TEDBlog July, 2011 Archive
13 July 2011
Watching Ushahidi’s Mumbai response unfold, with co-founder Erik Hersman
Erik Hersman, onstage Thursday at TEDGlobal. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
On Wednesday, July 13, a bombing in Mumbai took at least 10 lives. At TEDGlobal, the TED Blog talked with Erik Hersman, one of the cofounders of Ushahidi, an online crisis mapping and response tool — as a new Ushahidi deploys today to react to the bombings. As Hersman says: “This is a very rare moment to see all this stuff happening in real time.”
Hersman walked us through how an Ushahidi is born. The main Ushahidi for the Mumbai bombings was set up by Ajay Kumar (follow him @ajuonline). “He’s a veteran Ushahidi deployer in India,” Hersman said. “There was another early crowdmap, done by Anand Giridharadas (follow him at @AnandWrites), who’s a columnist for the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, but he collapsed his and sent everyone to Ajay’s. It’s so easy to set up an Ushahidi now that anybody can do it, so you have to coordinate which one’s going to be the main one.”
So how does it begin?
First, a Skype chat is set up for volunteers, added person by person, and that’s going right now — they’re doing everything from there. They do a couple different things to start. One is to run a live online updates list. They’re tracking media hits, setting up Twitter hashtags, things to follow. Some of this is people-curated and some of it’s automated.
And then the volunteers decide what to do with this information. There’s a Google spreadsheet — right now, there’s so much traffic they’ve made it a simple spreadsheet — and it lists everything: Who to call for help, blood bank needs, a bunch of different types of information … what everyone’s Twitter handles are …
Tell me about your role as a co-founder of Ushahidi?
It’s all about the volunteers. What we do is backstop in the beginning, but then these guys are the ones that do the work. Maybe we coordinate a little for the community stuff, because we’ve done it before, but we just get them working with each other and then back off.
There are volunteers coming together from all over the world now. Hundreds — and it looks like they have the crisis mappers network on it now. The Standby Crisis Mappers Task Force is a volunteer group of over 500 people from all over the world — that’s why there’s so many people.
13 July 2011
Coffee Common’s Edinburgh experience
Coffee Common, the organization of small coffee roasters who are making great coffee at TEDGlobal, made this lovely video of the coffee-making and -serving in Edinburgh. Dive in …
13 July 2011
Let’s take back the internet! Rebecca MacKinnon on TED.com
The first TEDTalk posted from TEDGlobal 2011, happening now in Edinburgh:
In this powerful talk, Rebecca MacKinnon describes the expanding struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace, and asks: How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control? She believes the internet is headed for a “Magna Carta” moment when citizens around the world demand that their governments protect free speech and their right to connection. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 14:52)
Watch Rebecca MacKinnon’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.
13 July 2011
“Future Billions”: Notes and images from Session 4 of TEDGlobal 2011
Niall Ferguson: Most of the $195,000 billion of wealth in the world was made after around 1800 and most is owned by Westerners. Why did wealth accrue to the West? Ferguson says: It’s not geography, it’s not national character. It’s ideas and institutions. Call them the “killer apps” of civilization. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Yasheng Huang, political economist, asks, re China and India: Has democracy helped or hindered economic growth? And how did China cmoe out of the Cultural Revolution such a powerhouse? Photo: James Duncan Davidson /TED
Tim Harford, “undercover economist,” says: “The way to solve complex problems is trial and error. Isn’t that a bit obvious?” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Robin Ince, comedian: “Understanding things does not remove the wonder and the joy of them.” He also notes, “Like many rationalists, I’m a Pisces.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
TED Prize winner JR is pasting faces in Edinburgh for the Inside Out Project. Learn more >> Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
John Danner: “If democracy and capitalism are the way of the world, we need to think about B4B: business for the billions.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Josette Sheeran says: There’s enough food on earth for everyone to have 2700 kC/day. But we lose a child to hunger every 10 seconds. Food is one issue that cannot be solved person by person. We have to stand together. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
13 July 2011
Inside Out Edinburgh: Playing with CCTVs
Photo: Circe f. Ervina
Announced onstage today at TED: JR, the street artist and the TED2011 TED Prize winner, has been working this week in Edinburgh on an Inside Out Project action in the home of TEDGlobal. Writer Celyn Bricker tells the story:
That the UK uses the most CCTV surveillance in Europe is widely known, though perhaps less well known is that Edinburgh is the UK’s most closely surveilled city. When we were provided with the opportunity to work with ‘Inside-Out’ we decided to highlight this little known feature of the city. We did this simply by photographing people on both sides of the CCTV camera -– those that are surveilled and those that work as surveillants. The former, of course, includes pretty much everyone, though we initially narrowed our range of subjects by photographing the group that are the most closely surveilled, namely males aged 16-24.
