31 July 2007
"The African spirit pushes through"
Guest blogger David McQueen was an enthusiastic reporter, photographer and networker at TEDGlobal 2007. He's a speaker, writer, music executive and youth worker whose busy blog covers issues around Africa and general personal development -- two interests that intersected at TEDGlobal, as he writes below.
Being very passionate about the continent of Africa, I love to put my money where my mouth is. I love to write about Africa, to meet people across the Diaspora, and to be engaged in discussions with people who have varied views on the beautiful continent. However, the one thing I was not able to do as frequently as I could was visit Africa, to get involved on the ground.
Earlier this year, however, a good stroke of fortune allowed me to be a fellow at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania. A place where young and old (am somewhere in between) movers and shakers for the next chapter of Africa could come to share ideas and thoughts. All of my friends were both happy and green with envy of the opportunity that came my way.
Having landed in the verdant country that was Tanzania, I got to meet a number of people who I had only ever spoken to online before. I met some celebrities like Bono and Larry Page ("Hi Larry, great software you have there!"), and was not too far from the president of Tanzani himself, and some scary-looking bodyguards. For those of us who attended, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Amazing friendships were formed and continue on.
A number of weeks later, the conversation continues. Many of us have spoken on the phone, emailed, planned a potential reunion and collectively contribute online in our very own Google Group. The buzz continues. The videos will be released soon, and my wife knows that I will be back to the continent of my ancestors anytime soon.
Collectively, many of us dream of a brighter future. Of course, it won't be the easiest passage readdressing the history, turmoil and the massive health problems we are facing, but heck the African spirit pushes through and will reclaim itself, even if in part as a result of the meeting of minds of those in that glorious conference organised by TED. Watch this space.
Watch for the first TEDTalks from this conference, premiering Wednesday, August 1, on TED.com.
29 July 2007
Ed Burtynsky's beautifully monstrous "Manufactured landscapes"
If you are planning (you should) to go see Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary "Manufactured landscapes", which opened last week in theaters across the US after spending a year mesmerizing film festivals audiences and will soon arrive in Europe, make sure you get there in time, for nothing describes the scale and essence of today's globalized industry more tellingly than the opening scene: a seven-minutes tracking shot of the floor of a boundless Chinese factory, row after row after row of disciplined workers and efficient repetition that Stanley Kubrick could have filmed.
"Manufactured landscapes" is based on the work of photographer -- and 2005 TED Prize winner (watch his speech) -- Ed Burtynsky, whose camera has captured stunning images of man-transformed landscapes around the world.
Burtynsky is not much interested in micro: his focus is on vastness, on the scale of the environmental scars and transformations brought forth by industry, energy production and transportation. The documentary (trailer) is a hybrid: it's a meditation that makes very little use of words, leaving it to images and situational sounds and noises to tell the story, and at the same time a convincing illustration of the monstrosity of today's global trade. Although Baichwal shows images from Canada, California and Bangladesh -- and makes generous use of Burtynsky's TEDPrize speech -- the movie's main character is China, the "manufacture to the world": there, Burtynsky, followed by Baichwal's cameras, has shot factories, huge container ports, quarries, the Three Gorges Dam, electronics graveyards, the rapid urbanization of Shanghai. (Another great movie, recently, has shown some of this within a fictional frame: Gianni Amelio's "The Missing Star").
Burtynsky's work (see his books) can be unsettling. He extracts beautiful, sometimes poetic images from outrageous alterations and destructions of the environment. He calls himself an artist -- not a reporter -- and refrains from judging what he photographs or from politicizing it, wanting, as he said at TED, to "make people think harder about our planet's future" without suggesting them a direction. As the film goes I find myself thinking of painters: Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Salvador Dalì because, respectively, Burtynsky's photos of a computer components dump, the stacks of containers in the port of Tianjin, and the lunar shipbreaking beach of Chittagong (Bangladesh) oddly remind of their artworks.
The photographer has a rationale for aestheticizing this devastation: that's a way to gain access.
Most of what Burtynsky photographs is on private land: "My work is
mostly negotiation, with some photography thrown in", he said half-jokingly at the
premiere in San Francisco. There is a scene in the movie where he is
shown with his assistants and an interpreter trying to talk Chinese
officials into opening the gates to a neverending coal yard, and the
key sentence is "we will make it beautiful". Asked how he convinced
factory managers to gather all their thousands of employees on a street
for the picture that makes the poster of the movie (see image),
Burtynsky explained that what Westerners see as a robotization of
workers, the Chinese proudly consider an organizational and industrial
achievement.
This discrepancy echoes throughout the documentary. It powerfully reminds us that "stuff" doesn't just happen, that it comes from somewhere, although we tend to forget or ignore it (thought of the impact of the extraction industry lately?) And it illustrates how, as we transform nature, we redefine who we are and our relationship to the planet.
