TEDBlog June, 2011 Archive
13 June 2011
Medicine’s future? There’s an app for that. Daniel Kraft on TED.com
At TEDxMaastricht, Daniel Kraft offers a fast-paced look at the next few years of innovations in medicine, powered by new tools, tests and apps that bring diagnostic information right to the patient’s bedside. (Recorded at TEDxMaastricht, April 2011, in Maastricht, Holland. Duration: 18:22)
Watch Daniel Kraft’s 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.
12 June 2011
Have you watched all the TEDTalks?
Inspired by a comment from Benedikt Heinen, the TED Blog would like to know: How many people out there have set a goal to watch all the TEDTalks?
In two weeks, we’re going to be celebrating 5 years of posting TEDTalks online. And if you’ve watched every TEDTalk — we want to celebrate that too. Hit the comments (or email contact@ted.com, or write a blog post and share the link) and let us know:
How did you find TEDTalks?
At what point did you set the goal: “I want to watch every TEDTalk”?
How are you keeping track?
What’s a talk you think you would not have watched without this goal?
What’s your favorite TEDTalk?
What’s something you learned from this experience?
People who’ve set this goal often find the TEDTalks spreadsheet helpful for keeping track.
12 June 2011
TED Fellows as Makers
“The risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things…” – in his inaugural address, President Obama emphasized the importance of “making” to society at large, something TED Fellows recognize and demonstrate in their everyday work across the globe. Here are just a few of the visionary makers among them.
SaUsR underwater tank cleaning robot. (Courtesy of Gridbots.)
PulkitGaur, TEDIndia Fellow, roboticist, and founder of Gridbots, says: “ALIAS [an autonomous robot with AI and vision] is a modular research robot I started making inspired by Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. I started working on this robot in my third year of engineering. I used indigenous designs and locally available materials.”
CanTV in Mali.
Moussa Keita, TEDGlobal 2007 Fellow, Geekcorps alumnus and founder of Zirasun, built and deployed CanTV which allows local radio stations to stream video content to the local community over WiFi. “One goal of the CanTV project is to make it possible to build CanTV receivers or TV ‘cantennas’ using locally available parts, with the exception of the $25 audio/video receiver, which we currently import from Canada. Also, the TV cantennas have been designed so that local technicians can quickly learn how to install them without special tools. The radio station already has access to television broadcasts via satellite, and a TV over wi-fi transmitter installed in August 2005.” Take a peek at the assembly of a CanTV here.
Fasmicro's data logger.
Ndubuisi Ekekwe, TED2010 Fellow and founder of Fasmicro, a microelectronics and embedded solutions provider, on why Africa needs an integrated circuits industry: “In a highly interconnected world, the number of technical knowledge workers in Africa will not grow without microelectronics programs that emphasize creating and disseminating knowledge. Without microelectronics, there is little homegrown information technology. Microelectronics makes communications products possible, from cell phones to computers.”
Uno III unicycle. (Courtesy of BPG Motors.)
Benjamin Gulak, TED2010 Fellow and motorized-unicycle inventor, describes his sporty but environmentally friendly creation, the UNO: “It’s similar to the Segway in that it has a couple of gyros and neat electrical sensors. Its top speed is 15 mph, but right now it’s in the prototype stage. It’s all a matter of time and scale. It’ll go faster.”
A modular watch. (Courtesy of Humblefacture.)
Dominic Muren, a TEDGlobal 2010 Fellow and founder of Humblefacture (an organization exploring how to make small-scale, local, low infrastructure manufacturing that can still make complicated objects), asserts that modern manufacturing is broken, but that a new breed of makers, like early mammals, “are creating their own patterns and order within the ecosystem. They are redefining what it means to be a manufacturer, and what it means to be a user. And they are multiplying. These new makers are far from forming a unified bloc, and conflicts over turf, operational style, and mission are rampant. They run the gamut from dorm-room shops to 30-person operations in major cities. But they all have three things in common: They are small. They are flexible. And they know their users better than anybody.” Above is an image of Dominic’s watch, an example of modular design which allows for consistency across product lines without inventing an entirely new platform each line of products.
- A power cube. (Courtesy of OpenSourceEcology.)
