percent. Even at that rate, by 2100 average GDP per capita in the world will be $200,000. That's not U.S. GDP per capita, which will be over a million, but world GDP per capita — $200,000. That's not that far. We won't make it. But some of our grandchildren probably will. And I should say, I think this is a rather modest prediction. In Kurzweilian terms this is gloomy. In Kurzweilian terms I'm like the Eeyore of economic growth. (Laughter) Alright what about problems? What about a great depression? Well let's take a look. Let's take a look at the Great Depression. Here is GDP per capita from 1900 to 1929. Now let's imagine that you were an economist in 1929, trying to forecast future growth for the United States, not knowing that the economy was about to go off a cliff, not knowing that we were about to enter the greatest economic disaster certainly in the 20th century. What would you have predicted, not knowing this? If you had based your prediction, your forecast on 1900 to 1929 you'd have predicted something like this. If you'd been a little more optimistic — say, based upon the Roaring Twenties — you'd have said this. So what actually happened? We went off a cliff but we recovered. In fact in the second half of the 20th century growth was even higher than anything you would have predicted based upon the first half of the 20th century. So growth can wash away even what appears to be a great depression. Alright. What else? Oil. Oil. This was a big topic. When I was writing up my notes oil was $140 per barrel. So people were asking a question. They were saying, "Is China drinking our milkshake?" (Laughter) And there is some truth to this, in the sense that we have something of a finite resource, and increased growth is going to push up demand for that. But I think I don't have to tell this audience that a higher price of oil is not necessarily a bad thing. Moreover, as everyone knows, look — it's energy, not oil, which counts. And higher oil prices mean a greater incentive to invest in energy R&D. You can see this in the data. As oil prices go up, energy patents go up. The world is much better equipped to overcome an increase in the price of oil today, than ever in the past, because of what I'm talking about. One idea, one world, one market. So I'm optimistic so long as we hew to these two ideas: to keep globalizing world markets, keep extending cooperation across national boundaries, and keep investing in education. Now the United States has a particularly important role to play in this: to keep our education system globalized, to keep our education system open to students from all over the world, because our education system is the candle that other students come to light their own candles. Now remember here what Jefferson said. Jefferson said, "When they come and light their candles at ours, they gain light, and we are not darkened." But Jefferson wasn't quite right, was he? Because the truth is, when they light their candles at ours, there is twice as much light available for everyone. So my view is: Be optimistic. Spread the ideas. Spread the light. Thank you. (Applause)

Growing evidence of brain plasticity

Michael Merzenich

{0: 'Michael Merzenich'}

{0: ['neuroscientist']}

{0: "Michael Merzenich studies neuroplasticity -- the brain's powerful ability to change itself and adapt -- and ways we might make use of that plasticity to heal injured brains and enhance the skills in healthy ones."}

2004-02-28

2009-04-28

TED2004

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['brain', 'computers', 'consciousness', 'entrepreneur', 'mind']

{184: '3 clues to understanding your brain', 102: 'The illusion of consciousness', 125: 'How brain science will change computing', 1563: 'The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain', 1671: 'A monkey that controls a robot with its thoughts. No, really.', 2077: 'A neural portrait of the human mind'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_growing_evidence_of_brain_plasticity/

Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich looks at one of the secrets of the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. He's researching ways to harness the brain's plasticity to enhance our skills and recover lost function.

This machine, which we all have residing in our skulls, reminds me of an aphorism, of a comment of Woody Allen to ask about what is the very best thing to have within your skull. And it's this machine. And it's constructed for change. It's all about change. It confers on us the ability to do things tomorrow that we can't do today, things today that we couldn't do yesterday. And of course it's born stupid. The last time you were in the presence of a baby — this happens to be my granddaughter, Mitra. Isn't she fabulous? (Laughter) But nonetheless when she popped out despite the fact that her brain had actually been progressing in its development for several months before on the basis of her experiences in the womb — nonetheless she had very limited abilities, as does every infant at the time of normal, natural full-term birth. If we were to assay her perceptual abilities, they would be crude. There is no real indication that there is any real thinking going on. In fact there is little evidence that there is any cognitive ability in a very young infant. Infants don't respond to much. There is not really much of an indication in fact that there is a person on board. (Laughter) And they can only in a very primitive way, and in a very limited way control their movements. It would be several months before this infant could do something as simple as reach out and grasp under voluntary control an object and retrieve it, usually to the mouth. And it will be some months beforeward, and we see a long steady progression of the evolution from the first wiggles, to rolling over, and sitting up, and crawling, standing, walking, before we get to that magical point in which we can motate in the world. And yet, when we look forward in the brain we see really remarkable advance. By this age the brain can actually store. It has stored, recorded, can fastly retrieve the meanings of thousands, tens of thousands of objects, actions, and their relationships in the world. And those relationships can in fact be constructed in hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of ways. By this age the brain controls very refined perceptual abilities. And it actually has a growing repertoire of cognitive skills. This brain is very much a thinking machine. And by this age there is absolutely no question that this brain, it has a person on board. And in fact at this age it is substantially controlling its own self-development. And by this age we see a remarkable evolution in its capacity to control movement. Now movement has advanced to the point where it can actually control movement simultaneously, in a complex sequence, in complex ways as would be required for example for playing a complicated game, like soccer. Now this boy can bounce a soccer ball on his head. And where this boy comes from, Sao Paulo, Brazil, about 40 percent of boys of his age have this ability. You could go out into the community in Monterey, and you'd have difficulty finding a boy that has this ability. And if you did he'd probably be from Sao Paulo. (Laughter) That's all another way of saying that our individual skills and abilities are very much shaped by our environments. That environment extends into our contemporary culture, the thing our brain is challenged with. Because what we've done in our personal evolutions is build up a large repertoire of specific skills and abilities that are specific to our own individual histories. And in fact they result in a wonderful differentiation in humankind, in the way that, in fact, no two of us are quite alike. Every one of us has a different set of acquired skills and abilities that all derive out of the plasticity, the adaptability of this really remarkable adaptive machine. In an adult brain of course we've built up a large repertoire of mastered skills and abilities that we can perform more or less automatically from memory, and that define us as acting, moving, thinking creatures. Now we study this, as the nerdy, laboratory, university-based scientists that we are, by engaging the brains of animals like rats, or monkeys, or of this particularly curious creature — one of the more bizarre forms of life on earth — to engage them in learning new skills and abilities. And we try to track the changes that occur as the new skill or ability is acquired. In fact we do this in individuals of any age, in these different species — that is to say from infancies, infancy up to adulthood and old age. So we might engage a rat, for example, to acquire a new skill or ability that might involve the rat using its paw to master particular manual grasp behaviors just like we might examine a child and their ability to acquire the sub-skills, or the general overall skill of accomplishing something like mastering the ability to read. Or you might look in an older individual who has mastered a complex set of abilities that might relate to reading musical notation or performing the mechanical acts of performance that apply to musical performance. From these studies we defined two great epochs of the plastic history of the brain. The first great epoch is commonly called the "Critical Period." And that is the period in which the brain is setting up in its initial form its basic processing machinery. This is actually a period of dramatic change in which it doesn't take learning, per se, to drive the initial differentiation of the machinery of the brain. All it takes for example in the sound domain, is exposure to sound. And the brain actually is at the mercy of the sound environment in which it is reared. So for example I can rear an animal in an environment in which there is meaningless dumb sound, a repertoire of sound that I make up, that I make, just by exposure, artificially important to the animal and its young brain. And what I see is that the animal's brain sets up its initial processing of that sound in a form that's idealized, within the limits of its processing achievements to represent it in an organized and orderly way. The sound doesn't have to be valuable to the animal: I could raise the animal in something that could be hypothetically valuable, like the sounds that simulate the sounds of a native language of a child. And I see the brain actually develop a processor that is specialized — specialized for that complex array, a repertoire of sounds. It actually exaggerates their separateness of representation, in multi-dimensional neuronal representational terms. Or I can expose the animal to a completely meaningless and destructive sound. I can raise an animal under conditions that would be equivalent to raising a baby under a moderately loud ceiling fan, in the presence of continuous noise. And when I do that I actually specialize the brain to be a master processor for that meaningless sound. And I frustrate its ability to represent any meaningful sound as a consequence. Such things in the early history of babies occur in real babies. And they account for, for example the beautiful evolution of a language-specific processor in every normally developing baby. And so they also account for development of defective processing in a substantial population of children who are more limited, as a consequence, in their language abilities at an older age. Now in this early period of plasticity the brain actually changes outside of a learning context. I don't have to be paying attention to what I hear. The input doesn't really have to be meaningful. I don't have to be in a behavioral context. This is required so the brain sets up it's processing so that it can act differentially, so that it can act selectively, so that the creature that wears it, that carries it, can begin to operate on it in a selective way. In the next great epoch of life, which applies for most of life, the brain is actually refining its machinery as it masters a wide repertoire of skills and abilities. And in this epoch, which extends from late in the first year of life to death; it's actually doing this under behavioral control. And that's another way of saying the brain has strategies that define the significance of the input to the brain. And it's focusing on skill after skill, or ability after ability, under specific attentional control. It's a function of whether a goal in a behavior is achieved or whether the individual is rewarded in the behavior. This is actually very powerful. This lifelong capacity for plasticity, for brain change, is powerfully expressed. It is the basis of our real differentiation, one individual from another. You can look down in the brain of an animal that's engaged in a specific skill, and you can witness or document this change on a variety of levels. So here is a very simple experiment. It was actually conducted about five years ago in collaboration with scientists from the University of Provence in Marseilles. It's a very simple experiment where a monkey has been trained in a task that involves it manipulating a tool that's equivalent in its difficulty to a child learning to manipulate or handle a spoon. The monkey actually mastered the task in about 700 practice tries. So in the beginning the monkey could not perform this task at all. It had a success rate of about one in eight tries. Those tries were elaborate. Each attempt was substantially different from the other. But the monkey gradually developed a strategy. And 700 or so tries later the monkey is performing it flawlessly — never fails. He's successful in his retrieval of food with this tool every time. At this point the task is being performed in a beautifully stereotyped way: very beautifully regulated and highly repeated, trial to trial. We can look down in the brain of the monkey. And we see that it's distorted. We can track these changes, and have tracked these changes in many such behaviors across time. And here we see the distortion reflected in the map of the skin surfaces of the hand of the monkey. Now this is a map, down in the surface of the brain, in which, in a very elaborate experiment we've reconstructed the responses, location by location, in a highly detailed response mapping of the responses of its neurons. We see here a reconstruction of how the hand is represented in the brain. We've actually distorted the map by the exercise. And that is indicated in the pink. We have a couple fingertip surfaces that are larger. These are the surfaces the monkey is using to manipulate the tool. If we look at the selectivity of responses in the cortex of the monkey, we see that the monkey has actually changed the filter characteristics which represents input from the skin of the fingertips that are engaged. In other words there is still a single, simple representation of the fingertips in this most organized of cortical areas of the surface of the skin of the body. Monkey has like you have. And yet now it's represented in substantially finer grain. The monkey is getting more detailed information from these surfaces. And that is an unknown — unsuspected, maybe, by you — part of acquiring the skill or ability. Now actually we've looked in several different cortical areas in the monkey learning this task. And each one of them changes in ways that are specific to the skill or ability. So for example we can look to the cortical area that represents input that's controlling the posture of the monkey. We look in cortical areas that control specific movements, and the sequences of movements that are required in the behavior, and so forth. They are all remodeled. They all become specialized for the task at hand. There are 15 or 20 cortical areas that are changed specifically when you learn a simple skill like this. And that represents in your brain, really massive change. It represents the change in a reliable way of the responses of tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions of neurons in your brain. It represents changes of hundreds of millions, possibly billions of synaptic connections in your brain. This is constructed by physical change. And the level of construction that occurs is massive. Think about the changes that occur in the brain of a child through the course of acquiring their movement behavior abilities in general. Or acquiring their native language abilities. The changes are massive. What it's all about is the selective representations of things that are important to the brain. Because in most of the life of the brain this is under control of behavioral context. It's what you pay attention to. It's what's rewarding to you. It's what the brain regards, itself, as positive and important to you. It's all about cortical processing and forebrain specialization. And that underlies your specialization. That is why you, in your many skills and abilities, are a unique specialist: a specialist that's vastly different in your physical brain in detail than the brain of an individual 100 years ago; enormously different in the details from the brain of the average individual 1,000 years ago. Now, one of the characteristics of this change process is that information is always related to other inputs or information that is occurring in immediate time, in context. And that's because the brain is constructing representations of things that are correlated in little moments of time and that relate to one another in little moments of successive time. The brain is recording all information and driving all change in temporal context. Now overwhelmingly the most powerful context that's occurred in your brain is you. Billions of events have occurred in your history that are related in time to yourself as the receiver, or yourself as the actor, yourself as the thinker, yourself as the mover. Billions of times little pieces of sensation have come in from the surface of your body that are always associated with you as the receiver, and that result in the embodiment of you. You are constructed, your self is constructed from these billions of events. It's constructed. It's created in your brain. And it's created in the brain via physical change. This is a marvelously constructed thing that results in individual form because each one of us has vastly different histories, and vastly different experiences, that drive in to us this marvelous differentiation of self, of personhood. Now we've used this research to try to understand not just how a normal person develops, and elaborates their skills and abilities, but also try to understand the origins of impairment, and the origins of differences or variations that might limit the capacities of a child, or an adult. I'm going to talk about using these strategies to actually design brain plasticity-based approach to drive corrections in the machinery of a child that increases the competence of the child as a language receiver and user and, thereafter, as a reader. And I'm going to talk about experiments that involve actually using this brain science, first of all to understand how it contributes to the loss of function as we age. And then, by using it in a targeted approach we're going to try to differentiate the machinery to recover function in old age. So the first example I'm going to talk about relates to children with learning impairments. We now have a large body of literature that demonstrates that the fundamental problem that occurs in the majority of children that have early language impairments, and that are going to struggle to learn to read, is that their language processor is created in a defective form. And the reason that it rises in a defective form is because early in the baby's brain's life the machine process is noisy. It's that simple. It's a signal-to-noise problem. Okay? And there are a lot of things that contribute to that. There are numerous inherited faults that could make the machine process noisier. Now I might say the noise problem could also occur on the basis of information provided in the world from the ears. If any — those of you who are older in the audience know that when I was a child we understood that a child born with a cleft palate was born with what we called mental retardation. We knew that they were going to be slow cognitively; we knew they were going to struggle to learn to develop normal language abilities; and we knew that they were going to struggle to learn to read. Most of them would be intellectual and academic failures. That's disappeared. That no longer applies. That inherited weakness, that inherited condition has evaporated. We don't hear about that anymore. Where did it go? Well, it was understood by a Dutch surgeon, about 35 years ago, that if you simply fix the problem early enough, when the brain is still in this initial plastic period so it can set up this machinery adequately, in this initial set up time in the critical period, none of that happens. What are you doing by operating on the cleft palate to correct it? You're basically opening up the tubes that drain fluid from the middle ears, which have had them reliably full. Every sound the child hears uncorrected is muffled. It's degraded. The child's native language is such a case is not English. It's not Japanese. It's muffled English. It's degraded Japanese. It's crap. And the brain specializes for it. It creates a representation of language crap. And then the child is stuck with it. Now the crap doesn't just happen in the ear. It can also happen in the brain. The brain itself can be noisy. It's commonly noisy. There are many inherited faults that can make it noisier. And the native language for a child with such a brain is degraded. It's not English. It's noisy English. And that results in defective representations of sounds of words — not normal — a different strategy, by a machine that has different time constants and different space constants. And you can look in the brain of such a child and record those time constants. They are about an order of magnitude longer, about 11 times longer in duration on average, than in a normal child. Space constants are about three times greater. Such a child will have memory and cognitive deficits in this domain. Of course they will. Because as a receiver of language, they are receiving it and representing it, and in information it's representing crap. And they are going to have poor reading skills. Because reading is dependent upon the translation of word sounds into this orthographic or visual representational form. If you don't have a brain representation of word sounds that translation makes no sense. And you are going to have corresponding abnormal neurology. Then these children increasingly in evaluation after evaluation, in their operations in language, and their operations in reading — we document that abnormal neurology. The point is is that you can train the brain out of this. A way to think about this is you can actually re-refine the processing capacity of the machinery by changing it. Changing it in detail. It takes about 30 hours on the average. And we've accomplished that in about 430,000 kids today. Actually, probably about 15,000 children are being trained as we speak. And actually when you look at the impacts, the impacts are substantial. So here we're looking at the normal distribution. What we're most interested in is these kids on the left side of the distribution. This is from about 3,000 children. You can see that most of the children on the left side of the distribution are moving into the middle or the right. This is in a broad assessment of their language abilities. This is like an IQ test for language. The impact in the distribution, if you trained every child in the United States, would be to shift the whole distribution to the right and narrow the distribution. This is a substantially large impact. Think of a classroom of children in the language arts. Think of the children on the slow side of the class. We have the potential to move most of those children to the middle or to the right side. In addition to accurate language training it also fixes memory and cognition speech fluency and speech production. And an important language dependent skill is enabled by this training — that is to say reading. And to a large extent it fixes the brain. You can look down in the brain of a child in a variety of tasks that scientists have at Stanford, and MIT, and UCSF, and UCLA, and a number of other institutions. And children operating in various language behaviors, or in various reading behaviors, you see for the most extent, for most children, their neuronal responses, complexly abnormal before you start, are normalized by the training. Now you can also take the same approach to address problems in aging. Where again the machinery is deteriorating now from competent machinery, it's going south. Noise is increasing in the brain. And learning modulation and control is deteriorating. And you can actually look down on the brain of such an individual and witness a change in the time constants and space constants with which, for example, the brain is representing language again. Just as the brain came out of chaos at the beginning, it's going back into chaos in the end. This results in declines in memory in cognition, and in postural ability and agility. It turns out you can train the brain of such an individual — this is a small population of such individuals — train equally intensively for about 30 hours. These are 80- to 90-year-olds. And what you see are substantial improvements of their immediate memory, of their ability to remember things after a delay, of their ability to control their attention, their language abilities and visual-spatial abilities. The overall neuropsychological index of these trained individuals in this population is about two standard deviations. That means that if you sit at the left side of the distribution, and I'm looking at your neuropyschological abilities, the average person has moved to the middle or the right side of the distribution. It means that most people who are at risk for senility, more or less immediately, are now in a protected position. My issues are to try to get to rescuing older citizens more completely and in larger numbers, because I think this can be done in this arena on a vast scale — and the same for kids. My main interest is how to elaborate this science to address other maladies. I'm specifically interested in things like autism, and cerebral palsy, these great childhood catastrophes. And in older age conditions like Parkinsonism, and in other acquired impairments like schizophrenia. Your issues as it relates to this science, is how to maintain your own high-functioning learning machine. And of course, a well-ordered life in which learning is a continuous part of it, is key. But also in your future is brain aerobics. Get ready for it. It's going to be a part of every life not too far in the future, just like physical exercise is a part of every well organized life in the contemporary period. The other way that we will ultimately come to consider this literature and the science that is important to you is in a consideration of how to nurture yourself. Now that you know, now that science is telling us that you are in charge, that it's under your control, that your happiness, your well-being, your abilities, your capacities, are capable of continuous modification, continuous improvement, and you're the responsible agent and party. Of course a lot of people will ignore this advice. It will be a long time before they really understand it. (Laughter) Now that's another issue and not my fault. Okay. Thank you. (Applause)

A one-woman global village

Sarah Jones

{0: 'Sarah Jones'}

{0: ['polymorphic playwright']}

{0: 'Tony Award-winning monologist, UNICEF ambassador, firebrand and FCC-fighting poet -- Sarah Jones assumes as many roles offstage as on.'}

2009-02-05

2009-04-29

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'humanity', 'humor', 'identity', 'performance', 'storytelling', 'theater']

{60: 'Four American characters', 347: 'Once upon a time, my mother ...', 26: 'If I controlled the Internet', 1989: 'What does the future hold? 11 characters offer quirky answers', 708: 'The art of the interview', 363: 'Lessons from past presidents'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jones_a_one_woman_global_village/

In this hilariously lively performance, actress Sarah Jones channels an opinionated elderly Jewish woman, a fast-talking Dominican college student and more, giving TED2009 just a sample of her spectacular character range.

I should tell you that when I was asked to be here, I thought to myself that well, it's TED. And these TEDsters are — you know, as innocent as that name sounds — these are the philanthropists and artists and scientists who sort of shape our world. And what could I possibly have to say that would be distinguished enough to justify my participation in something like that? And so I thought perhaps a really civilized-sounding British accent might help things a bit. And then I thought no, no. I should just get up there and be myself and just talk the way I really talk because, after all, this is the great unveiling. And so I thought I'd come up here and unveil my real voice to you. Although many of you already know that I do speak the Queen's English because I am from Queens, New York. (Laughter) But the theme of this session, of course, is invention. And while I don't have any patents that I'm aware of, you will be meeting a few of my inventions today. I suppose it's fair to say that I am interested in the invention of self or selves. We're all born into certain circumstances with particular physical traits, unique developmental experiences, geographical and historical contexts. But then what? To what extent do we self-construct, do we self-invent? How do we self-identify and how mutable is that identity? Like, what if one could be anyone at any time? Well my characters, like the ones in my shows, allow me to play with the spaces between those questions. And so I've brought a couple of them with me. And well, they're very excited. What I should tell you — what I should tell you is that they've each prepared their own little TED talks. So feel free to think of this as Sarah University. (Laughter) Okay. Okay. Oh, well. Oh, wonderful. Good evening everybody. Thank you so very much for having me here today. Ah, thank you very much. My name is Lorraine Levine. Oh my! There's so many of you. Hi sweetheart. Okay. (Laughter) Anyway, I am here because of a young girl, Sarah Jones. She's a very nice, young black girl. Well you know, she calls herself black — she's really more like a caramel color if you look at her. But anyway. (Laughter) She has me here because she puts me in her show, what she calls her one-woman show. And you know what that means, of course. That means she takes the credit and then makes us come out here and do all the work. But I don't mind. Frankly, I'm kvelling just to be here with all the luminaries you have attending something like this, you know. Really, it's amazing. Not only, of course, the scientists and all the wonderful giants of the industries but the celebrities. There are so many celebrities running around here. I saw — Glenn Close I saw earlier. I love her. And she was getting a yogurt in the Google cafe. Isn't that adorable? (Laughter) So many others you see, they're just wonderful. It's lovely to know they're concerned, you know. And — oh, I saw Goldie Hawn. Oh, Goldie Hawn. I love her, too; she's wonderful. Yeah. You know, she's only half Jewish. Did you know that about her? Yeah. But even so, a wonderful talent. (Laughter) And I — you know, when I saw her, such a wonderful feeling. Yeah, she's lovely. But anyway, I should have started by saying just how lucky I feel. It's such an eye-opening experience to be here. You're all so responsible for this world that we live in today. You know, I couldn't have dreamed of such a thing as a young girl. And you've all made these advancements happen in such a short time — you're all so young. You know, your parents must be very proud. But I — I also appreciate the diversity that you have here. I noticed it's very multicultural. You know, when you're standing up here, you can see all the different people. It's like a rainbow. It's okay to say rainbow. Yeah. I just — I can't keep up with whether you can say, you know, the different things. What are you allowed to say or not say? I just — I don't want to offend anybody. You know. But anyway, you know, I just think that to be here with all of you accomplished young people — literally, some of you, the architects building our brighter future. You know, it's heartening to me. Even though, quite frankly, some of your presentations are horrifying, absolutely horrifying. It's true. It's true. You know, between the environmental degradation and the crashing of the world markets you're talking about. And of course, we know it's all because of the — all the ... Well, I don't know how else to say it to you, so I'll just say it my way: the ganeyvish schticklich coming from the governments and the, you know, the bankers and the Wall Street. You know it. Anyway. (Laughter) The point is, I'm happy somebody has practical ideas to get us out of this mess. So I salute each of you and your stellar achievements. Thank you for all that you do. And congratulations on being such big makhers that you've become TED meisters. So, happy continued success. Congratulations. Mazel tov. (Applause) Hi. Hi. Thank you everybody. Sorry, this is such a wonderful opportunity and everything, to be here right now. My name is Noraida. And I'm just — I'm so thrilled to be part of like your TED conference that you're doing and everything like that. I am Dominican-American. Actually, you could say I grew up in the capital of Dominican Republic, otherwise known as Washington Heights in New York City. But I don't know if there's any other Dominican people here, but I know that Juan Enriquez, he was here yesterday. And I think he's Mexican, so that's — honestly, that's close enough for me right now. So — (Laughter) I just — I'm sorry. I'm just trying not to be nervous because this is a very wonderful experience for me and everything. And I just — you know I'm not used to doing the public speaking. And whenever I get nervous I start to talk really fast. Nobody can understand nothing I'm saying, which is very frustrating for me, as you can imagine. I usually have to just like try to calm down and take a deep breath. But then on top of that, you know, Sarah Jones told me we only have 18 minutes. So then I'm like, should I be nervous, you know, because maybe it's better. And I'm just trying not to panic and freak out. So I like, take a deep breath. Okay. Sorry. So anyway, what I was trying to say is that I really love TED. Like, I love everything about this. It's amazing. Like, it's — I can't get over this right now. And, like, people would not believe, seriously, where I'm from, that this even exists. You know, like even, I mean I love like the name, the — TED. I mean I know it's a real person and everything, but I'm just saying that like, you know, I think it's very cool how it's also an acronym, you know, which is like, you know, is like very high concept and everything like that. I like that. And actually, I can relate to the whole like acronym thing and everything. Because, actually, I'm a sophomore at college right now. At my school — actually I was part of co-founding an organization, which is like a leadership thing, you know, like you guys, you would really like it and everything. And the organization is called DA BOMB, A\and DA BOMB — not like what you guys can build and everything — it's like, DA BOMB, it means like Dominican — it's an acronym — Dominican-American Benevolent Organization for Mothers and Babies. So, I know, see, like the name is like a little bit long, but with the war on terror and everything, the Dean of Student Activities has asked us to stop saying DA BOMB and use the whole thing so nobody would get the wrong idea, whatever. So, basically like DA BOMB — what Dominican-American Benevolent Organization for Mothers and Babies does is, basically, we try to advocate for students who show a lot of academic promise and who also happen to be mothers like me. I am a working mother, and I also go to school full-time. And, you know, it's like — it's so important to have like role models out there. I mean, I know sometimes our lifestyles are very different, whatever. But like even at my job — like, I just got promoted. Right now it's very exciting actually for me because I'm the Junior Assistant to the Associate Director under the Senior Vice President for Business Development — that's my new title. So, but I think whether you own your own company or you're just starting out like me, like something like this is so vital for people to just continue expanding their minds and learning. And if everybody, like all people really had access to that, it would be a very different world out there, as I know you know. So, I think all people, we need that, but especially, I look at people like me, you know like, I mean, Latinos — we're about to be the majority, in like two weeks. So, we deserve just as much to be part of the exchange of ideas as everybody else. So, I'm very happy that you're, you know, doing this kind of thing, making the talks available online. That's very good. I love that. And I just — I love you guys. I love TED. And if you don't mind, privately now, in the future, I'm going to think of TED as an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Dominicans. Thank you very much. (Laughter) (Applause) So, that was Noraida, and just like Lorraine and everybody else you're meeting today, these are folks who are based on real people from my real life: friends, neighbors, family members. I come from a multicultural family. In fact, the older lady you just met: very, very loosely based on a great aunt on my mother's side. It's a long story, believe me. But on top of my family background, my parents also sent me to the United Nations school, where I encountered a plethora of new characters, including Alexandre, my French teacher, okay. Well, you know, it was beginner French, that I am taking with her, you know. And it was Madame Bousson, you know, she was very [French]. It was like, you know, she was there in the class, you know, she was kind of typically French. You know, she was very chic, but she was very filled with ennui, you know. And she would be there, you know, kind of talking with the class, you know, talking about the, you know, the existential futility of life, you know. And we were only 11 years old, so it was not appropriate. (Laughter) But [German]. Yes, I took German for three years, [German], and it was quite the experience because I was the only black girl in the class, even in the UN school. Although, you know, it was wonderful. The teacher, Herr Schtopf, he never discriminated. Never. He always, always treated each of us, you know, equally unbearably during the class. So, there were the teachers and then there were my friends, classmates from everywhere, many of whom are still dear friends to this day. And they've inspired many characters as well. For example, a friend of mine. Well, I just wanted to quickly say good evening. My name is Praveen Manvi and thank you very much for this opportunity. Of course, TED, the reputation precedes itself all over the world. But, you know, I am originally from India, and I wanted to start by telling you that once Sarah Jones told me that we will be having the opportunity to come here to TED in California, originally, I was very pleased and, frankly, relieved because, you know, I am a human rights advocate. And usually my work, it takes me to Washington D.C. And there, I must attend these meetings, mingling with some tiresome politicians, trying to make me feel comfortable by telling how often they are eating the curry in Georgetown. (Laughter) So, you can just imagine — right. So, but I'm thrilled to be joining all of you here. I wish we had more time together, but that's for another time. Okay? Great. (Applause) And, sadly, I don't think we'll have time for you to meet everybody I brought, but — I'm trying to behave myself, it's my first time here. But I do want to introduce you to a couple of folks you may recognize, if you saw "Bridge and Tunnel." Uh, well, thank you. Good evening. My name is Pauline Ning, and first I want to tell you that I'm — of course I am a member of the Chinese community in New York. But when Sarah Jones asked me to please come to TED, I said, well, you know, first, I don't know that, you know — before two years ago, you would not find me in front of an audience of people, much less like this because I did not like to give speeches because I feel that, as an immigrant, I do not have good English skills for speaking. But then, I decided, just like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, I try anyway. (Laughter) My daughter — my daughter wrote that, she told me, "Always start your speech with humor." But my background — I want to tell you story only briefly. My husband and I, we brought our son and daughter here in 1980s to have the freedom we cannot have in China at that time. And we tried to teach our kids to be proud of their tradition, but it's very hard. You know, as immigrant, I would speak Chinese to them, and they would always answer me back in English. They love rock music, pop culture, American culture. But when they got older, when the time comes for them to start think about getting married, that's when we expect them to realize, a little bit more, their own culture. But that's where we had some problems. My son, he says he is not ready to get married. And he has a sweetheart, but she is American woman, not Chinese. It's not that it's bad, but I told him, "What's wrong with a Chinese woman?" But I think he will change his mind soon. So, then I decide instead, I will concentrate on my daughter. The daughter's marriage is very special to the mom. But first, she said she's not interested. She only wants to spend time with her friends. And then at college, it's like she never came home. And she doesn't want me to come and visit. So I said, "What's wrong in this picture?" So, I accused my daughter to have like a secret boyfriend. But she told me, "Mom, you don't have to worry about boys because I don't like them." (Laughter) And I said, "Yes, men can be difficult, but all women have to get used to that." She said, "No Mom. I mean, I don't like boys. I like girls. I am lesbian." So, I always teach my kids to respect American ideas, but I told my daughter that this is one exception — (Laughter) — that she is not gay, she is just confused by this American problem. But she told me, "Mom, it's not American." She said she is in love — in love with a nice Chinese girl. (Laughter) So, these are the words I am waiting to hear, but from my son, not my daughter. (Laughter) But at first I did not know what to do. But then, over time, I have come to understand that this is who she is. So, even though sometimes it's still hard, I will share with you that it helps me to realize society is more tolerant, usually because of places like this, because of ideas like this, and people like you, with an open mind. So I think maybe TED, you impact people's lives in the ways maybe even you don't realize. So, for my daughter's sake, I thank you for your ideas worth spreading. Thank you. Xie xie. (Applause) Good evening. My name is Habbi Belahal. And I would like to first of all thank Sarah Jones for putting all of the pressure on the only Arab who she brought with her to be last today. I am originally from Jordan. And I teach comparative literature at Queens College. It is not Harvard. But I feel a bit like a fish out of water. But I am very proud of my students. And I see that a few of them did make it here to the conference. So you will get the extra credit I promised you. But, while I know that I may not look like the typical TED-izen, as you would say, I do like to make the point that we in global society, we are never as different as the appearances may suggest. So, if you will indulge me, I will share quickly with you a bit of verse, which I memorized as a young girl at 16 years of age. So, back in the ancient times. [Arabic] And this roughly translates: "Please, let me hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. And when I touch you, I feel happy inside. It's such a feeling that my love, I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide." Well, so okay, but please, please, but please. If it is sounding familiar, it is because I was at the same time in my life listening to the Beatles. On the radio [unclear], they were very popular. So, all of that is to say that I like to believe that for every word intended as to render us deaf to one another, there is always a lyric connecting ears and hearts across the continents in rhyme. And I pray that this is the way that we will self-invent, in time. That's all, shukran. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Okay? Great. (Applause) Thank you all very much. It was lovely. Thank you for having me. (Applause) Thank you very, very much. I love you. (Applause) Well, you have to let me say this. I just — thank you. I want to thank Chris and Jacqueline, and just everyone for having me here. It's been a long time coming, and I feel like I'm home. And I know I've performed for some of your companies or some of you have seen me elsewhere, but this is honestly one of the best audiences I've ever experienced. The whole thing is amazing, and so don't you all go reinventing yourselves any time soon. (Applause)

Lessons from the 1918 flu

Laurie Garrett

{0: 'Laurie Garrett'}

{0: ['science journalist']}

{0: 'Pulitzer winner Laurie Garrett studies global health and disease prevention. Her books include "The Coming Plague" and "Betrayal of Trust," about the crisis in global public health.'}

2007-02-02

2009-04-30

TED2007

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['Vaccines', 'business', 'ebola', 'health', 'health care', 'history', 'technology']

{58: 'My wish: Help me stop pandemics', 499: 'The jungle search for viruses', 2177: 'Humanity vs. Ebola. How we could win a terrifying war', 62748: 'A global pandemic calls for global solutions', 869: 'HIV and flu -- the vaccine strategy', 60084: "What we do (and don't) know about the coronavirus"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_garrett_lessons_from_the_1918_flu/

In 2007, as the world worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague," gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant than ever.

So the first question is, why do we need to even worry about a pandemic threat? What is it that we're concerned about? When I say "we," I'm at the Council on Foreign Relations. We're concerned in the national security community, and of course in the biology community and the public health community. While globalization has increased travel, it's made it necessary that everybody be everywhere, all the time, all over the world. And that means that your microbial hitchhikers are moving with you. So a plague outbreak in Surat, India becomes not an obscure event, but a globalized event — a globalized concern that has changed the risk equation. Katrina showed us that we cannot completely depend on government to have readiness in hand, to be capable of handling things. Indeed, an outbreak would be multiple Katrinas at once. Our big concern at the moment is a virus called H5N1 flu — some of you call it bird flu — which first emerged in southern China, in the mid-1990s, but we didn't know about it until 1997. At the end of last Christmas only 13 countries had seen H5N1. But we're now up to 55 countries in the world, have had this virus emerge, in either birds, or people or both. In the bird outbreaks we now can see that pretty much the whole world has seen this virus except the Americas. And I'll get into why we've so far been spared in a moment. In domestic birds, especially chickens, it's 100 percent lethal. It's one of the most lethal things we've seen in circulation in the world in any recent centuries. And we've dealt with it by killing off lots and lots and lots of chickens, and unfortunately often not reimbursing the peasant farmers with the result that there's cover-up. It's also carried on migration patterns of wild migratory aquatic birds. There has been this centralized event in a place called Lake Chenghai, China. Two years ago the migrating birds had a multiple event where thousands died because of a mutation occurring in the virus, which made the species range broaden dramatically. So that birds going to Siberia, to Europe, and to Africa carried the virus, which had not previously been possible. We're now seeing outbreaks in human populations — so far, fortunately, small events, tiny outbreaks, occasional clusters. The virus has mutated dramatically in the last two years to form two distinct families, if you will, of the H5N1 viral tree with branches in them, and with different attributes that are worrying. So what's concerning us? Well, first of all, at no time in history have we succeeded in making in a timely fashion, a specific vaccine for more than 260 million people. It's not going to do us very much good in a global pandemic. You've heard about the vaccine we're stockpiling. But nobody believes it will actually be particularly effective if we have a real outbreak. So one thought is: after 9/11, when the airports closed, our flu season was delayed by two weeks. So the thought is, hey, maybe what we should do is just immediately — we hear there is H5N1 spreading from human to human, the virus has mutated to be a human-to-human transmitter — let's shut down the airports. However, huge supercomputer analyses, done of the likely effectiveness of this, show that it won't buy us much time at all. And of course it will be hugely disruptive in preparation plans. For example, all masks are made in China. How do you get them mobilized around the world if you've shut all the airports down? How do you get the vaccines moved around the world and the drugs moved, and whatever may or not be available that would work. So it turns out that shutting down the airports is counterproductive. We're worried because this virus, unlike any other flu we've ever studied, can be transmitted by eating raw meat of the infected animals. We've seen transmission to wild cats and domestic cats, and now also domestic pet dogs. And in experimental feedings to rodents and ferrets, we found that the animals exhibit symptoms never seen with flu: seizures, central nervous system disorders, partial paralysis. This is not your normal garden-variety flu. It mimics what we now understand about reconstructing the 1918 flu virus, the last great pandemic, in that it also jumped directly from birds to people. We had evolution over time, and this unbelievable mortality rate in human beings: 55 percent of people who have become infected with H5N1 have, in fact, succumbed. And we don't have a huge number of people who got infected and never developed disease. In experimental feeding in monkeys you can see that it actually downregulates a specific immune system modulator. The result is that what kills you is not the virus directly, but your own immune system overreacting, saying, "Whatever this is so foreign I'm going berserk." The result: most of the deaths have been in people under 30 years of age, robustly healthy young adults. We have seen human-to-human transmission in at least three clusters — fortunately involving very intimate contact, still not putting the world at large at any kind of risk. Alright, so I've got you nervous. Now you probably assume, well the governments are going to do something. And we have spent a lot of money. Most of the spending in the Bush administration has actually been more related to the anthrax results and bio-terrorism threat. But a lot of money has been thrown out at the local level and at the federal level to look at infectious diseases. End result: only 15 states have been certified to be able to do mass distribution of vaccine and drugs in a pandemic. Half the states would run out of hospital beds in the first week, maybe two weeks. And 40 states already have an acute nursing shortage. Add on pandemic threat, you're in big trouble. So what have people been doing with this money? Exercises, drills, all over the world. Let's pretend there's a pandemic. Let's everybody run around and play your role. Main result is that there is tremendous confusion. Most of these people don't actually know what their job will be. And the bottom line, major thing that has come through in every single drill: nobody knows who's in charge. Nobody knows the chain of command. If it were Los Angeles, is it the mayor, the governor, the President of the United States, the head of Homeland Security? In fact, the federal government says it's a guy called the Principle Federal Officer, who happens to be with TSA. The government says the federal responsibility will basically be about trying to keep the virus out, which we all know is impossible, and then to mitigate the impact primarily on our economy. The rest is up to your local community. Everything is about your town, where you live. Well how good a city council you have, how good a mayor you have — that's who's going to be in charge. Most local facilities would all be competing to try and get their hands on their piece of the federal stockpile of a drug called Tamiflu, which may or may not be helpful — I'll get into that — of available vaccines, and any other treatments, and masks, and anything that's been stockpiled. And you'll have massive competition. Now we did purchase a vaccine, you've probably all heard about it, made by Sanofi-Aventis. Unfortunately it's made against the current form of H5N1. We know the virus will mutate. It will be a different virus. The vaccine will probably be useless. So here's where the decisions come in. You're the mayor of your local town. Let's see, should we order that all pets be kept indoors? Germany did that when H5N1 appeared in Germany last year, in order to minimize the spread between households by household cats, dogs and so on. What do we do when we don't have any containment rooms with reverse air that will allow the healthcare workers to take care of patients? These are in Hong Kong; we have nothing like that here. What about quarantine? During the SARS epidemic in Beijing quarantine did seem to help. We have no uniform policies regarding quarantine across the United States. And some states have differential policies, county by county. But what about the no-brainer things? Should we close all the schools? Well then what about all the workers? They won't go to work if their kids aren't in school. Encouraging telecommuting? What works? Well the British government did a model of telecommuting. Six weeks they had all people in the banking industry pretend a pandemic was underway. What they found was, the core functions — you know you still sort of had banks, but you couldn't get people to put money in the ATM machines. Nobody was processing the credit cards. Your insurance payments didn't go through. And basically the economy would be in a disaster state of affairs. And that's just office workers, bankers. We don't know how important hand washing is for flu — shocking. One assumes it's a good idea to wash your hands a lot. But actually in scientific community there is great debate about what percentage of flu transmission between people is from sneezing and coughing and what percentage is on your hands. The Institute of Medicine tried to look at the masking question. Can we figure out a way, since we know we won't have enough masks because we don't make them in America anymore, they're all made in China — do we need N95? A state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, must-be-fitted-to-your-face mask? Or can we get away with some different kinds of masks? In the SARS epidemic, we learned in Hong Kong that most of transmission was because people were removing their masks improperly. And their hand got contaminated with the outside of the mask, and then they rubbed their nose. Bingo! They got SARS. It wasn't flying microbes. If you go online right now, you'll get so much phony-baloney information. You'll end up buying — this is called an N95 mask. Ridiculous. We don't actually have a standard for what should be the protective gear for the first responders, the people who will actually be there on the front lines. And Tamiflu. You've probably heard of this drug, made by Hoffmann-La Roche, patented drug. There is some indication that it may buy you some time in the midst of an outbreak. Should you take Tamiflu for a long period of time, well, one of the side effects is suicidal ideations. A public health survey analyzed the effect that large-scale Tamiflu use would have, actually shows it counteractive to public health measures, making matters worse. And here is the other interesting thing: when a human being ingests Tamiflu, only 20 percent is metabolized appropriately to be an active compound in the human being. The rest turns into a stable compound, which survives filtration into the water systems, thereby exposing the very aquatic birds that would carry flu and providing them a chance to breed resistant strains. And we now have seen Tamiflu-resistant strains in both Vietnam in person-to-person transmission, and in Egypt in person-to-person transmission. So I personally think that our life expectancy for Tamiflu as an effective drug is very limited — very limited indeed. Nevertheless most of the governments have based their whole flu policies on building stockpiles of Tamiflu. Russia has actually stockpiled enough for 95 percent of all Russians. We've stockpiled enough for 30 percent. When I say enough, that's two weeks worth. And then you're on your own because the pandemic is going to last for 18 to 24 months. Some of the poorer countries that have had the most experience with H5N1 have built up stockpiles; they're already expired. They are already out of date. What do we know from 1918, the last great pandemic? The federal government abdicated most responsibility. And so we ended up with this wild patchwork of regulations all over America. Every city, county, state did their own thing. And the rules and the belief systems were wildly disparate. In some cases all schools, all churches, all public venues were closed. The pandemic circulated three times in 18 months in the absence of commercial air travel. The second wave was the mutated, super-killer wave. And in the first wave we had enough healthcare workers. But by the time the second wave hit it took such a toll among the healthcare workers that we lost most of our doctors and nurses that were on the front lines. Overall we lost 700,000 people. The virus was 100 percent lethal to pregnant women and we don't actually know why. Most of the death toll was 15 to 40 year-olds — robustly healthy young adults. It was likened to the plague. We don't actually know how many people died. The low-ball estimate is 35 million. This was based on European and North American data. A new study by Chris Murray at Harvard shows that if you look at the databases that were kept by the Brits in India, there was a 31-fold greater death rate among the Indians. So there is a strong belief that in places of poverty the death toll was far higher. And that a more likely toll is somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 100 million people before we had commercial air travel. So are we ready? As a nation, no we're not. And I think even those in the leadership would say that is the case, that we still have a long ways to go. So what does that mean for you? Well the first thing is, I wouldn't start building up personal stockpiles of anything — for yourself, your family, or your employees — unless you've really done your homework. What mask works, what mask doesn't work. How many masks do you need? The Institute of Medicine study felt that you could not recycle masks. Well if you think it's going to last 18 months, are you going to buy 18 months worth of masks for every single person in your family? We don't know — again with Tamiflu, the number one side effect of Tamiflu is flu-like symptoms. So then how can you tell who in your family has the flu if everybody is taking Tamiflu? If you expand that out to think of a whole community, or all your employees in your company, you begin to realize how limited the Tamiflu option might be. Everybody has come up to me and said, well I'll stockpile water or, I'll stockpile food, or what have you. But really? Do you really have a place to stockpile 18 months worth of food? Twenty-four months worth of food? Do you want to view the pandemic threat the way back in the 1950s people viewed the civil defense issue, and build your own little bomb shelter for pandemic flu? I don't think that's rational. I think it's about having to be prepared as communities, not as individuals — being prepared as nation, being prepared as state, being prepared as town. And right now most of the preparedness is deeply flawed. And I hope I've convinced you of that, which means that the real job is go out and say to your local leaders, and your national leaders, "Why haven't you solved these problems? Why are you still thinking that the lessons of Katrina do not apply to flu?" And put the pressure where the pressure needs to be put. But I guess the other thing to add is, if you do have employees, and you do have a company, I think you have certain responsibilities to demonstrate that you are thinking ahead for them, and you are trying to plan. At a minimum the British banking plan showed that telecommuting can be helpful. It probably does reduce exposure because people are not coming into the office and coughing on each other, or touching common objects and sharing things via their hands. But can you sustain your company that way? Well if you have a dot-com, maybe you can. Otherwise you're in trouble. Happy to take your questions. (Applause) Audience member: What factors determine the duration of a pandemic? Laurie Garret: What factors determine the duration of a pandemic, we don't really know. I could give you a bunch of flip, this, that, and the other. But I would say that honestly we don't know. Clearly the bottom line is the virus eventually attenuates, and ceases to be a lethal virus to humanity, and finds other hosts. But we don't really know how and why that happens. It's a very complicated ecology. Audience member: What kind of triggers are you looking for? You know way more than any of us. To say ahh, if this happens then we are going to have a pandemic? LG: The moment that you see any evidence of serious human-to-human to transmission. Not just intimately between family members who took care of an ailing sister or brother, but a community infected — spread within a school, spread within a dormitory, something of that nature. Then I think that there is universal agreement now, at WHO all the way down: Send out the alert. Audience member: Some research has indicated that statins can be helpful. Can you talk about that? LG: Yeah. There is some evidence that taking Lipitor and other common statins for cholesterol control may decrease your vulnerability to influenza. But we do not completely understand why. The mechanism isn't clear. And I don't know that there is any way responsibly for someone to start medicating their children with their personal supply of Lipitor or something of that nature. We have absolutely no idea what that would do. You might be causing some very dangerous outcomes in your children, doing such a thing. Audience member: How far along are we in being able to determine whether someone is actually carrying, whether somebody has this before the symptoms are full-blown? LG: Right. So I have for a long time said that what we really needed was a rapid diagnostic. And our Centers for Disease Control has labeled a test they developed a rapid diagnostic. It takes 24 hours in a very highly developed laboratory, in highly skilled hands. I'm thinking dipstick. You could do it to your own kid. It changes color. It tells you if you have H5N1. In terms of where we are in science with DNA identification capacities and so on, it's not that far off. But we're not there. And there hasn't been the kind of investment to get us there. Audience member: In the 1918 flu I understand that they theorized that there was some attenuation of the virus when it made the leap into humans. Is that likely, do you think, here? I mean 100 percent death rate is pretty severe. LG: Um yeah. So we don't actually know what the lethality was of the 1918 strain to wild birds before it jumped from birds to humans. It's curious that there is no evidence of mass die-offs of chickens or household birds across America before the human pandemic happened. That may be because those events were occurring on the other side of the world where nobody was paying attention. But the virus clearly went through one round around the world in a mild enough form that the British army in World War I actually certified that it was not a threat and would not affect the outcome of the war. And after circulating around the world came back in a form that was tremendously lethal. What percentage of infected people were killed by it? Again we don't really know for sure. It's clear that if you were malnourished to begin with, you had a weakened immune system, you lived in poverty in India or Africa, your likelihood of dying was far greater. But we don't really know. Audience member: One of the things I've heard is that the real death cause when you get a flu is the associated pneumonia, and that a pneumonia vaccine may offer you 50 percent better chance of survival. LG: For a long time, researchers in emerging diseases were kind of dismissive of the pandemic flu threat on the grounds that back in 1918 they didn't have antibiotics. And that most people who die of regular flu — which in regular flu years is about 360,000 people worldwide, most of them senior citizens — and they die not of the flu but because the flu gives an assault to their immune system. And along comes pneumococcus or another bacteria, streptococcus and boom, they get a bacterial pneumonia. But it turns out that in 1918 that was not the case at all. And so far in the H5N1 cases in people, similarly bacterial infection has not been an issue at all. It's this absolutely phenomenal disruption of the immune system that is the key to why people die of this virus. And I would just add we saw the same thing with SARS. So what's going on here is your body says, your immune system sends out all its sentinels and says, "I don't know what the heck this is. We've never seen anything even remotely like this before." It won't do any good to bring in the sharpshooters because those antibodies aren't here. And it won't do any good to bring in the tanks and the artillery because those T-cells don't recognize it either. So we're going to have to go all-out thermonuclear response, stimulate the total cytokine cascade. The whole immune system swarms into the lungs. And yes they die, drowning in their own fluids, of pneumonia. But it's not bacterial pneumonia. And it's not a pneumonia that would respond to a vaccine. And I think my time is up. I thank you all for your attention. (Applause)

What went wrong at the LHC

Brian Cox

{0: 'Brian Cox'}

{0: ['physicist']}

{0: "Physicist Brian Cox has two jobs: working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and explaining big science to the general public. He's a professor at the University of Manchester."}

2009-02-05

2009-05-01

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['astronomy', 'energy', 'exploration', 'physics', 'science', 'technology', 'quantum physics']

{253: "CERN's supercollider", 251: 'Making sense of string theory', 194: 'Beauty, truth and ... physics?', 1853: 'Why our universe might exist on a knife-edge', 2654: 'How we explore unanswered questions in physics', 2396: 'Have we reached the end of physics?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_cox_what_went_wrong_at_the_lhc/

In this short talk from TED U 2009, Brian Cox shares what's new with the CERN supercollider. He covers the repairs now underway and what the future holds for the largest science experiment ever attempted.

Last year at TED I gave an introduction to the LHC. And I promised to come back and give you an update on how that machine worked. So this is it. And for those of you that weren't there, the LHC is the largest scientific experiment ever attempted — 27 kilometers in circumference. Its job is to recreate the conditions that were present less than a billionth of a second after the universe began, up to 600 million times a second. It's nothing if not ambitious. This is the machine below Geneva. We take the pictures of those mini-Big Bangs inside detectors. This is the one I work on. It's called the ATLAS detector — 44 meters wide, 22 meters in diameter. Spectacular picture here of ATLAS under construction so you can see the scale. On the 10th of September last year we turned the machine on for the first time. And this picture was taken by ATLAS. It caused immense celebration in the control room. It's a picture of the first beam particle going all the way around the LHC, colliding with a piece of the LHC deliberately, and showering particles into the detector. In other words, when we saw that picture on September 10th we knew the machine worked, which is a great triumph. I don't know whether this got the biggest cheer, or this, when someone went onto Google and saw the front page was like that. It means we made cultural impact as well as scientific impact. About a week later we had a problem with the machine, related actually to these bits of wire here — these gold wires. Those wires carry 13 thousand amps when the machine is working in full power. Now the engineers amongst you will look at them and say, "No they don't. They're small wires." They can do that because when they are very cold they are what's called superconducting wire. So at minus 271 degrees, colder than the space between the stars, those wires can take that current. In one of the joints between over 9,000 magnets in LHC, there was a manufacturing defect. So the wire heated up slightly, and its 13,000 amps suddenly encountered electrical resistance. This was the result. Now that's more impressive when you consider those magnets weigh over 20 tons, and they moved about a foot. So we damaged about 50 of the magnets. We had to take them out, which we did. We reconditioned them all, fixed them. They're all on their way back underground now. By the end of March the LHC will be intact again. We will switch it on, and we expect to take data in June or July, and continue with our quest to find out what the building blocks of the universe are. Now of course, in a way those accidents reignite the debate about the value of science and engineering at the edge. It's easy to refute. I think that the fact that it's so difficult, the fact that we're overreaching, is the value of things like the LHC. I will leave the final word to an English scientist, Humphrey Davy, who, I suspect, when defending his protege's useless experiments — his protege was Michael Faraday — said this, "Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer." Thank you. (Applause)

The mathematics of war

Sean Gourley

{0: 'Sean Gourley'}

{0: ['physicist and military theorist']}

{0: 'Sean Gourley, trained as a physicist, has turned his scientific mind to analyzing data about a messier topic: modern war and conflict. He is a TED Fellow.'}

2009-02-05

2009-05-04

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['TED Fellows', 'math', 'physics', 'war']

{507: 'A prediction for the future of Iran', 92: "The best stats you've ever seen", 1003: 'The path to ending ethnic conflicts', 1513: "A Navy Admiral's thoughts on global security", 1250: 'How cyberattacks threaten real-world peace', 1321: 'In defense of dialogue'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_the_mathematics_of_war/

By analyzing raw data on violent incidents in the Iraq war and others, Sean Gourley and his team claim to have found a surprisingly strong mathematical relationship linking the fatality and frequency of attacks.

We look around the media, as we see on the news from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and the conflict seems incomprehensible to us. And that's certainly how it seemed to me when I started this project. But as a physicist, I thought, well if you give me some data, I could maybe understand this. You know, give us a go. So as a naive New Zealander I thought, well I'll go to the Pentagon. Can you get me some information? (Laughter) No. So I had to think a little harder. And I was watching the news one night in Oxford. And I looked down at the chattering heads on my channel of choice. And I saw that there was information there. There was data within the streams of news that we consume. All this noise around us actually has information. So what I started thinking was, perhaps there is something like open source intelligence here. If we can get enough of these streams of information together, we can perhaps start to understand the war. So this is exactly what I did. We started bringing a team together, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, of economists, mathematicians. We brought these guys together and we started to try and solve this. We did it in three steps. The first step we did was to collect. We did 130 different sources of information — from NGO reports to newspapers and cable news. We brought this raw data in and we filtered it. We extracted the key bits on information to build the database. That database contained the timing of attacks, the location, the size and the weapons used. It's all in the streams of information we consume daily, we just have to know how to pull it out. And once we had this we could start doing some cool stuff. What if we were to look at the distribution of the sizes of attacks? What would that tell us? So we started doing this. And you can see here on the horizontal axis you've got the number of people killed in an attack or the size of the attack. And on the vertical axis you've got the number of attacks. So we plot data for sample on this. You see some sort of random distribution — perhaps 67 attacks, one person was killed, or 47 attacks where seven people were killed. We did this exact same thing for Iraq. And we didn't know, for Iraq what we were going to find. It turns out what we found was pretty surprising. You take all of the conflict, all of the chaos, all of the noise, and out of that comes this precise mathematical distribution of the way attacks are ordered in this conflict. This blew our mind. Why should a conflict like Iraq have this as its fundamental signature? Why should there be order in war? We didn't really understand that. We thought maybe there is something special about Iraq. So we looked at a few more conflicts. We looked at Colombia, we looked at Afghanistan, and we looked at Senegal. And the same pattern emerged in each conflict. This wasn't supposed to happen. These are different wars, with different religious factions, different political factions, and different socioeconomic problems. And yet the fundamental patterns underlying them are the same. So we went a little wider. We looked around the world at all the data we could get our hands on. From Peru to Indonesia, we studied this same pattern again. And we found that not only were the distributions these straight lines, but the slope of these lines, they clustered around this value of alpha equals 2.5. And we could generate an equation that could predict the likelihood of an attack. What we're saying here is the probability of an attack killing X number of people in a country like Iraq is equal to a constant, times the size of that attack, raised to the power of negative alpha. And negative alpha is the slope of that line I showed you before. So what? This is data, statistics. What does it tell us about these conflicts? That was a challenge we had to face as physicists. How do we explain this? And what we really found was that alpha, if we think about it, is the organizational structure of the insurgency. Alpha is the distribution of the sizes of attacks, which is really the distribution of the group strength carrying out the attacks. So we look at a process of group dynamics: coalescence and fragmentation, groups coming together, groups breaking apart. And we start running the numbers on this. Can we simulate it? Can we create the kind of patterns that we're seeing in places like Iraq? Turns out we kind of do a reasonable job. We can run these simulations. We can recreate this using a process of group dynamics to explain the patterns that we see all around the conflicts around the world. So what's going on? Why should these different — seemingly different conflicts have the same patterns? Now what I believe is going on is that the insurgent forces, they evolve over time. They adapt. And it turns out there is only one solution to fight a much stronger enemy. And if you don't find that solution as an insurgent force, you don't exist. So every insurgent force that is ongoing, every conflict that is ongoing, it's going to look something like this. And that is what we think is happening. Taking it forward, how do we change it? How do we end a war like Iraq? What does it look like? Alpha is the structure. It's got a stable state at 2.5. This is what wars look like when they continue. We've got to change that. We can push it up: the forces become more fragmented; there is more of them, but they are weaker. Or we push it down: they're more robust; there is less groups; but perhaps you can sit and talk to them. So this graph here, I'm going to show you now. No one has seen this before. This is literally stuff that we've come through last week. And we see the evolution of Alpha through time. We see it start. And we see it grow up to the stable state the wars around the world look like. And it stays there through the invasion of Fallujah until the Samarra bombings in the Iraqi elections of '06. And the system gets perturbed. It moves upwards to a fragmented state. This is when the surge happens. And depending on who you ask, the surge was supposed to push it up even further. The opposite happened. The groups became stronger. They became more robust. And so I'm thinking, right, great, it's going to keep going down. We can talk to them. We can get a solution. The opposite happened. It's moved up again. The groups are more fragmented. And this tells me one of two things. Either we're back where we started and the surge has had no effect; or finally the groups have been fragmented to the extent that we can start to think about maybe moving out. I don't know what the answer is to that. But I know that we should be looking at the structure of the insurgency to answer that question. Thank you. (Applause)

Teach arts and sciences together

Mae Jemison

{0: 'Mae Jemison'}

{0: ['astronaut', 'engineer', 'entrepreneur', 'physician and educator']}

{0: 'Astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison‘s inclusive, audacious journey to improving life here on earth and beyond is paving the way for human interstellar travel.'}

2002-02-02

2009-05-05

TED2002

en

['ar', 'bg', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'dance', 'education', 'future', 'science', 'space', 'technology', 'science and art']

{66: 'Do schools kill creativity?', 1571: 'How art, technology and design inform creative leaders', 1657: "Let's teach kids to code", 2341: "Why some of us don't have one true calling", 31630: 'A powerful way to unleash your natural creativity', 453: 'Your elusive creative genius'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/mae_jemison_teach_arts_and_sciences_together/

Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer ... Telling stories from her own education and from her time in space, she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one -- to create bold thinkers.

What I want to do today is spend some time talking about some stuff that's giving me a little bit of existential angst, for lack of a better word, over the past couple of years. And basically, these three quotes tell what's going on. "When God made the color purple, God was just showing off," Alice Walker wrote in "The Color Purple." And Zora Neale Hurston wrote in "Dust Tracks On A Road," "Research is a formalized curiosity. It's poking and prying with a purpose." And then finally, when I think about the near future, we have this attitude, "Well, whatever happens, happens." Right? So that goes along with the Cheshire Cat saying, "If you don't care much where you want to get to, it doesn't much matter which way you go." But I think it does matter which way we go and what road we take, because when I think about design in the near future, what I think are the most important issues, what's really crucial and vital, is that we need to revitalize the arts and sciences right now, in 2002. (Applause) If we describe the near future as 10, 20, 15 years from now, that means that what we do today is going to be critically important, because in the year 2015, in the year 2020, 2025, the world our society is going to be building on, the basic knowledge and abstract ideas, the discoveries that we came up with today, just as all these wonderful things we're hearing about here at the TED conference that we take for granted in the world right now, were really knowledge and ideas that came up in the 50s, the 60s and the 70s. That's the substrate that we're exploiting today. Whether it's the internet, genetic engineering, laser scanners, guided missiles, fiber optics, high-definition television, remote sensing from space and the wonderful remote-sensing photos that we see in 3D weaving, TV programs like Tracker and Enterprise, CD-rewrite drives, flat-screen, Alvin Ailey's "Suite Otis," or Sarah Jones's "Your Revolution Will Not [Happen] Between These Thighs," which, by the way, was banned by the FCC, or ska — all of these things, without question, almost without exception, are really based on ideas and abstract and creativity from years before. So we have to ask ourselves: What are we contributing to that legacy right now? And when I think about it, I'm really worried. To be quite frank, I'm concerned. I'm skeptical that we're doing very much of anything. We're, in a sense, failing to act in the future. We're purposefully, consciously being laggards. We're lagging behind. Frantz Fanon, who was a psychiatrist from Martinique, said, "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission and fulfill or betray it." What is our mission? What do we have to do? I think our mission is to reconcile, to reintegrate science and the arts, because right now, there's a schism that exists in popular culture. People have this idea that science and the arts are really separate; we think of them as separate and different things. And this idea was probably introduced centuries ago, but it's really becoming critical now, because we're making decisions about our society every day that, if we keep thinking that the arts are separate from the sciences, and we keep thinking it's cute to say, "I don't understand anything about this one, I don't understand anything about the other one," then we're going to have problems. Now, I know no one here at TED thinks this. All of us, we already know that they're very connected. But I'm going to let you know that some folks in the outside world, believe it or not, think it's neat when they say, "Scientists and science is not creative. Maybe scientists are ingenious, but they're not creative." And then we have this tendency, the career counselors and various people say things like, "Artists are not analytical. They're ingenious, perhaps, but not analytical." And when these concepts underlie our teaching and what we think about the world, then we have a problem, because we stymie support for everything. By accepting this dichotomy, whether it's tongue-in-cheek, when we attempt to accommodate it in our world, and we try to build our foundation for the world, we're messing up the future, because: Who wants to be uncreative? Who wants to be illogical? Talent would run from either of these fields if you said you had to choose either. Then they'll go to something where they think, "Well, I can be creative and logical at the same time." Now, I grew up in the '60s and I'll admit it — actually, my childhood spanned the '60s, and I was a wannabe hippie, and I always resented the fact that I wasn't old enough to be a hippie. And I know there are people here, the younger generation, who want to be hippies. People talk about the '60s all the time. And they talk about the anarchy that was there. But when I think about the '60s, what I took away from it was that there was hope for the future. We thought everyone could participate. There were wonderful, incredible ideas that were always percolating, and so much of what's cool or hot today is really based on some of those concepts, whether it's people trying to use the Prime Directive from Star Trek, being involved in things, or, again, that three-dimensional weaving and fax machines that I read about in my weekly readers that the technology and engineering was just getting started. But the '60s left me with a problem. You see, I always assumed I would go into space, because I followed all of this. But I also loved the arts and sciences. You see, when I was growing up as a little girl and as a teenager, I loved designing and making doll clothes and wanting to be a fashion designer. I took art and ceramics. I loved dance: Lola Falana, Alvin Ailey, Jerome Robbins. And I also avidly followed the Gemini and the Apollo programs. I had science projects and tons of astronomy books. I took calculus and philosophy. I wondered about infinity and the Big Bang theory. And when I was at Stanford, I found myself, my senior year, chemical engineering major, half the folks thought I was a political science and performing arts major, which was sort of true, because I was Black Student Union President, and I did major in some other things. And I found myself the last quarter juggling chemical engineering separation processes, logic classes, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and also producing and choreographing a dance production. And I had to do the lighting and the design work, and I was trying to figure out: Do I go to New York City to try to become a professional dancer, or to go to medical school? Now, my mother helped me figure that one out. (Laughter) But when I went into space, I carried a number of things up with me. I carried a poster by Alvin Ailey — you can figure out now, I love the dance company — an Alvin Ailey poster of Judith Jamison performing the dance "Cry," dedicated to all black women everywhere; a Bundu statue, which was from the women's society in Sierra Leone; and a certificate for the Chicago Public School students to work to improve their science and math. And folks asked me, "Why did you take up what you took up?" And I had to say, "Because it represents human creativity; the creativity that allowed us, that we were required to have to conceive and build and launch the space shuttle, which springs from the same source as the imagination and analysis that it took to carve a Bundu statue, or the ingenuity it took to design, choreograph and stage "Cry." Each one of them are different manifestations, incarnations, of creativity — avatars of human creativity. And that's what we have to reconcile in our minds, how these things fit together. The difference between arts and sciences is not analytical versus intuitive. Right? E = mc2 required an intuitive leap, and then you had to do the analysis afterwards. Einstein said, in fact, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Dance requires us to express and want to express the jubilation in life, but then you have to figure out: Exactly what movement do I do to make sure it comes across correctly? The difference between arts and sciences is also not constructive versus deconstructive. A lot of people think of the sciences as deconstructive, you have to pull things apart. And yeah, subatomic physics is deconstructive — you literally try to tear atoms apart to understand what's inside of them. But sculpture, from what I understand from great sculptors, is deconstructive, because you see a piece and you remove what doesn't need to be there. Biotechnology is constructive. Orchestral arranging is constructive. So, in fact, we use constructive and deconstructive techniques in everything. The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin, even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they're manifestations of the same thing. Different quantum states of an atom? Or maybe if I want to be more 21st century, I could say that they're different harmonic resonances of a superstring. But we'll leave that alone. They spring from the same source. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the universe, the world around us. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us. The sciences, to me, are manifestations of our attempt to express or share our understanding, our experience, to influence the universe external to ourselves. It doesn't rely on us as individuals. It's the universe, as experienced by everyone. The arts manifest our desire, our attempt to share or influence others through experiences that are peculiar to us as individuals. Let me say it again another way: science provides an understanding of a universal experience, and arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience. That's what we have to think about, that they're all part of us, they're all part of a continuum. It's not just the tools, it's not just the sciences, the mathematics and the numerical stuff and the statistics, because we heard, very much on this stage, people talked about music being mathematical. Arts don't just use clay, aren't the only ones that use clay, light and sound and movement. They use analysis as well. So people might say, "Well, I still like that intuitive versus analytical thing," because everybody wants to do the right brain, left brain thing. We've all been accused of being right-brained or left-brained at some point in time, depending on who we disagreed with. (Laughter) You know, people say "intuitive" — that's like you're in touch with nature, in touch with yourself and relationships; analytical, you put your mind to work. I'm going to tell you a little secret. You all know this, though. But sometimes people use this analysis idea, that things are outside of ourselves, to say, this is what we're going to elevate as the true, most important sciences, right? Then you have artists — and you all know this is true as well — artists will say things about scientists because they say they're too concrete, they're disconnected from the world. But, we've even had that here on stage, so don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. (Laughter) We had folks talking about the Flat Earth Society and flower arrangers, so there's this whole dichotomy that we continue to carry along, even when we know better. And folks say we need to choose either-or. But it would really be foolish to choose either one, intuitive versus analytical. That's a foolish choice. It's foolish just like trying to choose between being realistic or idealistic. You need both in life. Why do people do this? I'm going to quote a molecular biologist, Sydney Brenner, who's 70 years old, so he can say this. He said, "It's always important to distinguish between chastity and impotence." Now — (Laughter) I want to share with you a little equation, OK? How does understanding science and the arts fit into our lives and what's going on and the things we're talking about here at the design conference? And this is a little thing I came up with: understanding and our resources and our will cause us to have outcomes. Our understanding is our science, our arts, our religion; how we see the universe around us; our resources, our money, our labor, our minerals — those things that are out there in the world we have to work with. But more importantly, there's our will. This is our vision, our aspirations of the future, our hopes, our dreams, our struggles and our fears. Our successes and our failures influence what we do with all of those. And to me, design and engineering, craftsmanship and skilled labor, are all the things that work on this to have our outcome, which is our human quality of life. Where do we want the world to be? And guess what? Regardless of how we look at this, whether we look at arts and sciences as separate or different, they're both being influenced now and they're both having problems. I did a project called S.E.E.ing the Future: Science, Engineering and Education. It was looking at how to shed light on the most effective use of government funding. We got a bunch of scientists in all stages of their careers. They came to Dartmouth College, where I was teaching. And they talked about, with theologians and financiers: What are some of the issues of public funding for science and engineering research? What's most important about it? There are some ideas that emerged that I think have really powerful parallels to the arts. The first thing they said was that the circumstances that we find ourselves in today in the sciences and engineering that made us world leaders are very different than the '40s, the '50s, and the '60s and the '70s, when we emerged as world leaders, because we're no longer in competition with fascism, with Soviet-style communism. And by the way, that competition wasn't just military; it included social competition and political competition as well, that allowed us to look at space as one of those platforms to prove that our social system was better. Another thing they talked about was that the infrastructure that supports the sciences is becoming obsolete. We look at universities and colleges — small, mid-sized community colleges across the country — their laboratories are becoming obsolete. And this is where we train most of our science workers and our researchers — and our teachers, by the way. And there's a media that doesn't support the dissemination of any more than the most mundane and inane of information. There's pseudoscience, crop circles, alien autopsy, haunted houses, or disasters. And that's what we see. This isn't really the information you need to operate in everyday life and figure out how to participate in this democracy and determine what's going on. They also said there's a change in the corporate mentality. Whereas government money had always been there for basic science and engineering research, we also counted on some companies to do some basic research. But what's happened now is companies put more energy into short-term product development than they do in basic engineering and science research. And education is not keeping up. In K through 12, people are taking out wet labs. They think if we put a computer in the room, it's going to take the place of actually mixing the acids or growing the potatoes. And government funding is decreasing in spending, and then they're saying, let's have corporations take over, and that's not true. Government funding should at least do things like recognize cost benefits of basic science and engineering research. We have to know that we have a responsibility as global citizens in this world. We have to look at the education of humans. We need to build our resources today to make sure that they're trained so they understand the importance of these things. And we have to support the vitality of science. That doesn't mean that everything has to have one thing that's going to go on, or that we know exactly what's going to be the outcome of it, but that we support the vitality and the intellectual curiosity that goes along [with it]. And if you think about those parallels to the arts — the competition with the Bolshoi Ballet spurred the Joffrey and the New York City Ballet to become better. Infrastructure, museums, theaters, movie houses across the country are disappearing. We have more television stations with less to watch, we have more money spent on rewrites to get old television programs in the movies. We have corporate funding now that, when it goes to support the arts, it almost requires that the product be part of the picture that the artist draws. We have stadiums that are named over and over again by corporations. In Houston, we're trying to figure out what to do with that Enron Stadium thing. (Laughter) Fine arts and education in the schools is disappearing, And we have a government that seems like it's gutting the NEA and other programs. So we have to really stop and think: What are we trying to do with the sciences and the arts? There's a need to revitalize them. We have to pay attention to it. I just want to tell you quickly what I'm doing — (Applause) I want to tell you what I've been doing a little bit since ... I feel this need to sort of integrate some of the ideas that I've had and run across over time. One of the things that I found out is that there's a need to repair the dichotomy between the mind and body as well. My mother always told me, you have to be observant, know what's going on in your mind and your body. And as a dancer, I had this tremendous faith in my ability to know my body, just as I knew how to sense colors. Then I went to medical school, and I was supposed to just go on what the machine said about bodies. You know, you would ask patients questions and some people would tell you, "Don't listen to what the patient said." We know that patients know and understand their bodies better, but these days we're trying to divorce them from that idea. We have to reconcile the patient's knowledge of their body with physicians' measurements. We had someone talk about measuring emotions and getting machines to figure out what to keep us from acting crazy. No, we shouldn't measure. We shouldn't use machines to measure road rage and then do something to keep us from engaging in it. Maybe we can have machines help us to recognize that we have road rage, and then we need to know how to control that without the machines. We even need to be able to recognize that without the machines. What I'm very concerned about is: How do we bolster our self-awareness as humans, as biological organisms? Michael Moschen spoke of having to teach and learn how to feel with my eyes, to see with my hands. We have all kinds of possibilities to use our senses by, and that's what we have to do. That's what I want to do — to try to use bioinstrumentation, those kind of things, to help our senses in what we do. That's the work I've been doing now, as a company called BioSentient Corporation. I figured I'd have to do that ad, because I'm an entrepreneur, and "entrepreneur" says "somebody who does what they want to do, because they're not broke enough that they have to get a real job." (Laughter) But that's the work I'm doing, BioSentient Corporation, trying to figure out: How do we integrate these things? Let me finish by saying that my personal design issue for the future is really about integrating; to think about that intuitive and that analytical. The arts and sciences are not separate. High school physics lesson before you leave: high school physics teacher used to hold up a ball. She would say, "This ball has potential energy. But nothing will happen to it, it can't do any work, until I drop it and it changes states." I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They're really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action. This conference is filled with wonderful ideas. We're going to share lots of things with people. But nothing's going to happen until we risk putting those ideas into action. We need to revitalize the arts and sciences today. We need to take responsibility for the future. We can't hide behind saying it's just for company profits, or it's just a business, or I'm an artist or an academician. Here's how you judge what you're doing: I talked about that balance between intuitive, analytical. Fran Lebowitz, my favorite cynic, said, "The three questions of greatest concern ..." — now I'm going to add on to design — "... are: Is it attractive?" That's the intuitive. "Is it amusing?" — the analytical, and, "Does it know its place?" — the balance. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Anti-gravity sculpture

Tom Shannon

{0: 'Tom Shannon'}

{0: ['sculptor']}

{0: "Tom Shannon's mixed-material sculpture seems to levitate -- often it actually does -- thanks to powerful magnets and clever arrangements of suspension wire. He designed the TED Prize trophy. "}

2003-02-27

2009-05-05

TED2003

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['TED Prize', 'art', 'design', 'engineering', 'space', 'science and art']

{267: 'Moving sculpture', 32: 'Art with wire, sugar, chocolate and string', 359: 'The Blur Building and other tech-empowered architecture', 1164: 'Taking imagination seriously', 23895: 'What on Earth is spin?', 27221: 'How far would you have to go to escape gravity?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_shannon_anti_gravity_sculpture/

Tom Shannon shows off his gravity-defying, otherworldly sculpture -- made of simple, earthly materials -- that floats and spins like planets on magnets and suspension wire. It's science-inspired art at its most heavenly.