28 July 2007
From "The Art of Conference Blogging"
Ethan Zuckerman blogged TEDGlobal 2007 (and several past TEDs). Every session. Every speaker (save a few). Every day for four days. His near-real-time blogging was a crucial record of this conference. Many comments were made about his ability to turn out fully formed, thoughtful posts almost instantly.
Just as important, his posts helped other TEDGlobal bloggers begin the conversations that have continued ever since. The roster of TEDGlobal bloggers, working together, told the story of this conference, as he writes in the excerpt below, taken (with his permission) from his post "The 5-4-3 Double Play, or the Art of Conference Blogging" -- which offers his 10 keys to conference blogging.
Collaborate:
"Hash," writing about bloggers at the TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, used the Swahili term “harambee” to describe the ideal operation of a group of bloggers at a conference:
Harambee is a Swahili term that means “pulling together”. That mentality, the willingness to work together, was what made it possible to cover a busy event like TEDGlobal ... Some of us decided to take pictures, some did interviews between sessions and others decided to summarize the day. Everyone who blogs has their own voice, and I think it showed in the coverage. What could have been an amalgamation of everyone saying the same thing turned into a fairly well-rounded coverarge of the event.
My goal in blogging a conference is not to be the sole, authoritative voice of the blogosphere. It’s to do what I enjoy doing: writing detailed summaries of each sessions. But that means I can’t take photos of the speakers on stage, can’t interview speakers between sessions, can’t monitor coverage of the conference in the blogosphere. At TED, we were able to split up the tasks, so that Hash and Andrew took photos, Ndesanjo blogged in Swahili, Juliana did interviews, June and Emily monitored blogosphere coverage, etc. It’s a whole lot more fun to blog these events in groups, even if that means sitting next to someone trying to liveblog at the same time as you are, arguing about how to spell a word the speaker has just uttered.
Watch for the first TEDTalks from this conference, premiering Wednesday, August 1, on TED.com.
27 July 2007
A hard week for space exploration
This has been a hard week for lovers and dreamers of space travel -- a frequent topic at TED. An explosion at Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites spaceport caused three victims. It was followed by a report on issues of personal safety at NASA, part of the unfolding story there.
Space exploration is an inherent high-risk endeavor. We invite you to view several talks on TED.com that can help recapture the excitement and pure imagination that has inspired generations of people to reach for the stars: Burt Rutan's own vision, Bill Stone's audacity, and cosmologist David Deutsch, who tells us that humanity's true purpose -- the reason we exist -- is to explore and learn, to gain knowledge.
26 July 2007
Own a Day of Architecture for Humanity
2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair's wish resulted in the creation of the Open Architecture Network. In the five months since its launch at TED the OAN has been shifting the landscape around how architects work to create more sustainable projects. Almost 500 projects worldwide are currently be managed through the network.
A number of TED companies are working on ways to make the OAN itself sustainable and it should be so within a year. Until then its parent company, Architecture for Humanity, needs organizational funding to continue running the network, so they've launched the Own the Day campaign.
In the words of AFH...
Own the Day
Help Architecture for Humanity provide 365 days of pro bono design services around the world---one day at a time---by donating one day's worth of your salary.
We know how busy you are and how hard it is to do pro bono work.So, here's the deal. We want you to donate one day of your salary instead. In exchange, you get to Own the Day of your choice.
You'll help support the work of Architecture for Humanity and allow architects and designers all over the world to offer their services pro bono-just by clicking your mouse. Think of it as community service plus design (minus the parole officer.)
We're going to ask you for a minimum donation of $100. If you earn more than that in a day, we'd love you to donate more (in fact, we need you to). You can Own the Day on behalf of a friend. Or, if you'd like your company to get involved, hey, you can go ahead and own a whole week. Or, simply match the donations of your employees. Just send us an email and we'll make it happen.
To own a day outright, donate $1200 (the cost of running the Open Architecture Network, Architecture for Humanity and all its chapters and projects for a day) and you will receive a limited edition t-shirts designed by US artists including Natalie ‘Alabama’ Chanin, Anabelle Pang, Emily Pilloton, Amy Rowan and Adam Cohn. Check out the other great offers below.
You can Own the Day by visiting here. Once you have made a donation, choose the day of your choice, and your name will appear on our nifty calendar for that day. We'll also feature each day's sponsors on our homepage and on the homepage of the Open Architecture Network.
That's it. Just think of all of the great projects you will have helped design and build all over the world without ever having to leave your desk. Heck, you'll be working so hard you might want to consider taking the day off.
If you're feeling bold....
$25,000 – Own TED 2008 week (Feb 27 – March 1)
It’s not only a way to tell other TEDsters that you care about good design and the Open Architecture Network enough to celebrate its’ 1st year anniversary. This donation would provide the gap funding* needed to build Siyathemba, a youth sports facility and HIV/AIDS outreach center in South Africa. If funding is found by August 31, the facility will open by TED 2008.
