TEDBlog May, 2010 Archive
12 May 2010
Glimpses of the pristine ocean: Enric Sala on TED.com
Enric Sala shares glorious images — and surprising insights — from some of the most pristine areas of the ocean. He shows how we can restore more of our oceans to this healthy, balanced state, and the powerful ecological and economic benefits of doing so. (Recorded on the Mission Blue Voyage, April 2010 on the National Geographic Endeavor, the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. Duration: 19:55)
Watch Enric Sala’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 600+ TEDTalks.
11 May 2010
Meet Sebastian Betti, TED volunteer translator
Tell us about yourself.
I was born in a little countryside town called Rauch (in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina) where I had the opportunity to spend my childhood in touch with nature and the simple things of life. After finishing high school I moved to Tandil, a neighboring small city, where I took up systems engineering. After moving again, I now live and work in the capital city, Buenos Aires, so even though I’ve lost the small scale of things, I enjoy this great beacon of art, science and cultural turmoil, which we shared at TEDxBA.
As for my interests, I love cinema, literature and science. Because I’m curious by nature, I feel an indescribable satisfaction in traveling, socializing and discovering new people, places and cultures. In that spirit, I’ve been traveling around the Americas in search of its cultural and natural wonders. Captivating places such as the moon-like landscapes in Costa Rica, the ancient caves and pre-Columbian sites in southern Colombia or sacred places like La Raya in Peru not only capture my attention but also awaken my inquietudes and eagerness for knowledge and — of course — multicultural experiences.
What drew you to TED?
Looking for material for a presentation on the non-computational factors affecting software quality, I created several brainstorming sessions on some social networks, and a colleague of mine sent me a link to the awesome talk by Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice. It was then when it occurred to me that I had to put Spanish subtitles on that talk … and so I did! Later, in a conference where I was presenting my work, I saw how captivating one of my video references was — once I translated it into Spanish — to an audience that might otherwise not have access to that information. I discovered that my interests matched with the Open Translation Project, and that’s how I got to TED.
Why do you translate?
I’ve been translating articles since my high school and college days simply because I’ve always wanted to deeply understand and gain insight into very specific subjects. The act of understanding brings me such an intellectual and emotional joy, therefore I think that translation is something worthwhile. After translating some TEDTalks for my own interest, the next step was to spread the word to others. No doubt I strongly believe that knowledge sharing is even more enjoyable than keeping it for oneself.
What are you favorite talks? Why?
“Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice” because I like his idea of “good enough is OK” for doing better in life, and his articulation of ideas is superb.
“Robert Lang folds way-new origami” and “Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world” because of their passion for knowledge above all, making a plea for that inner spark inside all of us.
“James Geary, metaphorically speaking” because it’s an interesting topic that’s very well presented through mind maps. I know there’s a massive presentation of automated mind maps at TEDxDubai 2010, and I’d like to see more of this in TEDTalks to come.
Finally, the amazing TEDxTalk by Constanza Ceruti at TEDxBA about the sacred mountains of the Inca civilization on the highest peaks of the Andes.
11 May 2010
Zap! Invention to fight mosquitoes, malaria: Nathan Myhrvold on TED.com
Nathan Myhrvold and team’s latest inventions — as brilliant as they are bold — remind us that the world needs wild creativity to tackle big problems like malaria. And just as that idea sinks in, he rolls out a live demo of a new, mosquito-zapping gizmo you have to see to believe. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 15:12)
Watch Nathan Myhrvold’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 600+ TEDTalks.
10 May 2010
Q&A with Nicholas Christakis: Our modern, connected lives
The TEDBlog caught up with physician and social scientist Nicholas Christakis just before his talk posted to ask him a few questions about social networks and how they affect our everyday lives. The conversation turned to evolution, Facebook, Twitter, online dating — with a quick tip on what you should be doing to speed up the search for a life partner.
How did you first decide that you would work on social networks? When did you come to that realization?