This is a sculpture I made, which is a way of, kind of, freeing a form into an object that has different degrees of freedom. So, it can balance on a point. This is a bronze ball, an aluminum arm here, and then this wooden disk. And the wooden disk was really thought about as something that you'd want to hold on to, and that would glide easily through your hands. The aluminum is because it's very light. The bronze is nice hard, durable material that could roll on the ground. Inside of the bronze ball there's a lead weight that is free-swinging on an axle that's on two bearings that pass in between, across it, like this, that counterbalance this weight. So it allows it to roll. And the sphere has that balance property that it always sort of stays still and looks the same from every direction. But if you put something on top of it, it disbalances it. And so it would tip over. But in this case because the interior is free-swinging in relation to the sphere, it can stand up on one point. And then there was a second level to this object, which is that it — I wanted it to convey some proportions that I was interested in, which is the diameter of the Moon and the diameter of the Earth in proportion to each other. I was exploring, really early on, wanting to make things float in the air. And I thought up a lot of ideas. This is sculpture that I made that — it's magnetically levitated. The thing is, is that it's slightly dangerous. Normally it's sort of cordoned off when it's in a museum. But it's uh — let's see if I can manipulate it a little bit without, um — oops. So this is just floating, floating on a permanent magnetic field, which stabilizes it in all directions. Except there is a slight tether here, which keeps it from going over the top of its field. It's sort of surfing on a magnetic field at the crest of a wave. And that's what supports the object and keeps it stable. I think we could roll the tape, admin. I have a sort of a collection of videos that I took of different installations, which I could narrate. This is a sculpture of the Sun and the Earth, in proportion. Representing that eight and a half minutes that it takes light and gravity to connect the two. So here is the Earth. It's a little less than a millimeter that was turned of solid bronze. And here is a similar sculpture. That's the Sun at that end. And then in a series of 55 balls, it reduces, proportionately — each ball and the spaces between them reduce proportionately, until they get down to this little Earth. This is in a sculpture park in Taejon. This one is about the Moon and then the distance to the Earth, in proportion also. This is a little stone ball, floating. As you can see the little tether, that it's also magnetically levitated. And then this is the first part of — this is 109 spheres, since the Sun is 109 times the diameter of the Earth. And so this is the size of the Sun. And then each of these little spheres is the size of the Earth in proportion to the Sun. It's made up of 16 concentric shells. Each one has 92 spheres. This is in the courtyard of a twelfth-century alchemist. I was thinking that the Sun is kind of the ultimate alchemist. (Laughter) So this, again, is on the subject — a slice from the equator of the Earth. And then the Moon in the center, and it's floating. And this is in France. This is in Sapporo. It's balancing on a shaft and a ball, right at the center of gravity, or just slightly above the center of gravity, which means that the lower half of the object is just a little bit more weighty. So you can see it rotating here. It weighs about a ton or over a ton. It's made of stainless steel, quite thick. But it's being balanced like that in equilibrium. It's susceptible to motion by the air currents. This is another species of work that I do. These are these arrays. These spheres are all suspended, but they have magnets horizontally in them that make them all like compasses. So all the red sides, for example, face one direction: south. And the blue side, the compliment, faces the other way. So as you turn around you're seeing different colors. This is based on the structure of a diamond. It was a diamond cell structure was the point of departure. And then there were kind of large spaces in the hollows between the atoms. And so I placed one more element of each one of them. These were white spheres. Then I had video projectors that were projecting intermittently onto the spheres. So they would catch parts of the images, and make sort of three-dimensional color volumes, as you walk through it, through the object. This is something I did of a tactile communication system. It was the idea of isolating the tactile component of sculpture, and then putting it into a communication system. This is an idea of moving a sculpture, a ball, that would be directed around the room by a computer. This is a clock I designed. It has Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map edited here. It turns once per day in synchrony with the Earth. And then, this is like projects that are harder to build. (Laughter) This has a diamond-bottomed lake. So it's a floating island with water, fresh water, that can fly from place to place. This would be grown, I suppose, with nanotechnology in the future sometime. In the course of doing my work I sort of have a broad range of interests. And some of it is just the idea of creating media — media as a sculpture, something that would keep the sculpture fresh and ever-changing, by just creating the media that the sculpture is made of. And I had a lot of — always interested in the concept of a crystal ball. And the idea that you could see things inside of a crystal ball and predict the future — or a television set, where it's sort of like a magic box where anything can appear. I had thought about, a long time ago, in the late '60s — when I was just starting out, I was under the influence of thinking about Buckminster Fuller's grand project for an electric globe across from the United Nations — and other things that were happening, the space program at that time, and Whole Earth Catalog, things like that. I was thinking about mass produced spherical television sets that could be linked to orbiting camera satellites. So if we could roll the next film here. This has evolved over the years in a lot of different iterations. But this the current version of it, is a flying airship that is about 35 meters in diameter, about 110 feet in diameter. The whole surface of it is covered with 60 million diodes, red, blue, and green, that allow you to have a high-resolution picture, visible in daylight. I came with a plan. I brought it to Paul MacCready's company AeroVironment to do a feasibility study, and they analyzed it, and came up with a lot of innovative ideas about how to propel it. So we have a physical plan of how to make this actually happen. This is the control room inside of the ship. The idea of this air genie is, it's something that can just transform and become anything. It's like a traveling show. It has speakers on it. And it has cameras over the surface of it. So it can see its environment, and then it can mimic its environment and disappear. Here the legs are retracting. The cabin is open or closed, as you like. It weighs about 20 tons. It has on-board generators. It can generate about a million kilowatts, in order to be bright enough to be visible in daylight. The idea of it is to make a kind of a traveling show. It really would be dedicated to the arts and to interacting. There would be on board a crew of artists, musicians, that would allow the thing to become actually kind of a conscious object that would respond to the moment, and to interact as an entity that was aware, that could communicate. It's completely silent and nonpolluting. It has electric motors with a novel propulsion system. It could be interacted with large crowds in different ways. Primarily I would be interested in how it would interact with, say, going to a college campus, and then being used as a way of talking about the earth sciences, the world, the situation of the globe. The default image on the object would probably be a high-resolution Earth image. But then one could interact with that and show plate tectonics or global warming issues, or migrations — all of the things that we're concerned with today. And then at night the idea is that it would be used as kind of a rave situation, where the people could cut loose, and the music and the lights, and everything. So it could land in a park, for example. Or this could represent a college green. And then it would have a corresponding website that would show the itinerary of this. And so interacting with the same kind of imagery. It would also be able to be an open code, so people could interact with it. It would be forum for people's ideas about what they would like to see on a giant screen of this type. So that's pretty much it. Okay. Thank you. (Applause)

What comes after An Inconvenient Truth?

Al Gore

{0: 'Al Gore'}

{0: ['climate advocate']}

{0: 'Nobel Laureate Al Gore focused the world’s attention on the global climate crisis. Now he’s showing us how we’re moving towards real solutions.\r\n'}

2009-02-06

2009-05-07

TED2009

en

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['alternative energy', 'climate change', 'energy', 'environment', 'presentation', 'science', 'technology', 'ecology', 'sustainability', 'natural resources']

{243: 'New thinking on the climate crisis', 1: 'Averting the climate crisis', 512: 'A new ecosystem for electric cars', 1380: 'Why I must speak out about climate change', 628: 'Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss', 938: 'Inside an Antarctic time machine'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_what_comes_after_an_inconvenient_truth/

At TED2009, Al Gore presents updated slides from around the globe to make the case that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted, and to make clear his stance on "clean coal."

Last year I showed these two slides so that demonstrate that the arctic ice cap, which for most of the last three million years has been the size of the lower 48 states, has shrunk by 40 percent. But this understates the seriousness of this particular problem because it doesn't show the thickness of the ice. The arctic ice cap is, in a sense, the beating heart of the global climate system. It expands in winter and contracts in summer. The next slide I show you will be a rapid fast-forward of what's happened over the last 25 years. The permanent ice is marked in red. As you see, it expands to the dark blue — that's the annual ice in winter, and it contracts in summer. The so-called permanent ice, five years old or older, you can see is almost like blood, spilling out of the body here. In 25 years it's gone from this, to this. This is a problem because the warming heats up the frozen ground around the Arctic Ocean, where there is a massive amount of frozen carbon which, when it thaws, is turned into methane by microbes. Compared to the total amount of global warming pollution in the atmosphere, that amount could double if we cross this tipping point. Already in some shallow lakes in Alaska, methane is actively bubbling up out of the water. Professor Katey Walter from the University of Alaska went out with another team to another shallow lake last winter. Video: Whoa! (Laughter) Al Gore: She's okay. The question is whether we will be. And one reason is, this enormous heat sink heats up Greenland from the north. This is an annual melting river. But the volumes are much larger than ever. This is the Kangerlussuaq River in southwest Greenland. If you want to know how sea level rises from land-base ice melting this is where it reaches the sea. These flows are increasing very rapidly. At the other end of the planet, Antarctica the largest mass of ice on the planet. Last month scientists reported the entire continent is now in negative ice balance. And west Antarctica cropped up on top some under-sea islands, is particularly rapid in its melting. That's equal to 20 feet of sea level, as is Greenland. In the Himalayas, the third largest mass of ice: at the top you see new lakes, which a few years ago were glaciers. 40 percent of all the people in the world get half of their drinking water from that melting flow. In the Andes, this glacier is the source of drinking water for this city. The flows have increased. But when they go away, so does much of the drinking water. In California there has been a 40 percent decline in the Sierra snowpack. This is hitting the reservoirs. And the predictions, as you've read, are serious. This drying around the world has lead to a dramatic increase in fires. And the disasters around the world have been increasing at an absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented rate. Four times as many in the last 30 years as in the previous 75. This is a completely unsustainable pattern. If you look at in the context of history you can see what this is doing. In the last five years we've added 70 million tons of CO2 every 24 hours — 25 million tons every day to the oceans. Look carefully at the area of the eastern Pacific, from the Americas, extending westward, and on either side of the Indian subcontinent, where there is a radical depletion of oxygen in the oceans. The biggest single cause of global warming, along with deforestation, which is 20 percent of it, is the burning of fossil fuels. Oil is a problem, and coal is the most serious problem. The United States is one of the two largest emitters, along with China. And the proposal has been to build a lot more coal plants. But we're beginning to see a sea change. Here are the ones that have been cancelled in the last few years with some green alternatives proposed. (Applause) However there is a political battle in our country. And the coal industries and the oil industries spent a quarter of a billion dollars in the last calendar year promoting clean coal, which is an oxymoron. That image reminded me of something. (Laughter) Around Christmas, in my home in Tennessee, a billion gallons of coal sludge was spilled. You probably saw it on the news. This, all over the country, is the second largest waste stream in America. This happened around Christmas. One of the coal industry's ads around Christmas was this one. Video: ♪♫ Frosty the coal man is a jolly, happy soul. He's abundant here in America, and he helps our economy grow. Frosty the coal man is getting cleaner everyday. He's affordable and adorable, and workers keep their pay. Al Gore: This is the source of much of the coal in West Virginia. The largest mountaintop miner is the head of Massey Coal. Video: Don Blankenship: Let me be clear about it. Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, they don't know what they're talking about. Al Gore: So the Alliance for Climate Protection has launched two campaigns. This is one of them, part of one of them. Video: Actor: At COALergy we view climate change as a very serious threat to our business. That's why we've made it our primary goal to spend a large sum of money on an advertising effort to help bring out and complicate the truth about coal. The fact is, coal isn't dirty. We think it's clean — smells good, too. So don't worry about climate change. Leave that up to us. (Laughter) Video: Actor: Clean coal — you've heard a lot about it. So let's take a tour of this state-of-the-art clean coal facility. Amazing! The machinery is kind of loud. But that's the sound of clean coal technology. And while burning coal is one of the leading causes of global warming, the remarkable clean coal technology you see here changes everything. Take a good long look: this is today's clean coal technology. Al Gore: Finally, the positive alternative meshes with our economic challenge and our national security challenge. Video: Narrator: America is in crisis — the economy, national security, the climate crisis. The thread that links them all: our addiction to carbon based fuels, like dirty coal and foreign oil. But now there is a bold new solution to get us out of this mess. Repower America with 100 percent clean electricity within 10 years. A plan to put America back to work, make us more secure, and help stop global warming. Finally, a solution that's big enough to solve our problems. Repower America. Find out more. Al Gore: This is the last one. Video: Narrator: It's about repowering America. One of the fastest ways to cut our dependence on old dirty fuels that are killing our planet. Man: Future's over here. Wind, sun, a new energy grid. Man #2: New investments to create high-paying jobs. Narrator: Repower America. It's time to get real. Al Gore: There is an old African proverb that says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We need to go far, quickly. Thank you very much. (Applause)

We need to feed the whole world

Louise Fresco

{0: 'Louise Fresco'}

{0: ['food and agriculture expert']}

{0: "A powerful thinker and globe-trotting advisor on sustainability, Louise Fresco says it's time to think of food as a topic of social and economic importance on par with oil -- that responsible agriculture and food consumption are crucial to world stability."}

2009-02-05

2009-05-07

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'food', 'global issues', 'industrial design', 'consumerism', 'agriculture', 'global development', 'sustainability', 'activism']

{263: "What's wrong with what we eat", 433: 'The art and craft of bread', 525: 'How ideas trump crises', 1016: "What's wrong with our food system", 1565: 'The global food waste scandal', 1199: 'Ending hunger now'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/louise_fresco_we_need_to_feed_the_whole_world/

Louise Fresco shows us why we should celebrate mass-produced, supermarket-style white bread. She says environmentally sound mass production will feed the world, yet leave a role for small bakeries and traditional methods.

I'm not at all a cook. So don't fear, this is not going to be a cooking demonstration. But I do want to talk to you about something that I think is dear to all of us. And that is bread — something which is as simple as our basic, most fundamental human staple. And I think few of us spend the day without eating bread in some form. Unless you're on one of these Californian low-carb diets, bread is standard. Bread is not only standard in the Western diet. As I will show to you, it is actually the mainstay of modern life. So I'm going to bake bread for you. In the meantime I'm also talking to you, so my life is going to be complicated. Bear with me. First of all, a little bit of audience participation. I have two loaves of bread here. One is a supermarket standard: white bread, pre-packaged, which I'm told is called a Wonderbread. (Laughter) I didn't know this word until I arrived. And this is more or less, a whole-meal, handmade, small-bakery loaf of bread. Here we go. I want to see a show of hands. Who prefers the whole-meal bread? Okay let me do this differently. Is anybody preferring the Wonderbread at all? (Laughter) I have two tentative male hands. (Laughter) Okay, now the question is really, why is this so? And I think it is because we feel that this kind of bread really is about authenticity. It's about a traditional way of living. A way that is perhaps more real, more honest. This is an image from Tuscany, where we feel agriculture is still about beauty. And life is really, too. And this is about good taste, good traditions. Why do we have this image? Why do we feel that this is more true than this? Well I think it has a lot to do with our history. In the 10,000 years since agriculture evolved, most of our ancestors have actually been agriculturalists or they were closely related to food production. And we have this mythical image of how life was in rural areas in the past. Art has helped us to maintain that kind of image. It was a mythical past. Of course, the reality is quite different. These poor farmers working the land by hand or with their animals, had yield levels that are comparable to the poorest farmers today in West Africa. But we have, somehow, in the course of the last few centuries, or even decades, started to cultivate an image of a mythical, rural agricultural past. It was only 200 years ago that we had the advent of the Industrial Revolution. And while I'm starting to make some bread for you here, it's very important to understand what that revolution did to us. It brought us power. It brought us mechanization, fertilizers. And it actually drove up our yields. And even sort of horrible things, like picking beans by hand, can now be done automatically. All that is a real, great improvement, as we shall see. Of course we also, particularly in the last decade, managed to envelop the world in a dense chain of supermarkets, in a chain of global trade. And it means that you now eat products, which can come from all around the world. That is the reality of our modern life. Now you may prefer this loaf of bread. Excuse my hands but this is how it is. But actually the real relevant bread, historically, is this white Wonder loaf. And don't despise the white bread because it really, I think, symbolizes the fact that bread and food have become plentiful and affordable to all. And that is a feat that we are not really conscious of that much. But it has changed the world. This tiny bread that is tasteless in some ways and has a lot of problems has changed the world. So what is happening? Well the best way to look at that is to do a tiny bit of simplistic statistics. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution with modernization of agriculture in the last few decades, since the 1960s, food availability, per head, in this world, has increased by 25 percent. And the world population in the meantime has doubled. That means that we have now more food available than ever before in human history. And that is the result, directly, of being so successful at increasing the scale and volume of our production. And this is true, as you can see, for all countries, including the so-called developing countries. What happened to our bread in the meantime? As food became plentiful here, it also meant that we were able to decrease the number of people working in agriculture to something like, on average, in the high income countries, five percent or less of the population. In the U.S. only one percent of the people are actually farmers. And it frees us all up to do other things — to sit at TED meetings and not to worry about our food. That is, historically, a really unique situation. Never before has the responsibility to feed the world been in the hands of so few people. And never before have so many people been oblivious of that fact. So as food became more plentiful, bread became cheaper. And as it became cheaper, bread manufacturers decided to add in all kinds of things. We added in more sugar. We add in raisins and oil and milk and all kinds of things to make bread, from a simple food into kind of a support for calories. And today, bread now is associated with obesity, which is very strange. It is the basic, most fundamental food that we've had in the last ten thousand years. Wheat is the most important crop — the first crop we domesticated and the most important crop we still grow today. But this is now this strange concoction of high calories. And that's not only true in this country, it is true all over the world. Bread has migrated to tropical countries, where the middle classes now eat French rolls and hamburgers and where the commuters find bread much more handy to use than rice or cassava. So bread has become from a main staple, a source of calories associated with obesity and also a source of modernity, of modern life. And the whiter the bread, in many countries, the better it is. So this is the story of bread as we know it now. But of course the price of mass production has been that we moved large-scale. And large-scale has meant destruction of many of our landscapes, destruction of biodiversity — still a lonely emu here in the Brazilian cerrado soybean fields. The costs have been tremendous — water pollution, all the things you know about, destruction of our habitats. What we need to do is to go back to understanding what our food is about. And this is where I have to query all of you. How many of you can actually tell wheat apart from other cereals? How many of you actually can make a bread in this way, without starting with a bread machine or just some kind of packaged flavor? Can you actually bake bread? Do you know how much a loaf of bread actually costs? We have become very removed from what our bread really is, which, again, evolutionarily speaking, is very strange. In fact not many of you know that our bread, of course, was not a European invention. It was invented by farmers in Iraq and Syria in particular. The tiny spike on the left to the center is actually the forefather of wheat. This is where it all comes from, and where these farmers who actually, ten thousand years ago, put us on the road of bread. Now it is not surprising that with this massification and large-scale production, there is a counter-movement that emerged — very much also here in California. The counter-movement says, "Let's go back to this. Let's go back to traditional farming. Let's go back to small-scale, to farmers' markets, small bakeries and all that." Wonderful. Don't we all agree? I certainly agree. I would love to go back to Tuscany to this kind of traditional setting, gastronomy, good food. But this is a fallacy. And the fallacy comes from idealizing a past that we have forgotten about. If we do this, if we want to stay with traditional small-scale farming we are going, actually, to relegate these poor farmers and their husbands — among whom I have lived for many years, working without electricity and water, to try to improve their food production — we relegate them to poverty. What they want are implements to increase their production: something to fertilize the soil, something to protect their crop and to bring it to a market. We cannot just think that small-scale is the solution to the world food problem. It's a luxury solution for us who can afford it, if you want to afford it. In fact we do not want this poor woman to work the land like this. If we say just small-scale production, as is the tendency here, to go back to local food means that a poor man like Hans Rosling cannot even eat oranges anymore because in Scandinavia we don't have oranges. So local food production is out. But also we do not want to relegate to poverty in the rural areas. And we do not want to relegate the urban poor to starvation. So we must find other solutions. One of our problems is that world food production needs to increase very rapidly — doubling by about 2030. The main driver of that is actually meat. And meat consumption in Southeast Asia and China in particular is what drives the prices of cereals. That need for animal protein is going to continue. We can discuss alternatives in another talk, perhaps one day, but this is our driving force. So what can we do? Can we find a solution to produce more? Yes. But we need mechanization. And I'm making a real plea here. I feel so strongly that you cannot ask a small farmer to work the land and bend over to grow a hectare of rice, 150,000 times, just to plant a crop and weed it. You cannot ask people to work under these conditions. We need clever low-key mechanization that avoids the problems of the large-scale mechanization that we've had. So what can we do? We must feed three billion people in cities. We will not do that through small farmers' markets because these people have no small farmers' markets at their disposal. They have low incomes. And they benefit from cheap, affordable, safe and diverse food. That's what we must aim for in the next 20 to 30 years. But yes there are some solutions. And let me just do one simple conceptual thing: if I plot science as a proxy for control of the production process and scale. What you see is that we've started in the left-hand corner with traditional agriculture, which was sort of small-scale and low-control. We've moved towards large-scale and very high control. What I want us to do is to keep up the science and even get more science in there but go to a kind of regional scale — not just in terms of the scale of the fields, but in terms of the entire food network. That's where we should move. And the ultimate may be, but it doesn't apply to cereals, that we have entirely closed ecosystems — the horticultural systems right at the top left-hand corner. So we need to think differently about agriculture science. Agriculture science for most people — and there are not many farmers among you here — has this name of being bad, of being about pollution, about large-scale, about the destruction of the environment. That is not necessary. We need more science and not less. And we need good science. So what kind of science can we have? Well first of all I think we can do much better on the existing technologies. Use biotechnology where useful, particularly in pest and disease resistance. There are also robots, for example, who can recognize weeds with a resolution of half an inch. We have much cleverer irrigation. We do not need to spill the water if we don't want to. And we need to think very dispassionately about the comparative advantages of small-scale and large-scale. We need to think that land is multi-functional. It has different functions. There are different ways in which we must use it — for residential, for nature, for agriculture purposes. And we also need to re-examine livestock. Go regional and go to urban food systems. I want to see fish ponds in parking lots and basements. I want to have horticulture and greenhouses on top of residential areas. And I want to use the energy that comes from those greenhouses and from the fermentation of crops to heat our residential areas. There are all kinds of ways we can do it. We cannot solve the world food problem by using biological agriculture. But we can do a lot more. And the main thing that I would really ask all of you as you go back to your countries, or as you stay here: ask your government for an integrated food policy. Food is as important as energy, as security, as the environment. Everything is linked together. So we can do that. In fact in a densely populated country like the River Delta, where I live in the Netherlands, we have combined these functions. So this is not science fiction. We can combine things even in a social sense of making the rural areas more accessible to people — to house, for example, the chronically sick. There is all kinds of things we can do. But there is something you must do. It's not enough for me to say, "Let's get more bold science into agriculture." You must go back and think about your own food chain. Talk to farmers. When was the last time you went to a farm and talked to a farmer? Talk to people in restaurants. Understand where you are in the food chain, where your food comes from. Understand that you are part of this enormous chain of events. And that frees you up to do other things. And above all, to me, food is about respect. It's about understanding, when you eat, that there are also many people who are still in this situation, who are still struggling for their daily food. And the kind of simplistic solutions that we sometimes have, to think that doing everything by hand is going to be the solution, is really not morally justified. We need to help to lift them out of poverty. We need to make them proud of being a farmer because they allow us to survive. Never before, as I said, has the responsibility for food been in the hands of so few. And never before have we had the luxury of taking it for granted because it is now so cheap. And I think there is nobody else who has expressed better, to me, the idea that food, in the end, in our own tradition, is something holy. It's not about nutrients and calories. It's about sharing. It's about honesty. It's about identity. Who said this so beautifully was Mahatma Gandhi, 75 years ago, when he spoke about bread. He did not speak about rice, in India. He said, "To those who have to go without two meals a day, God can only appear as bread." And so as I'm finishing my bread here — and I've been baking it, and I'll try not to burn my hands. Let me share with those of you here in the first row. Let me share some of the food with you. Take some of my bread. And as you eat it, and as you try it — please come and stand up. Have some of it. I want you to think that every bite connects you to the past and the future: to these anonymous farmers, that first bred the first wheat varieties; and to the farmers of today, who've been making this. And you don't even know who they are. Every meal you eat contains ingredients from all across the world. Everything makes us so privileged, that we can eat this food, that we don't struggle every day. And that, I think, evolutionarily-speaking is unique. We've never had that before. So enjoy your bread. Eat it, and feel privileged. Thank you very much. (Applause)

The tribes we lead

Seth Godin

{0: 'Seth Godin'}

{0: ['marketer and author']}

{0: 'Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age. His newest interest: the tribes we lead.'}

2009-02-04

2009-05-10

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'mk', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['communication', 'community', 'marketing', 'social media', 'society', 'books', 'leadership']

{28: 'How to get your ideas to spread', 274: 'Institutions vs. collaboration', 434: 'What consumers want', 651: 'Tribal leadership', 1998: 'Why good leaders make you feel safe', 1580: 'Smart failure for a fast-changing world'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_the_tribes_we_lead/

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.

So sometimes I get invited to give weird talks. I got invited to speak to the people who dress up in big stuffed animal costumes to perform at sporting events. Unfortunately I couldn't go. But it got me thinking about the fact that these guys, at least most of them, know what it is that they do for a living. What they do is they dress up as stuffed animals and entertain people at sporting events. Shortly after that I got invited to speak at the convention of the people who make balloon animals. And again, I couldn't go. But it's a fascinating group. They make balloon animals. There is a big schism between the ones who make gospel animals and porn animals, but — (Laughter) they do a lot of really cool stuff with balloons. Sometimes they get in trouble, but not often. And the other thing about these guys is, they also know what they do for a living. They make balloon animals. But what do we do for a living? What exactly to the people watching this do every day? And I want to argue that what we do is we try to change everything. That we try to find a piece of the status quo — something that bothers us, something that needs to be improved, something that is itching to be changed — and we change it. We try to make big, permanent, important change. But we don't think about it that way. And we haven't spent a lot of time talking about what that process is like. And I've been studying it for a couple years. And I want to share a couple stories with you today. First, about a guy named Nathan Winograd. Nathan was the number two person at the San Francisco SPCA. And what you may not know about the history of the SPCA is, it was founded to kill dogs and cats. Cities gave them a charter to get rid of the stray animals on the street and destroy them. In a typical year four million dogs and cats were killed, most of them within 24 hours of being scooped off of the street. Nathan and his boss saw this, and they could not tolerate it. So they set out to make San Francisco a no-kill city: create an entire city where every dog and cat, unless it was ill or dangerous, would be adopted, not killed. And everyone said it was impossible. Nathan and his boss went to the city council to get a change in the ordinance. And people from SPCAs and humane shelters around the country flew to San Francisco to testify against them — to say it would hurt the movement and it was inhumane. They persisted. And Nathan went directly to the community. He connected with people who cared about this: nonprofessionals, people with passion. And within just a couple years, San Francisco became the first no-kill city, running no deficit, completely supported by the community. Nathan left and went to Tompkins County, New York — a place as different from San Francisco as you can be and still be in the United States. And he did it again. He went from being a glorified dogcatcher to completely transforming the community. And then he went to North Carolina and did it again. And he went to Reno and he did it again. And when I think about what Nathan did, and when I think about what people here do, I think about ideas. And I think about the idea that creating an idea, spreading an idea has a lot behind it. I don't know if you've ever been to a Jewish wedding, but what they do is, they take a light bulb and they smash it. Now there is a bunch of reasons for that, and stories about it. But one reason is because it indicates a change, from before to after. It is a moment in time. And I want to argue that we are living through and are right at the key moment of a change in the way ideas are created and spread and implemented. We started with the factory idea: that you could change the whole world if you had an efficient factory that could churn out change. We then went to the TV idea, that said if you had a big enough mouthpiece, if you could get on TV enough times, if you could buy enough ads, you could win. And now we're in this new model of leadership, where the way we make change is not by using money or power to lever a system, but by leading. So let me tell you about the three cycles. The first one is the factory cycle. Henry Ford comes up with a really cool idea. It enables him to hire men who used to get paid 50 cents a day and pay them five dollars a day. Because he's got an efficient enough factory. Well with that sort of advantage you can churn out a lot of cars. You can make a lot of change. You can get roads built. You can change the fabric of an entire country. That the essence of what you're doing is you need ever-cheaper labor, and ever-faster machines. And the problem we've run into is, we're running out of both. Ever-cheaper labor and ever-faster machines. (Laughter) So we shift gears for a minute, and say, "I know: television; advertising. Push push. Take a good idea and push it on the world. I have a better mousetrap. And if I can just get enough money to tell enough people, I'll sell enough." And you can build an entire industry on that. If necessary you can put babies in your ads. If necessary you can use babies to sell other stuff. And if babies don't work, you can use doctors. But be careful. Because you don't want to get an unfortunate juxtaposition, where you're talking about one thing instead of the other. (Laughter) This model requires you to act like the king, like the person in the front of the room throwing things to the peons in the back. That you are in charge, and you're going to tell people what to do next. The quick little diagram of it is, you're up here, and you are pushing it out to the world. This method — mass marketing — requires average ideas, because you're going to the masses, and plenty of ads. What we've done as spammers is tried to hypnotize everyone into buying our idea, hypnotize everyone into donating to our cause, hypnotize everyone into voting for our candidate. And, unfortunately, it doesn't work so well anymore either. (Laughter) But there is good news around the corner — really good news. I call it the idea of tribes. What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50,000 years. It's about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it's something that people have wanted forever. Lots of people are used to having a spiritual tribe, or a church tribe, having a work tribe, having a community tribe. But now, thanks to the internet, thanks to the explosion of mass media, thanks to a lot of other things that are bubbling through our society around the world, tribes are everywhere. The Internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it's allowed is silos of interest. So you've got the red-hat ladies over here. You've got the red-hat triathletes over there. You've got the organized armies over here. You've got the disorganized rebels over here. You've got people in white hats making food. And people in white hats sailing boats. The point is that you can find Ukrainian folk dancers and connect with them, because you want to be connected. That people on the fringes can find each other, connect and go somewhere. Every town that has a volunteer fire department understands this way of thinking. (Laughter) Now it turns out this is a legitimate non-photoshopped photo. People I know who are firemen told me that this is not uncommon. And that what firemen do to train sometimes is they take a house that is going to be torn down, and they burn it down instead, and practice putting it out. But they always stop and take a picture. (Laughter) You know the pirate tribe is a fascinating one. They've got their own flag. They've got the eye patches. You can tell when you're running into someone in a tribe. And it turns out that it's tribes — not money, not factories — that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will, but because they wanted to connect. That what we do for a living now, all of us, I think, is find something worth changing, and then assemble tribes that assemble tribes that spread the idea and spread the idea. And it becomes something far bigger than ourselves, it becomes a movement. So when Al Gore set out to change the world again, he didn't do it by himself. And he didn't do it by buying a lot of ads. He did it by creating a movement. Thousands of people around the country who could give his presentation for him, because he can't be in 100 or 200 or 500 cities in each night. You don't need everyone. What Kevin Kelley has taught us is you just need, I don't know, a thousand true fans — a thousand people who care enough that they will get you the next round and the next round and the next round. And that means that the idea you create, the product you create, the movement you create isn't for everyone, it's not a mass thing. That's not what this is about. What it's about instead is finding the true believers. It's easy to look at what I've said so far, and say, "Wait a minute, I don't have what it takes to be that kind of leader." So here are two leaders. They don't have a lot in common. They're about the same age. But that's about it. What they did, though, is each in their own way, created a different way of navigating your way through technology. So some people will go out and get people to be on one team. And some people will get people to be on the other team. It also informs the decisions you make when you make products or services. You know, this is one of my favorite devices. But what a shame that it's not organized to help authors create movements. What would happen if, when you're using your Kindle, you could see the comments and quotes and notes from all the other people reading the same book as you in that moment. Or from your book group. Or from your friends, or from the circle you want. What would happen if authors, or people with ideas could use version two, which comes out on Monday, and use it to organize people who want to talk about something. Now there is a million things I could share with you about the mechanics here. But let me just try a couple. The Beatles did not invent teenagers. They merely decided to lead them. That most movements, most leadership that we're doing is about finding a group that's disconnected but already has a yearning — not persuading people to want something they don't have yet. When Diane Hatz worked on "The Meatrix," her video that spread all across the internet about the way farm animals are treated, she didn't invent the idea of being a vegan. She didn't invent the idea of caring about this issue. But she helped organize people, and helped turn it into a movement. Hugo Chavez did not invent the disaffected middle and lower class of Venezuela. He merely led them. Bob Marley did not invent Rastafarians. He just stepped up and said, "Follow me." Derek Sivers invented CD Baby, which allowed independent musicians to have a place to sell their music without selling out to the man — to have place to take the mission they already wanted to go to, and connect with each other. What all these people have in common is that they are heretics. That heretics look at the status quo and say, "This will not stand. I can't abide this status quo. I am willing to stand up and be counted and move things forward. I see what the status quo is; I don't like it." That instead of looking at all the little rules and following each one of them, that instead of being what I call a sheepwalker — somebody who's half asleep, following instructions, keeping their head down, fitting in — every once in a while someone stands up and says, "Not me." Someone stands up and says, "This one is important. We need to organize around it." And not everyone will. But you don't need everyone. You just need a few people — (Laughter) — who will look at the rules, realize they make no sense, and realize how much they want to be connected. So Tony Hsieh does not run a shoe store. Zappos isn't a shoe store. Zappos is the one, the only, the best-there-ever-was place for people who are into shoes to find each other, to talk about their passion, to connect with people who care more about customer service than making a nickel tomorrow. It can be something as prosaic as shoes, and something as complicated as overthrowing a government. It's exactly the same behavior though. What it requires, as Geraldine Carter has discovered, is to be able to say, "I can't do this by myself. But if I can get other people to join my Climb and Ride, then together we can get something that we all want. We're just waiting for someone to lead us." Michelle Kaufman has pioneered new ways of thinking about environmental architecture. She doesn't do it by quietly building one house at a time. She does it by telling a story to people who want to hear it. By connecting a tribe of people who are desperate to be connected to each other. By leading a movement and making change. And around and around and around it goes. So three questions I'd offer you. The first one is, who exactly are you upsetting? Because if you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo. The second question is, who are you connecting? Because for a lot of people, that's what they're in it for: the connections that are being made, one to the other. And the third one is, who are you leading? Because focusing on that part of it — not the mechanics of what you're building, but the who, and the leading part — is where change comes. So Blake, at Tom's Shoes, had a very simple idea. "What would happen if every time someone bought a pair of these shoes I gave exactly the same pair to someone who doesn't even own a pair of shoes?" This is not the story of how you get shelf space at Neiman Marcus. It's a story of a product that tells a story. And as you walk around with this remarkable pair of shoes and someone says, "What are those?" You get to tell the story on Blake's behalf, on behalf of the people who got the shoes. And suddenly it's not one pair of shoes or 100 pairs of shoes. It's tens of thousands of pairs of shoes. My friend Red Maxwell has spent the last 10 years fighting against juvenile diabetes. Not fighting the organization that's fighting it — fighting with them, leading them, connecting them, challenging the status quo because it's important to him. And the people he surrounds himself with need the connection. They need the leadership. It makes a difference. You don't need permission from people to lead them. But in case you do, here it is: they're waiting, we're waiting for you to show us where to go next. So here is what leaders have in common. The first thing is, they challenge the status quo. They challenge what's currently there. The second thing is, they build a culture. A secret language, a seven-second handshake, a way of knowing that you're in or out. They have curiosity. Curiosity about people in the tribe, curiosity about outsiders. They're asking questions. They connect people to one another. Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone. And tribe leaders can do that. It's fascinating, because all tribe leaders have charisma, but you don't need charisma to become a leader. Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that's where charisma comes from — from the leading. Finally, they commit. They commit to the cause. They commit to the tribe. They commit to the people who are there. So I'd like you to do something for me. And I hope you'll think about it before you reject it out-of-hand. What I want you to do, it only takes 24 hours, is: create a movement. Something that matters. Start. Do it. We need it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. (Applause)

Insights on HIV, in stunning data visuals

Hans Rosling

{0: 'Hans Rosling'}

{0: ['global health expert; data visionary']}

{0: 'In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development -- with some surprisingly good news -- snaps into sharp focus.'}

2009-02-06

2009-05-13

TED2009

en

['af', 'ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'lv', 'mn', 'mr', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sr', 'sv', 'ta', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['AIDS', 'Africa', 'disease', 'global issues', 'presentation', 'statistics', 'visualizations', 'HIV']

{499: 'The jungle search for viruses', 445: 'Solving medical mysteries', 259: 'Can we domesticate germs?', 143: 'Flip your thinking on AIDS in Africa', 8786: 'The dangerous evolution of HIV', 41873: 'How close are we to eradicating HIV?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_insights_on_hiv_in_stunning_data_visuals/

Hans Rosling unveils data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. By following the data, he suggests a surprising key to ending the epidemic.

(Applause) AIDS was discovered 1981; the virus, 1983. These Gapminder bubbles show you how the spread of the virus was in 1983 in the world, or how we estimate that it was. What we are showing here is — on this axis here, I'm showing percent of infected adults. And on this axis, I'm showing dollars per person in income. And the size of these bubbles, the size of the bubbles here, that shows how many are infected in each country, and the color is the continent. Now, you can see United States, in 1983, had a very low percentage infected, but due to the big population, still a sizable bubble. There were quite many people infected in the United States. And, up there, you see Uganda. They had almost five percent infected, and quite a big bubble in spite of being a small country, then. And they were probably the most infected country in the world. Now, what has happened? Now you have understood the graph and now, in the next 60 seconds, we will play the HIV epidemic in the world. But first, I have a new invention here. (Laughter) I have solidified the beam of the laser pointer. (Laughter) (Applause) So, ready, steady, go! First, we have the fast rise in Uganda and Zimbabwe. They went upwards like this. In Asia, the first country to be heavily infected was Thailand — they reached one to two percent. Then, Uganda started to turn back, whereas Zimbabwe skyrocketed, and some years later South Africa had a terrible rise of HIV frequency. Look, India got many infected, but had a low level. And almost the same happens here. See, Uganda coming down, Zimbabwe coming down, Russia went to one percent. In the last two to three years, we have reached a steady state of HIV epidemic in the world. 25 years it took. But, steady state doesn't mean that things are getting better, it's just that they have stopped getting worse. And it has — the steady state is, more or less, one percent of the adult world population is HIV-infected. It means 30 to 40 million people, the whole of California — every person, that's more or less what we have today in the world. Now, let me make a fast replay of Botswana. Botswana — upper middle-income country in southern Africa, democratic government, good economy, and this is what happened there. They started low, they skyrocketed, they peaked up there in 2003, and now they are down. But they are falling only slowly, because in Botswana, with good economy and governance, they can manage to treat people. And if people who are infected are treated, they don't die of AIDS. These percentages won't come down because people can survive 10 to 20 years. So there's some problem with these metrics now. But the poorer countries in Africa, the low-income countries down here, there the rates fall faster, of the percentage infected, because people still die. In spite of PEPFAR, the generous PEPFAR, all people are not reached by treatment, and of those who are reached by treatment in the poor countries, only 60 percent are left on treatment after two years. It's not realistic with lifelong treatment for everyone in the poorest countries. But it's very good that what is done is being done. But focus now is back on prevention. It is only by stopping the transmission that the world will be able to deal with it. Drugs is too costly — had we had the vaccine, or when we will get the vaccine, that's something more effective — but the drugs are very costly for the poor. Not the drug in itself, but the treatment and the care which is needed around it. So, when we look at the pattern, one thing comes out very clearly: you see the blue bubbles and people say HIV is very high in Africa. I would say, HIV is very different in Africa. You'll find the highest HIV rate in the world in African countries, and yet you'll find Senegal, down here — the same rate as United States. And you'll find Madagascar, and you'll find a lot of African countries about as low as the rest of the world. It's this terrible simplification that there's one Africa and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that. It's not respectful, and it's not very clever to think that way. (Applause) I had the fortune to live and work for a time in the United States. I found out that Salt Lake City and San Francisco were different. (Laughter) And so it is in Africa — it's a lot of difference. So, why is it so high? Is it war? No, it's not. Look here. War-torn Congo is down there — two, three, four percent. And this is peaceful Zambia, neighboring country — 15 percent. And there's good studies of the refugees coming out of Congo — they have two, three percent infected, and peaceful Zambia — much higher. There are now studies clearly showing that the wars are terrible, that rapes are terrible, but this is not the driving force for the high levels in Africa. So, is it poverty? Well if you look at the macro level, it seems more money, more HIV. But that's very simplistic, so let's go down and look at Tanzania. I will split Tanzania in five income groups, from the highest income to the lowest income, and here we go. The ones with the highest income, the better off — I wouldn't say rich — they have higher HIV. The difference goes from 11 percent down to four percent, and it is even bigger among women. There's a lot of things that we thought, that now, good research, done by African institutions and researchers together with the international researchers, show that that's not the case. So, this is the difference within Tanzania. And, I can't avoid showing Kenya. Look here at Kenya. I've split Kenya in its provinces. Here it goes. See the difference within one African country — it goes from very low level to very high level, and most of the provinces in Kenya is quite modest. So, what is it then? Why do we see this extremely high levels in some countries? Well, it is more common with multiple partners, there is less condom use, and there is age-disparate sex — that is, older men tend to have sex with younger women. We see higher rates in younger women than younger men in many of these highly affected countries. But where are they situated? I will swap the bubbles to a map. Look, the highly infected are four percent of all population and they hold 50 percent of the HIV-infected. HIV exists all over the world. Look, you have bubbles all over the world here. Brazil has many HIV-infected. Arab countries not so much, but Iran is quite high. They have heroin addiction and also prostitution in Iran. India has many because they are many. Southeast Asia, and so on. But, there is one part of Africa — and the difficult thing is, at the same time, not to make a uniform statement about Africa, not to come to simple ideas of why it is like this, on one hand. On the other hand, try to say that this is not the case, because there is a scientific consensus about this pattern now. UNAIDS have done good data available, finally, about the spread of HIV. It could be concurrency. It could be some virus types. It could be that there is other things which makes transmission occur in a higher frequency. After all, if you are completely healthy and you have heterosexual sex, the risk of infection in one intercourse is one in 1,000. Don't jump to conclusions now on how to behave tonight and so on. (Laughter) But — and if you are in an unfavorable situation, more sexually transmitted diseases, it can be one in 100. But what we think is that it could be concurrency. And what is concurrency? In Sweden, we have no concurrency. We have serial monogamy. Vodka, New Year's Eve — new partner for the spring. Vodka, Midsummer's Eve — new partner for the fall. Vodka — and it goes on like this, you know? And you collect a big number of exes. And we have a terrible chlamydia epidemic — terrible chlamydia epidemic which sticks around for many years. HIV has a peak three to six weeks after infection and therefore, having more than one partner in the same month is much more dangerous for HIV than others. Probably, it's a combination of this. And what makes me so happy is that we are moving now towards fact when we look at this. You can get this chart, free. We have uploaded UNAIDS data on the Gapminder site. And we hope that when we act on global problems in the future we will not only have the heart, we will not only have the money, but we will also use the brain. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Ideas for India's future

Nandan Nilekani

{0: 'Nandan Nilekani'}

{0: ['technologist and visionary']}

{0: 'Nandan Nilekani is the author of "Imagining India," a radical re-thinking of one of the world’s great economies. The co-founder of Infosys, he helped move India into the age of IT.'}

2009-02-04

2009-05-14

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'mr', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'economics', 'global issues', 'india', 'politics', 'potential', 'technology', 'infrastructure', 'Asia', 'global development', 'innovation', 'future']

{3: 'How to rebuild a broken state', 185: 'A commodities exchange for Ethiopia', 92: "The best stats you've ever seen", 689: 'Why nations should pursue soft power', 1220: 'Does democracy stifle economic growth?', 695: "Asia's rise -- how and when"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/nandan_nilekani_ideas_for_india_s_future/

Nandan Nilekani, the visionary co-founder of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress.

Let me talk about India through the evolution of ideas. Now I believe this is an interesting way of looking at it because in every society, especially an open democratic society, it's only when ideas take root that things change. Slowly ideas lead to ideology, lead to policies that lead to actions. In 1930 this country went through a Great Depression, which led to all the ideas of the state and social security, and all the other things that happened in Roosevelt's time. In the 1980s we had the Reagan revolution, which lead to deregulation. And today, after the global economic crisis, there was a whole new set of rules about how the state should intervene. So ideas change states. And I looked at India and said, really there are four kinds of ideas which really make an impact on India. The first, to my mind, is what I call as "the ideas that have arrived." These ideas have brought together something which has made India happen the way it is today. The second set of ideas I call "ideas in progress." Those are ideas which have been accepted but not implemented yet. The third set of ideas are what I call as "ideas that we argue about" — those are ideas where we have a fight, an ideological battle about how to do things. And the fourth thing, which I believe is most important, is "the ideas that we need to anticipate." Because when you are a developing country in the world where you can see the problems that other countries are having, you can actually anticipate what that did and do things very differently. Now in India's case I believe there are six ideas which are responsible for where it has come today. The first is really the notion of people. In the '60s and '70s we thought of people as a burden. We thought of people as a liability. Today we talk of people as an asset. We talk of people as human capital. And I believe this change in the mindset, of looking at people as something of a burden to human capital, has been one of the fundamental changes in the Indian mindset. And this change in thinking of human capital is linked to the fact that India is going through a demographic dividend. As healthcare improves, as infant mortality goes down, fertility rates start dropping. And India is experiencing that. India is going to have a lot of young people with a demographic dividend for the next 30 years. What is unique about this demographic dividend is that India will be the only country in the world to have this demographic dividend. In other words, it will be the only young country in an aging world. And this is very important. At the same time if you peel away the demographic dividend in India, there are actually two demographic curves. One is in the south and in the west of India, which is already going to be fully expensed by 2015, because in that part of the country, the fertility rate is almost equal to that of a West European country. Then there is the whole northern India, which is going to be the bulk of the future demographic dividend. But a demographic dividend is only as good as the investment in your human capital. Only if the people have education, they have good health, they have infrastructure, they have roads to go to work, they have lights to study at night — only in those cases can you really get the benefit of a demographic dividend. In other words, if you don't really invest in the human capital, the same demographic dividend can be a demographic disaster. Therefore India is at a critical point where either it can leverage its demographic dividend or it can lead to a demographic disaster. The second thing in India has been the change in the role of entrepreneurs. When India got independence entrepreneurs were seen as a bad lot, as people who would exploit. But today, after 60 years, because of the rise of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs have become role models, and they are contributing hugely to the society. This change has contributed to the vitality and the whole economy. The third big thing I believe that has changed India is our attitude towards the English language. English language was seen as a language of the imperialists. But today, with globalization, with outsourcing, English has become a language of aspiration. This has made it something that everybody wants to learn. And the fact that we have English is now becoming a huge strategic asset. The next thing is technology. Forty years back, computers were seen as something which was forbidding, something which was intimidating, something that reduced jobs. Today we live in a country which sells eight million mobile phones a month, of which 90 percent of those mobile phones are prepaid phones because people don't have credit history. Forty percent of those prepaid phones are recharged at less than 20 cents at each recharge. That is the scale at which technology has liberated and made it accessible. And therefore technology has gone from being seen as something forbidding and intimidating to something that is empowering. Twenty years back, when there was a report on bank computerization, they didn't name the report as a report on computers, they call them as "ledger posting machines." They didn't want the unions to believe that they were actually computers. And when they wanted to have more advanced, more powerful computers they called them "advanced ledger posting machines." So we have come a long way from those days where the telephone has become an instrument of empowerment, and really has changed the way Indians think of technology. And then I think the other point is that Indians today are far more comfortable with globalization. Again, after having lived for more than 200 years under the East India Company and under imperial rule, Indians had a very natural reaction towards globalization believing it was a form of imperialism. But today, as Indian companies go abroad, as Indians come and work all over the world, Indians have gained a lot more confidence and have realized that globalization is something they can participate in. And the fact that the demographics are in our favor, because we are the only young country in an aging world, makes globalization all the more attractive to Indians. And finally, India has had the deepening of its democracy. When democracy came to India 60 years back it was an elite concept. It was a bunch of people who wanted to bring in democracy because they wanted to bring in the idea of universal voting and parliament and constitution and so forth. But today democracy has become a bottom-up process where everybody has realized the benefits of having a voice, the benefits of being in an open society. And therefore democracy has become embedded. I believe these six factors — the rise of the notion of population as human capital, the rise of Indian entrepreneurs, the rise of English as a language of aspiration, technology as something empowering, globalization as a positive factor, and the deepening of democracy — has contributed to why India is today growing at rates it has never seen before. But having said that, then we come to what I call as ideas in progress. Those are the ideas where there is no argument in a society, but you are not able to implement those things. And really there are four things here. One is the question of education. For some reason, whatever reason — lack of money, lack of priorities, because of religion having an older culture — primary education was never given the focus it required. But now I believe it's reached a point where it has become very important. Unfortunately the government schools don't function, so children are going to private schools today. Even in the slums of India more than 50 percent of urban kids are going into private schools. So there is a big challenge in getting the schools to work. But having said that, there is an enormous desire among everybody, including the poor, to educate their children. So I believe primary education is an idea which is arrived but not yet implemented. Similarly, infrastructure — for a long time, infrastructure was not a priority. Those of you who have been to India have seen that. It's certainly not like China. But today I believe finally infrastructure is something which is agreed upon and which people want to implement. It is reflected in the political statements. 20 years back the political slogan was, "Roti, kapada, makaan," which meant, "Food, clothing and shelter." And today's political slogan is, "Bijli, sadak, pani," which means "Electricity, water and roads." And that is a change in the mindset where infrastructure is now accepted. So I do believe this is an idea which has arrived, but simply not implemented. The third thing is again cities. It's because Gandhi believed in villages and because the British ruled from the cities, therefore Nehru thought of New Delhi as an un-Indian city. For a long time we have neglected our cities. And that is reflected in the kinds of situations that you see. But today, finally, after economic reforms, and economic growth, I think the notion that cities are engines of economic growth, cities are engines of creativity, cities are engines of innovation, have finally been accepted. And I think now you're seeing the move towards improving our cities. Again, an idea which is arrived, but not yet implemented. The final thing is the notion of India as a single market — because when you didn't think of India as a market, you didn't really bother about a single market, because it didn't really matter. And therefore you had a situation where every state had its own market for products. Every province had its own market for agriculture. Increasingly now the policies of taxation and infrastructure and all that, are moving towards creating India as a single market. So there is a form of internal globalization which is happening, which is as important as external globalization. These four factors I believe — the ones of primary education, infrastructure, urbanization, and single market — in my view are ideas in India which have been accepted, but not implemented. Then we have what I believe are the ideas in conflict. The ideas that we argue about. These are the arguments we have which cause gridlock. What are those ideas? One is, I think, are ideological issues. Because of the historical Indian background, in the caste system, and because of the fact that there have been many people who have been left out in the cold, a lot of the politics is about how to make sure that we'll address that. And it leads to reservations and other techniques. It's also related to the way that we subsidize our people, and all the left and right arguments that we have. A lot of the Indian problems are related to the ideology of caste and other things. This policy is causing gridlock. This is one of the factors which needs to be resolved. The second one is the labor policies that we have, which make it so difficult for entrepreneurs to create standardized jobs in companies, that 93 percent of Indian labor is in the unorganized sector. They have no benefits: they don't have social security; they don't have pension; they don't have healthcare; none of those things. This needs to be fixed because unless you can bring these people into the formal workforce, you will end up creating a whole lot of people who are completely disenfranchised. Therefore we need to create a new set of labor laws, which are not as onerous as they are today. At the same time give a policy for a lot more people to be in the formal sector, and create the jobs for the millions of people that we need to create jobs for. The third thing is our higher education. Indian higher education is completely regulated. It's very difficult to start a private university. It's very difficult for a foreign university to come to India. As a result of that our higher education is simply not keeping pace with India's demands. That is leading to a lot of problems which we need to address. But most important I believe are the ideas we need to anticipate. Here India can look at what is happening in the west and elsewhere, and look at what needs to be done. The first thing is, we're very fortunate that technology is at a point where it is much more advanced than when other countries had the development. So we can use technology for governance. We can use technology for direct benefits. We can use technology for transparency, and many other things. The second thing is, the health issue. India has equally horrible health problems of the higher state of cardiac issue, the higher state of diabetes, the higher state of obesity. So there is no point in replacing a set of poor country diseases with a set of rich country diseases. Therefore we're to rethink the whole way we look at health. We really need to put in place a strategy so that we don't go to the other extreme of health. Similarly today in the West you're seeing the problem of entitlement — the cost of social security, the cost of Medicare, the cost of Medicaid. Therefore when you are a young country, again you have a chance to put in place a modern pension system so that you don't create entitlement problems as you grow old. And then again, India does not have the luxury of making its environment dirty, because it has to marry environment and development. Just to give an idea, the world has to stabilize at something like 20 gigatons per year. On a population of nine billion our average carbon emission will have to be about two tons per year. India is already at two tons per year. But if India grows at something like eight percent, income per year per person will go to 16 times by 2050. So we're saying: income growing at 16 times and no growth in carbon. Therefore we will fundamentally rethink the way we look at the environment, the way we look at energy, the way we create whole new paradigms of development. Now why does this matter to you? Why does what's happening 10 thousand miles away matter to all of you? Number one, this matters because this represents more than a billion people. A billion people, 1/6th of the world population. It matters because this is a democracy. And it is important to prove that growth and democracy are not incompatible, that you can have a democracy, that you can have an open society, and you can have growth. It's important because if you solve these problems, you can solve the problems of poverty in the world. It's important because you need it to solve the world's environment problems. If we really want to come to a point, we really want to put a cap on our carbon emission, we want to really lower the use of energy — it has to be solved in countries like India. You know if you look at the development in the West over 200 years, the average growth may have been about two percent. Here we are talking about countries growing at eight to nine percent. And that makes a huge difference. When India was growing at about three, 3.5 percent and the population was growing at two percent, its per capita income was doubling every 45 years. When the economic growth goes to eight percent and population growth drops to 1.5 percent, then per capita income is doubling every nine years. In other words, you're certainly fast-forwarding this whole process of a billion people going to prosperity. And you must have a clear strategy which is important for India and important for the world. That is why I think all of you should be equally concerned with it as I am. Thank you very much. (Applause)

A full-band beatbox

Naturally 7

{0: ' Naturally 7'}

{0: ['a capella ensemble']}

{0: 'The group Naturally 7 practices vocal play -- the art of using the human voice to mimic instruments. It\'s as if a beatboxing troupe decided they could "-box" a whole orchestra: flute, horns, drums, guitar -- building a vocal wall of sound.'}

2009-02-04

2009-05-15

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['entertainment', 'innovation', 'music', 'performance', 'singer', 'live music']

{364: 'Playing invisible turntables', 158: '"Thula Mama"', 254: "Wake up! It's They Might Be Giants!", 752: 'A warm embrace that saves lives', 1241: 'What do babies think?', 1075: 'The linguistic genius of babies'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/naturally_7_a_full_band_beatbox/

One-of-a-kind R&amp;B group Naturally 7 beatboxes an orchestra's worth of instruments to groove through their smooth single, "Fly Baby."

♫ I think I'm ready to do my thing ♫ ♫ I think I'm ready to take my chances ♫ ♫ I've been dining out and all stressed out ♫ ♫ Due to the circumstances. See? ♫ ♫ I gotta get up, get up, get up, get up ♫ ♫ Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up ♫ ♫ I see what you're saying ♫ ♫ We sent a demo to the world, they said it sounds like Take 6 ♫ ♫ I said "Hold on, wait a minute, I'll be back with the remix" ♫ ♫ They looking at us funny, we can't make any money ♫ ♫ It took us years to figure out that we was dealing with dummies ♫ ♫ They didn't understand the sound from the Bronx, that's the boogie down ♫ ♫ to Huntsville, Alabama, there's no circles in my planner, so ♫ ♫ It was time to make the product, so we hooked up with Townsend ♫ ♫ Made a deal with John Neal, on the road sold ten thousand ♫ ♫ WBA, that means a trip to Nashville ♫ ♫ Festplatte showed up and said them boys are naturals ♫ ♫ Can you hear what they were hearing? See what they were seeing? ♫ ♫ From Bronx to Berlin, we took the tour European ♫ ♫ All vocal yeah, we widit, call the album "What is it?" ♫ ♫ With Sarah Connor, set the goal for number one and we hit it ♫ ♫ But now it's Kev, Sim, Drew, Stew, time for a new day ♫ ♫ Ring the alarm, hit 'em on Skype or a two-way ♫ ♫ Sung by the words, we ready to fly! ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Time to leave that nest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! This ain't no time to rest ♫ ♫ Come on fly baby, we got work to do ♫ ♫ Here we go, spread my wings and ... ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Time to leave that nest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! This ain't no time to rest. Come on ♫ ♫ Fly baby! We got work to do ♫ ♫ Here we go. Spread my wings and fly. One more time ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Time to leave that nest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! This ain't no time to rest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! We got work to do ♫ ♫ Here we go, spread my wings and ... ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Fly baby fly ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Fly baby high ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Up to the sky ♫ ♫ Spread my wings and fly ♫ Instrumental! ♫ We're ready to fly! ♫ (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause)

The business logic of sustainability

Ray Anderson

{0: 'Ray Anderson'}

{0: ['sustainable-business pioneer']}

{0: 'Ray Anderson founded the company that makes covetable Flor carpeting. But behind the fresh design is a decades-deep commitment to sustainable ways of doing business -- culminating in the Mission Zero plan.'}

2009-02-02

2009-05-18

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'design', 'environment', 'green', 'materials', 'poetry', 'sustainability', 'technology']

{128: 'Salvation (and profit) in greentech', 104: 'Cradle to cradle design', 535: 'What comes after An Inconvenient Truth?', 1850: "Let's go all-in on selling sustainability", 1927: 'The investment logic for sustainability', 1837: 'The case for letting business solve social problems'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_anderson_the_business_logic_of_sustainability/

At his carpet company, Ray Anderson has increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional "take / make / waste" industrial system on its head. In a gentle, understated way, he shares a powerful vision for sustainable commerce.

Believe me or not, I come offering a solution to a very important part of this larger problem, with the requisite focus on climate. And the solution I offer is to the biggest culprit in this massive mistreatment of the earth by humankind, and the resulting decline of the biosphere. That culprit is business and industry, which happens to be where I have spent the last 52 years since my graduation from Georgia Tech in 1956. As an industrial engineer, cum aspiring and then successful entrepreneur. After founding my company, Interface, from scratch in 1973, 36 years ago, to produce carpet tiles in America for the business and institution markets, and shepherding it through start-up and survival to prosperity and global dominance in its field, I read Paul Hawken's book, "The Ecology of Commerce," the summer of 1994. In his book, Paul charges business and industry as, one, the major culprit in causing the decline of the biosphere, and, two, the only institution that is large enough, and pervasive enough, and powerful enough, to really lead humankind out of this mess. And by the way he convicted me as a plunderer of the earth. And I then challenged the people of Interface, my company, to lead our company and the entire industrial world to sustainability, which we defined as eventually operating our petroleum-intensive company in such a way as to take from the earth only what can be renewed by the earth, naturally and rapidly — not another fresh drop of oil — and to do no harm to the biosphere. Take nothing: do no harm. I simply said, "If Hawken is right and business and industry must lead, who will lead business and industry? Unless somebody leads, nobody will." It's axiomatic. Why not us? And thanks to the people of Interface, I have become a recovering plunderer. (Laughter) (Applause) I once told a Fortune Magazine writer that someday people like me would go to jail. And that became the headline of a Fortune article. They went on to describe me as America's greenest CEO. From plunderer to recovering plunderer, to America's greenest CEO in five years — that, frankly, was a pretty sad commentary on American CEOs in 1999. Asked later in the Canadian documentary, "The Corporation," what I meant by the "go to jail" remark, I offered that theft is a crime. And theft of our children's future would someday be a crime. But I realized, for that to be true — for theft of our children's future to be a crime — there must be a clear, demonstrable alternative to the take-make-waste industrial system that so dominates our civilization, and is the major culprit, stealing our children's future, by digging up the earth and converting it to products that quickly become waste in a landfill or an incinerator — in short, digging up the earth and converting it to pollution. According to Paul and Anne Ehrlich and a well-known environmental impact equation, impact — a bad thing — is the product of population, affluence and technology. That is, impact is generated by people, what they consume in their affluence, and how it is produced. And though the equation is largely subjective, you can perhaps quantify people, and perhaps quantify affluence, but technology is abusive in too many ways to quantify. So the equation is conceptual. Still it works to help us understand the problem. So we set out at Interface, in 1994, to create an example: to transform the way we made carpet, a petroleum-intensive product for materials as well as energy, and to transform our technologies so they diminished environmental impact, rather than multiplied it. Paul and Anne Ehrlich's environmental impact equation: I is equal to P times A times T: population, affluence and technology. I wanted Interface to rewrite that equation so that it read I equals P times A divided by T. Now, the mathematically-minded will see immediately that T in the numerator increases impact — a bad thing — but T in the denominator decreases impact. So I ask, "What would move T, technology, from the numerator — call it T1 — where it increases impact, to the denominator — call it T2 — where it reduces impact? I thought about the characteristics of first industrial revolution, T1, as we practiced it at Interface, and it had the following characteristics. Extractive: taking raw materials from the earth. Linear: take, make, waste. Powered by fossil fuel-derived energy. Wasteful: abusive and focused on labor productivity. More carpet per man-hour. Thinking it through, I realized that all those attributes must be changed to move T to the denominator. In the new industrial revolution extractive must be replaced by renewable; linear by cyclical; fossil fuel energy by renewable energy, sunlight; wasteful by waste-free; and abusive by benign; and labor productivity by resource productivity. And I reasoned that if we could make those transformative changes, and get rid of T1 altogether, we could reduce our impact to zero, including our impact on the climate. And that became the Interface plan in 1995, and has been the plan ever since. We have measured our progress very rigorously. So I can tell you how far we have come in the ensuing 12 years. Net greenhouse gas emissions down 82 percent in absolute tonnage. (Applause) Over the same span of time sales have increased by two-thirds and profits have doubled. So an 82 percent absolute reduction translates into a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gas intensity relative to sales. This is the magnitude of the reduction the entire global technosphere must realize by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate disruption — so the scientists are telling us. Fossil fuel usage is down 60 percent per unit of production, due to efficiencies in renewables. The cheapest, most secure barrel of oil there is is the one not used through efficiencies. Water usage is down 75 percent in our worldwide carpet tile business. Down 40 percent in our broadloom carpet business, which we acquired in 1993 right here in California, City of Industry, where water is so precious. Renewable or recyclable materials are 25 percent of the total, and growing rapidly. Renewable energy is 27 percent of our total, going for 100 percent. We have diverted 148 million pounds — that's 74,000 tons — of used carpet from landfills, closing the loop on material flows through reverse logistics and post-consumer recycling technologies that did not exist when we started 14 years ago. Those new cyclical technologies have contributed mightily to the fact that we have produced and sold 85 million square yards of climate-neutral carpet since 2004, meaning no net contribution to global climate disruption in producing the carpet throughout the supply chain, from mine and well head clear to end-of-life reclamation — independent third-party certified. We call it Cool Carpet. And it has been a powerful marketplace differentiator, increasing sales and profits. Three years ago we launched carpet tile for the home, under the brand Flor, misspelled F-L-O-R. You can point and click today at Flor.com and have Cool Carpet delivered to your front door in five days. It is practical, and pretty too. (Laughter) (Applause) We reckon that we are a bit over halfway to our goal: zero impact, zero footprint. We've set 2020 as our target year for zero, for reaching the top, the summit of Mount Sustainability. We call this Mission Zero. And this is perhaps the most important facet: we have found Mission Zero to be incredibly good for business. A better business model, a better way to bigger profits. Here is the business case for sustainability. From real life experience, costs are down, not up, reflecting some 400 million dollars of avoided costs in pursuit of zero waste — the first face of Mount Sustainability. This has paid all the costs for the transformation of Interface. And this dispels a myth too, this false choice between the environment and the economy. Our products are the best they've ever been, inspired by design for sustainability, an unexpected wellspring of innovation. Our people are galvanized around this shared higher purpose. You cannot beat it for attracting the best people and bringing them together. And the goodwill of the marketplace is astonishing. No amount of advertising, no clever marketing campaign, at any price, could have produced or created this much goodwill. Costs, products, people, marketplaces — what else is there? It is a better business model. And here is our 14-year record of sales and profits. There is a dip there, from 2001 to 2003: a dip when our sales, over a three-year period, were down 17 percent. But the marketplace was down 36 percent. We literally gained market share. We might not have survived that recession but for the advantages of sustainability. If every business were pursuing Interface plans, would that solve all our problems? I don't think so. I remain troubled by the revised Ehrlich equation, I equals P times A divided by T2. That A is a capital A, suggesting that affluence is an end in itself. But what if we reframed Ehrlich further? And what if we made A a lowercase 'a,' suggesting that it is a means to an end, and that end is happiness — more happiness with less stuff. You know that would reframe civilization itself — (Applause) — and our whole system of economics, if not for our species, then perhaps for the one that succeeds us: the sustainable species, living on a finite earth, ethically, happily and ecologically in balance with nature and all her natural systems for a thousand generations, or 10,000 generations — that is to say, into the indefinite future. But does the earth have to wait for our extinction as a species? Well maybe so. But I don't think so. At Interface we really intend to bring this prototypical sustainable, zero-footprint industrial company fully into existence by 2020. We can see our way now, clear to the top of that mountain. And now the challenge is in execution. And as my good friend and adviser Amory Lovins says, "If something exists, it must be possible." (Laughter) If we can actually do it, it must be possible. If we, a petro-intensive company can do it, anybody can. And if anybody can, it follows that everybody can. Hawken fulfilled business and industry, leading humankind away from the abyss because, with continued unchecked decline of the biosphere, a very dear person is at risk here — frankly, an unacceptable risk. Who is that person? Not you. Not I. But let me introduce you to the one who is most at risk here. And I myself met this person in the early days of this mountain climb. On a Tuesday morning in March of 1996, I was talking to people, as I did at every opportunity back then, bringing them along and often not knowing whether I was connecting. But about five days later back in Atlanta, I received an email from Glenn Thomas, one of my people in the California meeting. He was sending me an original poem that he had composed after our Tuesday morning together. And when I read it it was one of the most uplifting moments of my life. Because it told me, by God, one person got it. Here is what Glenn wrote. And here is that person, most at risk. Please meet "Tomorrow's Child." "Without a name, an unseen face, and knowing not your time or place, Tomorrow's child, though yet unborn, I met you first last Tuesday morn. A wise friend introduced us two. And through his sobering point of view I saw a day that you would see, a day for you but not for me. Knowing you has changed my thinking. For I never had an inkling that perhaps the things I do might someday, somehow threaten you. Tomorrow's child, my daughter, son, I'm afraid I've just begun to think of you and of your good, though always having known I should. Begin, I will. The way the cost of what I squander, what is lost, if ever I forget that you will someday come and live here too." Well, every day of my life since, "Tomorrow's Child" has spoken to me with one simple but profound message, which I presume to share with you. We are, each and every one, a part of the web of life. The continuum of humanity, sure, but in a larger sense, the web of life itself. And we have a choice to make during our brief, brief visit to this beautiful blue and green living planet: to hurt it or to help it. For you, it's your call. Thank you. (Applause)

Are we in control of our own decisions?

Dan Ariely

{0: 'Dan Ariely'}

{0: ['behavioral economist']}

{0: 'The dismal science of economics is not as firmly grounded in actual behavior as was once supposed. In "Predictably Irrational," Dan Ariely told us why.'}

2008-12-12

2009-05-19

EG 2008

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'gl', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'is', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'lv', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sh', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'decision-making', 'economics', 'global issues', 'psychology', 'science', 'self', 'society', 'personality', 'Best of the Web']

{487: 'Our buggy moral code', 78: 'Visual illusions that show how we (mis)think', 485: 'Cute, sexy, sweet, funny', 93: 'The paradox of choice', 26915: 'How to let go of being a "good" person -- and become a better person', 1437: 'Perspective is everything'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions/

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions.

I'll tell you a little bit about irrational behavior. Not yours, of course — other people's. (Laughter) So after being at MIT for a few years, I realized that writing academic papers is not that exciting. You know, I don't know how many of those you read, but it's not fun to read and often not fun to write — even worse to write. So I decided to try and write something more fun. And I came up with an idea that I would write a cookbook. And the title for my cookbook was going to be, "Dining Without Crumbs: The Art of Eating Over the Sink." (Laughter) And it was going to be a look at life through the kitchen. I was quite excited about this. I was going to talk a little bit about research, a little bit about the kitchen. We do so much in the kitchen, I thought this would be interesting. I wrote a couple of chapters, and took it to MIT Press and they said, "Cute, but not for us. Go and find somebody else." I tried other people, and everybody said the same thing, "Cute. Not for us." Until somebody said, "Look, if you're serious about this, you have to write about your research first; you have to publish something, then you'll get the opportunity to write something else. If you really want to do it, you have to do it." I said, "I don't want to write about my research. I do it all day long, I want to write something a bit more free, less constrained." And this person was very forceful and said, "Look, that's the only way you'll ever do it." So I said, "Okay, if I have to do it —" I had a sabbatical. I said, "I'll write about my research, if there's no other way. And then I'll get to do my cookbook." So, I wrote a book on my research. And it turned out to be quite fun in two ways. First of all, I enjoyed writing. But the more interesting thing was that I started learning from people. It's a fantastic time to write, because there's so much feedback you can get from people. People write to me about their personal experience, and about their examples, and where they disagree, and their nuances. And even being here — I mean, the last few days, I've known heights of obsessive behavior I never thought about. (Laughter) Which I think is just fascinating. I will tell you a little bit about irrational behavior, and I want to start by giving you some examples of visual illusion as a metaphor for rationality. So think about these two tables. And you must have seen this illusion. If I asked you what's longer, the vertical line on the table on the left, or the horizontal line on the table on the right, which one seems longer? Can anybody see anything but the left one being longer? No, right? It's impossible. But the nice thing about visual illusion is we can easily demonstrate mistakes. So I can put some lines on; it doesn't help. I can animate the lines. And to the extent you believe I didn't shrink the lines, which I didn't, I've proven to you that your eyes were deceiving you. Now, the interesting thing about this is when I take the lines away, it's as if you haven't learned anything in the last minute. (Laughter) You can't look at this and say, "Now I see reality as it is." Right? It's impossible to overcome this sense that this is indeed longer. Our intuition is really fooling us in a repeatable, predictable, consistent way. and there is almost nothing we can do about it, aside from taking a ruler and starting to measure it. Here's another one. It's one of my favorite illusions. What color is the top arrow pointing to? Audience: Brown. Dan Ariely: Brown. Thank you. The bottom one? Yellow. Turns out they're identical. Can anybody see them as identical? Very, very hard. I can cover the rest of the cube up. If I cover the rest of the cube, you can see that they are identical. If you don't believe me, you can get the slide later and do some arts and crafts and see that they're identical. But again, it's the same story, that if we take the background away, the illusion comes back. There is no way for us not to see this illusion. I guess maybe if you're colorblind, I don't think you can see that. I want you to think about illusion as a metaphor. Vision is one of the best things we do. We have a huge part of our brain dedicated to vision — bigger than dedicated to anything else. We use our vision more hours of the day than anything else. We're evolutionarily designed to use vision. And if we have these predictable repeatable mistakes in vision, which we're so good at, what are the chances we won't make even more mistakes in something we're not as good at, for example, financial decision-making. (Laughter) Something we don't have an evolutionary reason to do, we don't have a specialized part of the brain for, and we don't do that many hours of the day. The argument is in those cases, it might be that we actually make many more mistakes. And worse — not having an easy way to see them, because in visual illusions, we can easily demonstrate the mistakes; in cognitive illusion it's much, much harder to demonstrate the mistakes to people. So I want to show you some cognitive illusions, or decision-making illusions, in the same way. And this is one of my favorite plots in social sciences. It's from a paper by Johnson and Goldstein. It basically shows the percentage of people who indicated they would be interested in donating their organs. These are different countries in Europe. You basically see two types of countries: countries on the right, that seem to be giving a lot; and countries on the left that seem to giving very little, or much less. The question is, why? Why do some countries give a lot and some countries give a little? When you ask people this question, they usually think that it has to be about culture. How much do you care about people? Giving organs to somebody else is probably about how much you care about society, how linked you are. Or maybe it's about religion. But if you look at this plot, you can see that countries that we think about as very similar, actually exhibit very different behavior. For example, Sweden is all the way on the right, and Denmark, which we think is culturally very similar, is all the way on the left. Germany is on the left, and Austria is on the right. The Netherlands is on the left, and Belgium is on the right. And finally, depending on your particular version of European similarity, you can think about the U.K. and France as either similar culturally or not, but it turns out that with organ donation, they are very different. By the way, the Netherlands is an interesting story. You see, the Netherlands is kind of the biggest of the small group. It turns out that they got to 28 percent after mailing every household in the country a letter, begging people to join this organ donation program. You know the expression, "Begging only gets you so far." It's 28 percent in organ donation. (Laughter) But whatever the countries on the right are doing, they're doing a much better job than begging. So what are they doing? Turns out the secret has to do with a form at the DMV. And here is the story. The countries on the left have a form at the DMV that looks something like this. "Check the box below if you want to participate in the organ donor program." And what happens? People don't check, and they don't join. The countries on the right, the ones that give a lot, have a slightly different form. It says, "Check the box below if you don't want to participate ..." Interestingly enough, when people get this, they again don't check, but now they join. (Laughter) Now, think about what this means. You know, we wake up in the morning and we feel we make decisions. We wake up in the morning and we open the closet; we feel that we decide what to wear. we open the refrigerator and we feel that we decide what to eat. What this is actually saying, is that many of these decisions are not residing within us. They are residing in the person who is designing that form. When you walk into the DMV, the person who designed the form will have a huge influence on what you'll end up doing. Now, it's also very hard to intuit these results. Think about it for yourself. How many of you believe that if you went to renew your license tomorrow, and you went to the DMV, and you encountered one of these forms, that it would actually change your own behavior? Very hard to think that it would influence us. We can say, "Oh, these funny Europeans, of course it would influence them." But when it comes to us, we have such a feeling that we're in the driver's seat, such a feeling that we're in control and we are making the decision, that it's very hard to even accept the idea that we actually have an illusion of making a decision, rather than an actual decision. Now, you might say, "These are decisions we don't care about." In fact, by definition, these are decisions about something that will happen to us after we die. How could we care about something less than about something that happens after we die? So a standard economist, somebody who believes in rationality, would say, "You know what? The cost of lifting the pencil and marking a "V" is higher than the possible benefit of the decision, so that's why we get this effect." (Laughter) But, in fact, it's not because it's easy. It's not because it's trivial. It's not because we don't care. It's the opposite. It's because we care. It's difficult and it's complex. And it's so complex that we don't know what to do. And because we have no idea what to do, we just pick whatever it was that was chosen for us. I'll give you one more example. This is from a paper by Redelmeier and Shafir. And they said, "Would this effect also happens to experts? People who are well-paid, experts in their decisions, and who make a lot of them?" And they took a group of physicians. They presented to them a case study of a patient. They said, "Here is a patient. He is a 67-year-old farmer. He's been suffering from right hip pain for a while." And then, they said to the physicians, "You decided a few weeks ago that nothing is working for this patient. All these medications, nothing seems to be working. So you refer the patient for hip replacement therapy. Hip replacement. Okay?" So the patient is on a path to have his hip replaced. Then they said to half of the physicians, "Yesterday, you reviewed the patient's case, and you realized that you forgot to try one medication. You did not try ibuprofen. What do you do? Do you pull the patient back and try ibuprofen? Or do you let him go and have hip replacement?" Well, the good news is that most physicians in this case decided to pull the patient and try ibuprofen. Very good for the physicians. To the other group of physicians, they said, "Yesterday when you reviewed the case, you discovered there were two medications you didn't try out yet — ibuprofen and piroxicam." You have two medications you didn't try out yet. What do you do? You let him go, or you pull him back? And if you pull him back, do you try ibuprofen or piroxicam? Which one?" Now, think of it: This decision makes it as easy to let the patient continue with hip replacement, but pulling him back, all of the sudden it becomes more complex. There is one more decision. What happens now? The majority of the physicians now choose to let the patient go for a hip replacement. I hope this worries you, by the way — (Laughter) when you go to see your physician. The thing is that no physician would ever say, "Piroxicam, ibuprofen, hip replacement. Let's go for hip replacement." But the moment you set this as the default, it has a huge power over whatever people end up doing. I'll give you a couple of more examples on irrational decision-making. Imagine I give you a choice: Do you want to go for a weekend to Rome, all expenses paid — hotel, transportation, food, a continental breakfast, everything — or a weekend in Paris? Now, weekend in Paris, weekend in Rome — these are different things. They have different food, different culture, different art. Imagine I added a choice to the set that nobody wanted. Imagine I said, "A weekend in Rome, a weekend in Paris, or having your car stolen?" (Laughter) It's a funny idea, because why would having your car stolen, in this set, influence anything? (Laughter) But what if the option to have your car stolen was not exactly like this? What if it was a trip to Rome, all expenses paid, transportation, breakfast, but it doesn't include coffee in the morning? If you want coffee, you have to pay for it yourself, it's two euros 50. (Laughter) Now in some ways, given that you can have Rome with coffee, why would you possibly want Rome without coffee? It's like having your car stolen. It's an inferior option. But guess what happened? The moment you add Rome without coffee, Rome with coffee becomes more popular, and people choose it. The fact that you have Rome without coffee makes Rome with coffee look superior, and not just to Rome without coffee — even superior to Paris. (Laughter) Here are two examples of this principle. This was an ad in The Economist a few years ago that gave us three choices: an online subscription for 59 dollars, a print subscription for 125 dollars, or you could get both for 125. (Laughter) Now I looked at this, and I called up The Economist, and I tried to figure out what they were thinking. And they passed me from one person to another to another, until eventually I got to the person who was in charge of the website, and I called them up, and they went to check what was going on. The next thing I know, the ad is gone, no explanation. So I decided to do the experiment that I would have loved The Economist to do with me. I took this and I gave it to 100 MIT students. I said, "What would you choose?" These are the market shares — most people wanted the combo deal. Thankfully, nobody wanted the dominant option. That means our students can read. (Laughter) But now, if you have an option that nobody wants, you can take it off, right? So I printed another version of this, where I eliminated the middle option. I gave it to another 100 students. Here is what happened: Now the most popular option became the least popular, and the least popular became the most popular. What was happening was the option that was useless, in the middle, was useless in the sense that nobody wanted it. But it wasn't useless in the sense that it helped people figure out what they wanted. In fact, relative to the option in the middle, which was get only the print for 125, the print and web for 125 looked like a fantastic deal. And as a consequence, people chose it. The general idea here, by the way, is that we actually don't know our preferences that well. And because we don't know our preferences that well, we're susceptible to all of these influences from the external forces: the defaults, the particular options that are presented to us, and so on. One more example of this. People believe that when we deal with physical attraction, we see somebody, and we know immediately whether we like them or not, if we're attracted or not. This is why we have these four-minute dates. So I decided to do this experiment with people. I'll show you images here, no real people, but the experiment was with people. I showed some people a picture of Tom, and a picture of Jerry. and I said, "Who do you want to date? Tom or Jerry?" But for half the people, I added an ugly version of Jerry. I took Photoshop and I made Jerry slightly less attractive. (Laughter) For the other people, I added an ugly version of Tom. And the question was, will ugly Jerry and ugly Tom help their respective, more attractive brothers? The answer was absolutely yes. When ugly Jerry was around, Jerry was popular. When ugly Tom was around, Tom was popular. (Laughter) This of course has two very clear implications for life in general. If you ever go bar-hopping, who do you want to take with you? (Laughter) You want a slightly uglier version of yourself. (Laughter) Similar, but slightly uglier. (Laughter) The second point, or course, is that if somebody invites you to bar hop, you know what they think about you. (Laughter) Now you get it. What is the general point? The general point is that, when we think about economics, we have this beautiful view of human nature. "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!" We have this view of ourselves, of others. The behavioral economics perspective is slightly less "generous" to people; in fact, in medical terms, that's our view. (Laughter) But there is a silver lining. The silver lining is, I think, kind of the reason that behavioral economics is interesting and exciting. Are we Superman, or are we Homer Simpson? When it comes to building the physical world, we kind of understand our limitations. We build steps. And we build these things that not everybody can use, obviously. (Laughter) We understand our limitations, and we build around them. But for some reason, when it comes to the mental world, when we design things like healthcare and retirement and stock markets, we somehow forget the idea that we are limited. I think that if we understood our cognitive limitations in the same way we understand our physical limitations, even though they don't stare us in the face the same way, we could design a better world, and that, I think, is the hope of this thing. Thank you very much. (Applause)

10 things you didn't know about orgasm

Mary Roach

{0: 'Mary Roach'}

{0: ['writer']}

{0: "Death, the afterlife, and now sex -- Mary Roach tackles the most pondered and least understood conundrums that have baffled humans for centuries. (She's funny, too.)"}

2009-02-06

2009-05-20

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'lv', 'mr', 'mt', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'history', 'humor', 'science', 'sex', 'writing', 'books']

{16: 'Why we love, why we cheat', 2708: 'What young women believe about their own sexual pleasure', 15813: 'The truth about unwanted arousal', 2278: 'One woman, five characters, and a sex lesson from the future', 1166: 'Is anatomy destiny?', 2175: 'My mother’s strange definition of empowerment'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/mary_roach_10_things_you_didn_t_know_about_orgasm/

"Bonk" author Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious. (This talk is aimed at adults. Viewer discretion advised.)

