TED Global 2010 - Day Three
My last Day in Oxford owing to work commitments - that old problem of prioritising the urgent over the important - and a corker as far as I'm concerned....Its definitely worth a passing look at the work of Christien Meindertsma and her Pig 05049 project where she followed one pig from Netherlands to its final resting place in hundreds of products as diverse as military ammunition and bone china. This work is now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
But the talk that ignited the morning was without doubt that from Marcel Dicke who is an Ecological Entomologist. He passionately believes that we need to start eating more insects progressively replacing the protein in our diet with that derived far more efficiently from animals that have six legs. Insects already contribute $57m to the US economy by pollinating the plants we need, removing dung, controlling pests and kicking off the food chain - they now need to be a big part of our diet. Not only did he encourage the moderator of the session to eat a worm covered candy but all the venues for the coffee break that followed offered bug snacks alongside the pastries and fruit.
One of the best quotes of TED Global has to have been that from Tim Jackson the sustainability scholar. He described the sort of consumption that provides the engine for current global economic growth and is destroying our planet as the act of "spending money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about". Something to ponder on plannerkind!
To say Jessica Jackley rocked the place would be an understatement and this would be my top tip for the TED Talk to watch above all the others from Global 2010 once it is released online. She is the co-founder of Kiva the online micro-lender that after only 5 years now lends over $150m a year to entrepreneurs in over 200 countries. She is a passionate advocate of micro lending over aid not only to help real people kickstart their businesses but to foster greater empathy between the people of the earth. A donation as she said allows us to "buy our distance" a loan creates an ongoing dialogue and love. That she was overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment - telling her story on the TED stage merely acted to bring home the enormity of what she is up to some of which is captured in this story of one Kiva loan.
A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.
Then two scientists fighting to change the way we see ourselves and the world. Herbert Watzke is a food scientist an challenges the idea that we are omnivores, preferring to regard us as cocktivores, animals that eat cooked food. He maintains that cooking was the most fundamental technology of early man and unleashed human potential feeding both of our brains. Yes, that it this is a tale of two brains where one is in our skull and the other in our gut. Indeed our 'small brain' as he calls it is about the same size interns of nerve cells and neurones as a cat's brain and performs many brain like functions not least the start and stop signals for consumption of food that don't come from our large brain.
Stefano Mancuso, the plant neurobiologist, is cut from the same cloth. In as much as he is challenging the orthodoxy that surrounds our understanding of plants. For him plants are not inferior creatures to animals and exhibit both movement and sensing characteristics that we have long thought separated simple animals from plants. He shows that not only do plants sense light and gravity they also exhibit sleeping and playing behaviour all without a brain. For Maneuso the tip of the radial behaves in exactly the same ways as the brain of lower animals.
And so to education. Word to the wise, find out what Sugata Mitra is up to. He is creating self organised learning environments for kids around the world believing that Education is a self organising system in which learning emerges when you leave kids to their own devices and armed with a computer and the internet. The idea of education without schools, or importantly teachers, is important since in every country there are places where good schooled cannot be built or good teachers cannot or will not go. This thinking is based on some breathtaking research like whether 26 Tamil speaking 12 year olds left with a computer and lessons in English could teach themselves biotechnology. Contrary to popular belief he maintains that learning is more successful when the adults go away, with the exception of what he calls the "granny cloud" that kids can call upon (a bit like phone a friend) and which is staffed by a bunch of global grannies who mainly seem to dispense admiration as only Grannies do. One of the longest standing ovations of the conference from where I was sitting and then standing.
Conrad Wolfram, a mathematician, is similarly enthusiastic about computers in education and maths specifically. He is a passionate advocate that we should stop demanding that kids learn to calculate by hand and leave this to computers so that maths education can concentrate on posing the right questions, turning real problems into mathematical problems and then converting the computer calculated solutions back into the real world and verifying them.
Tom Chatfield is a games theorist. he is doing brilliant stuff trying to understand how compute games transfix and motivate us as a basis for changing the way we educate kids and much more. His work is perhaps more readily applicable to the stuff we do both in his understanding of real engagement (wanting + liking = engagement) and in the lessons from games he has developed. These include the power of experience bars that measure progress, the establishment of multiple long and short term aims, constant reward for effort, rapid and frequent feedback and teaching during periods of enhanced attention. As Rory Sutherland commented to me afterward this is gold dust in the whole behavioural economics and advertising debate.
