In My Copious Free Time

TED2008 Day 3, Session 3: What will tomorrow bring?

http://www.livescribe.com/
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
author, The Black Swan

Domains
Mediocristan nothing stands out
Extremistan  the exception dominates completely

Mediocristan - when your sample is very large, no single observation makes a difference

Taleb is a much more engaging speaker than writer - he has great ideas.

See here for an explanation of what a Black Swan is. Short story - a high-impact, unpredictable event.

Information is from Extremistan - it's winner take all. Take the book business - millions of books, 15-40 novels account for the overwhelming majority of sales.

The Ludic Fallacy: Any analogy with dice is erroneous and a misrepresentation of the structure of uncertainty and randomness.

Unboundness - must have respect for the unobserved (my note - see, this goes right back to physics and the Higgs Particle)
Story of the turkey (this is great!): the turkey is fed and cared for every day, confirming to it that its keeper is acting in its best interest. There is NOTHING in the turkey's life that points to the eventuality he will be on someone's table as dinner.

Uncertainty isn't quantum mechanics, it's Pakistan. The Faux Expert - people who act like they can predict but they can't. Their predictive error margin is so large that you might as well ask a cab driver.

Why are people skeptical about religion and not skeptical about economics.

Inverse problem - if you put an ice cube on the floor and it melts, that's simple. But if you see the puddle on the floor, there are infinite possibilities for reverse engineering the cube the water came from. (This is why it's such a mistake to look back in history and say "Oh, this is what led to that" in history. Hindsight is deceptive in so many cases.

Ends with pictures of Plato and Marx - they both tried to teach us to use our knowledge to make decisions. What we need to do is use our lack of knowledge and how little we understand the world to make decisions.

We're never going to understand the world, so we need to focus on our decision making. 
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Chris Anderson
author of The Long Tail

Minimum UAV Project - what if I could make a cheap, simple UAV
diydrones.com
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Peter Schwartz
futurist

"The future isn't what it used to be." - Paul Valery

Many people have become astonishingly pessimistic about the future. Valery didn't mean the future isn't as bright, he meant it isn't as certain.

4 Really Big Questions for the Future

1. Will there be a BIG world war involving the US/China/the Islamic world/India?
2. Will the global economic growth we have seen in the 2nd half of the 20th century continue?
3. Will the fruits of economic growth be relatively evenly spread?
4. Will we be able to achieve growth in an ecologically sustainable manner?

The last is relatively new -- and earth resources and sustainability are likely to be the biggest cause of national tension and possibly war.

1. Will there be a big world war:
Wars are resolved for honor, fear and interest in that order. China, India and US all have common interest right now. America's competitive advantage is we spend. China lends us the money to do so, and our spending helps their economy enormously, as it does in India. No one really has an interest in upsetting this apple cart.

Fear - we don't want war with China...e.g., #1 point of US Naval strategy - avoid conflict with China - share security with them

So maybe the uncertainty is on our side in this area.

2. Will the global economic growth we have seen in the 2nd half of the 20th century continue?
Study of contrasts - Singapore and Nigeria became independent at about the same time, both with a low GDP per capita. Though both had extremely limited resources, Singapore had the human organization to create wealth in a way that hasn't happened in Nigeria, much of this organization supporting education.

There is no limit to growth in human creativity when resource limitations are not in play.

3. Will the fruits of economic growth be relatively evenly spread?
Honest truth - we aren't oging to close the gap between the rich and poor. But can we lift more people out of poverty and grow the middle class?
Wikipedia - the most important anti-poverty tool the world has ever seen (spread of instant, free knowledge

4. Will we be able to achieve growth in an ecologically sustainable manner?
Environmental impact=population x affluence x technology

The population of the earth is not going to double again in the foreseeable future as it did in the boomer generation. OPEC is the most effective conservation organization in the world (by raising oil prices).

There are dramatic, innovative and exciting efforts in all areas of environmentalism that certainly give hope.

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Gregory Petsko
For 12,000 years the distribution of age population has looked like a pyramid. It is looking more like a column now and is quickly beginning to invert. By 2050 there will be 31+ million people in the US over 80. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's will affect 20-30%, costing over $330 billion.

Lower your risk:
Parkinson's
*Caffeine is protective
*Avoid head injuries and avian flu

Alzheimer's
*eat more fish (omega 3)
*keep blood pressure low
*use it or lose it

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Sue Goldie

Some say science and advocacy should be distinct, but she argues that analysis, advocacy and action should be on a continuum.

3 viruses of global health importance:
HIV
Hepatitis B and C
HPV

All have long latency period, affect large numbers, have high cost to treat.

This is all important information but not compelling to me. It would have been more valuable to me if she had talked more about decision science and why it works, how it connects to other disciplines, what other disciplines impact it.