Marcin Jakubowski, TED 2011 Fellow, founded Open Source Ecology, is developing and testing the Global Village Construction Set, a set of tools to build replicable, open source, modern, off-grid resilient communities. “It is about ‘hacking society’ via permaculture principles,” he says. “We are proposing high-tech neosubsistence – the capacity to live from local resources by using advanced, appropriate technology, without requiring any compromise to quality of life.” Want to know more? Visit FactorEFarm, and watch his TED Talk here.
- A biogas generator. (Courtesy of the Bioapplications blog.)
OlatunbosunObayomi, TEDGlobal 2010 Fellow, an autodidact, is interested in using animal and organic waste as a feedstock for biogas systems. He is now setting his sights on closed-loop aquaculture systems for indigenous fish populations in West Africa.
Makers are just one group of innovators found among the TEDFellows. With 249 Fellows and counting around the globe, the Fellows program looks for innovators in all fields – music, science, art, academia, medicine, the NGO sector, and more. Applications for the next class of Fellows open Monday June 13, 2011. Visit www.ted.com/fellows/apply to apply online.
11 June 2011
“Be authentic”: Q&A with JD Schramm
JD Schramm came by the TED offices this week to discuss posting his important — but very personal — TEDTalk. The TED Blog sat down with him to talk about healing. Because it all starts with talking …
If a friend of yours has survived a suicide attempt, it can be hard to know how to talk afterward. What are some things you can say to start the conversation?
My biggest piece of advice is to be authentic, to keep it real. If you are trying to interact with someone who is coming back from an attempt, the artificial or the trite, which may be comfortable for you, probably isn’t going to serve that person that’s struggling. Express love.
And it’s totally fine to acknowledge your own discomfort or uncertainty, rather than acting like it’s not there. Let it come into the room with you. Especially for people who are confused, hurt and angry, I think just owning those feelings. You’re then giving the person, the survivor, the space to also just express what’s there.
I don’t know about other people’s stories, but in my situation, until the attempt happened, there was a lot of posing, acting as if things were OK, and the attempt was so dramatic and so visible that all posing was stripped away. It was just the chance to be real.
It’s from that level of authenticity that I was able to start rebuilding. Coupled with getting help from people who know this. Get help from a counselor, pastor, therapist. [You can start with this list of resources.] I had a dream team; I had five people around me for the first year that tended to different needs in my life. I clearly had a physician, and I had a therapist, a spiritual director and more … These were not family members, these were people who were in my life for the role of helping me rebuild a portion of what was there. My family was amazing, but my family’s my family.
Because this is such an under-served field, I’m curious: How did you assemble the dream team?
I had to struggle a little bit to get it together. My sister did research for me, and helped guide [some] decisions early on. At that point, it wasn’t a choice I could figure out or I could make. Then before I left the hospital, they were very clear: I kind of had to put the team together. But it’s difficult to find resources.
I had one friend who also was a suicide survivor, and he said, “There’s one book … I think it’s out of print, but I found it useful. The author’s last name is Heckler, I think it’s called Waking Up Alive.” I couldn’t find the book itself, but I found a cassette tape of it. It was the only thing that I could find. This was in 2003, and since that time there’s more, and that’s good. Not a lot, but more than there was in 2003. But the people I worked with — they were knowledgeable, but this wasn’t an area of specialty for them. We were figuring it out as we went along.
Are there support groups for friends and family?
Well, the Suicide Walk has brought a great deal of awareness, but with almost all of these organizations and movements, their primary focus are on the people left behind. When you say “suicide survivor,” most people think of people who have lost a son, a brother, a loved one. The unique aspect of being an attempt survivor is less vocal. There’s a real taboo around it. This talk represents one more time stepping past my own discomfort with the taboo, with wondering what people will think about me. But it’s only going to get better if we take those steps.
What led you to tell your story?
Last year at TEDActive, listening to the personal stories at TEDYou, I wondered if I could do this. I wrote in my journal, “When will I tell my story?” Even when I walked onstage, I wasn’t sure if I would reveal or not. There’s a paragraph in my talk that I could have just skipped. But it felt right to let the audience know that I was John, that this was my story.
11 June 2011
Resources for suicide prevention, post-attempt survivors and their families
For those moved by JD Schramm’s powerful TEDTalk, this list of resources is a place to start. We’d love to know more — add suggestions to the comments or email us.
In the US:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-TALK
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
A free, 24-hour hotline available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Your call will be routed to the nearest crisis center to you.
