ouroboros

TED 2008 - Session #9 - "What Will Tomorrow Bring"

In 3 minutes, Magraff shows "LiveScribe", a nifty tech I was too distracted during the simulcast to give proper time - gonna have to go back on that one.

First talk is from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan. 

"I am interested in the exceptions to the rule that we don't see coming: the computer, 9/11, Harry Potter, the Beatles, Google...

Unboundedness: Respect the unobserved -
The farmer feeds a turkey for 100 days.  the turkey based on 100 days of experience, believes  the farmer is to be trusted.  Day 101, the farmer kills the turkey.  For the turkey, being killed is a black swan...but not for the farmer.  Banking, as a business, is a turkey.

I don't understand how you could be skeptical about religion, and not be skeptical about economics.

Uncertainty principle isn't a theory, it's Pakistan.

Experts aren't.  Never take advice from someone wearing a tie.

Inverse Principle.  Everything is non-linear, except for the exceptions.  How easy is it to reverse engineer an ice cube from water?

I advocate this: don't mess with a complex system.  Leave nature alone. 

Plato and Karl Marx.  The only difference is Plato had better bathing habits.  They tried to teach, to force us to use our knowledge to make decisions.  I propose we use our lack of knowledge and ignorance of situations to make decisions.

You have to make a decision based on what you are willing to lose, not history.

Chris Anderson 3 minuter - editors Wired, wrote Long Tail - DIYDrones.com. 

Democratizing UAV's

• A predator drone costs $4MM.  What is the minimum cost to build a UAV?
• First he weaponized LEGO's, building a LEGO Mindstorm UAV for under $1000
• Next, he attached a mobile phone to a model plane for a sub- $500 UAV
• Last, a balloon.  UAV for under $100.

Peter Schwartz "The Future isn't what it used to be" (Paul Valery)

The future is more uncertain that it has been historically, because we are generating the future ourselves, now on the fly.

4 really big questions for the future:

1. Will there be a BIG WORLD WAR involving US/China/the Islamic World/India?

Wars are driven by (in order)

• Honor - Language and rhetoric - do we , can we treat each other with dignity?
• Fear - To reduce we share responsibility (e.g., joint military patrols)
• Self-Interest - China/India/US don't want to upset the boat.  Interestingly, he leaves the Islamic world out of this discussion
  

2. Will the GLOBAL ECONOMIC GROWTH we have seen in the 2nd half of the 20th century continue?

Shows comparison between Nigeria and Singapore.  Nigeria with resources, Singapore without, yet Singapore has greatly surpassed Nigerian GDP.  Schwartz posits its due to organization and creativity.  Interestingly, a Singapore resident @ TED told me that Singapore's productivity was at the cost of creativity - that the school systems fous on rote passage of volume information, not creative interpretation...

3. Will the fruits of economic growth be relatively EVENLY SPREAD ?

Wikipedia is the best anti war/equality/opportunity tool - projections are for 3B people in the next 50 years will emerge out of poverty

4. Will we be able to achieve growth in an ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE manner?

He proposes this formula

i = p (population) x a (affluence) x t (technology)

• Population will not double again, so that's slowing down
• Affluence - we do want them to participate
• Technology is the real lever on the system - Craig Venter is the James Watt of biotechnology

3 minutes from Gregory Petsko - we are facing an epidemic of neurological diseases on a global scale.  Our populations are aging - and as we age, we are more susceptible to neurologic disorder.

• Lower your risk of Parkinson's- have a latte and avoid head injuries and the avian flu
• Lower your risk of Alzheimer's - Eat more fish, keep your blood pressure down

Sue Goldie, decision scientist on "Analysis Advocacy and Action"

"We must never fail to stay aware of the individual tragedies and struggles that are underneath the population statistics"

Learned young of the failure of systems.  Born to a young unwed mom she never met.  Bounced around through foster care.  Learned about resiliency and tenacity.  After residency at Yale, in New Haven, she saw her next system failure - US health care

She articulates 3 viruses of Public Health Importance:

• HIV--> leads in an average of 12 years to AIDS
• undefined B and C --> ~25 years to Liver Cancer
• Human Papilloma Virus (HPV)  --> ~30 years to Cervical Cancer.  World's most common STD.  90% of cases are in poorer countries

Felix Kramer - 3 minutes on the automobile - "Hope in the Car Industry"

• Electricity isn't just different, it's better than gas
• Today's hybrid evolves into the plug in hybrid and a interested coalition has arisen
• What's taking so long for green products to improve?  The wait for version 1 of the plug in hybrid...
• Felix's website : http://www.calcars.org

Larry Burns of GM (visionary-in-chief)- Driverless Cars and the DARPA challenge
Larry Shows the BOSS  driverless vehicle.

Why is is that GM had to build a driverless SUV?  Didn't they have something smaller?  And "BOSS"? c'mon, people.

Walter Isaacson - What does the future hold for the art of narration?

"Narrative is connecting the dots.  People select facts, determine how they play together and how they add up.  They tend to be chronological.  Tend to be linear.  Tend to work better in an analog world.  So how do we nurture and preserve the beauty of narrative in an iterative, collaborative, interactive age.

The Iliad, the Odyssey were collaborative processes, not written by a  single writer, but evolved through both telling and hearing the story.  Everyone at Aspen Institute does Antigone.  The song of Roland has no single author or narrator - but is a result of scholars and scribes recounting and embellishing, editing and recombinating. 

The invention of the printing press made narrative less collaborative and iterative - because the narrative gets "carved in lead" - and so, effectively, began mass media, and centrally controlled narrative...

But it seems that current interactive narrative is just old wine poured in new glasses - isn't YouTube just redistributed video.  We haven't really evolved narrative to into a new form using the new technologies.

Where are there glimmers?  Wikis.  Books in the future will return to being unwritten.  dynamic.  alive (like the old Iliad).  Alternate Reality Games (ARG) - participatory narratives played out in the real and virtual worlds...

We are featherless bipeds that tell stories.  Let's keep doing that - and bring in collaboration.  Participation.  The wisdom of crowds..."