Now she's gotten to something compelling - $50,000 in the US can amount to 23 weeks in increased life expectancy. But in Thailand, that money and amount to 1000 years.
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Felix Kramer
Talking about electric cars:
The planet can't wait for perfection - we need version 1.0 of earth-friendly products NOW.

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LIVE from Aspen
Walter Isaacson
author, former editor of Time

What could the future hold for the great art of narration? It's an art of stringing words together to inform and entertain and make sense of the world around us.

Narrative used to be collaborative, iterative and interactive process centuries ago. The invention of the printing press makes narrative less collaborative, less iterative, more static. Centralized media distribution continued this trend. The internet can change this trend and make narrative a community effort again, but so far it hasn't done much of that. The wiki movement is a step in that direction. Alternative reality and role-playing games are another step - many users control the narrative.

Wish - that we will not lose something that has been at our core for 4000 years.
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Ze Frank

"One thing I've demonstrated is that you can do this job for 16 years without asking a single question." - Clarence Thomas quoted in the NYT

A question is a complicated way of announcing your stupidity.

What are the questions we should ask ourselves over and over again?
"Am I really that big of an idiot?" If you ever start thinking the answer isn't "Yes I am." then you need to ask more questions.

TED Day 3, Session 2: What's out there?

In Aspen we've been enjoying some delicious Vosges Chocolate. Yesterday I had white chocolate

Brian Cox
physicist

Atlas Particle Accelerator - Protons go around a 27km accelerator 11,000 times per second - 99.999999% the speed of light.

If we want to know what we're made of, we have to look not just out into space, but back into space time, back at the start.

Elementary particles:
12 particles of matter stuck together by 4 forces of nature

thumbnail - 60 billion neutrinos per second passing through that small portion of your body

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting." Ernest Rutherford

What amazes me are the parts of physics that are I suppose somewhat controversial but also fairly widely accepted and yet they are only predicted but not yet observed. The Higgs Particle is pivotal to much of physics, but it has not yet been discovered.

Brilliant explanation of the Higgs Method -- if a person who is very popular walks through a crowded party, they are quickly surrounded by others who want to interact with them and their progress is impeded.

"The story of the Big Bang is a creation story equally as wonderful as those shared by many of the cultures Wade Davis talked about." (that is not really a direct quote, more of a paraphrase)

Carl Sagan - "these are the things that hydrogen atoms do when given 13.7 billion years."

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Robert Ballard
explorer

Our country has 2 exploration programs - NASA and NOAA. Why are we ignoring the oceans? The NASA yearly budget would fund the NOAA work for ~1600 years.

Most of our discoveries were made by accident - found one thing when we were looking for another.

It is naive to think that the Easter Bunny put all the resources on the continents. (I would add to that, "the portions of the continents that are currently above the water")

We have better maps of Mars than the 50% of US land mass that lies beneath the sea. If you look at a "map" of the ocean floor you see areas with mountains and ridges and areas that are relatively flat. This isn't because they're flat, it's because they haven't been explored.

A quarter of our planet is a single mountain range that we didn't enter until after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon -- the mid-ocean ridge stretches 42,000 miles, taking up 23% of earth's surface.

He's talking about the massive amounts of commercial grade metals on the ocean floor, and the reality is that there are quiet political machinations about who controls the ocean floor and who can take that metal if access it to becomes viable.

I'm off on a tangent now, but listening to Ballard talk about discovering chemosynthesis in his initial Great Rift Valley explorations in the 70s reminds me that we need to let go of this idea that we know so much -- we know almost nothing relative to what our bodies, our planet and our universe* have to show and teach us.

*"Our" is the easy word to use, but aside from our own bodies, we also need to let go of this idea of the planet and space as ours. We are theirs.

Upside down water bodies in the ocean, high pH levels...looks physically impossible, but even inside this inverted puddle similar to Drano in which bacteria are thriving.

"I would not let an adult drive my robot - they don't have enough gaming experience, but I'd let a kid."

Beautiful image of an awestruck girl, watching exploration.

Why are we not looking at moving out onto the sea? Why are we planning on colonizing the moon and Mars but not our own planet?

immersionpresents.org - great site, check it out
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Paul Stamets
mycologist (that's the study of fungi)

We're more closely related to fungi than any other kingdom. The sequence of microbes on rotting mushrooms are essential to the forests of the world.

Fungi were the first organisms to come to land.

Neat - infused burlap bags filled with natural material and mycelium in drainage areas on farms to reduce presence of E. coli in runoff from cattle farms.

Now he's working on treatments for smallpox, flu virus using rare fungi only found in old growth forest. What does this mean? It means that we saving the old growth forests is a matter of national defense. He's even using mycelium as pest control (has patents on techniques that industry executives have described as "the most disruptive technology the pesticide industry has experienced.")