The Trevor Project
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/localresources
866 4-U-TREVOR
The Trevor Project is determined to end suicide among LGBTQ youth by providing life-saving and life-affirming resources including a nationwide, 24/7 crisis intervention lifeline, digital community and advocacy/educational programs that create a safe, supportive and positive environment for everyone.
Samaritans USA
http://www.samaritansusa.org/
Samaritans centers provide volunteer-staffed hotlines and professional and volunteer-run public education programs, “suicide survivor” support groups and many other crisis response, outreach and advocacy activities.
ULifeline
http://ulifeline.org/page/main/StudentLogin.html
An anonymous online resource where you can learn about suicide prevention and campus-specific resources.
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention:
http://www.afsp.org/
A national nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide through research, education and advocacy, and to reaching out to people impacted by suicide.
YouSpoke
http://www.youspoke.org/
A nonprofit organization that cultivates a community for those deeply affected by suicide by offering them a creative outlet to share their story.
Mental Health First Aid USA
http://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/
A public education program that helps the public identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.
SAVE.org
A national nonprofit dedicated to preventing suicide through public awareness and education.
International:
International Association for Suicide Prevention
http://www.iasp.info/
IASP now includes professionals and volunteers from more than fifty different countries. IASP is a Non-Governmental Organization in official relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO) concerned with suicide prevention.
Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention
A resource for survivors as well as anyone in suicidal distress.
To find the nearest crisis center: http://www.casp-acps.ca/crisiscentres.asp
To find the nearest support group: http://www.casp-acps.ca/supportgroups.asp
Centro de Asistencia del Suicida Bs. As. (Argentina)
línea gratuita 135
http://www.casbuenosaires.org.ar/
Asociación Argentina de Prevención del Suicidio (AAPS)
www.suicidologia.org.ar
aaps@suicidologia.org.ar
(011) 4795-9519 o (011) 4982-3299
Centro de Atención al Familiar del Suicida (Argentina)
http://www.familiardesuicida.com.ar/
(011) 4758-2554
Centro de Valorização da Vida (Brazil)
http://www.cvv.org.br/
Tel: 141
Sociedade Portuguesa de Suicidologia (Portugal)
http://www.spsuicidologia.pt/
http://www.hulpmix.nl/ (Netherlands)
Befrienders Helplines (Italy)
http://www.befrienders.org/helplines/helplines.asp?c2=Italy
Suicide Ecoute (France)
http://www.suicide-ecoute.fr/
PHARE (France)
http://www.phare.org/
한국자살예방협회 (Korean Association for Suicide Prevention)
http://www.suicideprevention.or.kr/
한국자살협회 사이버 상담실 (Korean Suicide Prevention Cyber Counseling)
http://www.counselling.or.kr/
Hjälplinjen (Sweden)
http://www.hjalplinjen.se/
If you know of good resources available where you live, please add them to the comments section of this post.
11 June 2011
Help celebrate 5 years of TEDTalks
Two weeks from now, on Monday, June 27, 2011, we’ll celebrate 5 years of posting TEDTalks online. Throughout the week, we’ll be celebrating. We’re rolling out some new features, sharing messages from the TED family, and taking a look back at 5 years on the web.
And you’re invited to join in! Have TEDTalks made your life more interesting? We’d love to see your fun & creative ways of celebrating TEDtalks as individuals as well as communities around the world. Organize a video night … paint a picture … make a playlist … write a song … send us an email … write a blog post … we’re looking for all kinds of creative submissions to share on the blog the week of June 27.
Share your stories in the comments below, by email or on Twitter, and we’ll share the best efforts right here.
We’ll also be asking audience questions for the next two weeks, starting with:
Have you watched all the TEDTalks?
10 June 2011
Fellows Friday with Jessica Green
Interactive Fellows Friday Feature!
Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via Facebook. This week, Jessica asks:
Probiotics, like yogurt, are known to support healthy gut microbes. How could we apply this idea to support a healthy house, subway, or office?
Click here to respond!
There is a lot of talk about why biodiversity is important. Why is microbial biodiversity so critical?
The more we learn about microbes, the more it’s going to inform us about plants and animals and how to preserve their function and their diversity. So much of the insight that’s been brought upon ecology and evolution has been from studying things that we can see. One reason why it’s important to understand what we can’t see is because microbes comprise the vast majority of all life on Earth. Almost all the diversity in the Tree of Life is comprised of microbes.
