TEDBlog May, 2009 Archive
15 May 2009
Q&A with Hans Rosling (Part 2): How to change Fidel Castro's mind … and everybody else's
In the second half of the TEDBlog’s interview with global health professor and stats expert Hans Rosling, he gets personal. With his usual wit, Hans tells stories of winning over Fidel Castro, remembers his battle with testicular cancer and explains why we can’t get enough of him. If you need to catch up before diving into Part 2, read Part 1 of the interview or watch his newest TEDTalk, posted on Wednesday.
While we’re discussing world leaders — rumor has it that you have out-talked Fidel Castro. Would you like to tell that story?
Oh, that’s a very good story. It was 1993 in Cuba, and there was a huge outbreak of neuropathy which is basically damage to the nerves. It causes great damage to the legs and the eyes. There were 40,000 cases across the island. In May of ’93, I was approached by the Cuban Embassy in Sweden and invited to join a team of scientists going to Cuba. I agreed.
We were very well received in Cuba. I discovered that the Cuban government and professionals are great to make deals with. They keep to their word. If they don’t want something, they don’t want it, but if they say yes …
Fidel Castro actually came to me on the first day and chatted with me. It was a chat to go through my CV and check if it was true. Because of my work and time living in Africa, I have a Fidel-loving CV and he wanted to be sure all of this was true. He asked a lot of trick questions, but I passed the test.
I liked that he had stopped smoking, as leader of a country famous for their cigars. But, I also decided not to fall into calling him a great leader and all these things. I did not want to either promote or criticize the Cuban government, but to do what I was invited to do.
I told Castro that I would like to use qualitative research methods, incorporate some anthropology. But this was 1993, and it was very early to be using these methods in public health research. Now it’s totally accepted, but then it was a very new idea. And it was important to use in this case as I had noticed that the tobacco-growing provinces had much higher frequency of the condition. Also, the food distribution was equal in Cuba but the disease distribution was unequal, so that link was gone. So I said, “Let’s not just do a questionnaire here.” Quantitative people don’t like you to say that. So there was some argument, and that was the moment when Castro came in.
We sat for three or four hours and we got into a discussion over the details, the very smallest details. At one point I said, “We need to do good research.” He misunderstood me and thought that I meant that the research of his scientists was low quality. So he also had to give me a long lecture about how good the Cubans were at epidemiology. And it’s difficult to stop Castro when he begins talking — almost as difficult as it is to stop me. But then I said, “Can I tell you a story?” And as a Cuban, he immediately said, “Yes.”
So, I told him that I had watched a documentary on him, and he asked me more questions to verify that I remembered it all correctly and it was all true — and I passed. And then I said, “I liked especially when you lived in the Sierra Maestra. You worked along with the people, you ate with them, you played with their children. You must have learnt so much about them.” And he said, “Yes. Yes, we did.” And I replied, “But you didn’t have any questionnaires!” He laughed at that. So, I told him, “You see, today the methods of Sierra Maestra have become science.” He sort of liked that.
The next day the Minister of Health and the head of the Armed Forces and such all sat down with me for a meeting and said, “We would like you to stay in Cuba for the next six months. Tell us who you would like to work with.” So I stayed, and we did exactly the studies I had proposed.
I stayed for only three months, but I learned a lot about Cuba. And I will say this: What you think is good in Cuba is much better than you think. And what you think is bad in Cuba is much worse than you think.
READ MORE: Hans talks about how testicular cancer changed him, how he was convinced to talk at TED and why he gets the best customer service ever. (more…)
15 May 2009
Beatboxing a whole band: Naturally 7 on TED.com
One-of-a-kind R&B group Naturally 7 beatboxes an orchestra’s worth of instruments to groove through their smooth single, “Fly Baby.”(Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 3:56.)
Watch Naturally 7′s performance 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.
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14 May 2009
Q&A with Hans Rosling (Part 1): A deeper look at AIDS transmission and disease stats
On Monday, the TEDBlog had a long chat with Hans Rosling, the extraordinary global health professor that makes data come alive. He had his third TEDTalk posted yesterday and again wowed us all, explaining complex information with animated graphs — and humor. In this interview, he delves into his theories on concurrency and AIDS transmission, our ideological ruts and developing the Obama-meter!