Fundamentally, I suppose this topic sits well with my perception of humanity. We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It’s very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy — where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system. That’s clearly not the case when it comes to social systems. This realization was very much to my liking, intellectually and otherwise. We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.
Over the years, I’ve only become more and more interested in this topic, looking for data and ways to analyze this data. I found it more and more appealing. And then, as I said in my TEDTalk, once you start mapping these networks — they’re so intricate and so beautiful and so interesting — you just can’t help but wonder why we humans make them. Why does a spider weave its web? Why does the web have a particular kind of shape? It’s not a coincidence. You look at these webs and you think, “My God, what purpose do they serve? And, how do they affect us?” And so James (James Fowler, co-author of Connected) and I have both really become obsessed with trying to figure out how and why we form networks and how and why they affect us.
None of us are solitary, but different people reside in different places in their social networks and some are more solitary than others. Should people attempt to change their place in the social network, and can they?
That’s a complicated question. I don’t think individuals need to be too concerned with this. Generically, it’s not the case that some positions in a social network are better than others. For example, if a deadly germ is spreading through the network, you’d rather be on the periphery or you’d rather be a hermit — you’d rather not be connected to anyone. If you’re totally unconnected from the network, you’re not going to get the pathogen that’s spreading. If you don’t have sex with anyone, ever, you’re just not going to get a sexually transmitted disease. On the other hand, if you’re in one of those isolated positions in the network and what’s spreading through the network is an idea (appropriate to TED, which is invested in the spread of ideas) you’re not going to get that idea. So, whether it’s to your advantage or not to be in the middle or on the edge of the network depends on whether it’s an idea that’s spreading or a germ that’s spreading. If it’s a germ you’d rather be peripheral, and if it’s an idea you’d rather be central. Therefore, there’s no one optimal location.
There are other structural attributes of networks as well, such as how many friends you have. On the one hand, it’s great to have lots of friends because if you need help, you can get it. On the other hand, having lots of friends means that you have to offer more help, you have to come to the assistance to more people, to be responsible for more people. So, there’s no necessarily optimal location overall. Now, if we specify what we’re talking about, then it is more possible to take a stand on whether it’s better to be in this or that location in the network.
James and I think that there are deep reasons for different types of locations within human social networks — reasons that we don’t live in regular lattices. We don’t make highly ordered networks that look like salt crystals. I think we’ve shown that it’s partially genetic that we don’t. Now, it’s customary to think of human beings evolving under the pressures of the physical or biological environment — we think about how the temperature of the planet has affected our evolution, or how the altitude at which people live, or the rainfall, or the existence of predators or prey, or pathogens have affected our evolution as a species. But, in addition to the physical environment, there’s also the social environment that affects us.
In fact, one of the arguments about why we are smart, that physical anthropologists have been advancing over the last decade, has been the social brain hypothesis, which is that the reason we are smart is precisely to cope with the social complexity around us. As we began to form aggregates and live in groups, it became important to identify specific individuals, to know who was our friend and who was our enemy, to know the relationships between the other members of our group — I’m talking now over tens or hundreds of thousands of years. We evolved language to support this ability to communicate with each other, and huge parts of our brain now started getting bigger and bigger because of the means of communication. So we’ve evolved all these abilities — including insight into the minds of others, empathy — in response to the social environment around us. So now, it’s not just the physical and biological, but also the social.
I should also say that I am not a genetic determinist — I am not saying that genes are all that explain these social phenomena. Although, it would be equally ignorant to say that they play no role. Obviously, psychology and culture have important roles to play, maybe dominant roles. It’s possible. I guess what this would mean for individuals is that you can clearly influence where you are in a network and what it means for you, but it’s also clear that we are born with certain innate tendencies. For instance, we’re born shy or gregarious. A shy person could learn to be friendlier, but fundamentally they have a different taste for the number of social interactions they have.
This answer was a little meandering. I didn’t answer directly, in the sense that people can of course become aware of their location in networks and could, in principle, make efforts to modify their locations. But, on a macroscopic scale I don’t think a lot of that is possible.