Econol - generating cellulose from mycelium to create a fuel.
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Joshua Klein
hacker

Sandropic species - species that have adapted to human ecology (rats, crows)

Amazing - video of a crow using a straight wire to get an insect out of a tube. The crow, unsuccessful with the straight wire, spontaneously begins bending it into a hook, not trained to do so. But though this crow wasn't trained to act in this way, the intelligence of crows mean they are highly trainable, which means they might be useful and we might find ways to more peacefully coexist with this bird that we now see as a pest.
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Richard Preston
science writer

In recent times, about 96% of the coast (CA coast) forest was cut down.

Redwood Time - moves at a more stately pace than human time.

I think I'm experiencing TED overload. No notes, just listening and chilling for a while.

Off to lunch!! It is hard to eat on California time here in Aspen

TED2008 Day 3, Session 1: How do we create?

Amazing short film by Richard Hammond replicating close to the scale of the "Saving Private Ryan" Omaha Beach scene with only three people.

,p.

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John Knoll
Industrial Light and Magic and inventor of PhotoShop

"How do I create? Part of it is being a part of a community." It all comes down to community, doesn't it?

This is going to be hard to capture in word because it's all about visual effects.

Matte painting has been somewhat modified for the modern graphics era - it looks 3d in many cases but really isn't - "2.5d"

He just showed how they created a maelstrom in one of the Pirates movies - amazing work of computational fluid dynamics with what seemed like over a dozen different layers of effects, from subsurface bubbles to different types of foam on the surface.

Interesting talk, but not very much about the creative process.

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Yves Behar
designer

"The WHY is critical for me in answering the question, 'How do we create.'"

(Twitter is down! Oh, the horror!)

Here's a question you don't hear everyday: "What is that 'Num Lock' key? Do people really want it in their homes?"

"Advertising is the price companies pay for being un-original." (quoted by Yves, not his words)

As designers we need to think about how we can create a different relationship between our work and the world. It's the values we put into projects that create user value. Design is the glue that brings these values together.

RE: Jawbone headset - "If it isn't beautiful, it doesn't belong on your face."
It isn't about slapping a skin on the technology, it's about designing from the inside out.

DESIGN IS NEVER DONE. You need to continue to touch the user even after the product is designed. How do you continue to touch the user after the product is done?

Y Water - they created a symmetrical bottle that turned out to look like a Y, hence the name. The bottles connect, can become toys.

It's especially rewarding when your design work becomes a creative endeavor that other people can be creative with.

One Laptop Per Child: Negroponte said design was going to be why kids would love it, how it could be low-cost.

NYC Condom - NY began a public health campaign to distribute 36 million condoms. This is something where design creates a conversation - the design helped break the stigma. (Great slogan - NYC Condom - Get Some)
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Picture of me with fellow TEDster and all around cool smarty pants woman Tara Hunt:

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Robert Lang
origami artist

What changed in origami to create more natural forms, more complex forms in the last few decades? Math.

"The secret to productivity in math is to let dead people do your work for you."

There are 4 simple laws in origami that give rise to incredible complexity.

Idea->stick figure abstract form->base of folded shape->model

Going from abstract to base is the difficult leap. In the 90s, origami artists realized they could make complicated figures by packing circles onto single sheets. Each circle area becomes a portion of the based.

Real world apps for origami - medicine (stents), space (solar arrays, James Webb Space Telescope), automotive (airbags)

Lesson - sometimes problems solved for purely aesthetic reasons can turn out to solve very practical problems.
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Amy Tan
novelist

The value of nothing - out of nothing comes something.

Her big questions:
Why do things happen?
How do things happen?
How do I make things happen?

That last one is powerful in terms of personal growth and development -- we sometimes go through life experiencing life has happening to us without recognizing and acknowledging how much we actually create and control.

The uncertainty principle: I am not original, I am a fraud.
Observer effect: if you try to hard you will only discover the "about" and what you were looking for will be no longer there.

Ambiguity - the cosmological constant - you don't know what is operating but you know something is. "Save a man from drowning, you are responsible to him for life."  and "Saving fish from drowning."
They really have to do with intention -- we have a response and the results may not match our intentions.

Once you identify this ambiguity, you notice disturbing hints from the universe that were always there.

Why do we take on assumptions and other people's assumptions?

by imagining fully and becoming what is imagined and yet in that real world is how I find particles of truth in all possibilities. There are never complete answers. Uncertainty is a good thing. And if there is a partial answer it is to simply imagine. To imagine is to put myself in that story until there is a transparency between me and that story I have created. Imagination is the closest thing to feeling compassion.

