TEDBlog June, 2011 Archive
30 June 2011
TED Fellows: The Whole World’s Brilliants
In his classic Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote one of his most famous lines: “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
TED is anchored by the belief that brilliance is a public good — that inspiration, intellectualism, passion and the wonder of discovery are gifts that everyone should share and participate in. Just as important, however, is its affirmation that smart is not the domain of one or two or even three disciplines, but comes in all shapes and sizes and often from unexpected places. The enlightened mind does not, to paraphrase Twain, vegetate in one little field or industry of the earth all its lifetime.
We live in a moment when the awesome power of technology and the pressure of global competitiveness have focused our attention on the importance of hard disciplines. Our politicians push for emphasis on math and science in classrooms. If these improvements are essential, however, the conversation around them risks drowning out the all-important message that the world is beautiful because of the diversity of passion in it — that alongside engineers we need oboe players, and that for all of our artificial intelligence, we need choreographers who remind us how majestic human creation is all by itself.
From its origins as the conference for “technology, entertainment and design,” TED has grown into a bastion for multidisciplinary spectacle. The stage is not just full of mind-blowing science (although that’s there), but musical performances, meditations on society and monumental efforts toward social change. But no matter how good the show is, there is no place that demonstrates the spectrum of brilliance from which TED draws better than its Fellows program.
The TED Fellows program started as an experiment at TEDAfrica in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2007, and was so successful that by 2009 it had become a formal part of the TED Long Beach and TEDGlobal events. In the years since, the Fellows have come from many disciplines and many walks of life. There are musicians, artists, engineers, social entrepreneurs, internetInternet gurus, political activists and more. They’re all accomplished, but still at the beginning of their full potential. Almost all of them try to use what they’re good at to make the world a better place.
In this they’re not only emblematic of the spirit of TED but actively propelling it forward. As the organization focuses more and more on moving the ideas that it has so long celebrated into action, the TED Fellows have become a rallying point for an entire community.
Applications to be a fellow at the 2012 TED main event in Long Beach are open now. Accolades and conferences aside, the most powerful part of the experience for Fellows is that they discover a community of peers that is, by definition, of extraordinary diversity and capacity. If you’re a person who draws inspiration not from vegetating in little corners but by uncovering all the insight you can find, apply now.
Nathaniel Whittemore is an entrepreneur in San Francisco building tools for better connections, as well as a writer who has written for publications including Inc., Fast Company and Change.org. He’s a passionate TEDster who collaborated with the TED staff to put on TEDxVolcano in London in 2010, the world’s first flash conference.
30 June 2011
The Email Charter: an idea worth spreading
Can anything be done to ease the stress of our ever-growing email in-boxes? TED’s Curator Chris Anderson has been thinking about the problem and today is launching an Email Charter to try to reverse the upward spiral.
The Charter has 10 rules that tackle the core reason behind email’s relentless growth — that email takes more time to process than to create. Email stress is clearly widespread. An earlier draft of the Charter attracted 50,000 views and hundreds of comments and tweets, which have helped shape the final version.
Chris sees the Charter as an idea worth spreading. “This is a problem that can’t be solved by individuals acting alone,” he said. “Email stress comes from all the unanswered emails in your inbox, and the fear that you may be causing offense or frustration to your friends and colleagues. If we can mutually agree some different ground rules, that stress can go away.”
The Charter calls on email senders to focus on respecting the time of their recipients and make emails as easy as possible to process. It also suggests we cut each other some slack, and just mutually agree it’s OK for responses to be ultra-short or delayed.
Check out the Charter here, and then join the TED conversation that Chris started here.
28 June 2011
“Try to speak of discomfort more”: Highlights from our live-chat with Alice Dreger
Alice Dreger gave a powerful talk at TEDxNorthwestern on how our changing perception of anatomical differences is also changing our democracy. She was in New York today, so we invited her to the TED office for a live Q&A, where she posed this question:
The recent passage of gay marriage rights in New York demonstrates what I talked about in my TED lecture — the steady historical movement away from dividing people based on anatomical differences. What do you think our democracy is going to look like in the future, given the ways that we’re increasingly able to see anatomical complexity (variations on categories we thought were simple) and able to change our bodies?
