31 July 2006
Stradivari's Genius
When my wife was pregnant with our first son and we began considering what to name him, I proposed Strad. To violinists (a group of which I at least once counted myself a member), Stradivarius is the epitome of perfection. While cries of horror from certain members of the family resulted in my son being named Julian, not Strad, I have remained a devotee of the brilliant instrument maker and can think of few things that better reflect the virtues of TED -- the confluence of technology, entertainment and design -- than the Stradivarius.
I have just finished reading Stradivari's Genius by Toby Faber, a book that explores each of these aspects of Stadivari's work -- the history of violin making technology, the intimate relationship between great musicians and their Strads throughout time, and Stradivari's subtle design innovations that led to perfection of both aesthetics and acoustics. Stradivari's Genius follows the paths of 6 Strads from creation to modern times. The drama of the instruments and their owners makes for a fascinating read.
Interestingly, three of those six instruments have crossed paths with TED over the years. Two of the violins -- the Messiah and Viotti -- are on display at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. About a year ago today I stood in the Ashmolean enjoying conversation among dinosaur bones at TED Global. If only I had known then that two of the greatest violins in the world were mere feet away in the musical instrument room. The third TED instrument chronicled in Stradivari's Genius, is the Davidov cello. A succession of the greatest cellists to live have owned the Davidov, including Carl Davidov, Jacquiline du Pre, and now Yoyo Ma, who likely played the Davidov while performing at TED2002 with his Silk Road Project.
Perhaps TED will bring me in contact with the remaining three instruments -- the Pagannini, Khevenhuller and Lipinski -- some day soon. In the mean time, I think I'll start calling my son Julian "Strad." I should never have listened to my mother in law.
28 July 2006
Nigeria orders first million $100 laptops
At TED2006, former MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas Negroponte outlined the challenges of producing the $100 laptop, which will be designed for -- and only available to -- children in the developing world. The key, he suggested, is scale. The economics will work when countries begin ordering them by the millions. Well, according to the Nigerian newspaper, Vanguard, the first order is in: The Nigerian government has committed to purchasing at least one million. India, on the other hand, has declined. (Via VnuNet and PC Advisor.)
25 July 2006
TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant on TEDTalks
TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who presided over the last case of Smallpox on the planet. He also founded the Seva Foundation, which works to reverse cases of blindness, and co-founded several technology start-ups, including the legendary online community, The Well. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation.
In this talk, he explains in fascinating detail the key behind the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox, and then unveils his TEDPrize wish: to build a global system that detects each new disease or disaster as it emerges or occurs. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 26:34)
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25 July 2006
TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair on TEDTalks
TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair is founder of Architecture for Humanity, and author of Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. In this presentation, he demonstrates the need for a design response to natural disasters, and unveils his TEDPrize wish: to create a community that actively embraces open-source design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:12)
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25 July 2006
TEDPrize winner Jehane Noujaim on TEDTalks
TEDPrize winner Jehane Noujaim is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, responsible for Startup.com and the gutsy, controversial documentary Control Room. Two weeks before the U.S. invasion in Iraq, Jehane went to Qatar, gained access to both Al Jazeera and the U.S. military's Central Command offices, and caught the onset and outbreak of the Iraqi war on film. The result, "Control Room," lays out the divergent ways the war was reported by the Arabs and the West.
In this talk, she unveils her TEDPrize wish: to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 26:22)
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19 July 2006
An Electric Car is Born
There's been a lot of buzz lately about the death of electric cars, but gearheads 'round the world are eagerly awaiting the July 20 arrival of a new electric sports car from a startup by the name of Tesla Motors.
Yes, an electric sports car. Actually, when you think about a sports car as a device focused on pure driving enjoyment rather than as A-to-B transportation (kind of like the automotive equivalent of a Ducati 999), going electric makes a lot of sense, for a couple of reasons. If all you're going to do is carve up a twisty canyon road on a Sunday morning and drive a loop back home, there's no need to worry about where your next jolt of juice will come from. Second, there's the inherent nature of electric motors, which develop maximum torque at zero RPM. It's torque, not horsepower, that makes for a sparkling drive. A torquey electric motor will give you neck-snapping acceleration and a scintillating oomph in the small of your back.