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Todd Machover
(Funny moment - I'm sitting next to Tara Hunt who is also Twittering and taking notes. As June Cohen introduced Todd Machover, we both simultaneously flipped over our conference badges to check the spelling of his name. Totally cracked me up.)

1. Music is better if you make it. We each have the ability to create and be a part of music in a dynamic way. (Except me, he means. Really. I'm sure of it. Have you heard me sing in my car?)
2. Music is transformative.
3. Music shows who you really are.

Hyperscore - really cool program where you can compose music using color and lines and have it translated into musical notation.

Not a lot of notes here because Todd brought out a grad student and a patient Dan Eilsey who have been working together using Hyperscore and personal instruments so that Dan, who has cerebral palsy, can conduct and perform his own music. He performed a piece -- My Eagle Song -- and it was astounding and beautiful and all those other adjectives that in no way, shape or form can describe it's magnificence.
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I've been following TED tweets on Tweetscan and my favorite of the morning was @mizjodi who says "TED is the new orange."

Ted day 2, session 4: TED Prize session

This is the real power of TED - the TED Prize. Three people are chosen every year and given $100,000 to do with as they wish, but even greater, they are given a wish. This wish is put forth to all of TED, a group of powerful, influential, creative and passionate people who can then take action to make those wishes come true. The resources that can be brought to bear are staggering.

Updates on the 2007 wishes:

Encyclopedia of Life - goes live TODAY!

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Dave Eggers
No Child Left Behind: Like any Bush policy it is underfunded, poorly planned and based on a punitive model.

His Wish
I wish that you - you personally and every creative individual and organization you know will find a way to directly engage witha public school in your area and that you'll then tell the story of how you got involved so that within a year we have 1000 examples of tranformed students.

Once Upon a School (.org)
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Neil Turok

Too inspiring to even type much. I'm struck that he said when he began working to improve maths education and access in Africa, he got a lot of flack for it from his Cambridge colleagues -- "how do you have time for this??" people would ask. I can't help but wonder why this question gets asked. He has no more minutes in a day than anyone else. He just organizes them differently. It's about CHOICE, people.

He helped found the African Institute for Mathematical Study (AIMS)

His wish:
My wish is that you help us unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa so that within our lifetimes we are celebrating an African Einstein.

Two parts:
The Dream - that the next Einstein will be African.
The Plan - AIMS is a proven model so now we must replicate it. We want to roll out 15 AIMS centers across Africa.
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Karen Armstrong

My two favorite things she said:

"You must not confine your compassion to your own group."

"A lot of religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate."

I wish that you would help with the creation, launch and propagation of a Charter for Compassion, crafted by a group of leading inspirational thinkers from the three Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and based on the fundamental principes of universal justice and respect.

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This session has been extremely powerful and I am determined to DO SOMETHING about at least one of these wishes. More to come on this soon.

TED day 2, session 3: Will evil prevail?

This session began with a short video of Hitler bemoaning the domination of Blu-Ray. I already Twittered about that, so I won't comment further here.

An aside about being here in Aspen...
The weather is perfection - cold but sunny in the day - I don't wear my coat until the sun goes down. The Aspen Meadows Resort is very great, but not in an extravagant way. The rooms are all suites with views of the mountains on both the bedroom side and the sitting room side. And the Doerr Hosier Center is a beautiful facility. And those who know me will understand how important this is when I say that I've had 4 different amazingly delicious soups. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm all about the soup.

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Philip Zimbardo
social psychologist

What makes people go wrong?
"That line between good and evil which privileged people like to believe is fixed is actually movable and permeable."

"Evil is the exercise of power to harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically..."

We are told that the soldiers committing abuse at Abu Gharib  is that they were a "few bad apples" -- Zimbardo's hypothesis is that they soldiers were good, but the barrel was bad. What comes next is digital documentation of the violent and sexual acts from cameras of US military police (reservists) at Abu Ghraib prison on the night shift. HORRIFIC.

You can't ask WHO is responsible, but WHAT.
The power that corrupts is in the SYSTEM, not only in the dispositional or situation.

Experiment where people in pairs worked as teacher & learner and the teacher administered a gradually stronger shock to learners who answered incorrectly. Started at 15 volts, went up to 450 volts. The teacher subjects wouldn't go to 450, would they? Overwhelmingly, they did in study after study.

Stanford Prison Experiment: taking good apples and putting them in a bad barrel to see what happens. Does the system trump individual value? They had to stop the study after 6 days because it spun out of control with the guard subjects committing horrible acts against the prisoner subjects.

7 paths to evil:
Mindlessly taking the first small step
dehumanization of others
de-individualization of self - anonymity
diffusion of personal responsibility
(didn't get the other 3)

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."    Fyodor Dostoevsky
I like this quote because reading Crime and Punishment was really my first coming to terms with the idea that not all people who do evil things are "evil" and that good people can be put in situations where they can do evil things.