Now that everyone seems to be trying to increase their influence, and their followers and friends, through online social networks, why do you think some people succeed at becoming social media superstars and some don’t?
Well, we’ve studied this phenomenon, and we concluded that the types of social interactions we have online are the same but different than the interactions we have face-to-face. And, generally speaking, we think that people are not really influenced by any old interaction online, anymore than if a stranger calls you on the phone and says you should do something that you’ll say, “Oh, thank you,” and do it. The phone is a technology used in the service of existing social ties. So, you have a particular set of friends and interactions, and the telephone is useful for you to interact with those people. It doesn’t materially change the way strangers can affect you.
One of the examples that I would give is this: Talk to your grandmother or your great-grandmother and ask her how many best friends she had when she was a girl. And, she might say, “I had one or two really best friends, and three or four close friends — we had a circle of five girls.” Ask a young girl that question today and you’ll get the same answer. Now, the young girl today will also have all kinds of other social interactions, but the fundamental reality of our interest in having close social relationships really hasn’t changed.
What constrains or enables the capacity of human beings to work in groups is not so much the technology, but rather the capacity of the human brain to have and monitor social interactions. So you can make interactions between different pairs of people more efficient, and there’s no doubt modern technologies have done that, but what really limits our abilities to interact with each other and to influence each other is a more fundamental requirement. Social media and the Internet haven’t changed our capacity for social interaction any more than the Internet has changed our ability to be in love or our basic propensity to violence, because those are such fundamental human attributes.
In fact, James and I have looked at the phenomenon of Facebook friends — and here the word “friends” is weird, we should probably say “acquaintance.” We use the word “friends” but it doesn’t mean they’re really your friends. If a random Facebook acquaintance of yours expresses interest in a movie or a book or music, it doesn’t modify your own taste in those things. But, when a real friend of yours does, among your Facebook acquaintances, you are influenced and you do change. So, these fleeting, minor online interactions may not be as influential as we think. But, online interactions can indeed facilitate an influence process among people who are actually truly connected or who have meaningful relationships with each other.
Also, the person who accumulates 10,000 followers on Twitter is unlikely to be affected by everything else that everyone else is saying — you can’t possibly be monitoring the tweets of the other 10,000. And, if the person is sending out tweets to 10,000 or 20,000 people, in a way, all they’ve done is to become a targeted broadcaster. Now, that targeting is valuable. It’s much better to send messages to people who have expressed an interest in your message, rather than broadcasting into the air, but we should be thinking about this type of interaction more as a kind of change in the way of broadcasting rather than a change in the way of social interaction.
Do you think that the same people who have thousands of friends and followers online are also well-connected in real life?
I think that’s a very good question. I think people vary, whether for biological or psychological or social reasons, in their ability to interact with others. It’s possible that someone who has 10,000 followers on Twitter is actually rather antisocial. If you met him in person, he might not be able to sustain a conversation.
In a way, I think this is one of the beauties of the Internet. In Connected, we talked about “virtuality” — there are ways in which disabled people could have able-bodied avatars, men could pass as women — you’re able to be someone different in Second Life or in World of Warcraft. In these massive, multi-player online games, you’re able to adopt a different persona. I think it’s possible that people who act one way online may materially differ in their offline interactions. So, I wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that someone who has many friends in real life or enjoys social interaction might be the same type of person who has thousands of Twitter followers. I think they’re different phenomena.
This is also a reflection of our lack of evolution of language. Just like we use the word “friend” to describe the people you interact with on Facebook, which is probably not right, we also say “social network” when we talk about Twitter. But, again, Twitter is not like the social networks that James and I study, these face-to-face networks. This is a different phenomena and we probably should use a different word for it. Maybe we should call it “selective broadcasting” instead of “online networking.” And, maybe if we did that, we would think about it in a different way.