Here are some of the highlights:
***
David Webber: My question is one of about tolerance. Is tolerance the proper response to difference. To me tolerance implies intolerance, it implies that you must modify your behavior when in the presence of difference and I think that can produce the type of anxiety that Ben is talking about. Is there another position that we can take? Does true tolerance actually look like indifference?
Alice Dreger: I think the problem is that tolerance that leads to anxiety is just faked tolerance. Maybe it’s better than open intolerance? I wonder though if it would make more sense to try to speak of discomfort more. The two sisters I talked to a few years back who are conjoined said to me they much prefer if people admit their discomfort than if they just stand their dumb-mouthed or spewing intolerance or faked tolerance. Kids tend to be better at this than adults, until we ruin them.
***
Alice Dreger: So let me ask a new question: Sometimes people dream to me of worlds where there are no more genders. That doesn’t seem to me like paradise, but I’m curious about whether people feel gender is just oppressive? I am sometimes discouraged by how little pleasure we seem to credit to gender.
Max Peterson: I guess it depends on how one defines oppressive. I find mortality and aging terribly oppressive, but a world without either would not necessarily be better and would in its way be more oppressive to some (depending on the hypothetical scenario which brought it about). I don’t like all the expectations put upon me as a male in our society. But I am fond of other aspects and I like my body and I like a world full of differences, confusing though it may be sometimes. I look forward not to the elimination of gender, but to the expansion of same (with plenty of neutral spots for those so inclined).
***
Kathy K: … one of my favorite role models as a child was a young woman with 1/2 a wooden leg. [No, her name was not 'Peg' ::g::] I was raised to be ‘well-mannered’ and not to bring attention to that which is obvious, so I never spoke with her about how she came to have 1/2 a wooden leg. But then, what she lacked in physical ‘perfection’, she more than made up for with spiritual perfection. She had such a beautiful heart, the body didn’t matter. Perhaps this is the goal.
Alice Dreger: Right. And it’s interesting how we teach children shame about these things by teaching them not to ask. By contrast (and without my asking!) my son’s preschool did a big unit on disability, a very positive unit. They talked about disability as difference, and so one thing they did was to bring in wheelchairs, walkers, and various assistive devices for the kids to check out. Well, you can imagine how fascinated the children became with these new “toys.” Soon my son was bragging that his grandfather uses a walker, another kid was bragging that his uncle has a great wheelchair, and they were all talking about the people in their lives who use assistive devices. It was really a different look at things. My favorite book from that was a children’s book called “Mama Zooms!” about a very playful mother who uses a wheelchair to play imaginary games with her son, like “train.”
***
Marcin Kasiak: I think that we have learned very well to work around the difficulties that we face and turn the blind eye on things that we can’t change or agree with. That’s why I think that our ability to change how our bodies look and function won’t have a major impact on our democracies. at least in the social and psychological aspect. but because of the prices of new methods of treatments it will definitively have major economical impact.
Alice Dreger: But access to those body-changing technologies is very unequal. Don’t you worry about that — about creating classes where the rich get (bodily) richer and the poor get (bodily) poorer (which translates to economics, since bodies are tied to social status)?
28 June 2011
Now: Join Alice Dreger in a live Q&A on TED Conversations
On anatomy, destiny, marriage … 1-3pm Eastern.
She asks:
The recent passage of gay marriage rights in New York demonstrate what I talked about in my TED lecture — the steady historical movement away from dividing people based on anatomical differences. What do you think our democracy is going to look like in the future, given the ways that we’re increasingly able to see anatomical complexity (variations on categories we thought were simple) and able to change our bodies?
Jump in! http://on.ted.com/DregerQA
28 June 2011
New on TED Books: Alisa Miller’s “Media Makeover”
Charlie Sheen. Weinergate. Obama’s birth certificate. If you think the stories major media outlets obsess about hit tawdry new lows each week, you’re not alone. But you don’t have to follow the industry into the abyss of banality. You can do something about it, starting with your daily media consumption choices. In her provocative new TED Book, Media Makeover: Improving The News One Click at a Time, Alisa Miller offers an entertaining and informative view of how “news” is made, what is missing from our news diets, why certain types of content are harder to come by, the implications for our society — and what can be done about it. Miller, CEO of Public Radio International, urges us to take control of the news we consume if we want a more accurate picture of the world. Media Makeover, which builds on Miller’s 2008 TEDTalk, is a must-read for anyone who wants to be better informed. We talked to her just as the book was being released.