3 minutes from Ze Frank in Aspen

• Is it dark in here or is it just me? - God
• Are you really that much of an idiot? - my mom

A question is a complicated way of announcing your stupidity.

TED 2008 - Session #8 'What's Out There'

Brian Cox tips off Session #8, 'What's out there'. 

Below, a shot of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), going online shortly in a quest for Higgs particles (amongst other things...)

Some notes -

Ernest Rutherford said  "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" - that is, you can discover particles, but unless you understand the underlying reasons why, you've only collected stamps, not done science.  The LHC is built to understand.  Cox shared an anecdote - when funding was sought for the LHC, Margaret Thatcher said "if you can explain, in language a politician can understand, what you guys do [with the LHC], you can have the money".  So they used a party metaphor - imagine a room full of people at a party.  Someone unpopular can move through easily, particles will move out of the way to let them pass.  Conversely, someone popular will get clogged in people who will gravitate to them.  Known particles of matter are believed to be heavy because they collect theorized, but as yet undiscovered, particles - Higgs particles.  The LHC is meant to help find them.

"What does particle physics mean to me?  It's given us a wonderful narrative, a creation epic for science - at least as valid as the creation myths of the peoples of the high Andes, and frozen north."

Brian Cox's creation myth of science:

Below, Brian in the LHC, from Google images

Robert Ballard, geo-physicist and explorer, goes next.  He asks,"why are we ignoring the oceans?"

"NASA's one year budget would support NOAA's efforts for one thousand years.  Why are people afraid of the ocean?  Or uninterested in 72% of the earth's surface?  Most oceanic discoveries were found by accident...they were looking for  one thing, but found something else.  And by the way, there were more ships exploring the southern hemisphere during Captain cook's time."

50% of the US lies beneath the sea.  And we have better maps of mars than we have of this part of the US mass.
The greatest mountain range on the Earth, 42,000 miles long, is under the water.  Almost a quarter of our planet is  a mountain range we hadn't even visited until after we went to the moon.  The Rift valley is the "boundary of creation".  Photons cannot reach the average depth of the ocean (12,000 feet).

Along the Galapagos rift they found heat vents and pipes - a pipe organ of chemicals coming out of the ocean.  massive heavy metal deposits, large commercial grade ore along the range.  But that discovery was dwarfed by the life forms they found.  New life forms - Clams with different organs, that had been taken over by alternate biologic systems using chemosynthesis rather than photo synthesis.

Developed a new system of telepresence to replace the up down 5hr commute of the submersible - automated submersibles began discovering vast undersea edifices they dubbed the "Lost City"...just off San Torini, in a caldera nearby, they found phenomenal vent systems just 2 miles from where folks were sunning themselves on the shore, completely unaware.  And more and more - undersea brine pools and methane volcanoes.  They've discovered our past as well - the Bismarck, the Yorktown, Titanic, Phoenician ships laden with amphorae, ships carrying pre-fab stone temples.

Now they have a boat - decommissioned US naval ship the Okeanos Explorer (below)

Okeanos Explorer will be run like a emergency command center - live hardwired into the 12 universities with oceanic research departments - the boat will be a command center for feeding information from the sea into our minds...

I will not let an adult drive my remote underwater submersibles...they don't have enough video gaming experience..but I will let a kid drive.

We want the children involved, because when you get a jaw drop, you can rewrite that mind...

Why are we not looking at moving out onto the sea?  Why do we have programs to colonize the moon and mars?  Why are we not looking at colonizing our own planet when the technology is at hand?"

Q. are we ready to spread the human meme underwater?

A. Yes.  And we will preserve as well - are building under sea museums - immersionpresents.org, streamed live to visitors online...

Next up, a 3 minuter - Dialog in the Dark - you enter the experience with a dog and a guide - the only way to learn is to encounter...

Then comes Paul Stamets.

This one made my head hurt.  Still trying to figure out what happened.  if you do, let me know.

"Mycyleum infuses all landscapes.  Grand molecular disassemblers of nature.  We are most closely related to fungi than any other kingdom.   we share the same pathogens.  8 miles of mycyleum cells can fit in a single square inch of soil.  They are microfiltration membranes...essentially externalized stomachs and lungs.  Extended neurological membranes.  Mycyleum is the earth's internet - membranes broken will be repaired by the system.  It is system sentient - if you walk a mycyleum field,it will leap up to capture debris after your path.  The Internet, then, is a pattern built on a previous proven system."

Fungi gives off Oxalic acid, which crumbles rock, and creates soil...

Fungi, he suggests (and the fossil record seems to support) inherited the earth after the impact and extinction event - they use radiation as a source of energy, like plants use light.  They grew over twenty feet tall (see above).  Forests of fungi.

In Eastern Oregon, apparently, lives the world's largest mycyleum colony - 2200 acres in size and one cellwall thick...

Fungi are gateway species that open the door for other species - spores attract insects, insects lay eggs, larva are born, birds come, bring seeds and fertilize creating a green field...

We should save old growth forest as a matter of natural defense - the fungi that grow within house incredibly powerful anti-viral pathogens

We need to engage with mycyleum to save the world."

Joshua Klein -  on crows, co-existence, and vending machines for adaptive training

"Crows aren't just surviving with human beings, they are thriving with human beings.  And adapting in pretty unusual ways.  He shows a video of a New Caledonian crow using and improving tools to retrieve foods.  In Tokyo they've learned to drop nuts into traffic so cars can crack then.  Then they stand by the sidewalk until the light changes so they can go out into traffic to retrieve the food safely.  They are learning - from situations then from each other.  And they teach each other as well.

The vending machine as training tool:

They can be trained - what about trash removal?  search and rescue? he's excited by possible of interacting with other species and finding ways to co-exist and mutually support - rather than exterminate..."

Richard Preston, author of Hot Zone, now 'Wild Trees'

"Coastal Redwoods grow up to 380 feet tall, and the oldest living ones may be 2500 years or more old (contemporaneous with the Parthenon).  In recent times (the 70's through the 90's), 96% of the US coastal redwood forests were cut down...about 4% of the primeval forest remains in a string of small parks along the coast of Northern California. 