Alright. I'm going to show you a couple of images from a very diverting paper in The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine. I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that it is the most diverting paper ever published in The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine. The title is "Observations of In-Utero Masturbation." (Laughter) Okay. Now on the left you can see the hand — that's the big arrow — and the penis on the right. The hand hovering. And over here we have, in the words of radiologist Israel Meisner, "The hand grasping the penis in a fashion resembling masturbation movements." Bear in mind this was an ultrasound, so it would have been moving images. Orgasm is a reflex of the autonomic nervous system. Now, this is the part of the nervous system that deals with the things that we don't consciously control, like digestion, heart rate and sexual arousal. And the orgasm reflex can be triggered by a surprisingly broad range of input. Genital stimulation. Duh. But also, Kinsey interviewed a woman who could be brought to orgasm by having someone stroke her eyebrow. People with spinal cord injuries, like paraplegias, quadriplegias, will often develop a very, very sensitive area right above the level of their injury, wherever that is. There is such a thing as a knee orgasm in the literature. I think the most curious one that I came across was a case report of a woman who had an orgasm every time she brushed her teeth. (Laughter) Something in the complex sensory-motor action of brushing her teeth was triggering orgasm. And she went to a neurologist, who was fascinated. He checked to see if it was something in the toothpaste, but no — it happened with any brand. They stimulated her gums with a toothpick, to see if that was doing it. No. It was the whole, you know, motion. And the amazing thing to me is that you would think this woman would have excellent oral hygiene. (Laughter) Sadly — this is what it said in the journal paper — "She believed that she was possessed by demons and switched to mouthwash for her oral care." It's so sad. (Laughter) When I was working on the book, I interviewed a woman who can think herself to orgasm. She was part of a study at Rutgers University. You've got to love that. Rutgers. So I interviewed her in Oakland, in a sushi restaurant. And I said, "So, could you do it right here?" And she said, "Yeah, but you know I'd rather finish my meal if you don't mind." (Laughter) But afterwards, she was kind enough to demonstrate on a bench outside. It was remarkable. It took about one minute. And I said to her, "Are you just doing this all the time?" (Laughter) She said, "No. Honestly, when I get home, I'm usually too tired." (Laughter) She said that the last time she had done it was on the Disneyland tram. (Laughter) The headquarters for orgasm, along the spinal nerve, is something called the sacral nerve root, which is back here. And if you trigger, if you stimulate with an electrode, the precise spot, you will trigger an orgasm. And it is a fact that you can trigger spinal reflexes in dead people — a certain kind of dead person, a beating-heart cadaver. Now this is somebody who is brain-dead, legally dead, definitely checked out, but is being kept alive on a respirator, so that their organs will be oxygenated for transplantation. Now in one of these brain-dead people, if you trigger the right spot, you will see something every now and then. There is a reflex called the Lazarus reflex. And this is — I'll demonstrate as best I can, not being dead. It's like this. You trigger the spot. The dead guy, or gal, goes... like that. Very unsettling for people working in pathology labs. (Laughter) Now, if you can trigger the Lazarus reflex in a dead person, why not the orgasm reflex? I asked this question to a brain death expert, Stephanie Mann, who was foolish enough to return my emails. (Laughter) I said, "So, could you conceivably trigger an orgasm in a dead person?" She said, "Yes, if the sacral nerve is being oxygenated, you conceivably could." Obviously it wouldn't be as much fun for the person. But it would be an orgasm — (Laughter) nonetheless. There is a researcher at the University of Alabama who does orgasm research. I said to her, "You should do an experiment. You know? You can get cadavers if you work at a university." I said, "You should actually do this." She said, "You get the human subjects review board approval for this one." (Laughter) According to 1930s marriage manual author, Theodoor van De Velde, a slight seminal odor can be detected on the breath of a woman within about an hour after sexual intercourse. Theodoor van De Velde was something of a semen connoisseur. (Laughter) This is a guy writing a book, "Ideal Marriage," you know. Very heavy hetero guy. But he wrote in this book, "Ideal Marriage" — he said that he could differentiate between the semen of a young man, which he said had a fresh, exhilarating smell, and the semen of mature men, whose semen smelled, quote, "Remarkably like that of the flowers of the Spanish chestnut. Sometimes quite freshly floral, and then again sometimes extremely pungent." (Laughter) Okay. In 1999, in the state of Israel, a man began hiccupping. And this was one of those cases that went on and on. He tried everything his friends suggested. Nothing seemed to help. Days went by. At a certain point, the man, still hiccupping, had sex with his wife. And lo and behold, the hiccups went away. He told his doctor, who published a case report in a Canadian medical journal under the title, "Sexual Intercourse as a Potential Treatment for Intractable Hiccups." I love this article because at a certain point they suggested that unattached hiccuppers could try masturbation. (Laughter) I love that because there is like a whole demographic: unattached hiccuppers. (Laughter) Married, single, unattached hiccupper. In the 1900s, early 1900s, a lot of gynecologists believed that when a woman has an orgasm, the contractions serve to suck the semen up through the cervix and sort of deliver it really quickly to the egg, thereby upping the odds of conception. It was called the "upsuck" theory. (Laughter) If you go all the way back to Hippocrates, physicians believed that orgasm in women was not just helpful for conception, but necessary. Doctors back then were routinely telling men the importance of pleasuring their wives. Marriage-manual author and semen-sniffer Theodoor van De Velde — (Laughter) has a line in his book. I loved this guy. I got a lot of mileage out of Theodoor van De Velde. He had this line in his book that supposedly comes from the Habsburg Monarchy, where there was an empress Maria Theresa, who was having trouble conceiving. And apparently the royal court physician said to her, "I am of the opinion that the vulva of your most sacred majesty be titillated for some time prior to intercourse." (Laughter) It's apparently, I don't know, on the record somewhere. Masters and Johnson: now we're moving forward to the 1950s. Masters and Johnson were upsuck skeptics, which is also really fun to say. They didn't buy it. And they decided, being Masters and Johnson, that they would get to the bottom of it. They brought women into the lab — I think it was five women — and outfitted them with cervical caps containing artificial semen. And in the artificial semen was a radio-opaque substance, such that it would show up on an X-ray. This is the 1950s. Anyway, these women sat in front of an X-ray device. And they masturbated. And Masters and Johnson looked to see if the semen was being sucked up. Did not find any evidence of upsuck. You may be wondering, "How do you make artificial semen?" (Laughter) I have an answer for you. I have two answers. You can use flour and water, or cornstarch and water. I actually found three separate recipes in the literature. (Laughter) My favorite being the one that says — you know, they have the ingredients listed, and then in a recipe it will say, for example, "Yield: two dozen cupcakes." This one said, "Yield: one ejaculate." (Laughter) There's another way that orgasm might boost fertility. This one involves men. Sperm that sit around in the body for a week or more start to develop abnormalities that make them less effective at head-banging their way into the egg. British sexologist Roy Levin has speculated that this is perhaps why men evolved to be such enthusiastic and frequent masturbators. He said, "If I keep tossing myself off I get fresh sperm being made." Which I thought was an interesting idea, theory. So now you have an evolutionary excuse. (Laughter) Okay. (Laughter) All righty. There is considerable evidence for upsuck in the animal kingdom — pigs, for instance. In Denmark, the Danish National Committee for Pig Production found out that if you sexually stimulate a sow while you artificially inseminate her, you will see a six-percent increase in the farrowing rate, which is the number of piglets produced. So they came up with this five-point stimulation plan for the sows. There is posters they put in the barn, and they have a DVD. And I got a copy of this DVD. (Laughter) This is my unveiling, because I am going to show you a clip. (Laughter) So, okay. Now, here we go, la la la, off to work. It all looks very innocent. He's going to be doing things with his hands that the boar would use his snout, lacking hands. Okay. (Laughter) This is it. The boar has a very odd courtship repertoire. (Laughter) This is to mimic the weight of the boar. (Laughter) You should know, the clitoris of the pig is inside the vagina. So this may be sort of titillating for her. Here we go. (Laughter) And the happy result. (Applause) I love this video. There is a point in this video, towards the beginning, where they zoom in for a close up of his hand with his wedding ring, as if to say, "It's okay, it's just his job. He really does like women." (Laughter) Okay. When I was in Denmark, my host was named Anne Marie. And I said, "So why don't you just stimulate the clitoris of the pig? Why don't you have the farmers do that? That's not one of your five steps." I have to read you what she said, because I love it. She said, "It was a big hurdle just to get farmers to touch underneath the vulva. So we thought, let's not mention the clitoris right now." (Laughter) Shy but ambitious pig farmers, however, can purchase a — this is true — a sow vibrator, that hangs on the sperm feeder tube to vibrate. Because, as I mentioned, the clitoris is inside the vagina. So possibly, you know, a little more arousing than it looks. And I also said to her, "Now, these sows. I mean, you may have noticed there. The sow doesn't look to be in the throes of ecstasy." And she said, you can't make that conclusion, because animals don't register pain or pleasure on their faces in the same way that we do. Pigs, for example, are more like dogs. They use the upper half of the face; the ears are very expressive. So you're not really sure what's going on with the pig. Primates, on the other hand, we use our mouths more. This is the ejaculation face of the stump-tailed macaque. (Laughter) And, interestingly, this has been observed in female macaques, but only when mounting another female. (Laughter) Masters and Johnson. In the 1950s, they decided, okay, we're going to figure out the entire human sexual response cycle, from arousal, all the way through orgasm, in men and women — everything that happens in the human body. Okay, with women, a lot of this is happening inside. This did not stop Masters and Johnson. They developed an artificial coition machine. This is basically a penis camera on a motor. There is a phallus, clear acrylic phallus, with a camera and a light source, attached to a motor that is kind of going like this. And the woman would have sex with it. That is what they would do. Pretty amazing. Sadly, this device has been dismantled. This just kills me, not because I wanted to use it — I wanted to see it. (Laughter) One fine day, Alfred Kinsey decided to calculate the average distance traveled by ejaculated semen. This was not idle curiosity. Doctor Kinsey had heard — and there was a theory going around at the time, this being the 1940s — that the force with which semen is thrown against the cervix was a factor in fertility. Kinsey thought it was bunk, so he got to work. He got together in his lab 300 men, a measuring tape, and a movie camera. (Laughter) And in fact, he found that in three quarters of the men the stuff just kind of slopped out. It wasn't spurted or thrown or ejected under great force. However, the record holder landed just shy of the eight-foot mark, which is impressive. (Laughter) (Applause) Yes. Exactly. (Laughter) Sadly, he's anonymous. His name is not mentioned. (Laughter) In his write-up of this experiment in his book, Kinsey wrote, "Two sheets were laid down to protect the oriental carpets." (Laughter) Which is my second favorite line in the entire oeuvre of Alfred Kinsey. My favorite being, "Cheese crumbs spread before a pair of copulating rats will distract the female, but not the male." (Laughter) Thank you very much. (Applause) Thanks!

Could a Saturn moon harbor life?

Carolyn Porco

{0: 'Carolyn Porco'}

{0: ['planetary scientist']}

{0: 'As the leader of the Imaging Team on the Cassini mission to Saturn, Carolyn Porco interprets and shares the pictures coming back from this fascinating planet, its rings and its moons.'}

2009-02-06

2009-05-21

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'ug', 'uk', 'uz', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['Planets', 'astronomy', 'exploration', 'life', 'science', 'space', 'technology', 'solar system']

{306: "Let's look for life in the outer solar system", 178: 'This is Saturn', 141: "Inside the world's deepest caves", 42247: 'There may be extraterrestrial life in our solar system', 2550: '3 moons and a planet that could have alien life', 23968: 'The moon illusion'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/carolyn_porco_could_a_saturn_moon_harbor_life/

Carolyn Porco shares exciting new findings from the Cassini spacecraft's recent sweep of one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. Samples gathered from the moon's icy geysers hint that an ocean under its surface could harbor life.

Two years ago here at TED I reported that we had discovered at Saturn, with the Cassini Spacecraft, an anomalously warm and geologically active region at the southern tip of the small Saturnine moon Enceladus, seen here. This region seen here for the first time in the Cassini image taken in 2005. This is the south polar region, with the famous tiger-stripe fractures crossing the south pole. And seen just recently in late 2008, here is that region again, now half in darkness because the southern hemisphere is experiencing the onset of August and eventually winter. And I also reported that we'd made this mind-blowing discovery — this once-in-a-lifetime discovery of towering jets erupting from those fractures at the south pole, consisting of tiny water ice crystals accompanied by water vapor and simple organic compounds like carbon dioxide and methane. And at that time two years ago I mentioned that we were speculating that these jets might in fact be geysers, and erupting from pockets or chambers of liquid water underneath the surface, but we weren't really sure. However, the implications of those results — of a possible environment within this moon that could support prebiotic chemistry, and perhaps life itself — were so exciting that, in the intervening two years, we have focused more on Enceladus. We've flown the Cassini Spacecraft by this moon now several times, flying closer and deeper into these jets, into the denser regions of these jets, so that now we have come away with some very precise compositional measurements. And we have found that the organic compounds coming from this moon are in fact more complex than we previously reported. While they're not amino acids, we're now finding things like propane and benzene, hydrogen cyanide, and formaldehyde. And the tiny water crystals here now look for all the world like they are frozen droplets of salty water, which is a discovery that suggests that not only do the jets come from pockets of liquid water, but that that liquid water is in contact with rock. And that is a circumstance that could supply the chemical energy and the chemical compounds needed to sustain life. So we are very encouraged by these results. And we are much more confident now than we were two years ago that we might indeed have on this moon, under the south pole, an environment or a zone that is hospitable to living organisms. Whether or not there are living organisms there, of course, is an entirely different matter. And that will have to await the arrival, back at Enceladus, of the spacecrafts, hopefully some time in the near future, specifically equipped to address that particular question. But in the meantime I invite you to imagine the day when we might journey to the Saturnine system, and visit the Enceladus interplanetary geyser park, just because we can. Thank you. (Applause)

A supercharged motorcycle design

Yves Béhar

{0: 'Yves Béhar'}

{0: ['designer']}

{0: 'Yves Béhar is a designer, entrepreneur and avid surfer whose principles for good design have been deeply influential across the field.'}

2009-02-06

2009-05-22

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'kk', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'mk', 'mr', 'ms', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'ta', 'th', 'tl', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['cars', 'design', 'engineering', 'green', 'transportation']

{266: 'Designing objects that tell stories', 5: 'Great cars are great art', 411: 'The future of cars', 1695: 'The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ...', 752: 'A warm embrace that saves lives', 1549: 'Design for people, not awards'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/yves_behar_a_supercharged_motorcycle_design/

Yves Béhar and Forrest North unveil Mission One, a sleek, powerful electric motorcycle. They share slides from distant (yet similar) childhoods that show how collaboration kick-started their friendship -- and shared dreams.

Forrest North: The beginning of any collaboration starts with a conversation. And I would like to share with you some of the bits of the conversation that we started with. I grew up in a log cabin in Washington state with too much time on my hands. Yves Behar: And in scenic Switzerland for me. FN: I always had a passion for alternative vehicles. This is a land yacht racing across the desert in Nevada. YB: Combination of windsurfing and skiing into this invention there. FN: And I also had an interest in dangerous inventions. This is a 100,000-volt Tesla coil that I built in my bedroom, much to the dismay of my mother. YB: To the dismay of my mother, this is dangerous teenage fashion right there. (Laughter) FN: And I brought this all together, this passion with alternative energy and raced a solar car across Australia — also the U.S. and Japan. YB: So, wind power, solar power — we had a lot to talk about. We had a lot that got us excited. So we decided to do a special project together. To combine engineering and design and ... FN: Really make a fully integrated product, something beautiful. YB: And we made a baby. (Laughter) FN: Can you bring out our baby? (Applause) This baby is fully electric. It goes 150 miles an hour. It's twice the range of any electric motorcycle. Really the exciting thing about a motorcycle is just the beautiful integration of engineering and design. It's got an amazing user experience. It was wonderful working with Yves Behar. He came up with our name and logo. We're Mission Motors. And we've only got three minutes, but we could talk about it for hours. YB: Thank you. FN: Thank you TED. And thank you Chris, for having us. (Applause)

Don't eat the marshmallow!

Joachim de Posada

{0: 'Joachim de Posada'}

{0: ['speaker and author']}

{0: 'Joachim de Posada was a speaker and motivational coach. He was the author of "How to Survive Among the Piranhas" and "Don\'t Eat the Marshmallow ... Yet."'}

2009-02-05

2009-05-25

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'bs', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fi', 'fil', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'ko', 'lt', 'lv', 'mk', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['children', 'culture', 'humor', 'psychology']

{837: 'Build a tower, build a team', 38075: "How your brain's executive function works -- and how to improve it", 348: "What's wrong with school lunches", 1974: 'For parents, happiness is a very high bar', 582: 'The psychology of time', 1732: 'Our failing schools. Enough is enough!'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow/

In this short talk from TED U, Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow.

I'm here because I have a very important message: I think we have found the most important factor for success. And it was found close to here, Stanford. Psychology professor took kids that were four years old and put them in a room all by themselves. And he would tell the child, a four-year-old kid, "Johnny, I am going to leave you here with a marshmallow for 15 minutes. If, after I come back, this marshmallow is here, you will get another one. So you will have two." To tell a four-year-old kid to wait 15 minutes for something that they like, is equivalent to telling us, "We'll bring you coffee in two hours." (Laughter) Exact equivalent. So what happened when the professor left the room? As soon as the door closed... two out of three ate the marshmallow. Five seconds, 10 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, two minutes, four minutes, eight minutes. Some lasted 14-and-a-half minutes. (Laughter) Couldn't do it. Could not wait. What's interesting is that one out of three would look at the marshmallow and go like this ... Would look at it. Put it back. They would walk around. They would play with their skirts and pants. That child already, at four, understood the most important principle for success, which is the ability to delay gratification. Self-discipline: the most important factor for success. 15 years later, 14 or 15 years later, follow-up study. What did they find? They went to look for these kids who were now 18 and 19. And they found that 100 percent of the children that had not eaten the marshmallow were successful. They had good grades. They were doing wonderful. They were happy. They had their plans. They had good relationships with the teachers, students. They were doing fine. A great percentage of the kids that ate the marshmallow, they were in trouble. They did not make it to university. They had bad grades. Some of them dropped out. A few were still there with bad grades. A few had good grades. I had a question in my mind: Would Hispanic kids react the same way as the American kids? So I went to Colombia. And I reproduced the experiment. And it was very funny. I used four, five and six years old kids. And let me show you what happened. (Spanish) (Laughter) So what happened in Colombia? Hispanic kids, two out of three ate the marshmallow; one out of three did not. This little girl was interesting; she ate the inside of the marshmallow. (Laughter) In other words, she wanted us to think that she had not eaten it, so she would get two. But she ate it. So we know she'll be successful. But we have to watch her. (Laughter) She should not go into banking, for example, or work at a cash register. But she will be successful. And this applies for everything. Even in sales. The sales person that — the customer says, "I want that." And the person says, "Okay, here you are." That person ate the marshmallow. If the sales person says, "Wait a second. Let me ask you a few questions to see if this is a good choice." Then you sell a lot more. So this has applications in all walks of life. I end with — the Koreans did this. You know what? This is so good that we want a marshmallow book for children. We did one for children. And now it is all over Korea. They are teaching these kids exactly this principle. And we need to learn that principle here in the States, because we have a big debt. We are eating more marshmallows than we are producing. Thank you so much.

A passionate, personal case for education

Michelle Obama

{0: 'Michelle Obama'}

{0: ['first lady of the united states']}

{0: 'First Lady Michelle Obama, a lawyer and administrator, is an advocate for working parents and education for girls all around the world.'}

2009-04-04

2009-05-27

Elizabeth G. Anderson School

en

['ar', 'bg', 'bo', 'ca', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'kk', 'ko', 'lt', 'my', 'ne', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'education', 'global issues', 'politics', 'women', 'Best of the Web']

{66: 'Do schools kill creativity?', 1090: "Let's use video to reinvent education", 1728: 'Every kid needs a champion', 1076: 'Inspiring a life of immersion', 1089: "This isn't her mother's feminism", 1954: 'My daughter, Malala'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/michelle_obama_a_passionate_personal_case_for_education/

Speaking to an audience of students, US First Lady Michelle Obama reminds each one to take their education seriously -- and never take it for granted. This new, brilliant generation, she tells us, is the one that could close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be.

This is my first trip, my first foreign trip as a first lady. Can you believe that? (Applause) And while this is not my first visit to the U.K., I have to say that I am glad that this is my first official visit. The special relationship between the United States and the U.K. is based not only on the relationship between governments, but the common language and the values that we share, and I'm reminded of that by watching you all today. During my visit I've been especially honored to meet some of Britain's most extraordinary women — women who are paving the way for all of you. And I'm honored to meet you, the future leaders of Great Britain and this world. And although the circumstances of our lives may seem very distant, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America, and you, just getting through school, I want you to know that we have very much in common. For nothing in my life's path would have predicted that I'd be standing here as the first African-American First Lady of the United States of America. There is nothing in my story that would land me here. I wasn't raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago. That's the real part of Chicago. And I was the product of a working-class community. My father was a city worker all of his life, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. And she stayed at home to take care of me and my older brother. Neither of them attended university. My dad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the prime of his life. But even as it got harder for him to walk and get dressed in the morning — I saw him struggle more and more — my father never complained about his struggle. He was grateful for what he had. He just woke up a little earlier and worked a little harder. And my brother and I were raised with all that you really need: love, strong values and a belief that with a good education and a whole lot of hard work, that there was nothing that we could not do. I am an example of what's possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by the people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life: grandmothers, teachers, aunts, cousins, neighbors, who taught me about quiet strength and dignity. And my mother, the most important role model in my life, who lives with us at the White House and helps to care for our two little daughters, Malia and Sasha. She's an active presence in their lives, as well as mine, and is instilling in them the same values that she taught me and my brother: things like compassion, and integrity, and confidence, and perseverance — all of that wrapped up in an unconditional love that only a grandmother can give. I was also fortunate enough to be cherished and encouraged by some strong male role models as well, including my father, my brother, uncles and grandfathers. The men in my life taught me some important things, as well. They taught me about what a respectful relationship should look like between men and women. They taught me about what a strong marriage feels like: that it's built on faith and commitment and an admiration for each other's unique gifts. They taught me about what it means to be a father and to raise a family. And not only to invest in your own home but to reach out and help raise kids in the broader community. And these were the same qualities that I looked for in my own husband, Barack Obama. And when we first met, one of the things that I remember is that he took me out on a date. And his date was to go with him to a community meeting. (Laughter) I know, how romantic. (Laughter) But when we met, Barack was a community organizer. He worked, helping people to find jobs and to try to bring resources into struggling neighborhoods. As he talked to the residents in that community center, he talked about two concepts. He talked about "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be." And I talked about this throughout the entire campaign. What he said, that all too often, is that we accept the distance between those two ideas. And sometimes we settle for the world as it is, even when it doesn't reflect our values and aspirations. But Barack reminded us on that day, all of us in that room, that we all know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. We all know. And he urged the people in that meeting, in that community, to devote themselves to closing the gap between those two ideas, to work together to try to make the world as it is and the world as it should be, one and the same. And I think about that today because I am reminded and convinced that all of you in this school are very important parts of closing that gap. You are the women who will build the world as it should be. You're going to write the next chapter in history. Not just for yourselves, but for your generation and generations to come. And that's why getting a good education is so important. That's why all of this that you're going through — the ups and the downs, the teachers that you love and the teachers that you don't — why it's so important. Because communities and countries and ultimately the world are only as strong as the health of their women. And that's important to keep in mind. Part of that health includes an outstanding education. The difference between a struggling family and a healthy one is often the presence of an empowered woman or women at the center of that family. The difference between a broken community and a thriving one is often the healthy respect between men and women who appreciate the contributions each other makes to society. The difference between a languishing nation and one that will flourish is the recognition that we need equal access to education for both boys and girls. And this school, named after the U.K.'s first female doctor, and the surrounding buildings named for Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, Mary Seacole, the Jamaican nurse known as the "black Florence Nightingale," and the English author, Emily Bronte, honor women who fought sexism, racism and ignorance, to pursue their passions to feed their own souls. They allowed for no obstacles. As the sign said back there, "without limitations." They knew no other way to live than to follow their dreams. And having done so, these women moved many obstacles. And they opened many new doors for millions of female doctors and nurses and artists and authors, all of whom have followed them. And by getting a good education, you too can control your own destiny. Please remember that. If you want to know the reason why I'm standing here, it's because of education. I never cut class. Sorry, I don't know if anybody is cutting class. I never did it. I loved getting As. I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I liked getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world. And you too, with these same values, can control your own destiny. You too can pave the way. You too can realize your dreams, and then your job is to reach back and to help someone just like you do the same thing. History proves that it doesn't matter whether you come from a council estate or a country estate. Your success will be determined by your own fortitude, your own confidence, your own individual hard work. That is true. That is the reality of the world that we live in. You now have control over your own destiny. And it won't be easy — that's for sure. But you have everything you need. Everything you need to succeed, you already have, right here. My husband works in this big office. They call it the Oval Office. In the White House, there's the desk that he sits at — it's called the Resolute desk. It was built by the timber of Her Majesty's Ship Resolute and given by Queen Victoria. It's an enduring symbol of the friendship between our two nations. And its name, Resolute, is a reminder of the strength of character that's required not only to lead a country, but to live a life of purpose, as well. And I hope in pursuing your dreams, you all remain resolute, that you go forward without limits, and that you use your talents — because there are many; we've seen them; it's there — that you use them to create the world as it should be. Because we are counting on you. We are counting on every single one of you to be the very best that you can be. Because the world is big. And it's full of challenges. And we need strong, smart, confident young women to stand up and take the reins. We know you can do it. We love you. Thank you so much. (Applause)

The world's English mania

Jay Walker

{0: 'Jay Walker'}

{0: ['entrepreneur']}

{0: "Jay Walker is fascinated by intellectual property in all its forms. His firm, Walker Digital, created Priceline and many other businesses that reframe old problems with new IT. In his private life, he's a bibliophile and collector on an epic scale."}

2009-02-05

2009-05-27

TED2009

en

['af', 'ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'gl', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'kk', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'lv', 'mk', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'th', 'tl', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['United States', 'business', 'china', 'global issues', 'language']

{276: 'The ancestor of language', 69: 'Dreams from endangered cultures', 1106: "Don't insist on English!", 2595: '4 reasons to learn a new language', 23938: 'A brief history of plural word...s', 24232: 'Where did English come from?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jay_walker_the_world_s_english_mania/

Jay Walker explains why two billion people around the world are trying to learn English. He shares photos and spine-tingling audio of Chinese students rehearsing English -- "the world's second language" -- by the thousands.

Let's talk about manias. Let's start with Beatlemania. (Recording of crowd roaring) Hysterical teenagers, crying, screaming, pandemonium. (Recording of crowd roaring) Sports mania: deafening crowds, all for one idea — get the ball in the net. (Recording) Goal! Okay, religious mania: there's rapture, there's weeping, there's visions. Manias can be good. Manias can be alarming. Or manias can be deadly. (Recording of crowd cheering) The world has a new mania. A mania for learning English. Listen as Chinese students practice their English, by screaming it: Teacher: ... change my life! Students: I want to change my life! T: I don't want to let my parents down! S: I don't want to let my parents down! T: I don't ever want to let my country down! S: I don't ever want to let my country down! T: Most importantly... S: Most importantly... T: I don't want to let myself down! S: I don't want to let myself down! How many people are trying to learn English worldwide? Two billion of them. Students: A t-shirt. A dress. Jay Walker: In Latin America, in India, in Southeast Asia, and most of all, in China. If you're a Chinese student, you start learning English in the third grade, by law. That's why this year, China will become the world's largest English-speaking country. (Laughter) Why English? In a single word: opportunity. Opportunity for a better life, a job, to be able to pay for school, or put better food on the table. Imagine a student taking a giant test for three full days. Her score on this one test literally determines her future. She studies 12 hours a day for three years to prepare. Twenty-five percent of her grade is based on English. It's called the gaokao, and 80 million high school Chinese students have already taken this grueling test. The intensity to learn English is almost unimaginable, unless you witness it. Teacher: Perfect! Students: Perfect! T: Perfect! S: Perfect! T: I want to speak perfect English! S: I want to speak perfect English! T: I want to speak ... S: I want to speak ... T: ... perfect English! S: ... perfect English! T (yelling more loudly): I want to change my life! S (yelling more loudly): I want to change my life! JW: So is English mania good or bad? Is English a tsunami, washing away other languages? Not likely. English is the world's second language. Your native language is your life. But with English you can become part of a wider conversation — a global conversation about global problems, like climate change or poverty, or hunger or disease. The world has other universal languages. Mathematics is the language of science. Music is the language of emotions. And now English is becoming the language of problem-solving. Not because America is pushing it, but because the world is pulling it. So English mania is a turning point. Like the harnessing of electricity in our cities, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, English represents hope for a better future — a future where the world has a common language to solve its common problems. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Why we're storing billions of seeds

Jonathan Drori

{0: 'Jonathan Drori'}

{0: ['educator']}

{0: "Jonathan Drori commissioned the BBC's very first websites, one highlight in a long career devoted to online culture and educational media -- and understanding how we learn."}

2009-02-06

2009-05-28

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lv', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['biodiversity', 'biology', 'environment', 'future', 'garden', 'life', 'science', 'ecology', 'plants']

{476: 'Conserving the canopy', 83: 'My wish: Build the Encyclopedia of Life', 475: 'How to restore a rainforest', 2127: 'Humble plants that hide surprising secrets', 39941: 'How supercharged plants could slow climate change', 976: 'The roots of plant intelligence'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_drori_why_we_re_storing_billions_of_seeds/

In this brief talk from TED U 2009, Jonathan Drori encourages us to save biodiversity -- one seed at a time. Reminding us that plants support human life, he shares the vision of the Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion seeds to date from dwindling yet essential plant species.

All human life, all life, depends on plants. Let me try to convince you of that in a few seconds. Just think for a moment. It doesn't matter whether you live in a small African village, or you live in a big city, everything comes back to plants in the end: whether it's for the food, the medicine, the fuel, the construction, the clothing, all the obvious things; or whether it's for the spiritual and recreational things that matter to us so much; or whether it's soil formation, or the effect on the atmosphere, or primary production. Damn it, even the books here are made out of plants. All these things, they come back to plants. And without them we wouldn't be here. Now plants are under threat. They're under threat because of changing climate. And they are also under threat because they are sharing a planet with people like us. And people like us want to do things that destroy plants, and their habitats. And whether that's because of food production, or because of the introduction of alien plants into places that they really oughtn't be, or because of habitats being used for other purposes — all these things are meaning that plants have to adapt, or die, or move. And plants sometimes find it rather difficult to move because there might be cities and other things in the way. So if all human life depends on plants, doesn't it make sense that perhaps we should try to save them? I think it does. And I want to tell you about a project to save plants. And the way that you save plants is by storing seeds. Because seeds, in all their diverse glory, are plants' futures. All the genetic information for future generations of plants are held in seeds. So here is the building; it looks rather unassuming, really. But it goes down below ground many stories. And it's the largest seed bank in the world. It exists not only in southern England, but distributed around the world. I'll come to that. This is a nuclear-proof facility. God forbid that it should have to withstand that. So if you're going to build a seed bank, you have to decide what you're going to store in it. Right? And we decided that what we want to store first of all, are the species that are most under threat. And those are the dry land species. So first of all we did deals with 50 different countries. It means negotiating with heads of state, and with secretaries of state in 50 countries to sign treaties. We have 120 partner institutions all over the world, in all those countries colored orange. People come from all over the world to learn, and then they go away and plan exactly how they're going to collect these seeds. They have thousands of people all over the world tagging places where those plants are said to exist. They search for them. They find them in flower. And they go back when their seeds have arrived. And they collect the seeds. All over the world. The seeds — some of if is very untechnical. You kind of shovel them all in to bags and dry them off. You label them. You do some high-tech things here and there, some low-tech things here and there. And the main thing is that you have to dry them very carefully, at low temperature. And then you have to store them at about minus 20 degrees C — that's about minus four Fahrenheit, I think — with a very critically low moisture content. And these seeds will be able to germinate, we believe, with many of the species, in thousands of years, and certainly in hundreds of years. It's no good storing the seeds if you don't know they're still viable. So every 10 years we do germination tests on every sample of seeds that we have. And this is a distributed network. So all around the world people are doing the same thing. And that enables us to develop germination protocols. That means that we know the right combination of heat and cold and the cycles that you have to get to make the seed germinate. And that is very useful information. And then we grow these things, and we tell people, back in the countries where these seeds have come from, "Look, actually we're not just storing this to get the seeds later, but we can give you this information about how to germinate these difficult plants." And that's already happening. So where have we got to? I am pleased to unveil that our three billionth seed — that's three thousand millionth seed — is now stored. Ten percent of all plant species on the planet, 24,000 species are safe; 30,000 species, if we get the funding, by next year. Twenty-five percent of all the world's plants, by 2020. These are not just crop plants, as you might have seen stored in Svalbard in Norway — fantastic work there. This is at least 100 times bigger. We have thousands of collections that have been sent out all over the world: drought-tolerant forest species sent to Pakistan and Egypt; especially photosynthetic-efficient plants come here to the United States; salt-tolerant pasture species sent to Australia; the list goes on and on. These seeds are used for restoration. So in habitats that have already been damaged, like the tall grass prairie here in the USA, or in mined land in various countries, restoration is already happening because of these species — and because of this collection. Some of these plants, like the ones on the bottom to the left of your screen, they are down to the last few remaining members. The one where the guy is collecting seeds there on the truck, that is down to about 30 last remaining trees. Fantastically useful plant, both for protein and for medicine. We have training going on in China, in the USA, and many other countries. How much does it cost? 2,800 dollars per species is the average. I think that's cheap, at the price. And that gets you all the scientific data that goes with it. The future research is "How can we find the genetic and molecular markers for the viability of seeds, without having to plant them every 10 years?" And we're almost there. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Playing "Pink Noise" on guitar

Kaki King

{0: 'Kaki King'}

{0: ['guitarist']}

{0: 'Kaki King combines jaw-dropping guitar work with dreamy, searching songwriting.'}

2008-03-01

2009-05-29

TED2008

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fil', 'fr', 'gu', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'mr', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'ur', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['guitar', 'innovation', 'music', 'performance', 'singer']

{287: '"Clonie"', 117: 'Cape Breton fiddling in reel time', 188: '"Tembererana"', 2844: 'How I found myself through music', 24012: 'The death of the universe', 23716: 'How many universes are there?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/kaki_king_playing_pink_noise_on_guitar/

Kaki King, the first female on Rolling Stone's "guitar god" list, rocks out to a full live set at TED2008, including her breakout single, "Playing with Pink Noise." Jaw-dropping virtuosity meets a guitar technique that truly stands out.

I was thinking about my place in the universe, and about my first thought about what infinity might mean, when I was a child. And I thought that if time could reach forwards and backwards infinitely, doesn't that mean that every point in time is really infinitely small, and therefore somewhat meaningless. So we don't really have a place in the universe, as far as on a time line. But nothing else does either. Therefore every moment really is the most important moment that's ever happened, including this moment right now. And so therefore this music you're about to hear is maybe the most important music you'll ever hear in your life. (Laughter) (Applause) (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) (Applause) For those of you who I'll be fortunate enough to meet afterwards, you could please refrain from saying, "Oh my god, you're so much shorter in real life." (Laughter) Because it's like the stage is an optical illusion, for some reason. (Laughter) Somewhat like the curving of the universe. I don't know what it is. I get asked in interviews a lot, "My god, you're guitars are so gigantic!" (Laughter) "You must get them custom made — special, humongous guitars." (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause)

A call to reinvent liberal arts education

Liz Coleman

{0: 'Liz Coleman'}

{0: ['college president']}

{0: 'Liz Coleman radically remade Bennington College in the mid-1990s, in pursuit of a new vision: higher education as a performing art.'}

2009-02-07

2009-06-01

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['activism', 'collaboration', 'creativity', 'education', 'future', 'social change']

{555: 'A passionate, personal case for education', 533: 'Teach arts and sciences together', 66: 'Do schools kill creativity?', 2060: 'Why ordinary people need to understand power', 1924: 'Does the media have a "duty of care"?', 1667: 'Use data to build better schools'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/liz_coleman_a_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education/

Bennington president Liz Coleman delivers a call-to-arms for radical reform in higher education. Bucking the trend to push students toward increasingly narrow areas of study, she proposes a truly cross-disciplinary education -- one that dynamically combines all areas of study to address the great problems of our day.

College presidents are not the first people who come to mind when the subject is the uses of the creative imagination. So I thought I'd start by telling you how I got here. The story begins in the late '90s. I was invited to meet with leading educators from the newly free Eastern Europe and Russia. They were trying to figure out how to rebuild their universities. Since education under the Soviet Union was essentially propaganda serving the purposes of a state ideology, they appreciated that it would take wholesale transformations if they were to provide an education worthy of free men and women. Given this rare opportunity to start fresh, they chose liberal arts as the most compelling model because of its historic commitment to furthering its students' broadest intellectual, and deepest ethical potential. Having made that decision they came to the United States, home of liberal arts education, to talk with some of us most closely identified with that kind of education. They spoke with a passion, an urgency, an intellectual conviction that, for me, was a voice I had not heard in decades, a dream long forgotten. For, in truth, we had moved light years from the passions that animated them. But for me, unlike them, in my world, the slate was not clean, and what was written on it was not encouraging. In truth, liberal arts education no longer exists — at least genuine liberal arts education — in this country. We have professionalized liberal arts to the point where they no longer provide the breadth of application and the enhanced capacity for civic engagement that is their signature. Over the past century the expert has dethroned the educated generalist to become the sole model of intellectual accomplishment. (Applause) Expertise has for sure had its moments. But the price of its dominance is enormous. Subject matters are broken up into smaller and smaller pieces, with increasing emphasis on the technical and the obscure. We have even managed to make the study of literature arcane. You may think you know what is going on in that Jane Austen novel — that is, until your first encounter with postmodern deconstructionism. The progression of today's college student is to jettison every interest except one. And within that one, to continually narrow the focus, learning more and more about less and less; this, despite the evidence all around us of the interconnectedness of things. Lest you think I exaggerate, here are the beginnings of the A-B-Cs of anthropology. As one moves up the ladder, values other than technical competence are viewed with increasing suspicion. Questions such as, "What kind of a world are we making? What kind of a world should we be making? What kind of a world can we be making?" are treated with more and more skepticism, and move off the table. In so doing, the guardians of secular democracy in effect yield the connection between education and values to fundamentalists, who, you can be sure, have no compunctions about using education to further their values: the absolutes of a theocracy. Meanwhile, the values and voices of democracy are silent. Either we have lost touch with those values or, no better, believe they need not or cannot be taught. This aversion to social values may seem at odds with the explosion of community service programs. But despite the attention paid to these efforts, they remain emphatically extracurricular. In effect, civic-mindedness is treated as outside the realm of what purports to be serious thinking and adult purposes. Simply put, when the impulse is to change the world, the academy is more likely to engender a learned helplessness than to create a sense of empowerment. This brew — oversimplification of civic engagement, idealization of the expert, fragmentation of knowledge, emphasis on technical mastery, neutrality as a condition of academic integrity — is toxic when it comes to pursuing the vital connections between education and the public good, between intellectual integrity and human freedom, which were at the heart — (Applause) — of the challenge posed to and by my European colleagues. When the astronomical distance between the realities of the academy and the visionary intensity of this challenge were more than enough, I can assure you, to give one pause, what was happening outside higher education made backing off unthinkable. Whether it was threats to the environment, inequities in the distribution of wealth, lack of a sane policy or a sustainable policy with respect to the continuing uses of energy, we were in desperate straits. And that was only the beginning. The corrupting of our political life had become a living nightmare; nothing was exempt — separation of powers, civil liberties, the rule of law, the relationship of church and state. Accompanied by a squandering of the nation's material wealth that defied credulity. A harrowing predilection for the uses of force had become commonplace, with an equal distaste for the alternative forms of influence. At the same time, all of our firepower was impotent when it came to halting or even stemming the slaughter in Rwanda, Darfur, Myanmar. Our public education, once a model for the world, has become most noteworthy for its failures. Mastery of basic skills and a bare minimum of cultural literacy eludes vast numbers of our students. Despite having a research establishment that is the envy of the world, more than half of the American public don't believe in evolution. And don't press your luck about how much those who do believe in it actually understand it. Incredibly, this nation, with all its material, intellectual and spiritual resources, seems utterly helpless to reverse the freefall in any of these areas. Equally startling, from my point of view, is the fact that no one was drawing any connections between what is happening to the body politic, and what is happening in our leading educational institutions. We may be at the top of the list when it comes to influencing access to personal wealth. We are not even on the list when it comes to our responsibility for the health of this democracy. We are playing with fire. You can be sure Jefferson knew what he was talking about when he said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was, and never will be." (Applause) On a more personal note, this betrayal of our principles, our decency, our hope, made it impossible for me to avoid the question, "What will I say, years from now, when people ask, 'Where were you?'" As president of a leading liberal arts college, famous for its innovative history, there were no excuses. So the conversation began at Bennington. Knowing that if we were to regain the integrity of liberal education, it would take radical rethinking of basic assumptions, beginning with our priorities. Enhancing the public good becomes a primary objective. The accomplishment of civic virtue is tied to the uses of intellect and imagination at their most challenging. Our ways of approaching agency and authority turn inside out to reflect the reality that no one has the answers to the challenges facing citizens in this century, and everyone has the responsibility for trying and participating in finding them. Bennington would continue to teach the arts and sciences as areas of immersion that acknowledge differences in personal and professional objectives. But the balances redressed, our shared purposes assume an equal if not greater importance. When the design emerged it was surprisingly simple and straightforward. The idea is to make the political-social challenges themselves — from health and education to the uses of force — the organizers of the curriculum. They would assume the commanding role of traditional disciplines. But structures designed to connect, rather than divide mutually dependent circles, rather than isolating triangles. And the point is not to treat these topics as topics of study, but as frameworks of action. The challenge: to figure out what it will take to actually do something that makes a significant and sustainable difference. Contrary to widely held assumptions, an emphasis on action provides a special urgency to thinking. The importance of coming to grips with values like justice, equity, truth, becomes increasingly evident as students discover that interest alone cannot tell them what they need to know when the issue is rethinking education, our approach to health, or strategies for achieving an economics of equity. The value of the past also comes alive; it provides a lot of company. You are not the first to try to figure this out, just as you are unlikely to be the last. Even more valuable, history provides a laboratory in which we see played out the actual, as well as the intended consequences of ideas. In the language of my students, "Deep thought matters when you're contemplating what to do about things that matter." A new liberal arts that can support this action-oriented curriculum has begun to emerge. Rhetoric, the art of organizing the world of words to maximum effect. Design, the art of organizing the world of things. Mediation and improvisation also assume a special place in this new pantheon. Quantitative reasoning attains its proper position at the heart of what it takes to manage change where measurement is crucial. As is a capacity to discriminate systematically between what is at the core and what is at the periphery. And when making connections is of the essence, the power of technology emerges with special intensity. But so does the importance of content. The more powerful our reach, the more important the question "About what?" When improvisation, resourcefulness, imagination are key, artists, at long last, take their place at the table, when strategies of action are in the process of being designed. In this dramatically expanded ideal of a liberal arts education where the continuum of thought and action is its life's blood, knowledge honed outside the academy becomes essential. Social activists, business leaders, lawyers, politicians, professionals will join the faculty as active and ongoing participants in this wedding of liberal education to the advancement of the public good. Students, in turn, continuously move outside the classroom to engage the world directly. And of course, this new wine needs new bottles if we are to capture the liveliness and dynamism of this idea. The most important discovery we made in our focus on public action was to appreciate that the hard choices are not between good and evil, but between competing goods. This discovery is transforming. It undercuts self-righteousness, radically alters the tone and character of controversy, and enriches dramatically the possibilities for finding common ground. Ideology, zealotry, unsubstantiated opinions simply won't do. This is a political education, to be sure. But it is a politics of principle, not of partisanship. So the challenge for Bennington is to do it. On the cover of Bennington's 2008 holiday card is the architect's sketch of a building opening in 2010 that is to be a center for the advancement of public action. The center will embody and sustain this new educational commitment. Think of it as a kind of secular church. The words on the card describe what will happen inside. We intend to turn the intellectual and imaginative power, passion and boldness of our students, faculty and staff to developing strategies for acting on the critical challenges of our time. So we are doing our job. While these past weeks have been a time of national exhilaration in this country, it would be tragic if you thought this meant your job was done. The glacial silence we have experienced in the face of the shredding of the constitution, the unraveling of our public institutions, the deterioration of our infrastructure is not limited to the universities. We the people have become inured to our own irrelevance when it comes to doing anything significant about anything that matters concerning governance, beyond waiting another four years. We persist also in being sidelined by the idea of the expert as the only one capable of coming up with answers, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The problem is there is no such thing as a viable democracy made up of experts, zealots, politicians and spectators. (Applause) People will continue and should continue to learn everything there is to know about something or other. We actually do it all the time. And there will be and should be those who spend a lifetime pursuing a very highly defined area of inquiry. But this single-mindedness will not yield the flexibilities of mind, the multiplicity of perspectives, the capacities for collaboration and innovation this country needs. That is where you come in. What is certain is that the individual talent exhibited in such abundance here, needs to turn its attention to that collaborative, messy, frustrating, contentious and impossible world of politics and public policy. President Obama and his team simply cannot do it alone. If the question of where to start seems overwhelming you are at the beginning, not the end of this adventure. Being overwhelmed is the first step if you are serious about trying to get at things that really matter, on a scale that makes a difference. So what do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Well, you have two things. You have a mind. And you have other people. Start with those, and change the world. (Applause)

A university for the coming singularity

Ray Kurzweil

{0: 'Ray Kurzweil'}

{0: ['inventor', 'futurist']}

{0: "Ray Kurzweil is an engineer who has radically advanced the fields of speech, text and audio technology. He's revered for his dizzying -- yet convincing -- writing on the advance of technology, the limits of biology and the future of the human species."}

2009-02-07

2009-06-02

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['computers', 'education', 'future', 'nanoscale', 'prediction', 'science', 'technology']

{38: 'The accelerating power of technology', 405: "What I'm worried about, what I'm excited about", 125: 'How brain science will change computing', 1375: 'Abundance is our future', 1720: 'The key to growth? Race with the machines', 90: 'Unleash your creativity in a Fab Lab'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_a_university_for_the_coming_singularity/

Ray Kurzweil's latest graphs show that technology's breakneck advances will only accelerate -- recession or not. He unveils his new project, Singularity University, to study oncoming tech and guide it to benefit humanity.

Information technology grows in an exponential manner. It's not linear. And our intuition is linear. When we walked through the savanna a thousand years ago we made linear predictions where that animal would be, and that worked fine. It's hardwired in our brains. But the pace of exponential growth is really what describes information technologies. And it's not just computation. There is a big difference between linear and exponential growth. If I take 30 steps linearly — one, two, three, four, five — I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially — two, four, eight, 16 — I get to a billion. It makes a huge difference. And that really describes information technology. When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer that took up a whole building. The computer in your cellphone today is a million times cheaper, a million times smaller, a thousand times more powerful. That's a billion-fold increase in capability per dollar that we've actually experienced since I was a student. And we're going to do it again in the next 25 years. Information technology progresses through a series of S-curves where each one is a different paradigm. So people say, "What's going to happen when Moore's Law comes to an end?" Which will happen around 2020. We'll then go to the next paradigm. And Moore's Law was not the first paradigm to bring exponential growth to computing. The exponential growth of computing started decades before Gordon Moore was even born. And it doesn't just apply to computation. It's really any technology where we can measure the underlying information properties. Here we have 49 famous computers. I put them in a logarithmic graph. The logarithmic scale hides the scale of the increase, because this represents trillions-fold increase since the 1890 census. In 1950s they were shrinking vacuum tubes, making them smaller and smaller. They finally hit a wall; they couldn't shrink the vacuum tube any more and keep the vacuum. And that was the end of the shrinking of vacuum tubes, but it was not the end of the exponential growth of computing. We went to the fourth paradigm, transistors, and finally integrated circuits. When that comes to an end we'll go to the sixth paradigm; three-dimensional self-organizing molecular circuits. But what's even more amazing, really, than this fantastic scale of progress, is that — look at how predictable this is. I mean this went through thick and thin, through war and peace, through boom times and recessions. The Great Depression made not a dent in this exponential progression. We'll see the same thing in the economic recession we're having now. At least the exponential growth of information technology capability will continue unabated. And I just updated these graphs. Because I had them through 2002 in my book, "The Singularity is Near." So we updated them, so I could present it here, to 2007. And I was asked, "Well aren't you nervous? Maybe it kind of didn't stay on this exponential progression." I was a little nervous because maybe the data wouldn't be right, but I've done this now for 30 years, and it has stayed on this exponential progression. Look at this graph here.You could buy one transistor for a dollar in 1968. You can buy half a billion today, and they are actually better, because they are faster. But look at how predictable this is. And I'd say this knowledge is over-fitting to past data. I've been making these forward-looking predictions for about 30 years. And the cost of a transistor cycle, which is a measure of the price performance of electronics, comes down about every year. That's a 50 percent deflation rate. And it's also true of other examples, like DNA data or brain data. But we more than make up for that. We actually ship more than twice as much of every form of information technology. We've had 18 percent growth in constant dollars in every form of information technology for the last half-century, despite the fact that you can get twice as much of it each year. This is a completely different example. This is not Moore's Law. The amount of DNA data we've sequenced has doubled every year. The cost has come down by half every year. And this has been a smooth progression since the beginning of the genome project. And halfway through the project, skeptics said, "Well, this is not working out. You're halfway through the genome project and you've finished one percent of the project." But that was really right on schedule. Because if you double one percent seven more times, which is exactly what happened, you get 100 percent. And the project was finished on time. Communication technologies: 50 different ways to measure this, the number of bits being moved around, the size of the Internet. But this has progressed at an exponential pace. This is deeply democratizing. I wrote, over 20 years ago in "The Age of Intelligent Machines," when the Soviet Union was going strong, that it would be swept away by this growth of decentralized communication. And we will have plenty of computation as we go through the 21st century to do things like simulate regions of the human brain. But where will we get the software? Some critics say, "Oh, well software is stuck in the mud." But we are learning more and more about the human brain. Spatial resolution of brain scanning is doubling every year. The amount of data we're getting about the brain is doubling every year. And we're showing that we can actually turn this data into working models and simulations of brain regions. There is about 20 regions of the brain that have been modeled, simulated and tested: the auditory cortex, regions of the visual cortex; cerebellum, where we do our skill formation; slices of the cerebral cortex, where we do our rational thinking. And all of this has fueled an increase, very smooth and predictable, of productivity. We've gone from 30 dollars to 130 dollars in constant dollars in the value of an average hour of human labor, fueled by this information technology. And we're all concerned about energy and the environment. Well this is a logarithmic graph. This represents a smooth doubling, every two years, of the amount of solar energy we're creating, particularly as we're now applying nanotechnology, a form of information technology, to solar panels. And we're only eight doublings away from it meeting 100 percent of our energy needs. And there is 10 thousand times more sunlight than we need. We ultimately will merge with this technology. It's already very close to us. When I was a student it was across campus, now it's in our pockets. What used to take up a building now fits in our pockets. What now fits in our pockets would fit in a blood cell in 25 years. And we will begin to actually deeply influence our health and our intelligence, as we get closer and closer to this technology. Based on that we are announcing, here at TED, in true TED tradition, Singularity University. It's a new university that's founded by Peter Diamandis, who is here in the audience, and myself. It's backed by NASA and Google, and other leaders in the high-tech and science community. And our goal was to assemble the leaders, both teachers and students, in these exponentially growing information technologies, and their application. But Larry Page made an impassioned speech at our organizing meeting, saying we should devote this study to actually addressing some of the major challenges facing humanity. And if we did that, then Google would back this. And so that's what we've done. The last third of the nine-week intensive summer session will be devoted to a group project to address some major challenge of humanity. Like for example, applying the Internet, which is now ubiquitous, in the rural areas of China or in Africa, to bringing health information to developing areas of the world. And these projects will continue past these sessions, using collaborative interactive communication. All the intellectual property that is created and taught will be online and available, and developed online in a collaborative fashion. Here is our founding meeting. But this is being announced today. It will be permanently headquartered in Silicon Valley, at the NASA Ames research center. There are different programs for graduate students, for executives at different companies. The first six tracks here — artificial intelligence, advanced computing technologies, biotechnology, nanotechnology — are the different core areas of information technology. Then we are going to apply them to the other areas, like energy, ecology, policy law and ethics, entrepreneurship, so that people can bring these new technologies to the world. So we're very appreciative of the support we've gotten from both the intellectual leaders, the high-tech leaders, particularly Google and NASA. This is an exciting new venture. And we invite you to participate. Thank you very much. (Applause)

A wide-angle view of fragile Earth

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

{0: 'Yann Arthus-Bertrand'}

{0: ['photographer']}

{0: "With photography, Yann Arthus-Bertrand has captured the beauty of the Earth. Through video and film, his latest projects bind together ecology and humanism. For him, it's all about living together. "}

2009-02-04

2009-06-03

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'lt', 'mk', 'nb', 'nl', 'nn', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'climate change', 'environment', 'film', 'future', 'humanity', 'media', 'photography']

{324: 'How photography connects us', 279: 'Turning powerful stats into art', 40: 'The story of life in photographs', 1054: 'Addicted to risk', 1412: 'The other inconvenient truth', 1362: 'The true cost of oil'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/yann_arthus_bertrand_a_wide_angle_view_of_fragile_earth/

In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat -- stunning aerial photographs in his series "The Earth From Above," personal interviews from around the globe featured in his web project "6 billion Others," and his soon-to-be-released movie, "Home," which documents human impact on the environment through breathtaking video.

I have a big impact on the planet to travel here by plane. I emitted, in the atmosphere, nine tons of CO2; that is the weight of two elephants. I came here to speak about ecology, and I emitted as much CO2 as a Frenchman in one year. So what do I have to do? I have to kill a Frenchman when I come back at home? (Laughter) I have to do my carbon offset in another way, like I do every time. (Laughter) In fact my work is to show our impact on our planet. I'm going to show you some examples of the last pictures I've done in the last year. Alberta sand oil, a lot of pollution. You know the problem; we don't want to believe what we know. In Alberta people work nonstop, 24 hours by seven to extract as much oil as they can. We know about the end of oil. Oil sand is not a long-term solution. But we use three times more oil than we find every year. We don't want to believe what we know. Deny. Coral reef in New Caledonia. 100 percent of the coral may be wiped out before 2050 because of global warming. And you know how coral are very sensitive to temperature, and are very important for the biodiversity of the sea. North Pole. I've done this picture last summer. It was impossible to do this picture 15 years ago. Now there is a new way open between Atlantic and Pacific. The thickness of the Arctic decreased more than 40 percent since 1960. There is a new face of Kilimanjaro without ice. Sad picture. It lost 80 percent of its ice. According to scientists, in 100 years all the mountain glacier will be gone. Glaciers are very important for the life on earth. Like Al Gore told you, two billion people live on the water from the glacier of Himalaya. Return of fish men. One fifth of human kind depend on fish to live. Today now 70 percent of the fish stock are over-exploited. According to FAO, if we don't change our system of fishing the main sea resources will be gone in 2050. We don't want to believe what we know. The beautiful picture, by [unclear] in Africa. One human of six have not enough to eat in the world. One billion people have not enough to eat. In Africa, corn is one of the main foods in many places. Here in America, 90 percent of the corn cultivated is used to feed animals or to do oil. Palm tree plantation in Borneo. Every year we lose 50 thousand square miles in deforestation. Refugee camp in Darfur. Today we have 20 million refugees in the world. According to the U.N., we speak about 250 million refugees in 2050. I always show my pictures in the street. We have done already 100 exhibitions in the cities. But how to understand the world without the voice of people? Landscape was not enough. It was obvious to me to do another work. I launched a project named Six Billion Others. I sent around the world six cameramen asking the same question, the same crucial question, about life. We have done five thousand interviews. I'm going to show you this. Man: The most beautiful thing that has happened to me in life? It's when my dad told me, "Here, I give you this girl as your fiance." Woman: Love? Love is nice if you can have it. Second Man: Romeo and Juliet, Sassi and Panno, Dodi and Diana, Heer and Ranjha, this is love! Third Man: My greatest fear is ... Woman: You're asking me a hard question. Fourth Man: I live happily because what else should I do? Fifth Man: The first thing I remember ... (Sixth Man: That's how I learned, by my mother,) Fifth Man: ... from my childhood, (Sixth Man: that you should respect humans.) Fifth Man: we were having fun, biking. (Sixth Man: I will never forget those words.) Seventh Man: We invented stories, we flew around the world, while remaining in our attic. Eighth Man: I had a big laugh today. Ninth Man: You see, family is ... it's awful. 10th Man: In the word life, you have the life. 11th Man: Who am I? Isn't that the biggest question? 12th Man: If I was to go back to Iraq and speak to the people, I'd have to bow down and kiss their feet. Just as that woman tried to kiss my feet when we were taking her sons. I feel ashamed. And I feel humbled by their strength. And I will forever feel a need to make reparations to Iraq. Second Woman: Dad, Mom, I grew up. You shouldn't worry about me. Dad doesn't need to go to work. My family ... What can I say? At the moment, my family is very poor, my life here in Shenzhen is just about showing myself that I can earn more and to let my parents stay and have something to live on. I don't want them to spend their whole lives in poverty. If someday I can achieve something, I would like to say thank you daddy and mommy. Thank you. Thank you for having fed me and raised me, and for making my life of today. Thank you. 13th Man: After seven years now of being in a wheelchair, I've done more in life being in a chair than out of a chair. I still surf. I sail the world. I freedive. After many people said I couldn't do that. And I think that comes from connecting with nature, connecting with the energy of life, because we're all disabled in some way on the planet — spiritually, mentally or physically. I got the easy part. 14th Man: Let's say that you and me like each other. You come from elsewhere. You don't know me. I don't know you. We talk without lying. If I do like you, I give you one cow and many other things and we become friends. How can we make it all by ourselves? (Applause) YAB: You can also go to the website, answer — respond to the questions also. Forty crucial questions. Now I am going to speak to you about my movie. For the last three years, I was shooting the earth for the movie. The name of the movie is "Home" — "Maison." It is about the state of the planet. It's a fantastic story of life on the earth. I'm very proud to show you the teaser. Video: This Earth is four and a half billion years old. These plants, several hundred million years old. And we humans have been walking upright for only 200 thousand years. We've managed to adapt, and have conquered the whole planet. For generations, we've been raising our children, not unlike millions of other species living beside us. For the past 30 years I've been closely watching the earth and its dwellers from high up in the sky. Our life is tied to the well-being of our planet. We depend on water, forests, deserts, oceans. Fishing, breeding, farming are still the world's foremost human occupations. And what binds us together is far greater than what divides us. We all share the same need for the earth's gifts — the same wish to rise above ourselves, and become better. And yet we carry on raising walls to keep us apart. Today our greatest battle is to protect the natural offerings of our planet. In less than 50 years we've altered it more thoroughly than in the entire history of mankind. Half of the world's forests have vanished. Water resources are running low. Intensive farming is depleting soils. Our energy sources are not sustainable. The climate is changing. We are endangering ourselves. We're only trying to improve our lives. But the wealth gaps are growing wider. We haven't yet understood that we're going at a much faster pace than the planet can sustain. We know that solutions are available today. We all have the power to change this trend for the better. So what are we waiting for? (Applause) YAB: Luc Besson is the producer of the movie. But it is not a normal movie. The film is going to be distributed free. This film has no copyright. On the five of June, the environment day, everybody can download the movie on Internet. The film is given for free to the distributor for TV and theater to show it the fifth of June. There is no business on this movie. It is also available for school, cities, NGOs and you. We have to believe what we know. Let me tell you something. It's too late to be pessimistic — really too late. We have all a part of the solutions. To finish, I would like to welcome the 4,700th baby born since the beginning of this talk. Merci beaucoup. I love you. (Applause)

Odes to vice and consequences

Felix Dennis

{0: 'Felix Dennis'}

{0: ['publisher', 'philanthropist', 'poet']}

{0: 'Former hippie, former jailbird, former aficionado of crack cocaine, Felix Dennis built one of the most successful privately owned magazine empires in the world.'}

2004-02-27

2009-06-05

TED2004

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['entertainment', 'history', 'literature', 'poetry', 'writing', 'books']

{477: 'Learning from dirty jobs', 500: 'Poetry of youth and age', 363: 'Lessons from past presidents', 294: 'On humanity', 1625: "Please don't take my Air Jordans", 1398: 'Everyday moments, caught in time'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/felix_dennis_odes_to_vice_and_consequences/

Media big shot Felix Dennis roars his fiery, funny, sometimes racy original poetry, revisiting haunting memories and hard-won battle scars from a madcap -- yet not too repentant -- life. Best enjoyed with a glass of wine.

"The Better Man." I was the better at getting and keeping. You were the better at spend and spend; I was the better at grubbing and heaping, But who was the better man in the end? Yes, who was the better man, my friend? You were the better with lords and ladies, I was the better at pillaging Troy; You were the better at kissing the babies, I was the better at search and destroy. But who was the better man, old boy? Who was the better man? I was the better at improvisation, You were the better at spinning the plates; I was the better at procrastination, You were the better at quiet debate. But who was the better man, old mate? Who was the better man? You were the better at rolling a reefer, I was the better at coke and rum; Remember that night on the beach in Ibiza? The Maori twins with the tattooed bum? But who was the better man, old chum? Who was the better man? Now we come down to it, relatives grieving. Out in the hall with their crocodile tears; Now that you're out of it, now that you're leaving, Now that they've sealed your arse and your ears, What I've been meaning to tell you for years, And years, and years, and years, old friend ... Is that you were the better man, in the end; You were the better man, My friend. (Applause) I wrote this next poem for my mother. Every one of us had a mother, only one — probably the most important person in your life, if you're lucky enough to know them. My mother was certainly the most important in mine. Let me try and describe her to you. She's 86 years old. She's frail. White, platinum hair. Why do they do that? Why do old ladies go to those hair shops, and make those helmets? (Laughter) Bright as a button. All the ducks in a row. Looks like a much prettier version of Margaret Thatcher, (Laughter) but without any of the soft bits in Margaret's character. (Laughter) I wrote this poem for her. These are not my beliefs. But my mother has lived by this creed all her life. "Never Go Back." Never go back. Never go back. Never return to the haunts of your youth. Keep to the track, to the beaten track; Memory holds all you need of the truth. Never look back. Never look back. Never succumb to the gorgon's stare. Keep to the track, to the beaten track; No-one is waiting and nothing is there. Never go back. Never go back. Never surrender the future you earned. Keep to the track, to the beaten track; Never return to the bridges you've burned. Never look back. Never look back. Never retreat to the 'glorious past.' Keep to the track, to the beaten track; Treat every day of your life as your last. Never go back. Never go back. Never acknowledge the ghost on the stair. Keep to the track, to the beaten track; No-one is waiting and nothing is there. (Applause) Now ladies and gentlemen, I'm up on me hobbyhorse. If every commercially minded cosmetic surgeon were tied end to end along a railroad track, that would be me, stoking the train without a qualm in the world. Ladies, don't do it. Don't do it. You think we want you to do it, but we don't want you to do it. Stop it. Tell them to go to hell. You bodies are wonderful as they are. Just leave them alone. "To a Beautiful Lady of a Certain Age." Lady lady, do not weep. What is gone is gone. Now sleep. Turn your pillow. Dry your tears. Count thy sheep and not thy years. Nothing good can come of this. Time rules all, my dearest. 'Tis but folly to be waging war On one who never lost before. Lady, this is all in vain. Youth can never come again; We have drunk the summer wine. None can make a stitch in time. Nip and tuck till crack of doom. What is foretold in the womb May not be foresworn with gold. Nor may time be bought or sold. Dearest, do I love thee less? Do I shrink from thy caress? Think you I could cease to care? Never was there one so fair! Lady lady, do not weep — What is gone is gone. Now sleep. Lean against me, calm your fears, Count thy blessings, not thy years. (Applause) America, ladies and gentlemen, has done more for me financially than Britain ever has, or ever could have done. I was born in Britain, as you have probably guessed. Even when on its worst behavior, I find myself automatically defending the USA from the sneers of green-eyed Europhiles playing their Greek card to Roman trumps. America is an empire. I hope you know that now. All empires, by definition, are bumbling, shambolic, bullying, bureaucratic affairs, as certain of the rightness of their cause in infancy, as they are corrupted by power in their dotage. I am no historian, ladies and gentlemen. But it seems to be that the USA's sins, compared to those of many previous empires, are of a more moderate, if more pervasive, kind. Let me put this bluntly. If Americans are so fat, stupid and ignorant, my dear friends from Birmingham, how come they rule the world? "Hail to the Gods of America." Hail to the Gods of America! Hail to the gods of the dream. Invictus E Pluribus Unum. But which of them reigns supreme? Which is America's Jupiter? The Brahmins of Capital Hill? A sorcerer's profit on Wall Street? They eye of a dollar bill? Or is it celebrity status? The worship of those we hate. Or the cult of living forever, If only we'd watch our weight. What of the titans of media? Or Hollywood's siren call? What of the temples of justice, Whose servants enslave us all? What of the Brand and the Label? What of the upstart Sport? And what of the Constitution, That bully of last resort? Hail to the God of America, Whose power the masses extol — Convenience rules America; Convenience owns our soul. Aye, that it does. (Applause) And if you would like to know why I am not a father — I, who by a miracle have 22 godchildren — the answer is in this poem, which upsets me every time I read it. "Love Came to Visit Me." Love came to visit me, shy as a fawn. But finding me busy, she fled, with the dawn. At 20 the torch of resentment was lit. My rage at injustice waxed hot as the pits. The flux of its lava cleared all in its path. Comrades and enemies fled from its wrath. Yet lovers grew wary, once novelty waned To lie with a bloody man, his terror unfeigned. At 30 my powers seemed mighty to me. The fruits of my rivals, I shook from the tree. By guile and by bluster, by night and by day, I battered and scattered the fools from my way. And women grew willing to sham and to bluff. Their trinkets and baubles cost little enough. From 40 to 50, grown easy and sly, I wined them and dined them, like pigs in a sty. We feasted and reveled and rutted in muck, Forgetting our peril, forgetting to duck, Forgetting times arrows are sharper than knives. Grown sick to our stomachs, and sick of our lives. Love came to visit me, shy as a fawn. But finding me busy, she fled with the dawn. (Applause) Um, there are — I've got far too much money and I have far too much fun in my businesses. So poetry came as a complete shock to me, ladies and gentlemen. A complete shock. I was a little ill. Okay, I was ill. Okay, I had a life-threatening illness, you know. I was in a clinic. I wasn't allowed to make telephone calls. I wasn't allowed to see any of my — you know, whatever. So, in the end I begged a pack of Post-it notes off a nurse. And from another nurse, I begged a pencil, pen. And I didn't know what else to do. So I started to write poetry. That was in October of 2000. I'm not an evil man. But sometimes I try to put myself in an evil man's position. I'm not a glorious and fantastic-looking woman, who men fall down, you know, when she walks in a room. But sometimes I try to put myself in that position. (Laughter) Not with much success. But it's interesting to me. I love to write historical verse. I love to think what they thought, what it was like. Because although many of the speakers and many of the people who are in the audience, although you guys can not only go to the moon, you know, you're going to totally transform everything. Cloning will transform everything. Voice navigation will transform everything. I don't know. You can do anything you want. All you guys are so clever, and women, you can do it all! But human nature doesn't change, mate. My friends, human nature is exactly the same as it was when my ancestor — probably it was my ancestor — got his hands around the neck of the last Neanderthal, and battered the bastard to death. You think we didn't do that? Oh, we did. We killed every single one of them. Inch by inch we killed them. We hunted them down wherever they were. Rivals for meat. Rivals for berries. We're still doing it, with all of the genius assembled in this room. Our natures haven't changed a single iota. And they never will. Even when we've got off this little planet, and have put some of our eggs in some other baskets. And I am as bad as you. I spent eight years running one of the most successful publishing businesses in the world. And at seven o'clock every night, I took me some more girls, already corrupted. I never did anything to anyone that wasn't. And I took crack cocaine, every single night for seven years. It was like Dante's "Inferno." It was unbelievable. One of the offshoots of crack cocaine is that you keep an erection for about four hours. And you stay up for 12. It was absolutely unbelievable. Twenty-two godchildren I've got. What do I say to them? I only stopped because I thought if I got caught, what would happen to my mother. If you're a woman, remember that. The love of your son can utterly transform anything he does. "Our Lady in White." Pale she was, listless; And soft to the touch. A generous mistress Whom many loved much. Shoulder to shoulder, Night after night, We hoarded and sold her — Our Lady in White. We breathed but to savor her crystal caress. We craved but to favor the hem of her dress. We dabbled and babbled, Denying our thirsts. But always we scrabbled to lie with her first. Absent, we missed her, grew haggard and limp. Toyed with her sister, or threatened her pimp. Came word out of Babel, the lady returns! And there on the table we took her, in turns. Sensing the power that tyranny craves, There in that hour, she made us her slaves. Many there were, to covet her kiss. My shame as a spur, I fled the abyss. But only just. (Applause)

The world in 2200

Pete Alcorn

{0: 'Pete Alcorn'}

{0: ['media exec']}

{0: 'Pete Alcorn is the head of podcasting for Apple, and a veteran of the paper-publishing industry. '}

2009-02-05

2009-06-08

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['community', 'social change']

{38: 'The accelerating power of technology', 1791: 'The rise of the new global super-rich', 1719: 'The death of innovation, the end of growth', 625: 'Post-crash, investing in a better world', 1759: 'What will future jobs look like?', 1374: 'The Earth is full'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/pete_alcorn_the_world_in_2200/

In this short, optimistic talk from TED2009, Pete Alcorn shares a vision of the world of two centuries from now -- when declining populations and growing opportunity prove Malthus was wrong.