Tesla's car is likely to be very, very good from a performance standpoint: based on the DNA of an established sports car marque, it should combine stellar handling with a 4-second 0-60 time. Fast, nimble, fast, fast. And though the automotive landscape is littered with failed startups, Tesla Motors is chaired by Elon Musk, who spoke about rockets at TED2005, has a great track record of creating viable technology ventures, and is about to launch another one.
Here's to electric cars. Only 23 hours, 32 minutes, 56 seconds to go...
18 July 2006
Rick Warren on TEDTalks
Pastor Rick Warren has become one of the most influential Christian voices worldwide, following the runaway success of his book The Purpose-Driven Life, which has sold more than 30 million copies. His Saddleback Church, which began as a small group in his home, now hosts more than 20,000 congregants. In this talk, he describes his own challenge to find renewed purpose in the wake of his book's success, and his belief that God's intention is for each of us to use our unique talents and influence. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 21:46)
Also watch: Philosopher Dan Dennett responding to Rick Warren
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18 July 2006
Dan Dennett on TEDTalks
Dan Dennett is a Tufts philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, renowned for his books, Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). His most recent book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon calls for a rational examination of religion as a cultural phenomenon that co-evolved with humans to meet social needs. In this talk, which followed the presentation by Pastor Rick Warren, he takes issue with some of Warren's claims in The Purpose-Driven Life. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 25:29)
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17 July 2006
Quote of the week: Malcolm Gladwell
"I think I speak for all writers, when I say that I am delighted by marketing efforts of any sort."
— Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, commenting in The Guardian on film-style trailers for books, being released online by publishers to build demand for new titles
17 July 2006
guerrilla gardening: green interventions
Re-watching Majora Carter reminded me of another project committed to green spaces in the inner city; Guerrilla Gardening, people who go and garden in neglected public spaces, without permission but with generosity and humour. They find abandoned, unregarded bits of urban environment, sneak in at night and do some planting, some maintenance and eventually some harvesting. The idea has a distinguished history but has re-emerged in mainstream media through the efforts of a small band of gardeners in London, and around the world.
13 July 2006
TED BookClub: The Long Tail
The Long TailBy Chris Anderson
Published by Hyperion
256 pages | List price: $24.95
This month's TED Book Club mailing included a pre-publication copy of the book that's been generating so much buzz for the past year, The Long Tail. (It was published this week by Hyperion.) Several important things to say. First of all, despite the kudos I've received for this all year, the author is not me but "the other" Chris Anderson, the brilliant editor of Wired. Chris's stunningly powerful thesis is all here ... and it's much, much more than the original article that exploded around the web a couple years back. Some have described it as the key idea driving the Web 2.0 revolution, showing clearly how and why millions of new businesses and voices are flourishing in our new connected economy. It's one of those books that anyone remotely interested in business or marketing or communication in the Internet age just has to read.
13 July 2006
TED BookClub: Stumbling on Happiness
Stumbling on HappinessBy Dan Gilbert
Published by Knopf
304 pages | List price: $24.95
Harvard professor Dan Gilbert gave a stunning talk at TED2004, outlining research that showed how terrible we are at understanding our own emotional responses to countless everyday situations and choices. He's now fleshed this out into one of the most brilliant pieces of science writing I've ever come across. Stumbling on Happiness isn't just profound. It's also unbelievably readable and, well, funny. It's truly not fair that someone as smart as Dan also gets to write like a god, but 'tis true. I really urge you to give the book a try. It will change the way you think about yourself.
13 July 2006
TED BookClub: Design Like You Give a Damn
Design Like You Give A DamnBy Cameron Sinclair
Published by Metropolis Books
336 pages | List price: $35.00
I'm delighted to share with you the book created by one of this year's TEDPrize winners, Cameron Sinclair. Design Like You Give A Damn is just bursting with intriguing and often beautiful examples of how designers and architects around the world have created innovative housing for those most in need of it. You can't read it without feeling inspired... both by the individuals concerned, and by the power of design to make a difference.
12 July 2006
The jury's still out on Aubrey de Grey's anti-aging claims
Aubrey de Grey's claims that aging can be defeated, which he voiced at TEDGLOBAL last year and at TED2006,
"exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly
in vain) for independent verification". While they "don't compel the
assent of many knowledgeable scientists", they're also "not
demonstrably wrong".
That's the overall (in)conclusion of the challenge put forth last year by the MIT Technology Review to scientists to disprove de Grey's "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS). Three submissions by scientists and groups of scientists have been analyzed by five judges - all the details in this previous post - and the magazine announced yesterday the results of the jury's work: "SENS is a collection of hypotheses that ... cannot rise to the level of being scientifically verified. However, by the same token, the ideas of SENS have not been conclusively disproved". The challenge remains open.