READ MORE: Nicholas Christakis talks about the pervasiveness of our networks in our lives, our limited understanding of who we’re connected to and the phenomenon of online dating. (more…)
10 May 2010
The hidden influence of social networks: Nicholas Christakis on TED.com
We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits — from happiness to obesity — can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 18:14)
Watch Nicholas Christakis’ 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 600+ TEDTalks.
07 May 2010
Thomas Dolby: Spot the Billie Holiday lyrics
Via The Official Thomas Dolby Blog: Thomas Dolby has posted the lyrics to his brand-new song “Love Is a Loaded Pistol,” which premiered today on TED.com. He throws out a challenge: “See how many of Billie’s song titles you can spot.”
He writes that an MP3 of studio version of “Pistol” is available to download — sign up for Thomas Dolby’s mailing list to get the link.
Dolby also talked to Billboard.com about the single and the upcoming album, “A Map of the Floating City” — with appearances by Mark Knopfler, Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Natalie MacMaster, Eddi Reader and Camera Club’s Bruce Woolley. From the story:
“A Map of the Floating City” is comprised of three suites. “Amerikana” focuses on a fondness for American roots music Dolby developed while living in the United States for 22 years. “Oceanea” was inspired by “returning to my spiritual home” in the eastern coastline of England, while “Urbanoia” is “kind of a dark place, a dark city-state, so there definitely are some slightly more twisted songs on there.”
07 May 2010
"Love Is a Loaded Pistol": Thomas Dolby's new song, on TED.com
For his first studio album release in decades, musical innovator Thomas Dolby has been composing music in the uniquely inspirational setting of a restored life-boat. Here he premieres a gorgeous, evocative song from that album — about one night with a legend. He’s backed by members of the modern string quartet Ethel. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 4:57)
Watch Thomas Dolby on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.
06 May 2010
India's hidden hotbeds of invention: Anil Gupta on TED.com
Anil Gupta is on the hunt for the developing world’s unsung inventors — indigenous entrepreneurs whose ingenuity, hidden by poverty, could change many people’s lives. He shows how the Honey Bee Network helps them build the connections they need — and gain the recognition they deserve. (Recorded at TEDIndia, November 2009 in Mysore, India. Duration: 6:08)
Watch Anil Gupta’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 600+ TEDTalks.
05 May 2010
Why do we pay for overfishing? Mission Blue calls for end to subsidies
In advance of this summer’s G-20 summit in Toronto this June, today Mission Blue called on the G-20 nations to halt the growth of worldwide fishing subsidies.
In a letter delivered to Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada, 67 participants in Mission Blue share their grave concern about the state of the world’s fisheries, and point to government subsidies as a leading cause of overfishing by pushing fleets to fish longer, deeper and farther away.
Mission Blue participants Dr. Sylvia Earle, Chris Anderson, Andrew Sharpless, Leonardo DiCaprio, Glenn Close, Edward Norton, Chevy Chase, Mike deGruy, Bill Joy, Edith Widder, Jacqueline Novogratz, Fisher Stevens, Celine Cousteau, Jake Eberts and Daniel Pauly all signed the letter, which grew out of an onboard effort led by Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless. “Governments are paying companies to overfish our oceans,” says Sharpless, the head of Mission Blue’s working group on fishing subsidies. “It’s taxpayer-financed ocean depletion, and it’s crazy. Cutting government subsidies that produce overcapacity in the world’s fishing fleets is the silver bullet to restoring our world’s fisheries.”
Read the full press release here >>
05 May 2010
How we wrecked the ocean: Jeremy Jackson on TED.com
In this powerful talk, coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson lays out the shocking state of the ocean today: overfished, overheated, polluted, with indicators that things will get much worse. Astonishing photos and stats make the case. (Recorded on the Mission Blue Voyage, April 2010 on the National Geographic Endeavor, the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. Duration: 18:19)
Watch Jeremy Jackson’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 600+ TEDTalks.
Find stories on the TED Blog about:
Become a Fan of TED
on Facebook
Follow TED on Twitter:
@TEDNews | @TEDTalks
Subscribe to TED RSS feeds:
TED Blog | More RSS Options