I used to be a Malthusian. This was my mental model of the world: exploding population, small planet; it's going to lead to ugly things. But I'm moving past Malthus, because I think that we just might be about 150 years from a kind of new enlightenment. Here's why. This is the U.N.'s population data, you may have seen, for the world. And the world's population expected to top out at something hopefully a bit less than 10 billion, late this century. And after that, most likely it's going to begin to decline. So what then? Most of the economic models are built around scarcity and growth. So a lot of economists look at declining population and expect to see stagnation, maybe depression. But a declining population is going to have at least two very beneficial economic effects. One: fewer people on a fixed amount of land make investing in property a bad bet. In the cities, a lot of the cost of property is actually wrapped up in its speculative value. Take away land speculation, price of land drops. And that begins to lift a heavy burden off the world's poor. Number two: a declining population means scarce labor. Scarce labor drives wages. As wages increase that also lifts the burden on the poor and the working class. Now I'm not talking about a radical drop in population like we saw in the Black Death. But look what happened in Europe after the plague: rising wages, land reform, technological innovation, birth of the middle class; and after that, forward-looking social movements like the Renaissance, and later the Enlightenment. Most of our cultural heritage has tended to look backward, romanticizing the past. All of the Western religions begin with the notion of Eden, and descend through a kind of profligate present to a very ugly future. So human history is viewed as sort of this downhill slide from the good old days. But I think we're in for another change, about two generations after the top of that curve, once the effects of a declining population start to settle in. At that point, we'll start romanticizing the future again, instead of the nasty, brutish past. So why does this matter? Why talk about social-economic movements that may be more than a century away? Because transitions are dangerous times. When land owners start to lose money, and labor demands more pay, there are some powerful interests that are going to fear for the future. Fear for the future leads to some rash decisions. If we have a positive view about the future then we may be able to accelerate through that turn, instead of careening off a cliff. If we can make it through the next 150 years, I think that your great great grandchildren will forget all about Malthus. And instead, they'll be planning for the future and starting to build the 22nd Century Enlightenment. Thank you. (Applause)

Eco-friendly drywall

Kevin Surace

{0: 'Kevin Surace'}

{0: ['engineer', 'executive']}

{0: "Kevin Surace is looking at the climate crisis from an engineer's perspective -- and creating products that prove there's no piece of our daily lives we can't redesign to be cleaner and greener."}

2009-02-06

2009-06-09

TED2009

en

['af', 'ar', 'be', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'ta', 'tr', 'uk', 'uz', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['architecture', 'business', 'demo', 'design', 'green', 'invention', 'technology']

{566: 'A plug for smart power outlets', 128: 'Salvation (and profit) in greentech', 56: 'My wish: Manufactured landscapes and green education', 104: 'Cradle to cradle design', 114: 'A comic sendup of TED2006', 13: 'A master architect asks, Now what?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_surace_eco_friendly_drywall/

Kevin Surace suggests we rethink basic construction materials -- such as the familiar wallboard -- to reduce the huge carbon footprint generated by the manufacturing and construction of our buildings. He introduces EcoRock, a clean, recyclable and energy-efficient drywall created by his team at Serious Materials.

What's happening to the climate? It is unbelievably bad. This is, obviously, that famous view now of the Arctic, which is likely to be gone at this point in the next three or four or five years. Very, very, very scary. So we all look at what we can do. And when you look at the worldwide sources of CO2, 52 percent are tied to buildings. Only nine percent is passenger cars, interestingly enough. So we ran off to a sushi bar. And at that sushi bar we came up with a great idea. And it was something called EcoRock. And we said we could redesign the 115-year-old gypsum drywall process that generates 20 billion pounds of CO2 a year. So it was a big idea. We wanted to reduce that by 80 percent, which is exactly what we've done. We started R&D in 2006. Decided to use recycled content from cement and steel manufacturing. There is the inside of our lab. We haven't shown this before. But our people had to do some 5,000 different mixes to get this right, to hit our targets. And they worked absolutely very, very, very hard. So then we went forward and built our production line in China. We don't build this production equipment any longer in the U.S., unfortunately. We did the line install over the summer. We started right there, with absolutely nothing. You're seeing for the first time, a brand new drywall production line, not made using gypsum at all. That's the finished production line there. We got our first panel out on December third. That is the slurry being poured onto paper, basically. That's the line running. The exciting thing is, look at the faces of the people. These are people who worked this project for two to three years. And they are so excited. That's the first board off the line. Our Vice President of Operation kissing the board. Obviously very, very excited. But this has a huge, huge impact on the environment. We signed the first panel just a few weeks after that, had a great signing ceremony, leading to people hopefully using these products across the world. And we've got Cradle-to-Cradle Gold on this thing. We happened to win, just recently, the Green Product of the Year for "The Re-Invention of Drywall," from Popular Science. Thank you. Thank you. So here is what we learned: 8,000 gallons of gas equivalent to build one house. You probably had no idea. It's like driving around the world six times. We must change everything. Look around the room: chairs, wood, everything around us has to change or we're not going to lick this problem. Don't listen to the people who say you can't do this, because anyone can. And these job losses, we can fix them with green-collar jobs. We've got four plants. We're building this stuff around the country. We're going as fast as we can. Two and a half million cars worth of gypsum, you know, CO2 generated. Right? So what will you do? I'll tell you what I did and why I did it. And I know my time's up. Those are my kids, Natalie and David. When they have their kids, 2050, they'd better look back at Grandpa and say, "Hey, you gave it a good shot. You did the best you could with the team that you had." So my hope is that when you leave TED, you will look at reducing your carbon footprint in however you can do it. And if you don't know how, please find me — I will help you. Last but not least, Bill Gates, I know you invented Windows. Wait till you see, maybe next year, what kind of windows we've invented. Thank you so much. (Applause)

A plug for smart power outlets

John La Grou

{0: 'John La Grou'}

{0: ['inventor']}

{0: 'John La Grou, a long-time electronics inventor, audio designer and entrepreneur, wants to save lives (and energy) with a new, smarter type of electrical outlet.'}

2009-02-06

2009-06-09

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'lv', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'srp', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'uz', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['architecture', 'children', 'design', 'energy', 'technology', 'electricity']

{565: 'Eco-friendly drywall', 1754: 'How behavioral science can lower your energy bill', 619: 'A demo of wireless electricity', 105: "The electricity metaphor for the web's future", 1434: 'A 40-year plan for energy', 1401: 'The missing link to renewable energy'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/john_la_grou_a_plug_for_smart_power_outlets/

John La Grou unveils an ingenious new technology that will smarten up the electrical outlets in our homes, using microprocessors and RFID tags. The invention, Safeplug, promises to prevent deadly accidents like house fires -- and to conserve energy.

This is a world-changing invention. The smoke alarm has saved perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives, worldwide. But smoke alarms don't prevent fires. Every year in the USA, over 20,000 are killed or injured with 350,000 home fires. And one of the main causes of all these fires is electricity. What if we could prevent electrical fires before they start? Well, a couple of friends and I figured out how to do this. So how does electricity ignite residential fires? Well it turns out that the main causes are faulty and misused appliances and electrical wiring. Our invention had to address all of these issues. So what about circuit breakers? Well, Thomas Edison invented the circuit breaker in 1879. This is 130-year-old technology, and this is a problem, because over 80 percent of all home electrical fires start below the safety threshold of circuit breakers. Hmmm ... So we considered all of this. And we realized that electrical appliances must be able to communicate directly with the power receptacle itself. Any electrical device — an appliance, an extension cord, whatever — must be able to tell the power outlet, "Hey, power outlet, I'm drawing too much current. Shut me off now, before I start a fire." And the power outlet needs to be smart enough to do it. So here is what we did. We put a 10-cent digital transponder, a data tag, in the appliance plug. And we put an inexpensive, wireless data reader inside the receptacle so they could communicate. Now, every home electrical system becomes an intelligent network. The appliance's safe operating parameters are embedded into its plug. If too much current is flowing, the intelligent receptacle turns itself off, and prevents another fire from starting. We call this technology EFCI, Electrical Fault Circuit Interrupter. Okay, two more points. Every year in the USA, roughly 2,500 children are admitted to emergency rooms for shock and burn injuries related to electrical receptacles. And this is crazy. An intelligent receptacle prevents injuries because the power is always off, until an intelligent plug is detected. Simple. Now, besides saving lives, perhaps the greatest benefit of intelligent power is in its energy savings. This invention will reduce global energy consumption by allowing remote control and automation of every outlet in every home and business. Now you can choose to reduce your home energy bill by automatically cycling heavy loads like air conditioners and heaters. Hotels and businesses can shut down unused rooms from a central location, or even a cell phone. There are 10 billion electrical outlets in North America alone. The potential energy savings is very, very significant. So far we've applied for 414 patent claims. Of those, 186 have been granted: 228 are in process. And I'm pleased to announce that just three weeks ago we received our first international recognition, the 2009 CES Innovation Award. So, to conclude, intelligent power can, globally, save thousands of lives, prevent tens of thousands of injuries, and eliminate tens of billions of dollars in property damage every single year, while significantly reducing global energy consumption. In the spirit of this year's TED Conference, we think this is a powerful, world-changing invention. And I'd like to thank Chris for this opportunity to unveil our technology with you, and soon the world. Thank you. (Applause)

Happiness and its surprises

Nancy Etcoff

{0: 'Nancy Etcoff'}

{0: ['evolutionary psychologist']}

{0: 'Nancy Etcoff is part of a new vanguard of cognitive researchers asking: What makes us happy? Why do we like beautiful things? And how on earth did we evolve that way?'}

2004-02-02

2009-06-10

TED2004

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['beauty', 'culture', 'happiness', 'neuroscience', 'psychology', 'evolutionary psychology', 'emotions']

{97: 'The surprising science of happiness', 16: 'Why we love, why we cheat', 50: 'Happiness by design', 1607: 'Want to be happier? Stay in the moment', 779: 'The riddle of experience vs. memory', 191: 'The habits of happiness'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_etcoff_happiness_and_its_surprises/

Cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff looks at happiness -- the ways we try to achieve and increase it, the way it's untethered to our real circumstances, and its surprising effect on our bodies.

This is called Hooked on a Feeling: The Pursuit of Happiness and Human Design. I put up a somewhat dour Darwin, but a very happy chimp up there. My first point is that the pursuit of happiness is obligatory. Man wishes to be happy, only wishes to be happy, and cannot wish not to be so. We are wired to pursue happiness, not only to enjoy it, but to want more and more of it. So given that that's true, how good are we at increasing our happiness? Well, we certainly try. If you look on the Amazon site, there are over 2,000 titles with advice on the seven habits, the nine choices, the 10 secrets, the 14,000 thoughts that are supposed to bring happiness. Now another way we try to increase our happiness is we medicate ourselves. And so there's over 120 million prescriptions out there for antidepressants. Prozac was really the first absolute blockbuster drug. It was clean, efficient, there was no high, there was really no danger, it had no street value. In 1995, illegal drugs were a $400 billion business, representing eight percent of world trade, roughly the same as gas and oil. These routes to happiness haven't really increased happiness very much. One problem that's happening now is, although the rates of happiness are about as flat as the surface of the moon, depression and anxiety are rising. Some people say this is because we have better diagnosis, and more people are being found out. It isn't just that. We're seeing it all over the world. In the United States right now there are more suicides than homicides. There is a rash of suicide in China. And the World Health Organization predicts by the year 2020 that depression will be the second largest cause of disability. Now the good news here is that if you take surveys from around the world, we see that about three quarters of people will say they are at least pretty happy. But this does not follow any of the usual trends. For example, these two show great growth in income, absolutely flat happiness curves. My field, the field of psychology, hasn't done a whole lot to help us move forward in understanding human happiness. In part, we have the legacy of Freud, who was a pessimist, who said that pursuit of happiness is a doomed quest, is propelled by infantile aspects of the individual that can never be met in reality. He said, "One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of creation." So the ultimate goal of psychoanalytic psychotherapy was really what Freud called ordinary misery. (Laughter) And Freud in part reflects the anatomy of the human emotion system — which is that we have both a positive and a negative system, and our negative system is extremely sensitive. So for example, we're born loving the taste of something sweet and reacting aversively to the taste of something bitter. We also find that people are more averse to losing than they are happy to gain. The formula for a happy marriage is five positive remarks, or interactions, for every one negative. And that's how powerful the one negative is. Especially expressions of contempt or disgust, well you really need a lot of positives to upset that. I also put in here the stress response. We're wired for dangers that are immediate, that are physical, that are imminent, and so our body goes into an incredible reaction where endogenous opioids come in. We have a system that is really ancient, and really there for physical danger. And so over time, this becomes a stress response, which has enormous effects on the body. Cortisol floods the brain; it destroys hippocampal cells and memory, and can lead to all kinds of health problems. But unfortunately, we need this system in part. If we were only governed by pleasure we would not survive. We really have two command posts. Emotions are short-lived intense responses to challenge and to opportunity. And each one of them allows us to click into alternate selves that tune in, turn on, drop out thoughts, perceptions, feelings and memories. We tend to think of emotions as just feelings. But in fact, emotions are an all-systems alert that change what we remember, what kind of decisions we make, and how we perceive things. So let me go forward to the new science of happiness. We've come away from the Freudian gloom, and people are now actively studying this. And one of the key points in the science of happiness is that happiness and unhappiness are not endpoints of a single continuum. The Freudian model is really one continuum that, as you get less miserable, you get happier. And that isn't true — when you get less miserable, you get less miserable. And that happiness is a whole other end of the equation. And it's been missing. It's been missing from psychotherapy. So when people's symptoms go away, they tend to recur, because there isn't a sense of the other half — of what pleasure, happiness, compassion, gratitude, what are the positive emotions. And of course we know this intuitively, that happiness is not just the absence of misery. But somehow it was not put forward until very recently, seeing these as two parallel systems. So that the body can both look for opportunity and also protect itself from danger, at the same time. And they're sort of two reciprocal and dynamically interacting systems. People have also wanted to deconstruct. We use this word "happy," and it's this very large umbrella of a term. And then three emotions for which there are no English words: fiero, which is the pride in accomplishment of a challenge; schadenfreude, which is happiness in another's misfortune, a malicious pleasure; and naches, which is a pride and joy in one's children. Absent from this list, and absent from any discussions of happiness, are happiness in another's happiness. We don't seem to have a word for that. We are very sensitive to the negative, but it is in part offset by the fact that we have a positivity. We're also born pleasure-seekers. Babies love the taste of sweet and hate the taste of bitter. They love to touch smooth surfaces rather than rough ones. They like to look at beautiful faces rather than plain faces. They like to listen to consonant melodies instead of dissonant melodies. Babies really are born with a lot of innate pleasures. There was once a statement made by a psychologist that said that 80 percent of the pursuit of happiness is really just about the genes, and it's as difficult to become happier as it is to become taller. That's nonsense. There is a decent contribution to happiness from the genes — about 50 percent — but there is still that 50 percent that is unaccounted for. Let's just go into the brain for a moment, and see where does happiness arise from in evolution. We have basically at least two systems here, and they both are very ancient. One is the reward system, and that's fed by the chemical dopamine. And it starts in the ventral tegmental area. It goes to the nucleus accumbens, all the way up to the prefrontal cortex, orbital frontal cortex, where decisions are made, high level. This was originally seen as a system that was the pleasure system of the brain. In the 1950s, Olds and Milner put electrodes into the brain of a rat. And the rat would just keep pressing that bar thousands and thousands and thousands of times. It wouldn't eat. It wouldn't sleep. It wouldn't have sex. It wouldn't do anything but press this bar. So they assumed this must be, you know, the brain's orgasmatron. It turned out that it wasn't, that it really is a system of motivation, a system of wanting. It gives objects what's called incentive salience. It makes something look so attractive that you just have to go after it. That's something different from the system that is the pleasure system, which simply says, "I like this." The pleasure system, as you see, which is the internal opiates, there is a hormone oxytocin, is widely spread throughout the brain. Dopamine system, the wanting system, is much more centralized. The other thing about positive emotions is that they have a universal signal. And we see here the smile. And the universal signal is not just raising the corner of the lips to the zygomatic major. It's also crinkling the outer corner of the eye, the orbicularis oculi. So you see, even 10-month-old babies, when they see their mother, will show this particular kind of smile. Extroverts use it more than introverts. People who are relieved of depression show it more after than before. So if you want to unmask a true look of happiness, you will look for this expression. Our pleasures are really ancient. And we learn, of course, many, many pleasures, but many of them are base. And one of them, of course, is biophilia — that we have a response to the natural world that's very profound. Very interesting studies done on people recovering from surgery, who found that people who faced a brick wall versus people who looked out on trees and nature, the people who looked out on the brick wall were in the hospital longer, needed more medication, and had more medical complications. There is something very restorative about nature, and it's part of how we are tuned. Humans, particularly so, we're very imitative creatures. And we imitate from almost the second we are born. Here is a three-week-old baby. And if you stick your tongue out at this baby, the baby will do the same. We are social beings from the beginning. And even studies of cooperation show that cooperation between individuals lights up reward centers of the brain. One problem that psychology has had is instead of looking at this intersubjectivity — or the importance of the social brain to humans who come into the world helpless and need each other tremendously — is that they focus instead on the self and self-esteem, and not self-other. It's sort of "me," not "we." And I think this has been a really tremendous problem that goes against our biology and nature, and hasn't made us any happier at all. Because when you think about it, people are happiest when in flow, when they're absorbed in something out in the world, when they're with other people, when they're active, engaged in sports, focusing on a loved one, learning, having sex, whatever. They're not sitting in front of the mirror trying to figure themselves out, or thinking about themselves. These are not the periods when you feel happiest. The other thing is, that a piece of evidence is, is if you look at computerized text analysis of people who commit suicide, what you find there, and it's quite interesting, is use of the first person singular — "I," "me," "my," not "we" and "us" — and the letters are less hopeless than they are really alone. And being alone is very unnatural to the human. There is a profound need to belong. But there are ways in which our evolutionary history can really trip us up. Because, for example, the genes don't care whether we're happy, they care that we replicate, that we pass our genes on. So for example we have three systems that underlie reproduction, because it's so important. There's lust, which is just wanting to have sex. And that's really mediated by the sex hormones. Romantic attraction, that gets into the desire system. And that's dopamine-fed. And that's, "I must have this one person." There's attachment, which is oxytocin, and the opiates, which says, "This is a long-term bond." See the problem is that, as humans, these three can separate. So a person can be in a long term attachment, become romantically infatuated with someone else, and want to have sex with a third person. The other way in which our genes can sometimes lead us astray is in social status. We are very acutely aware of our social status and always seek to further and increase it. Now in the animal world, there is only one way to increase status, and that's dominance. I seize command by physical prowess, and I keep it by beating my chest, and you make submissive gestures. Now, the human has a whole other way to rise to the top, and that is a prestige route, which is freely conferred. Someone has expertise and knowledge, and knows how to do things, and we give that person status. And that's clearly the way for us to create many more niches of status so that people don't have to be lower on the status hierarchy as they are in the animal world. The data isn't terribly supportive of money buying happiness. But it's not irrelevant. So if you look at questions like this, life satisfaction, you see life satisfaction going up with each rung of income. You see mental distress going up with lower income. So clearly there is some effect. But the effect is relatively small. And one of the problems with money is materialism. What happens when people pursue money too avidly, is they forget about the real basic pleasures of life. So we have here, this couple. "Do you think the less-fortunate are having better sex?" And then this kid over here is saying, "Leave me alone with my toys." So one of the things is that it really takes over. That whole dopamine-wanting system takes over and derails from any of the pleasure system. Maslow had this idea back in the 1950s that as people rise above their biological needs, as the world becomes safer and we don't have to worry about basic needs being met — our biological system, whatever motivates us, is being satisfied — we can rise above them, to think beyond ourselves toward self-actualization or transcendence, and rise above the materialist. So to just quickly conclude with some brief data that suggests this might be so. One is people who underwent what is called a quantum change: they felt their life and their whole values had changed. And sure enough, if you look at the kinds of values that come in, you see wealth, adventure, achievement, pleasure, fun, be respected, before the change, and much more post-materialist values after. Women had a whole different set of value shifts. But very similarly, the only one that survived there was happiness. They went from attractiveness and happiness and wealth and self-control to generosity and forgiveness. I end with a few quotes. "There is only one question: How to love this world?" And Rilke, "If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself. Tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches." "First, say to yourself what you would be. Then do what you have to do." Thank you. (Applause)

Learning from the gecko's tail

Robert Full

{0: 'Robert Full'}

{0: ['biologist']}

{0: "Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build tomorrow's robots, based on evolution's ancient engineering."}

2009-02-05

2009-06-11

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'da', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'mk', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['animals', 'biology', 'biomechanics', 'design', 'materials', 'robots', 'technology']

{18: "Biomimicry's surprising lessons from nature's engineers", 195: 'The sticky wonder of gecko feet', 280: 'Robots inspired by cockroach ingenuity', 2014: "The secrets of nature's grossest creatures, channeled into robots", 820: 'My seven species of robot -- and how we created them', 2170: 'Why I make robots the size of a grain of rice'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_learning_from_the_gecko_s_tail/

Biologist Robert Full studies the amazing gecko, with its supersticky feet and tenacious climbing skill. But high-speed footage reveals that the gecko's tail harbors perhaps the most surprising talents of all.

Let me share with you today an original discovery. But I want to tell it to you the way it really happened — not the way I present it in a scientific meeting, or the way you'd read it in a scientific paper. It's a story about beyond biomimetics, to something I'm calling biomutualism. I define that as an association between biology and another discipline, where each discipline reciprocally advances the other, but where the collective discoveries that emerge are beyond any single field. Now, in terms of biomimetics, as human technologies take on more of the characteristics of nature, nature becomes a much more useful teacher. Engineering can be inspired by biology by using its principles and analogies when they're advantageous, but then integrating that with the best human engineering, ultimately to make something actually better than nature. Now, being a biologist, I was very curious about this. These are gecko toes. And we wondered how they use these bizarre toes to climb up a wall so quickly. We discovered it. And what we found was that they have leaf-like structures on their toes, with millions of tiny hairs that look like a rug, and each of those hairs has the worst case of split-ends possible: about 100 to 1000 split ends that are nano-size. And the individual has 2 billion of these nano-size split ends. They don't stick by Velcro or suction or glue. They actually stick by intermolecular forces alone, van der Waals forces. And I'm really pleased to report to you today that the first synthetic self-cleaning, dry adhesive has been made. From the simplest version in nature, one branch, my engineering collaborator, Ron Fearing, at Berkeley, had made the first synthetic version. And so has my other incredible collaborator, Mark Cutkosky, at Stanford — he made much larger hairs than the gecko, but used the same general principles. And here is its first test. (Laughter) That's Kellar Autumn, my former Ph.D. student, professor now at Lewis and Clark, literally giving his first-born child up for this test. (Laughter) More recently, this happened. Man: This the first time someone has actually climbed with it. Narrator: Lynn Verinsky, a professional climber, who appeared to be brimming with confidence. Lynn Verinsky: Honestly, it's going to be perfectly safe. It will be perfectly safe. Man: How do you know? Lynn Verinsky: Because of liability insurance. (Laughter) Narrator: With a mattress below and attached to a safety rope, Lynn began her 60-foot ascent. Lynn made it to the top in a perfect pairing of Hollywood and science. Man: So you're the first human being to officially emulate a gecko. Lynn Verinsky: Ha! Wow. And what a privilege that has been. Robert Full: That's what she did on rough surfaces. But she actually used these on smooth surfaces — two of them — to climb up, and pull herself up. And you can try this in the lobby, and look at the gecko-inspired material. Now the problem with the robots doing this is that they can't get unstuck, with the material. This is the gecko's solution. They actually peel their toes away from the surface, at high rates, as they run up the wall. Well I'm really excited today to show you the newest version of a robot, Stickybot, using a new hierarchical dry adhesive. Here is the actual robot. And here is what it does. And if you look, you can see that it uses the toe peeling, just like the gecko does. If we can show some of the video, you can see it climbing up the wall. (Applause) There it is. And now it can go on other surfaces because of the new adhesive that the Stanford group was able to do in designing this incredible robot. (Applause) Oh. One thing I want to point out is, look at Stickybot. You see something on it. It's not just to look like a gecko. It has a tail. And just when you think you've figured out nature, this kind of thing happens. The engineers told us, for the climbing robots, that, if they don't have a tail, they fall off the wall. So what they did was they asked us an important question. They said, "Well, it kind of looks like a tail." Even though we put a passive bar there. "Do animals use their tails when they climb up walls?" What they were doing was returning the favor, by giving us a hypothesis to test, in biology, that we wouldn't have thought of. So of course, in reality, we were then panicked, being the biologists, and we should know this already. We said, "Well, what do tails do?" Well we know that tails store fat, for example. We know that you can grab onto things with them. And perhaps it is most well known that they provide static balance. (Laughter) It can also act as a counterbalance. So watch this kangaroo. See that tail? That's incredible! Marc Raibert built a Uniroo hopping robot. And it was unstable without its tail. Now mostly tails limit maneuverability, like this human inside this dinosaur suit. (Laughter) My colleagues actually went on to test this limitation, by increasing the moment of inertia of a student, so they had a tail, and running them through and obstacle course, and found a decrement in performance, like you'd predict. (Laughter) But of course, this is a passive tail. And you can also have active tails. And when I went back to research this, I realized that one of the great TED moments in the past, from Nathan, we've talked about an active tail. Video: Myhrvold thinks tail-cracking dinosaurs were interested in love, not war. Robert Full: He talked about the tail being a whip for communication. It can also be used in defense. Pretty powerful. So we then went back and looked at the animal. And we ran it up a surface. But this time what we did is we put a slippery patch that you see in yellow there. And watch on the right what the animal is doing with its tail when it slips. This is slowed down 10 times. So here is normal speed. And watch it now slip, and see what it does with its tail. It has an active tail that functions as a fifth leg, and it contributes to stability. If you make it slip a huge amount, this is what we discovered. This is incredible. The engineers had a really good idea. And then of course we wondered, okay, they have an active tail, but let's picture them. They're climbing up a wall, or a tree. And they get to the top and let's say there's some leaves there. And what would happen if they climbed on the underside of that leaf, and there was some wind, or we shook it? And we did that experiment, that you see here. (Applause) And this is what we discovered. Now that's real time. You can't see anything. But there it is slowed down. What we discovered was the world's fastest air-righting response. For those of you who remember your physics, that's a zero-angular-momentum righting response. But it's like a cat. You know, cats falling. Cats do this. They twist their bodies. But geckos do it better. And they do it with their tail. So they do it with this active tail as they swing around. And then they always land in the sort of superman skydiving posture. Okay, now we wondered, if we were right, we should be able to test this in a physical model, in a robot. So for TED we actually built a robot, over there, a prototype, with the tail. And we're going to attempt the first air-righting response in a tail, with a robot. If we could have the lights on it. Okay, there it goes. And show the video. There it is. And it works just like it does in the animal. So all you need is a swing of the tail to right yourself. (Applause) Now, of course, we were normally frightened because the animal has no gliding adaptations, so we thought, "Oh that's okay. We'll put it in a vertical wind tunnel. We'll blow the air up, we'll give it a landing target, a tree trunk, just outside the plexi-glass enclosure, and see what it does. (Laughter) So we did. And here is what it does. So the wind is coming from the bottom. This is slowed down 10 times. It does an equilibrium glide. Highly controlled. This is sort of incredible. But actually it's quite beautiful, when you take a picture of it. And it's better than that, it — just in the slide — maneuvers in mid-air. And the way it does it, is it takes its tail and it swings it one way to yaw left, and it swings its other way to yaw right. So we can maneuver this way. And then — we had to film this several times to believe this — it also does this. Watch this. It oscillates its tail up and down like a dolphin. It can actually swim through the air. But watch its front legs. Can you see what they are doing? What does that mean for the origin of flapping flight? Maybe it's evolved from coming down from trees, and trying to control a glide. Stay tuned for that. (Laughter) So then we wondered, "Can they actually maneuver with this?" So there is the landing target. Could they steer towards it with these capabilities? Here it is in the wind tunnel. And it certainly looks like it. You can see it even better from down on top. Watch the animal. Definitely moving towards the landing target. Watch the whip of its tail as it does it. Look at that. It's unbelievable. So now we were really confused, because there are no reports of it gliding. So we went, "Oh my god, we have to go to the field, and see if it actually does this." Completely opposite of the way you'd see it on a nature film, of course. We wondered, "Do they actually glide in nature?" Well we went to the forests of Singapore and Southeast Asia. And the next video you see is the first time we've showed this. This is the actual video — not staged, a real research video — of animal gliding down. There is a red trajectory line. Look at the end to see the animal. But then as it gets closer to the tree, look at the close-up. And see if you can see it land. So there it comes down. There is a gecko at the end of that trajectory line. You see it there? There? Watch it come down. Now watch up there and you can see the landing. Did you see it hit? It actually uses its tail too, just like we saw in the lab. So now we can continue this mutualism by suggesting that they can make an active tail. And here is the first active tail, in the robot, made by Boston Dynamics. So to conclude, I think we need to build biomutualisms, like I showed, that will increase the pace of basic discovery in their application. To do this though, we need to redesign education in a major way, to balance depth with interdisciplinary communication, and explicitly train people how to contribute to, and benefit from other disciplines. And of course you need the organisms and the environment to do it. That is, whether you care about security, search and rescue or health, we must preserve nature's designs, otherwise these secrets will be lost forever. And from what I heard from our new president, I'm very optimistic. Thank you. (Applause)

Success is a continuous journey

Richard St. John

{0: 'Richard St. John'}

{0: ['marketer', 'success analyst']}

{0: 'A self-described average guy who found success doing what he loved, Richard St. John spent more than a decade researching the lessons of success -- and distilling them into 8 words, 3 minutes and one successful book.'}

2009-02-06

2009-06-12

TED2009

en

['af', 'ar', 'bg', 'bn', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'gu', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'kk', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'lv', 'mk', 'mn', 'mr', 'ms', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'ta', 'tg', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'uz', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'humor', 'life', 'productivity', 'psychology', 'success']

{70: '8 secrets of success', 96: 'Why we do what we do', 366: 'Flow, the secret to happiness', 33778: '8 lessons on building a company people enjoy working for', 2272: 'The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed', 31235: 'This is what makes employees happy at work'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_st_john_success_is_a_continuous_journey/

In his typically candid style, Richard St. John reminds us that success is not a one-way street, but a constant journey. He uses the story of his business' rise and fall to illustrate a valuable lesson -- when we stop trying, we fail.

Why do so many people reach success and then fail? One of the big reasons is, we think success is a one-way street. So we do everything that leads up to success, but then we get there. We figure we've made it, we sit back in our comfort zone, and we actually stop doing everything that made us successful. And it doesn't take long to go downhill. And I can tell you this happens, because it happened to me. Reaching success, I worked hard, I pushed myself. But then I stopped, because I figured, "Oh, you know, I made it. I can just sit back and relax." Reaching success, I always tried to improve and do good work. But then I stopped because I figured, "Hey, I'm good enough. I don't need to improve any more." Reaching success, I was pretty good at coming up with good ideas. Because I did all these simple things that led to ideas. But then I stopped, because I figured I was this hot-shot guy and I shouldn't have to work at ideas, they should just come like magic. And the only thing that came was creative block. I couldn't come up with any ideas. Reaching success, I always focused on clients and projects, and ignored the money. Then all this money started pouring in. And I got distracted by it. And suddenly I was on the phone to my stockbroker and my real estate agent, when I should have been talking to my clients. And reaching success, I always did what I loved. But then I got into stuff that I didn't love, like management. I am the world's worst manager, but I figured I should be doing it, because I was, after all, the president of the company. Well, soon a black cloud formed over my head and here I was, outwardly very successful, but inwardly very depressed. But I'm a guy; I knew how to fix it. I bought a fast car. (Laughter) It didn't help. I was faster but just as depressed. So I went to my doctor. I said, "Doc, I can buy anything I want. But I'm not happy. I'm depressed. It's true what they say, and I didn't believe it until it happened to me. But money can't buy happiness." He said, "No. But it can buy Prozac." And he put me on anti-depressants. And yeah, the black cloud faded a little bit, but so did all the work, because I was just floating along. I couldn't care less if clients ever called. (Laughter) And clients didn't call. (Laughter) Because they could see I was no longer serving them, I was only serving myself. So they took their money and their projects to others who would serve them better. Well, it didn't take long for business to drop like a rock. My partner and I, Thom, we had to let all our employees go. It was down to just the two of us, and we were about to go under. And that was great. Because with no employees, there was nobody for me to manage. So I went back to doing the projects I loved. I had fun again, I worked harder and, to cut a long story short, did all the things that took me back up to success. But it wasn't a quick trip. It took seven years. But in the end, business grew bigger than ever. And when I went back to following these eight principles, the black cloud over my head disappeared altogether. And I woke up one day and I said, "I don't need Prozac anymore." And I threw it away and haven't needed it since. I learned that success isn't a one-way street. It doesn't look like this; it really looks more like this. It's a continuous journey. And if we want to avoid "success-to-failure-syndrome," we just keep following these eight principles, because that is not only how we achieve success, it's how we sustain it. So here is to your continued success. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Life in Biosphere 2

Jane Poynter

{0: 'Jane Poynter'}

{0: ['biospherian']}

{0: 'After weathering two years in Biosphere 2, Jane Poynter is trying to create technologies that allow us to live in hostile environments -- like outer space. '}

2009-03-23

2009-06-15

TEDxUSC

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'de', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'et', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['TEDx', 'adventure', 'biotech', 'climate change', 'environment', 'space', 'ecology']

{490: 'How to grow fresh air', 128: 'Salvation (and profit) in greentech', 192: 'A critical look at geoengineering against climate change', 40: 'The story of life in photographs', 39941: 'How supercharged plants could slow climate change', 24045: 'Dead stuff: The secret ingredient in our food chain'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_poynter_life_in_biosphere_2/

Jane Poynter tells her story of living two years and 20 minutes in Biosphere 2 -- an experience that provoked her to explore how we might sustain life in the harshest of environments.

I have had the distinct pleasure of living inside two biospheres. Of course we all here in this room live in Biosphere 1. I've also lived in Biosphere 2. And the wonderful thing about that is that I get to compare biospheres. And hopefully from that I get to learn something. So what did I learn? Well, here I am inside Biosphere 2, making a pizza. So I am harvesting the wheat, in order to make the dough. And then of course I have to milk the goats and feed the goats in order to make the cheese. It took me four months in Biosphere 2 to make a pizza. Here in Biosphere 1, well it takes me about two minutes, because I pick up the phone and I call and say, "Hey, can you deliver the pizza?" So Biosphere 2 was essentially a three-acre, entirely sealed, miniature world that I lived in for two years and 20 minutes. (Laughter) Over the top it was sealed with steel and glass, underneath it was sealed with a pan of steel — essentially entirely sealed. So we had our own miniature rainforest, a private beach with a coral reef. We had a savanna, a marsh, a desert. We had our own half-acre farm that we had to grow everything. And of course we had our human habitat, where we lived. Back in the mid-'80s when we were designing Biosphere 2, we had to ask ourselves some pretty basic questions. I mean, what is a biosphere? Back then, yes, I guess we all know now that it is essentially the sphere of life around the Earth, right? Well, you have to get a little more specific than that if you're going to build one. And so we decided that what it really is is that it is entirely materially closed — that is, nothing goes in or out at all, no material — and energetically open, which is essentially what planet Earth is. This is a chamber that was 1/400th the size of Biosphere 2 that we called our Test Module. And the very first day that this fellow, John Allen, walked in, to spend a couple of days in there with all the plants and animals and bacteria that we'd put in there to hopefully keep him alive, the doctors were incredibly concerned that he was going to succumb to some dreadful toxin, or that his lungs were going to get choked with bacteria or something, fungus. But of course none of that happened. And over the ensuing few years, there were great sagas about designing Biosphere 2. But by 1991 we finally had this thing built. And it was time for us to go in and give it a go. We needed to know, is life this malleable? Can you take this biosphere, that has evolved on a planetary scale, and jam it into a little bottle, and will it survive? Big questions. And we wanted to know this both for being able to go somewhere else in the universe — if we were going to go to Mars, for instance, would we take a biosphere with us, to live in it? We also wanted to know so we can understand more about the Earth that we all live in. Well, in 1991 it was finally time for us to go in and try out this baby. Let's take it on a maiden voyage. Will it work? Or will something happen that we can't understand and we can't fix, thereby negating the concept of man-made biospheres? So eight of us went in: four men and four women. More on that later. (Laughter) And this is the world that we lived in. So, on the top, we had these beautiful rainforests and an ocean, and underneath we had all this technosphere, we called it, which is where all the pumps and the valves and the water tanks and the air handlers, and all of that. One of the Biospherians called it "garden of Eden on top of an aircraft carrier." And then also we had the human habitat of course, with the laboratories, and all of that. This is the agriculture. It was essentially an organic farm. The day I walked into Biosphere 2, I was, for the first time, breathing a completely different atmosphere than everybody else in the world, except seven other people. At that moment I became part of that biosphere. And I don't mean that in an abstract sense; I mean it rather literally. When I breathed out, my CO2 fed the sweet potatoes that I was growing. And we ate an awful lot of the sweet potatoes. (Laughter) And those sweet potatoes became part of me. In fact, we ate so many sweet potatoes I became orange with sweet potato. I literally was eating the same carbon over and over again. I was eating myself in some strange sort of bizarre way. When it came to our atmosphere, however, it wasn't that much of a joke over the long term, because it turned out that we were losing oxygen, quite a lot of oxygen. And we knew that we were losing CO2. And so we were working to sequester carbon. Good lord — we know that term now. We were growing plants like crazy. We were taking their biomass, storing them in the basement, growing plants, going around, around, around, trying to take all of that carbon out of the atmosphere. We were trying to stop carbon from going into the atmosphere. We stopped irrigating our soil, as much as we could. We stopped tilling, so that we could prevent greenhouse gasses from going into the air. But our oxygen was going down faster than our CO2 was going up, which was quite unexpected, because we had seen them going in tandem in the test module. And it was like playing atomic hide-and-seek. We had lost seven tons of oxygen. And we had no clue where it was. And I tell you, when you lose a lot of oxygen — and our oxygen went down quite far; it went from 21 percent down to 14.2 percent — my goodness, do you feel dreadful. I mean we were dragging ourselves around the Biosphere. And we had sleep apnea at night. So you'd wake up gasping with breath, because your blood chemistry has changed. And that you literally do that. You stop breathing and then you — (Gasps) — take a breath and it wakes you up. And it's very irritating. And everybody outside thought we were dying. I mean, the media was making it sound like were were dying. And I had to call up my mother every other day saying, "No, Mum, it's fine, fine. We're not dead. We're fine. We're fine." And the doctor was, in fact, checking us to make sure we were, in fact, fine. But in fact he was the person who was most susceptible to the oxygen. And one day he couldn't add up a line of figures. And it was time for us to put oxygen in. And you might think, well, "Boy, your life support system was failing you. Wasn't that dreadful?" Yes. In a sense it was terrifying. Except that I knew I could walk out the airlock door at any time, if it really got bad, though who was going to say, "I can't take it anymore!"? Not me, that was for sure. But on the other hand, it was the scientific gold of the project, because we could really crank this baby up, as a scientific tool, and see if we could, in fact, find where those seven tons of oxygen had gone. And we did indeed find it. And we found it in the concrete. Essentially it had done something very simple. We had put too much carbon in the soil in the form of compost. It broke down; it took oxygen out of the air; it put CO2 into the air; and it went into the concrete. Pretty straightforward really. So at the end of the two years when we came out, we were elated, because, in fact, although you might say we had discovered something that was quite "uhh," when your oxygen is going down, stopped working, essentially, in your life support system, that's a very bad failure. Except that we knew what it was. And we knew how to fix it. And nothing else emerged that really was as serious as that. And we proved the concept, more or less. People, on the other hand, was a different subject. We were — yeah I don't know that we were fixable. We all went quite nuts, I will say. And the day I came out of Biosphere 2, I was thrilled I was going to see all my family and my friends. For two years I'd been seeing people through the glass. And everybody ran up to me. And I recoiled. They stank! People stink! We stink of hairspray and underarm deodorant, and all kinds of stuff. Now we had stuff inside Biosphere to keep ourselves clean, but nothing with perfume. And boy do we stink out here. Not only that, but I lost touch of where my food came from. I had been growing all my own food. I had no idea what was in my food, where it came from. I didn't even recognize half the names in most of the food that I was eating. In fact, I would stand for hours in the aisles of shops, reading all the names on all of the things. People must have thought I was nuts. It was really quite astonishing. And I slowly lost track of where I was in this big biosphere, in this big biosphere that we all live in. In Biosphere 2 I totally understood that I had a huge impact on my biosphere, everyday, and it had an impact on me, very viscerally, very literally. So I went about my business: Paragon Space Development Corporation, a little firm I started with people while I was in the Biosphere, because I had nothing else to do. And one of the things we did was try to figure out: how small can you make these biospheres, and what can you do with them? And so we sent one onto the Mir Space Station. We had one on the shuttle and one on the International Space Station, for 16 months, where we managed to produce the first organisms to go through complete multiple life cycles in space — really pushing the envelope of understanding how malleable our life systems are. And I'm also proud to announce that you're getting a sneak preview — on Friday we're going to announce that we're actually forming a team to develop a system to grow plants on the Moon, which is going to be pretty fun. And the legacy of that is a system that we were designing: an entirely sealed system to grow plants to grow on Mars. And part of that is that we had to model very rapid circulation of CO2 and oxygen and water through this plant system. As a result of that modeling I ended up in all places, in Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea, formerly part of Ethiopia, is one of those places that is astonishingly beautiful, incredibly stark, and I have no understanding of how people eke out a living there. It is so dry. This is what I saw. But this is also what I saw. I saw a company that had taken seawater and sand, and they were growing a kind of crop that will grow on pure salt water without having to treat it. And it will produce a food crop. In this case it was oilseed. It was astonishing. They were also producing mangroves in a plantation. And the mangroves were providing wood and honey and leaves for the animals, so that they could produce milk and whatnot, like we had in the Biosphere. And all of it was coming from this: shrimp farms. Shrimp farms are a scourge on the earth, frankly, from an environmental point of view. They pour huge amounts of pollutants into the ocean. They also pollute their next-door neighbors. So they're all shitting each other's ponds, quite literally. And what this project was doing was taking the effluent of these, and turning them into all of this food. They were literally turning pollution into abundance for a desert people. They had created an industrial ecosystem, of a sense. I was there because I was actually modeling the mangrove portion for a carbon credit program, under the U.N. Kyoto Protocol system. And as I was modeling this mangrove swamp, I was thinking to myself, "How do you put a box around this?" When I'm modeling a plant in a box, literally, I know where to draw the boundary. In a mangrove forest like this I have no idea. Well, of course you have to draw the boundary around the whole of the Earth. And understand its interactions with the entire Earth. And put your project in that context. Around the world today we're seeing an incredible transformation, from what I would call a biocidal species, one that — whether we intentionally or unintentionally — have designed our systems to kill life, a lot of the time. This is in fact, this beautiful photograph, is in fact over the Amazon. And here the light green are areas of massive deforestation. And those beautiful wispy clouds are, in fact, fires, human-made fires. We're in the process of transforming from this, to what I would call a biophilic society, one where we learn to nurture society. Now it may not seem like it, but we are. It is happening all across the world, in every kind of walk of life, and every kind of career and industry that you can think of. And I think often times people get lost in that. They go, "But how can I possibly find my way in that? It's such a huge subject." And I would say that the small stuff counts. It really does. This is the story of a rake in my backyard. This was my backyard, very early on, when I bought my property. And in Arizona, of course, everybody puts gravel down. And they like to keep everything beautifully raked. And they keep all the leaves away. And on Sunday morning the neighbors leaf blower comes out, and I want to throttle them. It's a certain type of aesthetic. We're very uncomfortable with untidiness. And I threw away my rake. And I let all of the leaves fall from the trees that I have on my property. And over time, essentially what have I been doing? I've been building topsoil. And so now all the birds come in. And I have hawks. And I have an oasis. This is what happens every spring. For six weeks, six to eight weeks, I have this flush of green oasis. This is actually in a riparian area. And all of Tucson could be like this if everybody would just revolt and throw away the rake. The small stuff counts. The Industrial Revolution — and Prometheus — has given us this, the ability to light up the world. It has also given us this, the ability to look at the world from the outside. Now we may not all have another biosphere that we can run to, and compare it to this biosphere. But we can look at the world, and try to understand where we are in its context, and how we choose to interact with it. And if you lose where you are in your biosphere, or are perhaps having a difficulty connecting with where you are in the biosphere, I would say to you, take a deep breath. The yogis had it right. Breath does, in fact, connect us all in a very literal way. Take a breath now. And as you breathe, think about what is in your breath. There perhaps is the CO2 from the person sitting next-door to you. Maybe there is a little bit of oxygen from some algae on the beach not far from here. It also connects us in time. There may be some carbon in your breath from the dinosaurs. There could also be carbon that you are exhaling now that will be in the breath of your great-great-great-grandchildren. Thank you. (Applause)

How social media can make history

Clay Shirky

{0: 'Clay Shirky'}

{0: ['social media theorist']}

{0: 'Clay Shirky argues that the history of the modern world could be rendered as the history of ways of arguing, where changes in media change what sort of arguments are possible -- with deep social and political implications.'}

2009-06-03

2009-06-16

TED@State

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sl', 'sr', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['communication', 'culture', 'global issues', 'politics', 'social change', 'social media', 'technology']

{274: 'Institutions vs. collaboration', 523: 'Reporting crisis via texting', 473: 'The voices of Twitter users', 916: 'Listening to global voices', 1066: 'Social media and the end of gender', 641: 'How the Net aids dictatorships'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_social_media_can_make_history/

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

I want to talk about the transformed media landscape, and what it means for anybody who has a message that they want to get out to anywhere in the world. And I want to illustrate that by telling a couple of stories about that transformation. I'll start here. Last November there was a presidential election. You probably read something about it in the papers. And there was some concern that in some parts of the country there might be voter suppression. And so a plan came up to video the vote. And the idea was that individual citizens with phones capable of taking photos or making video would document their polling places, on the lookout for any kind of voter suppression techniques, and would upload this to a central place. And that this would operate as a kind of citizen observation — that citizens would not be there just to cast individual votes, but also to help ensure the sanctity of the vote overall. So this is a pattern that assumes we're all in this together. What matters here isn't technical capital, it's social capital. These tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. It isn't when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society. It's when everybody is able to take them for granted. Because now that media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted the idea that we're all in this together. And so we're starting to see a media landscape in which innovation is happening everywhere, and moving from one spot to another. That is a huge transformation. Not to put too fine a point on it, the moment we're living through — the moment our historical generation is living through — is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history. Now that's a big claim. I'm going to try to back it up. There are only four periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to qualify for the label "revolution." The first one is the famous one, the printing press: movable type, oil-based inks, that whole complex of innovations that made printing possible and turned Europe upside-down, starting in the middle of the 1400s. Then, a couple of hundred years ago, there was innovation in two-way communication, conversational media: first the telegraph, then the telephone. Slow, text-based conversations, then real-time voice based conversations. Then, about 150 years ago, there was a revolution in recorded media other than print: first photos, then recorded sound, then movies, all encoded onto physical objects. And finally, about 100 years ago, the harnessing of electromagnetic spectrum to send sound and images through the air — radio and television. This is the media landscape as we knew it in the 20th century. This is what those of us of a certain age grew up with, and are used to. But there is a curious asymmetry here. The media that is good at creating conversations is no good at creating groups. And the media that's good at creating groups is no good at creating conversations. If you want to have a conversation in this world, you have it with one other person. If you want to address a group, you get the same message and you give it to everybody in the group, whether you're doing that with a broadcasting tower or a printing press. That was the media landscape as we had it in the twentieth century. And this is what changed. This thing that looks like a peacock hit a windscreen is Bill Cheswick's map of the Internet. He traces the edges of the individual networks and then color codes them. The Internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time. Whereas the phone gave us the one-to-one pattern, and television, radio, magazines, books, gave us the one-to-many pattern, the Internet gives us the many-to-many pattern. For the first time, media is natively good at supporting these kinds of conversations. That's one of the big changes. The second big change is that, as all media gets digitized, the Internet also becomes the mode of carriage for all other media, meaning that phone calls migrate to the Internet, magazines migrate to the Internet, movies migrate to the Internet. And that means that every medium is right next door to every other medium. Put another way, media is increasingly less just a source of information, and it is increasingly more a site of coordination, because groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something can now gather around and talk to each other as well. And the third big change is that members of the former audience, as Dan Gilmore calls them, can now also be producers and not consumers. Every time a new consumer joins this media landscape a new producer joins as well, because the same equipment — phones, computers — let you consume and produce. It's as if, when you bought a book, they threw in the printing press for free; it's like you had a phone that could turn into a radio if you pressed the right buttons. That is a huge change in the media landscape we're used to. And it's not just Internet or no Internet. We've had the Internet in its public form for almost 20 years now, and it's still changing as the media becomes more social. It's still changing patterns even among groups who know how to deal with the Internet well. Second story. Last May, China in the Sichuan province had a terrible earthquake, 7.9 magnitude, massive destruction in a wide area, as the Richter Scale has it. And the earthquake was reported as it was happening. People were texting from their phones. They were taking photos of buildings. They were taking videos of buildings shaking. They were uploading it to QQ, China's largest Internet service. They were Twittering it. And so as the quake was happening the news was reported. And because of the social connections, Chinese students coming elsewhere, and going to school, or businesses in the rest of the world opening offices in China — there were people listening all over the world, hearing this news. The BBC got their first wind of the Chinese quake from Twitter. Twitter announced the existence of the quake several minutes before the US Geological Survey had anything up online for anybody to read. The last time China had a quake of that magnitude it took them three months to admit that it had happened. (Laughter) Now they might have liked to have done that here, rather than seeing these pictures go up online. But they weren't given that choice, because their own citizens beat them to the punch. Even the government learned of the earthquake from their own citizens, rather than from the Xinhua News Agency. And this stuff rippled like wildfire. For a while there the top 10 most clicked links on Twitter, the global short messaging service — nine of the top 10 links were about the quake. People collating information, pointing people to news sources, pointing people to the US geological survey. The 10th one was kittens on a treadmill, but that's the Internet for you. (Laughter) But nine of the 10 in those first hours. And within half a day donation sites were up, and donations were pouring in from all around the world. This was an incredible, coordinated global response. And the Chinese then, in one of their periods of media openness, decided that they were going to let it go, that they were going to let this citizen reporting fly. And then this happened. People began to figure out, in the Sichuan Provence, that the reason so many school buildings had collapsed — because tragically the earthquake happened during a school day — the reason so many school buildings collapsed is that corrupt officials had taken bribes to allow those building to be built to less than code. And so they started, the citizen journalists started reporting that as well. And there was an incredible picture. You may have seen in on the front page of the New York Times. A local official literally prostrated himself in the street, in front of these protesters, in order to get them to go away. Essentially to say, "We will do anything to placate you, just please stop protesting in public." But these are people who have been radicalized, because, thanks to the one child policy, they have lost everyone in their next generation. Someone who has seen the death of a single child now has nothing to lose. And so the protest kept going. And finally the Chinese cracked down. That was enough of citizen media. And so they began to arrest the protesters. They began to shut down the media that the protests were happening on. China is probably the most successful manager of Internet censorship in the world, using something that is widely described as the Great Firewall of China. And the Great Firewall of China is a set of observation points that assume that media is produced by professionals, it mostly comes in from the outside world, it comes in relatively sparse chunks, and it comes in relatively slowly. And because of those four characteristics they are able to filter it as it comes into the country. But like the Maginot Line, the great firewall of China was facing in the wrong direction for this challenge, because not one of those four things was true in this environment. The media was produced locally. It was produced by amateurs. It was produced quickly. And it was produced at such an incredible abundance that there was no way to filter it as it appeared. And so now the Chinese government, who for a dozen years, has quite successfully filtered the web, is now in the position of having to decide whether to allow or shut down entire services, because the transformation to amateur media is so enormous that they can't deal with it any other way. And in fact that is happening this week. On the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen they just, two days ago, announced that they were simply shutting down access to Twitter, because there was no way to filter it other than that. They had to turn the spigot entirely off. Now these changes don't just affect people who want to censor messages. They also affect people who want to send messages, because this is really a transformation of the ecosystem as a whole, not just a particular strategy. The classic media problem, from the 20th century is, how does an organization have a message that they want to get out to a group of people distributed at the edges of a network. And here is the twentieth century answer. Bundle up the message. Send the same message to everybody. National message. Targeted individuals. Relatively sparse number of producers. Very expensive to do, so there is not a lot of competition. This is how you reach people. All of that is over. We are increasingly in a landscape where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap. Now most organizations that are trying to send messages to the outside world, to the distributed collection of the audience, are now used to this change. The audience can talk back. And that's a little freaky. But you can get used to it after a while, as people do. But that's not the really crazy change that we're living in the middle of. The really crazy change is here: it's the fact that they are no longer disconnected from each other, the fact that former consumers are now producers, the fact that the audience can talk directly to one another; because there is a lot more amateurs than professionals, and because the size of the network, the complexity of the network is actually the square of the number of participants, meaning that the network, when it grows large, grows very, very large. As recently at last decade, most of the media that was available for public consumption was produced by professionals. Those days are over, never to return. It is the green lines now, that are the source of the free content, which brings me to my last story. We saw some of the most imaginative use of social media during the Obama campaign. And I don't mean most imaginative use in politics — I mean most imaginative use ever. And one of the things Obama did, was they famously, the Obama campaign did, was they famously put up MyBarackObama.com, myBO.com And millions of citizens rushed in to participate, and to try and figure out how to help. An incredible conversation sprung up there. And then, this time last year, Obama announced that he was going to change his vote on FISA, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He had said, in January, that he would not sign a bill that granted telecom immunity for possibly warrantless spying on American persons. By the summer, in the middle of the general campaign, He said, "I've thought about the issue more. I've changed my mind. I'm going to vote for this bill." And many of his own supporters on his own site went very publicly berserk. It was Senator Obama when they created it. They changed the name later. "Please get FISA right." Within days of this group being created it was the fastest growing group on myBO.com; within weeks of its being created it was the largest group. Obama had to issue a press release. He had to issue a reply. And he said essentially, "I have considered the issue. I understand where you are coming from. But having considered it all, I'm still going to vote the way I'm going to vote. But I wanted to reach out to you and say, I understand that you disagree with me, and I'm going to take my lumps on this one." This didn't please anybody. But then a funny thing happened in the conversation. People in that group realized that Obama had never shut them down. Nobody in the Obama campaign had ever tried to hide the group or make it harder to join, to deny its existence, to delete it, to take to off the site. They had understood that their role with myBO.com was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters. And that is the kind of discipline that it takes to make really mature use of this media. Media, the media landscape that we knew, as familiar as it was, as easy conceptually as it was to deal with the idea that professionals broadcast messages to amateurs, is increasingly slipping away. In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, in a world of media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants, in that world, media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It is more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups. And the choice we face, I mean anybody who has a message they want to have heard anywhere in the world, isn't whether or not that is the media environment we want to operate in. That's the media environment we've got. The question we all face now is, "How can we make best use of this media? Even though it means changing the way we've always done it." Thank you very much. (Applause)

How cults rewire the brain

Diane Benscoter

{0: 'Diane Benscoter'}

{0: ['deprogrammer']}

{0: 'Diane Benscoter, an ex-Moonie, is now invested in finding ways to battle extremist mentalities and their potentially deadly consequences.'}

2009-02-06

2009-06-17

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'mk', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sl', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['God', 'activism', 'faith', 'meme', 'religion']

{269: 'Memes and "temes"', 116: 'Dangerous memes', 113: 'Militant atheism', 2077: 'A neural portrait of the human mind', 1563: 'The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain', 2495: 'This is your brain on communication'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/diane_benscoter_how_cults_rewire_the_brain/

Diane Benscoter spent five years as a "Moonie." She shares an insider's perspective on the mind of a cult member, and proposes a new way to think about today's most troubling conflicts and extremist movements.

My journey to coming here today started in 1974. That's me with the funny gloves. I was 17 and going on a peace walk. What I didn't know though, was most of those people, standing there with me, were Moonies. (Laughter) And within a week I had come to believe that the second coming of Christ had occurred, that it was Sun Myung Moon, and that I had been specially chosen and prepared by God to be his disciple. Now as cool as that sounds, my family was not that thrilled with this. (Laughter) And they tried everything they could to get me out of there. There was an underground railroad of sorts that was going on during those years. Maybe some of you remember it. They were called deprogrammers. And after about five long years my family had me deprogrammed. And I then became a deprogrammer. I started going out on cases. And after about five years of doing this, I was arrested for kidnapping. Most of the cases I went out on were called involuntary. What happened was that the family had to get their loved ones some safe place somehow. And so they took them to some safe place. And we would come in and talk to them, usually for about a week. And so after this happened, I decided it was a good time to turn my back on this work. And about 20 years went by. There was a burning question though that would not leave me. And that was, "How did this happen to me?" And in fact, what did happen to my brain? Because something did. And so I decided to write a book, a memoir, about this decade of my life. And toward the end of writing that book there was a documentary that came out. It was on Jonestown. And it had a chilling effect on me. These are the dead in Jonestown. About 900 people died that day, most of them taking their own lives. Women gave poison to their babies, and watched foam come from their mouths as they died. The top picture is a group of Moonies that have been blessed by their messiah. Their mates were chosen for them. The bottom picture is Hitler youth. This is the leg of a suicide bomber. The thing I had to admit to myself, with great repulsion, was that I get it. I understand how this could happen. I understand how someone's brain, how someone's mind can come to the place where it makes sense — in fact it would be wrong, when your brain is working like that — not to try to save the world through genocide. And so what is this? How does this work? And how I've come to view what happened to me is a viral, memetic infection. For those of you who aren't familiar with memetics, a meme has been defined as an idea that replicates in the human brain and moves from brain to brain like a virus, much like a virus. The way a virus works is — it can infect and do the most damage to someone who has a compromised immune system. In 1974, I was young, I was naive, and I was pretty lost in my world. I was really idealistic. These easy ideas to complex questions are very appealing when you are emotionally vulnerable. What happens is that circular logic takes over. "Moon is one with God. God is going to fix all the problems in the world. All I have to do is humbly follow. Because God is going to stop war and hunger — all these things I wanted to do — all I have to do is humbly follow. Because after all, God is [working through] the messiah. He's going to fix all this." It becomes impenetrable. And the most dangerous part of this is that is creates "us" and "them," "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil." And it makes anything possible, makes anything rationalizable. And the thing is, though, if you looked at my brain during those years in the Moonies — neuroscience is expanding exponentially, as Ray Kurzweil said yesterday. Science is expanding. We're beginning to look inside the brain. And so if you looked at my brain, or any brain that's infected with a viral memetic infection like this, and compared it to anyone in this room, or anyone who uses critical thinking on a regular basis, I am convinced it would look very, very different. And that, strange as it may sound, gives me hope. And the reason that gives me hope is that the first thing is to admit that we have a problem. But it's a human problem. It's a scientific problem, if you will. It happens in the human brain. There is no evil force out there to get us. And so this is something that, through research and education, I believe that we can solve. And so the first step is to realize that we can do this together, and that there is no "us" and "them." Thank you very much. (Applause)

Surgery's past, present and robotic future

Catherine Mohr

{0: 'Catherine Mohr'}

{0: ['roboticist']}

{0: "Catherine Mohr loves what she does -- she's just not ever sure what it will be next. "}

2009-02-06

2009-06-18

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'gl', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['design', 'health care', 'heart health', 'medicine', 'science', 'technology']

{259: 'Can we domesticate germs?', 142: 'The potential of regenerative medicine', 236: 'A look inside the brain in real time', 1652: 'A universal translator for surgeons', 2046: 'A tool to fix one of the most dangerous moments in surgery', 6477: 'How augmented reality could change the future of surgery'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_mohr_surgery_s_past_present_and_robotic_future/

Surgeon and inventor Catherine Mohr tours the history of surgery (and its pre-painkiller, pre-antiseptic past), then demos some of the newest tools for surgery through tiny incisions, performed using nimble robot hands. Fascinating -- but not for the squeamish.

A talk about surgical robots is also a talk about surgery. And while I've tried to make my images not too graphic, keep in mind that surgeons have a different relationship with blood than normal people do, because, after all, what a surgeon does to a patient, if it were done without consent, would be a felony. Surgeons are the tailors, the plumbers, the carpenters — some would say the butchers — of the medical world: cutting, reshaping, reforming, bypassing, fixing. But you need to talk about surgical instruments and the evolution of surgical technology together. So in order to give you some kind of a perspective of where we are right now with surgical robots, and where we're going to be going in the future, I want to give you a little bit of perspective of how we got to this point, how we even came to believe that surgery was OK, that this was something that was possible to do, that this kind of cutting and reforming was OK. So, a little bit of perspective — about 10,000 years of perspective. This is a trephinated skull. And trephination is simply just cutting a hole in the skull. And many, many hundreds of skulls like this have been found in archaeological sites all over the world, dating back five to 10 thousand years. Five to 10 thousand years! Now imagine this. You are a healer in a Stone Age village. And you have some guy that you're not quite sure what's wrong with him — Oliver Sacks is going to be born way in the future. He's got some seizure disorder. And you don't understand this. But you think to yourself, "I'm not quite sure what's wrong with this guy. But maybe if I cut a hole in his head I can fix it." (Laughter) Now that is surgical thinking. Now we've got the dawn of interventional surgery here. What is astonishing about this is, even though we don't know really how much of this was intended to be religious, or how much of it was intended to be therapeutic, what we can tell is that these patients lived! Judging by the healing on the borders of these holes, they lived days, months, years following trephination. And so what we are seeing is evidence of a refined technique that was being handed down over thousands and thousands of years, all over the world. This arose independently at sites everywhere that had no communication to one another. We really are seeing the dawn of interventional surgery. Now we can fast forward many thousands of years into the Bronze Age and beyond. And we see new refined tools coming out. But surgeons in these eras are a little bit more conservative than their bold, trephinating ancestors. These guys confined their surgery to fairly superficial injuries. And surgeons were tradesmen, rather than physicians. This persisted all the way into and through the Renaissance. That may have saved the writers, but it didn't really save the surgeons terribly much. They were still a mistrusted lot. Surgeons still had a bit of a PR problem, because the landscape was dominated by the itinerant barber surgeon. These were folks that traveled from village to village, town to town, doing surgery sort of as a form of performance art. Because we were in the age before anesthesia, the agony of the patient is really as much of the public spectacle as the surgery itself. One of the most famous of these guys, Frere Jacques, shown here doing a lithotomy — which is the removal of the bladder stone, one of the most invasive surgeries they did at the time — had to take less than two minutes. You had to have quite a flair for the dramatic, and be really, really quick. And so here you see him doing a lithotomy. And he is credited with doing over 4,000 of these public surgeries, wandering around in Europe, which is an astonishing number, when you think that surgery must have been a last resort. I mean who would put themselves through that? Until anesthesia, the absence of sensation. With the demonstration of the Morton Ether Inhaler at the Mass. General in 1847, a whole new era of surgery was ushered in. Anesthesia gave surgeons the freedom to operate. Anesthesia gave them the freedom to experiment, to start to delve deeper into the body. This was truly a revolution in surgery. But there was a pretty big problem with this. After these very long, painstaking operations, attempting to cure things they'd never been able to touch before, the patients died. They died of massive infection. Surgery didn't hurt anymore, but it killed you pretty quickly. And infection would continue to claim a majority of surgical patients until the next big revolution in surgery, which was aseptic technique. Joseph Lister was aepsis's, or sterility's, biggest advocate, to a very very skeptical bunch of surgeons. But eventually they did come around. The Mayo brothers came out to visit Lister in Europe. And they came back to their American clinic and they said they had learned it was as important to wash your hands before doing surgery as it was to wash up afterwards. (Laughter) Something so simple. And yet, operative mortality dropped profoundly. These surgeries were actually now being effective. With the patient insensitive to pain, and a sterile operating field all bets were off, the sky was the limit. You could now start doing surgery everywhere, on the gut, on the liver, on the heart, on the brain. Transplantation: you could take an organ out of one person, you could put it in another person, and it would work. Surgeons didn't have a problem with respectability anymore; they had become gods. The era of the "big surgeon, big incision" had arrived, but at quite a cost, because they are saving lives, but not necessarily quality of life, because healthy people don't usually need surgery, and unhealthy people have a very hard time recovering from a cut like that. The question had to be asked, "Well, can we do these same surgeries but through little incisions?" Laparoscopy is doing this kind of surgery: surgery with long instruments through small incisions. And it really changed the landscape of surgery. Some of the tools for this had been around for a hundred years, but it had only been used as a diagnostic technique until the 1980s, when there was changes in camera technologies and things like that, that allowed this to be done for real operations. So what you see — this is now the first surgical image — as we're coming down the tube, this is a new entry into the body. It looks very different from what you're expecting surgery to look like. We bring instruments in, from two separate cuts in the side, and then you can start manipulating tissue. Within 10 years of the first gallbladder surgeries being done laparoscopically, a majority of gallbladder surgeries were being done laparoscopically — truly a pretty big revolution. But there were casualties of this revolution. These techniques were a lot harder to learn than people had anticipated. The learning curve was very long. And during that learning curve the complications went quite a bit higher. Surgeons had to give up their 3D vision. They had to give up their wrists. They had to give up intuitive motion in the instruments. This surgeon has over 3,000 hours of laparoscopic experience. Now this is a particularly frustrating placement of the needle. But this is hard. And one of the reasons why it is so hard is because the external ergonomics are terrible. You've got these long instruments, and you're working off your centerline. And the instruments are essentially working backwards. So what you need to do, to take the capability of your hand, and put it on the other side of that small incision, is you need to put a wrist on that instrument. And so — I get to talk about robots — the da Vinci robot put just that wrist on the other side of that incision. And so here you're seeing the operation of this wrist. And now, in contrast to the laparoscopy, you can precisely place the needle in your instruments, and you can pass it all the way through and follow it in a trajectory. And the reason why this becomes so much easier is — you can see on the bottom — the hands are making the motions, and the instruments are following those motions exactly. Now, what you put between those instruments and those hands, is a large, fairly complicated robot. The surgeon is sitting at a console, and controlling the robot with these controllers. And the robot is moving these instruments around, and powering them, down inside the body. You have a 3D camera, so you get a 3D view. And since this was introduced in 1999, a lot of these robots have been out and being used for surgical procedures like a prostatectomy, which is a prostate deep in the pelvis, and it requires fine dissection and delicate manipulation to be able to get a good surgical outcome. You can also sew bypass vessels directly onto a beating heart without cracking the chest. This is all done in between the ribs. And you can go inside the heart itself and repair the valves from the inside. You've got these technologies — thank you — (Applause) And so you might say, "Wow this is really cool! So, smartypants, why isn't all surgery being done this way?" And there are some reasons, some good reasons. And cost is one of them. I talked about the large, complicated robot. With all its bells and whistles, one of those robots will cost you about as much as a solid gold surgeon. More useful than a solid gold surgeon, but, still, it's a fairly big capital investment. But once you've got it, your procedure costs do come down. But there are other barriers. So something like a prostatectomy — the prostate is small, and it's in one spot, and you can set your robot up very precisely to work in that one spot. And so it's perfect for something like that. And in fact if you, or anyone you know, had their prostate taken out in the last couple of years, chances are it was done with one of these systems. But if you need to reach more places than just one, you need to move the robot. And you need to put some new incisions in there. And you need to re-set it up. And then you need to add some more ports, and more. And the problem is it gets time-consuming, and cumbersome. And for that reason there are many surgeries that just aren't being done with the da Vinci. So we had to ask the question, "Well how do we fix that?" What if we could change it so that we didn't have to re-set up each time we wanted to move somewhere different? What if we could bring all the instruments in together in one place? How would that change the capabilities of the surgeon? And how would that change the experience for the patient? Now, to do that, we need to be able to bring a camera and instruments in together through one small tube, like that tube you saw in the laparoscopy video. Or, not so coincidentally, like a tube like this. So what's going to come out of that tube is the debut of this new technology, this new robot that is going to be able to reach anywhere. Ready? So here it comes. This is the camera, and three instruments. And as you see it come out, in order to actually be able to do anything useful, it can't all stay clustered up like this. It has to be able to come off of the centerline and then be able to work back toward that centerline. He's a cheeky little devil. But what this lets you do is gives you that all-important traction, and counter-traction, so that you can dissect, so that you can sew, so that you can do all the things that you need to do, all the surgical tasks. But it's all coming in through one incision. It's not so simple. But it's worth it for the freedom that this gives us as we're going around. For the patient, however, it's transparent. This is all they're going to see. It's very exciting to think where we get to go with this. We get to write the script of the next revolution in surgery. As we take these capabilities, and we get to go to the next places, we get to decide what our new surgeries are going to be. And I think to really get the rest of the way in that revolution, we need to not just take our hands in in new ways, we also need to take our eyes in in new ways. We need to see beyond the surface. We need to be able to guide what we're cutting in a much better way. This is a cancer surgery. One of the problems with this, even for surgeons who've been looking at this a lot, is you can't see the cancer, especially when it's hidden below the surface. And so what we're starting to do is we're starting to inject specially designed markers into the bloodstream that will target the cancer. It will go, bind to the cancer. And we can make those markers glow. And we can take special cameras, and we can look at it. Now we know where we need to cut, even when it's below the surface. We can take these markers and we can inject them in a tumor site. And we can follow where they flow out from that tumor site, so we can see the first places where that cancer might travel. We can inject these dyes into the bloodstream, so that when we do a new vessel and we bypass a blockage on the heart, we can see if we actually made the connection, before we close that patient back up again — something that we haven't been able to do without radiation before. We can light up tumors like this kidney tumor, so that you can exactly see where the boundary is between the kidney tumor and the kidney you want to leave behind, or the liver tumor and the liver you want to leave behind. And we don't even need to confine ourselves to this macro vision. We have flexible microscopic probes that we can bring down into the body. And we can look at cells directly. I'm looking at nerves here. So these are nerves you see, down on the bottom, and the microscope probe that's being held by the robotic hand, up at the top. So this is all very prototypey at this point. But you care about nerves, if you are a surgical patient. Because they let you keep continence, bladder control, and sexual function after surgery, all of which is generally fairly important to the patient. So, with the combination of these technologies we can reach it all, and we can see it all. We can heal the disease. And we can leave the patient whole and intact and functional afterwards. Now, I've talked about the patient as if the patient is, somehow, someone abstract outside this room. And that is not the case. Many of you, all of you maybe, will at some point, or have already, faced a diagnosis of cancer, or heart disease, or some organ dysfunction that's going to buy you a date with a surgeon. And when you get to that point — I mean, these maladies don't care how many books you've written, how many companies you've started, that Nobel Prize you have yet to win, how much time you planned to spend with your children. These maladies come for us all. And the prospect I'm offering you, of an easier surgery ... is that going to make that diagnosis any less terrifying? I'm not sure I really even want it to. Because facing your own mortality causes a re-evaluation of priorities, and a realignment of what your goals are in life, unlike anything else. And I would never want to deprive you of that epiphany. What I want instead, is for you to be whole, intact, and functional enough to go out and save the world, after you've decided you need to do it. And that is my vision for your future. Thank you. (Applause)

The psychology of time

Philip Zimbardo

{0: 'Philip Zimbardo'}

{0: ['psychologist']}

{0: 'Philip Zimbardo was the leader of the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment -- and an expert witness at Abu Ghraib. His book The Lucifer Effect explores the nature of evil; now, in his new work, he studies the nature of heroism.'}

2009-02-06

2009-06-22

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'ko', 'lt', 'lv', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['brain', 'business', 'happiness', 'mind', 'psychology', 'science']

{272: 'The psychology of evil', 73: 'In praise of slowness', 70: '8 secrets of success', 553: "Don't eat the marshmallow!", 1974: 'For parents, happiness is a very high bar', 38075: "How your brain's executive function works -- and how to improve it"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_the_psychology_of_time/

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives.