The redwood seem to exist in their own time.  They are constantly in motion, upward, articulating and filling redwood space over redwood time.  Standing at the base you can't know the tree - like a mouse looking at the foot of the elephant - the bulk is above you.  It was believed that the canopy was a 'redwood desert', but when the first free climber scaled a giant, they discovered a wildly biodiverse 3-dimensional redwood labyrinth, where you lose the ground and the sky - hundreds of feet above the ground.

...Children don't seem to have the same fear of heights as humans [laughter]...

A redwood is a fractal.  They "reiterate", that is, limbs will grow out then spawn a new redwood at the end of the limb which in turn grows up.  If we reiterated like them, our fingers would sprout independent humans.  They also spawn buttresses - limbs that grow across between trunks and re-enter, connecting and supporting.  If portions of it rot, it sends new roots into the rot to extract the nutrients.  They are finding crustaceans living in the soil off the redwood canopies - the same that baleen whales feed off in the oceans.  What they are doing there, no-one knows."

TED 2008, Blog notes for Session #7 - "How We Create"

Thanks to Matthias Hollwich of HWKN, I had a pen and one sheet of paper to capture Session #7.

How We Create?  Read about it on TED.

TED talks in a sentence:

Jay Walker, Priceline founder: My library is cooler than yours.  Forever.

John Knoll, Visual Effects God, creator of Photoshop: Visual effects is creating what doesn't exist (BoingBoing post)

Yves Behar, designer: Advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal (FC profile)

Robert Long, origami futurist: "Toes have become an Origami Meme"

Amy Tan: Ambiguity is the cosmological constant, and a question is focus.

Tod Machover:  Music is (a) better if you make it, (b) transformative and (c) shows who you really are

David Blaine does card tricks for the crowd. Stefan Sagmeister watches @ TED

Kaki King - Guitar God - TED 2008

OK.  I'm a newly minted fanboy.  Because Kaki King rocked the goddamn house @ TED.  Visit her MySpace page.  Buy her album.  She's at SXSW, then she's coming to PDX - Doug Fir 3/22.  She could have won that guitar battle from Crossroads, when Ralph Macchio (as Eugene Martone, channeling Ry Cooder) took on Steve Vai (as Jack Butler).  I mean like kicked their asses, combined.

         

TE2008: Session 5 - Will Evil Prevail? + Session 6 "How Can We Change the World?"

The amazing thing about being in the MAIN ROOM at TED (not the simulcast lounge where peons like myself are banished) is that you get to see and hear the speakers physically and viscerally.  But you also can't blog.  For good reason.  They don't like you hanging out tapping away bathed in a phosphorescent glow while brilliant people emote at your bent semi-attentive head.

So this post is a combo of live blogging Session 6, and reconstructing Session 5.

Session #5: Will Evil Prevail?

First up: Philip Zimbardo, author of the Lucifer Effect
Basic question, "what makes people go wrong?"  Growing up in the Bronx (he and Stanley Millgram both graduated from same HS in '54) he understood the barrier between Good and Evil to be permeable.  He used the Escher image to show the inherent interrelation:

"Evil", he proposes, is relative.  The three dynamics that drive (using Abu Ghraib as a model):

• Dispositional (individual soldier)
• Situational (context - an Iraqi prison)
• Systemic (A military/govt culture permitting "softening" prisoners for interrogation)

"All evil starts with 15 volts", or "mindlessly taking the first step" is the first step on the path that descends to evil.

He proposes the creation of a culture that inspires heroism: "I'm a hero in waiting, waiting for the right situation to come along for me to be heroic"  Most heroes are everyday people, who recognize evil and have the courage to confront it.  "You have to learn to be a deviant", he said, to resist the pull of the crowd. 

Someday you will be in a situation where evil is being done.  You will have three choices:

• Become a perpetrator of Evil
• Be guilty of passive inaction
• Be a Hero

Although he didn't mention it, you can apparently get yourself a Lucifer effect t-shirt:

Next up, a 3-minuter from Laura Trice, speaking on the important of praise.
Why don't we ask for the things we need?  Because by admitting what we need, we are giving each other critical personal data and we are showing vulnerability".

Then came Irwin Redlener "Are we at risk of a Nuclear Attack?"
Describes nuclear era as an act in 2 phases - Chapter 1 was the superpower arms race, Chapter 2, the threat of a single event Nuclear Terrorism.  The danger for us in the US, he suggested, is that "evil doers" are organized, dedicated, stateless and retaliation proof.  US targets are accessible, soft and plentiful.  Bad combo.

Some practical techniques to deal with getting stuck in a nuclear incident:

• Get out of not go into harms way - know the prevailing wind and walk 1-2 miles perpendicular to it
• Don't look at the light flash (you'll be blinded) and keep your mouth open (so the shock wave doesn't make your eardrums explode)
• If close to the blast, duck in cover
• Get away from initial fallout (you've got 15-20 minutes before lethal radiation in the cloud falls back to earth after the blast)
• Keep skin, mouth and nose covered
• Decontaminate
• If in shelter, remain so for 48-72 hours

After watching a distressing video of a nuke going off in downtown Manhattan, Eboo Patel did a 3-minuter talking about how religions have been used to support extreme positions that endanger our society and its support for religious plurality.  Goldie Hawn spoke about Pangea Day, beautifully, and threw out this gem: "Films seed minds".  Doug Wilson asked us all to think long and hard about selling technology to regimes that use it to hunt down dissidents and opposition.

Then Samantha Power spoke.

During the Rwandan genocide, the US govt heard more about gorillas than people, because we'd built an infrastructure to support endangered species, but not endangered peoples.  But there has been a rise and coalescence of an Anti-Genocide movement in the US - but for it to be durable and truly impactful, it needs to spread beyond our borders.  She also shared four lessons from the life and death of Sergio Vieira de Mello:

• Be able to have a relationship with evil, BE IN THE ROOM, but don't check your principles at the door
• Have a reverence for dignity
• Be free of fear
• Have humility and an awareness of complexity - be aware of it, but don't be paralyzed by it

Whew.