Why does the news industry get such a bad rap? Is it justified? And is it simply the demands of a 24/7 news cycle?
In general, the news industry deserves criticism. It is not, however, that there isn’t excellent journalistic work happening each day; it can just be difficult to find. The news, in aggregate, is not providing an accurate picture of our world and is focused way too much on sensationalism –- the news equivalent of junk food. Part of this phenomenon is driven by a faster and faster news cycle, and that it is cheaper and more profitable to keep pumping sensational stories than to create other original news content. The net effect of the news agenda is that the public is trusting the news less and less. The good news is that research shows the public actually wants a more balanced diet of news. We dive deeper into all these issues in the book.
How does the news media reflect our perception of reality?
As the old adage says, the media is not great at telling us what to think, but it is stunningly good at telling you what to think about. Our perception of reality in our communities, our countries and our world is greatly influenced by the media. This is why taking control of our news diets is so important, so that we can more accurately see the world.
There is an old news-gathering idiom that ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ Is that principle now crippling the industry?
‘If it bleeds, it leads’ is still very prevalent. And to be clear, some of these events are newsworthy. Violence and conflict is, after all, part of our world. The issue is that there is so much more to tell. News templates like ‘if it bleeds, it leads,’ and others like it, do not embrace a sense of discovery. And they foster a place where good news, surprise, authenticity and connection don’t seem part of what is newsworthy or how news could be told. These stories are also part of our world. There is great opportunity to satisfy and build on these needs.
The news media has an important agenda-setting role. How has that changed in recent years?
The news media’s agenda-setting role is just as powerful as it ever was. Although, now we are consuming news across all kinds of platforms 24/7, sources are more fragmented, and Americans are increasingly attracted to sources that espouse their own point of view. We also have the power of social media that can spread news: good, bad, accurate and not accurate, in seconds, to many more people. Our friends and family are becoming an even more important part of what and whose news agenda we are seeing … and believing.
You argue that we tune into news sources that support, rather than challenge, our beliefs. That’s comforting and natural for many people. Why should we change those habits?
It is only natural for us to be attracted to stories that we agree with. It makes us feel smart and safe. But if we only listen to one perspective, whatever that may be, we are likely living in news bubble that will not equip us to expand our understanding of the world and also could negatively impact the quality of the decisions we make for ourselves, our families and our communities.
What are the essential things a news consumer can do to widen and enhance their view of the world?
Be mindful of the sources you choose. Don’t assume that any one source, or even your current collection of sources, is giving you all you need. Given the growing list of tools and services available to us these days, you can curate and take other actions to improve our news. Make sure that you don’t personalize your news so much that you cut yourself off from the unexpected. More tips are in the book and at mediamakeover.org, where we will be collecting best practices, tools, and great ideas to help us navigate the world through news and great storytelling.
Media Makeover is part of the TED Books series, which is available for the Kindle and all platforms that use Kindle Reader apps. Buy it on Amazon.com >>
27 June 2011
Meet the new Talks page
As part of our 5th anniversary, we’ve rolled out some improvements to the Talk page on TED.com — the place where many people first encounter a TEDTalk.
Most noticeable: in the right-hand column, you’ll see we’ve rearranged how we show you the talk description and the short speaker bio. Click on one of the little arrows to open each section. To close it, just open another section (it never fully “collapses”).
The big excitement for us is, this design lets us showcase a feature we’ve offered for years but that never got enough love: our amazing Interactive Transcript. Go on, click it open, and you’ll see a full text of the talk in English. Click anywhere within that text, and the video jumps to that very spot. It’s magic. Use the pulldown menu to see what other languages the Talk has been translated into (more translations appear over time), and you’ll see the same clickable magic in multiple languages.
We’re hoping this design helps you navigate and enjoy TEDTalks even more. And we’re eager for your feedback — here in the comments or on Twitter.
27 June 2011
TEDTalks at 5: Speakers tell their stories
TED.com video exists to celebrate great speakers, thinkers, doers — people with ideas that are passionately held and clearly put. For our speakers, putting their videos online has, in many cases, amplified their work beyond imagination, provoking new connections and directions to their careers and even their lives.