And finally, after all these are the mere highlights of Day 3! TED's curator Chris Anderson. Looking beyond the almost messiah like reverence in which he is held by TEDsters I thought his talk was excellent and not just because of a rather cute use of Prezi. In part because of the stellar success of the TED Talks online he is fascinated by the idea of Crowd Accelerated Innovation where the presence of a large audience, the ability to shine light on a particular endeavour and the desire amongst the crowd to learn and participate leads to rapid learning and new ideas . And he believes that the critical technology in this is, guess what, the power of online video. Apparently this is already noticeable in the dance community where new ideas can be introduced, learned and improved upon in ways that simply didn't exist before video became easy to upload, stream and download online. And in science he talked about the online service Jove which allows scientists to publish papers for peer review using online video, the principle benefit begin the speed with which experiments can be replicated when you show other scientists how to do it rather than describe the procedure in a journal.
So that's your lot. I bet Day Four was awesome too but alas I was not there to suck it all up.
TED Global 2010 - Day Two
Not a vintage TED day as far as I am concerned but one or two highlights....Ethan Zuckerman kicked off the day and a session called found in translation. Powerful stuff as he addressed the issue that cripples social media and ultimately potential the power of the internet to really connect humanity - the fact that we have increasingly segregated conversations online imprisoned in filter bubbles and what he rather brilliantly called 'imaginary cosmopolitanism'. He talked about how in reality atoms are more mobile than bits and gave the example that you are far more likely to drink bottled water from Fiji than come across anyone or anything from Fiji online despite it being a relatively engaged intent nation. He calls for a movement of xenophiles to actively build bridges between nations, tribes and communities online to foster greater understanding and help the internet life up to some of the grander claims that were made for it in the early days. Rather pleasingly he talked also of the need to create serendipity in our on demand lives which is something I have been banging on about for ages.
On a similar note Elif Shafak, the most read female novelist in Turkey talked about the power of circles and specifically their ability to destroy everything within them. She quoted a Sufi saying, "Knowledge that takes us not beyond ourselves is worse than ignorance". That surely is a powerful watchout for all of us and questions exactly how wide our worldwide web is.
I'm a big fan of David McCandless and his book 'Information is beautiful' that my brother gave me recently for my birthday. His data visualisations are both powerful and extremely elegant and he talks about the per of visualisation to draw together the language of the eye and the mind to create far greater and faster comprehension of the increasingly complex subjects and data sets we need to wrestle with personally and professionally. It rather made me think that all planners need to go on a data visualisation course and master design software beyond powerpoint - something for the APG or IPA perhaps?
Other people worth following up also might include the green chef Arthur Potts Dawson who is trying to change the environmental impact of the restaurant and food business at places like the Acorn House, the Waterhouse and the People's Supermarket(where customers have to work in the store for a few hours each month). And you might check out John Hardy's Green School in Bali.
TED Global 2010 - Day One
OK, so here are the people and talks that I think are really worth following up form day one of TED Global. Of course the talks themselves will appear on TED.com in the future so get ahead of the curve...the whole shebang kicked of with Joseph Nye - who describes himself as a rational optimism - talking about the nature of power in a World in which power transition to Asia (what Nye calls the Asian recovery) and power diffusion to non-states (driven in part by a reduction in computing costs by 1000x since 1970) are the dominant global themes. Nye advocates that we embrace the idea that the root to power is through influence not control and that 'narratives' are as important as tanks in winning influence on the global stage.
The star of the session for me was Sheryl WuDunn, a female rights advocate. She believes that gender inequality is the central moral challenge of our time. Not simply because brutality against women is morally wrong but because she believes women are the solution to many of the problems we face - indeed the highest return on investment in the developing world may well be in women's education. Sheryl is the author of Half the Sky.
Naif Al-Mutawa is the creator of the 99. This is a comic series that features 99 characters each from a different country and each of which embodies one of the 99 attributes of Alah. His intention is to provide a positive view of Islam for both Muslims and non Muslims.
Nic Marks talked about Happiness and the Happy Planet Index he has created. He was inspired by Robert Kennedy who said that what frustrated him was that "GNP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile". According to the index the country that is most successful in converting resources into happiness is Costa Rica. He is determined that conversations about reducing our ecological footprint goes hand in hand with a fundamental improvement in our quality of life and happiness.
Matt Ridley is another rational optimist and talked about what happens when ideas have sex. His maintains that it is the act of exchange - of objects and ideas - that defines humanity, because it means that we don't have to do and make everything that we need ourselves and he uses the example of the pencil to prove this. There is literally no one that knows how to make a pencil - no one person knows how to provide all the elements that go into the entire system that creates a pencil. This is the collective brain - the ability to do things for each other so that all of us can specialise and do the things we are best at. For Ridley this exchange is the engine of human development and what marks us apart from other species.