The process of interviewing and photographing people on both sides of the CCTV had some surprising results. There were some, working closely with CCTV, that found the current situation in the UK regarding surveillance to be highly problematic; likewise, at times we encountered the reverse with the people we spoke to in the streets who had no problem at all with high levels of surveillance and were in support of it. Nevertheless we chose to visually separate the two groups that we photographed by taking the photographs from contrasting angles: the images of the surveilled subjects are taken from above, as though captured on a CCTV camera, and the images of the surveillants from below, as though looking into a CCTV screen. The process of photographing the former led us to climbing onto street utility boxes, buildings, perimeter walls, street statues and monuments in an attempt to capture that moment when the surveilled subject comes into contact with the camera.
By pasting the image of ‘surveilled’ subject and ‘surveillant’ in the same physical space we were able to simulate a kind of encounter that is made impossible by the CCTV system. The strange process of CCTV –- which is essentially people watching other people -– is somehow normalized by having a machine system separating watched and watcher. We wanted to make clear the artificiality of this separation, and at the same time make some equivalence between the two groups: the ‘surveillants’ are of course themselves subject to surveillence, and we mimicked that process by taking their photographs. By pasting in the historic centre of Edinburgh, we wanted to highlight the tension between the city’s at times antique appearance and this surprising feature of its modernity –- that it is the most closely surveilled space in Europe.
12 July 2011
“Coded Patterns”: Images and notes from Session 3 of TEDGlobal 2011
Host Bruno Giussani open Session 3 of TEDGlobal 2011: Coded Patterns. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Physicist Geoffrey West asks: Are there quantitative, predictive laws of life? Yes — there are laws for organisms because they are made of networks. Is the same true of cities and corporations? Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Architect Shohei Shigematsu: “Considering how long Japan has been in recession, this is the moment we need a grand vision. Contrasting to hypermodernization in Middle East, I’m hoping to instigate a re-thinking of how Japan will develop.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Danielle de Niese gives a stunning performance of Lehar’s “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß” (My lips they kiss so hot!). Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Kevin Slavin: “When we’re confronted with huge amounts of data we don’t understand, we give them a name and a story. For instance, there’s one piece of code, Pragmatic Chaos (the Netflix recommendation algorithm), that determines 60% of movies rented.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Tom Rielly intros the downloadable TEDGlobal Fellows guide PDF on his iPad. Download the guide … Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Allan Jones leads a project that is mapping which genes are important in the brain by studying RNA left over after death. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Balazs Havasi, pianist, and Zoltan Kiss, drummer, rock out during Session 3: Coded Patterns. Havasi says: “They say that every little boy has two kinds of dreams: to be an astronaut, and to be a rock star.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
12 July 2011
Ideas worth translating: TEDGlobal Translator Workshop
For the first time at TEDGlobal, a small group of TED Translators came together to present ideas and talk about the future of the Open Translation Project. Discussions centered around how to better collaborate, communicate and capture knowledge amongst the TED translator community, as well as playing subtitled TEDTalks in schools and engaging with the TED community at large. Addressing the workshop attendees, TED’s June Cohen said, “Translators are knit into the fabric of what TED is — and what it’s becoming. Not only have you taken the TED mission farther than we imagined, but we’ve learned from you.”