I often wonder, “What would Charles Darwin think if he had spent his entire career looking at the genomes of microbes?” And in fact, he sampled microbes on the Beagle. But during that time, microbiologists could only differentiate between different microbes by using a microscope and looking at the traits of those microbes. Now we can yank the genes out of microbes in any environment and study their diversity by looking at their genes.
I think the study of microbes is slowly improving our understanding of how life works on Earth. For example, people are beginning to study biogeographic patterns — understanding variation from environment to environment — in and on the human body. From a microbial context, the region between your toes has been likened to a desert because it is less diverse than the crease of your arm, which is more like a tropical rainforest. We’re just beginning to understand how these various ecosystems of microbes in and on our body are affecting our immunity and our health.
As you study the ecosystems of buildings at your BioBE (Biology and the Built Environment) Center, what are you discovering?
Through the Center, we are finding a significant signature on the way that the design and operation of buildings impacts the diversity of microbes indoors. The results are surprising. And they’re important for two reasons. First, the types of microbes that are inside buildings are likely linked to the health and well-being of the people that are occupying those buildings. Second, the way that we design and operate buildings impacts the carbon footprint of that building.
For the first time in my career, the Center has given me a platform to explore issues that are relevant to human health and global climate change in tandem.
08 June 2011
Today, 5pm: Join a live Q&A with Damon Horowitz
Today at 5pm Eastern, join a live Q&A with Damon Horowitz about our “moral operating system.” He asks:
“I am curious to hear what prompts people to moral reflection and reconsideration: When have you realized that you were wrong about what you once thought was right?”
Jump in at 5pm, Wednesday, Eastern time: on.ted.com/HorowitzQA >>
08 June 2011
“Exploring the creative overlap”: Q&A with Janet Echelman
While Janet Echelman was at TED in March, she got word that she was being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. (And in fact, Echelman wasn’t the only new Guggenheim winner speaking at TED — her fellow Session 9 speaker Fiorenzo Omenetto also won the award). The award offers her a year of time off to think and explore. The TED Blog spoke to Janet last week to find out how that’s going so far…
Let’s talk about your life since your talk at TED. What’s changed?
The Guggenheim gives me the pleasure and privilege of a sabbatical year. I’ve known that academics get sabbatical years, but as an artist, I had to figure out what that would mean for me, how I can push boundaries and take this as a time for growth. I made progress right away at TED — I was inspired by several of the people I met here. I began exploring this with the co-presenters in our TED session, “Threads of Discovery,” curated by the visionary Juan Enriquez. In our session, there were two scientists I got to know from very different fields. Fio Omenetto, who’s a silk scientist, invited me to visit his lab to meet the mechanical engineer who builds his automated silk looms. We are exploring a creative overlap that wouldn’t happen otherwise between his work and mine. And then Ed Boyden from MIT, who is working with living brain cells that can be turned on and off with light! He invited me to come over and explore collaboration. We talked about ways we could make sculpture with living cells that move and change color.
Through Ed I met several of his colleagues at the Media Lab and MIT, one of whom is Neil Gershenfeld, who’s doing some new research with a modular building technique he calls “digital composites.” And he asked me, “How could this be useful to you in doing your urban sculpture at the scale of architecture?” So we have been going back and forth, laser-cutting different shapes, bringing them to my studio, where I’ve been playing around with their potential for volumetric sculpture shapes.
I like that a meeting of different minds at TED has become a creative fulcrum.
At TED I also met Vice-President Al Gore, and we had a conversation about how ideas about the environment could take form at an urban scale, be made physical in a sculpture that people could interact with. He mentioned the climate change impact of water vapor in the atmosphere — the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. He calls it the “bathtub effect”. As the atmosphere gets warmer, it can hold more water vapor, actually pulling moisture from the soil, and then releasing it in these larger downpours. That’s a conversation that couldn’t have started anywhere else, and next week, we’re going to meet again to explore this further.
At TED, even Jason Mraz asked about my work — he asked, Could that be a place where we shoot a music video, under one of these sculptures? We’re exchanging ideas and exploring new ways for my sculpture to interact with life, through ideas and through additional cultural streams. It’s just very exciting how all these possibilities have a life of their own.
Is this the first time you’re using laser cutting and other Fab Lab techniques in your work?
Yes! One thing I really liked about the Media Lab and Neil and his grad student Kenny Cheung — they agreed with me that the best way to explore was to make something. So we laser-cut a whole bunch of components and I’m playing with them right now in my studio. Whether it moves in the wind or becomes a new kind of armature out of which something else could billow, I don’t know.