As we approached the fifth anniversary of TEDtalks online, we asked our speakers: “How did your TEDTalk impact you?”
Read a few of their answers below. And if you’re curious, download a text doc with all the speakers’ replies, an amazing document.
Several speakers told us that having their TEDTalk online caused a major shift in their work and goals. Like Hans Rosling:
It is not a feeling, it is a fact, that my TED talks are more important than the rest of my professional life.
My TED talks have been seen by about 7 millions. That is on average 12 min x 7,000,000 persons = 80 million person-minutes = about 1 million person-hours.
Compare that to an average of 20 one-hour lectures per week for 40 weeks per year to a class of on average 50 students and you get 20 x 40 x 50 = 40,000 person-hours of attention per year. I did that for 30 years, so it is a total of 1.2 million person-hours of attention in lecture.
Add 100 scientific papers, each read by 100 persons during one hour, that is 10,000 person-hours of attention.
Add a textbook written with three others that requires 20 hours to read and it has been read by 5,000 giving a total of 100,000 person-hours of attention.
Add 40 year of team work with 5 persons during 40 hours per week during 40 weeks a year. A total of about 60 000 person-hours of attention.
Pre-TED professional life reaches 1.37 million.
TED-life gave five-fold more attention
Hope there will never be a post-TED life.
TED Prize winner Neil Turok writes:
The talk I gave at TED2008 was simply transformative. I spoke about the importance of mathematical skills in modern society and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). I expressed the wish that the next Einstein be African.
27 June 2011
Do you have a TEDTalks tattoo?
In talking to our readers and speakers, a fascinating fact emerged: At least two people, two different people, have tattoos inspired by a TEDTalk. The same TEDTalk: Rives’ “Mockingbird” remix of TED2006.
There must be more. So, a pledge: For every TED-inspired tattoo we hear about, I have promised to donate $1 to the Kickstarter campaign of Rives’ choice. He’s already made $2.
So let us know: Do you have a tattoo inspired by a TEDTalk? Hit the comments below, or tweet to @TEDNews with pic and the name of the inspiration.
Read more about Rives’ fan ink below … (more…)
27 June 2011
TEDTalks: 5 years and 500 million served
On June 27, 2006, we flipped the switch on TEDTalks, bringing talks from TED to the world for the first time. It was early days for online video — YouTube was just a year old; the video iPod had been around for six months — so we launched with six talks and modest goals, and have been amazed by what’s happened since. Five years and nearly 1,000 videos later, TEDTalks have been watched 500 million times, and translated into 81 languages by volunteers worldwide.
In fact, we’ve seen a number of key milestones in the last month: We welcomed our millionth fan on Facebook and our millionth iPad app download, and marked the 2000th TEDx event.
We’re filled with gratitude for the global community that has made all of this possible: the TEDx organizers, the translators, the corporate partners who support our work, the speakers who offered the world their words, and the wider TED community, who amplify the talks, and continually energize us with their own ideas.
To honor this global community, today we’re launching our first talk on TED.com delivered in a language other than English. (It has English subtitles by default.) It’s a powerful talk from a TEDx in San Miguel de Allende, in which Emiliano Salinas confronts the culture of violence and fear in Mexico — and calls on ordinary citizens to stand up, one by one, against terror and corruption. Thanks to the growing global reach of TEDx, and our army of translators, we can expect to see great talks in many different languages in the future.
As we approach the next five years, we’re thrilled by the prospect of sharing the best speakers in any language.
And we’d love to hear from you! Jump in to our Twitter feed or Facebook fan page and answer the question: Why do YOU watch TEDTalks?
Photo: TED / James Duncan Davidson
27 June 2011
A civil response to violence: Emiliano Salinas on TED.com
In this passionate talk from TEDxSanMigueldeAllende that’s already caused a sensation in Mexico, Emiliano Salinas, son of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, confronts the current climate of violence in Mexico — or rather, how Mexican society responds to it. He calls on ordinary citizens to move from denial and fear to peaceful, community-based action. This is the first talk posted on TED.com that was delivered in a language other than English. (It has English subtitles by default. Translated by Carolina Montero and Sebastian Betti.) (Recorded at TEDxSanMigueldeAllende, November 2010 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Duration: 12:17)
Watch Emiliano Salinos’ talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.
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