$100,000 - Own our Founding Day
We began Architecture for Humanity on April 6, 1999 and it means a lot to us. Celebrate our birthday and support our mission by donating more than $100,000 and own April 6. This one comes with Architecture for Humanity swag and you get to be honorary CEO. We will even make you business cards. Plus you get to shape the strategy of our organization for one day, or just order us around and get us to bring you coffee. The choice is yours.
$500,000 - Own the Year
This one is the doozy. the whole she bang, the kit and caboodle. This would allow us to provide professional services to communities all over the world and help in building hundreds of structures - from Afghanistan to Darfur to New Orleans. If someone wants to donate over $500,000 not only do you to own the whole year but we will receive 'middle naming rights' for everyone in the office. Yes that's right we will legally change all our middle names after you.
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*Additional funding by Woolworths – South Africa, INDEX and the Red Rubber Ball Foundation
26 July 2007
How I got my new hip, on TED.com
TEDster Allison Hunt's five-minute talk finds humor and marketing strategy in the most unlikely of places -- her own hip-replacement surgery. As the world scrutinizes broken health-care systems, this particularly timely clip shows how getting to the front of a two-year waiting list can have an altruistic effect. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 5:00.)
Watch Allison Hunt's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Allison Hunt on TED.com.
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26 July 2007
Powerful new documentary on the Darfur genocide
TED Curator Chris Anderson writes: Last night, I attended the New York premiere of The Devil Came on Horseback, a searing documentary about Darfur, told through the eyes of US military observer Brian Steidle, whose photographs of the ongoing genocide there exploded onto the world two years ago. They raised awareness then, and the new film has the potential to do so again. It packs a powerful punch. I came out seething with anger, and I think that was the intent. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times writes: "Brutal, urgent, devastating -- the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible." See it if you possibly can. If anyone out there thinks they can help boost distribution of the film (similar to how this community helped with An Inconvenient Truth), please let me know by writing to chris at ted dot com, and I'll connect you with the filmmakers Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg.
25 July 2007
"African bloggers stepped up to the plate ..."
Guest blogger Imnakoya has been writing Grandiose Parlor, offering "cogitations on sociopolitical and economic issues in Nigeria & Africa," for more than two years, and recently helped launch the African site aggregator and multi-author blog magazine AfricanLoft. His sites have been important voices in the post-TEDGlobal discussion -- which is especially significant because he wasn't actually in Arusha attending the conference. Following along with TEDGlobal from the United States via the blogs, he has helped to fuel the post-conference networking -- and the early initiatives that have grown out of the conference.
As one of the missing-in-action Fellows who couldn't attend the conference, the only rational thing I could do was plug into the mainstream media (MSM)-dominated information pipeline to follow the event. Well, this didn't happen; the MSM dropped the ball -- there was little or no coverage. Unexpectedly, the African bloggers stepped up to the plate, giving a comprehensive and almost hourly rendition of event. This is unprecedented in Africa. As I write this piece, African blogs are the only existing and extensive source of information on the TEDGlobal conference.
Just as no one would have thought some "ragtag bunch of unschooled bloggers" would become so relevant in broadcasting and amplifying what ensued in Arusha, no one would have deemed it possible to cull so much intellectual and entrepreneurial energy at one time in one remote location in Africa.
There is only one word for these scenarios: Revolution. I referred to the TED-Arusha conference as a revolution shortly after it closed, and I still stand by that statement.
TED brought out the cheetahs and left the hippos behind.
As conveyed by conference blogger Ethan Zuckerman:
[Economist George] Ayittey characterizes several of the conference speakers as "the cheetah generation," fast-moving people who don't accept corruption, and who demand that democracy and transparency lead to better governance. "Africa's salvation rests on the back of these cheetahs."
He contrasts them to "the hippo generation", the ruling elites, stuck in their intellectual patch, complaining about colonialism and imperialism. "They won't reform, because they benefit from the status quo."
However, I feel the element that would have given this revolution a much bigger bang was missing or present in insufficient amount: The hippos. The absence of the hippos was reflected in the Economist, whose writer observed:
... there were notably few of the hard-knuckle African politicians who often run the interior or defence ministry or act as kingmakers, sometimes bankrolling rotten presidents...
While the over-representation of the cheetahs may have been strategic, the dearth of hippos in Arusha limited a face-to-face encounter and discussion between these two -- the kind of interaction that is missing and needed in Africa.
Even though the impression in certain quarters is that the hippos are becoming irrelevant, I share a contrary view: The hippos are still of strategic importance given their influence in politics, within the general African society, and in the public sector, and it would have been blissful to have cheetahs impact some "good words" onto them in Arusha. After all, these are people who by choice have become "deaf and blind" and "locked up" within their rarefied positions of power and authority. Getting them to see and listen to the cheetahs' ideas, accomplishments, triumphs and challenges could have generated some interesting reactions ... among many earth-shaking meetings at TEDGlobal. (Who could have guessed Bono and Andrew Mwenda would have had such an interesting exchange?)