Need a paradigm shift away from the individual focus to a systemic public health model.

The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

We need to create an educational system that creates the mindset in children: I am a hero in waiting for my heroic moment.

The same situation that inflames evil in us can also inspire heroism. Mind your own business or decide that humanity is your business? To be a hero you have to be deviant - you are going against hte group, acting when others are passive.

One day you will be in a situation with 3 paths:
1 - evil
2 - passive inaction
3 - be a hero

Will you let the chance to be a hero and act when others don't pass you by?
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Lori  (Laura?) ???
Genuine praise and admiration expression

Why do people hold back from praising others? Why don't we ask for what we need?

When we ask for what we need, we are sharing data about us that others can use against us.

"True your wheels - be honest about the praise you need. Go home and ask for it and help others around you ask for what they need."
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Irwin Redlener
public health doctor

Are we at risk of a nuclear attack? Bigger question - can we permanently eliminate the nuclear threat?

Everything about the civil defense programs of the cold war age were completely disconnected from reality - duck and cover, fallout shelters, evacuation plans. There is no preparedness that will work, only prevention.

One element of nuclear threat -- "Evil-doers are organized, dedicated, "stateless" and "retaliation proof"

If a 10 kiloton nuclear weapon went off in NY financial district
1/2 mile radius - 90% chance of being killed immediately
2 mile radius - 50% chance of being killed immediately

No US city has an effective plan to deal with a nuclear detonation.

Personal points to survive - getting out of and not going into harm's way.
1. Don't look at the light flash, keep mouth open so eardrums don't burst
2. If you are very close, you do need to duck and cover
3. Get away from cloud in 10-20 minutes (or go underground or at least 9 floors up
4. Move perpendicular to the wind
5. Then keep as much of skin, nose and mouth covered
6. Get rid of clothing and wash down ASAP
7. Stay in shelter 48-72 hours

Nuclear war=not survivable
Nuclear terrorism=probably survivable for many

Ended with the image of Civil Defense the Donald Rumsfeld Way.
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Eboo Patel

"I fear that I am raising a Muslim child in a culture that is beginning to hate Muslims? What is going to happen to my son?"

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Goldie Hawn
Talking about Pangea Day:
"In film we sometimes think what we do is trivial or narcissistic....but it can change the trajectory of your thinking, can make you act out in a way you never thought you would."

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Samantha Power

NYT reported that 200k-300k people had already been killed in Rwandan genocide acts at 2 weeks into the horror. Not even front page news. Pat Schoeder met with journalists and a reporter asked her why there was so little response from Washington. She said, "in my offices, we are getting hundreds of calls about the endangered ape and gorilla populations there, but no one is calling about the people." The truth about this -- we don't have an endangered people movement.

Good news - almost out of nowhere there has ocme into being an anti-genocide movement in response to the atrocities in Darfur, comprised mostly of students - bigger than the anti-apartheid movement. 55 universities in 22 states have divested their holdings of companies doing business in Sudan.

1-800-Genocide - call and dial in your zip code and it will connect you to your Congressperson's office to ask them to take action.

They've created a report card for legislators on their performance and response to genocide issues.

"It's all lesser evil territory in these broken places."
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TED Day 2, Session 2: Is Beauty Truth?

Just a housekeeping note - I don't pretend that these notes are exhaustive or even sensical. But my hope is over the next few days to expand on some of them, not individually but in groups in terms of the connections I'm seeing, such as the connection between archeology and astronomy. These are the raw materials, the snippets I want to be sure to remember as I process the whole of the conference.

Also, check out this (growing) list of people blogging TED.

Jill Sobule is live here on stage in Aspen - such a treat! Jill's Next Record She's singing her last song of the set right now - Mexican Wrestler. I don't know if beauty is truth, but this song is beautiful and true.

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I think I'm going to write an email to Chris Anderson. Maybe I'll talk more about that if I actually do and he actually responds.
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Bummer - Nancy Etcoff is sick and can't be here. June Cohen did a good job talking about Etcoff's book, but I'm sad that she isn't here.

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Isaac Mizrahi
fashion designer and television show host

He's going to talk about his process - yay! "I don't know where the process really started." Says he doesn't sleep much and now thinks of it as a good thing rather than battling it. "A lot of my ideas come from mistakes and tricks of the eye. There are so many images and so much clothing and the ones that interest me are the ones that look like a mistake."

For him, inspiration does not come from research. "Your creativity should be like a bodily function." Very inspired by movies - sharing a clip he's put together of women in film. Trying to strike a balance between earnestness and irony -- his process is about balance.

"How can I ever make anything as beautiful as Greta Garbo? I can't - that's what keeps me awake at night."