Hans had so much interesting news to share, that we had to split our interview in two! Return tomorrow for Part 2 of the interview, when Hans will recount meeting Fidel Castro, explain how cancer changed him and divulge the secret of why we love him so.
So, you’ve seen your TEDTalk already?
Oh yes, and I got so disappointed because, first, I went over the time. Also, we had technical problems and spent the last two hours before my talk debugging the presentation. So, the presentation I gave is not as good as the version that was on my computer. It just did not come out well at all. You know, it’s a real challenge to talk about a subject as complicated as AIDS in front of a large audience.
And I made that one mistake. I said male circumcision prevents HIV transmission when really it reduces it in a population. And when someone hears this, he will think, “If I have a circumcision, I can’t contract HIV,” and this is not the case. However, at least this part was edited out of the talk.
I thought the talk was very good. Do you always feel this way about your talks? Have you given a talk that you thought was good?
TheTEDTalk from 2006 is almost perfect. Even the mistakes I made in that talk were almost perfect. Then, the screen was low and you could see the graphics around me while I was talking. It was so good for my style of presenting. But in 2007, you raised the screen.
Anyway, I didn’t know that format was going to be so good. This was a technique I discovered by serendipity, like the joke in my talk about solidifying the beam of the laser. People really liked that, because they are so fed up with laser pointers which are such an overused technology. Now, I’m working on a bamboo version so that it will be biodegradable.
We know AIDS spreads more rapidly with concurrent sex partners, but what exactly do Africa’s concurrent partner relationships look like?
Well, this concurrency I have only observed in some parts of southern and eastern Africa. You must remember that there are tremendous variations between practices in all of Africa. Remember in the talk, I spoke about the difference between Salt Lake City and San Francisco. For example, the gay community in Salt Lake City is not that strong. But where there is the practice of concurrent partners, between the ages of 15 and 30 you may have less partners and less intercourse and have 50 times more HIV.
Now, Swedes have serial monogamy, which is one partner after another but no overlap. And then there is polygamy. Concurrent partners does not mean polygamy. These are as different as snow and sand. I want to carefully explain this, because this area is so heavy with moral judgment.
Having concurrent partners means that during a one month period, on a regular basis, you have sex with more than one person. There is not one main partner and then little affairs, either. In these societies, sex is linked to the social transaction. Sex has a different social role. There’s not as much jealousy with regard to sex. Now, it sounds as if I am defending concurrent partners. But with the Swedish way, serial monogamy, you just drop partners. It’s not very nice.
There is another model as well. In the Middle East, you marry when you are between 17 and 21 and you only have sex with the person you marry. And, actually these people probably have more intercourse, with their spouse, than anyone else. Many of these couples have a great sex life, too.
Also, as I said in the talk, HIV doesn’t have the same risk of transmission at all times. From the time of infection, the virus’ levels grow and peak in the blood in the first six weeks. With no other STD present, the risk of transmission is actually very low at other times. So with serial monogamy, even if a person is infected, they continue to have sex only with the person that infected them until their viral levels have fallen. Whereas, if you have sex with two other people just after infection, the virus is more likely to spread.
Promiscuous parts of the gay community in the United States, and in Sweden, also have concurrent partners. Note that I said promiscuous. For heroin abusers, this concurrency pattern is also the same as they reuse needles from many different people. This is also significant as blood is more contagious than any other bodily fluid.
There is no research consensus on concurrency, but it is the most probable hypothesis.
READ MORE: Hans talks about ideological mistakes, circumcision, his swine flu commentary and the Obama-meter (more…)
14 May 2009
The ideas that will shape India's future: Nandan Nilekani on TED.com
In this wide-ranging talk, Nandan Nilekani, visionary CEO of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 15:13)
Watch Nandan Nilekani’s talk 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.
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13 May 2009
New facts on HIV and stunning data visuals: Hans Rosling on TED.com
Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world’s deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions — not drug treatments — is the key to ending the epidemic. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 9:56.)
Watch Hans Rosling’s talk 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.