Armenian translator Kristine Sargsyan presented on bringing translated TEDTalks into schools. Spanish translator Lidia Cámara de la Fuente talked about universal Spanish — that is, reconciling the language variations across Spanish-speaking countries. Kaloyana Milinova shared her story of collaboration with the MaYoMo translation team and TEDx in Bulgaria. Katja Tongucer, a German translator, explored how to improve translation quality through knowledge sharing.
Polish translator Krystian Aparta talked about translating terminology, telling the story of how he tracked down the perfect translation for a term in Janna Levin’s talk. Els De Keyser, a Dutch, French and Italian translator, connected online to talk about regionalism — and how translators and reviewers can work together to bridge differences by finding a mutually acceptable word. Serbian translator Ivana Korom talked about community building among the Serbian translators, and proposed the idea of regional translator workshops. And Jenny Yang, a Chinese translator, talked about how she noticed 3 different tribes of translators — and how and why they translate for TED.
Norwegian translator Martin Hassel brainstorms with TED engineers at the TED Translator Workshop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photos: James Duncan Davidson / TED
12 July 2011
“Everyday Rebellions”: Images and notes from Session 2 of TEDGlobal 2011
Hasan Elahi was targeted for screening by the FBI after a case of mistaken identity. So he decided to open his life completely. “There’s 46,000 images on my site now. I trust the FBI has seen all of them.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Maajid Nawaz says: “For 13 years I was an extremist — a potent force of spreading ideas across borders. We were laughing at democratic activists. We felt they were from yesteryear.” And he asks: “Why is it extremist organizations are succeeding, while those aspiring to democratic culture are falling behind?” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Justin Hall-Tipping asks: “What if some of the answers to our biggest problems could be found in the smallest places? We can do better — with exquisite control over a building block of matter, the stuff of life: the electron.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Yves Rossy, Jetman, demos his human jet wing. “I get up to 300km/hr flying. It’s pure flying, no steering. I don’t have feathers, but I feel like a bird sometimes.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Asaf Avidan plays “Out in the Cold,” a retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba — and then the seriously soulful “Her Lies.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Filmmaker Julia Bacha says: “I spend my days filming dozens of Palestinians using nonviolence, but most of you have never heard of them.” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
12 July 2011
“Beginnings”: Images and quotes from Session 1 of TEDGlobal 2011
Chris Anderson, left (with Bruno Giussani, right): “It’s a beautiful truth that all knowledge is connected. And now: It’s time for TED!” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Biologist Lee Cronin at #TEDGlobal asks: What is life? What is the most basic unit of matter that can evolve? Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Annie Murphy Paul springs a pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. For instance, as they consume amniotic fluid, fetuses are introduced to characteristic flavors + spices of their culture from their mother’s food. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Rebecca MacKinnon says: We do not have good answers for balancing security and free speech on our digital networks. How do we make sure that the internet evolves in a citizen-centric manner? Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
The glorious Danielle de Niese is singing — Chris calls her “the voice that launched a thousand ideas!” Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Richard Wilkinson notes that the intuition that inequality is bad has been around since before the French Revolution. But the data shows this is actually true. For instance, data shows that people in unequal societies tend to trust each other less. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Phillip Blond says: “Our politics in the 20th century has been governed by left-right thinking. But left and right are the same phenomenon. The left has not saved us from poverty; the right has not delivered us into prosperity.” And what we have lost is the former driving force of our society: groups. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
12 July 2011
“Creativity is the life force of the universe”: Report from Session 2 of TED University
Nathalie Miebach, TEDGlobal Fellow, artist, speaking at TED University during TEDGlobal 2011, July 12, 2011. Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED
Jeremy Moon, “Anything Can Be Prototyped”: “Creativity is the life force of the universe,” says Jeremy Moon, the CEO and founder of Icebreaker Clothing, “and my passion is unlocking the creativity in business.” He talks about a new kind of prototyping: not just creating products, but giving creative processes form. How to get ideas out of your team’s heads so they can be shared? Here are his key tenets: prototype like you’re right, listen like you’re wrong; fast, cheap and dirty is good; and everyone in an organization can be an active participant. He calls this system “The Icebreaker Way.” Teams give each other feedback, “bitch lists” of problems recognize things that don’t work, making way for those that might — which can be rendered into visual visual models. This democratic process has the potential change the creative culture of an organization.
