29 January 2007

In-depth CBS report on TED

Well, it took a few months longer than we'd hoped, but finally CBS have posted their filmed report of TED2006. Check it out. It was worth the wait. They took the time to get under the surface of the conference and explain some of its allure.  The film includes appearances by  Al Gore, Tony Robbins, Clifford Stoll, TEDtalks hit speaker Hans Rosling, Matt Groening, Peter Gabriel, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Meg Ryan, the string quartet Ethel, veteran TEDster Jim Young, 11-year-old violinist Sirena Huang, Thomas Dolby, Eva Vertes, Jehane Noujaim, Reed Hastings, and yours truly, not to mention great shots of the Main Hall and the Simulcast lounge. The reporter is David Pogue, better known for his tech gig over at the New York Times ...and if you watch it all the way through, you'll even see him in action at the piano. Nice work, sir, and thanks for the memory.

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24 January 2007

TEDsters' Films Nominated for 4 Academy Awards

Today's early morning announcement of the nominations for the 79th Academy Awards bore fruit for TEDsters, including Producer Lawrence Bender and "Talent" Al Gore, whose film, An Inconvenient Truth was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song (by Melissa Etheridge.) Jeff Skoll, whose Participant Productions financed the global warming movie, will speak at TED for the first time in March.

Meanwhile, over at Sony Pictures Digital's Imageworks animation and visual effects studio, they also popped open the champagne: Monster House was nominated for best animated feature, and Superman Returns was recognized for Sony's breakthrough character animation of the title character, and the amazing Space Shuttle action scene, among the myriad effects. Congratulations to TEDsters Yair Landau, Tim Sarnoff, Don Levy, Bill Villareal and George Joblove.

"Monster House" Gil Kenan (Columbia Pictures; Sony Pictures Releasing)

"Superman Returns" Mark Stetson, Neil Corbould, Richard R. Hoover and Jon Thum (Warner Bros.)

"An Inconvenient Truth" Davis Guggenheim; A Lawrence Bender/Laurie David Production (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions)

"I Need to Wake Up" from "An Inconvenient Truth," music and lyric by Melissa Etheridge (Paramount Classics and Participant Productions)

Technorati tags: Al Gore

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10 January 2007

The new Apple iphone and Jeff Han

The hoopla around the launch of the iphone is further proof of the power of multi-touch interfaces to transform the way we use computers.  Jeff Han blew away the TED audience in Monterey in February with his pioneering demo.

There were rumors that Apple had tried (unsuccessfully) to hire Jeff at one point to work on the launch of the iphone. NY Times techie David Pogue even asked Steve Jobs about him on the day of the launch. So I pinged Jeff to see if he had any comment on it. Here's his response:

"The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous, and I've always said, if there ever were a company to bring this kind of technology to the consumer market, it's Apple.  I just wish it were a bit bigger so I could really use both of my hands."

Something tells me there will be a LOT of ongoing excitement and delight around multi-touch in the next couple years. Hopefully Apple will publish APIs to allow third party apps on the iphone. Yesterday's outpouring of geekjoy could be just a foretaste.

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10 January 2007

National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis on TEDTalks

In this stunning talk, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis celebrates the extraordinary diversity of the world's indigenous cultures, many of which are disappearing, as ancestral land is lost and languages die. (50 percent of the world's 6000 languages are no longer taught to children.) Against a backdrop of extraordinary photos and stories that ignite the imagination, Davis argues that we should be concerned not only for preserving the biosphere, but also the "ethnosphere," which he describes as "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness." An anthropologist and botanist by training, Davis has traveled the world, living among indigenous cultures. He's written several books, including The Serpent and the Rainbow and Light at the Edge of the World. (Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 22:44)

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10 January 2007

Photographer Phil Borges on TEDTalks

Photographer Phil Borges displays his remarkable portraits, documenting the world's disappearing cultures, from persecuted monks in Tibet to embattled tribes in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He also shares inspiring results from his digital-storytelling workshops, which give indigenous teenagers tools for cultural preservation and self-expression. A former dentist, Phil Borges rediscovered his passion for photography, and spent the last 25 years documenting indigenous cultures around the world. His work collected in several books, including Tibetan Portrait and Enduring Spirit. In 2001, he founded Bridges to Understanding, an organization that works with teenagers worldwide, promoting cultural preservation and exchange through digital storytelling. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:19)

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08 January 2007

Al Gore's Climate Project in full swing

At the end of his first speech at TED2006, Al Gore announced that he was going to train a thousand people to give the climate change presentation he gave there - and which is at the core of his movie An Inconvenient Truth. That has turned into the Climate Project, and three training sessions have already taken place in Nashville, with an amazing range of participants. Nick Seaver, one of them, tells how that went.