I want to share with you some ideas about the secret power of time, in a very short time. Video: All right, start the clock please. 30 seconds studio. Keep it quiet please. Settle down. It's about time. End sequence. Take one. 15 seconds studio. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two ... Philip Zimbardo: Let's tune into the conversation of the principals in Adam's temptation. "Come on Adam, don't be so wishy-washy. Take a bite." "I did." "One bite, Adam. Don't abandon Eve." "I don't know, guys. I don't want to get in trouble." "Okay. One bite. What the hell?" (Laughter) Life is temptation. It's all about yielding, resisting, yes, no, now, later, impulsive, reflective, present focus and future focus. Promised virtues fall prey to the passions of the moment. Of teenage girls who pledged sexual abstinence and virginity until marriage — thank you George Bush — the majority, 60 percent, yielded to sexual temptations within one year. And most of them did so without using birth control. So much for promises. Now lets tempt four-year-olds, giving them a treat. They can have one marshmallow now. But if they wait until the experimenter comes back, they can have two. Of course it pays, if you like marshmallows, to wait. What happens is two-thirds of the kids give in to temptation. They cannot wait. The others, of course, wait. They resist the temptation. They delay the now for later. Walter Mischel, my colleague at Stanford, went back 14 years later, to try to discover what was different about those kids. There were enormous differences between kids who resisted and kids who yielded, in many ways. The kids who resisted scored 250 points higher on the SAT. That's enormous. That's like a whole set of different IQ points. They didn't get in as much trouble. They were better students. They were self-confident and determined. And the key for me today, the key for you, is, they were future-focused rather than present-focused. So what is time perspective? That's what I'm going to talk about today. Time perspective is the study of how individuals, all of us, divide the flow of your human experience into time zones or time categories. And you do it automatically and non-consciously. They vary between cultures, between nations, between individuals, between social classes, between education levels. And the problem is that they can become biased, because you learn to over-use some of them and under-use the others. What determines any decision you make? You make a decision on which you're going to base an action. For some people it's only about what is in the immediate situation, what other people are doing and what you're feeling. And those people, when they make their decisions in that format — we're going to call them "present-oriented," because their focus is what is now. For others, the present is irrelevant. It's always about "What is this situation like that I've experienced in the past?" So that their decisions are based on past memories. And we're going to call those people "past-oriented," because they focus on what was. For others it's not the past, it's not the present, it's only about the future. Their focus is always about anticipated consequences. Cost-benefit analysis. We're going to call them "future-oriented." Their focus is on what will be. So, time paradox, I want to argue, the paradox of time perspective, is something that influences every decision you make, you're totally unaware of. Namely, the extent to which you have one of these biased time perspectives. Well there is actually six of them. There are two ways to be present-oriented. There is two ways to be past-oriented, two ways to be future. You can focus on past-positive, or past-negative. You can be present-hedonistic, namely you focus on the joys of life, or present-fatalist — it doesn't matter, your life is controlled. You can be future-oriented, setting goals. Or you can be transcendental future: namely, life begins after death. Developing the mental flexibility to shift time perspectives fluidly depending on the demands of the situation, that's what you've got to learn to do. So, very quickly, what is the optimal time profile? High on past-positive. Moderately high on future. And moderate on present-hedonism. And always low on past-negative and present-fatalism. So the optimal temporal mix is what you get from the past — past-positive gives you roots. You connect your family, identity and your self. What you get from the future is wings to soar to new destinations, new challenges. What you get from the present hedonism is the energy, the energy to explore yourself, places, people, sensuality. Any time perspective in excess has more negatives than positives. What do futures sacrifice for success? They sacrifice family time. They sacrifice friend time. They sacrifice fun time. They sacrifice personal indulgence. They sacrifice hobbies. And they sacrifice sleep. So it affects their health. And they live for work, achievement and control. I'm sure that resonates with some of the TEDsters. (Laughter) And it resonated for me. I grew up as a poor kid in the South Bronx ghetto, a Sicilian family — everyone lived in the past and present. I'm here as a future-oriented person who went over the top, who did all these sacrifices because teachers intervened, and made me future oriented. Told me don't eat that marshmallow, because if you wait you're going to get two of them, until I learned to balance out. I've added present-hedonism, I've added a focus on the past-positive, so, at 76 years old, I am more energetic than ever, more productive, and I'm happier than I have ever been. I just want to say that we are applying this to many world problems: changing the drop-out rates of school kids, combating addictions, enhancing teen health, curing vets' PTSD with time metaphors — getting miracle cures — promoting sustainability and conservation, reducing physical rehabilitation where there is a 50-percent drop out rate, altering appeals to suicidal terrorists, and modifying family conflicts as time-zone clashes. So I want to end by saying: many of life's puzzles can be solved by understanding your time perspective and that of others. And the idea is so simple, so obvious, but I think the consequences are really profound. Thank you so much. (Applause)

New rules for rebuilding a broken nation

Paul Collier

{0: 'Paul Collier'}

{0: ['economist']}

{0: 'Paul Collier’s book The Bottom Billion shows what is happening to the poorest people in the world, and offers ideas for opening up opportunities to all.'}

2009-06-06

2009-06-24

TED@State

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['global issues', 'money', 'politics', 'poverty', 'state-building']

{270: 'The "bottom billion"', 91: "Invest in Africa's own solutions", 33: "Let's rethink America's military strategy", 1321: 'In defense of dialogue', 951: 'An independent diplomat', 3: 'How to rebuild a broken state'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_collier_new_rules_for_rebuilding_a_broken_nation/

Long conflict can wreck a country, leaving behind poverty and chaos. But what's the right way to help war-torn countries rebuild? At TED@State, Paul Collier explains the problems with current post-conflict aid plans, and suggests 3 ideas for a better approach.

I'm going to talk about post-conflict recovery and how we might do post-conflict recovery better. The record on post-conflict recovery is not very impressive. 40 percent of all post-conflict situations, historically, have reverted back to conflict within a decade. In fact, they've accounted for half of all civil wars. Why has the record been so poor? Well, the conventional approach to post-conflict situations has rested on, on kind of, three principles. The first principle is: it's the politics that matters. So, the first thing that is prioritized is politics. Try and build a political settlement first. And then the second step is to say, "The situation is admittedly dangerous, but only for a short time." So get peacekeepers there, but get them home as soon as possible. So, short-term peacekeepers. And thirdly, what is the exit strategy for the peacekeepers? It's an election. That will produce a legitimate and accountable government. So that's the conventional approach. I think that approach denies reality. We see that there is no quick fix. There's certainly no quick security fix. I've tried to look at the risks of reversion to conflict, during our post-conflict decade. And the risks stay high throughout the decade. And they stay high regardless of the political innovations. Does an election produce an accountable and legitimate government? What an election produces is a winner and a loser. And the loser is unreconciled. The reality is that we need to reverse the sequence. It's not the politics first; it's actually the politics last. The politics become easier as the decade progresses if you're building on a foundation of security and economic development — the rebuilding of prosperity. Why does the politics get easier? And why is it so difficult initially? Because after years of stagnation and decline, the mentality of politics is that it's a zero-sum game. If the reality is stagnation, I can only go up if you go down. And that doesn't produce a productive politics. And so the mentality has to shift from zero-sum to positive-sum before you can get a productive politics. You can only get positive, that mental shift, if the reality is that prosperity is being built. And in order to build prosperity, we need security in place. So that is what you get when you face reality. But the objective of facing reality is to change reality. And so now let me suggest two complimentary approaches to changing the reality of the situations. The first is to recognize the interdependence of three key actors, who are different actors, and at the moment are uncoordinated. The first actor is the Security Council. The Security Council typically has the responsibility for providing the peacekeepers who build the security. And that needs to be recognized, first of all, that peacekeeping works. It is a cost-effective approach. It does increase security. But it needs to be done long-term. It needs to be a decade-long approach, rather than just a couple of years. That's one actor, the Security Council. The second actor, different cast of guys, is the donors. The donors provide post-conflict aid. Typically in the past, the donors have been interested in the first couple of years, and then they got bored. They moved on to some other situation. Post-conflict economic recovery is a slow process. There are no quick processes in economics except decline. You can do that quite fast. (Laughter) So the donors have to stick with this situation for at least a decade. And then the third key actor is the post-conflict government. And there are two key things it's got to do. One is it's got to do economic reform, not fuss about the political constitution. It's got to reform economic policy. Why? Because during conflict economic policy typically deteriorates. Governments snatch short-term opportunities and, by the end of the conflict, the chickens have come home to roost. So this legacy of conflict is really bad economic policy. So there is a reform agenda, and there is an inclusion agenda. The inclusion agenda doesn't come from elections. Elections produce a loser, who is then excluded. So the inclusion agenda means genuinely bringing people inside the tent. So those three actors. And they are interdependent over a long term. If the Security Council doesn't commit to security over the course of a decade, you don't get the reassurance which produces private investment. If you don't get the policy reform and the aid, you don't get the economic recovery, which is the true exit strategy for the peacekeepers. So we should recognize that interdependence, by formal, mutual commitments. The United Nations actually has a language for these mutual commitments, the recognition of mutual commitments; it's called the language of compact. And so we need a post-conflict compact. The United Nations even has an agency which could broker these compacts; it's called the Peace Building Commission. It would be ideal to have a standard set of norms where, when we got to a post-conflict situation, there was an expectation of these mutual commitments from the three parties. So that's idea one: recognize interdependence. And now let me turn to the second approach, which is complimentary. And that is to focus on a few critical objectives. Typical post-conflict situation is a zoo of different actors with different priorities. And indeed, unfortunately, if you navigate by needs you get a very unfocused agenda, because in these situations, needs are everywhere, but the capacity to implement change is very limited. So we have to be disciplined and focus on things that are critical. And I want to suggest that in the typical post-conflict situation three things are critical. One is jobs. One is improvements in basic services — especially health, which is a disaster during conflict. So jobs, health, and clean government. Those are the three critical priorities. So I'm going to talk a little about each of them. Jobs. What is a distinctive approach to generating jobs in post-conflict situations? And why are jobs so important? Jobs for whom? Especially jobs for young men. In post-conflict situations, the reason that they so often revert to conflict, is not because elderly women get upset. It's because young men get upset. And why are they upset? Because they have nothing to do. And so we need a process of generating jobs, for ordinary young men, fast. Now, that is difficult. Governments in post-conflict situation often respond by puffing up the civil service. That is not a good idea. It's not sustainable. In fact, you're building a long-term liability by inflating civil service. But getting the private sector to expand is also difficult, because any activity which is open to international trade is basically going to be uncompetitive in a post-conflict situation. These are not environments where you can build export manufacturing. There's one sector which isn't exposed to international trade, and which can generate a lot of jobs, and which is, in any case, a sensible sector to expand, post-conflict, and that is the construction sector. The construction sector has a vital role, obviously, in reconstruction. But typically that sector has withered away during conflict. During conflict people are doing destruction. There isn't any construction going on. And so the sector shrivels away. And then when you try and expand it, because it's shriveled away, you encounter a lot of bottlenecks. Basically, prices soar and crooked politicians then milk the rents from the sector, but it doesn't generate any jobs. And so the policy priority is to break the bottlenecks in expanding the construction sector. What might the bottlenecks be? Just think what you have to do successfully to build a structure, using a lot of labor. First you need access to land. Often the legal system is broken down so you can't even get access to land. Secondly you need skills, the mundane skills of the construction sector. In post-conflict situations we don't just need Doctors Without Borders, we need Bricklayers Without Borders, to rebuild the skill set. We need firms. The firms have gone away. So we need to encourage the growth of local firms. If we do that, we not only get the jobs, we get the improvements in public infrastructure, the restoration of public infrastructure. Let me turn from jobs to the second objective, which is improving basic social services. And to date, there has been a sort of a schizophrenia in the donor community, as to how to build basic services in post-conflict sectors. On the one hand it pays lip service to the idea of rebuild an effective state in the image of Scandinavia in the 1950s. Lets develop line ministries of this, that, and the other, that deliver these services. And it's schizophrenic because in their hearts donors know that's not a realistic agenda, and so what they also do is the total bypass: just fund NGOs. Neither of those approaches is sensible. And so what I'd suggest is what I call Independent Service Authorities. It's to split the functions of a monopoly line ministry up into three. The planning function and policy function stays with the ministry; the delivery of services on the ground, you should use whatever works — churches, NGOs, local communities, whatever works. And in between, there should be a public agency, the Independent Service Authority, which channels public money, and especially donor money, to the retail providers. So the NGOs become part of a public government system, rather than independent of it. One advantage of that is that you can allocate money coherently. Another is, you can make NGOs accountable. You can use yardstick competition, so they have to compete against each other for the resources. The good NGOs, like Oxfam, are very keen on this idea. They want to have the discipline and accountability. So that's a way to get basic services scaled up. And because the government would be funding it, it would be co-branding these services. So they wouldn't be provided thanks to the United States government and some NGO. They would be co-branded as being done by the post-conflict government, in the country. So, jobs, basic services, finally, clean government. Clean means follow their money. The typical post-conflict government is so short of money that it needs our money just to be on a life-support system. You can't get the basic functions of the state done unless we put money into the core budget of these countries. But, if we put money into the core budget, we know that there aren't the budget systems with integrity that mean that money will be well spent. And if all we do is put money in and close our eyes it's not just that the money is wasted — that's the least of the problems — it's that the money is captured. It's captured by the crooks who are at the heart of the political problem. And so inadvertently we empower the people who are the problem. So building clean government means, yes, provide money to the budget, but also provide a lot of scrutiny, which means a lot of technical assistance that follows the money. Paddy Ashdown, who was the grand high nabob of Bosnia to the United Nations, in his book about his experience, he said, "I realize what I needed was accountants without borders, to follow that money." So that's the — let me wrap up, this is the package. What's the goal? If we follow this, what would we hope to achieve? That after 10 years, the focus on the construction sector would have produced both jobs and, hence, security — because young people would have jobs — and it would have reconstructed the infrastructure. So that's the focus on the construction sector. The focus on the basic service delivery through these independent service authorities would have rescued basic services from their catastrophic levels, and it would have given ordinary people the sense that the government was doing something useful. The emphasis on clean government would have gradually squeezed out the political crooks, because there wouldn't be any money in taking part in the politics. And so gradually the selection, the composition of politicians, would shift from the crooked to the honest. Where would that leave us? Gradually it would shift from a politics of plunder to a politics of hope. Thank you. (Applause)

You are the future of philanthropy

Katherine Fulton

{0: 'Katherine Fulton'}

{0: ['new philanthropist']}

{0: 'President of Monitor Institute, Katherine Fulton is also a strategist, author, teacher and speaker working for social change. '}

2007-03-10

2009-06-25

TED2007

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'ur', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['activism', 'community', 'global issues', 'philanthropy', 'potential']

{157: 'Patient capitalism', 152: 'Aid versus trade', 1837: 'The case for letting business solve social problems', 983: 'Poverty, money -- and love', 1076: 'Inspiring a life of immersion', 1927: 'The investment logic for sustainability'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/katherine_fulton_you_are_the_future_of_philanthropy/

In this uplifting talk, Katherine Fulton sketches the new future of philanthropy -- one where collaboration and innovation allow regular people to do big things, even when money is scarce. Giving five practical examples of crowd-driven philanthropy, she calls for a new generation of citizen leaders.

I want to help you re-perceive what philanthropy is, what it could be, and what your relationship to it is. And in doing that, I want to offer you a vision, an imagined future, if you will, of how, as the poet Seamus Heaney has put it, "Once in a lifetime the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme." I want to start with these word pairs here. We all know which side of these we'd like to be on. When philanthropy was reinvented a century ago, when the foundation form was actually invented, they didn't think of themselves on the wrong side of these either. In fact they would never have thought of themselves as closed and set in their ways, as slow to respond to new challenges, as small and risk-averse. And in fact they weren't. They were reinventing charity in those times, what Rockefeller called "the business of benevolence." But by the end of the 20th century, a new generation of critics and reformers had come to see philanthropy just this way. The thing to watch for as a global philanthropy industry comes about — and that's exactly what is happening — is how the aspiration is to flip these old assumptions, for philanthropy to become open and big and fast and connected, in service of the long term. This entrepreneurial energy is emerging from many quarters. And it's driven and propelled forward by new leaders, like many of the people here, by new tools, like the ones we've seen here, and by new pressures. I've been following this change for quite a while now, and participating in it. This report is our main public report. What it tells is the story of how today actually could be as historic as 100 years ago. What I want to do is share some of the coolest things that are going on with you. And as I do that, I'm not going to dwell much on the very large philanthropy that everybody already knows about — the Gates or the Soros or the Google. Instead, what I want to do is talk about the philanthropy of all of us: the democratization of philanthropy. This is a moment in history when the average person has more power than at any time. What I'm going to do is look at five categories of experiments, each of which challenges an old assumption of philanthropy. The first is mass collaboration, represented here by Wikipedia. Now, this may surprise you. But remember, philanthropy is about giving of time and talent, not just money. Clay Shirky, that great chronicler of everything networked, has captured the assumption that this challenges in such a beautiful way. He said, "We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have Wikipedia. Suddenly big things can be done for love." Watch, this spring, for Paul Hawken's new book — Author and entrepreneur many of you may know about. The book is called "Blessed Unrest." And when it comes out, a series of wiki sites under the label WISER, are going to launch at the same time. WISER stands for World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility. WISER sets out to document, link and empower what Paul calls the largest movement, and fastest-growing movement in human history: humanity's collective immune response to today's threats. Now, all of these big things for love — experiments — aren't going to take off. But the ones that do are going to be the biggest, the most open, the fastest, the most connected form of philanthropy in human history. Second category is online philanthropy marketplaces. This is, of course, to philanthropy what eBay and Amazon are to commerce. Think of it as peer-to-peer philanthropy. And this challenges yet another assumption, which is that organized philanthropy is only for the very wealthy. Take a look, if you haven't, at DonorsChoose. Omidyar Network has made a big investment in DonorsChoose. It's one of the best known of these new marketplaces where a donor can go straight into a classroom and connect with what a teacher says they need. Take a look at Changing the Present, started by a TEDster, next time you need a wedding present or a holiday present. GiveIndia is for a whole country. And it goes on and on. The third category is represented by Warren Buffet, which I call aggregated giving. It's not just that Warren Buffet was so amazingly generous in that historic act last summer. It's that he challenged another assumption, that every giver should have his or her own fund or foundation. There are now, today, so many new funds that are aggregating giving and investing, bringing together people around a common goal, to think bigger. One of the best known is Acumen Fund, led by Jacqueline Novogratz, a TEDster who got a big boost here at TED. But there are many others: New Profit in Cambridge, New School's Venture Fund in Silicon Valley, Venture Philanthropy Partners in Washington, Global Fund for Women in San Francisco. Take a look at these. These funds are to philanthropy what venture capital, private equity, and eventually mutual funds are to investing, but with a twist — because often a community forms around these funds, as it has at Acumen and other places. Now, imagine for a second these first three types of experiments: mass collaboration, online marketplaces, aggregated giving. And understand how they help us re-perceive what organized philanthropy is. It's not about foundations necessarily; it's about the rest of us. And imagine the mash-up, if you will, of these things, in the future, when these things come together in the experiments of the future — imagine that somebody puts up, say, 100 million dollars for an inspiring goal — there were 21 gifts of 100 million dollars or more in the US last year, not out of the question — but only puts it up if it's matched by millions of small gifts from around the globe, thereby engaging lots of people, and building visibility and engaging people in the goal that's stated. I'm going to look quickly at the fourth and fifth categories, which are innovation, competitions and social investing. They're betting a visible competition, a prize, can attract talent and money to some of the most difficult issues, and thereby speed the solution. This tackles yet another assumption, that the giver and the organization is at the center, as opposed to putting the problem at the center. You can look to these innovators to help us especially with things that require technological or scientific solution. That leaves the final category, social investing, which is really, anyway, the biggest of them all, represented here by Xigi.net. And this, of course, tackles the biggest assumption of all, that business is business, and philanthropy is the vehicle of people who want to create change in the world. Xigi is a new community site that's built by the community, linking and mapping this new social capital market. It lists already 1,000 entities that are offering debt and equity for social enterprise. So we can look to these innovators to help us remember that if we can leverage even a small amount of the capital that seeks a return, the good that can be driven could be astonishing. Now, what's really interesting here is that we're not thinking our way into a new way of acting; we're acting our way into a new way of thinking. Philanthropy is reorganizing itself before our very eyes. And even though all of the experiments and all of the big givers don't yet fulfill this aspiration, I think this is the new zeitgeist: open, big, fast, connected, and, let us also hope, long. We have got to realize that it is going to take a long time to do these things. If we don't develop the stamina to stick with things — whatever it is you pick, stick with it — all of this stuff is just going to be, you know, a fad. But I'm really hopeful. And I'm hopeful because it's not only philanthropy that's reorganizing itself, it's also whole other portions of the social sector, and of business, that are busy challenging "business as usual." And everywhere I go, including here at TED, I feel that there is a new moral hunger that is growing. What we're seeing is people really wrestling to describe what is this new thing that's happening. Words like "philanthrocapitalism," and "natural capitalism," and "philanthroentrepreneur," and "venture philanthropy." We don't have a language for it yet. Whatever we call it, it's new, it's beginning, and I think it's gong to quite significant. And that's where my imagined future comes in, which I am going to call the social singularity. Many of you will realize that I'm ripping a bit off of the science fiction writer Vernor Vinge's notion of a technological singularity, where a number of trends accelerate and converge and come together to create, really, a shockingly new reality. It may be that the social singularity ahead is the one that we fear the most: a convergence of catastrophes, of environmental degradation, of weapons of mass destruction, of pandemics, of poverty. That's because our ability to confront the problems that we face has not kept pace with our ability to create them. And as we've heard here, it is no exaggeration to say that we hold the future of our civilization in our hands as never before. The question is, is there a positive social singularity? Is there a frontier for us of how we live together? Our future doesn't have to be imagined. We can create a future where hope and history rhyme. But we have a problem. Our experience to date, both individually and collectively, hasn't prepared us for what we're going to need to do, or who we're going to need to be. We are going to need a new generation of citizen leaders willing to commit ourselves to growing and changing and learning as rapidly as possible. That's why I have one last thing I want to show you. This is a photograph taken about 100 years ago of my grandfather and great-grandfather. This is a newspaper publisher and a banker. And they were great community leaders. And, yes, they were great philanthropists. I keep this photograph close by to me — it's in my office — because I've always felt a mystical connection to these two men, both of whom I never knew. And so, in their honor, I want to offer you this blank slide. And I want you to imagine that this a photograph of you. And I want you to think about the community that you want to be part of creating. Whatever that means to you. And I want you to imagine that it's 100 years from now, and your grandchild, or great-grandchild, or niece or nephew or god-child, is looking at this photograph of you. What is the story you most want for them to tell? Thank you very much. (Applause)

My trek to the South Pole

Ray Zahab

{0: 'Ray Zahab'}

{0: ['endurance runner']}

{0: "In January 2009, Ray Zahab broke the record for fastest unsupported trek across Antarctica, to raise awareness and money for kids' environmental education. In 2006, he ran across the Sahara to raise awareness of water shortages. (He started running 5 years ago.)"}

2009-02-06

2009-06-26

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lv', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['global issues', 'Antarctica']

{89: 'Why did I ski to the North Pole?', 502: 'Extreme wingsuit flying', 1: 'Averting the climate crisis', 1631: 'Why bother leaving the house?', 29160: 'The dangerous race for the South Pole', 23958: 'The Arctic vs. the Antarctic'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_zahab_my_trek_to_the_south_pole/

Extreme runner Ray Zahab shares an enthusiastic account of his record-breaking trek on foot to the South Pole -- a 33-day sprint through the snow.

A month ago today I stood there: 90 degrees south, the top of the bottom of the world, the Geographic South Pole. And I stood there beside two very good friends of mine, Richard Weber and Kevin Vallely. Together we had just broken the world speed record for a trek to the South Pole. It took us 33 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes to get there. We shaved five days off the previous best time. And in the process, I became the first person in history to make the entire 650-mile journey, from Hercules Inlet to South Pole, solely on feet, without skis. Now, many of you are probably saying, "Wait a sec, is this tough to do?" (Laughter) Imagine, if you will, dragging a sled, as you just saw in that video clip, with 170 pounds of gear, in it everything you need to survive on your Antarctic trek. It's going to be 40 below, every single day. You'll be in a massive headwind. And at some point you're going to have to cross these cracks in the ice, these crevasses. Some of them have a very precarious thin footbridge underneath them that could give way at a moment's notice, taking your sled, you, into the abyss, never to be seen again. The punchline to your journey? Look at the horizon. Yes, it's uphill the entire way, because the South Pole is at 10,000 feet, and you're starting at sea level. Our journey did not, in fact, begin at Hercules Inlet, where frozen ocean meets the land of Antarctica. It began a little less than two years ago. A couple of buddies of mine and I had finished a 111-day run across the entire Sahara desert. And while we were there we learned the seriousness of the water crisis in Northern Africa. We also learned that many of the issues facing the people of Northern Africa affected young people the most. I came home to my wife after 111 days of running in the sand, and I said, "You know, there's no doubt if this bozo can get across the desert, we are capable of doing anything we set our minds to." But if I'm going to continue doing these adventures, there has to be a reason for me to do them beyond just getting there. Around that time I met an extraordinary human being, Peter Thum, who inspired me with his actions. He's trying to find and solve water issues, the crisis around the world. His dedication inspired me to come up with this expedition: a run to the South Pole where, with an interactive website, I will be able to bring young people, students and teachers from around the world on board the expedition with me, as active members. So we would have a live website, that every single day of the 33 days, we would be blogging, telling stories of, you know, depleted ozone forcing us to cover our faces, or we will burn. Crossing miles and miles of sastrugi — frozen ice snowdrifts that could be hip-deep. I'm telling you, crossing these things with 170-pound sled, that sled may as well have weighed 1,700 pounds, because that's what it felt like. We were blogging to this live website daily to these students that were tracking us as well, about 10-hour trekking days, 15-hour trekking days, sometimes 20 hours of trekking daily to meet our goal. We'd catch cat-naps at 40 below on our sled, incidentally. In turn, students, people from around the world, would ask us questions. Young people would ask the most amazing questions. One of my favorite: It's 40 below, you've got to go to the bathroom, where are you going to go and how are you going to do it? I'm not going to answer that. But I will answer some of the more popular questions. Where do you sleep? We slept in a tent that was very low to the ground, because the winds on Antarctica were so extreme, it would blow anything else away. What do you eat? One of my favorite dishes on expedition: butter and bacon. It's about a million calories. We were burning about 8,500 a day, so we needed it. How many batteries do you carry for all the equipment that you have? Virtually none. All of our equipment, including film equipment, was charged by the sun. And do you get along? I certainly hope so, because at some point or another on this expedition, one of your teammates is going to have to take a very big needle, and put it in an infected blister, and drain it for you. But seriously, seriously, we did get along, because we had a common goal of wanting to inspire these young people. They were our teammates! They were inspiring us. The stories we were hearing got us to the South Pole. The website worked brilliantly as a two-way street of communication. Young people in northern Canada, kids in an elementary school, dragging sleds across the school-yard, pretending they were Richard, Ray and Kevin. Amazing. We arrived at the South Pole. We huddled into that tent, 45 below that day, I'll never forget it. We looked at each other with these looks of disbelief at what we had just completed. And I remember looking at the guys thinking, "What do I take from this journey?" You know? Seriously. That I'm this uber-endurance guy? As I stand here today talking to you guys, I've been running for the grand sum of five years. And a year before that I was a pack-a-day smoker, living a very sedentary lifestyle. What I take from this journey, from my journeys, is that, in fact, within every fiber of my belief standing here, I know that we can make the impossible possible. I'm learning this at 40. Can you imagine? Seriously, can you imagine? I'm learning this at 40 years of age. Imagine being 13 years old, hearing those words, and believing it. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause)

Teach statistics before calculus!

Arthur Benjamin

{0: 'Arthur Benjamin'}

{0: ['mathemagician']}

{0: 'Using daring displays of algorithmic trickery, lightning calculator and number wizard Arthur Benjamin mesmerizes audiences with mathematical mystery and beauty.'}

2009-02-05

2009-06-29

TED2009

en

['af', 'ar', 'az', 'bg', 'bn', 'bs', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fi', 'fil', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'gl', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'kk', 'kn', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'lv', 'mk', 'mn', 'mr', 'ms', 'my', 'nb', 'ne', 'nl', 'nn', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sh', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'ta', 'te', 'th', 'tl', 'tr', 'uk', 'uz', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['economics', 'education', 'math', 'statistics']

{66: 'Do schools kill creativity?', 558: 'A call to reinvent liberal arts education', 199: 'A performance of "Mathemagic"', 9986: 'This company pays kids to do their math homework', 2518: "What's so sexy about math?", 24136: 'Is math discovered or invented?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_teach_statistics_before_calculus/

Someone always asks the math teacher, "Am I going to use calculus in real life?" And for most of us, says Arthur Benjamin, the answer is no. He offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age.

Now, if President Obama invited me to be the next Czar of Mathematics, then I would have a suggestion for him that I think would vastly improve the mathematics education in this country. And it would be easy to implement and inexpensive. The mathematics curriculum that we have is based on a foundation of arithmetic and algebra. And everything we learn after that is building up towards one subject. And at top of that pyramid, it's calculus. And I'm here to say that I think that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid ... that the correct summit — that all of our students, every high school graduate should know — should be statistics: probability and statistics. (Applause) I mean, don't get me wrong. Calculus is an important subject. It's one of the great products of the human mind. The laws of nature are written in the language of calculus. And every student who studies math, science, engineering, economics, they should definitely learn calculus by the end of their freshman year of college. But I'm here to say, as a professor of mathematics, that very few people actually use calculus in a conscious, meaningful way, in their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, statistics — that's a subject that you could, and should, use on daily basis. Right? It's risk. It's reward. It's randomness. It's understanding data. I think if our students, if our high school students — if all of the American citizens — knew about probability and statistics, we wouldn't be in the economic mess that we're in today. (Laughter) (Applause) Not only — thank you — not only that ... but if it's taught properly, it can be a lot of fun. I mean, probability and statistics, it's the mathematics of games and gambling. It's analyzing trends. It's predicting the future. Look, the world has changed from analog to digital. And it's time for our mathematics curriculum to change from analog to digital, from the more classical, continuous mathematics, to the more modern, discrete mathematics — the mathematics of uncertainty, of randomness, of data — that being probability and statistics. In summary, instead of our students learning about the techniques of calculus, I think it would be far more significant if all of them knew what two standard deviations from the mean means. And I mean it. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Life lessons through tinkering

Gever Tulley

{0: 'Gever Tulley'}

{0: ['tinkerer']}

{0: 'The founder of the Tinkering School, Gever Tulley likes to build things with kids.'}

2009-02-06

2009-06-30

TED2009

en

['af', 'ar', 'bg', 'bs', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fil', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'mr', 'my', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'uz', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['children', 'education', 'innovation', 'invention', 'creativity', 'design']

{202: '5 dangerous things you should let your kids do', 66: 'Do schools kill creativity?', 587: 'Teach statistics before calculus!', 1010: 'My green school dream', 553: "Don't eat the marshmallow!", 1732: 'Our failing schools. Enough is enough!'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_life_lessons_through_tinkering/

Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a roller coaster!

This is the exact moment that I started creating something called Tinkering School. Tinkering School is a place where kids can pick up sticks and hammers and other dangerous objects, and be trusted. Trusted not to hurt themselves, and trusted not to hurt others. Tinkering School doesn't follow a set curriculum, and there are no tests. We're not trying to teach anybody any specific thing. When the kids arrive they're confronted with lots of stuff: wood and nails and rope and wheels, and lots of tools, real tools. It's a six-day immersive experience for the kids. And within that context, we can offer the kids time — something that seems in short supply in their over-scheduled lives. Our goal is to ensure that they leave with a better sense of how to make things than when they arrived, and the deep internal realization that you can figure things out by fooling around. Nothing ever turns out as planned ... ever. (Laughter) And the kids soon learn that all projects go awry — (Laughter) and become at ease with the idea that every step in a project is a step closer to sweet success, or gleeful calamity. We start from doodles and sketches. And sometimes we make real plans. And sometimes we just start building. Building is at the heart of the experience: hands on, deeply immersed and fully committed to the problem at hand. Robin and I, acting as collaborators, keep the landscape of the projects tilted towards completion. Success is in the doing, and failures are celebrated and analyzed. Problems become puzzles and obstacles disappear. When faced with particularly difficult setbacks or complexities, a really interesting behavior emerges: decoration. (Laughter) Decoration of the unfinished project is a kind of conceptual incubation. From these interludes come deep insights and amazing new approaches to solving the problems that had them frustrated just moments before. All materials are available for use. Even those mundane, hateful, plastic grocery bags can become a bridge stronger than anyone imagined. And the things that they build amaze even themselves. Video: Three, two, one, go! Gever Tulley: A rollercoaster built by seven-year-olds. Video: Yay! (Applause) GT: Thank you. It's been a great pleasure. (Applause)

17 words of architectural inspiration

Daniel Libeskind

{0: 'Daniel Libeskind'}

{0: ['architect']}

{0: 'Being a designer of breathtaking and sometimes confounding buildings seems almost a footnote to the amazing life of architect Daniel Libeskind.'}

2009-02-06

2009-07-01

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['architecture', 'cities', 'creativity', 'design', 'technology']

{197: 'Design and destiny', 174: 'My green agenda for architecture', 219: 'Building uniqueness', 31: 'How architecture can connect us', 750: 'Building a theater that remakes itself', 1854: 'Architecture at home in its community'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_libeskind_17_words_of_architectural_inspiration/

Daniel Libeskind builds on very big ideas. Here, he shares 17 words that underlie his vision for architecture -- raw, risky, emotional, radical -- and that offer inspiration for any bold creative pursuit.

I'll start with my favorite muse, Emily Dickinson, who said that wonder is not knowledge, neither is it ignorance. It's something which is suspended between what we believe we can be, and a tradition we may have forgotten. And I think, when I listen to these incredible people here, I've been so inspired — so many incredible ideas, so many visions. And yet, when I look at the environment outside, you see how resistant architecture is to change. You see how resistant it is to those very ideas. We can think them out. We can create incredible things. And yet, at the end, it's so hard to change a wall. We applaud the well-mannered box. But to create a space that never existed is what interests me; to create something that has never been, a space that we have never entered except in our minds and our spirits. And I think that's really what architecture is based on. Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder. And that wonder is really what has created the greatest cities, the greatest spaces that we have had. And I think that is indeed what architecture is. It is a story. By the way, it is a story that is told through its hard materials. But it is a story of effort and struggle against improbabilities. If you think of the great buildings, of the cathedrals, of the temples, of the pyramids, of pagodas, of cities in India and beyond, you think of how incredible this is that that was realized not by some abstract idea, but by people. So, anything that has been made can be unmade. Anything that has been made can be made better. There it is: the things that I really believe are of important architecture. These are the dimensions that I like to work with. It's something very personal. It's not, perhaps, the dimensions appreciated by art critics or architecture critics or city planners. But I think these are the necessary oxygen for us to live in buildings, to live in cities, to connect ourselves in a social space. And I therefore believe that optimism is what drives architecture forward. It's the only profession where you have to believe in the future. You can be a general, a politician, an economist who is depressed, a musician in a minor key, a painter in dark colors. But architecture is that complete ecstasy that the future can be better. And it is that belief that I think drives society. And today we have a kind of evangelical pessimism all around us. And yet it is in times like this that I think architecture can thrive with big ideas, ideas that are not small. Think of the great cities. Think of the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center. They were built in times that were not really the best of times in a certain way. And yet that energy and power of architecture has driven an entire social and political space that these buildings occupy. So again, I am a believer in the expressive. I have never been a fan of the neutral. I don't like neutrality in life, in anything. I think expression. And it's like espresso coffee, you know, you take the essence of the coffee. That's what expression is. It's been missing in much of the architecture, because we think architecture is the realm of the neutered, the realm of the kind of a state that has no opinion, that has no value. And yet, I believe it is the expression — expression of the city, expression of our own space — that gives meaning to architecture. And, of course, expressive spaces are not mute. Expressive spaces are not spaces that simply confirm what we already know. Expressive spaces may disturb us. And I think that's also part of life. Life is not just an anesthetic to make us smile, but to reach out across the abyss of history, to places we have never been, and would have perhaps been, had we not been so lucky. So again, radical versus conservative. Radical, what does it mean? It's something which is rooted, and something which is rooted deep in a tradition. And I think that is what architecture is, it's radical. It's not just a conservation in formaldehyde of dead forms. It is actually a living connection to the cosmic event that we are part of, and a story that is certainly ongoing. It's not something that has a good ending or a bad ending. It's actually a story in which our acts themselves are pushing the story in a particular way. So again I am a believer in the radical architecture. You know the Soviet architecture of that building is the conservation. It's like the old Las Vegas used to be. It's about conserving emotions, conserving the traditions that have obstructed the mind in moving forward and of course what is radical is to confront them. And I think our architecture is a confrontation with our own senses. Therefore I believe it should not be cool. There is a lot of appreciation for the kind of cool architecture. I've always been an opponent of it. I think emotion is needed. Life without emotion would really not be life. Even the mind is emotional. There is no reason which does not take a position in the ethical sphere, in the philosophical mystery of what we are. So I think emotion is a dimension that is important to introduce into city space, into city life. And of course, we are all about the struggle of emotions. And I think that is what makes the world a wondrous place. And of course, the confrontation of the cool, the unemotional with emotion, is a conversation that I think cities themselves have fostered. I think that is the progress of cities. It's not only the forms of cities, but the fact that they incarnate emotions, not just of those who build them, but of those who live there as well. Inexplicable versus understood. You know, too often we want to understand everything. But architecture is not the language of words. It's a language. But it is not a language that can be reduced to a series of programmatic notes that we can verbally write. Too many buildings that you see outside that are so banal tell you a story, but the story is very short, which says, "We have no story to tell you." (Laughter) So the important thing actually, is to introduce the actual architectural dimensions, which might be totally inexplicable in words, because they operate in proportions, in materials, in light. They connect themselves into various sources, into a kind of complex vector matrix that isn't really frontal but is really embedded in the lives, and in the history of a city, and of a people. So again, the notion that a building should just be explicit I think is a false notion, which has reduced architecture into banality. Hand versus the computer. Of course, what would we be without computers? Our whole practice depends on computing. But the computer should not just be the glove of the hand; the hand should really be the driver of the computing power. Because I believe that the hand in all its primitive, in all its physiological obscurity, has a source, though the source is unknown, though we don't have to be mystical about it. We realize that the hand has been given us by forces that are beyond our own autonomy. And I think when I draw drawings which may imitate the computer, but are not computer drawings — drawings that can come from sources that are completely not known, not normal, not seen, yet the hand — and that's what I really, to all of you who are working — how can we make the computer respond to our hand rather than the hand responding to the computer. I think that's part of what the complexity of architecture is. Because certainly we have gotten used to the propaganda that the simple is the good. But I don't believe it. Listening to all of you, the complexity of thought, the complexity of layers of meaning is overwhelming. And I think we shouldn't shy away in architecture, You know, brain surgery, atomic theory, genetics, economics are complex complex fields. There is no reason that architecture should shy away and present this illusory world of the simple. It is complex. Space is complex. Space is something that folds out of itself into completely new worlds. And as wondrous as it is, it cannot be reduced to a kind of simplification that we have often come to be admired. And yet, our lives are complex. Our emotions are complex. Our intellectual desires are complex. So I do believe that architecture as I see it needs to mirror that complexity in every single space that we have, in every intimacy that we possess. Of course that means that architecture is political. The political is not an enemy of architecture. The politeama is the city. It's all of us together. And I've always believed that the act of architecture, even a private house, when somebody else will see it, is a political act, because it will be visible to others. And we live in a world which is connecting us more and more. So again, the evasion of that sphere, which has been so endemic to that sort of pure architecture, the autonomous architecture that is just an abstract object has never appealed to me. And I do believe that this interaction with the history, with history that is often very difficult, to grapple with it, to create a position that is beyond our normal expectations and to create a critique. Because architecture is also the asking of questions. It's not only the giving of answers. It's also, just like life, the asking of questions. Therefore it is important that it be real. You know we can simulate almost anything. But the one thing that can be ever simulated is the human heart, the human soul. And architecture is so closely intertwined with it because we are born somewhere and we die somewhere. So the reality of architecture is visceral. It's not intellectual. It's not something that comes to us from books and theories. It's the real that we touch — the door, the window, the threshold, the bed — such prosaic objects. And yet, I try, in every building, to take that virtual world, which is so enigmatic and so rich, and create something in the real world. Create a space for an office, a space of sustainability that really works between that virtuality and yet can be realized as something real. Unexpected versus habitual. What is a habit? It's just a shackle for ourselves. It's a self-induced poison. So the unexpected is always unexpected. You know, it's true, the cathedrals, as unexpected, will always be unexpected. You know Frank Gehry's buildings, they will continue to be unexpected in the future. So not the habitual architecture that instills in us the false sort of stability, but an architecture that is full of tension, an architecture that goes beyond itself to reach a human soul and a human heart, and that breaks out of the shackles of habits. And of course habits are enforced by architecture. When we see the same kind of architecture we become immured in that world of those angles, of those lights, of those materials. We think the world really looks like our buildings. And yet our buildings are pretty much limited by the techniques and wonders that have been part of them. So again, the unexpected which is also the raw. And I often think of the raw and the refined. What is raw? The raw, I would say is the naked experience, untouched by luxury, untouched by expensive materials, untouched by the kind of refinement that we associate with high culture. So the rawness, I think, in space, the fact that sustainability can actually, in the future translate into a raw space, a space that isn't decorated, a space that is not mannered in any source, but a space that might be cool in terms of its temperature, might be refractive to our desires. A space that doesn't always follow us like a dog that has been trained to follow us, but moves ahead into directions of demonstrating other possibilities, other experiences, that have never been part of the vocabulary of architecture. And of course that juxtaposition is of great interest to me because it creates a kind of a spark of new energy. And so I do like something which is pointed, not blunt, something which is focused on reality, something that has the power, through its leverage, to transform even a very small space. So architecture maybe is not so big, like science, but through its focal point it can leverage in an Archimedian way what we think the world is really about. And often it takes just a building to change our experience of what could be done, what has been done, how the world has remained both in between stability and instability. And of course buildings have their shapes. Those shapes are difficult to change. And yet, I do believe that in every social space, in every public space, there is a desire to communicate more than just that blunt thought, that blunt technique, but something that pinpoints, and can point in various directions forward, backward, sideways and around. So that is indeed what is memory. So I believe that my main interest is to memory. Without memory we would be amnesiacs. We would not know which way we were going, and why we are going where we're going. So I've been never interested in the forgettable reuse, rehashing of the same things over and over again, which, of course, get accolades of critics. Critics like the performance to be repeated again and again the same way. But I rather play something completely unheard of, and even with flaws, than repeat the same thing over and over which has been hollowed by its meaninglessness. So again, memory is the city, memory is the world. Without the memory there would be no story to tell. There would be nowhere to turn. The memorable, I think, is really our world, what we think the world is. And it's not only our memory, but those who remember us, which means that architecture is not mute. It's an art of communication. It tells a story. The story can reach into obscure desires. It can reach into sources that are not explicitly available. It can reach into millennia that have been buried, and return them in a just and unexpected equity. So again, I think the notion that the best architecture is silent has never appealed to me. Silence maybe is good for a cemetery but not for a city. Cities should be full of vibrations, full of sound, full of music. And that indeed is the architectural mission that I believe is important, is to create spaces that are vibrant, that are pluralistic, that can transform the most prosaic activities, and raise them to a completely different expectation. Create a shopping center, a swimming place that is more like a museum than like entertainment. And these are our dreams. And of course risk. I think architecture should be risky. You know it costs a lot of money and so on, but yes, it should not play it safe. It should not play it safe, because if it plays it safe it's not moving us in a direction that we want to be. And I think, of course, risk is what underlies the world. World without risk would not be worth living. So yes, I do believe that the risk we take in every building. Risks to create spaces that have never been cantilevered to that extent. Risks of spaces that have never been so dizzying, as they should be, for a pioneering city. Risks that really move architecture even with all its flaws, into a space which is much better that the ever again repeated hollowness of a ready-made thing. And of course that is finally what I believe architecture to be. It's about space. It's not about fashion. It's not about decoration. It's about creating with minimal means something which can not be repeated, cannot be simulated in any other sphere. And there of course is the space that we need to breathe, is the space we need to dream. These are the spaces that are not just luxurious spaces for some of us, but are important for everybody in this world. So again, it's not about the changing fashions, changing theories. It's about carving out a space for trees. It's carving out a space where nature can enter the domestic world of a city. A space where something which has never seen a light of day can enter into the inner workings of a density. And I think that is really the nature of architecture. Now I am a believer in democracy. I don't like beautiful buildings built for totalitarian regimes. Where people cannot speak, cannot vote, cannot do anything. We too often admire those buildings. We think they are beautiful. And yet when I think of the poverty of society which doesn't give freedom to its people, I don't admire those buildings. So democracy, as difficult as it is, I believe in it. And of course, at Ground Zero what else? It's such a complex project. It's emotional. There is so many interests. It's political. There is so many parties to this project. There is so many interests. There's money. There's political power. There are emotions of the victims. And yet, in all its messiness, in all its difficulties, I would not have liked somebody to say, "This is the tabula rasa, mister architect — do whatever you want." I think nothing good will come out of that. I think architecture is about consensus. And it is about the dirty word "compromise." Compromise is not bad. Compromise, if it's artistic, if it is able to cope with its strategies — and there is my first sketch and the last rendering — it's not that far away. And yet, compromise, consensus, that is what I believe in. And Ground Zero, despite all its difficulties, it's moving forward. It's difficult. 2011, 2013. Freedom Tower, the memorial. And that is where I end. I was inspired when I came here as an immigrant on a ship like millions of others, looking at America from that point of view. This is America. This is liberty. This is what we dream about. Its individuality, demonstrated in the skyline. It's resilience. And finally, it's the freedom that America represents, not just to me, as an immigrant, but to everyone in the world. Thank you. (Applause) Chris Anderson: I've got a question. So have you come to peace with the process that happened at Ground Zero and the loss of the original, incredible design that you came up with? Daniel Libeskind: Look. We have to cure ourselves of the notion that we are authoritarian, that we can determine everything that happens. We have to rely on others, and shape the process in the best way possible. I came from the Bronx. I was taught not to be a loser, not to be somebody who just gives up in a fight. You have to fight for what you believe. You don't always win everything you want to win. But you can steer the process. And I believe that what will be built at Ground Zero will be meaningful, will be inspiring, will tell other generations of the sacrifices, of the meaning of this event. Not just for New York, but for the world. Chris Anderson: Thank you so much, Daniel Libeskind. (Applause)

The design genius of Charles + Ray Eames

Eames Demetrios

{0: 'Eames Demetrios'}

{0: ['artist']}

{0: 'Eames Demetrios is the creator of Kcymaerxthaere, a parallel universe coexisting with our world. He is the grandson of the legendary husband-and-wife design team Charles and Ray Eames.'}

2007-02-02

2009-07-06

TED2007

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['children', 'creativity', 'design', 'film', 'product design']

{520: 'Rethinking the way we sit down', 239: 'Sputnik mania', 691: 'Science-inspired design', 207: 'Treat design as art', 431: 'Ways of seeing', 372: 'Design and the Elastic Mind'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/eames_demetrios_the_design_genius_of_charles_ray_eames/

The legendary design team Charles and Ray Eames made films, houses and classic midcentury modern furniture. Eames Demetrios, their grandson, shows rarely seen films and archival footage in a lively, loving tribute to their creative process.

Charles and Ray were a team. They were husband and wife. Despite the New York Times' and Vanity Fair's best efforts recently, they're not brothers. (Laughter) And they were a lot of fun. You know, Ray was the one who wore the ampersands in the family. (Laughter) We are going to focus on Charles today, because it is Charles' 100th birthday. But when I speak of him, I'm really speaking of both of them as a team. Here's Charles when he was three. So he would be 100 this June. We have a lot of cool celebrations that we're going to do. The thing about their work is that most people come to the door of furniture — I suspect you probably recognize this chair and some of the others I'm going to show you. But we're going to first enter through the door of the Big Top. The whole thing about this, though, is that, you know, why am I showing it? Is it because Charles and Ray made this film? This is actually a training film for a clown college that they had. They also practiced a clown act when the future of furniture was not nearly as auspicious as it turned out to be. There is a picture of Charles. So let's watch the next clip. The film that we're about to see is a film they made for the Moscow World's Fair. Video: This is the land. It has many contrasts. It is rough and it is flat. In places it is cold. In some it is hot. Too much rain falls on some areas, and not enough on others. But people live on this land. And, as in Russia, they are drawn together into towns and cities. Here is something of the way they live. Eames Demetrios: Now, this is a film that was hardly ever seen in the United States. It was on seven screens and it was 200 feet across. And it was at the height of the Cold War. The Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate happened about 50 feet from where this was shown. And yet, how did it start? You know, commonality, the first line in Charles' narration was, "The same stars that shine down on Russia shine down on the United States. From the sky, our cities look much the same." It was that human connection that Charles and Ray always found in everything. And you can imagine, and the thing about it is, that they believed that the human mind could handle this number of images because the important thing was to get the gestalt of what the images were about. So that was just a little snip. But the thing about Charles and Ray is that they were always modeling stuff. They were always trying things out. I think one of the things I am passionate about, my grandparents work, I'm passionate about my work, but on top of all that I'm passionate about a holistic vision of design, where design is a life skill, not a professional skill. And you know, those of us with kids often want our kids to take music. I'm no exception. But it's not about them becoming Bono or Tracy Chapman. It's about getting that music thing going through their heads and their thinking. Design is the same way. Design has to become that same way. And this is a model that they did of that seven-screen presentation. And Charles just checking it out there. So now we're going to go through that door of furniture. This is an unusual installation of airport seating. So what we're going to see is some of the icons of Eames furniture. And the thing about their furniture is that they said the role of the designer was essentially that of a good host, anticipating the needs of the guest. So those are cool images. But these are ones I think are really cool. These are all the prototypes. These are the mistakes, although I don't think mistakes is the right word in design. It's just the things you try out to kind of make it work better. And you know some of them would probably be terrible chairs. Some of them are kind of cool looking. It's like "Hey, why didn't they try that?" It was that hands-on iterative process which is so much like vernacular design and folk design in traditional cultures. And I think that's one of the commonalities between modernism and traditional design. I think it may be a real common ground as we kind of figure out what on earth to do in the next 20 or 30 years. The other thing that's kind of cool is that you look at this and in the media when people say design, they actually mean style. And I'm really here to talk about design. But you know the object is just a pivot. It's a pivot between a process and a system. And this is a little film I made about the making of the Eames lounge chair. The design process for Charles and Ray never ended in manufacturing. It continued. They were always trying to make thing better and better. Because it's like as Bill Clinton was saying about Rwandan health clinics. It's not enough to create one. You've got to create a system that will work better and better. So I've always liked this prototype picture. Because it just kind of, you know, doesn't get any more basic than that. You try things out. This is a relatively famous chair. Its early version had an "X" base. That's what the collectors like. Charles and Ray liked this one because it was better. It worked better: "H" base, much more practical. This is something called a splint. And I was very touched by Dean Kamen's work for the military, or for the soldiers, because Charles and Ray designed a molded plywood splint. This is it. And they'd been working on furniture before. But doing these splints they learned a lot about the manufacturing process, which was incredibly important to them. I'm trying to show you too much, because I want you to really get a broth of ideas and images. This is a house that Charles and Ray designed. My sister is chasing someone else. It's not me. Although I endorse heartily the fact that he stole her diary, it's not me. And then this is a film, on the lower left, that Charles and Ray made. Now look at that plastic chair. The house is 1949. The chair is done in 1949. Charles and Ray, they didn't obsess about style for it's own sake. They didn't say, "Our style is curves. Let's make the house curvy." They didn't say, "Our style is grids. Let's make the chair griddy." They focused on the need. They tried to solve the design problem. Charles used to say, "The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem." It's kind of a brutal quote. This is the earlier design of that house. And again, they managed to figure out a way to make a prototype of a house — architecture, very expensive medium. Here's a film we've been hearing things about. The "Powers of Ten" is a film they made. If we watch the next clip, you're going to see the first version of "Powers of Ten," upper left. The familiar one on the lower right. The Eames' film Tops, lower left. And a lamp that Charles designed for a church. Video: Which in turn belongs to a local group of galaxies. These form part of a grouping system much as the stars do. They are so many and so varied that from this distance they appear like the stars from Earth. ED: You've seen that film, and what's so great about this whole conference is that everybody has been talking about scale. Everybody here is coming at it from a different way. I want to give you one example. E.O. Wilson once told me that when he looked at ants — he loved them, of course, and he wanted to learn more about them — he consciously looked at them from the standpoint of scale. So here is the tiny creature. And yet simply by changing the frame of reference it reveals so much, including what ended up being the TED Prize. Modeling, they tried modeling all the time. They were always modeling things. And I think part of that is that they never delegated understanding. And I think in our family we were very lucky, because we learned about design backwards. Design was not something other. It was part of the business of life in general. It was part of the quality of life. And here is some family pictures. And you can see why I'm down on style, with a haircut like that. But anyway, (Laughter) I remember the cut grapefruit that we would have at the Eames house when I was a kid. So we're going to watch another film. This is a film, the one called Toys. You can see me, I have the same haircut, in the upper right corner. Upper left is a film they did on toy trains. Lower right is a solar do-nothing toy. Lower left is Day-of-the-Dead toys. Charles used to say that toys are not as innocent as they appear. They are often the precursor to bigger things. And these ideas — that train up there, being about the honest use of materials, is totally the same as the honest use of materials in the plywood. And now I'm going to test you. This is a letter that my grandfather sent to my mom when she was five years old. So can you read it? Lucia angel, okay, eye. Audience: Saw many trains. ED: Awl, also, good that the leather crafter's guild is here. Also, what is he doing? Row, rowed. Sun? No. Well is there another name for a sunrise? Dawn, very good. Also rode on one. I ... Audience: You had, I hope you had — ED: Now you've been to the website Dogs of Saint Louis in the late, in the mid-1930's, then you'd know that was a Great Dane. So, I hope you had a Audience: Nice time, time — ED: Time at. Citizen Kane, rose — Audience: Rosebud. ED: No, bud. "D"'s right. At Buddy's — Audience: Party. Love. ED: Okay, good. So, "I saw many trains and also rode on one. I hope you had a nice time at Buddy's party." So you guys did pretty good, cool. So my mom and Charles had this great relationship where they'd send those sorts of things back and forth to one another. And it's all part of the, you know, they used to say, "Take your pleasure seriously." These are some images from a project of mine that's called Kymaerica. It's sort of an alternative universe. It's kind of a reinterpretation of the landscape. Those plaques are plaques we've been installing around North America. We're about to do six in the U.K. next week. And they honor events in the linear world from the fictional world. So, of course, since it's bronze it has to be true. Video: Kymaerica with waterfalls, tumbling through our — ED: This is one of the traditional Kymaerican songs. And so we had spelling bees in Paris, Illinois. Video: Your word is N. Carolina. Girl: Y-I-N-D-I-A-N-A. ED: And then Embassy Row is actually a historical site, because in the Kymaerican story this is where the Parisian Diaspora started, where there embassy was. So you can actually visit and have this three-dimensional fictional experience there. And the town has really embraced it. We had the spelling bee in conjunction with the Gwomeus Club. But what is really cool is that we take our visual environment as inevitable. And it's not. Other things could have happened. The Japanese could have discovered Monterey. And we could have been born 100,000 years ago. And there are a lot of fun things. This is the Museum of the Bench. They have trading cards and all sorts of cool things. And you're kind of trapped in the texture of Kymaerica. The Tahatchabe, the great road building culture. A guy named Nobu Naga, the so-called Japanese Columbus. But now I'm going to return you to the real world. And this is Cranbrook. I've got a real treat for you, which is the first film that Charles ever made. So let's watch that. Nobody's ever seen it. Cranbrook is very generous to let us show it for the first time here. It's a film about Maya Gretel, a famous ceramicist, and a teacher at Cranbrook. And he made it for the 1939 faculty exhibition. Silent. We don't have a track for it yet. Very simple. It's just a start. But it's that learn-by-doing thing. You want to learn how to make films? Go make a movie. And you try something out. But here is what's really great. See that chair there? The orange one? That's the organic chair. 1940. At the same time that Charles was doing that chair, he was doing this film. So my point is that this scope of vision, this holistic vision of design, was with them from the beginning. It wasn't like "Oh, we made some chairs and got successful. Now we're going to do some movies." It was always part of how they looked at the world. And that's what's really powerful. And I think that all of us in this room, as you move design forward, it's not about just doing one thing. It's about how you approach problems. And there is this huge, beautiful commonality between design, business and the world. So we're going to do the last clip. And I've shown you some of the images. I just want to focus on sound now. So this is Charles' voice. Charles Eames: In India, those without, and the lowest in caste, eat very often, particularly in southern India, they eat off of a banana leaf. And those a little bit up the scale eat off of a sort of a low-fired ceramic dish. And a little bit higher, why they have a glaze on a thing they call a thali. If you're up the scale a little bit more, why, a brass thali. And then things get to be a little questionable. There are things like silver-plated thalis. And there is solid silver thalis. And I suppose some nut has had a gold thali that he's eaten off of. But you can go beyond that. And the guys that have not only means, but a certain amount of knowledge and understanding, go to the next step, and they eat off a banana leaf. And I think that in these times when we fall back and regroup, that somehow or other, the banana leaf parable sort of got to get working there, because I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of. But it is that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf. ED: I've been looking forward to sharing that quote with you. Because that's part of where we've got to get to. And I also want to share this one. "Beyond the age of information is the age of choices." And I really think that's where we are. And it's kind of cool for me to be part of a family and a tradition where he was talking about that in 1978. And part of why this stuff is important and all the things that we do are important, is that these are the ideas we need. And I think that this is all part of surrendering to the design journey. That's what we all need to do. Design is not just for designers anymore. It's a process. It's not style. All that great thinking needs to really get about solving pretty key problems. I really thank you for your time. (Applause)

3 ways the brain creates meaning

Tom Wujec

{0: 'Tom Wujec'}

{0: ['designer']}

{0: "Tom Wujec studies how we share and absorb information. He's an innovative practitioner of business visualization -- using design and technology to help groups solve problems and understand ideas. He is a Fellow at Autodesk."}

2009-02-06

2009-07-07

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'mk', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['brain', 'creativity', 'design', 'presentation', 'technology', 'visualizations']

{540: 'Insights on HIV, in stunning data visuals', 392: 'Tales of creativity and play', 147: 'Visualizing the wonder of a living cell', 1939: 'Could future devices read images from our brains?', 2077: 'A neural portrait of the human mind', 1308: 'The quest to understand consciousness'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_3_ways_the_brain_creates_meaning/

Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas?

Last year at TED we aimed to try to clarify the overwhelming complexity and richness that we experience at the conference in a project called Big Viz. And the Big Viz is a collection of 650 sketches that were made by two visual artists. David Sibbet from The Grove, and Kevin Richards, from Autodesk, made 650 sketches that strive to capture the essence of each presenter's ideas. And the consensus was: it really worked. These sketches brought to life the key ideas, the portraits, the magic moments that we all experienced last year. This year we were thinking, "Why does it work?" What is it about animation, graphics, illustrations, that create meaning? And this is an important question to ask and answer because the more we understand how the brain creates meaning, the better we can communicate, and, I also think, the better we can think and collaborate together. So this year we're going to visualize how the brain visualizes. Cognitive psychologists now tell us that the brain doesn't actually see the world as it is, but instead, creates a series of mental models through a collection of "Ah-ha moments," or moments of discovery, through various processes. The processing, of course, begins with the eyes. Light enters, hits the back of the retina, and is circulated, most of which is streamed to the very back of the brain, at the primary visual cortex. And primary visual cortex sees just simple geometry, just the simplest of shapes. But it also acts like a kind of relay station that re-radiates and redirects information to many other parts of the brain. As many as 30 other parts that selectively make more sense, create more meaning through the kind of "Ah-ha" experiences. We're only going to talk about three of them. So the first one is called the ventral stream. It's on this side of the brain. And this is the part of the brain that will recognize what something is. It's the "what" detector. Look at a hand. Look at a remote control. Chair. Book. So that's the part of the brain that is activated when you give a word to something. A second part of the brain is called the dorsal stream. And what it does is locates the object in physical body space. So if you look around the stage here you'll create a kind of mental map of the stage. And if you closed your eyes you'd be able to mentally navigate it. You'd be activating the dorsal stream if you did that. The third part that I'd like to talk about is the limbic system. And this is deep inside of the brain. It's very old, evolutionarily. And it's the part that feels. It's the kind of gut center, where you see an image and you go, "Oh! I have a strong or emotional reaction to whatever I'm seeing." So the combination of these processing centers help us make meaning in very different ways. So what can we learn about this? How can we apply this insight? Well, again, the schematic view is that the eye visually interrogates what we look at. The brain processes this in parallel, the figments of information asking a whole bunch of questions to create a unified mental model. So, for example, when you look at this image a good graphic invites the eye to dart around, to selectively create a visual logic. So the act of engaging, and looking at the image creates the meaning. It's the selective logic. Now we've augmented this and spatialized this information. Many of you may remember the magic wall that we built in conjunction with Perceptive Pixel where we quite literally create an infinite wall. And so we can compare and contrast the big ideas. So the act of engaging and creating interactive imagery enriches meaning. It activates a different part of the brain. And then the limbic system is activated when we see motion, when we see color, and there are primary shapes and pattern detectors that we've heard about before. So the point of this is what? We make meaning by seeing, by an act of visual interrogation. The lessons for us are three-fold. First, use images to clarify what we're trying to communicate. Secondly make those images interactive so that we engage much more fully. And the third is to augment memory by creating a visual persistence. These are techniques that can be used to be — that can be applied in a wide range of problem solving. So the low-tech version looks like this. And, by the way, this is the way in which we develop and formulate strategy within Autodesk, in some of our organizations and some of our divisions. What we literally do is have the teams draw out the entire strategic plan on one giant wall. And it's very powerful because everyone gets to see everything else. There's always a room, always a place to be able to make sense of all of the components in the strategic plan. This is a time-lapse view of it. You can ask the question, "Who's the boss?" You'll be able to figure that out. (Laughter) So the act of collectively and collaboratively building the image transforms the collaboration. No Powerpoint is used in two days. But instead the entire team creates a shared mental model that they can all agree on and move forward on. And this can be enhanced and augmented with some emerging digital technology. And this is our great unveiling for today. And this is an emerging set of technologies that use large-screen displays with intelligent calculation in the background to make the invisible visible. Here what we can do is look at sustainability, quite literally. So a team can actually look at all the key components that heat the structure and make choices and then see the end result that is visualized on this screen. So making images meaningful has three components. The first again, is making ideas clear by visualizing them. Secondly, making them interactive. And then thirdly, making them persistent. And I believe that these three principles can be applied to solving some of the very tough problems that we face in the world today. Thanks so much. (Applause)

Escaping the Khmer Rouge

Sophal Ear

{0: 'Sophal Ear'}

{0: ['development economist']}

{0: 'Sophal Ear leads research on post-conflict countries -- looking at the effectiveness of foreign aid and the challenge of development in places like his native land, Cambodia.'}

2009-02-06

2009-07-08

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'km', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['Asia', 'adventure', 'storytelling', 'war', 'history']

{297: 'The story of a girl', 299: 'A hero of the Congo forest', 84: 'My wish: Let my photographs bear witness', 1651: 'What I saw in the war', 1120: 'My father the forger', 1954: 'My daughter, Malala'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/sophal_ear_escaping_the_khmer_rouge/

TED Fellow Sophal Ear shares the compelling story of his family's escape from Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. He recounts his mother's cunning and determination to save her children.

I normally teach courses on how to rebuild states after war. But today I've got a personal story to share with you. This is a picture of my family, my four siblings — my mom and I — taken in 1977. And we're actually Cambodians. And this picture is taken in Vietnam. So how did a Cambodian family end up in Vietnam in 1977? Well to explain that, I've got a short video clip to explain the Khmer Rouge regime during 1975 and 1979. Video: April 17th, 1975. The communist Khmer Rouge enters Phnom Penh to liberate their people from the encroaching conflict in Vietnam, and American bombing campaigns. Led by peasant-born Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge evacuates people to the countryside in order to create a rural communist utopia, much like Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution in China. The Khmer Rouge closes the doors to the outside world. But after four years the grim truth seeps out. In a country of only seven million people, one and a half million were murdered by their own leaders, their bodies piled in the mass graves of the killing fields. Sophal Ear: So, notwithstanding the 1970s narration, on April 17th 1975 we lived in Phnom Penh. And my parents were told by the Khmer Rouge to evacuate the city because of impending American bombing for three days. And here is a picture of the Khmer Rouge. They were young soldiers, typically child soldiers. And this is very normal now, of modern day conflict, because they're easy to bring into wars. The reason that they gave about American bombing wasn't all that far off. I mean, from 1965 to 1973 there were more munitions that fell on Cambodia than in all of World War II Japan, including the two nuclear bombs of August 1945. The Khmer Rouge didn't believe in money. So the equivalent of the Federal Reserve Bank in Cambodia was bombed. But not just that, they actually banned money. I think it's the only precedent in which money has ever been stopped from being used. And we know money is the root of all evil, but it didn't actually stop evil from happening in Cambodia, in fact. My family was moved from Phnom Penh to Pursat province. This is a picture of what Pursat looks like. It's actually a very pretty area of Cambodia, where rice growing takes place. And in fact they were forced to work the fields. So my father and mother ended up in a sort of concentration camp, labor camp. And it was at that time that my mother got word from the commune chief that the Vietnamese were actually asking for their citizens to go back to Vietnam. And she spoke some Vietnamese, as a child having grown up with Vietnamese friends. And she decided, despite the advice of her neighbors, that she would take the chance and claim to be Vietnamese so that we could have a chance to survive, because at this point they're forcing everybody to work. And they're giving about — in a modern-day, caloric-restriction diet, I guess — they're giving porridge, with a few grains of rice. And at about this time actually my father got very sick. And he didn't speak Vietnamese. So he died actually, in January 1976. And it made it possible, in fact, for us to take on this plan. So the Khmer Rouge took us from a place called Pursat to Kaoh Tiev, which is across from the border from Vietnam. And there they had a detention camp where alleged Vietnamese would be tested, language tested. And my mother's Vietnamese was so bad that to make our story more credible, she'd given all the boys and girls new Vietnamese names. But she'd given the boys girls' names, and the girls boys' names. And it wasn't until she met a Vietnamese lady who told her this, and then tutored her for two days intensively, that she was able to go into her exam and — you know, this was a moment of truth. If she fails, we're all headed to the gallows; if she passes, we can leave to Vietnam. And she actually, of course — I'm here, she passes. And we end up in Hong Ngu on the Vietnamese side. And then onwards to Chau Doc. And this is a picture of Hong Ngu, Vietnam today. A pretty idyllic place on the Mekong Delta. But for us it meant freedom. And freedom from persecution from the Khmer Rouge. Last year, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, which the U.N. is helping Cambodia take on, started, and I decided that as a matter of record I should file a Civil Complaint with the Tribunal about my father's passing away. And I got word last month that the complaint was officially accepted by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. And it's for me a matter of justice for history, and accountability for the future, because Cambodia remains a pretty lawless place, at times. Five years ago my mother and I went back to Chau Doc. And she was able to return to a place that for her meant freedom, but also fear, because we had just come out of Cambodia. I'm happy, actually, today, to present her. She's here today with us in the audience. Thank you mother. (Applause)

A next-gen cure for killer infections

Kary Mullis

{0: 'Kary Mullis'}

{0: ['biochemist']}

{0: "Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a way to copy a strand of DNA. (His technique, called PCR, jump-started the 1990s' biorevolution.) He's known for his wide-ranging interests -- and strong opinions."}

2009-02-05

2009-07-09

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'ku', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['biology', 'chemistry', 'disease', 'health', 'health care', 'medicine', 'science', 'technology']

{509: 'How bacteria "talk"', 259: 'Can we domesticate germs?', 499: 'The jungle search for viruses', 27105: 'How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis', 37137: "To detect diseases earlier, let's speak bacteria's secret language", 2245: 'Programming bacteria to detect cancer (and maybe treat it)'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/kary_mullis_a_next_gen_cure_for_killer_infections/

(NOTE: This talk was given in 2009, and this field of science has developed quickly since then. Read "Criticisms &amp; updates" below for more details.) Drug-resistant bacteria kills, even in top hospitals. But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise. Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis, who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed, unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise.

So it was about four years ago, five years ago, I was sitting on a stage in Philadelphia, I think it was, with a bag similar to this. And I was pulling a molecule out of this bag. And I was saying, you don't know this molecule really well, but your body knows it extremely well. And I was thinking that your body hated it, at the time, because we are very immune to this. This is called alpha-gal epitope. And the fact that pig heart valves have lots of these on them is the reason that you can't transplant a pig heart valve into a person easily. Actually our body doesn't hate these. Our body loves these. It eats them. I mean, the cells in our immune system are always hungry. And if an antibody is stuck to one of these things on the cell, it means "that's food." Now, I was thinking about that and I said, you know, we've got this immune response to this ridiculous molecule that we don't make, and we see it a lot in other animals and stuff. But I said we can't get rid of it, because all the people who tried to transplant heart valves found out you can't get rid of that immunity. And I said, why don't you use that? What if I could stick this molecule, slap it onto a bacteria that was pathogenic to me, that had just invaded my lungs? I mean I could immediately tap into an immune response that was already there, where it was not going to take five or six days to develop it — it was going to immediately attack whatever this thing was on. It was kind of like the same thing that happens when you, like when you're getting stopped for a traffic ticket in L.A., and the cop drops a bag of marijuana in the back of your car, and then charges you for possession of marijuana. It's like this very fast, very efficient way to get people off the street. (Laughter) So you can take a bacteria that really doesn't make these things at all, and if you could clamp these on it really well you have it taken off the street. And for certain bacteria we don't have really efficient ways to do that anymore. Our antibiotics are running out. And, I mean, the world apparently is running out too. So probably it doesn't matter 50 years from now — streptococcus and stuff like that will be rampant — because we won't be here. But if we are — (Laughter) we're going to need something to do with the bacteria. So I started working with this thing, with a bunch of collaborators. And trying to attach this to things that were themselves attached to certain specific target zones, bacteria that we don't like. And I feel now like George Bush. It's like "mission accomplished." So I might be doing something dumb, just like he was doing at the time. But basically what I was talking about there we've now gotten to work. And it's killing bacteria. It's eating them. This thing can be stuck, like that little green triangle up there, sort of symbolizing this right now. You can stick this to something called a DNA aptamer. And that DNA aptamer will attach specifically to a target that you have selected for it. So you can find a little feature on a bacterium that you don't like, like Staphylococcus — I don't like it in particular, because it killed a professor friend of mine last year. It doesn't respond to antibiotics. So I don't like it. And I'm making an aptamer that will have this attached to it. That will know how to find Staph when it's in your body, and will alert your immune system to go after it. Here's what happened. See that line on the very top with the little dots? That's a bunch of mice that had been poisoned by our scientist friends down in Texas, at Brooks Air Base, with anthrax. And they had also been treated with a drug that we made that would attack anthrax in particular, and direct your immune system to it. You'll notice they all lived, the ones on the top line — that's a 100 percent survival rate. And they actually lived another 14 days, or 28 when we finally killed them, and took them apart and figured out what went wrong. Why did they not die? And they didn't die because they didn't have anthrax anymore. So we did it. Okay? (Applause) Mission accomplished! (Applause)

4 environmental 'heresies'

Stewart Brand

{0: 'Stewart Brand'}

{0: ['environmentalist', 'futurist']}

{0: "Since the counterculture '60s, Stewart Brand has been creating our internet-worked world. Now, with biotech accelerating four times faster than digital technology, Stewart Brand has a bold new plan ..."}

2009-06-03

2009-07-13

TED@State

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['alternative energy', 'climate change', 'environment', 'future', 'global issues', 'green', 'sustainability', 'urban planning', 'global development', 'Anthropocene', 'electricity']

{123: 'What squatter cities can teach us', 402: 'The Long Now', 535: 'What comes after An Inconvenient Truth?', 881: 'Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?', 2583: 'How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment', 1727: 'My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_4_environmental_heresies/

The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate.