The conference is over, now what?
Great initiative comes with great challenges -- and one such is getting the word out beyond the margins of the blog pages. As much as the TED initiative is driven by an out-of-the-box mentality, the success of any post-TEDGlobal initiatives in Africa will be dependent in great extent on the ability of the players to bridge the old and the new worlds. Although the blogs carried the day in Arusha, the mainstream media is still very relevant in Africa.
It's also imperative that the cheetah generation aggressively seek ways to extend their footprints beyond the relatively comfortable entrepreneurial/NGO circles. One of the advantages of having access to political power is the ability to make things happen faster, and reach a wider audience. The sooner more cheetahs assume the control of strategic positions within the public sector, the quicker several of the excellent ideas showcased in Arusha will become mainstream in Africa.
Watch for the premiere of the first talks from TEDGlobal, next week on TED.com.
24 July 2007
High drama inside a cell, on TED.com
David Bolinsky and his team at XVIVO illustrate scientific and medical concepts with high-drama animation. These animators are true auteurs, carefully scripting and editing the story of cellular processes to show everyone -- expert and amateur alike -- the truth and the beauty of our bodies. You've never seen the life of a cell quite like this. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 9:57.)
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Watch David Bolinsky's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
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24 July 2007
"TEDGlobal was a seminal moment for Africa ..."
Next week on TED.com, we'll premiere the first talks from the TEDGlobal 2007 conference, held in Arusha, Tanzania, this June. Several bloggers from the conference will be posting here over the coming week.
TEDGlobal 2007 Fellow Juliana Rotich has been keeping the influential blog Afromusing for two and a half years, writing and interviewing about such issues as green energy, technology and many other topics around Kenya and the African continent. She also contributes to AfriGadget and is working on a forum for renewable-energy information exchange.
As the videos from TEDGlobal are released, I'd like to share a few thoughts on what I felt as a TED Fellow, an African and blogger; what this conference meant to me and other Fellows that I have been conversing with since this historic conference ended.
TEDGlobal was a seminal moment for Africa. It opened our eyes and minds to the ideas, people and technology shaping a continent. Glimpses of history from the segment "Looking Back to Look Forward," the present innovation in "Emergent Design" and "Tales of Invention," to the future in the segment "Ideas Worth Spreading." It felt like a precursor to a Wired Nextfest of sorts -- Africa edition, a "jumping-off point."
It was an out-of-the-box experience: boxes of tribe, nationality, continent and yes, even boxes of race. Chris Anderson and Emeka Okafor on stage reminded me of Seinfeld's black-and-white cookie. It was also about conversations between different minds from different continents, backgrounds and specialties. To have been in a forum where views and ideas about Africa are discussed with fervor, passion and engagement was ground-breaking, inspiring, enlightening and fantastic.
As an African, one might think that we would already know about the content presented at TEDGlobal 2007, but many of us could not have imagined the breadth and talent in Technology, Entertainment and Design coming from Africa. There was even a metaphorically poignant moment when the president of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, removed his suit jacket and got comfortable to address the TEDGlobal audience. It was a moment that seemed to signal a peeling away of old ideas, seeing new ways to tackle Africa's challenges. Inasmuch as our minds were opened up to the potential of the African continent, on looking back I am reminded that the themes at TEDGlobal are indeed ... Global. As you watch the talks and see the ideas being shared, think of the universal questions that bind us all together.
For the African fellows like me, to have a video by a fellow African who looks like me, comes from the same continent, showing what they have done to change Africa ... It touches my mind and resolutely affirms a belief that perhaps was in the back of my mind, but today has been brought to the fore of my consciousness. The belief that Africa's next chapter is being written with innovative, entertaining and creative ideas that will shape a bright future. As we watch, engage in the conversations, and spread the ideas coming out of TEDGlobal, I am reminded that we are in one sandbox of a planet. We might as well learn and help each other. The African voices you will see and hear will have an idea, a message, a story that I hope will also touch you. Cheers TED, and thank you.
Watch for the premiere of the first talks from TEDGlobal, next week on TED.com.
22 July 2007
TED's Emeka Okafor on the conversation after TEDGlobal
As Program Director for TEDGlobal2007, Emeka Okafor worked with TED Curator Chris Anderson and the TED team to assemble a list of speakers that spoke to the heart of the new Africa -- the "cheetah generation" of inventors and investors, policymakers and bloggers, who are bringing new energy to the continent. We spoke to Emeka -- who's an entrepreneur and multiple blogger himself -- about life since TEDGlobal:
First -- have you recovered?
Yes, it's been a blissful recovery to see the continued strength of post-conference conversations.