Nathalie Miebach, “Weaving Science”: Artist and TED Fellow Nathalie Miebach, who also spoke at the Fellows session on Monday, wanted to bust through the two-dimensionality of the way we look at space – via diagrams, photos, numerical charts, and so on – to more accurately represent how humans really experience it. What if the data of space could be rendered in 3D, at a scale we can examine? She weaves space and meteorological data — such as sunrise and moonrise information in McMurdo, Antarctica — into twisted, undulating basket sculptures using colorful reeds and beads, making some of the rhythms and dimensions of our experience of space visible and tactile.
Ian Ritchie, “The Day I Turned Down Tim Berners-Lee”: June Cohen introduces Ian by saying: “Sometimes the best way to share your success is to tell a story when you were dead wrong.” By 1990, Ritchie and his Apple software firm Iomega had developed something called hypertext markup language, when he met a nice young man called Tim Berners-Lee. Tim had a vision for connecting all the world’s computers, and he needed a markup language. And Ian said, “No, thank you.” He felt the vision was too grand, wouldn’t work, was pie-in-the-sky. Which, as he says, puts him in the same category as the 12 publishers who turned down Harry Potter.
Amy Lockwood, “Selling Condoms in the Congo”: Reformed marketer Amy Lockwood, deputy director of Stanford Center for Global Health, notes that the HIV prevalence rate in the DRC is 1.3% out of 76 million people, and only a quarter of those are receiving the drugs they need. One preventive measure: condoms. Amy visited the DRC and spent a lot of time talking to people about condoms. She found that while donor agencies made condoms available, only 3% of people use them for contraception. Examining this as a marketer, she found that donor-branded condoms were branded using messages of “fear, financing and fidelity — not what people are thinking about right before they buy a condom.” What are they thinking about? Sex! Amy observes that while donor agencies mean well, she says that thinking more like a marketer — addressing people’s real drives and desires — might just save their lives.
Eric Rasmussen, “The Invisible Urban Billions”: Eric studies populations that live in urban slums and favelas — and more than a billion of the 7 billion of us live in the slums of the developing world. Global population growth, in fact, is driven by urban slums. (By 2030, 40% of the population of Mexico will live in the slums of Mexico City.) And yet ambitious, hard-working young families there thrive on educational opportunity. One of the most effective education tools in slums is the cell phone, used as a blackboard. How to give slum dwellers power? “Don’t do anything FOR me WITHOUT me.”
Geoff Mulgan, “Rethinking Education: Studio Schools”: In the UK, bored teens are dropping out of school, and employers are complaining that kids are entering the workforce unprepared. In response, Geoff Mulgan, CEO of Nesta, came up with the Studio School, an idea based on the integration of work and learning. These small schools of 300 pupils work in teams, focus on practical projects, offer coaches rather than teachers, and are funded publicly but run independently. Trial schools in Luton and Blackpool opened last year have succeeded: academic results jumped, the education ministry has taken notice – and most importantly, young people love it. Now studio schools spreading rapidly across the UK, a great example of how a smart idea can gain wings and transform lives.