Because of what I'm about to say, I really should establish my green credentials. When I was a small boy, I took my pledge as an American, to save and faithfully defend from waste the natural resources of my country, its air, soil and minerals, its forests, waters and wildlife. And I've stuck to that. Stanford, I majored in ecology and evolution. 1968, I put out the Whole Earth Catalog. Was "mister natural" for a while. And then worked for the Jerry Brown administration. The Brown administration, and a bunch of my friends, basically leveled the energy efficiency of California, so it's the same now, 30 years later, even though our economy has gone up 80 percent, per capita. And we are putting out less greenhouse gasses than any other state. California is basically the equivalent of Europe, in this. This year, Whole Earth Catalog has a supplement that I'll preview today, called Whole Earth Discipline. The dominant demographic event of our time is this screamingly rapid urbanization that we have going on. By mid-century we'll be about 80 percent urban, and that's mostly in the developing world, where that's happening. It's interesting, because history is driven to a large degree by the size of cities. The developing world now has all of the biggest cities, and they are developing three times faster than the developed countries, and nine times bigger. It's qualitatively different. They are the drivers of history, as we see by looking at history. 1,000 years ago this is what the world looked like. Well we now have a distribution of urban power similar to what we had 1,000 years ago. In other words, the rise of the West, dramatic as it was, is over. The aggregate numbers are absolutely overwhelming: 1.3 million people a week coming to town, decade after decade. What's really going on? Well, what's going on is the villages of the world are emptying out. Subsistence farming is drying up basically. People are following opportunity into town. And this is why. I used to have a very romantic idea about villages, and it's because I never lived in one. (Laughter) Because in town — this is the bustling squatter city of Kibera, near Nairobi — they see action. They see opportunity. They see a cash economy that they were not able to participate in back in the subsistence farm. As you go around these places there's plenty of aesthetics. There is plenty going on. They are poor, but they are intensely urban. And they are intensely creative. The aggregate numbers now are that basically squatters, all one billion of them, are building the urban world, which means they're building the world — personally, one by one, family by family, clan by clan, neighborhood by neighborhood. They start flimsy and they get substantial as time goes by. They even build their own infrastructure. Well, steal their own infrastructure, at first. Cable TV, water, the whole gamut, all gets stolen. And then gradually gentrifies. It is not the case that slums undermine prosperity, not the working slums; they help create prosperity. So in a town like Mumbai, which is half slums, it's 1/6th of the GDP of India. Social capital in the slums is at its most urban and dense. These people are valuable as a group. And that's how they work. There is a lot of people who think about all these poor people, "Oh there's terrible things. We've got to fix their housing." It used to be, "Oh we've got to get them phone service." Now they're showing us how they do their phone service. Famine mostly is a rural event now. There are things they care about. And this is where we can help. And the nations they're in can help. And they are helping each other solve these issues. And you go to a nice dense place like this slum in Mumbai. You look at that lane on the right. And you can ask, "Okay what's going on there?" The answer is, "Everything." This is better than a mall. It's much denser. It's much more interactive. And the scale is terrific. The main event is, these are not people crushed by poverty. These are people busy getting out of poverty just as fast as they can. They're helping each other do it. They're doing it through an outlaw thing, the informal economy. The informal economy, it's sort of like dark energy in astrophysics: it's not supposed to be there, but it's huge. We don't understand how it works yet, but we have to. Furthermore, people in the informal economy, the gray economy — as time goes by, crime is happening around them. And they can join the criminal world, or they can join the legitimate world. We should be able to make that choice easier for them to get toward the legitimate world, because if we don't, they will go toward the criminal world. There's all kinds of activity. In Dharavi the slum performs not only a lot of services for itself, but it performs services for the city at large. And one of the main events are these ad-hoc schools. Parents pool their money to hire some local teachers to a private, tiny, unofficial school. Education is more possible in the cities, and that changes the world. So you see some interesting, typical, urban things. So one thing slammed up against another, such as in Sao Paulo here. That's what cities do. That's how they create value, is by slamming things together. In this case, supply right next to demand. So the maids and the gardeners and the guards that live in this lively part of town on the left walk to work, in the boring, rich neighborhood. Proximity is amazing. We are learning about how dense proximity can be. Connectivity between the city and the country is what's going to keep the country good, because the city has interesting ways of doing things. This is what makes cities — (Applause) this is what makes cities so green in the developing world. Because people leave the poverty trap, an ecological disaster of subsistence farms, and head to town. And when they're gone the natural environment starts to come back very rapidly. And those who remain in the village can shift over to cash crops to send food to the new growing markets in town. So if you want to save a village, you do it with a good road, or with a good cell phone connection, and ideally some grid electrical power. So the event is: we're a city planet. That just happened. More than half. The numbers are considerable. A billion live in the squatter cities now. Another billion is expected. That's more than a sixth of humanity living a certain way. And that will determine a lot of how we function. Now, for us environmentalists, maybe the greenest thing about the cities is they diffuse the population bomb. People get into town. The immediately have fewer children. They don't even have to get rich yet. Just the opportunity of coming up in the world means they will have fewer, higher-quality kids, and the birthrate goes down radically. Very interesting side effect here, here's a slide from Phillip Longman. Shows what is happening. As we have more and more old people, like me, and fewer and fewer babies. And they are regionally separated. What you're getting is a world which is old folks, and old cities, going around doing things the old way, in the north. And young people in brand new cities they're inventing, doing new things, in the south. Where do you think the action is going to be? Shift of subject. Quickly drop by climate. The climate news, I'm sorry to say, is going to keep getting worse than we think, faster than we think. Climate is a profoundly complex, nonlinear system, full of runaway positive feedbacks, hidden thresholds and irrevocable tipping points. Here's just a few samples. We're going to keep being surprised. And almost all the surprises are going to be bad ones. From your standpoint this means a great increase in climate refugees over the coming decades, and what goes along with that, which is resource wars and chaos wars, as we're seeing in Darfur. That's what drought does. It brings carrying capacity down, and there's not enough carrying capacity to support the people. And then you're in trouble. Shift to the power situation. Baseload electricity is what it takes to run a city, or a city planet. So far there is only three sources of baseload electricity: coal, some gas, nuclear and hydro. Of those, only nuclear and hydro are green. Coal is what is causing the climate problems. And everyone will keep burning it because it's so cheap, until governments make it expensive. Wind and solar can't help, because so far we don't have a way to store that energy. So with hydro maxed out, coal and lose the climate, or nuclear, which is the current operating low-carbon source, and maybe save the climate. And if we can eventually get good solar in space, that also could help. Because remember, this is what drives the prosperity in the developing world in the villages and in the cities. So, between coal and nuclear, compare their waste products. If all of the electricity you used in your lifetime was nuclear, the amount of waste that would be added up would fit in a Coke can. Whereas a coal-burning plant, a normal one gigawatt coal plant, burns 80 rail cars of coal a day, each car having 100 tons. And it puts 18 thousand tons of carbon dioxide in the air. So and then when you compare the lifetime emissions of these various energy forms, nuclear is about even with solar and wind, and ahead of solar — oh, I'm sorry — with hydro and wind, and ahead of solar. And does nuclear really compete with coal? Just ask the coal miners in Australia. That's where you see some of the source, not from my fellow environmentalists, but from people who feel threatened by nuclear power. Well the good news is that the developing world, but frankly, the whole world, is busy building, and starting to build, nuclear reactors. This is good for the atmosphere. It's good for their prosperity. I want to point out one interesting thing, which is that environmentalists like the thing we call micropower. It's supposed to be, I don't know, local solar and wind and cogeneration, and good things like that. But frankly micro-reactors which are just now coming on, might serve even better. The Russians, who started this, are building floating reactors, for their new passage, where the ice is melting, north of Russia. And they're selling these floating reactors, only 35 megawatts, to developing countries. Here's the design of an early one from Toshiba. It's interesting, say, to take a 25-megawatt, 25 million watts, and you compare it to the standard big iron of an ordinary Westinghouse or Ariva, which is 1.2, 1.6 billion watts. These things are way smaller. They're much more adaptable. Here's an American design from Lawrence Livermore Lab. Here's another American design that came out of Los Alamos, and is now commercial. Almost all of these are not only small, they are proliferation-proof. They're typically buried in the ground. And the innovation is moving very rapidly. So I think microreactors is going to be important for the future. In terms of proliferation, nuclear energy has done more to dismantle nuclear weapons than any other activity. And that's why 10 percent of the electricity in this room, 20 percent of electricity in this room is probably nuclear. Half of that is coming from dismantled warheads from Russia, soon to be joined by our dismantled warheads. And so I would like to see the GNEP program, that was developed in the Bush administration, go forward aggressively. And I was glad to see that president Obama supported the nuclear fuel bank strategy when he spoke in Prague the other week. One more subject. Genetically engineered food crops, in my view, as a biologist, have no reason to be controversial. My fellow environmentalists, on this subject, have been irrational, anti-scientific, and very harmful. Despite their best efforts, genetically engineered crops are the most rapidly successful agricultural innovation in history. They're good for the environment because they enable no-till farming, which leaves the soil in place, getting healthier from year to year — slso keeps less carbon dioxide going from the soil into the atmosphere. They reduce pesticide use. And they increase yield, which allows you to have your agricultural area be smaller, and therefore more wild area is freed up. By the way, this map from 2006 is out of date because it shows Africa still under the thumb of Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth from Europe, and they're finally getting out from under that. And biotech is moving rapidly in Africa, at last. This is a moral issue. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics met on this issue twice in great detail and said it is a moral imperative to make genetically engineered crops readily available. Speaking of imperatives, geoengineering is taboo now, especially in government circles, though I think there was a DARPA meeting on it a couple of weeks ago, but it will be on your plate — not this year but pretty soon, because some harsh realizations are coming along. This is a list of them. Basically the news is going to keep getting more scary. There will be events, like 35,000 people dying of a heat wave, which happened a while back. Like cyclones coming up toward Bangladesh. Like wars over water, such as in the Indus. And as those events keep happening we're going to say, "Okay, what can we do about that really?" But there's this little problem with geoengineering: what body is going to decide who gets to engineer? How much they do? Where they do it? Because everybody is downstream, downwind of whatever is done. And if we just taboo it completely we could lose civilization. But if we just say "OK, China, you're worried, you go ahead. You geoengineer your way. We'll geoengineer our way." That would be considered an act of war by both nations. So this is very interesting diplomacy coming along. I should say, it is more practical than people think. Here is an example that climatologists like a lot, one of the dozens of geoengineering ideas. This one came from the sulfur dioxide from Mount Pinatubo in 1991 — cooled the earth by half a degree. There was so much ice in 1992, the following year, that there was a bumper crop of polar bear cubs who were known as the Pinatubo cubs. To put sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere would cost on the order of a billion dollars a year. That's nothing, compared to all of the other things we may be trying to do about energy. Just to run by another one: this is a plan to brighten the reflectance of ocean clouds, by atomizing seawater; that would brighten the albedo of the whole planet. A nice one, because it can happen lots of little ways in lots of little places, is by copying the ancient Amazon Indians who made good agricultural soil by pyrolizing, smoldering, plant waste, and biochar fixes large quantities of carbon while it's improving the soil. So here is where we are. Nobel Prize-winning climatologist Paul Crutzen calls our geological era the Anthropocene, the human-dominated era. We are stuck with its obligations. In the Whole Earth Catalog, my first words were, "We are as Gods, and might as well get good at it." The first words of Whole Earth Discipline are, "We are as Gods, and have to get good at it." Thank you. (Applause)

Playing with space and light

Olafur Eliasson

{0: 'Olafur Eliasson'}

{0: ['sculptor of light and space']}

{0: "The transparent simplicity and experiential nature of his work has built Olafur Eliasson's reputation as one of the world's most accessible creators of contemporary art."}

2009-02-06

2009-07-14

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'cities', 'design']

{32: 'Art with wire, sugar, chocolate and string', 534: 'Anti-gravity sculpture', 279: 'Turning powerful stats into art', 654: 'Claim your "manspace"', 1551: 'Sculpted space, within and without', 1966: 'How public spaces make cities work'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/olafur_eliasson_playing_with_space_and_light/

In the spectacular large-scale projects he's famous for (such as "Waterfalls" in New York harbor), Olafur Eliasson creates art from a palette of space, distance, color and light. This idea-packed talk begins with an experiment in the nature of perception.

I have a studio in Berlin — let me cue on here — which is down there in this snow, just last weekend. In the studio we do a lot of experiments. I would consider the studio more like a laboratory. I have occasional meetings with scientists. And I have an academy, a part of the University of Fine Arts in Berlin. We have an annual gathering of people, and that is called Life in Space. Life in Space is really not necessarily about how we do things, but why we do things. Do you mind looking, with me, at that little cross in the center there? So just keep looking. Don't mind me. So you will have a yellow circle, and we will do an after-image experiment. When the circle goes away you will have another color, the complementary color. I am saying something. And your eyes and your brain are saying something back. This whole idea of sharing, the idea of constituting reality by overlapping what I say and what you say — think of a movie. Since two years now, with some stipends from the science ministry in Berlin, I've been working on these films where we produce the film together. I don't necessarily think the film is so interesting. Obviously this is not interesting at all in the sense of the narrative. But nevertheless, what the potential is — and just keep looking there — what the potential is, obviously, is to kind of move the border of who is the author, and who is the receiver. Who is the consumer, if you want, and who has responsibility for what one sees? I think there is a socializing dimension in, kind of, moving that border. Who decides what reality is? This is the Tate Modern in London. The show was, in a sense, about that. It was about a space in which I put half a semi-circular yellow disk. I also put a mirror in the ceiling, and some fog, some haze. And my idea was to make the space tangible. With such a big space, the problem is obviously that there is a discrepancy between what your body can embrace, and what the space, in that sense, is. So here I had the hope that by inserting some natural elements, if you want — some fog — I could make the space tangible. And what happens is that people, they start to see themselves in this space. So look at this. Look at the girl. Of course they have to look through a bloody camera in a museum. Right? That's how museums are working today. But look at her face there, as she's checking out, looking at herself in the mirror. "Oh! That was my foot there!" She wasn't really sure whether she was seeing herself or not. And in that whole idea, how do we configure the relationship between our body and the space? How do we reconfigure it? How do we know that being in a space makes a difference? Do you see when I said in the beginning, it's about why, rather than how? The why meant really, "What consequences does it have when I take a step?" "What does it matter?" "Does it matter if I am in the world or not?" "And does it matter whether the kind of actions I take filter into a sense of responsibility?" Is art about that? I would say yes. It is obviously about not just about decorating the world, and making it look even better, or even worse, if you ask me. It's obviously also about taking responsibility, like I did here when throwing some green dye in the river in L.A., Stockholm, Norway and Tokyo, among other places. The green dye is not environmentally dangerous, but it obviously looks really rather frightening. And it's on the other side also, I think, quite beautiful, as it somehow shows the turbulence in these kind of downtown areas, in these different places of the world. The "Green river," as a kind of activist idea, not a part of an exhibition, it was really about showing people, in this city, as they walk by, that space has dimensions. A space has time. And the water flows through the city with time. The water has an ability to make the city negotiable, tangible. Negotiable meaning that it makes a difference whether you do something or not. It makes a difference whether you say, "I'm a part of this city. And if I vote it makes a difference. If I take a stand, it makes a difference." This whole idea of a city not being a picture is, I think, something that art, in a sense, always was working with. The idea that art can actually evaluate the relationship between what it means to be in a picture, and what it means to be in a space. What is the difference? The difference between thinking and doing. So these are different experiments with that. I won't go into them. Iceland, lower right corner, my favorite place. These kinds of experiments, they filter into architectural models. These are ongoing experiments. One is an experiment I did for BMW, an attempt to make a car. It's made out of ice. A crystalline stackable principle in the center on the top, which I am trying to turn into a concert hall in Iceland. A sort of a run track, or a walk track, on the top of a museum in Denmark, which is made of colored glass, going all around. So the movement with your legs will change the color of your horizon. And two summers ago at the Hyde Park in London, with the Serpentine Gallery: a kind of a temporal pavilion where moving was the only way you could see the pavilion. This summer, in New York: there is one thing about falling water which is very much about the time it takes for water to fall. It's quite simple and fundamental. I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move, the mountain starts to move. The big mountains far away, they move less. The small mountains in the foreground, they move more. And if you stop again, you wonder, "Is that a one-hour valley? Or is that a three-hour hike, or is that a whole day I'm looking at?" If you have a waterfall in there, right out there at the horizon; you look at the waterfall and you go, "Oh, the water is falling really slowly." And you go, "My god it's really far away and it's a giant waterfall." If a waterfall is falling faster, it's a smaller waterfall which is closer by — because the speed of falling water is pretty constant everywhere. And your body somehow knows that. So this means a waterfall is a way of measuring space. Of course being an iconic city like New York, that has had an interest in somehow playing around with the sense of space, you could say that New York wants to seem as big as possible. Adding a measurement to that is interesting: the falling water suddenly gives you a sense of, "Oh, Brooklyn is exactly this much — the distance between Brooklyn and Manhattan, in this case the lower East River is this big." So it was not just necessarily about putting nature into the cities. It was also about giving the city a sense of dimension. And why would we want to do that? Because I think it makes a difference whether you have a body that feels a part of a space, rather than having a body which is just in front of a picture. And "Ha-ha, there is a picture and here is I. And what does it matter?" Is there a sense of consequences? So if I have a sense of the space, if I feel that the space is tangible, if I feel there is time, if there is a dimension I could call time, I also feel that I can change the space. And suddenly it makes a difference in terms of making space accessible. One could say this is about community, collectivity. It's about being together. How do we create public space? What does the word "public" mean today anyway? So, asked in that way, I think it raises great things about parliamentary ideas, democracy, public space, being together, being individual. How do we create an idea which is both tolerant to individuality, and also to collectivity, without polarizing the two into two different opposites? Of course the political agendas in the world has been very obsessed, polarizing the two against each other into different, very normative ideas. I would claim that art and culture, and this is why art and culture are so incredibly interesting in the times we're living in now, have proven that one can create a kind of a space which is both sensitive to individuality and to collectivity. It's very much about this causality, consequences. It's very much about the way we link thinking and doing. So what is between thinking and doing? And right in-between thinking and doing, I would say, there is experience. And experience is not just a kind of entertainment in a non-casual way. Experience is about responsibility. Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility. So art, in that sense, I think holds an incredible relevance in the world in which we're moving into, particularly right now. That's all I have. Thank you very much. (Applause)

A better way to harvest bone marrow

Daniel Kraft

{0: 'Daniel Kraft'}

{0: ['physician-scientist', 'inventor', 'entrepreneur']}

{0: 'Daniel Kraft explores the impact and potential of rapidly developing technologies as applied to health and medicine.'}

2009-02-06

2009-07-15

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['biology', 'biotech', 'health', 'health care', 'medicine', 'science', 'technology']

{580: "Surgery's past, present and robotic future", 594: 'A next-gen cure for killer infections', 57: 'My wish: Three unusual medical inventions', 57639: 'How bones make blood', 23972: 'What are stem cells?', 1124: 'Transplant cells, not organs'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kraft_a_better_way_to_harvest_bone_marrow/

Daniel Kraft demos his Marrow Miner -- a new device that quickly harvests life-saving bone marrow with minimal pain to the donor. He emphasizes that the adult stem cells found in bone marrow can be used to treat many terminal conditions, from Parkinson's to heart disease.

So I am a pediatric cancer doctor and stem-cell researcher at Stanford University where my clinical focus has been bone marrow transplantation. Now, inspired by Jill Bolte Taylor last year, I didn't bring a human brain, but I did bring a liter of bone marrow. And bone marrow is actually what we use to save the lives of tens of thousands of patients, most of whom have advanced malignancies like leukemia and lymphoma and some other diseases. So, a few years ago, I'm doing my transplant fellowship at Stanford. I'm in the operating room. We have Bob here, who is a volunteer donor. We're sending his marrow across the country to save the life of a child with leukemia. So actually how do we harvest this bone marrow? Well we have a whole O.R. team, general anesthesia, nurses, and another doctor across from me. Bob's on the table, and we take this sort of small needle, you know, not too big. And the way we do this is we basically place this through the soft tissue, and kind of punch it into the hard bone, into the tuchus — that's a technical term — and aspirate about 10 mls of bone marrow out, each time, with a syringe. And hand it off to the nurse. She squirts it into a tin. Hands it back to me. And we do that again and again. About 200 times usually. And by the end of this my arm is sore, I've got a callus on my hand, let alone Bob, whose rear end looks something more like this, like Swiss cheese. So I'm thinking, you know, this procedure hasn't changed in about 40 years. And there is probably a better way to do this. So I thought of a minimally invasive approach, and a new device that we call the Marrow Miner. This is it. And the Marrow Miner, the way it works is shown here. Our standard see-through patient. Instead of entering the bone dozens of times, we enter just once, into the front of the hip or the back of the hip. And we have a flexible, powered catheter with a special wire loop tip that stays inside the crunchy part of the marrow and follows the contours of the hip, as it moves around. So it enables you to very rapidly aspirate, or suck out, rich bone marrow very quickly through one hole. We can do multiple passes through that same entry. No robots required. And, so, very quickly, Bob can just get one puncture, local anesthesia, and do this harvest as an outpatient. So I did a few prototypes. I got a small little grant at Stanford. And played around with this a little bit. And our team members developed this technology. And eventually we got two large animals, and pig studies. And we found, to our surprise, that we not only got bone marrow out, but we got 10 times the stem cell activity in the marrow from the Marrow Miner, compared to the normal device. This device was just FDA approved in the last year. Here is a live patient. You can see it following the flexible curves around. There will be two passes here, in the same patient, from the same hole. This was done under local anesthesia, as an outpatient. And we got, again, about three to six times more stem cells than the standard approach done on the same patient. So why should you care? Bone marrow is a very rich source of adult stem cells. You all know about embryonic stem cells. They've got great potential but haven't yet entered clinical trials. Adult stem cells are throughout our body, including the blood-forming stem cells in our bone marrow, which we've been using as a form of stem-cell therapy for over 40 years. In the last decade there's been an explosion of use of bone marrow stem cells to treat the patient's other diseases such as heart disease, vascular disease, orthopedics, tissue engineering, even in neurology to treat Parkinson's and diabetes. We've just come out, we're commercializing, this year, generation 2.0 of the Marrow Miner. The hope is that this gets more stem cells out, which translates to better outcomes. It may encourage more people to sign up to be potential live-saving bone marrow donors. It may even enable you to bank your own marrow stem cells, when you're younger and healthier, to use in the future should you need it. And ultimately — and here's a picture of our bone marrow transplant survivors, who come together for a reunion each year at Stanford. Hopefully this technology will let us have more of these survivors in the future. Thanks. (Applause)

Exploring the mind of a killer

Jim Fallon

{0: 'Jim Fallon'}

{0: ['neurobiologist']}

{0: 'Sloan Scholar, Fulbright Fellow, Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience, Jim Fallon looks at the way nature and nurture intermingle to wire up the human brain.'}

2009-02-05

2009-07-16

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fr', 'gl', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lv', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sq', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['brain', 'consciousness', 'mental health', 'mind', 'psychology', 'science', 'violence', 'genetics', 'neuroscience', 'crime']

{184: '3 clues to understanding your brain', 236: 'A look inside the brain in real time', 97: 'The surprising science of happiness', 1267: 'A map of the brain', 2779: 'The biology of our best and worst selves', 252: 'Your genes are not your fate'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer/

Psychopathic killers are the basis for some must-watch TV, but what really makes them tick? Neuroscientist Jim Fallon talks about brain scans and genetic analysis that may uncover the rotten wiring in the nature (and nurture) of murderers. In a too-strange-for-fiction twist, he shares a fascinating family history that makes his work chillingly personal.

I'm a neuroscientist, a professor at the University of California. And over the past 35 years, I've studied behavior on the basis of everything from genes through neurotransmitters, dopamine, things like that, all the way through circuit analysis. So that's what I normally do. But then, for some reason, I got into something else, just recently. And it all grew out of one of my colleagues asking me to analyze a bunch of brains of psychopathic killers. And so this would be the typical talk I would give. And the question is, "How do you end up with a psychopathic killer?" What I mean by psychopathic killer are these people, these types of people. And so some of the brains that I've studied are people you know about. When I get the brains I don't know what I'm looking at. It's blind experiments. They also gave me normal people and everything. So I've looked at about 70 of these. And what came up was a number of pieces of data. So we look at these sorts of things theoretically, on the basis of genetics, and brain damage, and interaction with environment, and exactly how that machine works. So we're interested in exactly where in the brain, and what's the most important part of the brain. So we've been looking at this: the interaction of genes, what's called epigenetic effects, brain damage, and environment, and how these are tied together. And how you end up with a psychopath, and a killer, depends on exactly when the damage occurs. It's really a very precisely timed thing. You get different kinds of psychopaths. So we're going along with this. And here's, just to give you the pattern. The pattern is that those people, every one of them I looked at, who was a murderer, and was a serial killer, had damage to their orbital cortex, which is right above the eyes, the orbits, and also the interior part of the temporal lobe. So there is the pattern that every one of them had, but they all were a little different too. They had other sorts of brain damage. A key thing is that the major violence genes, it's called the MAO-A gene. And there is a variant of this gene that is in the normal population. Some of you have this. And it's sex-linked. It's on the X chromosome. And so in this way you can only get it from your mother. And in fact this is probably why mostly men, boys, are psychopathic killers, or are very aggressive. Because a daughter can get one X from the father, one X from the mother, it's kind of diluted out. But for a son, he can only get the X chromosome from his mother. So this is how it's passed from mother to son. And it has to do with too much brain serotonin during development, which is kind of interesting because serotonin is supposed to make you calm and relaxed. But if you have this gene, in utero your brain is bathed in this, so your whole brain becomes insensitive to serotonin, so it doesn't work later on in life. And I'd given this one talk in Israel, just this past year. And it does have some consequences. Theoretically what this means is that in order to express this gene, in a violent way, very early on, before puberty, you have to be involved in something that is really traumatic — not a little stress, not being spanked or something, but really seeing violence, or being involved in it, in 3D. Right? That's how the mirror neuron system works. And so, if you have that gene, and you see a lot of violence in a certain situation, this is the recipe for disaster, absolute disaster. And what I think might happen in these areas of the world, where we have constant violence, you end up having generations of kids that are seeing all this violence. And if I was a young girl, somewhere in a violent area, you know, a 14 year old, and I want to find a mate, I'd find some tough guy, right, to protect me. Well what the problem is this tends to concentrate these genes. And now the boys and the girls get them. So I think after several generations, and here is the idea, we really have a tinderbox. So that was the idea. But then my mother said to me, "I hear you've been going around talking about psychopathic killers. And you're talking as if you come from a normal family." I said, "What the hell are you talking about?" She then told me about our own family tree. Now she blamed this on my father's side, of course. This was one of these cases, because she has no violence in her background, but my father did. Well she said, "There is good news and bad news. One of your cousins is Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell university. But the bad news is that your cousin is also Lizzie Borden. Now I said, "Okay, so what? We have Lizzie." She goes, "No it gets worse, read this book." And here is this "Killed Strangely," and it's this historical book. And the first murder of a mother by a son was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Okay, so that's the first case of matricide. And that book is very interesting. Because it's about witch trials, and how people thought back then. But it doesn't stop there. There were seven more men, on my father's side, starting then, Cornells, that were all murderers. Okay, now this gives one a little pause. (Laughter) Because my father himself, and my three uncles, in World War II, were all conscientious objectors, all pussycats. But every once in a while, like Lizzie Borden, like three times a century, and we're kind of due. (Laughter) So the moral of the story is: people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But more likely is this. (Laughter) And we had to take action. Now our kids found out about it. And they all seemed to be OK. But our grandkids are going to be kind of concerned here. So what we've done is I've started to do PET scans of everybody in the family. (Laughter) We started to do PET scans, EEGs and genetic analysis to see where the bad news is. Now the only person — it turns out one son and one daughter, siblings, didn't get along and their patterns are exactly the same. They have the same brain, and the same EEG. And now they are close as can be. But there's gonna be bad news somewhere. And we don't know where it's going to pop up. So that's my talk. (Laughter)

Skin color is an illusion

Nina Jablonski

{0: 'Nina Jablonski'}

{0: ['anthropologist']}

{0: 'Nina Jablonski is author of Skin: A Natural History, a close look at human skin’s many remarkable traits: its colors, its sweatiness, the fact that we decorate it.'}

2009-02-05

2009-07-17

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'eo', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['anthropology', 'biology', 'evolution', 'human origins', 'humanity', 'race', 'science']

{315: "A dig for humanity's origins", 323: 'A family tree for humanity', 18: "Biomimicry's surprising lessons from nature's engineers", 2761: 'The science of skin color', 1648: 'Could the sun be good for your heart?', 1413: 'How can technology transform the human body?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/nina_jablonski_skin_color_is_an_illusion/

Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies' adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that's because he did not have access to NASA.

Interestingly, Charles Darwin was born a very lightly pigmented man, in a moderately-to-darkly pigmented world. Over the course of his life, Darwin had great privilege. He lived in a fairly wealthy home. He was raised by very supportive and interested parents. And when he was in his 20s he embarked upon a remarkable voyage on the ship the Beagle. And during the course of that voyage, he saw remarkable things: tremendous diversity of plants and animals, and humans. And the observations that he made on that epic journey were to be eventually distilled into his wonderful book, "On the Origin of Species," published 150 years ago. Now what is so interesting and to some, the extent, what's a bit infamous about "The Origin of Species," is that there is only one line in it about human evolution. "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It wasn't until much longer, much later, that Darwin actually spoke and wrote about humans. Now in his years of traveling on the Beagle, and from listening to the accounts or explorers and naturalists, he knew that skin color was one of the most important ways in which people varied. And he was somewhat interested in the pattern of skin color. He knew that darkly pigmented peoples were found close to the equator; lightly pigmented peoples, like himself, were found closer to the poles. So what did he make of all this? Well he didn't write anything about it in The Origin of Species. But much later, in 1871, he did have something to say about it. And it was quite curious. He said, "Of all the differences between the races of men, the color of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked." And he went on to say, "These differences do not coincide with corresponding differences in climate." So he had traveled all around. He had seen people of different colors living in different places. And yet he rejected the idea that human skin pigmentation was related to the climate. If only Darwin lived today. If only Darwin had NASA. Now, one of the wonderful things that NASA does is it puts up a variety of satellites that detect all sort of interesting things about our environment. And for many decades now there have been a series of TOMS satellites that have collected data about the radiation of the Earth's surface. The TOMS 7 satellite data, shown here, show the annual average ultraviolet radiation at the Earth's surface. Now the really hot pink and red areas are those parts of the world that receive the highest amounts of UV during the year. The incrementally cooler colors — blues, greens, yellows, and finally grays — indicate areas of much lower ultraviolet radiation. What's significant to the story of human skin pigmentation is just how much of the Northern Hemisphere is in these cool gray zones. This has tremendous implications for our understanding of the evolution of human skin pigmentation. And what Darwin could not appreciate, or didn't perhaps want to appreciate at the time, is that there was a fundamental relationship between the intensity of ultraviolet radiation and skin pigmentation. And that skin pigmentation itself was a product of evolution. And so when we look at a map of skin color, and predicted skin color, as we know it today, what we see is a beautiful gradient from the darkest skin pigmentations toward the equator, and the lightest ones toward the poles. What's very, very important here is that the earliest humans evolved in high-UV environments, in equatorial Africa. The earliest members of our lineage, the genus Homo, were darkly pigmented. And we all share this incredible heritage of having originally been darkly pigmented, two million to one and half million years ago. Now what happened in our history? Let's first look at the relationship of ultraviolet radiation to the Earth's surface. In those early days of our evolution, looking at the equator, we were bombarded by high levels of ultraviolet radiation. The UVC, the most energetic type, was occluded by the Earth's atmosphere. But UVB and UVA especially, came in unimpeded. UVB turns out to be incredibly important. It's very destructive, but it also catalyzes the production of vitamin D in the skin, vitamin D being a molecule that we very much need for our strong bones, the health of our immune system, and myriad other important functions in our bodies. So, living at the equator, we got lots and lots of ultraviolet radiation and the melanin — this wonderful, complex, ancient polymer compound in our skin — served as a superb natural sunscreen. This polymer is amazing because it's present in so many different organisms. Melanin, in various forms, has probably been on the Earth a billion years, and has been recruited over and over again by evolution, as often happens. Why change it if it works? So melanin was recruited, in our lineage, and specifically in our earliest ancestors evolving in Africa, to be a natural sunscreen. Where it protected the body against the degradations of ultraviolet radiation, the destruction, or damage to DNA, and the breakdown of a very important molecule called folate, which helps to fuel cell production, and reproduction in the body. So, it's wonderful. We evolved this very protective, wonderful covering of melanin. But then we moved. And humans dispersed — not once, but twice. Major moves, outside of our equatorial homeland, from Africa into other parts of the Old World, and most recently, into the New World. When humans dispersed into these latitudes, what did they face? Conditions were significantly colder, but they were also less intense with respect to the ultraviolet regime. So if we're somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, look at what's happening to the ultraviolet radiation. We're still getting a dose of UVA. But all of the UVB, or nearly all of it, is dissipated through the thickness of the atmosphere. In the winter, when you are skiing in the Alps, you may experience ultraviolet radiation. But it's all UVA, and, significantly, that UVA has no ability to make vitamin D in your skin. So people inhabiting northern hemispheric environments were bereft of the potential to make vitamin D in their skin for most of the year. This had tremendous consequences for the evolution of human skin pigmentation. Because what happened, in order to ensure health and well-being, these lineages of people dispersing into the Northern Hemisphere lost their pigmentation. There was natural selection for the evolution of lightly pigmented skin. Here we begin to see the evolution of the beautiful sepia rainbow that now characterizes all of humanity. Lightly pigmented skin evolved not just once, not just twice, but probably three times. Not just in modern humans, but in one of our distant unrelated ancestors, the Neanderthals. A remarkable, remarkable testament to the power of evolution. Humans have been on the move for a long time. And just in the last 5,000 years, in increasing rates, over increasing distances. Here are just some of the biggest movements of people, voluntary movements, in the last 5,000 years. Look at some of the major latitudinal transgressions: people from high UV areas going to low UV and vice versa. And not all these moves were voluntary. Between 1520 and 1867, 12 million, 500 people were moved from high UV to low UV areas in the transatlantic slave trade. Now this had all sorts of invidious social consequences. But it also had deleterious health consequences to people. So what? We've been on the move. We're so clever we can overcome all of these seeming biological impediments. Well, often we're unaware of the fact that we're living in environments in which our skin is inherently poorly adapted. Some of us with lightly pigmented skin live in high-UV areas. Some of us with darkly pigmented skin live in low-UV areas. These have tremendous consequences for our health. We have to, if we're lightly pigmented, be careful about the problems of skin cancer, and destruction of folate in our bodies, by lots of sun. Epidemiologists and doctors have been very good about telling us about protecting our skin. What they haven't been so good about instructing people is the problem of darkly pigmented people living in high latitude areas, or working inside all the time. Because the problem there is just as severe, but it is more sinister, because vitamin D deficiency, from a lack of ultraviolet B radiation, is a major problem. Vitamin D deficiency creeps up on people, and causes all sorts of health problems to their bones, to their gradual decay of their immune systems, or loss of immune function, and probably some problems with their mood and health, their mental health. So we have, in skin pigmentation, one of these wonderful products of evolution that still has consequences for us today. And the social consequences, as we know, are incredibly profound. We live in a world where we have lightly and darkly pigmented people living next to one another, but often brought into proximity initially as a result of very invidious social interactions. So how can we overcome this? How can we begin to understand it? Evolution helps us. 200 years after Darwin's birthday, we have the first moderately pigmented President of the United States. (Applause) How wonderful is that? (Applause) This man is significant for a whole host of reasons. But we need to think about how he compares, in terms of his pigmentation, to other people on Earth. He, as one of many urban admixed populations, is very emblematic of a mixed parentage, of a mixed pigmentation. And he resembles, very closely, people with moderate levels of pigmentation who live in southern Africa, or Southeast Asia. These people have a tremendous potential to tan, to develop more pigment in their skin, as a result of exposure to sun. They also run the risk of vitamin D deficiency, if they have desk jobs, like that guy. So lets all wish for his great health, and his awareness of his own skin pigmentation. Now what is wonderful about the evolution of human skin pigmentation, and the phenomenon of pigmentation, is that it is the demonstration, the evidence, of evolution by natural selection, right on your body. When people ask you, "What is the evidence for evolution?" You don't have to think about some exotic examples, or fossils. You just have to look at your skin. Darwin, I think, would have appreciated this, even though he eschewed the importance of climate on the evolution of pigmentation during his own life. I think, were he able to look at the evidence we have today, he would understand it. He would appreciate it. And most of all, he would teach it. You, you can teach it. You can touch it. You can understand it. Take it out of this room. Take your skin color, and celebrate it. Spread the word. You have the evolution of the history of our species, part of it, written in your skin. Understand it. Appreciate it. Celebrate it. Go out. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it wonderful? You are the products of evolution. Thank you. (Applause)

Wiring a web for global good

Gordon Brown

{0: 'Gordon Brown'}

{0: ['british prime minister']}

{0: "Britain's former prime minister Gordon Brown played a key role in shaping the G20 nations' response to the world's financial crisis, and was a powerful advocate for a coordinated global response to problems such as climate change, poverty and social justice."}

2009-07-21

2009-07-21

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'az', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'gl', 'he', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['Europe', 'collaboration', 'communication', 'economics', 'global issues', 'politics', 'technology']

{700: 'Global ethic vs. national interest', 274: 'Institutions vs. collaboration', 644: 'A third way to think about aid', 1314: 'The global power shift', 1321: 'In defense of dialogue', 2477: 'What does it mean to be a citizen of the world?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown_wiring_a_web_for_global_good/

We're at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today's interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic -- and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.

Can I say how delighted I am to be away from the calm of Westminster and Whitehall? (Laughter) This is Kim, a nine-year-old Vietnam girl, her back ruined by napalm, and she awakened the conscience of the nation of America to begin to end the Vietnam War. This is Birhan, who was the Ethiopian girl who launched Live Aid in the 1980s, 15 minutes away from death when she was rescued, and that picture of her being rescued is one that went round the world. This is Tiananmen Square. A man before a tank became a picture that became a symbol for the whole world of resistance. This next is the Sudanese girl, a few moments from death, a vulture hovering in the background, a picture that went round the world and shocked people into action on poverty. This is Neda, the Iranian girl who was shot while at a demonstration with her father in Iran only a few weeks ago, and she is now the focus, rightly so, of the YouTube generation. And what do all these pictures and events have in common? What they have in common is what we see unlocks what we cannot see. What we see unlocks the invisible ties and bonds of sympathy that bring us together to become a human community. What these pictures demonstrate is that we do feel the pain of others, however distantly. What I think these pictures demonstrate is that we do believe in something bigger than ourselves. What these pictures demonstrate is that there is a moral sense across all religions, across all faiths, across all continents — a moral sense that not only do we share the pain of others, and believe in something bigger than ourselves but we have a duty to act when we see things that are wrong that need righted, see injuries that need to be corrected, see problems that need to be rectified. There is a story about Olof Palme, the Swedish Prime Minister, going to see Ronald Reagan in America in the 1980s. Before he arrived Ronald Reagan said — and he was the Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister — "Isn’t this man a communist?" The reply was, "No, Mr President, he’s an anti-communist." And Ronald Reagan said, "I don’t care what kind of communist he is!" (Laughter) Ronald Reagan asked Olof Palme, the Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden, "Well, what do you believe in? Do you want to abolish the rich?" He said, "No, I want to abolish the poor." Our responsibility is to let everyone have the chance to realize their potential to the full. I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world. We now have the capacity to find common ground with people who we will never meet, but who we will meet through the Internet and through all the modern means of communication; that we now have the capacity to organize and take collective action together to deal with the problem or an injustice that we want to deal with; and I believe that this makes this a unique age in human history, and it is the start of what I would call the creation of a truly global society. Go back 200 years when the slave trade was under pressure from William Wilberforce and all the protesters. They protested across Britain. They won public opinion over a long period of time. But it took 24 years for the campaign to be successful. What could they have done with the pictures that they could have shown if they were able to use the modern means of communication to win people’s hearts and minds? Or if you take Eglantyne Jebb, the woman who created Save the Children 90 years ago. She was so appalled by what was happening in Austria as a result of the First World War and what was happening to children who were part of the defeated families of Austria, that in Britain she wanted to take action, but she had to go house to house, leaflet to leaflet, to get people to attend a rally in the Royal Albert Hall that eventually gave birth to Save the Children, an international organization that is now fully recognized as one of the great institutions in our land and in the world. But what more could she have done if she’d had the modern means of communications available to her to create a sense that the injustice that people saw had to be acted upon immediately? Now look at what’s happened in the last 10 years. In Philippines in 2001, President Estrada — a million people texted each other about the corruption of that regime, eventually brought it down and it was, of course, called the "coup de text." (Laughter) Then you have in Zimbabwe the first election under Robert Mugabe a year ago. Because people were able to take mobile phone photographs of what was happening at the polling stations, it was impossible for that Premier to fix that election in the way that he wanted to do. Or take Burma and the monks that were blogging out, a country that nobody knew anything about that was happening, until these blogs told the world that there was a repression, meaning that lives were being lost and people were being persecuted and Aung San Suu Kyi, who is one of the great prisoners of conscience of the world, had to be listened to. Then take Iran itself, and what people are doing today: following what happened to Neda, people who are preventing the security services of Iran finding those people who are blogging out of Iran, any by everybody who is blogging, changing their address to Tehran, Iran, and making it difficult for the security services. Take, therefore, what modern technology is capable of: the power of our moral sense allied to the power of communications and our ability to organize internationally. That, in my view, gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world. Foreign policy can never be the same again. It cannot be run by elites; it’s got to be run by listening to the public opinions of peoples who are blogging, who are communicating with each other around the world. 200 years ago the problem we had to solve was slavery. 150 years ago I suppose the main problem in a country like ours was how young people, children, had the right to education. 100 years ago in most countries in Europe, the pressure was for the right to vote. 50 years ago the pressure was for the right to social security and welfare. In the last 50-60 years we have seen fascism, anti-Semitism, racism, apartheid, discrimination on the basis of sex and gender and sexuality; all these have come under pressure because of the campaigns that have been run by people to change the world. I was with Nelson Mandela a year ago, when he was in London. I was at a concert that he was attending to mark his birthday and for the creation of new resources for his foundation. I was sitting next to Nelson Mandela — I was very privileged to do so — when Amy Winehouse came onto the stage. (Laughter) And Nelson Mandela was quite surprised at the appearance of the singer and I was explaining to him at the time who she was. Amy Winehouse said, "Nelson Mandela and I have a lot in common. My husband too has spent a long time in prison." (Laughter) Nelson Mandela then went down to the stage and he summarized the challenge for us all. He said in his lifetime he had climbed a great mountain, the mountain of challenging and then defeating racial oppression and defeating apartheid. He said that there was a greater challenge ahead, the challenge of poverty, of climate change — global challenges that needed global solutions and needed the creation of a truly global society. We are the first generation which is in a position to do this. Combine the power of a global ethic with the power of our ability to communicate and organize globally, with the challenges that we now face, most of which are global in their nature. Climate change cannot be solved in one country, but has got to be solved by the world working together. A financial crisis, just as we have seen, could not be solved by America alone or Europe alone; it needed the world to work together. Take the problems of security and terrorism and, equally, the problem of human rights and development: they cannot be solved by Africa alone; they cannot be solved by America or Europe alone. We cannot solve these problems unless we work together. So the great project of our generation, it seems to me, is to build for the first time, out of a global ethic and our global ability to communicate and organize together, a truly global society, built on that ethic but with institutions that can serve that global society and make for a different future. We have now, and are the first generation with, the power to do this. Take climate change. Is it not absolutely scandalous that we have a situation where we know that there is a climate change problem, where we know also that that will mean we have to give more resources to the poorest countries to deal with that, when we want to create a global carbon market, but there is no global institution that people have been able to agree upon to deal with this problem? One of the things that has got to come out of Copenhagen in the next few months is an agreement that there will be a global environmental institution that is able to deal with the problems of persuading the whole of the world to move along a climate-change agenda. (Applause) One of the reasons why an institution is not in itself enough is that we have got to persuade people around the world to change their behavior as well, so you need that global ethic of fairness and responsibility across the generations. Take the financial crisis. If people in poorer countries can be hit by a crisis that starts in New York or starts in the sub-prime market of the United States of America. If people can find that that sub-prime product has been transferred across nations many, many times until it ends up in banks in Iceland or the rest in Britain, and people's ordinary savings are affected by it, then you cannot rely on a system of national supervision. You need in the long run for stability, for economic growth, for jobs, as well as for financial stability, global economic institutions that make sure that growth to be sustained has to be shared, and are built on the principle that the prosperity of this world is indivisible. So another challenge for our generation is to create global institutions that reflect our ideas of fairness and responsibility, not the ideas that were the basis of the last stage of financial development over these recent years. Then take development and take the partnership we need between our countries and the rest of the world, the poorest part of the world. We do not have the basis of a proper partnership for the future, and yet, out of people’s desire for a global ethic and a global society that can be done. I have just been talking to the President of Sierra Leone. This is a country of six and a half million people, but it has only 80 doctors; it has 200 nurses; it has 120 midwives. You cannot begin to build a healthcare system for six million people with such limited resources. Or take the girl I met when I was in Tanzania, a girl called Miriam. She was 11 years old; her parents had both died from AIDS, her mother and then her father. She was an AIDS orphan being handed across different extended families to be cared for. She herself was suffering from HIV; she was suffering from tuberculosis. I met her in a field, she was ragged, she had no shoes. When you looked in her eyes, any girl at the age of eleven is looking forward to the future, but there was an unreachable sadness in that girl’s eyes and if I could have translated that to the rest of the world for that moment, I believe that all the work that it had done for the global HIV/AIDS fund would be rewarded by people being prepared to make donations. We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture, so that Africa is not a net importer of food, but an exporter of food. Take the problems of human rights and the problems of security in so many countries around the world. Burma is in chains, Zimbabwe is a human tragedy, in Sudan thousands of people have died unnecessarily for wars that we could prevent. In the Rwanda Children's Museum, there is a photograph of a 10-year-old boy and the Children's Museum is commemorating the lives that were lost in the Rwandan genocide where a million people died. There is a photograph of a boy called David. Beside that photograph there is the information about his life. It said "David, age 10." David: ambition to be a doctor. Favorite sport: football. What did he enjoy most? Making people laugh. How did he die? Tortured to death. Last words said to his mother who was also tortured to death: "Don't worry. The United Nations are coming." And we never did. And that young boy believed our promises that we would help people in difficulty in Rwanda, and we never did. So we have got to create in this world also institutions for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid, but also for reconstruction and security for some of the conflict-ridden states of the world. So my argument today is basically this. We have the means by which we could create a truly global society. The institutions of this global society can be created by our endeavors. That global ethic can infuse the fairness and responsibility that is necessary for these institutions to work, but we should not lose the chance in this generation, in this decade in particular, with President Obama in America, with other people working with us around the world, to create global institutions for the environment, and for finance, and for security and for development, that make sense of our responsibility to other peoples, our desire to bind the world together, and our need to tackle problems that everybody knows exist. It is said that in Ancient Rome that when Cicero spoke to his audiences, people used to turn to each other and say about Cicero, "Great speech." But it is said that in Ancient Greece when Demosthenes spoke to his audiences, people turned to each other and didn’t say "Great speech." They said, "Let's march." We should be marching towards a global society. Thank you. (Applause)

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Alain de Botton

{0: 'Alain de Botton'}

{0: ['philosopher']}

{0: 'Through his witty and literate books -- and his new School of Life -- Alain de Botton helps others find fulfillment in the everyday. '}

2009-07-21

2009-07-28

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'be', 'bg', 'bn', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'he', 'hi', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'ko', 'lt', 'lv', 'mk', 'mn', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sh', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'philosophy', 'success', 'work', 'work-life balance']

{453: 'Your elusive creative genius', 70: '8 secrets of success', 97: 'The surprising science of happiness', 2332: 'How to find work you love', 2341: "Why some of us don't have one true calling", 61930: "It's OK to feel overwhelmed. Here's what to do next"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success/

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

For me they normally happen, these career crises, often, actually, on a Sunday evening, just as the sun is starting to set, and the gap between my hopes for myself and the reality of my life starts to diverge so painfully that I normally end up weeping into a pillow. I'm mentioning all this — I'm mentioning all this because I think this is not merely a personal problem; you may think I'm wrong in this, but I think we live in an age when our lives are regularly punctuated by career crises, by moments when what we thought we knew — about our lives, about our careers — comes into contact with a threatening sort of reality. It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living. It's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety. I want to look now, if I may, at some of the reasons why we might be feeling anxiety about our careers. Why we might be victims of these career crises, as we're weeping softly into our pillows. One of the reasons why we might be suffering is that we are surrounded by snobs. In a way, I've got some bad news, particularly to anybody who's come to Oxford from abroad. There's a real problem with snobbery, because sometimes people from outside the U.K. imagine that snobbery is a distinctively U.K. phenomenon, fixated on country houses and titles. The bad news is that's not true. Snobbery is a global phenomenon; we are a global organization, this is a global phenomenon. What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you, and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. The dominant kind of snobbery that exists nowadays is job snobbery. You encounter it within minutes at a party, when you get asked that famous iconic question of the early 21st century, "What do you do?" According to how you answer that question, people are either incredibly delighted to see you, or look at their watch and make their excuses. (Laughter) Now, the opposite of a snob is your mother. (Laughter) Not necessarily your mother, or indeed mine, but, as it were, the ideal mother, somebody who doesn't care about your achievements. Unfortunately, most people are not our mothers. Most people make a strict correlation between how much time, and if you like, love — not romantic love, though that may be something — but love in general, respect — they are willing to accord us, that will be strictly defined by our position in the social hierarchy. And that's a lot of the reason why we care so much about our careers and indeed start caring so much about material goods. You know, we're often told that we live in very materialistic times, that we're all greedy people. I don't think we are particularly materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It's not the material goods we want; it's the rewards we want. It's a new way of looking at luxury goods. The next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari, don't think, "This is somebody who's greedy." Think, "This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love." (Laughter) Feel sympathy, rather than contempt. There are other reasons — (Laughter) There are other reasons why it's perhaps harder now to feel calm than ever before. One of these, and it's paradoxical, because it's linked to something that's rather nice, is the hope we all have for our careers. Never before have expectations been so high about what human beings can achieve with their lifespan. We're told, from many sources, that anyone can achieve anything. We've done away with the caste system, we are now in a system where anyone can rise to any position they please. And it's a beautiful idea. Along with that is a kind of spirit of equality; we're all basically equal. There are no strictly defined hierarchies. There is one really big problem with this, and that problem is envy. Envy, it's a real taboo to mention envy, but if there's one dominant emotion in modern society, that is envy. And it's linked to the spirit of equality. Let me explain. I think it would be very unusual for anyone here, or anyone watching, to be envious of the Queen of England. Even though she is much richer than any of you are, and she's got a very large house, the reason why we don't envy her is because she's too weird. (Laughter) She's simply too strange. We can't relate to her, she speaks in a funny way, she comes from an odd place. So we can't relate to her, and when you can't relate to somebody, you don't envy them. The closer two people are — in age, in background, in the process of identification — the more there's a danger of envy, which is incidentally why none of you should ever go to a school reunion, because there is no stronger reference point than people one was at school with. The problem of modern society is it turns the whole world into a school. Everybody's wearing jeans, everybody's the same. And yet, they're not. So there's a spirit of equality combined with deep inequality, which can make for a very stressful situation. It's probably as unlikely that you would nowadays become as rich and famous as Bill Gates, as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you would accede to the ranks of the French aristocracy. But the point is, it doesn't feel that way. It's made to feel, by magazines and other media outlets, that if you've got energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage — you, too, could start a major thing. (Laughter) The consequences of this problem make themselves felt in bookshops. When you go to a large bookshop and look at the self-help sections, as I sometimes do — if you analyze self-help books produced in the world today, there are basically two kinds. The first kind tells you, "You can do it! You can make it! Anything's possible!" The other kind tells you how to cope with what we politely call "low self-esteem," or impolitely call, "feeling very bad about yourself." There's a real correlation between a society that tells people that they can do anything, and the existence of low self-esteem. So that's another way in which something quite positive can have a nasty kickback. There is another reason why we might be feeling more anxious — about our careers, about our status in the world today, than ever before. And it's, again, linked to something nice. And that nice thing is called meritocracy. Everybody, all politicians on Left and Right, agree that meritocracy is a great thing, and we should all be trying to make our societies really, really meritocratic. In other words — what is a meritocratic society? A meritocratic society is one in which, if you've got talent and energy and skill, you will get to the top, nothing should hold you back. It's a beautiful idea. The problem is, if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you'll also, by implication, and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. In other words, your position in life comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved. And that makes failure seem much more crushing. You know, in the Middle Ages, in England, when you met a very poor person, that person would be described as an "unfortunate" — literally, somebody who had not been blessed by fortune, an unfortunate. Nowadays, particularly in the United States, if you meet someone at the bottom of society, they may unkindly be described as a "loser." There's a real difference between an unfortunate and a loser, and that shows 400 years of evolution in society and our belief in who is responsible for our lives. It's no longer the gods, it's us. We're in the driving seat. That's exhilarating if you're doing well, and very crushing if you're not. It leads, in the worst cases — in the analysis of a sociologist like Emil Durkheim — it leads to increased rates of suicide. There are more suicides in developed, individualistic countries than in any other part of the world. And some of the reason for that is that people take what happens to them extremely personally — they own their success, but they also own their failure. Is there any relief from some of these pressures that I've been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to a few of them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody deserves to get where they get to, I think it's a crazy idea, completely crazy. I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any halfway-decent meritocratic idea; I am a meritocrat in that sense. But I think it's insane to believe that we will ever make a society that is genuinely meritocratic; it's an impossible dream. The idea that we will make a society where literally everybody is graded, the good at the top, bad at the bottom, exactly done as it should be, is impossible. There are simply too many random factors: accidents, accidents of birth, accidents of things dropping on people's heads, illnesses, etc. We will never get to grade them, never get to grade people as they should. I'm drawn to a lovely quote by St. Augustine in "The City of God," where he says, "It's a sin to judge any man by his post." In modern English that would mean it's a sin to come to any view of who you should talk to, dependent on their business card. It's not the post that should count. According to St. Augustine, only God can really put everybody in their place; he's going to do that on the Day of Judgment, with angels and trumpets, and the skies will open. Insane idea, if you're a secularist person, like me. But something very valuable in that idea, nevertheless. In other words, hold your horses when you're coming to judge people. You don't necessarily know what someone's true value is. That is an unknown part of them, and we shouldn't behave as though it is known. There is another source of solace and comfort for all this. When we think about failing in life, when we think about failure, one of the reasons why we fear failing is not just a loss of income, a loss of status. What we fear is the judgment and ridicule of others. And it exists. The number one organ of ridicule, nowadays, is the newspaper. If you open the newspaper any day of the week, it's full of people who've messed up their lives. They've slept with the wrong person, taken the wrong substance, passed the wrong piece of legislation — whatever it is, and then are fit for ridicule. In other words, they have failed. And they are described as "losers." Now, is there any alternative to this? I think the Western tradition shows us one glorious alternative, which is tragedy. Tragic art, as it developed in the theaters of ancient Greece, in the fifth century B.C., was essentially an art form devoted to tracing how people fail, and also according them a level of sympathy, which ordinary life would not necessarily accord them. A few years ago, I was thinking about this, and I went to "The Sunday Sport," a tabloid newspaper I don't recommend you start reading if you're not familiar with it already. (Laughter) And I went to talk to them about certain of the great tragedies of Western art. I wanted to see how they would seize the bare bones of certain stories, if they came in as a news item at the news desk on a Saturday afternoon. I mentioned Othello; they'd not heard of it but were fascinated. (Laughter) I asked them to write a headline for the story. They came up with "Love-Crazed Immigrant Kills Senator's Daughter." Splashed across the headline. I gave them the plotline of Madame Bovary. Again, a book they were enchanted to discover. And they wrote "Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic After Credit Fraud." (Laughter) And then my favorite — they really do have a kind of genius of their own, these guys — my favorite is Sophocles' Oedipus the King: "Sex With Mum Was Blinding." (Laughter) (Applause) In a way, if you like, at one end of the spectrum of sympathy, you've got the tabloid newspaper. At the other end of the spectrum, you've got tragedy and tragic art. And I suppose I'm arguing that we should learn a little bit about what's happening in tragic art. It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser. He is not a loser, though he has lost. And I think that is the message of tragedy to us, and why it's so very, very important, I think. The other thing about modern society and why it causes this anxiety, is that we have nothing at its center that is non-human. We are the first society to be living in a world where we don't worship anything other than ourselves. We think very highly of ourselves, and so we should; we've put people on the Moon, done all sorts of extraordinary things. And so we tend to worship ourselves. Our heroes are human heroes. That's a very new situation. Most other societies have had, right at their center, the worship of something transcendent: a god, a spirit, a natural force, the universe, whatever it is — something else that is being worshiped. We've slightly lost the habit of doing that, which is, I think, why we're particularly drawn to nature. Not for the sake of our health, though it's often presented that way, but because it's an escape from the human anthill. It's an escape from our own competition, and our own dramas. And that's why we enjoy looking at glaciers and oceans, and contemplating the Earth from outside its perimeters, etc. We like to feel in contact with something that is non-human, and that is so deeply important to us. What I think I've been talking about really is success and failure. And one of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. If I said that there's somebody behind the screen who's very successful, certain ideas would immediately come to mind. You'd think that person might have made a lot of money, achieved renown in some field. My own theory of success — I'm somebody who's very interested in success, I really want to be successful, always thinking, how can I be more successful? But as I get older, I'm also very nuanced about what that word "success" might mean. Here's an insight that I've had about success: You can't be successful at everything. We hear a lot of talk about work-life balance. Nonsense. You can't have it all. You can't. So any vision of success has to admit what it's losing out on, where the element of loss is. And I think any wise life will accept, as I say, that there is going to be an element where we're not succeeding. And the thing about a successful life is that a lot of the time, our ideas of what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They're sucked in from other people; chiefly, if you're a man, your father, and if you're a woman, your mother. Psychoanalysis has been drumming home this message for about 80 years. No one's quite listening hard enough, but I very much believe it's true. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television, to advertising, to marketing, etc. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. When we're told that banking is a very respectable profession, a lot of us want to go into banking. When banking is no longer so respectable, we lose interest in banking. We are highly open to suggestion. So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas, and make sure that we own them; that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out, at the end of the journey, that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along. So, I'm going to end it there. But what I really want to stress is: by all means, success, yes. But let's accept the strangeness of some of our ideas. Let's probe away at our notions of success. Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own. Thank you very much. (Applause) Chris Anderson: That was fascinating. But how do you reconcile this idea of it being bad to think of someone as a "loser," with the idea that a lot of people like, of seizing control of your life, and that a society that encourages that, perhaps has to have some winners and losers? Alain De Botton: Yes, I think it's merely the randomness of the winning and losing process that I want to stress, because the emphasis nowadays is so much on the justice of everything, and politicians always talk about justice. Now I'm a firm believer in justice, I just think that it's impossible. So we should do everything we can to pursue it, but we should always remember that whoever is facing us, whatever has happened in their lives, there will be a strong element of the haphazard. That's what I'm trying to leave room for; otherwise, it can get quite claustrophobic. CA: I mean, do you believe that you can combine your kind of kinder, gentler philosophy of work with a successful economy? Or do you think that you can't, but it doesn't matter that much that we're putting too much emphasis on that? AB: The nightmare thought is that frightening people is the best way to get work out of them, and that somehow the crueler the environment, the more people will rise to the challenge. You want to think, who would you like as your ideal dad? And your ideal dad is somebody who is tough but gentle. And it's a very hard line to make. We need fathers, as it were, the exemplary father figures in society, avoiding the two extremes, which is the authoritarian disciplinarian on the one hand, and on the other, the lax, no-rules option. CA: Alain De Botton. AB: Thank you very much. (Applause)

Art that looks back at you

Golan Levin

{0: 'Golan Levin'}

{0: ['experimental audio-visual artist']}

{0: 'Half performance artist, half software engineer, Golan Levin manipulates the computer to create improvised soundscapes with dazzling corresponding visuals. He is at the forefront of defining new parameters for art.'}

2009-02-20

2009-07-30

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'creativity', 'design', 'poetry', 'software', 'technology']

{14: 'Software (as) art', 32: 'Art with wire, sugar, chocolate and string', 144: "The Web's secret stories", 1571: 'How art, technology and design inform creative leaders', 230: '5 predictions, from 1984', 1152: 'Visualizing ourselves ... with crowd-sourced data'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/golan_levin_art_that_looks_back_at_you/

Golan Levin, an artist and engineer, uses modern tools -- robotics, new software, cognitive research -- to make artworks that surprise and delight. Watch as sounds become shapes, bodies create paintings, and a curious eye looks back at the curious viewer.

Hello! My name is Golan Levin. I'm an artist and an engineer, which is, increasingly, a more common kind of hybrid. But I still fall into this weird crack where people don't seem to understand me. And I was looking around and I found this wonderful picture. It's a letter from "Artforum" in 1967 saying "We can't imagine ever doing a special issue on electronics or computers in art." And they still haven't. And lest you think that you all, as the digerati, are more enlightened, I went to the Apple iPhone app store the other day. Where's art? I got productivity. I got sports. And somehow the idea that one would want to make art for the iPhone, which my friends and I are doing now, is still not reflected in our understanding of what computers are for. So, from both directions, there is kind of, I think, a lack of understanding about what it could mean to be an artist who uses the materials of his own day, or her own day, which I think artists are obliged to do, is to really explore the expressive potential of the new tools that we have. In my own case, I'm an artist, and I'm really interested in expanding the vocabulary of human action, and basically empowering people through interactivity. I want people to discover themselves as actors, as creative actors, by having interactive experiences. A lot of my work is about trying to get away from this. This a photograph of the desktop of a student of mine. And when I say desktop, I don't just mean the actual desk where his mouse has worn away the surface of the desk. If you look carefully, you can even see a hint of the Apple menu, up here in the upper left, where the virtual world has literally punched through to the physical. So this is, as Joy Mountford once said, "The mouse is probably the narrowest straw you could try to suck all of human expression through." (Laughter) And the thing I'm really trying to do is enabling people to have more rich kinds of interactive experiences. How can we get away from the mouse and use our full bodies as a way of exploring aesthetic experiences, not necessarily utilitarian ones. So I write software. And that's how I do it. And a lot of my experiences resemble mirrors in some way. Because this is, in some sense, the first way, that people discover their own potential as actors, and discover their own agency. By saying "Who is that person in the mirror? Oh it's actually me." And so, to give an example, this is a project from last year, which is called the Interstitial Fragment Processor. And it allows people to explore the negative shapes that they create when they're just going about their everyday business. So as people make shapes with their hands or their heads and so forth, or with each other, these shapes literally produce sounds and drop out of thin air — basically taking what's often this, kind of, unseen space, or this undetected space, and making it something real, that people then can appreciate and become creative with. So again, people discover their creative agency in this way. And their own personalities come out in totally unique ways. So in addition to using full-body input, something that I've explored now, for a while, has been the use of the voice, which is an immensely expressive system for us, vocalizing. Song is one of our oldest ways of making ourselves heard and understood. And I came across this fantastic research by Wolfgang Köhler, the so-called father of gestalt psychology, from 1927, who submitted to an audience like yourselves the following two shapes. And he said one of them is called Maluma. And one of them is called Taketa. Which is which? Anyone want to hazard a guess? Maluma is on top. Yeah. So. As he says here, most people answer without any hesitation. So what we're really seeing here is a phenomenon called phonaesthesia, which is a kind of synesthesia that all of you have. And so, whereas Dr. Oliver Sacks has talked about how perhaps one person in a million actually has true synesthesia, where they hear colors or taste shapes, and things like this, phonaesthesia is something we can all experience to some extent. It's about mappings between different perceptual domains, like hardness, sharpness, brightness and darkness, and the phonemes that we're able to speak with. So 70 years on, there's been some research where cognitive psychologists have actually sussed out the extent to which, you know, L, M and B are more associated with shapes that look like this, and P, T and K are perhaps more associated with shapes like this. And here we suddenly begin to have a mapping between curvature that we can exploit numerically, a relative mapping between curvature and shape. So it occurred to me, what happens if we could run these backwards? And thus was born the project called Remark, which is a collaboration with Zachary Lieberman and the Ars Electronica Futurelab. And this is an interactive installation which presents the fiction that speech casts visible shadows. So the idea is you step into a kind of a magic light. And as you do, you see the shadows of your own speech. And they sort of fly away, out of your head. If a computer speech recognition system is able to recognize what you're saying, then it spells it out. And if it isn't then it produces a shape which is very phonaesthetically tightly coupled to the sounds you made. So let's bring up a video of that. (Applause) Thanks. So. And this project here, I was working with the great abstract vocalist, Jaap Blonk. And he is a world expert in performing "The Ursonate," which is a half-an-hour nonsense poem by Kurt Schwitters, written in the 1920s, which is half an hour of very highly patterned nonsense. And it's almost impossible to perform. But Jaap is one of the world experts in performing it. And in this project we've developed a form of intelligent real-time subtitles. So these are our live subtitles, that are being produced by a computer that knows the text of "The Ursonate" — fortunately Jaap does too, very well — and it is delivering that text at the same time as Jaap is. So all the text you're going to see is real-time generated by the computer, visualizing what he's doing with his voice. Here you can see the set-up where there is a screen with the subtitles behind him. Okay. So ... (Applause) The full videos are online if you are interested. I got a split reaction to that during the live performance, because there is some people who understand live subtitles are a kind of an oxymoron, because usually there is someone making them afterwards. And then a bunch of people who were like, "What's the big deal? I see subtitles all the time on television." You know? They don't imagine the person in the booth, typing it all. So in addition to the full body, and in addition to the voice, another thing that I've been really interested in, most recently, is the use of the eyes, or the gaze, in terms of how people relate to each other. It's a really profound amount of nonverbal information that's communicated with the eyes. And it's one of the most interesting technical challenges that's very currently active in the computer sciences: being able to have a camera that can understand, from a fairly big distance away, how these little tiny balls are actually pointing in one way or another to reveal what you're interested in, and where your attention is directed. So there is a lot of emotional communication that happens there. And so I've been beginning, with a variety of different projects, to understand how people can relate to machines with their eyes. And basically to ask the questions: What if art was aware that we were looking at it? How could it respond, in a way, to acknowledge or subvert the fact that we're looking at it? And what could it do if it could look back at us? And so those are the questions that are happening in the next projects. In the first one which I'm going to show you, called Eyecode, it's a piece of interactive software in which, if we read this little circle, "the trace left by the looking of the previous observer looks at the trace left by the looking of previous observer." The idea is that it's an image wholly constructed from its own history of being viewed by different people in an installation. So let me just switch over so we can do the live demo. So let's run this and see if it works. Okay. Ah, there is lots of nice bright video. There is just a little test screen that shows that it's working. And what I'm just going to do is — I'm going to hide that. And you can see here that what it's doing is it's recording my eyes every time I blink. Hello? And I can ... hello ... okay. And no matter where I am, what's really going on here is that it's an eye-tracking system that tries to locate my eyes. And if I get really far away I'm blurry. You know, you're going to have these kind of blurry spots like this that maybe only resemble eyes in a very very abstract way. But if I come up really close and stare directly at the camera on this laptop then you'll see these nice crisp eyes. You can think of it as a way of, sort of, typing, with your eyes. And what you're typing are recordings of your eyes as you're looking at other peoples' eyes. So each person is looking at the looking of everyone else before them. And this exists in larger installations where there are thousands and thousands of eyes that people could be staring at, as you see who's looking at the people looking at the people looking before them. So I'll just add a couple more. Blink. Blink. And you can see, just once again, how it's sort of finding my eyes and doing its best to estimate when it's blinking. Alright. Let's leave that. So that's this kind of recursive observation system. (Applause) Thank you. The last couple pieces I'm going to show are basically in the new realm of robotics — for me, new for me. It's called Opto-Isolator. And I'm going to show a video of the older version of it, which is just a minute long. Okay. In this case, the Opto-Isolator is blinking in response to one's own blinks. So it blinks one second after you do. This is a device which is intended to reduce the phenomenon of gaze down to the simplest possible materials. Just one eye, looking at you, and eliminating everything else about a face, but just to consider gaze in an isolated way as a kind of, as an element. And at the same time, it attempts to engage in what you might call familiar psycho-social gaze behaviors. Like looking away if you look at it too long because it gets shy, or things like that. Okay. So the last project I'm going to show is this new one called Snout. (Laughter) It's an eight-foot snout, with a googly eye. (Laughter) And inside it's got an 800-pound robot arm that I borrowed, (Laughter) from a friend. (Laughter) It helps to have good friends. I'm at Carnegie Mellon; we've got a great Robotics Institute there. I'd like to show you thing called Snout, which is — The idea behind this project is to make a robot that appears as if it's continually surprised to see you. (Laughter) The idea is that basically — if it's constantly like "Huh? ... Huh?" That's why its other name is Doubletaker, Taker of Doubles. It's always kind of doing a double take: "What?" And the idea is basically, can it look at you and make you feel as if like, "What? Is it my shoes?" "Got something on my hair?" Here we go. Alright. Checking him out ... For you nerds, here's a little behind-the-scenes. It's got a computer vision system, and it tries to look at the people who are moving around the most. Those are its targets. Up there is the skeleton, which is actually what it's trying to do. It's really about trying to create a novel body language for a new creature. Hollywood does this all the time, of course. But also have the body language communicate something to the person who is looking at it. This language is communicating that it is surprised to see you, and it's interested in looking at you. (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you very much. That's all I've got for today. And I'm really happy to be here. Thank you so much. (Applause)

I believe we evolved from aquatic apes

Elaine Morgan

{0: 'Elaine Morgan'}

{0: ['aquatic ape theorist']}

{0: 'Elaine Morgan, armed with an arsenal of television writing credits and feminist credentials, spent her life on a mission to prove humans evolved in water. '}

2009-07-22

2009-07-31

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'bs', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sv', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['apes', 'evolution', 'science']

{1131: 'Are we ready for neo-evolution?', 1102: "Evolution's gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans", 1396: 'The single biggest health threat women face', 168: "The search for humanity's roots", 315: "A dig for humanity's origins", 11: 'What separates us from chimpanzees?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_i_believe_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes/

(NOTE: Statements in this talk have been challenged by scientists working in this field. Read "Criticisms &amp; updates" below for more details.) Elaine Morgan was a tenacious proponent of a theory that is not widely accepted. The aquatic ape hypothesis lays out the idea that humans evolved from primate ancestors who dwelt in watery habitats. Hear her spirited defense of the idea -- and her theory on why science doesn't take it seriously.

Well, this is 2009. And it's the Bicentenary of Charles Darwin. And all over the world, eminent evolutionists are anxious to celebrate this. And what they're planning to do is to enlighten us on almost every aspect of Darwin and his life, and how he changed our thinking. I say almost every aspect, because there is one aspect of this story which they have thrown no light on. And they seem anxious to skirt around it and step over it and to talk about something else. So I'm going to talk about it. It's the question of, why are we so different from the chimpanzees? We get the geneticists keeping on telling us how extremely closely we are related — hardly any genes of difference, very, very closely related. And yet, when you look at the phenotypes, there's a chimp, there's a man; they're astoundingly different, no resemblance at all. I'm not talking about airy-fairy stuff about culture or psychology, or behavior. I'm talking about ground-base, nitty-gritty, measurable physical differences. They, that one, is hairy and walking on four legs. That one is a naked biped. Why? I mean — (Laughter) if I'm a good Darwinist, I've got to believe there's a reason for that. If we changed so much, something must have happened. What happened? Now 50 years ago, that was a laughably simple question. Everybody knew the answer. They knew what happened. The ancestor of the apes stayed in the trees; our ancestors went out onto the plain. That explained everything. We had to get up on our legs to peer over the tall grass, or to chase after animals, or to free our hands for weapons. And we got so overheated in the chase that we had to take off that fur coat and throw it away. Everybody knew that, for generations. But then, in the '90s, something began to unravel. The paleontologists themselves looked a bit more closely at the accompanying microfauna that lived in the same time and place as the hominids. And they weren't savanna species. And they looked at the herbivores. And they weren't savanna herbivores. And then they were so clever, they found a way to analyze fossilized pollen. Shock, horror. The fossilized pollen was not of savanna vegetation. Some of it even came from lianas, those things that dangle in the middle of the jungle. So we're left with a situation where we know that our earliest ancestors were moving around on four legs in the trees, before the savanna ecosystem even came into existence. This is not something I've made up. It's not a minority theory. Everybody agrees with it. Professor Tobias came over from South Africa and spoke to University College London. He said, "Everything I've been telling you for the last 20 years, forget about it. It was wrong. We've got to go back to square one and start again." It made him very unpopular. They didn't want to go back to square one. I mean, it's a terrible thing to happen. You've got this beautiful paradigm. You've believed it through generations. Nobody has questioned it. You've been constructing fanciful things on top of it, relying on it to be as solid as a rock. And now it's whipped away from under you. What do you do? What does a scientist do in that case? Well, we know the answer because Thomas S. Kuhn wrote a seminal treatise about this back in 1962. He said what scientists do when a paradigm fails is, guess what — they carry on as if nothing had happened. (Laughter) If they haven't got a paradigm they can't ask the question. So they say, "Yes it's wrong, but supposing it was right ..." (Laughter) And the only other option open to them is to stop asking the questions. So that is what they have done now. That's why you don't hear them talking about it. It's yesterday's question. Some of them have even elevated it into a principle. It's what we ought to be doing. Aaron Filler from Harvard said, "Isn't it time we stopped talking about selective pressures? I mean, why don't we talk about, well, there's chromosomes, and there's genes. And we just record what we see." Charles Darwin must be spinning in his grave! He knew all about that kind of science. And he called it hypothesis-free science. And he despised it from the bottom of his heart. And if you're going to say, "I'm going to stop talking about selective pressures," you can take "The Origin of Species" and throw it out of the window, for it's about nothing else but selective pressures. And the irony of it is, that this is one occasion of a paradigm collapse where we didn't have to wait for a new paradigm to come up. There was one waiting in the wings. It had been waiting there since 1960 when Alister Hardy, a marine biologist, said, "I think what happened, perhaps our ancestors had a more aquatic existence for some of the time." He kept it to himself for 30 years. But then the press got hold of it and all hell broke loose. All his colleagues said, "This is outrageous. You've exposed us to public ridicule! You must never do that again." And at that time, it became set in stone: the aquatic theory should be dumped with the UFOs and the yetis, as part of the lunatic fringe of science. Well I don't think that. I think that Hardy had a lot going for him. I'd like to talk about just a handful of what have been called the hallmarks of mankind, the things that made us different from everybody else, and all our relatives. Let's look at our naked skin. It's obvious that most of the things we think about that have lost their body hair, mammals without body hair, are aquatic ones, like the dugong, the walrus, the dolphin, the hippopotamus, the manatee. And a couple of wallowers-in-mud like the babirusa. And you're tempted to think, well perhaps, could that be why we are naked? I suggested it and people said, "No no no. I mean, look at the elephant. You've forgotten all about the elephant haven't you?" So back in 1982 I said, "Well perhaps the elephant had an aquatic ancestor." Peals of merry laughter! "That crazy woman. She's off again. She'll say anything won't she?" But by now, everybody agrees that the elephant had an aquatic ancestor. This has come 'round to be that all those naked pachyderms have aquatic ancestors. The last exception was supposed to be the rhinoceros. Last year in Florida they found extinct ancestor of a rhinoceros and said, "Seems to have spent most of its time in the water." So this is a close connection between nakedness and water. As an absolute connection, it only works one way. You can't say all aquatic animals are naked, because look at the sea otter. But you can say that every animal that has become naked has been conditioned by water, in its own lifetime, or the lifetime of its ancestors. I think this is significant. The only exception is the naked Somalian mole-rat, which never puts its nose above the surface of the ground. And take bipedality. Here you can't find anybody to compare it with, because we're the only animal that walks upright on two legs. But you can say this: all the apes and all the monkeys are capable of walking on two legs, if they want to, for a short time. There is only one circumstance in which they always, all of them, walk on two legs, and that is when they are wading through water. Do you think that's significant? David Attenborough thinks it's significant, as the possible beginning of our bipedalism. Look at the fat layer. We have got, under our skin, a layer of fat, all over: nothing in the least like that in any other primate. Why should it be there? Well they do know, that if you look at other aquatic mammals, the fat that in most land mammals is deposited inside the body wall, around the kidneys and the intestines and so on, has started to migrate to the outside, and spread out in a layer inside the skin. In the whale it's complete: no fat inside at all, all in blubber outside. We cannot avoid the suspicion that in our case it's started to happen. We have got skin lined with this layer. It's the only possible explanation of why humans, if they're very unlucky, can become grossly obese, in a way that would be totally impossible for any other primate, physically impossible. Something very odd, matter-of-factly, never explained. The question of why we can speak. We can speak. And the gorilla can't speak. Why? Nothing to do with his teeth or his tongue or his lungs or anything like that — purely has to do with its conscious control of its breath. You can't even train a gorilla to say "Ah" on request. The only creatures that have got conscious control of their breath are the diving animals and the diving birds. It was an absolute precondition for our being able to speak. And then again, there is the fact that we are streamlined. Trying to imagine a diver diving into water — hardly makes a splash. Try to imagine a gorilla performing the same maneuver, and you can see that, compared with gorilla, we are halfway to being shaped like a fish. I am trying to suggest that, for 40-odd years, this aquatic idea has been miscategorized as lunatic fringe, and it is not lunatic fringe. And the ironic thing about it is that they are not staving off the aquatic theory to protect a theory of their own, which they've all agreed on, and they love. There is nothing there. They are staving off the aquatic theory to protect a vacuum. (Laughter) (Applause) How do they react when I say these things? One very common reaction I've heard about 20 times is, "But it was investigated. They conducted a serious investigation of this at the beginning, when Hardy put forward his article." I don't believe it. For 35 years I've been looking for any evidence of any incident of that kind, and I've concluded that that's one of the urban myths. It's never been done. I ask people sometimes, and they say, "I like the aquatic theory! Everybody likes the aquatic theory. Of course they don't believe it, but they like it." Well I say, "Why do you think it's rubbish?" They say "Well ... everybody I talk to says it's rubbish. And they can't all be wrong, can they?" The answer to that, loud and clear, is, "Yes! They can all be wrong." History is strewn with the cases when they've all got it wrong. (Applause) And if you've got a scientific problem like that, you can't solve it by holding a head count, and saying, "More of us say yes than say no." (Laughter) Apart from that, some of the heads count more than others. Some of them have come over. There was Professor Tobias. He's come over. Daniel Dennett, he's come over. Sir David Attenborough, he's come over. Anybody else out there? Come on in. The water is lovely. (Applause) And now we've got to look to the future. Ultimately one of three things is going to happen. Either they will go on for the next 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. "Yeah well we don't talk about that. Let's talk about something interesting." That would be very sad. The second thing that could happen is that some young genius will arrive, and say, "I've found it. It was not the savanna, it was not the water, it was this!" No sign of that happening either. I don't think there is a third option. So the third thing that might happen is a very beautiful thing. If you look back at the early years of the last century, there was a stand-off, a lot of bickering and bad feeling between the believers in Mendel, and the believers in Darwin. It ended with a new synthesis: Darwin's ideas and Mendel's ideas blending together. And I think the same thing will happen here. You'll get a new synthesis. Hardy's ideas and Darwin's ideas will be blended together. And we can move forward from there, and really get somewhere. That would be a beautiful thing. It would be very nice for me if it happened soon. (Laughter) Because I'm older now than George Burns was when he said, "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas." (Laughter) So if it's going to come and it's going to happen, what's holding it up? I can tell you that in three words. Academia says no. They decided in 1960, "That belongs with the UFOs and the yetis." And it's not easy to change their minds. The professional journals won't touch it with a barge pole. The textbooks don't mention it. The syllabus doesn't mention even the fact that we're naked, let alone look for a reason to it. "Horizon," which takes its cue from the academics, won't touch it with a barge pole. So we never hear the case put for it, except in jocular references to people on the lunatic fringe. I don't know quite where this diktat comes from. Somebody up there is issuing the commandment, "Thou shalt not believe in the aquatic theory. And if you hope to make progress in this profession, and you do believe it, you'd better keep it to yourself, because it will get in your way." So I get the impression that some parts of the scientific establishment are morphing into a kind of priesthood. But you know, that makes me feel good, because Richard Dawkins has told us how to treat a priesthood. (Laughter) He says, "Firstly, you've got to refuse to give it all the excessive awe and reverence it's been trained to receive." Right. I'll go ahead with that. And secondly, he says, "You must never be afraid to rock the boat." I'll go along with that too. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Hold your breath for micro-sculpture

Willard Wigan

{0: 'Willard Wigan'}

{0: ['micro-sculptor']}

{0: 'Willard Wigan sculpts figures small enough to fit on the head of a pin. To create these microscopic masterpieces, he works diligently through the stillest hours of the night, between his own heartbeats.'}

2009-07-21

2009-08-03

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['art', 'creativity']

{606: 'Art that looks back at you', 32: 'Art with wire, sugar, chocolate and string', 162: 'My creations, a new form of life', 25751: 'Can you solve the killer robo-ants riddle?', 145: 'The emergent genius of ant colonies', 1995: 'What ants teach us about the brain, cancer and the Internet'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/willard_wigan_hold_your_breath_for_micro_sculpture/

Willard Wigan tells the story of how a difficult and lonely childhood drove him to discover his unique ability -- to create art so tiny that it can't be seen with the naked eye. His slideshow of figures, as seen through a microscope, can only be described as mind-boggling.