Session #6: How can we change the world?

1st up:  Author Dave Eggers

 

Disguised a writing center as a pirate supply shop to create a writing/tutoring environment.  Now over 1400 tutors involved.  Books have grown from the collaboration - 

From the description of 'Waiting to be Heard':

"The voices of students speaking about peace and violence are loud and clear, and they can be read in Waiting to Be Heard. This anthology by thirty-nine students of San Francisco's Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, with a foreword by Isabel Allende, combines essays, fiction, poetry, and experimental writing to offer passionate, lucid staments about personal, local, and global issues — the way high-schoolers would have you hear them."

Somehow, the pirate shop, started as a lark, actually became profitable and paid the rent.  More literacy centers followed - here's the Brooklyn Superhero Store:

[photo by Anne Helmond - Anne, you rock!]

Literacy chapters have sprung up in Seattle, the Spy Store in Chicago, the monster store in Michigan, the time travel mart in Los Angeles, etc. - here's the list of 'em, right here.  Awesome.

Egger's TED wish is below - click it to visit his site and learn how to engage!!!:

Next TED prize winner - Neil Turok

 

 

Neil's dream: The next Einstein will be African

 

Neil's plan: spread African Institutes for Mathematical Science (AIMS) across Africa.  Work with governments and local teachers to roll out 15 AIMS centers with Pan-African student bodies.  They must be RICH: Relevant, Innovative, Cost-Effective, High-Quality

 

Neil's Wish:

"My wish is that you help us unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes we see the next Einstein come from Africa".

Last Prize Winner: Karen Armstrong

According to her:

"Belief is only a recent religious enthusiasm - in the west in the 17th century it narrowed to our current understanding "I commit myself". [But that interpretation] make people quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian.

Religion is about behaving differently.  First you behave in a committed way, then you begin to understand the religion. Because you can only understand a religion and its beliefs by putting them into action.

Every major faith has historically given primacy to compassion - it is the test of any true religiosity.  Compassion brings you into the presence of the divine.  Rid of ego, you "are in" with the divine.  They've also all had a primary place for the golden rule: "do unto others what you would they do unto you".  Other than that, according to the Rabbi Hillel, "the rest of the Torah is commentary". 

Religion has been hijacked.  Universal outreach has been sacrificed/discarded.

Terrorists cite the Qu'uran.  Christianity, which is supposed to not be judgmental, is.  You cannot and must not confine your compassion to your own group.  "Love your enemies or the stranger, so that you may know one another".  The cause of our present woes are political, not religious, but religion is a fault line.

People now equate religious faith with 'believing' things.  And those things push out both compassion and the golden rule. 

More religious people prefer to be right, than to be compassionate"

Karen's wish:

"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 principles of universal justice and respect."

Wow.

 

TED Post #6 - Session #4...still

Garrett Lisi - surfer, physicist, writer of "An exceptionally simple theory of everything"

Our universe is the equivalent of a growing E8 Coral analogy, branching into different possibility.

Quantum mechanics in a sentence - "Everything that can happen does"

Can't predict what will happen when the Hadron particle accelerator goes online, pushing things 7x faster than ever possible before.   Quantum physics tells us everything will.  Hoping to find the Higgs particle.

My head hurts.  He presses a button to rotate 4-dimensional charge spaces.  Plus 'up/down' for 6-dimensional charge space, of course.

And here is 8-dimensional charge space:

The animated visual poetry of what he is showing in conjunction with what he describes is awesome.

Apparently, all of physics is resolved in wild images straight off a spiro-graph.

Coincidence?  Everything that can happen does.  You decide.

TED Post #5 - but still session 4 :-)

Go.  Here. Now.  Check this site out.

http://www.192021.org/

When mobility is weaponized

Remember Google and Apple offering geospecifc info for your mobile devices?  Nokia buys NavTeq?  Your geographic position can be a great way to deliver context relevant info.  Or send troops to find you.

Afghanistan telcos fear Taliban bomb threats

Taliban militants threatened to blow up telecommunication companies in Afghanistan if they refuse to switch off their networks for 10 hours at nights. The threat is a response to fear of US military and other foreign forces using mobile phone signals to track down Taliban footprints and launch attacks on them, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed told The Associated Press.

“It has caused heavy casualties to Taliban and sometimes to civilians,” Mujaheed said. “If those companies do not stop their signal within three days, the Taliban will target their towers and their offices.”

TED Post #4, Session 4 - Is Beauty Truth?

The rocking June Cohen opens it up.

First up - Isaac Mizrahi

"My designs come from mistakes or tricks from the eye...slightly mistaken or surprising...where does inspiration come from?  insipiration comes from lying awake and thinking.  NOT research.  Funnest thing I've ever done was read 'Peter and the Wolf' with a band from Juilliard.  Creativity should be like a bodily function.  I'm inspired by movies - the colors and lighting - how women are treated - glorified/denigated - irony and earnestness - I balance things.  Color motivates me - but rarely what I find in nature...how can I make anything as beautiful as that image of Natalie Wood?  or Greta Garbo?" - it's what keeps me awake at night.  Astrologers tell me to do something, I do it.  At 21, an astrologer told me my soullmate would be named "erik'. I'd go into bars and shout "Eric".  Epitaph:  "He ate out, he saw shows".  i do a lot of things, if you do lots of things you can feel lousy about lots of them, rather than mastering feeling lousy about one."

"I don't think of myself as a designer, or a fashion designer - I think of myself as...oh I don't know WHAT I think of myself...well, that's just that."

"You have to be slightly bored with everything.  But if you're not, you have to at least pretend to be slightly bored with everything."

"Style makes you feel great because it takes your mind off the fact that your going to die."

Style is great only in that it is amusing.

Relates things to kitchenry.  "Would you serve a rotten chicken?  Well then why would you wear that dress?"...Everything boils down to that.

Here's my last clip.  I don't think it's good, I just think it's not boring."

3minute Siegrfried Wolhe (sp?) - What does Leonardo daVinci look like?
Analyzed portraits, sulptures, drawings to identify the real DaVinci.  So cool.