Have you been reading the coverage of the conference since it ended? What do you think about the difference between the mainstream press coverage and the blog coverage?
The MSM press completely missed the zeitgeist that the conference tapped into. I wonder, did they go to a different conference? My thinking is that they proved to be one of the key reservoirs of preconceived thinking about the continent.
The blogosphere conversely provided everything that one would expect from the MSM and much much more. We tend to forget that not a single TEDTalk from TEDGlobal has been released yet -- it seems as if a good portion have. The blogs have excelled themselves in reportage, analysis, opinions, post-TEDGlobal initiative/project planning, etc.
What are some of the plans you've heard about that are inspired by TEDGlobal?
+ The AfricanLoft blog is hosting a carnival that is infused with TEDGlobal ideas.
+ Afrigadget has a proposal for "A strategy for supporting innovative entrepreneurs in Africa"
+ Jen Brea asks "there are tons of people out there doing projects who would like to know how to do them better? Or differently? What kind of forum could be created for brainstorming, critiquing, and improving upon existing ideas and models?"
+ Tunji Lardner, TED Fellow and founder of WangoNet, is looking at "unlocking products from various research institutes in Nigeria, we intend to scientifically bundle them and them market them."
... and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
In the week to come, watch for more news from TEDGlobal's continuing conversation, and guest posts from conference bloggers.
Premiering Wednesday, August 1: The first TEDTalks from TEDGlobal2007!
21 July 2007
Kevin Kelly: Technology as a teenager
Developing the ideas he laid out in his 2005 talk at TED -- where he asked, "What does technology want?" -- Kevin Kelly posts a fascinating essay in the latest edition of Edge.org. He suggests that we can think of technology as another kingdom of life -- call it the technium. And that, like all other life, it grows.
He says,
I tend to think of the technium like a child of humanity. Our job will be to train the technium, to imbue it with certain principles because, at a certain level and at a certain age, it will basically become much more autonomous than it is now. It will leave us like a teenager who goes on to live alone: although he or she will continue to interact with us and will always be part of us, we have to let it go.
To succeed in this, though, he warns:
We need to have a deep sense of our values, what we stand for. In a deep irony, the more technology advances, the less sure we are of who we are and what we stand for as a species and as individuals.
Watch Kevin Kelly's TEDTalk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, and join a wide-ranging discussion.
19 July 2007
Rives exposes the secrets of 4 a.m., on TED.com
The slam poet/tech artist/paper sculptor Rives does eight minutes of lyrical origami, folding history into a series of coincidences surrounding that most surreal of hours: 4 o'clock in the morning. This elusive hour, both very late and very early, appears often in art and literature as a way to describe the most extreme states of affairs. Rives -- aided by a nimble mind and extensive online research -- reveals 4 a.m. as an iconic moment, drawing hilarious historical connections. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:17.)
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Watch Rives's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances, including two more by Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006, and his spoken-word piece "If I controlled the Internet"
Read more about Rives on TED.com.
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18 July 2007
"100-dollar laptop" could go commercial by September
For all those who, seeing the first "100-dollar laptops," have wondered "when can I get one?" the answer is: sooner than expected.
One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte said this week during a speech in Geneva, Switzerland, that a retail version of the laptop may be commercially available in September 2007, according to a report published by local blog GenevaLunch. Negroponte presented the laptop project at TED2006 (watch video or read summary) and had already spoken of the possibility of a commercial rollout, suggesting however a longer time-horizon. The laptop may be sold under a "buy one, pay two" model (the second going to a kid in a developing country).
Currently, 7,000 of the computers are in use, said Negroponte. He expects to see this figure grow to 1 million by the end of the year. And being the ambitious visionary we know, he believes that within five years -- if not sooner -- OLPC could account for 20 percent of the world's computer production ... Rolling out large numbers of computers could be made easier by last week's announcement that OLPC and Intel -- which until then had pursued competing inexpensive computers for developing countries (OLPC's laptop is built around a chip by AMD, Intel's main competitor) -- have agreed to work together.
17 July 2007
Creativity is on the wall
So you walk down the street and suddenly the wall to your left starts sprouting flowers, drawings and other animations. You slow down to watch closely, and the animations slow down, too.
That's because you're controlling them. Although you may not realize it immediately, motion sensors and a camera have locked on to you and given you control over the interactive wall. That's how a new street-level ad by software maker and TED partner Adobe works. The interactive wall, 7 feet (or about 2 meters) high and 15 feet wide, is part of a campaign to market Adobe's new Creative Suite 3 software package (which includes well-known programs such as Photoshop). It's installed these days in New York's Union Square -- look for it along the wall of the Virgin Megastore building -- and, according to a NYTimes story (from which we borrowed the picture) it will soon be re-created in London:
The line at the bottom of the wall is actually a slider that moves with the controlling passer-by, unleashing more -- or less, depending on the movement -- creative juice. See it in action via this Gizmodo video.