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Siegfried Woldhe
3 minute talk on Da Vinci

He's taken drawings of male faces Da Vinci did, eliminated some for various reasons to try to come up with an accurate representation of what Da Vinci looked like. Is it true? Who knows, but it's definitely intriguing.

The image he showed has not been published.

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Thomas Krens
Guggenheim Foundation

Define beauty
Define truth
Is beauty perfection
is beauty=perfection conditional?
What is culture?
What is art?

27 more or less random demonstrations of beauty that illustrate either the absurdity or accuracy of the premise that beauty is truth.  Everything from Michelangelo to an Indian motorcycle.

How do we experience art, truth and beauty?
How do we consume culture?
how do we contain/communicate the richness of diversity and beauty?
Do art museums work?

The public art museum is an 18th century idea (encyclopedia) in a 19th century box (the extended or recycled palace), that more or less fulfills its structural destiny sometime toward the end of the 20th century.

"Our museums conjure up for us a Greece that never existed. Andre Malraux

The artificial context of a museum should cause us to question the validity of what we experience there.

Things change - be prepared to adapt.
At the beginning of the 21st century, it is incumbent on museums to act responsibly as agents of change.

AUDIENCE DOES MATTER.

"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations, passion above all is a remedy against boredom." Joseph Brodsky
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Richard Saul Wurman
TED co-founder

"Chris started calling himself the curator of TED and I thought 'What the fuck is that?'"

"I just wanted a conference that was interesting to me." Funny how something great can spring from one person's wants and likes.

"All the talks aren't equally good, but the bad ones aren't that long."

Special TED moments - Jill Bolte Taylor's talk yesterday, Sherwin Neulan talking about electroshock therapy, when I kissed a bear (???)

19-20-21
19 cities in the world with
20 million people in the
21st century

Do yourself a favor and visit 192021

"When you look at the map, all the lines around countries are where we build walls and shoot each other."
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Garrett Lisi
physicist

"There's a whole zoo of subatomic particles."

OK, let's just be honest for a moment. Lisi is a genius and his talk is perhaps as comprehensible as it can be to the layperson. But given that I'm starving and a bit tired of sitting now, it's washing over me something like blah-blah Ginger. So I'm going to have to read more about this soon. To Garrett all I can say, "Really, it's not you, it's me."

TED Day 2, Session 1: What is life?

Alisa Miller
3 minute talk

How does the news shape the way we see the world - you must check out World Mapper which shows the world maps based on data other than land mass. In this instance, the maps here show how "big" other countries look in terms of media coverage. 

Key takeaway: Covering Britney is cheaper.
(By the way, it was longer than 3 minutes, but WELL worth it!)
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Craig Venter
Genetics pioneer

We've been digitizing life for 20 years through mapping the human genome. Can we regenerate life or generate new life out of the digital world? It's very difficult to generate DNA and the longer a chain you build, the more the errors. So now they're trying to replicate bacteria. But if they build it, how do they "boot it up"? The idea is that they create a chain, take another bacteria and insert the chain into that bacteria's genome and then the bacteria "boots up" as the one they are trying to create.

20 million genes discovered to date - these genes are the design components of the future.

They're working on software to design species digitally -- I'm sure it's more complex than the slide suggests, but it's hard to grasp designing a species via pull-down menu.

Their goals as Craig says are "fairly modest" - replace the petrol-chemical industry, become a major source of energy, improve vaccines, etc.

What bugs me about this is that it's difficult to follow with complex slides. I'm still brewing over yesterday's comment about the "female physicist" in a previous TED session who was "incomprehensible." But instead of the argument that resulted from that presentation, Chris Anderson sat down with Venter and said "help me understand."

Someone just posed that they are also a very dangerous organization due to the weaponization possibilities of this technology. Venter seems to believe (backed by Pew study) that few people want to use this technology to do harm. But who defines harm? Maybe there aren't terrorists who will want to do this (not now, anyway), but what about government use? I don't believe that all of those uses will be  peaceful or "good."

$100 million year budget, 70% funded by the government.

What can the TED community do to help? We need to educate people and not stop because we're fearful of what the technology can do.
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Paul Rothemund
DNA origamist

What goes into the definition of life -- lots of questions, but basically it involves computation. And small changes (mutations) can result in very meaningful changes. He's comparing the parts of molecules in terms of machinery and hardware -- molecular computers.

He says Venter is asking what's the smallest sequence I can create to replicate an organism? That's the same as "what's the smallest program I can build to replicate Word?"

Current DNA nanostructure building is very elegant but time consuming. His process, DNA origami, can "be done in your kitchen." Short strands of DNA attach in to long strands in different places so that it pulls the long chain into a series of double helixes. These are often rectangular in shape but can be manipulated into different shapes based on what short strands you use and where they attach.