Thomas Krens - is beauty truth?

Rattles first through a series of images - '27 more or less random demonstrations of beauty that illustrate either the absurdity or accuracy of the premise that beauty is truth'.  Quotes:

"Beauty and truth do not reside in the objects themselves but in the interaction with the viewer.

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

Our art museums conjure up for us a Greece that never existed - Malraux (1952)

Audience matters.  Art is for the masses.

Museums are sacred territory - art works inside are both survivors and messengers

So what is a museum now?

Krens talks about Guggenheim's plans for Abu Dhabi...dear god...nothing short of cultural terraforming...

Echoing Isaac in the words of Brodsky - "Passion is the cure for boredom"

TED Post #3. Session 3.

Let me start by saying it was a long night, and we'll leave it at that.

Thursday am, after the InSTEDD breakfast, the show gets going with a 3 minute-er from Alisa Miller - "how media shapes our lives".  Shows maps from 'world mapper' (according to their site, "a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.  There are 366 maps, also available as PDF posters".)

Second 3 minute-er:  Jay Walker, founder of Priceline, holds up a copy of the Guttenberg bible, and shares this tidbit:

"The printing press was driven entirely by the printing of indulgences, not reading. 

In the 1450's, the Catholic church needed money.  They generated cash by selling handwritten 'Indulgences', basically 'get-out-of-purgatory faster' passes.  For the church, having spent as much time and effort to handwrite indulgences as fast as possible, saw presses, as tools to print money.  Martin Luther was complaining, when he posted his screed on the church door, of a 'church run amok', printing out indulgences by the millions..."

Sweeet.

Session 3:  What is Life?

First up, Craig Venter. 

"Software can build the hardware in a biologic system" - but design is critical and genetic accuracy is critical. 
Believes the recombinant power is indicative that there must be life out there - perhaps dormant seeking a viable state...
So how do we boot up a synthetic chromosome?

Changing a cell's software (injecting new DNA) causes it to reconstitute its hardware (functionality, membranes, etc.)

What can Synthetic and Combinatorial Genomics do?

• increase basic understanding of life
• replace the petrochemical industry
• become a major source of energy
• enhance bioremediation
• drive antibiotic an vaccine discovery and production

Envisions synthetic Bacteria, Eukaryote and Archaea -

QA w/ Chris for Craig

Q.  You've discovered many genes during your ocean voyage.  why not use those rather than design from scratch?
A. we are finding biodiversity - genes that produce octane...but nothing evolved to produce the quantities we need.  we were thinking of making a micro refinery - but the scale is what's critical.  changing current organisms is a stopgap.

Q. So nature hasn't been effective?
A.  If nature was doing what we need it to do now, this planet would be covered with methane

Q. You proved you could move a natural chromosome from one bug to another and reboot the molecule.  So in your lab, they are looking at moving a chromosome into a new bacteria and hoping it will reproduce...
A.  We try not to base too much on 'hope'...[audience laughs]

We've evolved to resist reboot via DNA sharing - otherwise sex would be very different. 

You don't need to create life, you just need to create the code and letting it create itself.

Q. What is the 'suicide gene'? We see that in your chart...

A.  An easily triggered gene that, if triggered, would kill the gene if it got out of the experiment...

Q.  Are you building a genetic "pagemaker" or "skynet"?  What about weaponzing this stuff?

A. Pathogens are the hardest to create.  I am not advocating 'biohacking', but we need new tools against emerging infections..drug resistant staph killed more than HIV last year.  with pop going from 6 to 9B, expect new emerging infections

Q How do you think of your own legacy in this?  Could you be accused of playing god?

A. We are not "playing".

Paul K. Rothemund: How to make DNA Origami

Photo above is folded DNA.  Below - other patterns.

you can make DNA origami - nanoengineer

• to create complex forms - life performs computations
• these computations are performed by molecules
• the understand this we are re-imagining refashioning and rebuilding molecular computation from the ground up
• molecular programming holds more than self made cell phones and computers

3 minute - Dean Ornish - 'Genes are not our fate, they are our predisposition"

Susan Blackmore - "Memes in the cosmos" - AWESOME

• "We humans are earth's Pandoran species"
• Mimetics founded on principle of universal Darwinism.  The best idea anybody ever had - simple, but explains all design in the universe. 

To paraphrase the origin of species:

"if you have creatures that vary...and if there is a struggle for life such that nearly all these creatures die...and if the very few that survive pass on to their offspring whatever it was that helped THEM survive, then their offspring will be better suited to survive in that environment'

Meme - that which is imitated, or information which is copied from person to person.  The folded toilet paper meme, for example:

Variation + Selection + Heredity = you MUST get evolution, or  "design out of chaos without the aid of mind"

Language is a parasite to which we have adapted.  most other life forms are gene machines.  we are meme machines.

we need a new word for techno memes..."temes"...writing allowed us to capture memes out there. 

At the cusp of a third replicator - Techno-memes - memes that have evolved to self-transmit free of...humans...

She talks about the Drake equation - {N=R*fp ne fl fi fc L} for intelligent life probability - but she posits an error in the thinking - that Drake's formula ignores fundamentally the proposition of replicators

so she proposes an alternate formula:

N=n x f(R1) x f(R2) x f(R3) x L

• n = # of planet in our galaxy
• f(R1) = the fraction of planets with a first level replicator
• f(R2) = the fraction of planets with a second level replicator (memes)
• f(R3) = the fraction of planets with a third level replicator (temes)
• L = the fraction of planets life for which R3 survives

She notes that "the brain uses 20% of body's energy, for 2% of the body's weight - enormous energy expenditure to maintain."

Dangerous point of the third replicator - these are 'temes' spread because they must.  they do not care about us - they are information - why should they? - they use enormous quantities of resources - and they don't need us to survive.  'Temes' turn us into 'teme' machines...and we are living in a world where we are merging with the tech.

Will we get through this third danger point?