There's an old saying, "Just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it's not there." My work is — it's a reflection of myself. What I wanted to do is to show the world that the little things can be the biggest things. We all seem to think that, you know, if we look down on the ground, there's nothing there. And we use the word "nothing." Nothing doesn't exist, because there is always something. My mother told me that, when I was a child, that I should always respect the little things. What made me do this work? I shall go into my story. This all started when I was age five. What made me do it? At school, I will admit this: academically, I couldn't express myself. So I was, more or less, classed as "nothing." My world was seen as less. So I decided I didn't really want to be a part of that world. I thought, I need to retreat into something else. So when my mother used to take me to school, she thought I was at school, and I used to do a U-turn, when her back was turned, and run off and hide in the shed at the back of the garden. Now, the one time I was in the shed, and my mother suspected something, thinking I was at school. My mother was like the woman in Tom and Jerry. So you'd just see her feet. (Laughter) So I was hiding in the shed, like that. And all of a sudden ... And then I saw her legs. And then she said — grabbed me like that, because my mother was quite big — and she lifted me up and she says, "How come you're not at school?" I told her I couldn't face it because the way the teacher was treating me, ridiculing me, and using me as an example of failure. So I told her. At that age, obviously, I couldn't express it that way, but I told her I didn't feel right. And then she just said, "You're going back to school tomorrow." And walked off. And I didn't expect that, because I expected one of these ... But I didn't get it. So I'm sitting there thinking. And as I looked down on the ground, I noticed there was some ants running around. And I went into this little fantasy world. And I thought, "These ants, are they looking for the queen ant? Or do they need somewhere to live?" So I thought "Perhaps, if I made these ants some apartments, they'll move in." (Laughter) So I did. And how I set about that, I got some splinters of wood. And I sliced the little splinters of wood with a broken shard of glass, constructed this little apartment. Well it looked like a little shanty shed when I'd finished. But I thought, perhaps the ant won't know, it'll probably move in. And so they did. That was a bit crude, at the time. And I made all these little apartments and little merry-go-rounds, seesaws and swings, little ladders. And then I encouraged the ants to come 'round by putting sugar and things like that. And then I sat down and all the ants came along. And all I could hear was "Is this for us?" (Laughter) And I say, "Yes, they're all for you." And they moved in, and decided not to pay me any rent. (Laughter) And from there I was watching this little world. It became part of me. When I discovered that I had this gift, I wanted to experiment with this world that we can't see. So I realized that there was more to life than just everything that we see around us that's huge. So I started to educate myself on this molecular level. And as I got older, I continued. I showed my mother. My mother told me to take it smaller. Now I shall show you something here. And I'll explain. As you can see, that's a pinhead. (Laughter) (Applause) Now that is called the Huf Haus. The gentleman who commissioned me to do this was a gentleman called Peter Huf. And he says to me "Willard, can you put my house on a pinhead?" (Laughter) So I say, "How are you going to fit in there?" (Laughter) And then he said to me, "I don't believe you can do it. Can you really do it?" And I says, "Well, try me." And then he said, "But I don't believe that you can do this." So I said, "OK." So, to cut a long story short, I went home, went underneath the microscope, and I crushed up a piece of glass, crushed it up. And underneath the microscope there were splinters of glass. Some of them were quite jagged. So I was crushing up these pieces of glass, which, as you can see, that's the actual frame of the house. And the actual roof is made up of a fiber, which I found in my sister's old teddy bear. (Laughter) So I got the teddy bear and I said, "Do you mind if I pull out one of your fibers?" So I did. And I looked at it beneath the microscope. And some of it was flat. So I decided to slice these up with the tool that I make by — I sharpen the end of a needle into a blade. And then I actually slow down my whole nervous system. And then I work between my heartbeat, I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don't inhale my own work, at the same time. (Laughter) (Applause) Because that has happened to me. (Laughter) So what I did, like I said, come back to the glass. I found these little bits of glass. And I had to make them square. So I'm thinking "How can I do this?" So what I did, I got an oilstone. Broke the edge of an oilstone off. And what I did, I took pieces of glass. And I started to rub them. I used a little tweezer which I made from a hair clip. And I built rubber around the end of the tweezer so it wouldn't crush the glass. And then I started rubbing, very very gently, till some of the edges were quite square. And then I constructed it. And how I constructed it, is by making grooves in the top of the pinhead. And then pushing the glass in with its own friction. And as I was doing it, what happened? The instrument that I used turned into a catapult. And it went like this ... And then that was it. (Laughter) Gone. So I'm thinking, "Mr. Huf isn't going to be very happy when I told him his house has gone to another, into the atmosphere somewhere." So to cut the story short, I decided that I had to go back and do it. So I found some more. And I decided to, sort of, construct it very, very slowly, holding my breath, working between my heartbeat, and making sure everything is leveled. Because it's such a small sculpture, nothing can go wrong. And I decided to build it up. Then I used fibers out of my jumper, which I held and stretched. And made the beams going around the house. And the actual windows and the balcony had to be sort of constructed. I used a money spider's web to actually attach certain things, which sent me insane. But I managed to do it. And when I finished it, I came back the next day. I noticed that the house was occupied. Have we ever heard of a dust mite? Darren dust mite and his family moved in. (Laughter) So basically I'd completed the house. And there you are. (Applause) (Laughter) Right. As you can see, Bart Simpson is having a little argument. I think they're arguing about the space on the pin. There's not enough room for the two of them. So I didn't think he was going to throw Bart off. I think he was just warning him actually. But this one was made out of a nylon tag out of my shirt. What I did, I plucked the tag out and put it underneath the microscope. I used the needle which has got a slight blade on the end. Can anybody see the blade on the end of that needle? Audience: No. WW: So what I did is the same process where I just kind of hold my breath and just work away very, very slowly, manipulating the plastic, cutting it, because it behaves different. Whenever you work on that level, things behave different. Because it's on this molecular level things change and they act different. And sometimes they turn into little catapults and things go up in the air. And, you know, all different things happen. But I had to make a little barrier, going around it, out of cellophane, to stop it moving. Then static electricity set in. And it went ... And I'm trying to remove it. And the static is interfering with everything. So there is sweat dripping off my head, because I have to carve Homer Simpson like that, in that position. And after I've cut out the shape, then I have to make sure that there is room for Bart's neck. So after I've done the same thing, then I have to paint it. And after I've actually sculpted them, I have to paint them. I experimented with a — I found a dead fly. And I plucked the hair off the fly's head. Decided to make a paintbrush. (Laughter) But I would never do it to a living fly. (Laughter) Because I've heard a fly in pain. And they go "Meow! Ow!" Even though they get on our nerves, I would never kill an insect because, "All creatures great and small" — there is a hymn that says that. So what I decided to do is to pluck fine hair out of my face. And I looked at it underneath the microscope. That was the paintbrush. And whilst I'm painting I have to be very careful, because the paint starts to turn into little blobs. And it starts to dry very quickly. So I have to be very quick. If I'm not, it will end up looking not like what it's supposed to look like. It could end up looking like Humpty Dumpty or somebody else. So I have to be very very careful. This one took me approximately, I would say, six to seven weeks. My work, rough estimate, sometimes five, six to seven weeks; you can't always anticipate. (Applause) As you can see, that's Charlton Heston brought down to size. (Laughter) He says to me, "Willard" — You can see him saying, "Why me?" I says, "I enjoyed your film. That's why." As you can see, there's an aphid fly there. That's just to show the scale and the actual size of the sculpture. I would say it probably measures ... a quarter of a millimeter. In America they say a period stop. So say if you cut a period stop in half, a full stop, that's about the size of the whole thing. It's made — the chariot is made of gold. And Charlton Heston is made of a floating fiber, which I took out of the air. When the sunlight comes through the window you see these little fibers. And what I normally do is walk 'round a room — (Laughter) — trying to find one. And then I put it underneath the microscope. I remember one time I was doing it, and the window was open. And there was a lady standing by the bus stop. And she saw me walking around like this. (Laughter) And then she looked at me. And then I went ... And then she went, "Hmm, OK, he's not mad." Yeah, to actually do this thing — the actual chariot is made of gold. I had a 24-karat gold ring. And I cut off a little flake of gold. And I bent it 'round, and made it into the chariot. And the horse is made from nylon. And the spider's web is for the reins on the horse. To get the symmetrical shape of the horse was very difficult, because I had to get the horse to rear up and look as though it was in some kind of action. When I did this one, a gentleman seen it and said to me, "There's no way you can do this, you must have used some kind of machine. There's no way a man can do that. It must be a machine." So I says, "OK then, if you say it's a machine ..." (Laughter) (Applause) That one took me approximately six weeks. (Applause) The most famous statue in the world. This one, I would say, was a serious challenge. (Laughter) Because I had to put the torch on the top. That one is, more or less, the same type of process. The bottom of it is carved from a grain of sand, because I wanted to get a bit of the stone effect. I used a microscopic shard of diamond to actually carve the actual base. Well, I can look at this one and I can be very proud of this, because that statue has always sort of kept an image in my head of, you know, the beginning of people coming to America. So it's sort of Ellis Island, and seeing America for the first time. And that's the first thing they saw. So I wanted to have that little image. And this is it. (Laughter) And we all know that is the Hulk. I wanted to create movement in the eye of a needle. Because we know we see needles, but people aren't familiar with the eye of a needle apart from putting a thread through it. So I broke the needle. And made a needle look like the Hulk's broken it. It's — I had to make little holes in the base of the needle, to shove his feet in. So most of my work, I don't use glue. They go in with their own friction. And that's how I managed to do it. As you can see, he's looking at the moment. He's got a little grimace on his face. And his mouth must be probably about three microns. So the eyes are probably about one micron or something. That ship there, that's made from 24-karat gold. And I normally rig it with the web of a money spider. But I had to rig it with strands of glue. Because the web of the spider, it was sending me insane, because I couldn't get the web to move off. And that's 24-karat gold. And it's constructed. I built it. Constructed each plank of gold. And the whole thing is sort of symmetrical. The flag had to be made out of little strands of gold. It's almost like doing a surgical operation to get this thing right. (Applause) As you can see, dressage. (Laughter) It's something I wanted to do just to show how I could get the symmetrical shape. The actual rigging on the reins on the horse are made from the same sort of thing. And that was done with a particle from my shirt. And the pinhead I've made green around there by scraping the particles off a green shirt and then pressed onto the needle. It's very painstaking work, but the best things come in small packages. (Laughter) Bruno Giussani: Willard Wigan! (Applause)

How to make filthy water drinkable

Michael Pritchard

{0: 'Michael Pritchard'}

{0: ['inventor']}

{0: "With cutting-edge nanotech, Michael Pritchard's Lifesaver water-purification bottle could revolutionize water-delivery systems in disaster-stricken areas around the globe. "}

2009-07-22

2009-08-04

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sq', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'demo', 'design', 'global issues', 'invention', 'technology', 'water']

{2: 'Simple designs to save a life', 122: 'Human-centered design', 91: "Invest in Africa's own solutions", 702: 'The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting', 8418: '3 thoughtful ways to conserve water', 1093: 'How to keep rivers and streams flowing'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pritchard_how_to_make_filthy_water_drinkable/

Too much of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Engineer Michael Pritchard did something about it -- inventing the portable Lifesaver filter, which can make the most revolting water drinkable in seconds. An amazing demo from TEDGlobal 2009.

Good morning everybody. I'd like to talk about a couple of things today. The first thing is water. Now I see you've all been enjoying the water that's been provided for you here at the conference, over the past couple of days. And I'm sure you'll feel that it's from a safe source. But what if it wasn't? What if it was from a source like this? Then statistics would actually say that half of you would now be suffering with diarrhea. I talked a lot in the past about statistics, and the provision of safe drinking water for all. But they just don't seem to get through. And I think I've worked out why. It's because, using current thinking, the scale of the problem just seems too huge to contemplate solving. So we just switch off: us, governments and aid agencies. Well, today, I'd like to show you that through thinking differently, the problem has been solved. By the way, since I've been speaking, another 13,000 people around the world are suffering now with diarrhea. And four children have just died. I invented Lifesaver bottle because I got angry. I, like most of you, was sitting down, the day after Christmas in 2004, when I was watching the devastating news of the Asian tsunami as it rolled in, playing out on TV. The days and weeks that followed, people fleeing to the hills, being forced to drink contaminated water or face death. That really stuck with me. Then, a few months later, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the side of America. "Okay," I thought, "here's a First World country, let's see what they can do." Day one: nothing. Day two: nothing. Do you know it took five days to get water to the Superdome? People were shooting each other on the streets for TV sets and water. That's when I decided I had to do something. Now I spent a lot of time in my garage, over the next weeks and months, and also in my kitchen — much to the dismay of my wife. (Laughter) However, after a few failed prototypes, I finally came up with this, the Lifesaver bottle. Okay, now for the science bit. Before Lifesaver, the best hand filters were only capable of filtering down to about 200 nanometers. The smallest bacteria is about 200 nanometers. So a 200-nanometer bacteria is going to get through a 200-nanometer hole. The smallest virus, on the other hand, is about 25 nanometers. So that's definitely going to get through those 200 nanometer holes. Lifesaver pores are 15 nanometers. So nothing is getting through. Okay, I'm going to give you a bit of a demonstration. Would you like to see that? I spent all the time setting this up, so I guess I should. We're in the fine city of Oxford. So — someone's done that up. Fine city of Oxford, so what I've done is I've gone and got some water from the River Cherwell, and the River Thames, that flow through here. And this is the water. But I got to thinking, you know, if we were in the middle of a flood zone in Bangladesh, the water wouldn't look like this. So I've gone and got some stuff to add into it. And this is from my pond. (Sniffs) (Coughs) Have a smell of that, mister cameraman. Okay. (Laughs) Right. We're just going to pour that in there. Audience: Ugh! Michael Pritchard: Okay. We've got some runoff from a sewage plant farm. So I'm just going to put that in there. (Laughter) Put that in there. There we go. (Laughter) And some other bits and pieces, chuck that in there. And I've got a gift here from a friend of mine's rabbit. So we're just going to put that in there as well. (Laughter) Okay. (Laughter) Now. The Lifesaver bottle works really simply. You just scoop the water up. Today I'm going to use a jug just to show you all. Let's get a bit of that poo in there. That's not dirty enough. Let's just stir that up a little bit. Okay, so I'm going to take this really filthy water, and put it in here. Do you want a drink yet? (Laughter) Okay. There we go. Replace the top. Give it a few pumps. Okay? That's all that's necessary. Now as soon as I pop the teat, sterile drinking water is going to come out. I've got to be quick. Okay, ready? There we go. Mind the electrics. That is safe, sterile drinking water. (Applause) Cheers. (Applause) There you go Chris. (Applause) What's it taste of? Chris Anderson: Delicious. Michael Pritchard: Okay. Let's see Chris's program throughout the rest of the show. Okay? (Laughter) Okay. Lifesaver bottle is used by thousands of people around the world. It'll last for 6,000 liters. And when it's expired, using failsafe technology, the system will shut off, protecting the user. Pop the cartridge out. Pop a new one in. It's good for another 6,000 liters. So let's look at the applications. Traditionally, in a crisis, what do we do? We ship water. Then, after a few weeks, we set up camps. And people are forced to come into the camps to get their safe drinking water. What happens when 20,000 people congregate in a camp? Diseases spread. More resources are required. The problem just becomes self-perpetuating. But by thinking differently, and shipping these, people can stay put. They can make their own sterile drinking water, and start to get on with rebuilding their homes and their lives. Now, it doesn't require a natural disaster for this to work. Using the old thinking, of national infrastructure and pipe work, is too expensive. When you run the numbers on a calculator, you run out of noughts. So here is the "thinking different" bit. Instead of shipping water, and using man-made processes to do it, let's use Mother Nature. She's got a fantastic system. She picks the water up from there, desalinates it, for free, transports it over there, and dumps it onto the mountains, rivers, and streams. And where do people live? Near water. All we've go to do is make it sterile. How do we do that? Well, we could use the Lifesaver bottle. Or we could use one of these. The same technology, in a jerry can. This will process 25,000 liters of water; that's good enough for a family of four, for three years. And how much does it cost? About half a cent a day to run. Thank you. (Applause) So, by thinking differently, and processing water at the point of use, mothers and children no longer have to walk four hours a day to collect their water. They can get it from a source nearby. So with just eight billion dollars, we can hit the millennium goal's target of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water. To put that into context, The U.K. government spends about 12 billion pounds a year on foreign aid. But why stop there? With 20 billion dollars, everyone can have access to safe drinking water. So the three-and-a-half billion people that suffer every year as a result, and the two million kids that die every year, will live. Thank you. (Applause)

Why the world needs charter cities

Paul Romer

{0: 'Paul Romer'}

{0: ['chief economist and senior vice president', 'world bank']}

{0: "Paul Romer's research on catch-up growth in low- and middle-income countries has emphasized the importance of government policies that encourage orderly urban expansion."}

2009-07-22

2009-08-05

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sv', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['business', 'cities', 'culture', 'economics', 'global issues', 'politics']

{584: 'New rules for rebuilding a broken nation', 127: 'Want to help Africa? Do business here', 151: "Africa's cheetahs versus hippos", 1165: "The world's first charter city?", 1226: 'The 6 killer apps of prosperity', 992: 'Global power shifts'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer_why_the_world_needs_charter_cities/

How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. (Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong?)

Take a look at this picture. It poses a very fascinating puzzle for us. These African students are doing their homework under streetlights at the airport in the capital city because they don't have any electricity at home. Now, I haven't met these particular students, but I've met students like them. Let's just pick one — for example, the one in the green shirt. Let's give him a name, too: Nelson. I'll bet Nelson has a cellphone. So here is the puzzle. Why is it that Nelson has access to a cutting-edge technology, like the cellphone, but doesn't have access to a 100-year-old technology for generating electric light in the home? Now, in a word, the answer is "rules." Bad rules can prevent the kind of win-win solution that's available when people can bring new technologies in and make them available to someone like Nelson. What kinds of rules? The electric company in this nation operates under a rule, which says that it has to sell electricity at a very low, subsidized price — in fact, a price that is so low it loses money on every unit that it sells. So it has neither the resources, nor the incentives, to hook up many other users. The president wanted to change this rule. He's seen that it's possible to have a different set of rules, rules where businesses earn a small profit, so they have an incentive to sign up more customers. That's the kind of rules that the cellphone company that Nelson purchases his telephony from operates under. The president has seen how those rules worked well. So he tried to change the rules for pricing on electricity, but ran into a firestorm of protest from businesses and consumers who wanted to preserve the existing subsidized rates. So he was stuck with rules that prevented him from letting the win-win solution help his country. And Nelson is stuck studying under the streetlights. The real challenge then, is to try to figure out how we can change rules. Are there some rules we can develop for changing rules? I want to argue that there is a general abstract insight that we can make practical, which is that, if we can give more choices to people, and more choices to leaders — who, in many countries, are also people. (Laughter) But, it's useful to present the opposition between these two. Because the kind of choice you might want to give to a leader, a choice like giving the president the choice to raise prices on electricity, takes away a choice that people in the economy want. They want the choice to be able to continue consuming subsidized electric power. So if you give just to one side or the other, you'll have tension or friction. But if we can find ways to give more choices to both, that will give us a set of rules for changing rules that get us out of traps. Now, Nelson also has access to the Internet. And he says that if you want to see the damaging effects of rules, the ways that rules can keep people in the dark, look at the pictures from NASA of the earth at night. In particular check out Asia. If you zoom in here, you can see North Korea, in outline here, which is like a black hole compared to its neighbors. Now, you won't be surprised to learn that the rules in North Korea keep people there in the dark. But it is important to recognize that North Korea and South Korea started out with identical sets of rules in both the sense of laws and regulations, but also in the deeper senses of understandings, norms, culture, values and beliefs. When they separated, they made choices that led to very divergent paths for their sets of rules. So we can change — we as humans can change the rules that we use to interact with each other, for better, or for worse. Now let's look at another region, the Caribbean. Zoom in on Haiti, in outline here. Haiti is also dark, compared to its neighbor here, the Dominican Republic, which has about the same number of residents. Both of these countries are dark compared to Puerto Rico, which has half as many residents as either Haiti or the Dominican Republic. What Haiti warns us is that rules can be bad because governments are weak. It's not just that the rules are bad because the government is too strong and oppressive, as in North Korea. So that if we want to create environments with good rules, we can't just tear down. We've got to find ways to build up, as well. Now, China dramatically demonstrates both the potential and the challenges of working with rules. Back in the beginning of the data presented in this chart, China was the world's high-technology leader. Chinese had pioneered technologies like steel, printing, gunpowder. But the Chinese never adopted, at least in that period, effective rules for encouraging the spread of those ideas — a profit motive that could have encouraged the spread. And they soon adopted rules which slowed down innovation and cut China off from the rest of the world. So as other countries in the world innovated, in the sense both of developing newer technologies, but also developing newer rules, the Chinese were cut off from those advances. Income there stayed stagnant, as it zoomed ahead in the rest of the world. This next chart looks at more recent data. It plots income, average income in China as a percentage of average income in the United States. In the '50s and '60s you can see that it was hovering at about three percent. But then in the late '70s something changed. Growth took off in China. The Chinese started catching up very quickly with the United States. If you go back to the map at night, you can get a clue to the process that lead to the dramatic change in rules in China. The brightest spot in China, which you can see on the edge of the outline here, is Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a small bit of China that, for most of the 20th century, operated under a very different set of rules than the rest of mainland China — rules that were copied from working market economies of the time, and administered by the British. In the 1950s, Hong Kong was a place where millions of people could go, from the mainland, to start in jobs like sewing shirts, making toys. But, to get on a process of increasing income, increasing skills led to very rapid growth there. Hong Kong was also the model which leaders like Deng Xiaoping could copy, when they decided to move all of the mainland towards the market model. But Deng Xiaoping instinctively understood the importance of offering choices to his people. So instead of forcing everyone in China to shift immediately to the market model, they proceeded by creating some special zones that could do, in a sense, what Britain did: make the opportunity to go work with the market rules available to the people who wanted to opt in there. So they created four special economic zones around Hong Kong: zones where Chinese could come and work, and cities grew up very rapidly there; also zones where foreign firms could come in and make things. One of the zones next to Hong Kong has a city called Shenzhen. In that city there is a Taiwanese firm that made the iPhone that many of you have, and they made it with labor from Chinese who moved there to Shenzhen. So after the four special zones, there were 14 coastal cites that were open in the same sense, and eventually demonstrated successes in these places that people could opt in to, that they flocked to because of the advantages they offered. Demonstrated successes there led to a consensus for a move toward the market model for the entire economy. Now the Chinese example shows us several points. One is: preserve choices for people. Two: operate on the right scale. If you try to change the rules in a village, you could do that, but a village would be too small to get the kinds of benefits you can get if you have millions of people all working under good rules. On the other hand, the nation is too big. If you try to change the rules in the nation, you can't give some people a chance to hold back, see how things turn out, and let others zoom ahead and try the new rules. But cities give you this opportunity to create new places, with new rules that people can opt in to. And they're large enough to get all of the benefits that we can have when millions of us work together under good rules. So the proposal is that we conceive of something called a charter city. We start with a charter that specifies all the rules required to attract the people who we'll need to build the city. We'll need to attract the investors who will build out the infrastructure — the power system, the roads, the port, the airport, the buildings. You'll need to attract firms, who will come hire the people who move there first. And you'll need to attract families, the residents who will come and live there permanently, raise their children, get an education for their children, and get their first job. With that charter, people will move there. The city can be built. And we can scale this model. We can go do it over and over again. To make it work, we need good rules. We've already discussed that. Those are captured in the charter. We also need the choices for people. That's really built into the model if we allow for the possibility of building cities on uninhabited land. You start from uninhabited territory. People can come live under the new charter, but no one is forced to live under it. The final thing we need are choices for leaders. And, to achieve the kind of choices we want for leaders we need to allow for the potential for partnerships between nations: cases where nations work together, in effect, de facto, the way China and Britain worked together to build, first a little enclave of the market model, and then scale it throughout China. In a sense, Britain, inadvertently, through its actions in Hong Kong, did more to reduce world poverty than all the aid programs that we've undertaken in the last century. So if we allow for these kind of partnerships to replicate this again, we can get those kinds of benefits scaled throughout the world. In some cases this will involve a delegation of responsibility, a delegation of control from one country to another to take over certain kinds of administrative responsibilities. Now, when I say that, some of you are starting to think, "Well, is this just bringing back colonialism?" It's not. But it's important to recognize that the kind of emotions that come up when we start to think about these things, can get in the way, can make us pull back, can shut down our ability, and our interest in trying to explore new ideas. Why is this not like colonialism? The thing that was bad about colonialism, and the thing which is residually bad in some of our aid programs, is that it involved elements of coercion and condescension. This model is all about choices, both for leaders and for the people who will live in these new places. And, choice is the antidote to coercion and condescension. So let's talk about how this could play out in practice. Let's take a particular leader, Raul Castro, who is the leader of Cuba. It must have occurred to Castro that he has the chance to do for Cuba what Deng Xiaoping did for China, but he doesn't have a Hong Kong there on the island in Cuba. He does, though, have a little bit of light down in the south that has a very special status. There is a zone there, around Guantanamo Bay, where a treaty gives the United States administrative responsibility for a piece of land that's about twice the size of Manhattan. Castro goes to the prime minister of Canada and says, "Look, the Yankees have a terrible PR problem. They want to get out. Why don't you, Canada, take over? Build — run a special administrative zone. Allow a new city to be built up there. Allow many people to come in. Let us have a Hong Kong nearby. Some of my citizens will move into that city as well. Others will hold back. But this will be the gateway that will connect the modern economy and the modern world to my country." Now, where else might this model be tried? Well, Africa. I've talked with leaders in Africa. Many of them totally get the notion of a special zone that people can opt into as a rule. It's a rule for changing rules. It's a way to create new rules, and let people opt-in without coercion, and the opposition that coercion can force. They also totally get the idea that in some instances they can make more credible promises to long-term investors — the kind of investors who will come build the port, build the roads, in a new city — they can make more credible promises if they do it along with a partner nation. Perhaps even in some arrangement that's a little bit like an escrow account, where you put land in the escrow account and the partner nation takes responsibility for it. There is also lots of land in Africa where new cities could be built. This is a picture I took when I was flying along the coast. There are immense stretches of land like this — land where hundreds of millions of people could live. Now, if we generalize this and think about not just one or two charter cites, but dozens — cities that will help create places for the many hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people who will move to cities in the coming century — is there enough land for them? Well, throughout the world, if we look at the lights at night, the one thing that's misleading is that, visually, it looks like most of the world is already built out. So let me show you why that's wrong. Take this representation of all of the land. Turn it into a square that stands for all the arable land on Earth. And let these dots represent the land that's already taken up by the cities that three billion people now live in. If you move the dots down to the bottom of the rectangle you can see that the cities for the existing three billion urban residents take up only three percent of the arable land on earth. So if we wanted to build cities for another billion people, they would be dots like this. We'd go from three percent of the arable land, to four percent. We'd dramatically reduce the human footprint on Earth by building more cities that people can move to. And if these are cities governed by good rules, they can be cities where people are safe from crime, safe from disease and bad sanitation, where people have a chance to get a job. They can get basic utilities like electricity. Their kids can get an education. So what will it take to get started building the first charter cities, scaling this so we build many more? It would help to have a manual. (Laughter) What university professors could do is write some details that might go into this manual. You wouldn't want to let us run the cities, go out and design them. You wouldn't let academics out in the wild. (Laughter) But, you could set us to work thinking about questions like, suppose it isn't just Canada that does the deal with Raul Castro. Perhaps Brazil comes in as a participant, and Spain as well. And perhaps Cuba wants to be one of the partners in a four-way joint venture. How would we write the treaty to do that? There is less precedent for that, but that could easily be worked out. How would we finance this? Turns out Singapore and Hong Kong are cities that made huge gains on the value of the land that they owned when they got started. You could use the gains on the value of the land to pay for things like the police, the courts, but the school system and the health care system too, which make this a more attractive place to live, makes this a place where people have higher incomes — which, incidentally, makes the land more valuable. So the incentives for the people helping to construct this zone and build it, and set up the basic rules, go very much in the right direction. So there are many other details like this. How could we have buildings that are low cost and affordable for people who work in a first job, assembling something like an iPhone, but make those buildings energy efficient, and make sure that they are safe, so they don't fall down in an earthquake or a hurricane. Many technical details to be worked out, but those of us who are already starting to pursue these things can already tell that there is no roadblock, there's no impediment, other than a failure of imagination, that will keep us from delivering on a truly global win-win solution. Let me conclude with this picture. The reason we can be so well off, even though there is so many people on earth, is because of the power of ideas. We can share ideas with other people, and when they discover them, they share with us. It's not like scarce objects, where sharing means we each get less. When we share ideas we all get more. When we think about ideas in that way, we usually think about technologies. But there is another class of ideas: the rules that govern how we interact with each other; rules like, let's have a tax system that supports a research university that gives away certain kinds of knowledge for free. Let's have a system where we have ownership of land that is registered in a government office, that people can pledge as collateral. If we can keep innovating on our space of rules, and particularly innovate in the sense of coming up with rules for changing rules, so we don't get stuck with bad rules, then we can keep moving progress forward and truly make the world a better place, so that people like Nelson and his friends don't have to study any longer under the streetlights. Thank you. (Applause)

Biomimicry in action

Janine Benyus

{0: 'Janine Benyus'}

{0: ['science writer', 'innovation consultant', 'conservationist']}

{0: "A self-proclaimed nature nerd, Janine Benyus' concept of biomimicry has galvanized scientists, architects, designers and engineers into exploring new ways in which nature's successes can inspire humanity. "}

2009-07-22

2009-08-06

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lv', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sr', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['biodiversity', 'biology', 'biomimicry', 'biotech', 'creativity', 'design', 'innovation', 'invention', 'nature']

{18: "Biomimicry's surprising lessons from nature's engineers", 2: 'Simple designs to save a life', 83: 'My wish: Build the Encyclopedia of Life', 1700: 'One very dry demo', 1072: "Using nature's genius in architecture", 25748: 'What if cracks in concrete could fix themselves?'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action/

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.

If I could reveal anything that is hidden from us, at least in modern cultures, it would be to reveal something that we've forgotten, that we used to know as well as we knew our own names. And that is that we live in a competent universe, that we are part of a brilliant planet, and that we are surrounded by genius. Biomimicry is a new discipline that tries to learn from those geniuses, and take advice from them, design advice. That's where I live, and it's my university as well. I'm surrounded by genius. I cannot help but remember the organisms and the ecosystems that know how to live here gracefully on this planet. This is what I would tell you to remember if you ever forget this again. Remember this. This is what happens every year. This is what keeps its promise. While we're doing bailouts, this is what happened. Spring. Imagine designing spring. Imagine that orchestration. You think TED is hard to organize. (Laughter) Right? Imagine, and if you haven't done this in a while, do. Imagine the timing, the coordination, all without top-down laws, or policies, or climate change protocols. This happens every year. There is lots of showing off. There is lots of love in the air. There's lots of grand openings. And the organisms, I promise you, have all of their priorities in order. I have this neighbor that keeps me in touch with this, because he's living, usually on his back, looking up at those grasses. And one time he came up to me — he was about seven or eight years old — he came up to me. And there was a wasp's nest that I had let grow in my yard, right outside my door. And most people knock them down when they're small. But it was fascinating to me, because I was looking at this sort of fine Italian end papers. And he came up to me and he knocked. He would come every day with something to show me. And like, knock like a woodpecker on my door until I opened it up. And he asked me how I had made the house for those wasps, because he had never seen one this big. And I told him, "You know, Cody, the wasps actually made that." And we looked at it together. And I could see why he thought, you know — it was so beautifully done. It was so architectural. It was so precise. But it occurred to me, how in his small life had he already believed the myth that if something was that well done, that we must have done it. How did he not know — it's what we've all forgotten — that we're not the first ones to build. We're not the first ones to process cellulose. We're not the first ones to make paper. We're not the first ones to try to optimize packing space, or to waterproof, or to try to heat and cool a structure. We're not the first ones to build houses for our young. What's happening now, in this field called biomimicry, is that people are beginning to remember that organisms, other organisms, the rest of the natural world, are doing things very similar to what we need to do. But in fact they are doing them in a way that have allowed them to live gracefully on this planet for billions of years. So these people, biomimics, are nature's apprentices. And they're focusing on function. What I'd like to do is show you a few of the things that they're learning. They have asked themselves, "What if, every time I started to invent something, I asked, 'How would nature solve this?'" And here is what they're learning. This is an amazing picture from a Czech photographer named Jack Hedley. This is a story about an engineer at J.R. West. They're the people who make the bullet train. It was called the bullet train because it was rounded in front, but every time it went into a tunnel it would build up a pressure wave, and then it would create like a sonic boom when it exited. So the engineer's boss said, "Find a way to quiet this train." He happened to be a birder. He went to the equivalent of an Audubon Society meeting. And he studied — there was a film about king fishers. And he thought to himself, "They go from one density of medium, the air, into another density of medium, water, without a splash. Look at this picture. Without a splash, so they can see the fish. And he thought, "What if we do this?" Quieted the train. Made it go 10 percent faster on 15 percent less electricity. How does nature repel bacteria? We're not the first ones to have to protect ourselves from some bacteria. Turns out that — this is a Galapagos Shark. It has no bacteria on its surface, no fouling on its surface, no barnacles. And it's not because it goes fast. It actually basks. It's a slow-moving shark. So how does it keep its body free of bacteria build-up? It doesn't do it with a chemical. It does it, it turns out, with the same denticles that you had on Speedo bathing suits, that broke all those records in the Olympics, but it's a particular kind of pattern. And that pattern, the architecture of that pattern on its skin denticles keep bacteria from being able to land and adhere. There is a company called Sharklet Technologies that's now putting this on the surfaces in hospitals to keep bacteria from landing, which is better than dousing it with anti-bacterials or harsh cleansers that many, many organisms are now becoming drug resistant. Hospital-acquired infections are now killing more people every year in the United States than die from AIDS or cancer or car accidents combined — about 100,000. This is a little critter that's in the Namibian desert. It has no fresh water that it's able to drink, but it drinks water out of fog. It's got bumps on the back of its wing covers. And those bumps act like a magnet for water. They have water-loving tips, and waxy sides. And the fog comes in and it builds up on the tips. And it goes down the sides and goes into the critter's mouth. There is actually a scientist here at Oxford who studied this, Andrew Parker. And now kinetic and architectural firms like Grimshaw are starting to look at this as a way of coating buildings so that they gather water from the fog. 10 times better than our fog-catching nets. CO2 as a building block. Organisms don't think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block. There is now a cement manufacturing company starting in the United States called Calera. They've borrowed the recipe from the coral reef, and they're using CO2 as a building block in cement, in concrete. Instead of — cement usually emits a ton of CO2 for every ton of cement. Now it's reversing that equation, and actually sequestering half a ton of CO2 thanks to the recipe from the coral. None of these are using the organisms. They're really only using the blueprints or the recipes from the organisms. How does nature gather the sun's energy? This is a new kind of solar cell that's based on how a leaf works. It's self-assembling. It can be put down on any substrate whatsoever. It's extremely inexpensive and rechargeable every five years. It's actually a company a company that I'm involved in called OneSun, with Paul Hawken. There are many many ways that nature filters water that takes salt out of water. We take water and push it against a membrane. And then we wonder why the membrane clogs and why it takes so much electricity. Nature does something much more elegant. And it's in every cell. Every red blood cell of your body right now has these hourglass-shaped pores called aquaporins. They actually export water molecules through. It's kind of a forward osmosis. They export water molecules through, and leave solutes on the other side. A company called Aquaporin is starting to make desalination membranes mimicking this technology. Trees and bones are constantly reforming themselves along lines of stress. This algorithm has been put into a software program that's now being used to make bridges lightweight, to make building beams lightweight. Actually G.M. Opel used it to create that skeleton you see, in what's called their bionic car. It lightweighted that skeleton using a minimum amount of material, as an organism must, for the maximum amount of strength. This beetle, unlike this chip bag here, this beetle uses one material, chitin. And it finds many many ways to put many functions into it. It's waterproof. It's strong and resilient. It's breathable. It creates color through structure. Whereas that chip bag has about seven layers to do all of those things. One of our major inventions that we need to be able to do to come even close to what these organisms can do is to find a way to minimize the amount of material, the kind of material we use, and to add design to it. We use five polymers in the natural world to do everything that you see. In our world we use about 350 polymers to make all this. Nature is nano. Nanotechnology, nanoparticles, you hear a lot of worry about this. Loose nanoparticles. What is really interesting to me is that not many people have been asking, "How can we consult nature about how to make nanotechnology safe?" Nature has been doing that for a long time. Embedding nanoparticles in a material for instance, always. In fact, sulfur-reducing bacteria, as part of their synthesis, they will emit, as a byproduct, nanoparticles into the water. But then right after that, they emit a protein that actually gathers and aggregates those nanoparticles so that they fall out of solution. Energy use. Organisms sip energy, because they have to work or barter for every single bit that they get. And one of the largest fields right now, in the world of energy grids, you hear about the smart grid. One of the largest consultants are the social insects. Swarm technology. There is a company called Regen. They are looking at how ants and bees find their food and their flowers in the most effective way as a whole hive. And they're having appliances in your home talk to one another through that algorithm, and determine how to minimize peak power use. There's a group of scientists in Cornell that are making what they call a synthetic tree, because they are saying, "There is no pump at the bottom of a tree." It's capillary action and transpiration pulls water up, a drop at a time, pulling it, releasing it from a leaf and pulling it up through the roots. And they're creating — you can think of it as a kind of wallpaper. They're thinking about putting it on the insides of buildings to move water up without pumps. Amazon electric eel — incredibly endangered, some of these species — create 600 volts of electricity with the chemicals that are in your body. Even more interesting to me is that 600 volts doesn't fry it. You know we use PVC, and we sheath wires with PVC for insulation. These organisms, how are they insulating against their own electric charge? These are some questions that we've yet to ask. Here's a wind turbine manufacturer that went to a whale. Humpback whale has scalloped edges on its flippers. And those scalloped edges play with flow in such a way that is reduces drag by 32 percent. These wind turbines can rotate in incredibly slow windspeeds, as a result. MIT just has a new radio chip that uses far less power than our chips. And it's based on the cochlear of your ear, able to pick up internet, wireless, television signals and radio signals, in the same chip. Finally, on an ecosystem scale. At Biomimicry Guild, which is my consulting company, we work with HOK Architects. We're looking at building whole cities in their planning department. And what we're saying is that, shouldn't our cities do at least as well, in terms of ecosystem services, as the native systems that they replace? So we're creating something called Ecological Performance Standards that hold cities to this higher bar. The question is — biomimicry is an incredibly powerful way to innovate. The question I would ask is, "What's worth solving?" If you haven't seen this, it's pretty amazing. Dr. Adam Neiman. This is a depiction of all of the water on Earth in relation to the volume of the Earth — all the ice, all the fresh water, all the sea water — and all the atmosphere that we can breathe, in relation to the volume of the Earth. And inside those balls life, over 3.8 billion years, has made a lush, livable place for us. And we are in a long, long line of organisms to come to this planet and ask ourselves, "How can we live here gracefully over the long haul?" How can we do what life has learned to do? Which is to create conditions conducive to life. Now in order to do this, the design challenge of our century, I think, we need a way to remind ourselves of those geniuses, and to somehow meet them again. One of the big ideas, one of the big projects I've been honored to work on is a new website. And I would encourage you all to please go to it. It's called AskNature.org. And what we're trying to do, in a TEDesque way, is to organize all biological information by design and engineering function. And we're working with EOL, Encyclopedia of Life, Ed Wilson's TED wish. And he's gathering all biological information on one website. And the scientists who are contributing to EOL are answering a question, "What can we learn from this organism?" And that information will go into AskNature.org. And hopefully, any inventor, anywhere in the world, will be able, in the moment of creation, to type in, "How does nature remove salt from water?" And up will come mangroves, and sea turtles and your own kidneys. And we'll begin to be able to do as Cody does, and actually be in touch with these incredible models, these elders that have been here far, far longer than we have. And hopefully, with their help, we'll learn how to live on this Earth, and on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. Thank you very much. (Applause)

The music of a war child

Emmanuel Jal

{0: 'Emmanuel Jal'}

{0: ['hip-hop artist']}

{0: "Emmanuel Jal's hypnotic voice rises from hellish origins as a beacon of hope for those caught in seemingly endless cycles of war and despair. "}

2009-07-23

2009-08-07

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'lv', 'mn', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['entertainment', 'global issues', 'music', 'poetry', 'politics', 'war', 'performance', 'live music']

{155: 'Telling stories from Africa', 158: '"Thula Mama"', 466: "El Sistema's top youth orchestra", 2683: "What it's like to be a parent in a war zone", 2110: "Let's help refugees thrive, not just survive", 294: 'On humanity'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/emmanuel_jal_the_music_of_a_war_child/

For five years, young Emmanuel Jal fought as a child soldier in the Sudan. Rescued by an aid worker, he's become an international hip-hop star and an activist for kids in war zones. In words and lyrics, he tells the story of his amazing life.

I just want to say my name is Emmanuel Jal. And I come from a long way. I've been telling a story that has been so painful for me. It's been a tough journey for me, traveling the world, telling my story in form of a book. And also telling it like now. And also, the easiest one was when I was doing it in form of a music. So I have branded myself as a war child. I'm doing this because of an old lady in my village now, who have lost her children. There is no newspaper to cover her pain, and what she wants to change in this society. And I'm doing it for a young man who want to create a change and has no way to project his voice because he can't write. Or there is no Internet, like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, for them to talk. Also one thing that kept me pushing this story, this painful stories out, the dreams I have, sometimes, is like the voices of the dead, that I have seen would tell me, "Don't give up. Keep on going." Because sometime I feel like stopping and not doing it, because I didn't know what I was putting myself into. Well I was born in the most difficult time, when my country was at war. I saw my village burned down. The world that meant a lot to me, I saw it vanish in my face. I saw my aunt in rape when I was only five. My mother was claimed by the war. My brothers and sisters were scattered. And up to now, me and my father were detached and I still have issues with him. Seeing people die every day, my mother crying, it's like I was raised in a violence. And that made me call myself a war child. And not only that, when I was eight I became a child soldier. I didn't know what was the war for. But one thing I knew was an image that I saw that stuck in my head. When I went to the training camp I say, "I want to kill as many Muslims, and as many Arabs, as possible." The training wasn't easy, but that was the driving force, because I wanted to revenge for my family. I wanted to revenge for my village. Luckily now things have changed because I came to discover the truth. What was actually killing us wasn't the Muslims, wasn't the Arabs. It was somebody sitting somewhere manipulating the system, and using religion to get what they want to get out of us, which is the oil, the diamond, the gold and the land. So realizing the truth gave me a position to choose: should I continue to hate, or let it go? So I happened to forgive. Now I sing music with the Muslims. I dance with them. I even had a movie out called "War Child," funded by Muslim people. So that pain has gone out. But my story is huge. So I'm just going to go into a different step now, which is easier for me. I'm going to give you poem called "Forced to Sin," which is from my album "War Child." I talk about my story. One of the journey that I tread when I was tempted to eat my friend because we had no food and we were like around 400. And only 16 people survived that journey. So I hope you're going to hear this. My dreams are like torment. My every moment. Voices in my brain, of friends that was slain. Friends like Lual who died by my side, of starvation. In the burning jungle, and the desert plain. Next was I, but Jesus heard my cry. As I was tempted to eat the rotten flesh of my comrade, he gave me comfort. We used to raid villages, stealing chickens, goats and sheeps, anything we could eat. I knew it was rude, but we needed food. And therefore I was forced to sin, forced to sin to make a living, forced to sin to make a living. Sometimes you gotta lose to win. Never give up. Never give in. Left home at the age of seven. One year later, live with an AK-47 by my side. Slept with one eye open wide. Run, duck, play dead and hide. I've seen my people die like flies. But I've never seen a dead body, at least one that I've killed. But still as I wonder, I won't go under. Guns barking like lightning and thunder. As a child so young and tender, Words I can't forget I still remember. I saw sergeant command raising his hand, no retreat, no surrender. I carry the banner of the trauma. War child, child without a mama, still fighting in the saga. Yet as I wage this new war I'm not alone in this drama. No sit or stop, as I reach for the top I'm fully dedicated like a patriotic cop. I'm on a fight, day and night. Sometime I do wrong in order to make things right. It's like I'm living a dream. First time I'm feeling like a human being. Ah! The children of Darfur. Your empty bellies on the telly and now it's you that I'm fighting for. Left home. Don't even know the day I'll ever return. My country is war-torn. Music I used to hear was bombs and fire of guns. So many people die that I don't even cry no more. Ask God question, what am I here for. And why are my people poor. And why, why when the rest of the children were learning how to read and write, I was learning how to fight. I ate snails, vultures, rabbits, snakes, and anything that had life. I was ready to eat. I know it's a shame. But who is to be blamed? That's my story shared in the form of a lesson. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) What energized me and kept me going is the music I do. I never saw anybody to tell my story to them so they could advise me or do therapy. So the music had been my therapy for me. It's been where I actually see heaven, where I can be happy, where I can be a child again, in dances, through music. So one thing I know about music: music is the only thing that has power to enter your cell system, your mind, your heart, influence your soul and your spirit, and can even influence the way you live without even you knowing. Music is the only thing that can make you want to wake up your bed and shake your leg, without even wanting to do it. And so the power music has I normally compare to the power love when love doesn't see a color. You know, if you fall in love with a frog, that's it. One testimony about how I find music is powerful is when I was still a soldier back then. I hated the people in the north. But I don't know why I don't hate their music. So we party and dance to their music. And one thing that shocked me is one day they brought an Arab musician to come and entertain the soldiers. And I almost broke my leg dancing to his music. But I had this question. So now I'm doing music so I know what the power of music is. So what's happening here? I've been in a painful journey. Today is day number 233 in which I only eat dinner. I don't eat breakfast. No lunch. And I've done a campaign called Lose to Win. Where I'm losing so that I could win the battle that I'm fighting now. So my breakfast, my lunch, I donate it to a charity that I founded because we want to build a school in Sudan. And I'm doing this because also it's a normal thing in my home, people eat one meal a day. Here I am in the West. I choose not to. So in my village now, kids there, they normally listen to BBC, or any radio, and they are waiting to know, the day Emmanuel will eat his breakfast it means he got the money to build our school. And so I made a commitment. I say, "I'm gonna not eat my breakfast." I thought I was famous enough that I would raise the money within one month, but I've been humbled. (Laughter) So it's taken me 232 days. And I said, "No stop until we get it." And like it's been done on Facebook, MySpace. The people are giving three dollars. The lowest amount we ever got was 20 cents. Somebody donated 20 cents online. I don't know how they did it. (Laughter) But that moved me. And so, the importance of education to me is what I'm willing to die for. I'm willing to die for this, because I know what it can do to my people. Education enlighten your brain, give you so many chances, and you're able to survive. As a nation we have been crippled. For so many years we have fed on aid. You see a 20-years-old, 30-years-old families in a refugee camps. They only get the food that drops from the sky, from the U.N. So these people, you're killing a whole generation if you just give them aid. If anybody want to help us this is what we need. Give us tools. Give the farmers tools. It's rain. Africa is fertile. They can grow the crops. (Applause) Invest in education. Education so that we have strong institution that can create a revolution to change everything. Because we have all those old men that are creating wars in Africa. They will die soon. But if you invest in education then we'll be able to change Africa. That's what I'm asking. (Applause) So in order to do that, I founded a charter called Gua Africa, where we put kids in school. And now we have a couple in university. We have like 40 kids, ex-child soldiers mixed with anybody that we feel like we want to support. And I said "I'm going to put it in practice." And with the people that are going to follow me and help me do things. That's what I want to do to change, to make a difference in the world. Well now, my time is going, so I want to sing a song. But I'll ask you guys to stand up so we celebrate the life of a British aid worker called Emma McCune that made it possible for me to be here. I'm gonna sing this song, just to inspire you how this woman has made a difference. She came to my country and saw the importance of education. She said the only way to help Sudan is to invest in the women, educating them, educating the children, so that they could come and create a revolution in this complex society. So she even ended up marrying a commander from the SPLA. And she rescued over 150 child soldiers. One of them happened to be me now. And so at this moment I want to ask to celebrate Emma with me. Are you guys ready to celebrate Emma? Audience: Yes! Emmanuel Jal: All right. ♫ This one goes to Emma McCune ♫ ♫ Angel to rescue came one afternoon ♫ ♫ I'm here because you rescued me ♫ ♫ I'm proud to carry your legacy ♫ ♫ Thank you. Bless you. R.I.P. ♫ ♫ What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? What would I be? ♫ ♫ What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ Another starving refugee ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? Yeah! ♫ ♫ Yeah! Yeah! ♫ ♫ You would have seen my face on the telly ♫ ♫ Fat hungry belly ♫ ♫ Flies in my eyes, head too big for my size ♫ ♫ Just another little starving child ♫ ♫ Running around in Africa, born to be wild ♫ ♫ Praise God, praise the Almighty ♫ ♫ for sending an angel to rescue me ♫ ♫ I got a reason for being on this Earth ♫ ♫ 'Cause I know more than many what a life is worth ♫ ♫ Now that I got a chance to stand my ground ♫ ♫ I'm gonna run over mountains, leaps and bounds ♫ ♫ I ain't an angel, hope I'll be one soon ♫ ♫ And if I am, I wanna be like Emma McCune ♫ ♫ Me! What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ Another starving refugee ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? Yeah! Yeah!♫ ♫ Yeah, Yeah! ♫ ♫ I would have probably died from starvation ♫ ♫ Or some other wretched disease ♫ ♫ I would have grown up with no education ♫ ♫ Just another refugee ♫ ♫ I stand here because somebody cared ♫ ♫ I stand here because somebody dared ♫ ♫ I know there is a lot of Emmas out there ♫ ♫ Who is willing and trying to save a life of a child ♫ ♫ What would I be? Me! ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ Another starving refugee ♫ ♫ I remember the time when I was small ♫ ♫ When I couldn't read or write at all ♫ ♫ Now I'm all grown up, I got my education ♫ ♫ The sky is the limit and I can't be stopped by no one ♫ ♫ How I prayed for this day to come ♫ ♫ And I pray that the world find wisdom ♫ ♫ To give the poor in need some assistance ♫ ♫ Instead of putting up resistance, yeah ♫ ♫ Sitting and waiting for the politics to fix this ♫ ♫ It ain't gonna happen ♫ ♫ They're all sitting on they asses ♫ ♫ Popping champagne and sponging off the masses ♫ ♫ Coming from a refugee boy-soldier ♫ ♫ But I still got my dignity ♫ ♫ I gotta say it again ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me ♫ ♫ I'd be a corpse on the African plain ♫ Is there anybody who's here in the back, some love. Big scream for Emma everybody. Yeah! I'm gonna get crazy now. ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ Another starving refugee ♫ ♫ What would I be? ♫ ♫ If Emma never rescued me? ♫ ♫ Yeah, Yeah ♫ ♫ Yeah, I would have probably died from starvation ♫ ♫ Or some other wretched disease ♫ ♫ I would have grown up with no education ♫ ♫ Just another refugee ♫ (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Go save a life of a child. (Applause)

The puzzle of motivation

Dan Pink

{0: 'Dan Pink'}

{0: ['career analyst']}

{0: 'Bidding adieu to his last "real job" as Al Gore\'s speechwriter, Dan Pink went freelance to spark a right-brain revolution in the career marketplace. '}

2009-07-24

2009-08-24

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'ca', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fi', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'hy', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ka', 'kk', 'ko', 'ku', 'lt', 'lv', 'mk', 'mr', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'sv', 'ta', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['brain', 'business', 'creativity', 'motivation', 'science', 'social change', 'work']

{548: 'Are we in control of our own decisions?', 605: 'A kinder, gentler philosophy of success', 420: 'Why we make bad decisions', 2283: 'Forget the pecking order at work', 1706: 'What makes us feel good about our work?', 2474: 'The surprising habits of original thinkers'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation/

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.

I need to make a confession at the outset here. A little over 20 years ago, I did something that I regret, something that I'm not particularly proud of. Something that, in many ways, I wish no one would ever know, but here I feel kind of obliged to reveal. (Laughter) In the late 1980s, in a moment of youthful indiscretion, I went to law school. (Laughter) In America, law is a professional degree: after your university degree, you go on to law school. When I got to law school, I didn't do very well. To put it mildly, I didn't do very well. I, in fact, graduated in the part of my law school class that made the top 90% possible. (Laughter) Thank you. I never practiced law a day in my life; I pretty much wasn't allowed to. (Laughter) But today, against my better judgment, against the advice of my own wife, I want to try to dust off some of those legal skills — what's left of those legal skills. I don't want to tell you a story. I want to make a case. I want to make a hard-headed, evidence-based, dare I say lawyerly case, for rethinking how we run our businesses. So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, take a look at this. This is called the candle problem. Some of you might know it. It's created in 1945 by a psychologist named Karl Duncker. He created this experiment that is used in many other experiments in behavioral science. And here's how it works. Suppose I'm the experimenter. I bring you into a room. I give you a candle, some thumbtacks and some matches. And I say to you, "Your job is to attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table." Now what would you do? Many people begin trying to thumbtack the candle to the wall. Doesn't work. I saw somebody kind of make the motion over here — some people have a great idea where they light the match, melt the side of the candle, try to adhere it to the wall. It's an awesome idea. Doesn't work. And eventually, after five or ten minutes, most people figure out the solution, which you can see here. The key is to overcome what's called functional fixedness. You look at that box and you see it only as a receptacle for the tacks. But it can also have this other function, as a platform for the candle. The candle problem. I want to tell you about an experiment using the candle problem, done by a scientist named Sam Glucksberg, who is now at Princeton University, US, This shows the power of incentives. He gathered his participants and said: "I'm going to time you, how quickly you can solve this problem." To one group he said, "I'm going to time you to establish norms, averages for how long it typically takes someone to solve this sort of problem." To the second group he offered rewards. He said, "If you're in the top 25% of the fastest times, you get five dollars. If you're the fastest of everyone we're testing here today, you get 20 dollars." Now this is several years ago, adjusted for inflation, it's a decent sum of money for a few minutes of work. It's a nice motivator. Question: How much faster did this group solve the problem? Answer: It took them, on average, three and a half minutes longer. 3.5 min longer. This makes no sense, right? I mean, I'm an American. I believe in free markets. That's not how it's supposed to work, right? (Laughter) If you want people to perform better, you reward them. Right? Bonuses, commissions, their own reality show. Incentivize them. That's how business works. But that's not happening here. You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity. What's interesting about this experiment is that it's not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over again for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators — if you do this, then you get that — work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don't work or, often, they do harm. This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. I spent the last couple of years looking at the science of human motivation, particularly the dynamics of extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators. And I'm telling you, it's not even close. If you look at the science, there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. What's alarming here is that our business operating system — think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses, how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources— it's built entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks. That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn't work, often doesn't work, and often does harm. Let me show you. Glucksberg did another similar experiment, he presented the problem in a slightly different way, like this up here. Attach the candle to the wall so the wax doesn't drip onto the table. Same deal. You: we're timing for norms. You: we're incentivizing. What happened this time? This time, the incentivized group kicked the other group's butt. Why? Because when the tacks are out of the box, it's pretty easy isn't it? (Laughter) If-then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks, where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to. Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind; that's why they work in so many cases. So, for tasks like this, a narrow focus, where you just see the goal right there, zoom straight ahead to it, they work really well. But for the real candle problem, you don't want to be looking like this. The solution is on the periphery. You want to be looking around. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility. Let me tell you why this is so important. In western Europe, in many parts of Asia, in North America, in Australia, white-collar workers are doing less of this kind of work, and more of this kind of work. That routine, rule-based, left-brain work — certain kinds of accounting, financial analysis, computer programming — has become fairly easy to outsource, fairly easy to automate. Software can do it faster. Low-cost providers can do it cheaper. So what really matters are the more right-brained creative, conceptual kinds of abilities. Think about your own work. Think about your own work. Are the problems that you face, or even the problems we've been talking about here, do they have a clear set of rules, and a single solution? No. The rules are mystifying. The solution, if it exists at all, is surprising and not obvious. Everybody in this room is dealing with their own version of the candle problem. And for candle problems of any kind, in any field, those if-then rewards, the things around which we've built so many of our businesses, don't work! It makes me crazy. And here's the thing. This is not a feeling. Okay? I'm a lawyer; I don't believe in feelings. This is not a philosophy. I'm an American; I don't believe in philosophy. (Laughter) This is a fact — or, as we say in my hometown of Washington, D.C., a true fact. (Laughter) (Applause) Let me give you an example. Let me marshal the evidence here. I'm not telling a story, I'm making a case. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, some evidence: Dan Ariely, one of the great economists of our time, he and three colleagues did a study of some MIT students. They gave these MIT students a bunch of games, games that involved creativity, and motor skills, and concentration. And the offered them, for performance, three levels of rewards: small reward, medium reward, large reward. If you do really well you get the large reward, on down. What happened? As long as the task involved only mechanical skill bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. Okay? But once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance. Then they said, "Let's see if there's any cultural bias here. Let's go to Madurai, India and test it." Standard of living is lower. In Madurai, a reward that is modest in North American standards, is more meaningful there. Same deal. A bunch of games, three levels of rewards. What happens? People offered the medium level of rewards did no better than people offered the small rewards. But this time, people offered the highest rewards, they did the worst of all. In eight of the nine tasks we examined across three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance. Is this some kind of touchy-feely socialist conspiracy going on here? No, these are economists from MIT, from Carnegie Mellon, from the University of Chicago. Do you know who sponsored this research? The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. That's the American experience. Let's go across the pond to the London School of Economics, LSE, London School of Economics, alma mater of eleven Nobel Laureates in economics. Training ground for great economic thinkers like George Soros, and Friedrich Hayek, and Mick Jagger. (Laughter) Last month, just last month, economists at LSE looked at 51 studies of pay-for-performance plans, inside of companies. Here's what they said: "We find that financial incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance." There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And what worries me, as we stand here in the rubble of the economic collapse, is that too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. And if we really want to get out of this economic mess, if we really want high performance on those definitional tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things, to entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach. The good news is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, they're interesting, or part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses. I want to talk today only about autonomy. In the 20th century, we came up with this idea of management. Management did not emanate from nature. Management is not a tree, it's a television set. Somebody invented it. It doesn't mean it's going to work forever. Management is great. Traditional notions of management are great if you want compliance. But if you want engagement, self-direction works better. Some examples of some kind of radical notions of self-direction. You don't see a lot of it, but you see the first stirrings of something really interesting going on, what it means is paying people adequately and fairly, absolutely — getting the issue of money off the table, and then giving people lots of autonomy. Some examples. How many of you have heard of the company Atlassian? It looks like less than half. (Laughter) Atlassian is an Australian software company. And they do something incredibly cool. A few times a year they tell their engineers, "Go for the next 24 hours and work on anything you want, as long as it's not part of your regular job. Work on anything you want." Engineers use this time to come up with a cool patch for code, come up with an elegant hack. Then they present all of the stuff that they've developed to their teammates, to the rest of the company, in this wild and woolly all-hands meeting at the end of the day. Being Australians, everybody has a beer. They call them FedEx Days. Why? Because you have to deliver something overnight. It's pretty; not bad. It's a huge trademark violation, but it's pretty clever. (Laughter) That one day of intense autonomy has produced a whole array of software fixes that might never have existed. It's worked so well that Atlassian has taken it to the next level with 20% time — done, famously, at Google — where engineers can spend 20% of their time working on anything they want. They have autonomy over their time, their task, their team, their technique. Radical amounts of autonomy. And at Google, as many of you know, about half of the new products in a typical year are birthed during that 20% time: things like Gmail, Orkut, Google News. Let me give you an even more radical example of it: something called the Results Only Work Environment (the ROWE), created by two American consultants, in place at a dozen companies around North America. In a ROWE people don't have schedules. They show up when they want. They don't have to be in the office at a certain time, or any time. They just have to get their work done. How they do it, when they do it, where they do it, is totally up to them. Meetings in these kinds of environments are optional. What happens? Almost across the board, productivity goes up, worker engagement goes up, worker satisfaction goes up, turnover goes down. Autonomy, mastery and purpose, the building blocks of a new way of doing things. Some of you might look at this and say, "Hmm, that sounds nice, but it's Utopian." And I say, "Nope. I have proof." The mid-1990s, Microsoft started an encyclopedia called Encarta. They had deployed all the right incentives, They paid professionals to write and edit thousands of articles. Well-compensated managers oversaw the whole thing to make sure it came in on budget and on time. A few years later, another encyclopedia got started. Different model, right? Do it for fun. No one gets paid a cent, or a euro or a yen. Do it because you like to do it. Just 10 years ago, if you had gone to an economist, anywhere, "Hey, I've got these two different models for creating an encyclopedia. If they went head to head, who would win?" 10 years ago you could not have found a single sober economist anywhere on planet Earth who would have predicted the Wikipedia model. This is the titanic battle between these two approaches. This is the Ali-Frazier of motivation, right? This is the Thrilla in Manila. Intrinsic motivators versus extrinsic motivators. Autonomy, mastery and purpose, versus carrot and sticks, and who wins? Intrinsic motivation, autonomy, mastery and purpose, in a knockout. Let me wrap up. There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are a natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive— the drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter. And here's the best part. We already know this. The science confirms what we know in our hearts. So, if we repair this mismatch between science and business, if we bring our motivation, notions of motivation into the 21st century, if we get past this lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks, we can strengthen our businesses, we can solve a lot of those candle problems, and maybe, maybe — we can change the world. I rest my case. (Applause)

A demo of wireless electricity

Eric Giler

{0: 'Eric Giler'}

{0: ['wireless electrician']}

{0: 'As the CEO of MIT-inspired WiTricity, Eric Giler has a plan to beam electric power through the air to wirelessly power your laptop or recharge your car. You may never plug in again.'}

2009-07-23

2009-08-25

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'bs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'mk', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['engineering', 'entrepreneur', 'future', 'science', 'technology', 'infrastructure', 'electricity']

{512: 'A new ecosystem for electric cars', 566: 'A plug for smart power outlets', 457: 'Toy tiles that talk to each other', 1401: 'The missing link to renewable energy', 105: "The electricity metaphor for the web's future", 1704: 'A skateboard, with a boost'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_a_demo_of_wireless_electricity/

Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT's breakthrough version, WiTricity -- a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.

Early visions of wireless power actually were thought of by Nikola Tesla basically about 100 years ago. The thought that you wouldn't want to transfer electric power wirelessly, no one ever thought of that. They thought, "Who would use it if you didn't?" And so, in fact, he actually set about doing a variety of things. Built the Tesla coil. This tower was built on Long Island back at the beginning of the 1900s. And the idea was, it was supposed to be able to transfer power anywhere on Earth. We'll never know if this stuff worked. Actually, I think the Federal Bureau of Investigation took it down for security purposes, sometime in the early 1900s. But the one thing that did come out of electricity is that we love this stuff so much. I mean, think about how much we love this. If you just walk outside, there are trillions of dollars that have been invested in infrastructure around the world, putting up wires to get power from where it's created to where it's used. The other thing is, we love batteries. And for those of us that have an environmental element to us, there is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or a few feet of where there is very inexpensive power. So, before I got here, I thought, "You know, I am from North America. We do have a little bit of a reputation in the United States." So I thought I'd better look it up first. So definition number six is the North American definition of the word "suck." Wires suck, they really do. Think about it. Whether that's you in that picture or something under your desk. The other thing is, batteries suck too. And they really, really do. Do you ever wonder what happens to this stuff? 40 billion of these things built. This is what happens. They fall apart, they disintegrate, and they end up here. So when you talk about expensive power, the cost per kilowatt-hour to supply battery power to something is on the order of two to three hundred pounds. Think about that. The most expensive grid power in the world is thousandths of that. So fortunately, one of the other definitions of "suck" that was in there, it does create a vacuum. And nature really does abhor a vacuum. What happened back a few years ago was a group of theoretical physicists at MIT actually came up with this concept of transferring power over distance. Basically they were able to light a 60 watt light bulb at a distance of about two meters. It got about 50 percent of the efficiency — by the way, that's still a couple thousand times more efficient than a battery would be, to do the same thing. But were able to light that, and do it very successfully. This was actually the experiment. So you can see the coils were somewhat larger. The light bulb was a fairly simple task, from their standpoint. This all came from a professor waking up at night to the third night in a row that his wife's cellphone was beeping because it was running out of battery power. And he was thinking, "With all the electricity that's out there in the walls, why couldn't some of that just come into the phone so I could get some sleep?" And he actually came up with this concept of resonant energy transfer. But inside a standard transformer are two coils of wire. And those two coils of wire are really, really close to each other, and actually do transfer power magnetically and wirelessly, only over a very short distance. What Dr. Soljacic figured out how to do was separate the coils in a transformer to a greater distance than the size of those transformers using this technology, which is not dissimilar from the way an opera singer shatters a glass on the other side of the room. It's a resonant phenomenon for which he actually received a MacArthur Fellowship Award, which is nicknamed the Genius Award, last September, for his discovery. So how does it work? Imagine a coil. For those of you that are engineers, there's a capacitor attached to it too. And if you can cause that coil to resonate, what will happen is it will pulse at alternating current frequencies — at a fairly high frequency, by the way. And if you can bring another device close enough to the source, that will only work at exactly that frequency, you can actually get them to do what's called strongly couple, and transfer magnetic energy between them. And then what you do is, you start out with electricity, turn it into magnetic field, take that magnetic field, turn it back into electricity, and then you can use it. Number one question I get asked. I mean, people are worried about cellphones being safe. You know. What about safety? The first thing is this is not a "radiative" technology. It doesn't radiate. There aren't electric fields here. It's a magnetic field. It stays within either what we call the source, or within the device. And actually, the magnetic fields we're using are basically about the same as the Earth's magnetic field. We live in a magnetic field. And the other thing that's pretty cool about the technology is that it only transfers energy to things that work at exactly the same frequency. And it's virtually impossible in nature to make that happen. Then finally we have governmental bodies everywhere that will regulate everything we do. They've pretty much set field exposure limits, which all of the things in the stuff I'll show you today sort of sit underneath those guidelines. Mobile electronics. Home electronics. Those cords under your desk, I bet everybody here has something that looks like that or those batteries. There are industrial applications. And then finally, electric vehicles. These electric cars are beautiful. But who is going to want to plug them in? Imagine driving into your garage — we've built a system to do this — you drive into your garage, and the car charges itself, because there is a mat on the floor that's plugged into the wall. And it actually causes your car to charge safely and efficiently. Then there's all kinds of other applications. Implanted medical devices, where people don't have to die of infections anymore if you can seal the thing up. Credit cards, robot vacuum cleaners. So what I'd like to do is take a couple minutes and show you, actually, how it works. And what I'm going to do is to show you pretty much what's here. You've got a coil. That coil is connected to an R.F. amplifier that creates a high-frequency oscillating magnetic field. We put one on the back of the television set. By the way, I do make it look a little bit easier than it is. There's lots of electronics and secret sauce and all kinds of intellectual property that go into it. But then what's going to happen is, it will create a field. It will cause one to get created on the other side. And if the demo gods are willing, in about 10 seconds or so we should see it. The 10 seconds actually are because we — I don't know if any of you have ever thought about plugging a T.V. in when you use just a cord. Generally, you have to go over and hit the button. So I thought we put a little computer in it that has to wake up to tell it to do that. So, I'll plug that in. It creates a magnetic field here. It causes one to be created out here. And as I said, in sort of about 10 seconds we should start to see ... This is a commercially — (Applause) available color television set. Imagine, you get one of these things. You want to hang them on the wall. How many people want to hang them on the wall? Think about it. You don't want those ugly cords coming down. Imagine if you can get rid of it. The other thing I wanted to talk about was safety. So, there is nothing going on. I'm okay. And I'll do it again, just for safety's sake. Almost immediately, though, people ask, "How small can you make this? Can you make this small enough?" Because remember Dr. Soljacic's original idea was his wife's cellphone beeping. So, I wanted to show you something. We're an equal opportunity designer of this sort of thing. This a Google G1. You know, it's the latest thing that's come out. It runs the Android operating system. I think I heard somebody talk about that before. It's odd. It has a battery. It also has coiled electronics that WiTricity has put into the back of it. And if I can get the camera — okay, great — you'll see, as I get sort of close... you're looking at a cellphone powered completely wirelessly. (Applause) And I know some of you are Apple aficionados. So, you know they don't make it easy at Apple to get inside their phones. So we put a little sleeve on the back, but we should be able to get this guy to wake up too. And those of you that have an iPhone recognize the green center. (Applause) And Nokia as well. You'll see that what we did there is put a little thing in the back, to do that, and it probably beeps, actually, as it goes on as well. But they typically use it to light up the screen. So, imagine these things could go ... they could go in your ceiling. They could go in the floor. They could go, actually, underneath your desktop. So that when you walk in or you come in from home, if you carry a purse, it works in your purse. You never have to worry about plugging these things in again. And think of what that would do for you. So I think in closing, sort of in the immortal visions of The New Yorker magazine, I thought I'd put up one more slide. And for those of you who can't read it, it says, "It does appear to be some kind of wireless technology." So, thank you very much. (Applause)

Let my dataset change your mindset

Hans Rosling

{0: 'Hans Rosling'}

{0: ['global health expert; data visionary']}

{0: 'In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development -- with some surprisingly good news -- snaps into sharp focus.'}

2009-06-04

2009-08-27

TED@State

en

['ar', 'bg', 'bs', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'et', 'fa', 'fr', 'fr-ca', 'he', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sr', 'sv', 'th', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['medicine', 'presentation', 'science', 'technology', 'data', 'statistics', 'global development', 'math', 'global issues', 'Asia', 'visualizations', 'Africa']

{92: "The best stats you've ever seen", 584: 'New rules for rebuilding a broken nation', 598: "4 environmental 'heresies'", 140: 'New insights on poverty', 974: "The good news of the decade? We're winning the war against child mortality", 912: 'Global population growth, box by box'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_let_my_dataset_change_your_mindset/

Talking at the US State Department this summer, Hans Rosling uses his fascinating data-bubble software to burst myths about the developing world. Look for new analysis on China and the post-bailout world, mixed with classic data shows.