I love Steven Johnson and have done since he wrote the Ghost Map, an understanding of the limits of urbanisation and specifically the way in which John Snow discovered the link between cholera and poor sanitation by mapping cases in the Soho outbreak of 1854 around one water pump in Broad Street. He talked about the conditions that create great ideas or in which great ideas are born. People recalling how their ideas emerge tend to ascribe them to one 'eureka' moment as Darwin did about natural selection (he said it had come to him while reading Malthus). In truth ideas emerge in a much more muddled and laboured way over time and critically through connections not just between existing ideas but also between people. He has written this all up in a new book Where good ideas come from - the natural history of evolution.
Best of TED - Day Four
Manhatten on the 12th September 1609 and today. Image courtesy of Traceybrown914
Last but not least the best from the final morning session.
Eric Sanderson – Landscape Biologist - Eric has been working on the Mannahatta project which recreates the Manhatten as Henry Hudson would have experienced it on September 12 1609. He has been working back froma British Military map form the War of Independence recreating the ecosystems that existed on Manhatten and then visualizing them in quite extraordinary ways.
Bjarke Ingels – Architect – Nothing earth shattering here but this man is quite clearly an architectural genius. One of his latest projects is the Danish Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo which includes a 1000 bikes people can borrow, a million litres of Danish Water which is been shipped to China and the Little Mermaid. His advice if you are going to the Danish Capital next year looking for the Little Mermaid is don’t bother.
Magnus Larsson – Dune Architect - This was earth shattering. Magnus is working on a ‘wall’ across Africa to prevent desertification. Plans have existed to plant trees across the continent but trees are very vulnerable ot being used for firewood when people are desperate so Magnus’s plan is to solidify a line of dunes by injecting a bacteria into the sand that turns it into sandstone.
Dan Pink – Career Analyst - Dan is frustrated that science has conclusively proved that the use of extrinsic motivators to reward staff (like bonuses) crushes the creativity that most organizations need but that the business world is still obsessed with this approach. Extrinsic motivators work for very simple tasks but narrows peoples’ focus for the problem solving jobs most of us now have. His solution is to develop intrinsic motivators like autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Itay Talgam – Conductor – Bit of a management metaphor this but brilliant. Talgam uses the styles of different conductors to illustrate the need for leaders to direct and inspire, yes, but also to show their enjoyment of the work their people do. Definitely one to look at online when TED uploads the talks.
Best of TED - Day Three
Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility in Hanford,
Southeastern Washington State by Taryn Simon
Now we are cooking, take a look at these bad boys and girls.
Paul Romer – New Growth Economist – Paul believes that the city not the nation state is the appropriate resolution to think about development taking his inspiration from the way that Hong Kong and then specially designated mainland cities have been the engine for China’s growth. His plan for Cuba is to do the same kind of thing using Guantanamo Bay as a special development zone administered by Canada and Cuba jointly, incidentally removing a political headache for the USA along the way. For Paul innovation in development is all about changing the rules that shape that development.
Mark Koska – Mark has developed a new syringe that breaks if you attempt to use it more than once, a innovation to help reduce the 1.3m people who die each year from reuse of syringes.
Michael Pritchard – Inventor – Mark’s Lifesaver Bottle can turn any water on earth in to sterile drinking water in seconds. This opens the possibility that in emergency situations Live Saver bottles can be distributed rather than setting up water distribution points that inevitably become centres of population and therefore disease.
Tim Brown – CEO of Ideo – Tim advocated a return from design to design thinkig as a way of helping design solve big problems rather than simply being a tool for consumerism.
Taryn Simon – Photographer – Taryn takes photos of forbidden subjects particularly America’s dirty secrets in An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar and wrongly accused life sentence and death-row prisoners in The Innocents.
Emmanuel Jal – Hip hop artist – Emmanuel was a child soldier for four years in the Sudan civil war until he was rescued by British aid worker Emma Maccune.
Eric Giler – Wireless Electrician – Eric demonstrated Witricity a technology for distributing electricity without wires using resonant energy transfer. Totally amazing and completely awesome offering a real hope of wireless homes and a big hole in the 40bn batteries we throw away every year.
Bertrand Piccard – Balloonist – Bertrand was one of two people to circumnavigate the earth by balloon and talked about his plan to do the same in a solar powered plane. A plane that will have to store enough energy to fly through the night in order to complete the journey.