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05 January 2007

A Bezos Blast

Longtime TEDster Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, has revealed video footage of an early test flight from his secret space project Blue Origin.  The vertical take-off vehicle shown here  blasted off gently on November 13th and reached a height of 285 feet before descending safely back to earth.

The project's goal is to lower the cost of space flight. Jeff writes: "Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we're working on it methodically. We believe in incremental improvement and in keeping investments at a pace that's sustainable. Slow and steady is the way to achieve results."

The site shows several images and videos. Jeff's role? Opening the champagne.

Blue Origin are now looking to ramp up their engineering team.

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04 January 2007

The cheeseburger footprint

TED2006 speaker Jamais Cascio has a very interesting way of considering cheeseburgers. He tries (in this post) to calculate their carbon footprint: how much carbon is produced in the process of cooking the burger, plus growing the feed for the cattle, growing and milling the wheat to make bread, growing the other ingredients, slaughtering and freezing the cattle for meat, pickling cucumbers, storing and transporting, driving to the fast-food restaurant, etc, not to forget, at the beginning of the chain, the methane emissions from the cattle. He details the sources of his data and his calculations in the post, and concludes that

the overall CO2-equivalent emissions from all the cheeseburgers consumed in the US [in a year] roughly equal the greenhouse output of 100'000 SUVs.

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02 January 2007

What are you optimistic about?

It's a new year and up at the Edge John Brockman is asking the now-traditional annual "big question", a wide-open query put to many smart people, mostly scientists from all disciplines. Last year John asked "What is your dangerous idea?". This year, he has somehow reversed the lens: "What are you optimistic about? Why?". 160 people contributed their answer. Here a few by some of my favorite thinkers (and, incidentally, TED and TEDGLOBAL speakers or friends):

• Philosopher Dan Dennett: The evaporation of the powerful mystique of religion.
• Psychologist Daniel Goleman: Transparency.
• The New Scientist's Alun Anderson: The sunlight-powered future.
• Psychologist Steven Pinker: The decline of violence.
• Howard "Smart Mobs" Rheingold: The tools for cultural production and distribution are in the hands of 14 year olds.
• Biotechonomy's Juan Enriquez: Leading millions out of poverty in a single generation.
• Science historian George Dyson: The return of commercial sail.
• Former Microsoft VP Linda Stone: People are using tech effectively to mediate toward a healthier global community.
• Biologist Brian Goodwin: Our ability as a species to respond to the challenge presented by peak oil.
• "Collapse"'s Jared Diamond: Good choices sometimes prevail.
• Google's Chris Dibona: Widely available, constantly renewing, high-res images of the Earth will end conflict and ecological devastation as we know it.
• Human genome decoder Craig Venter: Evidence-based decision-making will help transform society.
• Social networks researcher Clay Shirky: Evidence.
• Forecaster Paul Saffo: Humankind is particularly good at muddling.
• Anthropologist Helen Fisher: "Free love".
• Writer Cory Doctorow: Copying is what bits are for.

TED curator Chris Anderson was also asked. His answer: Systemic flaws in the reported world view:

Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are systemic flaws in the reported world view. Certain types of news -- for example dramatic disasters and terrorist actions -- are massively over-reported, others -- such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world -- massively under-reported. Although this leads to major problems such as distortion of rational public policy and a perpetual gnawing fear of apocalypse, it is also reason to be optimistic. Once you realize you're being inadvertently brainwashed to believe things are worse than they are, you can... with a little courage... step out into the sunshine. ... So for example, the publication last year of a carefully researched Human Security Report received little attention. Despite the fact that it had concluded that the numbers of armed conflicts in the world had fallen 40% in little over a decade. And that the number of fatalities per conflict had also fallen. Think about that. The entire news agenda for a decade, received as endless tales of wars, massacres and bombings, actually missed the key point. Things are getting better. If you believe Robert Wright and his NonZero hypothesis, this is part of a very long-term and admittedly volatile trend in which cooperation eventually trumps conflict. (Full text)

What are you optimistic about? Click on "comments" below and share.

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