TEDBlog March, 2009 Archive
17 March 2009
Why we think it's OK to cheat and steal (sometimes): Dan Ariely on TED.com
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it’s OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we’re predictably irrational — and can be influenced in ways we can’t grasp. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 16:23.)
Watch Dan Ariely’s talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 400+ TEDTalks — including more unconventional explanations.
On the TED Blog: Read Dan Ariely’s take on the Bernie Madoff scandal >>
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17 March 2009
I'll wait for the bicycle version
It takes a certain courage to look at the design of nearly every ground vehicle that exists and say, “You know the real problem with these? They run on wheels.” A stunned silence descended over the TED office as this amazing demo video hopped from email to email, and we think you may react the same. Or, possibly, by shrieking.
The inspiration for this vehicle is Theo Jansen’s kinetic sculptures and, we suspect, Dean Kamen’s Segway.
16 March 2009
Cute, sexy, sweet and funny: an evolutionary riddle. Dan Dennett on TED.com
Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet? Philosopher Dan Dennett has answers you wouldn’t expect, as he shares evolution’s counterintuitive reasoning on cute, sweet and sexy things (plus a new theory from Matthew Hurley on why jokes are funny). (Recorded at TED U 2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 07:45.)
Watch Dan Dennett’s talk from TED U 2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 400+ TEDTalks — including more talks about evolution’s genius.
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13 March 2009
Dan Ariely offers 3 irrational lessons from the Bernie Madoff scandal
Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, presented a jaw-dropping talk on cheating and dishonesty at TED2009. We’re posting Ariely’s TEDTalk next Tuesday, and we asked him for his thoughts on the Bernie Madoff scandal unfolding now in New York:
The first chapter of the Bernie Madoff fiasco has come to a close, with Madoff pleading guilty to 11 charges of fraud yesterday.
Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme was horrific on many levels. But while we watch the next phase of the scandal, it’s important to ask: What lessons are we going to learn from this? I can see three lessons that relate to my work studying human irrationality — and in particular, some non-useful lessons we might learn.
One lesson that individuals and foundations are likely to take from the Madoff scandal is that in addition to diversifying their portfolio across several investments (stock, bonds, equity, cash), they also need to diversify their investments among several advisors. While the idea of diversifying among advisors has some merit — and it could reduce the exposure risk of another Madoff scandal — it will also make the task of managing portfolios much more difficult and much less efficient. Imagine that you have $1,000,000, split among four advisors. You will need a whole new level of coordination among them so they can have the right amount of cash, bonds, stocks etc., across all of your assets.
And I think that people will begin to over-diversify across investors. Why? Because when we have one large and salient instance in our minds, it can be so powerful that we overemphasize it. This same effect is very apparent in what we call “the identifiable victim effect,” and it is the reason that we overemphasize the risks of a shark attack, and underestimate the risks of riding a bike without a helmet. In general, what we find when there’s one single vivid event is that people overweight it — we focus on it too much. So that’s the first lesson: We’re going to learn from the Madoff scandal, but we are going to overdo it.
Read the full essay from Dan Ariely — including two more non-useful lessons — after the jump >>
And watch for Dan Ariely’s TEDTalk next Tuesday, March 17.
Dan Ariely will be speaking in New York City on Monday, March 16, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Details here >>
Photo: TED / Asa Mathat (more…)
13 March 2009
Trendables — 6 products that can
-able, everyone’s favorite “can-do” adjective suffix, is enjoying a revival. 20-some years since its heyday, we’ve found it stitched to no less than six modern product names, deriving for them a certain adroitness that a lonesome noun mightn’t have provided. And two of these products, as it happens, have been demoed at TED.
1. Siftables: The cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. (See David Merrill’s demo of Siftables at TED2009.)
2. Inventables: A subscription service used by consumer product companies who want to create unique products. (Watch Keith Schact and Zach Kaplan show off products from the future.)
3. Instructables: A how-to and DIY community where people make and share inspiring, entertaining, and useful projects, recipes and hacks. (Watch Saul Griffith show hardware solutions to everyday problems.)
4. Mashable: Touted as the world’s largest Web 2.0- and social networking-related news blog.
5. Reactable: An electronic music instrument with a slick, multi-touch interface.
6. Lunchables: Children’s meal combinations, often called “the taste of elementary school” by the Gen Y cohort.
Give us more examples in the comments, if you are capable.
(Image: Mike Femia)
13 March 2009
Another bonus of inventing the World Wide Web …
Today, CERN’s been throwing a party to celebrate the 20th birthday of the web — which they date to the now-famous memo that Tim Berners-Lee wrote to his boss, sketching out a framework for a document-sharing system. As they tell it:
Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world forever: Tim Berners-Lee handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall entitled “Information Management : a Proposal”. “Vague, but exciting” is how Mike described it, and he gave Tim the nod to take his proposal forward. The following year, the World Wide Web was born.
A panel of speakers and dignitaries marked the event with a short symposium, after which Sir Tim and a few others took a private tour of the ATLAS cavern, part of the Large Hadron Collider. Sir Tim is at left, dwarfed by the massive project. (Learn more about what happens at ATLAS by watching Brian Cox’s TEDTalk.)
CERN has built out a helpful website celebrating the web’s birthday — including a look at the very first web site and web server, at info.cern.ch. The site now contains a pocket history of the web, including a photo of the very first web surfer, Robert Cailliau.
Berners-Lee spoke at the celebration today, sharing his vision for the next rev of the Web — one in which data is as open and exchangeable as words and images are on the current Web. Watch his TEDTalk to get the inspiring details >>
Photo: CERN
13 March 2009
Writing the Charter for Compassion: The Council of Conscience meets in Geneva
Cross-posted to the TED Prize blog: Last week, an amazing group of religious thinkers and leaders, the Council of Conscience, met outside of Geneva to finalize the Charter for Compassion. Previously called the Council of Sages, the group consists of individuals from the five major religions and almost every continent.
The Councilors spent two days together; they discussed the idea of compassion, sorted through the written submissions from the world, determined the key ideas necessary to include in the Charter and created a plan for how the Charter will live in the world. The discussions were thought-provoking, candid, and heartfelt. Everyone involved came away both inspired and committed to working towards creating a more compassionate global society.
Details will be revealed in the coming weeks and months. There are many ways which everyone can help propagate the Charter for Compassion and we encourage everyone to register on charterforcompassion.org to receive updates about ways to participate.
For more on the Council of Conscience meeting, read this report from council member Sr. Joan Chittister >>
Photo credit: TED Prize/tedprize.org
13 March 2009
The next Web of open, linked data: Tim Berners-Lee on TED.com
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: Unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 16:23.)
Watch Tim Berners-Lee’s talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 400+ TEDTalks — including more talks about what’s next in tech.
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13 March 2009
Scientific American on the day the Web was born
For some more background on why today’s TEDTalk is especially appropriate today, read Scientific American‘s thorough and fascinating look at the birth of the web.
12 March 2009
Watch Karen Armstrong on Bill Moyers Journal
My work has continually brought me back to the notion of compassion. Whichever religious tradition I study, I find at the heart of it is the idea of feeling with the other, experiencing with the other, compassion. And every single one of the major world religions has developed its own version of the Golden Rule. Don’t do to others what you would not like them to do to you.
… We’ve got to do better than this. Compassion doesn’t mean feeling sorry for people. It doesn’t mean pity. It means putting yourself in the position of the other, learning about the other. Learning what’s motivating the other, learning about their grievances.
Confirm airdate and time on your local PBS station >>
Watch Karen Armstrong make her audacious wish during the TED Prize session at TED2008:
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