Christopher deCharms 3 minutes on Mimicry.  3 ways to impact brain - drugs, knife or therapy.  4th option is coming.  dynamic self brain control - what will you do when you can control your brain?  "our generation will be pioneers in inner space".

David Hoffman - 3 minutes on fire.  Had a fire.  All his stuff went up - film, books, photos, history.  "I'll tell you, film burns."

Doris Kearns Goodwin - "The richest lives are an even balance of work/love/play."

Fierce ambition is a good thing - Lincoln driven by a desire to accomplish something worthy enough in life to have made the world a better place to live in.

More amazing stuff on other blogs.

InSTEDD @ TED, 7AM loca

Eric rasmussen. EWarn 'Access' database SMS-synchronized. GATR inflatable satellite communications, TrIM -simultaneous 17 language IM translator, SPOT GPS pulser, palantir, 'sensemaking from large data sets, SMS GeoChat, geobloggING ricohs. John francis, ethical advisor

john hodgman @ TED

worldwide telescope.org

TED post #1

OK.  Renny's sort of in heaven right now.  Down here @ the TED bloggers alley in Monterrey.  I feel incredibly lucky to be here, so here is my best attempt to share what I am seeing/hearing.  Typing as I go.  My apologies for typos.

So far:

• Demo of kluster technology - crowdsourcing tool they are using to try to develop a product over the course of TED in a single 72 hour period - seriously check it out.  Kluster leverages game design principles to the brainstorming process - funky
• Lunch sponsored by Nokia, Annsi Vanjoki presenting

1st presenter in the Who Are We bucket:

Louise Leakey, granddaughter of Louis.  Couple of quick notes -

• until 30,000 years ago, we shared earth with at least two other walking apes
• what makes us us?  She suggests collective intelligence, language, consciousness, advanced tool use + the ability to communicate with each other any where in the world...
• avg 'Homo' species has lasted about one million years, but look at us - in only 200K years, 6.5 B people, growing by about 80MM/year.  Technology, she notes, has removed our checks and balances
• "we are most certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our species" - Louis Leakey

Palette cleanser - it costs a lump of coal to transmit one megabyte of data.  That's funky - shows a bag of coal (200 lumps) equating it to one 200Mb file.  Yikes.

Wade Davis got off strong, stayed on a roll:

'We coexisted with neandrathals, but left them in our dust...according to proto-shamanists, cave paintings are 'postcards of nostalgia', not direct artwork reflecting active culture..all of humanity descended from 1000 people who left Africa...there is no progression - different cultures are just different options.   Polynesia - 10K islands.  Wade traveled with Navigators who can determine island group by wave patterns against boat...they know 250 stars by name, can feel 32 different sea swells against the hull of the boat from the inside...if you apply everything it took to get to the moon, to the sea? you get Polynesia.  western science is a major response to minor needs.  our billboards sell underwear, theirs, prayer walls."

Talks about the 4 noble truths:

• all life is suffering
• cause of suffering is ignorance
• ignorance can be overcome
• delineation of a contemplative practice

Said one monk "we may not believe you went to the moon, but you did.  you may not believe we achieve transcendence in a lifetime, but we do"

Andean rituals - go into the mountain as an individual, but you emerge as a community.  Machu piccu was never a "lost city" always linked into road system, but also into the sacred places - rhythms of land play into sacred models - their prayers and their prayers alone maintained their world and society.

Wade spent 6 weeks with the "elder brothers" a deeply religious Peruvian priesthood - that "live and breathe the realm of the sacred chewing .5lbs of coca leaves/day - they pray for the dead with spinning motions, all weaving and look, descendants from the goldsmiths of central America, retreated into the mountains.  Keep men in the sacred field for 18 years, two cycles of 9 years each.  The world is an abstraction
had to be cleansed before visiting - holy men wear no shoes - must never break contact with the earth

For the Inuit, blood and ice are affirmations of life, not signs of death

the world is not flat - it remains a rich tapestry, topography of the spirit - these societies are not failed attempts to be you, they are different answers to "what does it mean to be alive"

industrial society has existed only 300 years - a shallow culture by comparison

Chris Jordan - HOLY COW - takes issues from the raw language of data to make them stories that are meaningful to us.  So we can ask, as a people, "How do we change?"  How do we take responsibility for the one thing we are in charge of - which is our own behavior.

Here's one photo:

detail:

yep, those are plastic cups.  1MM of them.  Same as is used in 6hrs by the US airline industry.

Breast augmentation is becoming the most rapidly growing high school graduation gift.

His "Can Seurat" depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

and the detail shot:

and up close:

 

Next up:  Sxip Shirey, audio artist.  Amazing.  My words suck compared to what sounds he makes.

Then

Stephen Hawking via telecon to Cambridge, addresses four questions:

1. Where did we come from

2. How did the universe come into being

3. are we l alone in the universe

4. is there alien life out there

what is the future of the =human race

Odd to hear a telecon of a virtualized voice talking about the beginning of the universe...thought the theory of the universe could be divided into two parts

Under extreme conditions, time can behave like another dimension of space.  removes distinction between time and space.  means initial laws of evolution apply to creation.  the universe can be created out of nothing.  if fact, we can predict the likelihood.  we think we have solved the mystery - "perhaps we should patent it"

Are we alone?  we believe life arose spontaneously on the earth, so we can assume it has also originated in other places.  but we don't know how life first appeared.  Life appeared on earth within a half billion years of it being possible.  Has been about 10B years - if probability was low, it would have taken longer to form

Are we alone?  well, we haven't meant anyone. doesn't think there are other civilizations at or higher than our level within a few hundred light years.

what is the future of the human race?  we should make sure we survive and reproduce, our use if the planet resources are growing exponentially.  Our genetic code carries a selfish and aggressive instinct - it will be difficult to avoid trouble...Our future is in space.

Thankful his physical condition hasn't been a handicap in his pursuit of knowledge...

[film showed the 7 minutes and the user interface Hawkins uses for answering]

Jill Bolte Taylor - Brain scientist - Neuroanatomist - - starts riffing on Triple Immunofluorescence

Had her own brain hemorrhage 12/10/1996. Lost her left hemisphere, effectively.