Similar interactive walls, a mix of technology and art installation, are not new. However, this is possibly a first in a very busy street (and indeed, the movements of people in the background also affect the animation). When you walk by it, as we did today, it is not self-evident that you or one of the other pedestrians "control" the animation: it takes a moment, also because there is no visible explanation of how the wall works. But that may actually be Adobe's intended effect: people stop, wonder, talk, try to figure out, touch the slider (but that's no touchscreen), jump in front of the camera to see if it has any effect. In a word -- the current magic word of advertising -- they engage.
17 July 2007
Will Wright previews his new game, Spore, on TED.com
A technical virtuoso with boundless imagination, Will Wright has created a style of computer gaming unlike any that came before, emphasizing learning more than losing, invention more than sport. With his hit game SimCity, he spurred players to make predictions, take risks, and sometimes fail miserably, as they built their own virtual urban worlds. With his follow-up hit, The Sims, he encouraged the same creativity toward building a household, all the while preserving the addictive fun of ordinary video games. His next game, Spore, which he previews here, evolves an entire universe from a single-celled creature. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 16:49.)
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Watch Will Wright's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
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16 July 2007
Steve Jobs' speaking techniques
At TED, we make a job of scouring the world for ideas worth sharing and for speakers able to share them in the most compelling ways. So we pay attention when somebody delivers a great speech. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs certainly did so when, last January, he introduced the iPhone at the annual Macworld trade show in San Francisco, five months before the device actually hit the US market.
Communication coach Carmine Gallo has deconstructed Jobs' job for BusinessWeek.com. A good primer for any speaker, with concrete, memorable examples. Read Gallo's column, watch Jobs' speech, or consider this cheat sheet: 1) Build up the presentation to something unexpected; 2) Stick to one theme per slide, and make them visually attractive; 3) Vary the speed and tone at which you speak to electrify the audience; 4) Three things are absolutely key: rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. 5) If you're passionate about the idea or the product, show it.
14 July 2007
Africa Cookbook Project launched at TEDGlobal
Fran Osseo-Asare is a sociologist who studies (and loves) the food of Africa -- check out Betumi: The African Culinary Network, and her blog, BetumiBlog. She's found that, on this continent with so many regional cuisines, authentic cookbooks can be hard to come by. Which may seem like a small point -- but as she says, cookbooks are "a record of popular culture, social history, [and] my specialty, culinary creativity." Culture, in short, is shared and honored through food.
Last month at TEDGlobal 2007, Osseo-Asare launched the massive Africa Cookbook Project, collecting cookbooks from all African nations and regions. She'll catalogue them and, eventually, digitize them. If you have African cookbooks, or want to learn more about the cuisines of Africa, get in touch.
And watch this space: Video from TEDGlobal 2007 will start appearing on TED.com this month.
13 July 2007
E.O. Wilson on PBS: Why should we care if the woodpecker goes?
The last "Bill Moyers Journal", the weekly report on PBS, featured a long interview (video - transcript) by Moyers with biologist and TED Prize 2007 winner EO Wilson. The focus was very much on Wilson's career -- "No one in our time has added more to our understanding of Earth's ecology than Ed Wilson" is how Moyers described him -- but Moyers took the opportunity to also ask questions about the Encyclopedia of Life. The EOL is Wilson's TED Prize wish (video - summary - text): It's a vast project aimed at documenting all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth, and those yet to be discovered ("We're maybe today about 1/10 through the discovery of species", says Wilson). Efforts towards an EOL have been underway since January 2006, but Wilson's TED2007 speech has significantly accelerated the process, with the McArthur Foundation leading a US$ 50 million funding commitment, leading scientific institutions including Harvard University and the Smithsonian teaming up, and agency Avenue A/Razorfish creating a first design concept for the Encyclopedia and a video to explain the ambitious vision behind the initiative, using photography by Frans Lanting (watch his TED 2005 speech) and others.
Moyers is a great interviewer. At a certain point, he asks Wilson: why should we care if the woodpecker goes? I mean, we've lost---how many species have we lost?
Wilson: How many species going extinct or becoming very rare do you think it takes before you see something happening? We now know from experiments and theory that the more species you take out of an ecosystem like a pond, a patch of forest, a little bit of marine shallow environments, the more you take out the less stable it becomes. If you have a tsunami or a severe drought or a fire, it is less likely that that ecosystem, that body of species in that particular environment, is going to come back all the way. So it becomes less stable with fewer species. And then we also know it becomes less productive. In other words, it's not able to produce as many kilograms of new matter from photosynthesis and passage through the ecosystem. It's less productive. It sure is less interesting, though, isn't it? And more than that: we lose the services of these species.
Moyers: The services of these species.
Wilson: Yes, services of these species to us. Like pollination and water purification.