Cool - student in China built a DNA origami chain that looks like China.

But what is the use? DNA origami doesn't scale -- you can't build a human. What it can do is algorithmic self-assembly of tiles. The tiles become the program and the patterns they form are the output. And computer program can be translated into a tile pattern that counts. Please don't ask me to explain how it does it because I just can't. Of course, it counts, but like Alex when he was 2, it skips numbers. "At least it counts up," he says.
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Dean Ornish
medical researcher

We're learning how powerful and dynamic lifestyle changes can be. Walking for 3hrs per week can actually increase your brain neurogenisis. Things that build cells - chocolate, tea, blueberries, stress management. Decrease cells - too much alcohol, sugar, etc.

Lifestyle changes can even turn on helpful genes,

Our genes are not our fate -- we can impact predisposition by making lifestyle changes like eating less fat and sugar, not smoking.
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Susan Blackwell
memecist, psychologist

Humans are the Pandorian species.

The theory of memes is founded on principle of universal Darwinism. It's much if-if-if-then -- the evolutionary algorithm of variation, selection and heredity. With those you must get evolution or "design out of chaos without the aid of mind." Genes are the first replicator - powerful and selfish replicator s(they will replicate if they can regardless of consequences). Another replicator is culture -- we replicate behaviors we see.

A meme is not an idea - just information that is copied. TED is a great meme-fest.

A curious meme - you go to a hotel and see lots of things, including the neatly folded toilet paper end. Who thought this up and how has it spread? But it has indeed spread across the world. Blackmore shows photos of folded toilet paper ends all around the world.

We are the meme machines -- we propagate memes. (Sometimes pretty quickly I think.) We are the second replicator.

She's seeing new memes - technological memes - technomemes. Technology is on the cusp of becoming the third replicator.

Drake equation - number of communicative civilizations. He included intelligence as a factor, but Blackmore says it is less important than the replicators. Her equation computes the fractions of planets in the galaxy that have first, second and third replicators with the fraction of a planet's life for which the third replicator survives.

But new replicators are dangerous to produce -- simple example is that babies with bigger brains are harder to give birth to.

We think we created the internet for our own benefit, but meme theory says that techno-memes (temes) replicated themselves and we were just the ve
hicle for replication.

This is the first talk I've heard on meme theory, though I've read about it, and now I have a much better view of it's so controversial.
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Christopher DeCharms
You can mimic what you can see - soon you will be able to program your brain states. Through non-invasive MRI to see real time what our brains are doing as we think, move, feel, etc. We can watch brain activity, then select areas to control. For instance, chronic pain patients can see their brain activity and repath activity to reduce pain.

The big question - our generation is the first to be able to do this -- where will we take it?

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David Hoffman

filmaker

Nine days ago he had a fire - his archive of films, books, everything -- gone. Was he his things, he asks?  Wanting to take something good from something bad, he's digging it out, wondering if there's something new and better to see in the burned objects. He's working on this idea of life as bits and pieces.

Each person's tragedy is just that to them, but Fred just commented to me and I'm sitting with the thought of how much tragedy exists in the world as children die every day, violent acts are committed, people

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Doris Kerns Goodwin

I've heard her speak a few times and I'm struck at how detailed her stories are - compelling not in their delivery but in their richness. This is a bit different because she's talking about how the richest lives are ones that strike a balance between work, love and play.

There's no way to convey the details she relays about how Lincoln persevered through tragedy, many defeats and remain true to his convictions, had the foresight and courage to build a cabinet from not just allies but detractors and competitors. If you haven't read Team of Rivals, consider it.

Goodwin says that learning to keep score of a baseball game and then relaying the game events taught her an appreciation of history and story telling. She always brings tears to my eyes when she talks about her love of baseball and its connection to her growing up, her father, her sons.
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TED day 1, session 2: What is our place in the universe?

Patricia Burchat
Astrophysicist
Only a small fraction of the universe is made of "ordinary matter" (us, this chair, this planet). 26% is dark matter...how does that matter impact our view of the universe? Profoundly it seems. Since I am not an astronomer, I can't even begin to explain why. It has gravitational attraction and forms structure. Dark energy makes up 70% and is completely different from dark matter in effect. It impedes gravitational attraction, competing with dark matter.

Fantastically succinct explanation of dark matter and energy. -
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John Hodgman
(he's the Apple commercial PC guy, author, Resident Expert on The Daily Show)
Cute little talk about Enrico Fermi's belief there is no other intelligent life in the universe. Not much else to say except that he's very funny in a quiet sort of way.
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Peter Ward
Paleontologist
How are we going to talk to alien life if we can't even transfer a slide from a PC to a Mac and have it get the letters right? Peter Ward studies the K-T extinction event and writes about why other complex life in the universe is very improbable and simple life is not just probable, but likely common.