It sounds like you’re pushing limits a little bit.
In my regular life, I am very involved in commissions for cities and sometimes countries. And I think of public art as a team sport. The outcome is only possible with the interaction of all the players. It is a completely engrossing job to develop and deliver a living sculpture that will last for many years. I often have new ideas or areas that I’d like to explore, but I’m so busy in the day-to-day work of this art practice that I rarely have time to explore all those questions.
So this year with the Guggenheim Fellowship, it’s a chance to set this time apart, a time for me to explore those questions and to grow and go more deeply into new ideas. I feel lucky to be able to explore ideas that I don’t yet know are going to work. You can’t stumble upon something new and wonderful if you don’t have time to stumble.
I’m interested in pursuing original research to focus on ways of making visual the natural forces and cycles that are going on around us all the time and that we are unable to see. One way I’m doing this is exploring the possibilities of different materials. Right now I’m exploring new ways to sculpt with water. I’m testing different ways of manipulating tiny water particles to create moving curtains of “dry-mist,” and to make it thick enough so it responds and makes you want to play, yet manipulate the particles so you don’t get wet.
I like working at an urban scale, and making art that people encounter as a part of their daily life. And when it all comes together, it can become a moment of shared experience, where you might start up a conversation with a total stranger about something you are both encountering.
It’s cool, that thread in your work that is data-driven and really geeky.
One thing that has become more clear to me, actually from listening to TEDTalks about the limbic brain … I’ve always known that my work speaks to a non-verbal or pre-verbal part of ourselves, and that its communicative ability is not in the conscious part of our minds. I’ve learned that this correlates to the limbic brain, which has no language and is the part that governs how we make decisions, feel loyalty, or “gut feelings.” This helps explain why it’s always been hard for me or others to describe my work in words. It’s an experiential kind of art — about how you feel as you move through it. You take it in with your body.
This also helped me understand my process in the past couple years, working on the piece in Denver, where I took this data of an earthquake and tsunami and was inspired to make it into a visual, physical sculptural form. In the shaping of that piece, I was focused on the experience of connecting with the limbic brain, and joining it to the neocortex. So people can hook into the work through these conscious ideas, the data of the tsunami, but then it grabs you in a way that isn’t about data. Its real power is the physical experience. And that was my first project where I brought these two parts of the brain together.
Here’s another thing that came out of TED — Carl Bass and Jeff Kowalski from Autodesk heard my talk, they invited me to collaborate with their amazing software team to explore the potential for the work I’m doing with netted surfaces that move in response to wind direction and velocity.
Advances in technology have opened up possibilities in the cultural realm throughout history. I’m intrigued by developments in technology– as an artist it gives me a new palette to explore. The geeky part of me loves this exploration of technology to make art. I also want to mention the contribution of my fabulous geeky husband, David Feldman, who originally trained as a computer scientist, and now runs a firm that helps technology startups focus and unleash their potential. Even though you’d think my artwork would be the furthest thing from a technology company, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from him that have helped my art to more fully embody my ideas. He’s helped me to express and organize my ideas in context — to make sure I’m asking the right questions — which turns out to be as helpful to an artist as it is for a company.
It takes really creative collaborators from so many different fields to create this kind of urban sculpture, and it’s a real joy for me, getting to work with so many brilliant people with different kinds of minds.
Photo at top: James Duncan Davidson. All other photos: Greg Hayes / Echelman Studio
08 June 2011
Announcing the results of TED’s Full Spectrum auditions
We’re thrilled to announce the results of our Full Spectrum auditions — TED’s first-ever audition for the main stage of TED2012.
Seventeen finalists gave short TEDTalks in the onstage auditions at New York’s Hiro Ballroom on May 24 (you can watch the archived video stream). An audience of 200 friends voted, using a ranking system of 1 to 5. And the results are:
Audience favorite: Reggie Watts! This boundary-breaking comedian will be speaking at TED2012. His reaction: “Wowie!!”
Three more audience favorites will have their talks posted to TED.com in coming weeks:
BeatJazz inventor and controllerist Onyx Ashanti
Bipolar comedian Joshua Walters
iPad storyteller Joe Sabia
And for a few more audience favorites … we’re exploring projects with them that we’ll announce in the coming months. Watch this space for news.
See photos of the show and portraits of the speakers on Flickr >>
Photo: James Duncan Davidson
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