(Cross-posted on LunchOverIP)
11 July 2006
Joshua Prince-Ramus on TEDTalks
Joshua Prince-Ramus is architect of the Seattle Public Library and principal of REX (Ramus-Ella Architects). Previously, he was U.S. Director of Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture. Through a series of beautiful visualizations, he deconstructs the collaborative process of building the Seattle Public Library, and also offers a sneak preview of his works in progress (The Wyly Theater in Dallas, Texas and Museum Plaza in Louisville, Kentucky). [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:41]
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11 July 2006
Julia Sweeney on TEDTalks
Julia Sweeney is a comedian and playwright, well-known both for her stint on Saturday Night Live (She created the character "Pat.") and for writing and performing the hit Broadway show, "God Said Ha!" (produced also as a film). Here, she performs an excerpt from her new one-woman play, "Letting Go of God." [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:16]
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07 July 2006
Larry Brilliant on not being evil at Google
From Wired's July issue: A charming Q + A with 2006 TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant, recently appointed Director of the $1B Google Foundation. Along with solving some of the world's biggest problems, Brilliant cites another ambitious goal: changing the famous Google mantra 'Don't be evil' to "Do something really, really, really good."
06 July 2006
Welcome guest blogger: Russell Davies
Today we add another voice to the TEDBlog: TEDster Russell Davies, who begins his TEDBlogging career with a post incorporating not one, but two past TED speakers (Edward Tufte and Hans Rosling), linking them to not one but two current events (Tufte's new book, Rosling's TEDTalk). Impressive. We're great fans of Russell's own blog, russelldavies.com, which mixes morsels of media wisdom with his own spin on life. Pay particular attention to his take on advertising and account planning... While at Wieden + Kennedy/London, Russell helped create the brilliant Honda ads (Choir, Impossible Dream, Hate Something) we've shown at TED and highlighted here. He spent the last year helping Nike with brand strategy and consumer research, before turning his attention to freelancing, writing and spending more time with his blogs (including these charmers: eggbaconchipsandbeans.com and a good place for a cup of tea and a think). We're thrilled to have you, Russell. Welcome!
06 July 2006
For the collection: Beautiful Evidence
Edward Tufte is deeply suspicious of presentation software. Hans Rosling makes it sing. And they're both right. In the wrong hands PowerPoint can bore you, mislead you or far, far worse. In the right ones it can inform and illuminate.
Mr Tufte (a TED veteran) makes his case and tells us much more in his new book Beautiful Evidence, the fourth in a series of exquisite titles all of which he has written, designed and self-published. His standards are incredibly high, making his books some of the most thoughtful and beautiful objects you will ever own.
Mr Rosling makes his case through Gapminder. They are both concerned with the effective representation of evidence, I wonder what they make of each other's work.
05 July 2006
What does a search engine look like?
In the words of Swiss technophilosopher René Berger, "It's becoming impossible not to visit with Google daily". But when you do, what do you visit exactly? In other words: what does a search engine really look like? It actually looks like this:
This picture of Google's new server farm in The Dalles, Oregon was published a couple weeks ago in the New York Times. The facility, which is under construction, is only one of several Google data centers, but John Markoff and Saul Hansell in their article speculate that it may "soon be one of the world's most powerful supercomputers". TED sponsor Google is known primarily as a search engine, they write, but it is actually "foremost an effort to build a network of supercomputers (...) that can process more data, faster and cheaper than its rivals". The choice of The Dalles as the location of the data center has apparently to do with the availability of low-cost electricity (the grey structures protruding from the two football-field-sized buildings on the left are cooling towers) and easy access to data networks.
Markoff and Hansell have some interesting figures: In March 2001, when Google was serving about 70 million pages a day, its computing system had about 8'000 servers; by 2003 that number had grown to 100'000. Today "the best guess is that Google has more than 450'000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world". For comparison, they write, Microsoft's Internet activities currently use some 200'000 servers. In a recent Fortune article TED regular David Kirkpatrick puts the number of Google servers around the world at one million and confirms that Microsoft is also investing billions in infrastructure. Kirkpatrick quotes Microsoft's Ray Ozzie: "Just think about where there are windmills, dams, and other natural power sources around the world: that's where you're going to see server farms".
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