I can't even go into detail about this, but he's talking about Mark Roth's theory of how to turn a mammal into a reptile by infusing them with hydrogen sulfide. Joe, please explain when I get home! Remember to ask geologist husband more about Flood Basalts.

Note - at no time in earth history that we can discern has any ice existed on the planet when the CO2 levels were at 1000ppm. Right now we're at 280ppm.
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Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
spiritual teacher

The universe it to create the "wow" in us. The first thing we do on entering the world is take a deep breath in and cry. The last thing we do is exhale a breath and others cry. Sorry, I didn't really take any notes during this, I just needed to be and listen.
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Tom Reilly, TED
Talking about the TED gift bags...I didn't go into much detail about this last night.
Unless Bottega Venneta made one I don't know about, it really is the nicest conference bag I've ever seen. Not only is it green (100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottle fabric). Very well designed interior with IDEO "big questions tag.
TED tee by REMO
TED polar bear from WWF
Custom laser-engraved back Zune preloaded with TED talks, music from performers here
Jawbone bluetooth headset in red
Keen Footwear GC for free shoes
$1000 GC from Lexus plus a Pangea Organics product box
Mimobot USB drive from Mozilla
1-yr subscription to Lynda.com (online tech how-to)
Nice pen from The Ladders
BMW electronic tire gauge
40% off Steelcase Chair
Media storage pocket
30% off Sony BRAVIA TV and/or Blu-Ray
23andMe GC (I got this free, more on that later)
Hint Mint mints
Zenergize water flavoring tablets
In the Name of Love - Africa Celebrates U2
CD with Kaki King
Surf's Up on Blu-Ray
BBC Planet Earth DVD set
REMO planner
Wired is picking up shipping home for any book purchases here
TED program guide and pencil made from recycled newsprint
Muji pencil sharpener (one of my favorite things!)
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Kaki King
Named by Rolling Stone as the "first ever female guitar god." What they didn't say is she's sort of a philosopher, too. If only I could post a sound file of this performance. She plays the guitar as if it's an entire orchestra.

Off for the opening night party at the Baldwin Gallery in town...

TED2008 - Day 1: Who are we?

First up is Hamlet's soliloquy. Once upon a time I knew this by heart.

And Chris Anderson takes the stage. It's time for TED! This year's theme is The Big Questions and over the next 4 days we'll talk about questions like, Will evil prevail? What is life?

First up - Louise Leakey
Just an upright, walking, super-intelligent, big-brained ape.
It's remarkable to think of how many questions still exist about human ancestry and how little time we've truly been exploring it.

Who are we and are the things our much larger brain allow us to do going to be the cause of us being the shortest-lived hominid species?

"We are most certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species." -Louis Leakey
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And now a little film -- the unmasking scene from Return of the Jedi. Except imagine that instead of the mask mouthpiece, Vader had a harmonica. Luke decides the mask is preferable.
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Next up - Wade Davis
Culture was born of the imagination.
All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions.
Western science is a major response to a minor need.

I have to look up the stories of the Elder Brothers who pray for the well-being of everyone and look at the rest of us in the industrialized world as the Younger Brothers who are ruining the world.

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Next up we're live in Aspen! Rives just did a cute little story with

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Back to Monterey - Chris Jordan
Talking about how the small, unintended actions
4mil plastic cups used on airplanes every day
40mil hot beverage cups every day. That's a 42 story building

US has the largest % of its people in prison.

If you haven't seen his art work representing the scale of waste, addiction and excess, you should. It's staggering.

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Bonus surprise...recorded earlier today, Stephen Hawking. Whoa.

1. Where did we come from?
2. Are we alone?
3. What is the future of the human race?

There aren't words to express how remarkable this person on earth is.

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Jill Bolte Taylor
So much of what we know about the brain is learned from what goes wrong with it.

Harvard neurologist who had a stroke.
Right brain - the here and now, thinks in pictures, each moment is an enormous collage of how we are experiencing everything around us.
Left brain - linear, methodical, all about past and future, what was and what can be. Picks out details of the collage, catalogs it, associates it with everything else we've experienced. Thinks in words. Tells us we are individuals.

We are of two minds and in every moment we can choose to step into the right or the left and experience it, act out of it and impact our world as a part of the whole or a distinct individual.

What is nice is to see a powerful woman, fully herself, sharing herself both intellectually and emotionally, telling her story through her tears. Tears are not reason to stop, to "pull yourself together." They are simply one manifestation of life and who we are.

And so TED begins

When the doors open in Monterey, they play the Elephant March from Aida to signal it's time to sit down...all dramatic and shit. Preparing to make some noise when Chris Anderson asks, "Aspen, are you there?"