Thomas Emacora, “Participatory Design to ‘Recode’ Neglected Places”: At the crossroads of design and social change, Thomas looks at neglected cities and suburbs, searching for latent potential in the existing-but-forgotten. Sustainability is often more of a social than a technological or financial challenge — and community-led projects around the world are demonstrating that sustainability is incredibly powerful when it involves existing structures re-imagined and “recoded.”
Sonaar Luthra, “Testing Waters”: Reprising his TED Fellows talk, Sonaar introduces his easy-to-use, affordable, networked water-testing device that instantly tells users and relief workers whether water is safe to drink, helping to fight waterborne disease, especially in the aftermath of disaster.
In a rapid-fire question-and-answer session with the audience, June Cohen asks: “Are you optimistic or pessimistic, and why? Read the answers >>
Imogen Heap, “Music Gloves”: In her first live performance with this newly developed technology, Imogen Heap takes looping to a whole new level. The musician is known for improvising and performing with loads of gear on stage, but now she’s streamlined AND expanded her soundmaking process with a pair of wireless gloves that let her record and manipulate live vocals and instrumentation with gesture and movement. Not only is the gear itself nifty – she’d be perfect in a Philip K Dick-based film — the gloves adds the element of dance, making a performance that’s just as riveting to watch as it is to listen to.
Houssem Aoudi, “Building the Future of Tunisia”: In January 2011, weeks of demonstrations in Tunisia led to the ousting of President Ben Ali after 23 years in power. Houssem was in the streets, and afterwards, he organized TEDxCarthage: Success Stories to share experiences, encourage discussion and debate, spread a message of hope for the future of the country, and “to imagine our new society free from tyrants.” The next TEDxCarthage theme: InTolerance.
Ajit Sharma, “The Custodians of Indian Lineage”: Ajit, the CEO of AWC Industries and organizer of TEDxThar, introduces the Bhaat, a caste of Indian people who have for millennia been responsible for maintaining family genealogies, clans, and songs. These historians visit the families they record along with their own sons and grandsons, promoting intergenerational knowledge between families. Bhaat have been essential to maintaining culture — and know their subjects so well they even serve as matchmakers for arranged marriages. Sadly, the Bhaat tradition is dying out. Ajit wants his great-great-grandchildren to know about his life, too, and notes the Bhaat did their job without modern technology. As the methods for archiving our life stories change, Ajit calls for us to remember the essence of this drive – “the simple human desire to journey through time.”
Serge Mouangue, “Third Aesthetic”: Designer Serge Mouangue reprises his TED Fellows talk about mashing up African and Japanese cultures – starting with kimono made with African fabrics. One response? “This is an outrage; do not bastardize Japanese designs!” Fortunately, Serge carries on his cross-cultural explorations, a dialogue between cultures taking place in music, art, and objects.
Naif Al-Mutawa, “Crossover Comics: Bridges or Propaganda?”: Naif, creator of comic The99, starring Islam-inspired superheroes, talks about what happened after The99 “met” their colleagues at the Justice League of America in a crossover comic. It’s been well received, but in the US, there’s been a backlash against the animated version, where critics accused The99 of radicalizing young children, and broadcast of the cartoon was delayed. Naif says he hopes this decision will be reversed and that The99 will radicalize all children — to teach tolerance.
Julian Treasure, “The Importance of Listening”: Julian Treasure, chair of The Sound Agency, lives to listen. Here he gets us to think about how the rest of us are losing our listening skills! Listening is making meaning from sound, he says: pattern recognition, filters such as culture, language, beliefs, and intention. And he argues sound is the main way we experience the flow of time. So why are we losing our ability to listen? The world is too noisy; we’re impatient; the art of conversation is being replaced by personal broadcasting; and we’re desensitized, making it hard for us to pay attention to the quiet and understated. But active listening is crucial to promoting connection, understanding, and peace. He offers some tools to sharpen our ears: practice three minutes a day of silence; in noisy places, become aware of different channels of sound; and savor mundane sounds — what he calls “the hidden choir”.
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