I'm going to talk about your mindset. Does your mindset correspond to my dataset? (Laughter) If not, one or the other needs upgrading, isn't it? When I talk to my students about global issues, and I listen to them in the coffee break, they always talk about "we" and "them." And when they come back into the lecture room I ask them, "What do you mean with "we" and "them"? "Oh, it's very easy. It's the western world and it's the developing world," they say. "We learned it in college." And what is the definition then? "The definition? Everyone knows," they say. But then you know, I press them like this. So one girl said, very cleverly, "It's very easy. Western world is a long life in a small family. Developing world is a short life in a large family." And I like that definition, because it enabled me to transfer their mindset into the dataset. And here you have the dataset. So, you can see that what we have on this axis here is size of family. One, two, three, four, five children per woman on this axis. And here, length of life, life expectancy, 30, 40, 50. Exactly what the students said was their concept about the world. And really this is about the bedroom. Whether the man and woman decide to have small family, and take care of their kids, and how long they will live. It's about the bathroom and the kitchen. If you have soap, water and food, you know, you can live long. And the students were right. It wasn't that the world consisted — the world consisted here, of one set of countries over here, which had large families and short life. Developing world. And we had one set of countries up there which was the western world. They had small families and long life. And you are going to see here the amazing thing that has happened in the world during my lifetime. Then the developing countries applied soap and water, vaccination. And all the developing world started to apply family planning. And partly to USA who help to provide technical advice and investment. And you see all the world moves over to a two child family, and a life with 60 to 70 years. But some countries remain back in this area here. And you can see we still have Afghanistan down here. We have Liberia. We have Congo. So we have countries living there. So the problem I had is that the worldview that my students had corresponds to reality in the world the year their teachers were born. (Laughter) (Applause) And we, in fact, when we have played this over the world. I was at the Global Health Conference here in Washington last week, and I could see the wrong concept even active people in United States had, that they didn't realize the improvement of Mexico there, and China, in relation to United States. Look here when I move them forward. Here we go. They catch up. There's Mexico. It's on par with United States in these two social dimensions. There was less than five percent of the specialists in Global Health that was aware of this. This great nation, Mexico, has the problem that arms are coming from North, across the borders, so they had to stop that, because they have this strange relationship to the United States, you know. But if I would change this axis here, I would instead put income per person. Income per person. I can put that here. And we will then see a completely different picture. By the way, I'm teaching you how to use our website, Gapminder World, while I'm correcting this, because this is a free utility on the net. And when I now finally got it right, I can go back 200 years in history. And I can find United States up there. And I can let the other countries be shown. And now I have income per person on this axis. And United States only had some, one, two thousand dollars at that time. And the life expectancy was 35 to 40 years, on par with Afghanistan today. And what has happened in the world, I will show now. This is instead of studying history for one year at university. You can watch me for one minute now and you'll see the whole thing. (Laughter) You can see how the brown bubbles, which is west Europe, and the yellow one, which is the United States, they get richer and richer and also start to get healthier and healthier. And this is now 100 years ago, where the rest of the world remains behind. Here we come. And that was the influenza. That's why we are so scared about flu, isn't it? It's still remembered. The fall of life expectancy. And then we come up. Not until independence started. Look here You have China over there, you have India over there, and this is what has happened. Did you note there, that we have Mexico up there? Mexico is not at all on par with the United States, but they are quite close. And especially, it's interesting to see China and the United States during 200 years, because I have my oldest son now working for Google, after Google acquired this software. Because in fact, this is child labor. My son and his wife sat in a closet for many years and developed this. And my youngest son, who studied Chinese in Beijing. So they come in with the two perspectives I have, you know? And my son, youngest son who studied in Beijing, in China, he got a long-term perspective. Whereas when my oldest son, who works for Google, he should develop by quarter, or by half-year. Or Google is quite generous, so he can have one or two years to go. But in China they look generation after generation because they remember the very embarrassing period, for 100 years, when they went backwards. And then they would remember the first part of last century, which was really bad, and we could go by this so-called Great Leap Forward. But this was 1963. Mao Tse-Tung eventually brought health to China, and then he died, and then Deng Xiaoping started this amazing move forward. Isn't it strange to see that the United States first grew the economy, and then gradually got rich? Whereas China could get healthy much earlier, because they applied the knowledge of education, nutrition, and then also benefits of penicillin and vaccines and family planning. And Asia could have social development before they got the economic development. So to me, as a public health professor, it's not strange that all these countries grow so fast now. Because what you see here, what you see here is the flat world of Thomas Friedman, isn't it. It's not really, really flat. But the middle income countries — and this is where I suggest to my students, stop using the concept "developing world." Because after all, talking about the developing world is like having two chapters in the history of the United States. The last chapter is about present, and president Obama, and the other is about the past, where you cover everything from Washington to Eisenhower. Because Washington to Eisenhower, that is what we find in the developing world. We could actually go to Mayflower to Eisenhower, and that would be put together into a developing world, which is rightly growing its cities in a very amazing way, which have great entrepreneurs, but also have the collapsing countries. So, how could we make better sense about this? Well, one way of trying is to see whether we could look at income distribution. This is the income distribution of peoples in the world, from $1. This is where you have food to eat. These people go to bed hungry. And this is the number of people. This is $10, whether you have a public or a private health service system. This is where you can provide health service for your family and school for your children, and this is OECD countries: Green, Latin America, East Europe. This is East Asia, and the light blue there is South Asia. And this is how the world changed. It changed like this. Can you see how it's growing? And how hundreds of millions and billions is coming out of poverty in Asia? And it goes over here? And I come now, into projections, but I have to stop at the door of Lehman Brothers there, you know, because — (Laughter) that's where the projections are not valid any longer. Probably the world will do this. and then it will continue forward like this. But more or less, this is what will happen, and we have a world which cannot be looked upon as divided. We have the high income countries here, with the United States as a leading power; we have the emerging economies in the middle, which provide a lot of the funding for the bailout; and we have the low income countries here. Yeah, this is a fact that from where the money comes, they have been saving, you know, over the last decade. And here we have the low income countries where entrepreneurs are. And here we have the countries in collapse and war, like Afghanistan, Somalia, parts of Congo, Darfur. We have all this at the same time. That's why it's so problematic to describe what has happened in the developing world. Because it's so different, what has happened there. And that's why I suggest a slightly different approach of what you would call it. And you have huge differences within countries also. I heard that your departments here were by regions. Here you have Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Arab states, East Europe, Latin America, and OECD. And on this axis, GDP. And on this, heath, child survival, and it doesn't come as a surprise that Africa south of Sahara is at the bottom. But when I split it, when I split it into country bubbles, the size of the bubbles here is the population. Then you see Sierra Leone and Mauritius, completely different. There is such a difference within Sub-Saharan Africa. And I can split the others. Here is the South Asian, Arab world. Now all your different departments. East Europe, Latin America, and OECD countries. And here were are. We have a continuum in the world. We cannot put it into two parts. It is Mayflower down here. It is Washington here, building, building countries. It's Lincoln here, advancing them. It's Eisenhower bringing modernity into the countries. And then it's United States today, up here. And we have countries all this way. Now, this is the important thing of understanding how the world has changed. At this point I decided to make a pause. (Laughter) And it is my task, on behalf of the rest of the world, to convey a thanks to the U.S. taxpayers, for Demographic Health Survey. Many are not aware of — no, this is not a joke. This is very serious. It is due to USA's continuous sponsoring during 25 years of the very good methodology for measuring child mortality that we have a grasp of what's happening in the world. (Applause) And it is U.S. government at its best, without advocacy, providing facts, that it's useful for the society. And providing data free of charge on the internet, for the world to use. Thank you very much. Quite the opposite of the World Bank, who compiled data with government money, tax money, and then they sell it to add a little profit, in a very inefficient, Gutenberg way. (Applause) But the people doing that at the World Bank are among the best in the world. And they are highly skilled professionals. It's just that we would like to upgrade our international agencies to deal with the world in the modern way, as we do. And when it comes to free data and transparency, United States of America is one of the best. And that doesn't come easy from the mouth of a Swedish public health professor. (Laughter) And I'm not paid to come here, no. I would like to show you what happens with the data, what we can show with this data. Look here. This is the world. With income down there and child mortality. And what has happened in the world? Since 1950, during the last 50 years we have had a fall in child mortality. And it is the DHS that makes it possible to know this. And we had an increase in income. And the blue former developing countries are mixing up with the former industrialized western world. We have a continuum. But we still have, of course, Congo, up there. We still have as poor countries as we have had, always, in history. And that's the bottom billion, where we've heard today about a completely new approach to do it. And how fast has this happened? Well, MDG 4. The United States has not been so eager to use MDG 4. But you have been the main sponsor that has enabled us to measure it, because it's the only child mortality that we can measure. And we used to say that it should fall four percent per year. Let's see what Sweden has done. We used to boast about fast social progress. That's where we were, 1900. 1900, Sweden was there. Same child mortality as Bangladesh had, 1990, though they had lower income. They started very well. They used the aid well. They vaccinated the kids. They get better water. And they reduced child mortality, with an amazing 4.7 percent per year. They beat Sweden. I run Sweden the same 16 year period. Second round, it's Sweden, 1916, against Egypt, 1990. Here we go. Once again the USA is part of the reason here. They get safe water, they get food for the poor, and they get malaria eradicated. 5.5 percent. They are faster than the millennium development goal. And third chance for Sweden, against Brazil here. Brazil here has amazing social improvement over the last 16 years, and they go faster than Sweden. This means that the world is converging. The middle income countries, the emerging economy, they are catching up. They are moving to cities, where they also get better assistance for that. Well the Swedish students protest at this point. They say, "This is not fair, because these countries had vaccines and antibiotics that were not available for Sweden. We have to do real-time competition." Okay. I give you Singapore, the year I was born. Singapore had twice the child mortality of Sweden. It's the most tropical country in the world, a marshland on the equator. And here we go. It took a little time for them to get independent. But then they started to grow their economy. And they made the social investment. They got away malaria. They got a magnificent health system that beat both the U.S. and Sweden. We never thought it would happen that they would win over Sweden! (Applause) All these green countries are achieving millennium development goals. These yellow are just about to be doing this. These red are the countries that doesn't do it, and the policy has to be improved. Not simplistic extrapolation. We have to really find a way of supporting those countries in a better way. We have to respect the middle income countries on what they are doing. And we have to fact-base the whole way we look at the world. This is dollar per person. This is HIV in the countries. The blue is Africa. The size of the bubbles is how many are HIV affected. You see the tragedy in South Africa there. About 20 percent of the adult population are infected. And in spite of them having quite a high income, they have a huge number of HIV infected. But you also see that there are African countries down here. There is no such thing as an HIV epidemic in Africa. There's a number, five to 10 countries in Africa that has the same level as Sweden and United States. And there are others who are extremely high. And I will show you that what has happened in one of the best countries, with the most vibrant economy in Africa and a good governance, Botswana. They have a very high level. It's coming down. But now it's not falling, because there, with help from PEPFAR, it's working with treatment. And people are not dying. And you can see it's not that easy, that it is war which caused this. Because here, in Congo, there is war. And here, in Zambia, there is peace. And it's not the economy. Richer country has a little higher. If I split Tanzania in its income, the richer 20 percent in Tanzania has more HIV than the poorest one. And it's really different within each country. Look at the provinces of Kenya. They are very different. And this is the situation you see. It's not deep poverty. It's the special situation, probably of concurrent sexual partnership among part of the heterosexual population in some countries, or some parts of countries, in south and eastern Africa. Don't make it Africa. Don't make it a race issue. Make it a local issue. And do prevention at each place, in the way it can be done there. So to just end up, there are things of suffering in the one billion poorest, which we don't know. Those who live beyond the cellphone, those who have yet to see a computer, those who have no electricity at home. This is the disease, Konzo, I spent 20 years elucidating in Africa. It's caused by fast processing of toxic cassava root in famine situation. It's similar to the pellagra epidemic in Mississippi in the '30s. It's similar to other nutritional diseases. It will never affect a rich person. We have seen it here in Mozambique. This is the epidemic in Mozambique. This is an epidemic in northern Tanzania. You never heard about the disease. But it's much more than Ebola that has been affected by this disease. Cause crippling throughout the world. And over the last two years, 2,000 people has been crippled in the southern tip of Bandundu region. That used to be the illegal diamond trade, from the UNITA-dominated area in Angola. That has now disappeared, and they are now in great economic problem. And one week ago, for the first time, there were four lines on the Internet. Don't get confused of the progress of the emerging economies and the great capacity of people in the middle income countries and in peaceful low income countries. There is still mystery in one billion. And we have to have more concepts than just developing countries and developing world. We need a new mindset. The world is converging, but — but — but not the bottom billion. They are still as poor as they've ever been. It's not sustainable, and it will not happen around one superpower. But you will remain one of the most important superpowers, and the most hopeful superpower, for the time to be. And this institution will have a very crucial role, not for United States, but for the world. So you have a very bad name, State Department. This is not the State Department. It's the World Department. And we have a high hope in you. Thank you very much. (Applause)

A multimedia theatrical adventure

Natasha Tsakos

{0: 'Natasha Tsakos'}

{0: ['artist']}

{0: 'The president and founder of NTiD inc., Natasha Tsakos brings a creative, innovative vision, and the art of orchestrating and synchronizing various disciplines, to the execution of high-leveled productions.'}

2009-02-06

2009-08-28

TED2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hy', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'my', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'th', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['media', 'performance', 'performance art', 'storytelling', 'theater', 'animation']

{347: 'Once upon a time, my mother ...', 60: 'Four American characters', 527: 'A one-woman global village', 1653: 'Be an artist, right now!', 606: 'Art that looks back at you', 1379: 'The clues to a great story'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/natasha_tsakos_a_multimedia_theatrical_adventure/

Natasha Tsakos presents part of her one-woman, multimedia show, "Upwake." As the character Zero, she blends dream and reality with an inventive virtual world projected around her in 3D animation and electric sound.

I love theater. I love the idea that you can transform, become somebody else and look at life with a completely new perspective. I love the idea that people will sit in one room for a couple of hours and listen. The idea that in that room at that moment, everyone, regardless of their age, their gender, their race, their color, their religion, comes together. At that moment, we transcend space and time together. Theater awakens our senses and opens the door to our imagination. And our ability to imagine is what makes us explorers. Our ability to imagine makes us inventors and creators and unique. I was commissioned in 2003 to create an original show, and began developing "Upwake." "Upwake" tells the story of Zero, a modern-day business man, going to work with his life in a suitcase, stuck between dream and reality and not able to decipher the two. I wanted "Upwake" to have the same audiovisual qualities as a movie would. And I wanted to let my imagination run wild. So I began drawing the story that was moving in my head. If Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of "The Little Prince," were here, he would have drawn three holes inside that box and told you your sheep was inside. Because, if you look closely enough, things will begin to appear. This is not a box; these are the renderings of my imagination from head to paper to screen to life. In "Upwake" buildings wear suits, Zero tap dances on a giant keyboard, clones himself with a scanner, tames and whips the computer mice, sails away into dreamscape from a single piece of paper and launches into space. I wanted to create environments that moved and morphed like an illusionist. Go from one world to another in a second. I wanted to have humor, beauty, simplicity and complexity and use metaphors to suggest ideas. At the beginning of the show, for example, Zero deejays dream and reality. Technology is an instrument that allowed me to manifest my visions in high definition, live, on stage. So today, I would like to talk to you about the relationship between theater and technology. Let's start with technology. (Fuse blowing) All right. Let's start with theater. (Laughter) (Buzzing) (Click, click, bang) (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you. "Upwake" lasts 52 minutes and 54 seconds. I project 3D animation on all the four surfaces of the stage which I interact with. The use of animation and projection was a process of discovery. I didn't use it as a special effect, but as a partner on stage. There are no special effects in "Upwake," no artifice. It's as lavish and intricate as it is simple and minimal. Three hundred and forty-four frames, four and a half years and commissions later, what started as a one person show became a collaborative work of nineteen most talented artists. And here are some excerpts. (Applause) Thank you. So this is, relatively, a new show that we're now beginning to tour. And in Austin, Texas, I was asked to give small demonstrations in schools during the afternoon. When I arrived at one of the schools, I certainly did not expect this: Six hundred kids, packed in a gymnasium, waiting. I was a little nervous performing without animation, costume — really — and make-up. But the teachers came to me afterward and told me they hadn't seen the kids that attentive. And I think the reason why is that I was able to use their language and their reality in order to transport them into another. Something happened along the way. Zero became a person and not just a character in a play. Zero does not speak, is neither man nor woman. Zero is Zero, a little hero of the 21st Century, and Zero can touch so many more people than I possibly could. It's as much about bringing new disciplines inside this box as it is about taking theater out of its box. As a street performer, I have learned that everybody wants to connect. And that usually, if you're a bit extraordinary, if you're not exactly of human appearance, then people will feel inclined to participate and to feel out loud. It's as though you made something resonate within them. It's as though the mystery of the person they're interacting with and connecting allows them to be themselves just a bit more. Because through your mask, they let theirs go. Being human is an art form. I know theater can improve the quality of people's lives, and I know theater can heal. I've worked as a doctor clown in a hospital for two years. I have seen sick kids and sad parents and doctors be lifted and transported in moments of pure joy. I know theater unites us. Zero wants to engage the generation of today and tomorrow, tell various stories through different mediums. Comic books. Quantum physics video games. And Zero wants to go to the moon. In 2007, Zero launched a green campaign, suggesting his friends and fans to turn off their electricity every Sunday from 7:53 to 8:00 p.m. The idea is simple, basic. It's not original, but it's important, and it's important to participate. There is a revolution. It's a human and technological revolution. It's motion and emotion. It's information. It's visual. It's musical. It's sensorial. It's conceptual. It's universal. It's beyond words and numbers. It's happening. The natural progression of science and art finding each other to better touch and define the human experience. There is a revolution in the way that we think, in the way that we share, and the way that we express our stories, our evolution. This is a time of communication, connection and creative collaboration. Charlie Chaplin innovated motion pictures and told stories through music, silence, humor and poetry. He was social, and his character, The Tramp, spoke to millions. He gave entertainment, pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most. We are not here to question the possible; we are here to challenge the impossible. In the science of today, we become artists. In the art of today, we become scientists. We design our world. We invent possibilities. We teach, touch and move. It is now that we can use the diversity of our talents to create intelligent, meaningful and extraordinary work. It's now. (Ringing) Thank you. (Applause)

One seed at a time, protecting the future of food

Cary Fowler

{0: 'Cary Fowler'}

{0: ['biodiversity archivist']}

{0: 'Biodiversity warrior Cary Fowler wants to save the world from agricultural collapse, one seed at a time. '}

2009-07-23

2009-08-31

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'gl', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sv', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['agriculture', 'biodiversity', 'climate change', 'disaster relief', 'environment', 'food', 'garden', 'plants', 'ecology', 'Anthropocene']

{556: "Why we're storing billions of seeds", 537: 'We need to feed the whole world', 1412: 'The other inconvenient truth', 53276: 'How corn conquered the world', 2241: 'The case for engineering our food', 945: 'Let the environment guide our development'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food/

The wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change. Cary Fowler takes us inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vast treasury buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse group of food-crop seeds ... for whatever tomorrow may bring.

I've been fascinated with crop diversity for about 35 years from now, ever since I stumbled across a fairly obscure academic article by a guy named Jack Harlan. And he described the diversity within crops — all the different kinds of wheat and rice and such — as a genetic resource. And he said, "This genetic resource," — and I'll never forget the words — "stands between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine." I figured he was either really on to something, or he was one of these academic nutcases. So, I looked a little further, and what I figured out was that he wasn't a nutcase. He was the most respected scientist in the field. What he understood was that biological diversity — crop diversity — is the biological foundation of agriculture. It's the raw material, the stuff, of evolution in our agricultural crops. Not a trivial matter. And he also understood that that foundation was crumbling, literally crumbling. That indeed, a mass extinction was underway in our fields, in our agricultural system. And that this mass extinction was taking place with very few people noticing and even fewer caring. Now, I know that many of you don't stop to think about diversity in agricultural systems and, let's face it, that's logical. You don't see it in the newspaper every day. And when you go into the supermarket, you certainly don't see a lot of choices there. You see apples that are red, yellow, and green and that's about it. So, let me show you a picture of one form of diversity. Here's some beans, and there are about 35 or 40 different varieties of beans on this picture. Now, imagine each one of these varieties as being distinct from another about the same way as a poodle from a Great Dane. If I wanted to show you a picture of all the dog breeds in the world, and I put 30 or 40 of them on a slide, it would take about 10 slides because there about 400 breeds of dogs in the world. But there are 35 to 40,000 different varieties of beans. So if I were to going to show you all the beans in the world, and I had a slide like this, and I switched it every second, it would take up my entire TED talk, and I wouldn't have to say anything. But the interesting thing is that this diversity — and the tragic thing is — that this diversity is being lost. We have about 200,000 different varieties of wheat, and we have about 2 to 400,000 different varieties of rice, but it's being lost. And I want to give you an example of that. It's a bit of a personal example, in fact. In the United States, in the 1800s — that's where we have the best data — farmers and gardeners were growing 7,100 named varieties of apples. Imagine that. 7,100 apples with names. Today, 6,800 of those are extinct, no longer to be seen again. I used to have a list of these extinct apples, and when I would go out and give a presentation, I would pass the list out in the audience. I wouldn't tell them what it was, but it was in alphabetical order, and I would tell them to look for their names, their family names, their mother's maiden name. And at the end of the speech, I would ask, "How many people have found a name?" And I never had fewer than two-thirds of an audience hold up their hand. And I said, "You know what? These apples come from your ancestors, and your ancestors gave them the greatest honor they could give them. They gave them their name. The bad news is they're extinct. The good news is a third of you didn't hold up your hand. Your apple's still out there. Find it. Make sure it doesn't join the list." So, I want to tell you that the piece of the good news is that the Fowler apple is still out there. And there's an old book back here, and I want to read a piece from it. This book was published in 1904. It's called "The Apples of New York" and this is the second volume. See, we used to have a lot of apples. And the Fowler apple is described in here — I hope this doesn't surprise you — as, "a beautiful fruit." (Laughter) I don't know if we named the apple or if the apple named us, but ... but, to be honest, the description goes on and it says that it "doesn't rank high in quality, however." And then he has to go even further. It sounds like it was written by an old school teacher of mine. "As grown in New York, the fruit usually fails to develop properly in size and quality and is, on the whole, unsatisfactory." (Laughter) And I guess there's a lesson to be learned here, and the lesson is: so why save it? I get this question all the time. Why don't we just save the best one? And there are a couple of answers to that question. One thing is that there is no such thing as a best one. Today's best variety is tomorrow's lunch for insects or pests or disease. The other thing is that maybe that Fowler apple or maybe a variety of wheat that's not economical right now has disease or pest resistance or some quality that we're going to need for climate change that the others don't. So it's not necessary, thank God, that the Fowler apple is the best apple in the world. It's just necessary or interesting that it might have one good, unique trait. And for that reason, we ought to be saving it. Why? As a raw material, as a trait we can use in the future. Think of diversity as giving us options. And options, of course, are exactly what we need in an era of climate change. I want to show you two slides, but first, I want to tell you that we've been working at the Global Crop Diversity Trust with a number of scientists — particularly at Stanford and University of Washington — to ask the question: What's going to happen to agriculture in an era of climate change and what kind of traits and characteristics do we need in our agricultural crops to be able to adapt to this? In short, the answer is that in the future, in many countries, the coldest growing seasons are going to be hotter than anything those crops have seen in the past. The coldest growing seasons of the future, hotter than the hottest of the past. Is agriculture adapted to that? I don't know. Can fish play the piano? If agriculture hasn't experienced that, how could it be adapted? Now, the highest concentration of poor and hungry people in the world, and the place where climate change, ironically, is going to be the worst is in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. So I've picked two examples here, and I want to show you. In the histogram before you now, the blue bars represent the historical range of temperatures, going back about far as we have temperature data. And you can see that there's some difference between one growing season and another. Some are colder, some are hotter and it's a bell shaped curve. The tallest bar is the average temperature for the most number of growing seasons. In the future, later this century, it's going to look like the red, totally out of bounds. The agricultural system and, more importantly, the crops in the field in India have never experienced this before. Here's South Africa. The same story. But the most interesting thing about South Africa is we don't have to wait for 2070 for there to be trouble. By 2030, if the maize, or corn, varieties, which is the dominant crop — 50 percent of the nutrition in Southern Africa are still in the field — in 2030, we'll have a 30 percent decrease in production of maize because of the climate change already in 2030. 30 percent decrease of production in the context of increasing population, that's a food crisis. It's global in nature. We will watch children starve to death on TV. Now, you may say that 20 years is a long way off. It's two breeding cycles for maize. We have two rolls of the dice to get this right. We have to get climate-ready crops in the field, and we have to do that rather quickly. Now, the good news is that we have conserved. We have collected and conserved a great deal of biological diversity, agricultural diversity, mostly in the form of seed, and we put it in seed banks, which is a fancy way of saying a freezer. If you want to conserve seed for a long term and you want to make it available to plant breeders and researchers, you dry it and then you freeze it. Unfortunately, these seed banks are located around the world in buildings and they're vulnerable. Disasters have happened. In recent years we lost the gene bank, the seed bank in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can guess why. In Rwanda, in the Solomon Islands. And then there are just daily disasters that take place in these buildings, financial problems and mismanagement and equipment failures, and all kinds of things, and every time something like this happens, it means extinction. We lose diversity. And I'm not talking about losing diversity in the same way that you lose your car keys. I'm talking about losing it in the same way that we lost the dinosaurs: actually losing it, never to be seen again. So, a number of us got together and decided that, you know, enough is enough and we need to do something about that and we need to have a facility that can really offer protection for our biological diversity of — maybe not the most charismatic diversity. You don't look in the eyes of a carrot seed quite in the way you do a panda bear, but it's very important diversity. So we needed a really safe place, and we went quite far north to find it. To Svalbard, in fact. This is above mainland Norway. You can see Greenland there. That's at 78 degrees north. It's as far as you can fly on a regularly scheduled airplane. It's a remarkably beautiful landscape. I can't even begin to describe it to you. It's otherworldly, beautiful. We worked with the Norwegian government and with the NorGen, the Norwegian Genetic Resources Program, to design this facility. What you see is an artist's conception of this facility, which is built in a mountain in Svalbard. The idea of Svalbard was that it's cold, so we get natural freezing temperatures. But it's remote. It's remote and accessible so it's safe and we don't depend on mechanical refrigeration. This is more than just an artist's dream, it's now a reality. And this next picture shows it in context, in Svalbard. And here's the front door of this facility. When you open up the front door, this is what you're looking at. It's pretty simple. It's a hole in the ground. It's a tunnel, and you go into the tunnel, chiseled in solid rock, about 130 meters. There are now a couple of security doors, so you won't see it quite like this. Again, when you get to the back, you get into an area that's really my favorite place. I think of it as sort of a cathedral. And I know that this tags me as a bit of a nerd, but ... (Laughter) Some of the happiest days of my life have been spent ... (Laughter) in this place there. (Applause) If you were to walk into one of these rooms, you would see this. It's not very exciting, but if you know what's there, it's pretty emotional. We have now about 425,000 samples of unique crop varieties. There's 70,000 samples of different varieties of rice in this facility right now. About a year from now, we'll have over half a million samples. We're going up to over a million, and someday we'll basically have samples — about 500 seeds — of every variety of agricultural crop that can be stored in a frozen state in this facility. This is a backup system for world agriculture. It's a backup system for all the seed banks. Storage is free. It operates like a safety deposit box. Norway owns the mountain and the facility, but the depositors own the seed. And if anything happens, then they can come back and get it. This particular picture that you see shows the national collection of the United States, of Canada, and an international institution from Syria. I think it's interesting in that this facility, I think, is almost the only thing I can think of these days where countries, literally, every country in the world — because we have seeds from every country in the world — all the countries of the world have gotten together to do something that's both long term, sustainable and positive. I can't think of anything else that's happened in my lifetime that way. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you that I have a solution for climate change, for the water crisis. Agriculture takes 70 percent of fresh water supplies on earth. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you that there is such a solution for those things, or the energy crisis, or world hunger, or peace in conflict. I can't look you in the eyes and tell you that I have a simple solution for that, but I can look you in the eyes and tell you that we can't solve any of those problems if we don't have crop diversity. Because I challenge you to think of an effective, efficient, sustainable solution to climate change if we don't have crop diversity. Because, quite literally, if agriculture doesn't adapt to climate change, neither will we. And if crops don't adapt to climate change, neither will agriculture, neither will we. So, this is not something pretty and nice to do. There are a lot of people who would love to have this diversity exist just for the existence value of it. It is, I agree, a nice thing to do. But it's a necessary thing to do. So, in a very real sense, I believe that we, as an international community, should get organized to complete the task. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a wonderful gift that Norway and others have given us, but it's not the complete answer. We need to collect the remaining diversity that's out there. We need to put it into good seed banks that can offer those seeds to researchers in the future. We need to catalog it. It's a library of life, but right now I would say we don't have a card catalog for it. And we need to support it financially. My big idea would be that while we think of it as commonplace to endow an art museum or endow a chair at a university, we really ought to be thinking about endowing wheat. 30 million dollars in an endowment would take care of preserving all the diversity in wheat forever. So we need to be thinking a little bit in those terms. And my final thought is that we, of course, by conserving wheat, rice, potatoes, and the other crops, we may, quite simply, end up saving ourselves. Thank you. (Applause)

Adjustable liquid-filled eyeglasses

Joshua Silver

{0: 'Joshua Silver'}

{0: ['optical innovator']}

{0: 'Atomic physicist Joshua Silver invented liquid-filled optical lenses to produce low-cost, adjustable glasses, giving sight to millions without access to an optometrist.'}

2009-07-23

2009-09-01

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['global issues', 'health', 'health care', 'innovation', 'invention', 'product design', 'sight', 'global development']

{613: 'How to make filthy water drinkable', 48: 'Everyday inventions', 285: 'A mobile fridge for vaccines', 57916: 'The function and fashion of eyeglasses', 1745: 'Why Google Glass?', 709: 'How low-cost eye care can be world-class'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_silver_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses/

Josh Silver delivers his brilliantly simple solution for correcting vision at the lowest cost possible -- adjustable, liquid-filled lenses. At TEDGlobal 2009, he demos his affordable eyeglasses and reveals his global plan to distribute them to a billion people in need by 2020.

I'm going to tell you about one of the world's largest problems and how it can be solved. I'd like to start with a little experiment. Could you put your hand up if you wear glasses or contact lenses, or you've had laser refractive surgery? Now, unfortunately, there are too many of you for me to do the statistics properly. But it looks like — I'm guessing — that it'll be about 60 percent of the room because that's roughly the fraction of developed world population that have some sort of vision correction. The World Health Organization estimates — well, they make various estimates of the number of people who need glasses — the lowest estimate is 150 million people. They also have an estimate of around a billion. But in fact, I would argue that we've just done an experiment here and now, which shows us that the global need for corrective eyewear is around half of any population. And the problem of poor vision, is actually not just a health problem, it's also an educational problem, and it's an economic problem, and it's a quality of life problem. Glasses are not very expensive. They're quite plentiful. The problem is, there aren't enough eye care professionals in the world to use the model of the delivery of corrective eyewear that we have in the developed world. There are just way too few eye care professionals. So this little slide here shows you an optometrist and the little blue person represents about 10,000 people and that's the ratio in the U.K. This is the ratio of optometrists to people in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, there are some countries in sub-Saharan Africa where there's one optometrist for eight million of the population. How do you do this? How do you solve this problem? I came up with a solution to this problem, and I came up with a solution based on adaptive optics for this. And the idea is you make eye glasses, and you adjust them yourself and that solves the problem. What I want to do is to show you that one can make a pair of glasses. I shall just show you how you make a pair of glasses. I shall pop this in my pocket. I'm short sighted. I look at the signs at the end, I can hardly see them. So — okay, I can now see that man running out there, and I can see that guy running out there. I've now made prescription eyewear to my prescription. Next step in my process. So, I've now made eye glasses to my prescription. Okay, so I've made these glasses and ... Okay, I've made the glasses to my prescription and ... ... I've just ... And I've now made some glasses. That's it. (Applause) Now, these aren't the only pair in the world. In fact, this technology's been evolving. I started working on it in 1985, and it's been evolving very slowly. There are about 30,000 in use now. And they're in fifteen countries. They're spread around the world. And I have a vision, which I'll share with you. I have a global vision for vision. And that vision is to try to get a billion people wearing the glasses they need by the year 2020. To do that — this is an early example of the technology. The technology is being further developed — the cost has to be brought down. This pair, in fact, these currently cost about 19 dollars. But the cost has to be brought right down. It has to be brought down because we're trying to serve populations who live on a dollar a day. How do you solve this problem? You start to get into detail. And on this slide, I'm basically explaining all the problems you have. How do you distribute? How do you work out how to fit the thing? How do you have people realizing that they have a vision problem? How do you deal with the industry? And the answer to that is research. What we've done is to set up the Center for Vision in the Developing World here in the university. If you want to know more, just come have a look at our website. Thank you. (Applause)

Post-crash, investing in a better world

Geoff Mulgan

{0: 'Geoff Mulgan'}

{0: ['social commentator']}

{0: 'Geoff Mulgan is director of the Young Foundation, a center for social innovation, social enterprise and public policy that pioneers ideas in fields such as aging, education and poverty reduction. He’s the founder of the think-tank Demos, and the author of "The Art of Public Strategy."'}

2009-07-24

2009-09-02

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['culture', 'design', 'health', 'social change', 'technology']

{157: 'Patient capitalism', 972: 'An economic reality check', 1791: 'The rise of the new global super-rich', 2055: 'Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming', 1374: 'The Earth is full', 2423: "Economic growth has stalled. Let's fix it"}

https://www.ted.com/talks/geoff_mulgan_post_crash_investing_in_a_better_world/

As we reboot the world's economy, Geoff Mulgan poses a question: Instead of sending bailout money to doomed old industries, why not use stimulus funds to bootstrap some new, socially responsible companies -- and make the world a little bit better?

It's hard to believe that it's less than a year since the extraordinary moment when the finance, the credit, which drives our economies froze. A massive cardiac arrest. The effect, the payback, perhaps, for years of vampire predators like Bernie Madoff, whom we saw earlier. Abuse of steroids, binging and so on. And it's only a few months since governments injected enormous sums of money to try and keep the whole system afloat. And we're now in a very strange sort of twilight zone, where no one quite knows what's worked, or what doesn't. We don't have any very clear maps, any compass to guide us. We don't know which experts to believe anymore. What I'm going to try and do is to give some pointers to what I think is the landscape on the other side of the crisis, what things we should be looking out for and how we can actually use the crisis. There's a definition of leadership which says, "It's the ability to use the smallest possible crisis for the biggest possible effect." And I want to talk about how we ensure that this crisis, which is by no means small, really is used to the full. I want to start just by saying a bit about where I'm coming from. I've got a very confused background which perhaps makes me appropriate for confused times. I've got a Ph.D. in Telecoms, as you can see. I trained briefly as a Buddhist monk under this guy. I've been a civil servant, and I've been in charge of policy for this guy as well. But what I want to talk about begins when I was at this city, this university, as a student. And then as now, it was a beautiful place of balls and punts, beautiful people, many of whom took to heart Ronald Reagan's comment that, "even if they say hard work doesn't do you any harm, why risk it?" But when I was here, a lot of my fellow teenagers were in a very different situation, leaving school at a time then of rapidly growing youth unemployment, and essentially hitting a brick wall in terms of their opportunities. And I spent quite a lot of time with them rather than in punts. And they were people who were not short of wit, or grace or energy, but they had no hope, no jobs, no prospects. And when people aren't allowed to be useful, they soon think that they're useless. And although that was great for the music business at the time, it wasn't much good for anything else. And ever since then, I've wondered why it is that capitalism is so amazingly efficient at some things, but so inefficient at others, why it's so innovative in some ways and so un-innovative in others. Now, since that time, we've actually been through an extraordinary boom, the longest boom ever in the history of this country. Unprecedented wealth and prosperity, but that growth hasn't always delivered what we needed. H.L. Mencken once said that, "to every complex problem, there is a simple solution and it's wrong." But I'm not saying growth is wrong, but it's very striking that throughout the years of growth, many things didn't get better. Rates of depression carried on up, right across the Western world. If you look at America, the proportion of Americans with no one to talk to about important things went up from a tenth to a quarter. We commuted longer to work, but as you can see from this graph, the longer you commute the less happy you're likely to be. And it became ever clearer that economic growth doesn't automatically translate into social growth or human growth. We're now at another moment when another wave of teenagers are entering a cruel job market. There will be a million unemployed young people here by the end of the year, thousands losing their jobs everyday in America. We've got to do whatever we can to help them, but we've also got to ask, I think, a more profound question of whether we use this crisis to jump forward to a different kind of economy that's more suited to human needs, to a better balance of economy and society. And I think one of the lessons of history is that even the deepest crises can be moments of opportunity. They bring ideas from the margins into the mainstream. They often lead to the acceleration of much-needed reforms. And you saw that in the '30s, when the Great Depression paved the way for Bretton Woods, welfare states and so on. And I think you can see around us now, some of the green shoots of a very different kind of economy and capitalism which could grow. You can see it in daily life. When times are hard, people have to do things for themselves, and right across the world, Oxford, Omaha, Omsk, you can see an extraordinary explosion of urban farming, people taking over land, taking over roofs, turning barges into temporary farms. And I'm a very small part of this. I have 60,000 of these things in my garden. A few of these. This is Atilla the hen. And I'm a very small part of a very large movement, which for some people is about survival, but is also about values, about a different kind of economy, which isn't so much about consumption and credit, but about things which matter to us. And everywhere too, you can see a proliferation of time banks and parallel currencies, people using smart technologies to link up all the resources freed up by the market — people, buildings, land — and linking them to whomever has got the most compelling needs. There's a similar story, I think, for governments. Ronald Reagan, again, said the two funniest sentences in the English language are, "I'm from the government. And I'm here to help." But I think last year when governments did step in, people were quite glad that they were there, that they did act. But now, a few months on, however good politicians are at swallowing frogs without pulling a face, as someone once put it, they can't hide their uncertainty. Because it's already clear how much of the enormous amount of money they put into the economy, really went into fixing the past, bailing out the banks, the car companies, not preparing us for the future. How much of the money is going into concrete and boosting consumption, not into solving the really profound problems we have to solve. And everywhere, as people think about the unprecedented sums which are being spent of our money and our children's money, now, in the depth of this crisis, they're asking: Surely, we should be using this with a longer-term vision to accelerate the shift to a green economy, to prepare for aging, to deal with some of the inequalities which scar countries like this and the United States rather than just giving the money to the incumbents? Surely, we should be giving the money to entrepreneurs, to civil society, for people able to create the new, not to the big, well-connected companies, big, clunky government programs. And, after all this, as the great Chinese sage Lao Tzu said, "Governing a great country is like cooking a small fish. Don't overdo it." And I think more and more people are also asking: Why boost consumption, rather than change what we consume? Like the mayor of São Paulo who's banned advertising billboards, or the many cities like San Francisco putting in infrastructures for electric cars. You can see a bit of the same thing happening in the business world. Some, I think some of the bankers who have appear to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. But ask yourselves: What will be the biggest sectors of the economy in 10, 20, 30 years time? It won't be the ones lining up for handouts, like cars and aerospace and so on. The biggest sector, by far, will be health — already 18 percent of the American economy, predicted to grow to 30, even 40 percent by mid-century. Elder care, child care, already much bigger employers than cars. Education: six, seven, eight percent of the economy and growing. Environmental services, energy services, the myriad of green jobs, they're all pointing to a very different kind of economy which isn't just about products, but is using distributed networks, and it's founded above all on care, on relationships, on what people do to other people, often one to one, rather than simply selling them a product. And I think that what connects the challenge for civil society, the challenge for governments and the challenge for business now is, in a way, a very simple one, but quite a difficult one. We know our societies have to radically change. We know we can't go back to where we were before the crisis. But we also know it's only through experiment that we'll discover exactly how to run a low carbon city, how to care for a much older population, how to deal with drug addiction and so on. And here's the problem. In science, we do experiments systematically. Our societies now spend two, three, four percent of GDP to invest systematically in new discovery, in science, in technology, to fuel the pipeline of brilliant inventions which illuminate gatherings like this. It's not that our scientists are necessarily much smarter than they were a hundred years ago, maybe they are, but they have a hell of a lot more backing than they ever did. And what's striking though, is that in society there's almost nothing comparable, no comparable investment, no systematic experiment, in the things capitalism isn't very good at, like compassion, or empathy, or relationships or care. Now, I didn't really understand that until I met this guy who was then an 80-year-old, slightly shambolic man who lived on tomato soup and thought ironing was very overrated. He had helped shape Britain's post-war institutions, its welfare state, its economy, but had sort of reinvented himself as a social entrepreneur, became an inventor of many, many different organizations. Some famous ones like the Open University, which has 110,000 students, the University of the Third Age, which has nearly half a million older people teaching other older people, as well as strange things like DIY garages and language lines and schools for social entrepreneurs. And he ended his life selling companies to venture capitalists. He believed if you see a problem, you shouldn't tell someone to act, you should act on it yourself, and he lived long enough and saw enough of his ideas first scorned and then succeed that he said you should always take no as a question and not as an answer. And his life was a systematic experiment to find better social answers, not from a theory, but from experiment, and experiment involving the people with the best intelligence on social needs, which were usually the people living with those needs. And he believed we live with others, we share the world with others and therefore our innovation must be done with others too, not doing things at people, for them, and so on. Now, what he did didn't used to have a name, but I think it's rapidly becoming quite mainstream. It's what we do in the organization named after him where we try and invent, create, launch new ventures, whether it's schools, web companies, health organizations and so on. And we find ourselves part of a very rapidly growing global movement of institutions working on social innovation, using ideas from design or technology or community organizing to develop the germs of a future world, but through practice and through demonstration and not through theory. And they're spreading from Korea to Brazil to India to the USA and across Europe. And they've been given new momentum by the crisis, by the need for better answers to joblessness, community breakdown and so on. Some of the ideas are strange. These are complaints choirs. People come together to sing about the things that really bug them. (Laughter) Others are much more pragmatic: health coaches, learning mentors, job clubs. And some are quite structural, like social impact bonds where you raise money to invest in diverting teenagers from crime or helping old people keep out of hospital, and you get paid back according to how successful your projects are. Now, the idea that all of this represents, I think, is rapidly becoming a common sense and part of how we respond to the crisis, recognizing the need to invest in innovation for social progress as well as technological progress. There were big health innovation funds launched earlier this year in this country, as well as a public service innovation lab. Across northern Europe, many governments now have innovation laboratories within them. And just a few months ago, President Obama launched the Office of Social Innovation in the White House. And what people are beginning to ask is: Surely, just as we invest in R and D, two, three, four percent, of our GDP, of our economy, what if we put, let's say, one percent of public spending into social innovation, into elder care, new kinds of education, new ways of helping the disabled? Perhaps we'd achieve similar productivity gains in society to those we've had in the economy and in technology. And if, a generation or two ago, the big challenges were ones like getting a man on the moon, perhaps the challenges we need to set ourselves now are ones like eliminating child malnutrition, stopping trafficking, or one, I think closer to home for America or Europe, why don't we set ourselves the goal of achieving a billion extra years of life for today's citizens. Now those are all goals which could be achieved within a decade, but only with radical and systematic experiment, not just with technologies, but also with lifestyles and culture and policies and institutions too. Now, I want to end by saying a little bit about what I think this means for capitalism. I think what this is all about, this whole movement which is growing from the margins, remains quite small. Nothing like the resources of a CERN or a DARPA or an IBM or a Dupont. What it's telling us is that capitalism is going to become more social. It's already immersed in social networks. It will become more involved in social investment, and social care and in industries where the value comes from what you do with others, not just from what you sell to them, and from relationships as well as from consumption. But interestingly too, it implies a future where society learns a few tricks from capitalism about how you embed the DNA of restless continual innovation into society, trying things out and then growing and scaling the ones that work. Now, I think this future will be quite surprising to many people. In recent years, a lot of intelligent people thought that capitalism had basically won. History was over and society would inevitably have to take second place to economy. But I've been struck with a parallel in how people often talk about capitalism today and how they talked about the monarchy 200 years ago, just after the French Revolution and the restoration of the monarchy in France. Then, people said monarchy dominated everywhere because it was rooted in human nature. We were naturally deferential. We needed hierarchy. Just as today, the enthusiasts of unrestrained capitalism say it's rooted in human nature, only now it's individualism, inquisitiveness, and so on. Then monarchy had seen off its big challenger, mass democracy, which was seen as a well-intentioned but doomed experiment, just as capitalism has seen off socialism. Even Fidel Castro now says that the only thing worse than being exploited by multinational capitalism is not being exploited by multinational capitalism. And whereas then monarchies, palaces and forts dominated every city skyline and looked permanent and confident, today it's the gleaming towers of the banks which dominate every big city. I'm not suggesting the crowds are about to storm the barricades and string up every investment banker from the nearest lamppost, though that might be quite tempting. But I do think we're on the verge of a period when, just as happened to the monarchy and, interestingly, the military too, the central position of finance capital is going to come to an end, and it's going to steadily move to the sides, the margins of our society, transformed from being a master into a servant, a servant to the productive economy and of human needs. And as that happens, we will remember something very simple and obvious about capitalism, which is that, unlike what you read in economics textbooks, it's not a self-sufficient system. It depends on other systems, on ecology, on family, on community, and if these aren't replenished, capitalism suffers too. And our human nature isn't just selfish, it's also compassionate. It's not just competitive, it's also caring. Because of the depth of the crisis, I think we are at a moment of choice. The crisis is almost certainly deepening around us. It will be worse at the end of this year, quite possibly worse in a year's time than it is today. But this is one of those very rare moments when we have to choose whether we're just pedaling furiously to get back to where we were a year or two ago, and a very narrow idea of what the economy is for, or whether this is a moment to jump ahead, to reboot and to do some of the things we probably should have been doing anyway. Thank you. (Applause)

Making sound visible through cymatics

Evan Grant

{0: 'Evan Grant'}

{0: ['creative technologist']}

{0: 'Evan Grant works with cymatics, the art of visualizing sound, and is the founder of the arts and technology collective seeper.'}

2009-07-23

2009-09-03

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'da', 'de', 'el', 'en', 'es', 'fa', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'hu', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'lt', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'sk', 'sl', 'sr', 'tr', 'uk', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['design', 'math', 'presentation', 'science', 'visualizations']

{516: 'Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere', 412: 'Demo: The Orb', 1505: 'New ways to see music (with color! and fire!)', 2357: 'The enchanting music of sign language', 2610: 'Everything you hear on film is a lie', 442: 'Hypersonic sound and other inventions'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/evan_grant_making_sound_visible_through_cymatics/

Evan Grant demonstrates the science and art of cymatics, a process for making soundwaves visible. Useful for analyzing complex sounds (like dolphin calls), it also makes complex and beautiful designs.

I'm a creative technologist and the focus of my work is on public installations. One of my driving passions is this idea of exploring nature, and trying to find hidden data within nature. It seems to me that there is this latent potential everywhere, all around us. Everything gives out some kind of data, whether it's sound or smell or vibration. Through my work, I've been trying to find ways to harness and unveil this. And so this basically led me to a subject called cymatics. Now, cymatics is the process of visualizing sound by basically vibrating a medium such as sand or water, as you can see there. So, if we have a quick look at the history of cymatics beginning with the observations of resonance, by Da Vinci, Galileo, the English scientist Robert Hook and then Ernest Chladni. He created an experiment using a metal plate, covering it with sand and then bowing it to create the Chladni patterns that you see here on the right. Moving on from this, the next person to explore this field was a gentleman called Hans Jenny in the 1970s. He actually coined the term cymatics. Then bringing us into the present day is a fellow collaborator of mine and cymatics expert, John Stewart Reed. He's kindly recreated for us the Chladni experiment. What we can see here is the metal sheet, this time connected to a sound driver and being fed by a frequency generator. As the frequencies increase, so do the complexities of the patterns that appear on the plate. As you can see with your own eyes. (Applause) So, what excites me about cymatics? Well, for me cymatics is an almost magical tool. It's like a looking glass into a hidden world. Through the numerous ways that we can apply cymatics, we can actually start to unveil the substance of things not seen. Devices like the cymascope, which you can see here, have been used to scientifically observe cymatic patterns. And the list of scientific applications is growing every day. For example, in oceanography, a lexicon of dolphin language is actually being created by basically visualizing the sonar beams that the dolphins emit. And hopefully in the future we'll be able to gain some deeper understanding of how they communicate. We can also use cymatics for healing and education. This is an installation developed with school children, where their hands are tracked. It allows them to control and position cymatic patterns and the reflections that are caused by them. We can also use cymatics as a beautiful natural art form. This image here is created from a snippet of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony playing through a cymatic device. So it kind of flips things on its head a little bit. This is Pink Floyd's "Machine" playing in real time through the cymascope. We can also use cymatics as a looking glass into nature. And we can actually recreate the archetypal forms of nature. So, for example, here on the left we can see a snowflake as it would appear in nature. Then on the right we can see a cymatically created snowflake. And here is a starfish and a cymatic starfish. And there is thousands of these. So what does this all mean? Well, there is still a lot to explore in its early days. And there's not many people working in this field. But consider for a moment that sound does have form. We've seen that it can affect matter and cause form within matter. Then sort of take a leap and think about the universe forming. And think about the immense sound of the universe forming. And if we kind of ponder on that, then perhaps cymatics had an influence on the formation of the universe itself. And here is some eye candy for you, from a range of DIY scientists and artists from all over the globe. Cymatics is accessible to everybody. I want to urge everybody here to apply your passion, your knowledge and your skills to areas like cymatics. I think collectively we can build a global community. We can inspire each other. And we can evolve this exploration of the substance of things not seen. Thank you. (Applause)

A leap from the edge of space

Steve Truglia

{0: 'Steve Truglia'}

{0: ['stuntman']}

{0: 'Stuntman and record-setter Steve Truglia was a stunt coordinator, performer and action unit director in the UK.'}

2009-07-22

2009-09-04

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hr', 'id', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['entertainment', 'film', 'space', 'sports', 'technology']

{205: 'The mystery box', 502: 'Extreme wingsuit flying', 429: 'My dream of a flying car', 23920: 'If superpowers were real: Flight', 23918: 'If superpowers were real: Super strength', 1402: 'From mach-20 glider to hummingbird drone'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_truglia_a_leap_from_the_edge_of_space/

At his day job, Steve Truglia flips cars, walks through fire and falls out of buildings -- pushing technology to make stunts bigger, safer, more awesome. He talks us through his next stunt: the highest jump ever attempted, from the very edge of space.

I'm extremely excited to be given the opportunity to come and speak to you today about what I consider to be the biggest stunt on Earth. Or perhaps not quite on Earth. A parachute jump from the very edge of space. More about that a bit later on. What I'd like to do first is take you through a very brief helicopter ride of stunts and the stunts industry in the movies and in television, and show you how technology has started to interface with the physical skills of the stunt performer in a way that makes the stunts bigger and actually makes them safer than they've ever been before. I've been a professional stunt man for 13 years. I'm a stunt coordinator. And as well as perform stunts I often design them. During that time, health and safety has become everything about my job. It's critical now that when a car crash happens it isn't just the stunt person we make safe, it's the crew. We can't be killing camera men. We can't be killing stunt men. We can't be killing anybody or hurting anybody on set, or any passerby. So, safety is everything. But it wasn't always that way. In the old days of the silent movies — Harold Lloyd here, hanging famously from the clock hands — a lot of these guys did their own stunts. They were quite remarkable. They had no safety, no real technology. What safety they had was very scant. This is the first stunt woman, Rosie Venger, an amazing woman. You can see from the slide, very very strong. She really paved the way at a time when nobody was doing stunts, let alone women. My favorite and a real hero of mine is Yakima Canutt. Yakima Canutt really formed the stunt fight. He worked with John Wayne and most of those old punch-ups you see in the Westerns. Yakima was either there or he stunt coordinated. This is a screen capture from "Stagecoach," where Yakima Canutt is doing one of the most dangerous stunts I've ever seen. There is no safety, no back support, no pads, no crash mats, no sand pits in the ground. That's one of the most dangerous horse stunts, certainly. Talking of dangerous stunts and bringing things slightly up to date, some of the most dangerous stunts we do as stunt people are fire stunts. We couldn't do them without technology. These are particularly dangerous because there is no mask on my face. They were done for a photo shoot. One for the Sun newspaper, one for FHM magazine. Highly dangerous, but also you'll notice it doesn't look as though I'm wearing anything underneath the suit. The fire suits of old, the bulky suits, the thick woolen suits, have been replaced with modern materials like Nomex or, more recently, Carbonex — fantastic materials that enable us as stunt professionals to burn for longer, look more spectacular, and in pure safety. Here's a bit more. There's a guy with a flame thrower there, giving me what for. One of the things that a stuntman often does, and you'll see it every time in the big movies, is be blown through the air. Well, we used to use trampettes. In the old days, that's all they had. And that's a ramp. Spring off the thing and fly through the air, and hopefully you make it look good. Now we've got technology. This thing is called an air ram. It's a frightening piece of equipment for the novice stunt performer, because it will break your legs very, very quickly if you land on it wrong. Having said that, it works with compressed nitrogen. And that's in the up position. When you step on it, either by remote control or with the pressure of your foot, it will fire you, depending on the gas pressure, anything from five feet to 30 feet. I could, quite literally, fire myself into the gallery. Which I'm sure you wouldn't want. Not today. Car stunts are another area where technology and engineering advances have made life easier for us, and safer. We can do bigger car stunts than ever before now. Being run over is never easy. That's an old-fashioned, hard, gritty, physical stunt. But we have padding, and fantastic shock-absorbing things like Sorbothane — the materials that help us, when we're hit like this, not to hurt ourselves too much. The picture in the bottom right-hand corner there is of some crash test dummy work that I was doing. Showing how stunts work in different areas, really. And testing breakaway signpost pillars. A company makes a Lattix pillar, which is a network, a lattice-type pillar that collapses when it's hit. The car on the left drove into the steel pillar. And you can't see it from there, but the engine was in the driver's lap. They did it by remote control. I drove the other one at 60 miles an hour, exactly the same speed, and clearly walked away from it. Rolling a car over is another area where we use technology. We used to have to drive up a ramp, and we still do sometimes. But now we have a compressed nitrogen cannon. You can just see, underneath the car, there is a black rod on the floor by the wheel of the other car. That's the piston that was fired out of the floor. We can flip lorries, coaches, buses, anything over with a nitrogen cannon with enough power. (Laughs) It's a great job, really. (Laughter) It's such fun! You should hear some of the phone conversations that I have with people on my Bluetooth in the shop. "Well, we can flip the bus over, we can have it burst into flames, and how about someone, you know, big explosion." And people are looking like this ... (Laughs) I sort of forget how bizarre some of those conversations are. The next thing that I'd like to show you is something that Dunlop asked me to do earlier this year with our Channel Five's "Fifth Gear Show." A loop-the-loop, biggest in the world. Only one person had ever done it before. Now, the stuntman solution to this in the old days would be, "Let's hit this as fast as possible. 60 miles an hour. Let's just go for it. Foot flat to the floor." Well, you'd die if you did that. We went to Cambridge University, the other university, and spoke to a Doctor of Mechanical Engineering there, a physicist who taught us that it had to be 37 miles an hour. Even then, I caught seven G and lost a bit of consciousness on the way in. That's a long way to fall, if you get it wrong. That was just about right. So again, science helps us, and with the engineering too — the modifications to the car and the wheel. High falls, they're old fashioned stunts. What's interesting about high falls is that although we use airbags, and some airbags are quite advanced, they're designed so you don't slip off the side like you used to, if you land a bit wrong. So, they're a much safer proposition. Just basically though, it is a basic piece of equipment. It's a bouncy castle with slats in the side to allow the air to escape. That's all it is, a bouncy castle. That's the only reason we do it. See, it's all fun, this job. What's interesting is we still use cardboard boxes. They used to use cardboard boxes years ago and we still use them. And that's interesting because they are almost retrospective. They're great for catching you, up to certain heights. And on the other side of the fence, that physical art, the physical performance of the stuntman, has interfaced with the very highest technology in I.T. and in software. Not the cardboard box, but the green screen. This is a shot of "Terminator," the movie. Two stunt guys doing what I consider to be a rather benign stunt. It's 30 feet. It's water. It's very simple. With the green screen we can put any background in the world on it, moving or still, and I can assure you, nowadays you can't see the joint. This is a parachutist with another parachutist doing exactly the same thing. Completely in the safety of a studio, and yet with the green screen we can have some moving image that a skydiver took, and put in the sky moving and the clouds whizzing by. Decelerator rigs and wires, we use them a lot. We fly people on wires, like this. This guy is not skydiving. He's being flown like a kite, or moved around like a kite. And this is a Guinness World Record attempt. They asked me to open their 50th anniversary show in 2004. And again, technology meant that I could do the fastest abseil over 100 meters, and stop within a couple of feet of the ground without melting the rope with the friction, because of the alloys I used in the descender device. And that's Centre Point in London. We brought Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road to a standstill. Helicopter stunts are always fun, hanging out of them, whatever. And aerial stunts. No aerial stunt would be the same without skydiving. Which brings us quite nicely to why I'm really here today: Project Space Jump. In 1960, Joseph Kittenger of the United States Air Force did the most spectacular thing. He did a jump from 100,000 feet, 102,000 to be precise, and he did it to test high altitude systems for military pilots in the new range of aircraft that were going up to 80,000 feet or so. And I'd just like to show you a little footage of what he did back then. And just how brave he was in 1960, bear in mind. Project Excelsior, it was called. There were three jumps. They first dropped some dummies. So that's the balloon, big gas balloon. It's that shape because the helium has to expand. My balloon will expand to 500 times and look like a big pumpkin when it's at the top. These are the dummies being dropped from 100,000 feet, and there is the camera that's strapped to them. You can clearly see the curvature of the Earth at that kind of altitude. And I'm planning to go from 120,000 feet, which is about 22 miles. You're in a near vacuum in that environment, which is in minus 50 degrees. So it's an extremely hostile place to be. This is Joe Kittenger himself. Bear in mind, ladies and gents, this was 1960. He didn't know if he would live or die. This is an extremely brave man. I spoke with him on the phone a few months ago. He's a very humble and wonderful human being. He sent me an email, saying, "If you get this thing off the ground I wish you all the best." And he signed it, "Happy landings," which I thought was quite lovely. He's in his 80s and he lives in Florida. He's a tremendous guy. This is him in a pressure suit. Now one of the challenges of going up to altitude is when you get to 30,000 feet — it's great, isn't it? — When you get to 30,000 feet you can really only use oxygen. Above 30,000 feet up to nearly 50,000 feet, you need pressure breathing, which is where you're wearing a G suit. This is him in his old rock-and-roll jeans there, pushing him in, those turned up jeans. You need a pressure suit. You need a pressure breathing system with a G suit that squeezes you, that helps you to breathe in and helps you to exhale. Above 50,000 feet you need a space suit, a pressure suit. Certainly at 100,000 feet no aircraft will fly. Not even a jet engine. It needs to be rocket-powered or one of these things, a great big gas balloon. It took me a while; it took me years to find the right balloon team to build the balloon that would do this job. I've found that team in America now. And it's made of polyethylene, so it's very thin. We will have two balloons for each of my test jumps, and two balloons for the main jump, because they notoriously tear on takeoff. They're just so, so delicate. This is the step off. He's written on that thing, "The highest step in the world." And what must that feel like? I'm excited and I'm scared, both at the same time in equal measures. And this is the camera that he had on him as he tumbled before his drogue chute opened to stabilize him. A drogue chute is just a smaller chute which helps to keep your face down. You can just see them there, popping open. Those are the drogue chutes. He had three of them. I did quite a lot of research. And you'll see in a second there, he comes back down to the floor. Now just to give you some perspective of this balloon, the little black dots are people. It's hundreds of feet high. It's enormous. That's in New Mexico. That's the U.S. Air Force Museum. And they've made a dummy of him. That's exactly what it looked like. My gondola will be more simple than that. It's a three sided box, basically. So I've had to do quite a lot of training. This is Morocco last year in the Atlas mountains, training in preparation for some high altitude jumps. This is what the view is going to be like at 90,000 feet for me. Now you may think this is just a thrill-seeking trip, a pleasure ride, just the world's biggest stunt. Well there's a little bit more to it than that. Trying to find a space suit to do this has led me to an area of technology that I never really expected when I set about doing this. I contacted a company in the States who make suits for NASA. That's a current suit. This was me last year with their chief engineer. That suit would cost me about a million and a half dollars. And it weighs 300 pounds and you can't skydive in it. So I've been stuck. For the past 15 years I've been trying to find a space suit that would do this job, or someone that will make one. Something revolutionary happened a little while ago, at the same facility. That's the prototype of the parachute. I've now had them custom make one, the only one of its kind in the world. And that's the only suit of its kind in the world. It was made by a Russian that's designed most of the suits of the past 18 years for the Soviets. He left the company because he saw, as some other people in the space suit industry, an emerging market for space suits for space tourists. You know if you are in an aircraft at 30,000 feet and the cabin depressurizes, you can have oxygen. If you're at 100,000 feet you die. In six seconds you've lost consciousness. In 10 seconds you're dead. Your blood tries to boil. It's called vaporization. The body swells up. It's awful. And so we expect — it's not much fun. We expect, and others expect, that perhaps the FAA, the CAA might say, "You need to put someone in a suit that's not inflated, that's connected to the aircraft." Then they're comfortable, they have good vision, like this great big visor. And then if the cabin depressurizes while the aircraft is coming back down, in whatever emergency measures, everyone is okay. I would like to bring Costa on, if he's here, to show you the only one of its kind in the world. I was going to wear it, but I thought I'd get Costa to do it, my lovely assistant. Thank you. He's very hot. Thank you, Costa. This is the communication headset you'll see on lots of space suits. It's a two-layer suit. NASA suits have got 13 layers. This is a very lightweight suit. It weighs about 15 pounds. It's next to nothing. Especially designed for me. It's a working prototype. I will use it for all the jumps. Would you just give us a little twirl, please, Costa? Thank you very much. And it doesn't look far different when it's inflated, as you can see from the picture down there. I've even skydived in it in a wind tunnel, which means that I can practice everything I need to practice, in safety, before I ever jump out of anything. Thanks very much, Costa. (Applause) Ladies and gentlemen, that's just about it from me. The status of my mission at the moment is it still needs a major sponsor. I'm confident that we'll find one. I think it's a great challenge. And I hope that you will agree with me, it is the greatest stunt on Earth. Thank you very much for your time. (Applause)

Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss

James Balog

{0: 'James Balog'}

{0: ['photographer']}

{0: "James Balog's latest work, the Extreme Ice Survey, captures the twisting, soaring forms of threatened wild ice. "}

2009-07-23

2009-09-08

TEDGlobal 2009

en

['ar', 'bg', 'cs', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fr', 'he', 'hu', 'it', 'ja', 'ko', 'nb', 'nl', 'pl', 'pt-br', 'ro', 'ru', 'tr', 'vi', 'zh-cn', 'zh-tw']

['climate change', 'global issues', 'photography', 'science', 'technology']

{89: 'Why did I ski to the North Pole?', 938: 'Inside an Antarctic time machine', 36217: 'How to grow a glacier', 46577: 'An urgent call to protect the world\'s "Third Pole"', 3136: "What's hidden under the Greenland ice sheet?", 1171: 'Haunting photos of polar ice'}

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_balog_time_lapse_proof_of_extreme_ice_loss/

Photographer James Balog shares new image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change.

Most of the time, art and science stare at each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension. There is great confusion when the two look at each other. Art, of course, looks at the world through the psyche, the emotions — the unconscious at times — and of course the aesthetic. Science tends to look at the world through the rational, the quantitative — things that can be measured and described — but it gives art a terrific context of understanding. In the Extreme Ice Survey, we're dedicated to bringing those two parts of human understanding together, to merging the art and science to the end of helping us understand nature and humanity's relationship with nature better. Specifically, I as a person who's been a professional nature photographer my whole adult life, am firmly of the belief that photography, video, film have tremendous powers for helping us understand and shape the way we think about nature and about ourselves in relationship to nature. In this project, we're specifically interested, of course, in ice. I'm fascinated by the beauty of it, the mutability of it, the malleability of it, and the fabulous shapes in which it can carve itself. These first images are from Greenland. But ice has another meaning. Ice is the canary in the global coal mine. It's the place where we can see and touch and hear and feel climate change in action. Climate change is a really abstract thing in most of the world. Whether or not you believe in it is based on your sense of is it raining more or is it raining less? Is it getting hotter or is it getting colder? What do the computer models say about this, that and the other thing? All of that, strip it away. In the world of the arctic and alpine environments, where the ice is, it's real and it's present. The changes are happening. They're very visible. They're photographable. They're measurable. 95 percent of the glaciers in the world are retreating or shrinking. That's outside Antarctica. 95 percent of the glaciers in the world are retreating or shrinking, and that's because the precipitation patterns and the temperature patterns are changing. There is no significant scientific dispute about that. It's been observed, it's measured, it's bomb-proof information. And the great irony and tragedy of our time is that a lot of the general public thinks that science is still arguing about that. Science is not arguing about that. In these images we see ice from enormous glaciers, ice sheets that are hundreds of thousands of years old breaking up into chunks, and chunk by chunk by chunk, iceberg by iceberg, turning into global sea level rise. So, having seen all of this in the course of a 30-year career, I was still a skeptic about climate change until about 10 years ago, because I thought the story of climate change was based on computer models. I hadn't realized it was based on concrete measurements of what the paleoclimates — the ancient climates — were, as recorded in the ice sheets, as recorded in deep ocean sediments, as recorded in lake sediments, tree rings, and a lot of other ways of measuring temperature. When I realized that climate change was real, and it was not based on computer models, I decided that one day I would do a project looking at trying to manifest climate change photographically. And that led me to this project. Initially, I was working on a National Geographic assignment — conventional, single frame, still photography. And one crazy day, I got the idea that I should — after that assignment was finished — I got the idea that I should shoot in time-lapse photography, that I should station a camera or two at a glacier and let it shoot every 15 minutes, or every hour or whatever and watch the progression of the landscape over time. Well, within about three weeks, I incautiously turned that idea of a couple of time-lapse cameras into 25 time-lapse cameras. And the next six months of my life were the hardest time in my career, trying to design, build and deploy out in the field these 25 time-lapse cameras. They are powered by the sun. Solar panels power them. Power goes into a battery. There is a custom made computer that tells the camera when to fire. And these cameras are positioned on rocks on the sides of the glaciers, and they look in on the glacier from permanent, bedrock positions, and they watch the evolution of the landscape. We just had a number of cameras out on the Greenland Ice Sheet. We actually drilled holes into the ice, way deep down below the thawing level, and had some cameras out there for the past month and a half or so. Actually, there's still a camera out there right now. In any case, the cameras shoot roughly every hour. Some of them shoot every half hour, every 15 minutes, every five minutes. Here's a time lapse of one of the time-lapse units being made. (Laughter) I personally obsessed about every nut, bolt and washer in these crazy things. I spent half my life at our local hardware store during the months when we built these units originally. We're working in most of the major glaciated regions of the northern hemisphere. Our time-lapse units are in Alaska, the Rockies, Greenland and Iceland, and we have repeat photography positions, that is places we just visit on an annual basis, in British Columbia, the Alps and Bolivia. It's a big undertaking. I stand here before you tonight as an ambassador for my whole team. There's a lot of people working on this right now. We've got 33 cameras out this moment. We just had 33 cameras shoot about half an hour ago all across the northern hemisphere, watching what's happened. And we've spent a lot of time in the field. It's been a fantastic amount of work. We've been out for two and a half years, and we've got about another two and a half years yet to go. That's only half our job. The other half of our job is to tell the story to the global public. You know, scientists have collected this kind of information off and on over the years, but a lot of it stays within the science community. Similarly, a lot of art projects stay in the art community, and I feel very much a responsibility through mechanisms like TED, and like our relationship with the Obama White House, with the Senate, with John Kerry, to influence policy as much as possible with these pictures as well. We've done films. We've done books. We have more coming. We have a site on Google Earth that Google Earth was generous enough to give us, and so forth, because we feel very much the need to tell this story, because it is such an immediate evidence of ongoing climate change right now. Now, one bit of science before we get into the visuals. If everybody in the developed world understood this graph, and emblazoned it on the inside of their foreheads, there would be no further societal argument about climate change because this is the story that counts. Everything else you hear is just propaganda and confusion. Key issues: this is a 400,000 year record. This exact same pattern is seen going back now almost a million years before our current time. And several things are important. Number one: temperature and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere go up and down basically in sync. You can see that from the orange line and the blue line. Nature naturally has allowed carbon dioxide to go up to 280 parts per million. That's the natural cycle. Goes up to 280 and then drops for various reasons that aren't important to discuss right here. But 280 is the peak. Right now, if you look at the top right part of that graph, we're at 385 parts per million. We are way, way outside the normal, natural variability. Earth is having a fever. In the past hundred years, the temperature of the Earth has gone up 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, .75 degrees Celsius, and it's going to keep going up because we keep dumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere. At the rate of about two and a half parts per million per year. It's been a remorseless, steady increase. We have to turn that around. That's the crux, and someday I hope to emblazon that across Times Square in New York and a lot of other places. But anyway, off to the world of ice. We're now at the Columbia Glacier in Alaska. This is a view of what's called the calving face. This is what one of our cameras saw over the course of a few months. You see the glacier flowing in from the right, dropping off into the sea, camera shooting every hour. If you look in the middle background, you can see the calving face bobbing up and down like a yo-yo. That means that glacier's floating and it's unstable, and you're about to see the consequences of that floating. To give you a little bit of a sense of scale, that calving face in this picture is about 325 feet tall. That's 32 stories. This is not a little cliff. This is like a major office building in an urban center. The calving face is the wall where the visible ice breaks off, but in fact, it goes down below sea level another couple thousand feet. So there's a wall of ice a couple thousand feet deep going down to bedrock if the glacier's grounded on bedrock, and floating if it isn't. Here's what Columbia's done. This is in south central Alaska. This was an aerial picture I did one day in June three years ago. This is an aerial picture we did this year. That's the retreat of this glacier. The main stem, the main flow of the glacier is coming from the right and it's going very rapidly up that stem. We're going to be up there in just a few more weeks, and we expect that it's probably retreated another half a mile, but if I got there and discovered that it had collapsed and it was five miles further back, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Now it's really hard to grasp the scale of these places, because as the glaciers — one of the things is that places like Alaska and Greenland are huge, they're not normal landscapes — but as the glaciers are retreating, they're also deflating, like air is being let out of a balloon. And so, there are features on this landscape. There's a ridge right in the middle of the picture, up above where that arrow comes in, that shows you that a little bit. There's a marker line called the trim line above our little red illustration there. This is something no self-respecting photographer would ever do — you put some cheesy illustration on your shot, right? — and yet you have to do it sometimes to narrate these points. But, in any case, the deflation of this glacier since 1984 has been higher than the Eiffel Tower, higher than the Empire State Building. A tremendous amount of ice has been let out of these valleys as it's retreated and deflated, gone back up valley. These changes in the alpine world are accelerating. It's not static. Particularly in the world of sea ice, the rate of natural change is outstripping predictions of just a few years ago, and the processes either are accelerating or the predictions were too low to begin with. But in any case, there are big, big changes happening as we speak. So, here's another time-lapse shot of Columbia. And you see where it ended in these various spring days, June, May, then October. Now we turn on our time lapse. This camera was shooting every hour. Geologic process in action here. And everybody says, well don't they advance in the winter time? No. It was retreating through the winter because it's an unhealthy glacier. Finally catches up to itself, it advances. And you can look at these pictures over and over again because there's such a strange, bizarre fascination in seeing these things you don't normally get to see come alive. We've been talking about "seeing is believing " and seeing the unseen at TED Global. That's what you see with these cameras. The images make the invisible visible. These huge crevasses open up. These great ice islands break off — and now watch this. This has been the springtime this year — a huge collapse. That happened in about a month, the loss of all that ice. So that's where we started three years ago, way out on the left, and that's where we were a few months ago, the last time we went into Columbia. To give you a feeling for the scale of the retreat, we did another cheesy illustration, with British double-decker buses. If you line up 295 of those nose to tail, that's about how far back that was. It's a long way. On up to Iceland. One of my favorite glaciers, the Sólheimajökull. And here, if you watch, you can see the terminus retreating. You can see this river being formed. You can see it deflating. Without the photographic process, you would never see this. This is invisible. You can stand up there your whole life and you would never see this, but the camera records it. So we wind time backwards now. We go back a couple years in time. That's where it started. That's where it ended a few months ago. And on up to Greenland. The smaller the ice mass, the faster it responds to climate. Greenland took a little while to start reacting to the warming climate of the past century, but it really started galloping along about 20 years ago. And there's been a tremendous increase in the temperature up there. It's a big place. That's all ice. All those colors are ice and it goes up to about two miles thick, just a gigantic dome that comes in from the coast and rises in the middle. The one glacier up in Greenland that puts more ice into the global ocean than all the other glaciers in the northern hemisphere combined is the Ilulissat Glacier. We have some cameras on the south edge of the Ilulissat, watching the calving face as it goes through this dramatic retreat. Here's a two-year record of what that looks like. Helicopter in front of the calving face for scale, quickly dwarfed. The calving face is four and a half miles across, and in this shot, as we pull back, you're only seeing about a mile and a half. So, imagine how big this is and how much ice is charging out. The interior of Greenland is to the right. It's flowing out to the Atlantic Ocean on the left. Icebergs, many, many, many, many times the size of this building, are roaring out to sea. We just downloaded these pictures a couple weeks ago, as you can see. June 25th, monster calving events happened. I'll show you one of those in a second. This glacier has doubled its flow speed in the past 15 years. It now goes at 125 feet a day, dumping all this ice into the ocean. It tends to go in these pulses, about every three days, but on average, 125 feet a day, twice the rate it did 20 years ago. Okay. We had a team out watching this glacier, and we recorded the biggest calving event that's ever been put on film. We had nine cameras going. This is what a couple of the cameras saw. A 400-foot-tall calving face breaking off. Huge icebergs rolling over. Okay, how big was that? It's hard to get it. So an illustration again, gives you a feeling for scale. A mile of retreat in 75 minutes across the calving face, in that particular event, three miles wide. The block was three-fifths of a mile deep, and if you compare the expanse of the calving face to the Tower Bridge in London, about 20 bridges wide. Or if you take an American reference, to the U.S. Capitol Building and you pack 3,000 Capitol Buildings into that block, it would be equivalent to how large that block was. 75 minutes. Now I've come to the conclusion after spending a lot of time in this climate change world that we don't have a problem of economics, technology and public policy. We have a problem of perception. The policy and the economics and the technology are serious enough issues, but we actually can deal with them. I'm certain that we can. But what we have is a perception problem because not enough people really get it yet. You're an elite audience. You get it. Fortunately, a lot of the political leaders in the major countries of the world are an elite audience that for the most part gets it now. But we still need to bring a lot of people along with us. And that's where I think organizations like TED, like the Extreme Ice Survey can have a terrific impact on human perception and bring us along. Because I believe we have an opportunity right now. We are nearly on the edge of a crisis, but we still have an opportunity to face the greatest challenge of our generation and, in fact, of our century. This is a terrific, terrific call to arms to do the right thing for ourselves and for the future. I hope that we have the wisdom to let the angels of our better nature rise to the occasion and do what needs to be done. Thank you. (Applause)