Moyers: That we get free from nature.
Wilson: Yeah. Here's an easy way to remember it.
12 July 2007
Everything we know about AIDS in Africa is wrong: Emily Oster on TED.com
Emily Oster, a University of Chicago economist, looks at the stats on AIDS in Africa -- and comes up with a stunning conclusion: Everything we know about AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is wrong. We look for root causes such as poverty and poor health care -- but we also need to factor in, say, the price of coffee, and the routes of long-haul truckers. In short, she says, there is a lot we don't know; and our assumptions about what we do know may keep us from finding the best way to stop the disease. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 15:45.)
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10 July 2007
Jonathan Harris tells the Web's secret stories, on TED.com
Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the infinite world on the Web -- so he builds dazzling graphic interfaces that help us visualize the data floating around out there. Here he presents "We Feel Fine," a project that scours blogs to collect the planet's emoti(c)ons, and the "Yahoo! Time Capsule," which preserves images, quotes and thoughts snapped up in 2006. And he premieres "Universe," which presents current events as constellations of words -- a tag cloud of our collective consciousness. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:37.) Read more about Jonathan Harris on TED.com.
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10 July 2007
TEDGlobal, one month on
It's been a month since TEDGlobal 2007 rocked Arusha, Tanzania -- bringing together Africans from all over the continent and the world, philanthropists and businesspeople, global citizens and key bloggers. The four days of the conference were up-all-night intense -- and many bloggers signed off on the last day with promises to write more when they caught up on their sleep.
Well, now they have.
Blogger Jen Brea turned in a sharp article for American.com that sums up the discussions around Africa sparked, in June, by TEDGlobal, the G8 summit and Vanity Fair:
Three weeks ago, TED held its first-ever conference in Africa, bringing together trademark optimism with an even more humbling sort of A-list.
Eleni Gabre-Madhin, a World Bank economist, returned to her native Ethiopia to start a commodities exchange to prevent future famines. Daniel Annerose invented software in Senegal that allows farmers to track market prices via SMS text messaging. Alieu Conteh built the first cellular network in the Congo, Florence Seriki, Nigeria's first computer manufacturing company.
Then there's William Kamkwamba, the undisputed showstopper, a teenager from rural Malawi who, at age fourteen, built a windmill from plastic scrap and an old bicycle frame that generates enough electricity to light his family's house.
These speakers were selected to support a thesis, painfully obvious but somehow radical in this age: Africa won't be "saved" by aid, but by the ingenuity and determination of its own people. ...
Conference speaker Nii Simmonds, at Nubian Cheetah, reports on a conversation with revered economist George Ayittey two weeks ago:
George asked, "so Nii, how do we get you TED Cheetahs to contribute to African development"?
I thought about it for a second and said, "I would be nice if TED sponsored fellows to their respective countries to use their professional work experience to help a business for a month or so."
I heard a pause, and George said, "well that is nice, but what about a fund, called a Cheetah Fund that is sustainable was set-up to help TED fellows or other African Cheetahs with funding for their respective businesses".
Wow, I said to myself, how come I didn't think about this before. African chiefs have been using this system for centuries before colonialism, we just have to go back to some of our indigenous roots ...
Speaker Ory Okolloh, who blogs at Kenyan Pundit and runs the public-affairs site mzalendo:Eye On Kenyan Parliament, is working her way through the sessions, using Ethan Zuckerman's liveblogging for her notes. During Euvin Naidoo's talk, she mused:
... wouldn’t it be great to have a one-stop shop website or something where you can access stats and info about investing in individual African countries. I thought the Investment Climate Facility was supposed to be doing that, but it appears that they are focused on other things. Niche blog opportunity anyone?
Lova Rakotomalala, from blogging family Global Voices, offers a quote-packed roundup from the Malagasy blogosphere (with translations from French to English):
Harinjaka got to visualize his dream of helping his homeland by attending the TED conference ...
He explains that he drew inspiration from the discussion in Arusha and he plans on leaving France and going back home to contribute to the turnaround ...
This is just a sample from the TEDGlobal blogging community; visit our list of TEDGlobal bloggers to find more updates and news.
And watch this space: Video from TEDGlobal 2007 will start appearing on TED.com this month.
09 July 2007
Defeating aging: Aubrey de Grey's handbook
British biogerontologist, computer scientist and twice TED speaker Aubrey de Grey has just finished a book, "Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime", where he details his controversial claim that "we could defeat aging".
Cheat sheet: Aubrey went on stage at TEDGLOBAL05 (video) and then at TED06 saying (I'm oversimplifying) that aging, like a disease, can be cured; that it is essentially a set of accumulating molecular and cellular transformations in our bodies, caused by metabolism, that eventually lead to pathology and kill us. Therefore, it could be approached "as an engineering problem": identify all the components of the variety of processes that cause tissues to age, and design remedies for each of them. He calls the approach "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS).