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13 May 2009
TED's Open Translation Project brings subtitles in 40+ languages to TED.com
We here at TED are thrilled to announce this news!
NEW YORK, May 13, 2009 — The acclaimed 18-minute talks available free on the TED website will now be accessible beyond the English-speaking world, through the TED Open Translation Project (www.ted.com/translation), which launches today, generously sponsored by Nokia.
A year in the making, the project offers video subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability for volunteers worldwide to translate any talk into any language. The project launches with 300 translations in 40 languages; more than 200 volunteer translators have already contributed.
Download the Open Translation Project press release as a PDF >>
“TED’s mission is to spread good thinking globally, and so it’s high time we began reaching out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don’t speak English,” says TED Curator Chris Anderson. “We’re excited to be using a bottom-up, open-source approach that will in time allow all our talks to be translated into all the world’s languages. A web-empowered revolution in global education is under way. We’re not far from the day when anyone on Earth can directly access the world’s great teachers speaking to them in their own language. How cool is that?”
Each of the 400+ talks on TED.com will now offer:
+ Subtitles, in English and many additional languages (several videos carry up to 25 languages at launch)
+ A time-coded, interactive transcript, in multiple languages, which lets you click on any phrase and jump straight to that point in the video. This makes the entire content of the video indexable on search engines
+ Translated headlines and video descriptions, which appear when a new language is selected
+ Language-specific URLs which play the chosen subtitles by default
The TED Open Translation Project is one of the most comprehensive attempts by a major media platform to subtitle and index online video content. It’s also a groundbreaking effort in the public, professional use of volunteer translation.
“Volunteer translation will be increasingly important for anyone trying to reach a global audience,” says June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media. “It’s the only feasible way to reach all the world’s languages. Crowd-sourced translation creates communities of volunteers who are passionate about producing great work, accountable for the accuracy of their translations, and invested in evolving the system itself. It turns users into true participants, helping to spread ideas.”
Crowd-sourced translations in all the world’s languages
To launch the Open Translation Project, a handful of talks were professionally translated into 20 languages. But all translations going forward will be provided by volunteers. In fact, volunteer translators have already contributed more than 200 published translations to the project (with 450 more in development). These volunteers range from well-organized groups working together in their own language, to lone translators working individually and matched by TED with others.
To support this program, TED and technology partner dotSUB have developed a set of tools that allow participants around the world to translate their favorite talks into their own language. This approach is scalable, and — importantly — allows speakers of less-dominant languages an equal opportunity to spread ideas within their communities.
This open-source approach mimics the successful strategies of products like Wikipedia, Linux and Mozilla, which have proven the power -– and ultimate reliability –- of open solutions. Crowd-sourced translation has already been proven effective on a handful of sites worldwide, including Wikipedia and the Global Voices blog at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
To ensure quality translations, TED established a set of guidelines and systems to help translators deliver the best work possible. To begin with, a professionally generated (and speaker-approved) English transcript is provided for each talk, so that all translations are based on the same source document. TED then requires every translation to be reviewed by a second fluent speaker before it’s published; both translator and reviewer are credited by name on the site. TED controls the final “publish” button (nothing is “automatically” published), and there are feedback mechanisms for ongoing community input and improvement after publication.
At launch, TED’s Open Translation Project will include more than 300 translations, in more than 40 languages, including Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kirghiz, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. Our translators hail from cities from Beijing to Buenos Aires; Tehran to Tel Aviv; Espoo, Finland, to Barranquilla, Colombia.
Accurate, searchable, interactive transcripts for every TEDTalk
Each of the 400+ TED talks now has a time-coded, interactive transcript, in English and all available languages. Using this interactive transcript, a user can select any phrase and have the video play from the point where that phrase is spoken. The transcripts will be fully indexable by search engines — in all languages — exposing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, someone searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately find the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter’s talk when she speaks of her green roof project in the South Bronx.
Questions about the project? Write to subtitles@ted.com or read the FAQ.
12 May 2009
You asked Seth Godin absolutely anything — and he answered
If you were a James Bond villain, how would you take over the world? – Andrew Noseworthy
I’d release a pheremone that increases the fear that people have about doing great things. It would only increase it by 3%, but that would be enough to wipe out most competition. I’m convinced someone is already doing this, by the way.