Best of TED - Day Two
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Support for the acquatic ape theory? Image courtesy of Chweetletchu
And here are the afternoon's highlights.
Rebecca Saxe – Cognitive Neuroscientist – Talked about the way in which we understand other people’s minds, the responsibility of a special part of the brain (a discovery she herself made as a student). She also talked about the ability to alter people’s moral judgements by stimulating this part of the brain, an application that the Pentagon is apparently reasonably interested in.
Henry Markham – Cotex Visionary – Henry maintains that our ability to understand the human brain is the next step in the evolution of humanity and he is building a software simulation of the brain to help us do this – his Blue Brain project.
David Deutsch – Quantum Theorist – Criticised the belief in empiricism at the heart of much science, believing that scientific knowledge is tested by empiricism not derived from it, after all the greatest theories of explanation cannot be seen. For him the route to truth in science is through good explanations and this means hard to vary explanations. My favourite quote from David is "Our best theories are not only tuer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense".
Elaine Morgan – Aquatic Ape Theorist – At the age of 90 Elaine is the oldest speaker ever to grace a TED stage. A scientific maverick she continues to try and win support from a hostile community for the idea that Mankind is descended from aquatic apes and not apes that descended from trees in the Savanna.
Best of TED - Day Two
Imogen Heap at Sundance 2006. Image courtesy of Eugene
This is my personal view of the cream of the crop from the morning session on day two.
Evegeny Morozov – Internet Scientist – Evgeny believes that the internet, far from being a trojan horse for freedom in oppressive regimes, is your average dictators best friend. It used to take years to uncover a network of activists. Now you just look at their Facebook page. He also believes that the internet is far more likely to be the ultimate opiate for the masses rather than from inspiring and a generation of cyber activists.
Stefana Broadbent – Tech Anthropologist – Her work suggests that the proliferation of channels is strengthening our core relationships not eroding them. And they (Mobile, IM, SMS etc.) are strengthening them precisely because it is allowing our personal sphere to penetrate our work lives. Whether those work lives are in developed world offices, developing work factories or amongst migrant workers away from their families for long periods of time. And as such this development is allowing us to get back to the connection between personal and productive spheres that were common place before industrialisation.
Imogen Heap – Diva – Quite extraordinary.
Rory Sutherland – Advertising Guru – If it isn’t our very own Rory Sutherland following Imogen and her standing ovation with one of the most entertaining talks of the conference about the need for us to place more value on the intangible. The boy Sutherland done us proud.
Lewis Pugh – Arctic Swimmer – An extraordinary story about swimming 1 km across the geographical North Pole in water that is 4,200 metres deep and -1.7C, in order to highlight the rapid progress of climate change.
Best of TED - Day One
Image courtesy of FrogdesignmindAdliterate is supposed to be about my ideas and not other people's. But I have had the priviledge to get to TED global in Oxford and these people's ideas are better than mine.
So I thought I'd share the best of what I have seen.
I guess the talks will be available in due course online (Gordon Brown's has already been put up) so the links are to the speaker's own sites and work.
Stefan Sagmeister – Design and typographical genius. Talked about how to return your career to a calling by taking a sabbatical every 5-7 years. Also great stuff on the curse of sameness in identity design and how the most powerful identities are now infinitely flexible.
Gordon Brown – Prime Minister. Talked about creating new global institutions to relect a new set of global ethics and the idea that the prosperity of this world is not indivisible and belongs to all of us.
Willard Wigan – Microsculptor. Astonishing sculptures on the heads of pins and in the eyes of needles. He works a this scale by slowing his pulse down and then working between heart beats with materials like fibres plucked from the air, money spider’s webs and paint brushes made from hairs taken from a fly’s body.
Josh Silver – Runs the Centre for Vision in the Developing World. Has designed a pair of glasses that turns the wearer into an optometrist and create the perfect prescription in seconds with no training. This is because there is no shortage of glasses in the developing world but there is a huge shortage of people to fit them correctly.
Now that's what I call a mash up
Pirate Dinosaurs, you can't say fairer than that. The only thing that could be remotely better would be Pirate Dinosaurs in Space.
The Workers Plea
My father and I were talking recently and he suddenly produced a note he has carried in his wallet for the last 30 years. And this is it, 'the workers plea', in all its typewriter written glory.
I thought you might be interested in it whether you are an employer or an employee. It seems to encapsulate a basic code of conduct between people and hell it might even work in other relationships. For what it is worth the conversation we were having was actually about the relationship between the governed and the state.