The book, co-written with his assistant Michael Rae, will be released September 4 by St Martin's Press. We e-mailed with Aubrey last week.
Aubrey, are you feeling older than last year?
Not really -- and that's despite the fact that my schedule has become even more punishing. I think the fulfilment I derive from spearheading the push to save so many lives somehow gives me the vitality to cope.
How has your research progressed since your TEDGLOBAL05 and TED06 speeches?
The Methuselah Foundation has gone from strength to strength. The biggest development, among other donations, was the pledge of $3.5m from TEDster and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, which resulted from a dialogue that began at TED. Most of his pledge ($3m of it) is a 1:2 challenge, so our current goal is to obtain $6m from elsewhere to match that pledge in full.
OK, that's about the funding. But how's the research going?
It's been going really well too. We are currently sponsoring research by three teams (in Phoenix, Houston and Cambridge UK) on two of the most important SENS strands -- LysoSENS, the identification and exploitation of microbial enzymes to break down molecules that we cannot naturally degrade, and MitoSENS, the incorporation of modified copies of the mitochondrial DNA into the chromosomal DNA so that mitochondrial mutations will have no effect. Both these projects are going really well, results coming out of the LysoSENS project have already been presented at two meetings and a paper has been submitted for publication in a prominent journal.
What should readers expect to learn from the book?
They will learn all about the detailed science of SENS. The book is written (largely by my splendid research assistant Michael Rae) very much for a non-scientist audience, but without dumbing down the science at all.
05 July 2007
Why can't we grow new body parts? Alan Russell on TED.com
Alan Russell studies regenerative medicine, a breakthrough way of treating disease and injury by helping the body to rebuild itself. He shows how engineered tissue that "speaks the body's language" has helped a man regrow his lost fingertip, how stem cells can rebuild damaged heart muscle, and how cell therapy can regenerate the skin of burned soldiers. This new medicine comes just in time, Russell says -- our aging population, with its steeply rising medical bills, will otherwise (and soon) cause a crisis in health care systems around the world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:37. Contains graphic medical imagery.) Read more about Alan Russell on TED.com.
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04 July 2007
Incremental infrastructure for Africa
Extending the discussions at TEDGLOBAL2007 in Tanzania and the conversation that's currently taking place online, Ethan Zuckerman has a must-read post on the economic growth of Africa as exemplified by the very fast growth of mobile telephony across the continent -- there are currently nearly 120 million subscribers to cell phones. That growth has been breathtaking, and is central to many discussions about the future of Africa. However, Ethan wonders, it’s hard to know whether it is replicable in other sectors:
There’s a couple of circumstances that I think are critical to understand in the rise of mobile networks on the continent:
- You can build a mobile phone network one piece at a time. With a GSM license and a single tower, a company can begin earning revenue and start using this revenue to finance future expansion. An investment in the single-digit millions can turn into a multi-billion dollar business through reinvestment of revenues. That just isn’t true for creating container ports, major roads or large power generating facilities (...)
- Users financed a great deal of the infrastructure behind the mobile phone boom - specifically, they purchased the handsets (...)
- Sheer government incompetence helped the mobile industry by ensuring that most phone buyers weren’t replacing land lines with mobiles, but purchasing their first phones. It’s easier to sell someone a new, useful service rather than an improvement on an existing service (...)
I’m trying to figure out whether these criteria lead to an infrastructure investment strategy for Africa based on incremental infrastructure development. (...) African mobile phone companies are being forced to become power companies. In urban areas, phone companies have to equip every tower with diesel generators because of frequent power cuts. In more rural areas, where companies can’t rely on grid power, providers need to put in two generators - one to power the station, the second as backup. The cost of delivering diesel fuel to these locations is substantial - Russell Southwood calculates that a grid and road-connected base station costs $2,500 a month to maintain, while a very rural station might cost $20,000. (...) If mobile phone companies - or a similarly entrepreneurial entity - could begin building larger, more efficient power generating facilities, they could service local communities with power as well as with telephony. If there were sufficient success for this model, it might start to resemble the “electranet” that some have suggested might alleviate African power problems.
03 July 2007
Dan Dennett on dangerous memes, on TED.com
Here's one of those talks that can change your view of the world forever. Starting with the deceptively simple story of an ant, Dan Dennett unleashes a dazzling sequence of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of "memes" -- a term coined by Richard Dawkins for mental concepts that are literally alive and capable of spreading from brain to brain.
On the way, look out for:
• a powerful one-sentence secret of happiness
• a compelling insight into terrorists' motivation
• a chilling view of Islam
And just when you think you know where the talk's heading, it dramatically shifts direction and questions some of western culture's fundamental assumptions.
This. Is. Unmissable. (Recorded February 2002 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 15:39) Read more about Dan Dennett on TED.com.
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