Pulls out a brain with dangling spinal column.  seriously.  Audience freaks out.  then she describes the hemispheres.

• right hemisphere - parallel processor - this present moment, right here, right now.  thinks in pictures.  learns through kinestesiology, sensorial input.  we are energy beings connected to each other via our right hemispheres
• left hemisphere - Serial processor - the past and the future.  Pull details out of present moment associates present to past (what we have learned) and projects possibility into the future.  thinks in language, not pictures.  calculating intelligence.  Says "I am", which makes me single and separate from the energy flow, separate from you.

The morning of the stroke, she became aware of her body...she began experiencing her own body from a  distance.   And felt a bad headache coming on.  Standing in her bathroom, she could hear her own internal dialog about which muscles should expand and contract,  Then realized she couldn't define where her body began and ended,  the molecules of her body connected, bled into the molecules of the wall...then left hemisphere brain chatter went silent...

captivated by the energy around her - felt enormous and expansive - then left hemisphere came back on line "we got trouble! we have a problem! we need to get help!" then it drifted back out and she was back in la-la land - had just shed 37 years of emotional baggage, then left hemisphere comes back on line "get help! gotta get to work! can I drive?"...she then realized she was having a stroke, then thought - "omg - this is so cool - how many brain scientists get to study what they study from the inside?"  then left hemisphere said "i don't have TIME for a stroke" - long process to get a colleague on the phone.  In her mind she said "I need help" but sounded like a golden retriever - she didn't know she couldn't speak or understand language until she tried to use it.  Got to the hospital.

Then she woke.

Sensory input was an overload - lights too bright, sounds huge - couldn't identify her own body in space...felt there was no way she could squeeze the enormity of herself back into her body.  Felt like she had found Nirvana.  Could people step to the right of there left hemispheres?  transcend?

2.5 weeks later, they removed a hemorrhage, a blood ball the size of a golf ball.

Her message:

"We have two cognitive minds - we can choose who and how we want to be in the world - and you do choose.  we do choose.  to be single and alone, apart , or together part of the universe."

Session 1 comes to a close.

Game Studies Download 3.0

[via avantgame]

"The Game Studies Download is compiled annually by Jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost, and Mia Consalvo for the Game Developers Conference. It's a summary of the top ten research findings from academic game studies from the previous calendar year. Our main criteria for selecting studies is simple: the direct relevance of the researchers' insights to the future innovation of game design and development."

Wow. Well worth the read.

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Search - it's not just for wonks

Was speaking this morning with Jim Macove @ Fathom. 

I was asking him how Fathom and other SEO orgs wouldn't be automated out of existence when Google finishes refining their bid management tools and someone comes up with a simple off-the-shelf site metadata injector for websites that links with your bid management tools to allow a steady yin/yang of effective paid terms being morphed into cost effective organic inclusions  (anyone?  anyone?).

Jim suggested Search could never be fully automated, because beyond cost effective PPC management, you need a human being ensuring that search efforts link strategically to the umbrella campaign concepts, and that your efforts don't fall victim to technical glitches (e.g., that you don't burn your month's paid search budget in two days and go dark for the balance because of a typo or checked option box in the bid tool's system).  And I buy that, to a degree.

As an example where automation falls to heck, Jim used paid search as a Crisis Management tool.  As in "my [misunderstood] company just f-ed up", or "they just found ebola-laden ground monkey brains in my multivitamins-for-children-product".  Getting into the engines with a quick paid search effort around hot button terms may help you prevent a 'disaster' from going 'catastrophe' by reason of neglect or delay - while you look for all the telephone numbers of "influential bloggers" who need their feathers smoothed and nests lined (assuming the flap is just a mistake).

So it's pretty easy to envision a microfragmented Search specialization market - content seeding, product release, crisis management, etc., as there is revenue to be generated there, and few agencies, clients or PR shops are equipped or trained to deal in this space pro-actively and dynamically.  Not all specialty search shops are either, to be honest.

So here was the last thing we discussed, and I'd welcome any thoughts on this -

Search seems to have landed on the media side of the revenue equation.  Probably because the media teams spend real money, enough to justify Google's $158 B valuation and MSoft/Yahoo's woozy mating ritual going on now.  Or else it comes from a special budget set aside for the purpose and a specialty shop gets the nod.

But while profit may be in media, client mindshare is often still in creative.  Because a campaign lives or dies on the strength or weakness of its ideas, right?  But that's NO EXCUSE not to consider search creatively. 

Top notch media planning and buying, as well as search, should be as 'creative' as the 'creative' it's put into service for.   A great brand experience, not delivered brilliantly (via execution AND distribution), isn't great.  It's compromised.  An almost.

Jim suggested we need an "Effie" for search to prove it out as an ad tool, not a DR crutch - but my argument is that Google @ $158B is pretty effing-effie as far as I'm concerned.   The problem I see is that search seems too often to be relegated to wonks when it should be as fluid a part of the brand experience as any other creative treatment.   

Search shouldn't be a doormat, it should be another guest at your brand party.

Our goal is to put together a Cannes-winning engagement scenario that uses search as creatively as any other tool in the box. 

Depending on whose numbers you use, 50 to 80% of online sessions begin with a search.  Search, as the first taste of your online efforts, is the chance to have them at "hello". 

If you (agency, brand, whomever) aren't leveraging search every bit as creatively as every other tool in the kit, you're wasting opportunities.  Are you letting competitors buy up your brand's campaign-relevant terms, to drink the sweet sweet nectar of the traffic you worked so hard to generate?

W+K @ Yakuza, PDX

YVR, awaiting boarding

Apparently, our plane's being towed from the maintenance shed over to our gate. Ummmmm...

YVR, 1:20PM LOCAL

Sweet.

helsinki, 7:45 local

Looking for something?

If you search for "meaning", Google will find you 185 Million results in .17 seconds.  Amazing you can get that many results and still no answer.

Yahoo Live = Speed Dating + isolation chambers + lurkers + kids + freak/geeks

Yahoo Live.  I'll admit - I'm conceptually smitten.