In the age of tribes, will the benefits outweigh the problems? Specifically, if society fractions into increasingly small groups, won’t we wind up with more rules, more conflict, and more difficulty in communicating, as each develops its own norms and goals? Does this internet-enabled tribal age have implications for how we are going to coexist in society as the “other” becomes an increasingly large part of the population? — David Stewart
I think the idea of negative tribal behavior is older than the Cro Magnon man. Tribes online, in work and in communities aren’t going to make us more violent. We don’t run the risk of more us/them conflicts. I think, instead, we’re going to see more movements that benefit all of us. When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate. Remember, it’s the doing, more than what gets done, that defines tribe.
How do you make “limited edition” physical products feel limited? Especially when they’re limited because you don’t have the capability to produce too many — like hand-made clothes. Should you even try? – John-Phillip Johansson
Of course. There’s a real need for scarcity. The question is how you demonstrate it. Berkin bags? Signed prints? TED invites? By exposing the insiders, you create demand among the outsiders.
What have you learned today? – Antonio Ortiz
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
While getting people to support causes (sign petitions, join a group, etc.) on social networking sites like Facebook has been done very successfully, getting them to donate time and money to the same causes has not. Why do you think this is so? – Pavithra Sankaran
I’m not sure that signing petitions does a thing. I think that easy in/easy out is an axiom, and if you want to make change you need to ask people to do more than just nod at you.
How can small business coffee shops survive a Starbucks next door? — Pascal Lacroix
By being not only different, but better in ways Starbucks cannot. You can’t win by imitating them. Consider having a membership fee, or a different social group. Serve a different item, in a different way, at a different price. Emphasize the ‘Cheers’ friendly element over the ‘get in and get out’ mindset. Exclude certain people or practices. Offer clothes or community performances … stuff they can’t do!
Can you offer any dating pointers? – Mark Smith
I’ve tried the Gregorian, but I find the Julian calendar is a lot more useful.
Among my blogging peers in the marketing/PR/social media niche, I often hear people toss around comments like “he’s the next Seth Godin,” or, “My goal is to be the next Seth Godin.” I’m curious what your advice would be to the next generation of emerging thought leaders — especially the ones eyeing your particular seat. – Tiffany Monhollon
I’m still trying to be pretty good at being ‘this’ Seth Godin, so I wish people who want to be the next one a lot of luck. There’s never been a next Elvis Costello or a next Jill Sobule. There wasn’t even a next Chuck Berry or a next Charlie Chaplin … I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.
12 May 2009
A piano performance that balances chaos and harmony: Eric Lewis on TED.com
Eric Lewis (who plays the White House tonight!) explores the piano’s expressive power as he pounds and caresses the keys (and the strings) in a performance during the 2009 TED Prize session. He plays an original song, a tribute to ocean and sky and the vision of the TED Prize winners. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 4:54.)
Watch Eric Lewis’ performance 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.
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11 May 2009
Ask Seth Godin absolutely anything
Today, TEDTalks star Seth Godin will answer your questions — on absolutely anything! Post your questions in the comments here on the TED Blog, or email them to contact@ted.com. We’ll select our five favorites from the bunch and post Seth’s responses on the TED Blog.
A marketing guru with eclectic interests and insights, Seth is game for questions on ANY topic you can think of. Be creative!
11 May 2009
Ushahidi wins $200K MacArthur grant
Ushahidi — a crisis-tracking tool with roots in TEDGlobal 2007 — has been awarded a $200,000 grant for development from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The Ushahidi mapping tool was developed by Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh and Juliana Rotich, who’d met as TED Fellows at the 2007 TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania, and the programmer David Kobia. A mashup of Google Maps and texting widgets, Ushahidi allowed citizens to do real-time reporting via text during the Kenyan post-election riots. It’s since been developed into an engine for more widespread reporting — most recently, to monitor the Indian elections and to track swine flu. In his 2009 TEDTalk, Erik Hersman, a co-founder, talked about the team’s big plans for Ushahidi — making it open-source and expandable. Watch his TEDTalk to hear this vision, which the grant will help come true >>
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