Sure, the live video/streamed video/shared video social video paradigm has been around for a while.  The news with Yahoo Live is that an industry big boy has effectively validated the space by entering it - though they are clearly still overcoming some pretty irritating technical hurdles.  Says Marshall Kirkpatrick, blogger and consultant to the stars:  "If I were one of the existing video sharing/creation sites, I'd get out there quick with a clearly articulated value proposition."  Why? Yahoo is going to eat your lunch.

I know Yahoo's flogging this thing.  I know there are other video clients out there.  But wow.  I just went to check this thing out for few minutes and got stuck for three four five hours so far.

Sure there's a delay.  Sure it chunks up.  Sure my mike has crapped out is apparently live again.  Sure you have to keep typing because the sound may or may not be working and then you get loud mike reverb.  But there is something really compelling about it.  Something very human.
  
Some quick observations:

• Folks look LAME while silently watching other folks.  Guys in particular seem to always rest their head on a hand.  or two.  You know what?  if you can't hold up your head without your hands, GO OUTSIDE AND EXERCISE. Then come back in and watch some gal taking singing requests before gamely butchering the national anthem (yep, saw that).  And before you come back?  put on a shirt.  and pants.  and wash your face.
• Please have something to say.  a live channel gets old quick, even if you are cute - trust me, I checked out a few of them (and on other networks).  To the extent apps like this remind folks you need to organize your thoughts before you open your mouth, awesome.  To the extent it's just a million million people talking about their cats while crazed Norwegians text chat contemptuously over their streaming faces (yep, saw that too) it doesn't bode well. 
• Fluid watchers - or maybe thats fickle.  or maybe they are craving a jolt.  folks dip in and out of channels quick.  I saw one guy in five separate channels.  and they are merciless - the guy doing the live rap show had a bad patch and you could hear and see the viewers drop out of his channel going to look for...
• cute girls - believe it or not, they still draw.  Silent legions of viewers.  one Romanian gal, I swear, she was a thirteen or fourteen year old [tops!] and brushed her hair for over 130 viewers.  Before you send your kid to their room, confiscate the webcam or they may pole dance for a silent horde.  Not really.  but sort of.  I think you get it.
• Ambient creepy - few viewers in each channel actually enabled their cams, fewer still audio.  You perform.  they listen.  and watch.  and not all of them are dressed.
  
• Empty Channels: a yahoo live channel can be like a party no-one comes to.  and you sit alone in your channel, waiting for folks to come in.  bizarre.  Expect the rise of the video community host.
• Distributed performance - I saw three separate folks streaming (not very good) performances, a live rap show with a call in, and a dude explaining why the yahoo services keep crashing.  Look for political channels to start up REAL QUICK.

If I'm selling video conferencing services, I'm worried.

Jeremiah Owyang pull together a great list of other live video/streamed video websites worthy of note:

• StickAm - Express yourself live
• Ustream - Live interactive video for everyone
• kyte: TVstart your own broadcast network!
• Mogulus Live Broadcast!
• Veodia  live TV studio in your browser
• Operator 11 Grab your cam and join any show that’s netcasting
• YouCams Instant Social Networking
• MyStreams Lifecasting Now
• HomeCamera Home Monitoring made easy
• Infinite Conferencing Webcast Your Event… Get the Power and Reach of a Radio or Television Broadcast at a fraction of the cost!
• BlogTV Create, Share, and Watch Live Broadcasts
• ComVu “Broadcast video “live” from the palm of your hand”
• Justin TV “A place for live video. That means everything from event streaming to lifecasting.”
• Yahoo Live “Y! Live was dreamed up as a way to make it possible for anyone to create their own live video experience”

Net - this stuff is amazing. 

It forces the question of community - watching is not just a solo consumption event but one in which each player has a distinct and visible personality.   The web social contract is getting more sophisticated.  You can see your viewers.  You can ban or block them.  Anyone (broadcasting or watching) can flag inappropriate content.

As is usually the case, the tools are background noise for the social interaction growing on their platforms.  Two bucks says the porn industry already has been using this, and its only just now spilling out into freeware.  But then what this whole thing needs is a paypal plug in/secure transaction freeware that allows people to micro-charge (or in the porn use case, macro- or recurring charge setups) access to their sites. 

Does this make our lives better?  make us less lonely?  I got to meet some of my blog readers (shout out to a.d.p. in stockholm!) - you tell me.

Bad question - 3:08am, London.

Yahoo Live - Sick Sick Sick

The Changing Face of Music

 

With bands bailing out of labels and offering music for free, and with brands like Doritos finding and promoting new music talent, who do you think are the three biggest names in music right now?  A hint - one starts with "i" and the other sounds a lot like Amazon. 

For now I'd argue the third spot will be filled by a rotating cast of brands - between Starbucks entertainment exclusives and distribution, Coke music and now Pepsi Stuff music promotions, brands have a strong chance to play kingmakers in the new music landscape - even with anemic participation and/or redemption:

"Regardless of which labels ultimately sign on, the [Pepsi] Super Bowl commercials will nonetheless double as the coming-out party for Amazon's digital download site, which soft-launched Sept. 25...Given the steep decline in U.S. CD sales-so far, down 18.6% year to date compared with last year-music executives have been vocally worried about what the new year will bring for the physical format.  By switching to a digital format that is compatible with all portable devices-including the all-important iPod-the move could help merchants like Wal-Mart and Amazon capture some of iTunes' 70% market share, and perhaps grow the overall size of the digital marketplace."
                        - "A tipping point for MP3's", by Ed Christman, for Billboard

Some episodes of drinkin' and rhymin':

• 02/04 - Pepsi and iTunes teamed up for a 100 Million song promotion.  Interestingly, the promo saw only a 5% redemption rate with just 5 Million songs 'won'
• 05/16/07 - Coke and iTunes team up to give fans 2 Billion on-pack chances to win music in Europe
• 11/30/07 - Amazon + Pepsi to give away "up to" a billion songs, promotion to tip off with Superbowl.  The hook?  5 Billion codes distributed, and 5 codes from 5 caps together net you 1 song + a burst bladder