14 December 2009

Q&A with Loretta Napoleoni: The ever-changing face of terrrorism

At TEDGlobal, Loretta Napoleoni gave a fascinating talk on her exclusive opportunity to speak with members of the secretive Italian terrorist group, the Red Brigades, and the startling insight she's gained over decades of studying the economics of terrorism. Before her talk posted, she chatted with the TEDBlog and shared a little more of her unusual knowledge of the world of terrorism.

The direct interactions you had with the Red Brigades were fascinating. Since that time, have you had that kind of direct interaction with other terrorist groups?

Oh, yes. I wrote a book on Iraq. In fact, it’s called Insurgent Iraq: Al-Zarqawi and the New Generation. To write that book, which came out in 2005, I actually interviewed members of the Al-Zarqawi group. These were people who were very close to insiders in Iraq. I interviewed people in Amman, and some of them had met him before when he was growing up, some of them had met in prison, and it all helped me to get an idea of his personality. I also interviewed people in Spain who came mostly from Syria and they were part of the Salafi movement, which was also close to this group.

Of course, these interviews were conducted in a different way from the Red Brigades interviews. I interviewed the Red Brigades when their armed struggle was finished, so I did those interviews in prison. Obviously, the atmosphere was very different because I had a legal kind of access. I was allowed inside the prison where I was allowed to talk to them, whereas the interviews with the Al-Zarqawi group were done in secret, often through an intermediary who also was a translator. A lot of interviews were conducted by email.

The interesting thing is that there was a sort of personality profile that became evident. Now, I am not saying that there is one single type of individual who is a better type of terrorist than another. What I am saying is that the circumstances that push certain individuals over the edge, to become terrorists, are generally very, very similar. There are of course, people that resist this kind of temptation and people that don’t. I found a lot of similarity between Al-Zarqawi and his inner group and some members of the Red Brigades, for example. That, from a psychological point of view is very interesting.

Now, a lot of armed organizations will talk to me, and I have had contact with others in a less detailed and in-depth context. Once you have been allowed to discuss certain issues with one armed organization, then a sort of trust is built, and so other armed organizations will talk to you.

In order to establish trust, did you sometimes have to withhold information? Essentially, are there things you know that you can’t tell the world?

Not really, because they will never tell you anything that they shouldn’t tell you. The interviews are always conducted about issues that belong to the past or that are already known. They’ll never tell you confidential information, because they don’t know you.

Also, I wouldn’t ask these kinds of questions. I would never ask, “Did you actually mastermind the bombing of the Amman hotels in 2005?” I would never do that, because that would put me in a very awkward situation. I’m more interested in the way they actually operate and also in the root causes and ideology of their group. They’re very happy to talk about that. They want to tell you why they’re doing what they’re doing.

I never met one single member of an armed organization that was a psychopath, somebody that really wanted to kill for the pleasure of killing or somebody that was motivated only by vengeance. I never met anybody like that. There was always a very strong political background, and this is what they want to talk to you about.

Another TED speaker, Diane Benscoter, talks about her time in a cult and there are moments when you are talking about the people who make good terrorists that sound very similar to what she describes when talking about people who make good cult members. Do you see similarities here as well?

Yes. I think generally the heads of terrorist groups are very, very smart people. They’re also great manipulators. I would presume that cult leaders are identical. These sort of individuals are very strong, they have very strong charisma.

I have a story that I think is very interesting from this psychological perspective. While I was interviewing the Red Brigades, I met this guy who had learned how to paint in jail and showed me a few of his paintings. The paintings were beautiful. You looked at the paintings and couldn’t believe that the person who did them had also killed people. There was a certain kind of sensitivity, there was also a certain kind of peaceful message in these paintings. So, I became interested and spoke a lot with him, and I found him to be an incredibly gentle person. You would not have believed that this guy was actually a terrorist. Then, later on, I met somebody else from his specific group, recruited more or less at the same time, and this other member of the Red Brigades told me that everybody within that group knew that this guy had been lured into terrorism by the leader of that region. The leader of that region was a very charismatic individual and he realized that that guy was easily manipulated, and he used him.

It was quite a sad story from the human point of view. The life of this individual was now completely destroyed, because he had to spend over twenty years in jail when he really is, basically a non-violent individual. Later on, he realized that. He realized his mistakes and he told me, “If I could go back, I would never do what I did again.” Now, very few of them actually said that.

Really?

Oh, absolutely. Most of them won’t say that at all.

So, the ideology is so strong for most members that they don’t regret violent behavior?

Well, I don’t think it’s the ideology. I think that anybody can become a terrorist. That’s my point of view. But, not everybody can actually kill. In order to reach that level, you have to be deeply convinced. So very few people -- even when they give up the armed struggle, end up in jail or whatever and abandon that part of their life -- very few question their position, because if they did their lives would be totally destroyed.

Now the individual I was speaking about from the Red Brigades was a particularly gentle and sensitive individual. I think he could have been easily manipulated by his sect. All he wanted was to be part of something, to belong to something, to be accepted by the others. He found a way to achieve all of these goals, and it happened to be the Red Brigades. It could have been anything. It could have been any sect that fulfilled these goals for him.

What are some of the most economically powerful terrorist groups in the world today and what are some of the traits they have in common?

Well, today I think the most powerful group is the Taliban. Al Qaeda is also very powerful, but the Taliban is slowly but surely taking back Afghanistan, so that there is now a sort of mix that exists there of both Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Another very powerful group is the Colombian FARC, which has merged with the Colombian cartel.

The new type of terrorist we’re seeing today is a terrorist that is linked to narcotics traffickers, and whose primary source of economic power is actually narcotics. That’s different from 9/11. You see, before 9/11 it was very different because you had somebody like Osama Bin Laden, who was very wealthy and had sponsors -- he had money diverted from the Gulf to fund Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was born in the 1980s, a sort of offspring of the first mujahideen. There was a different history there, and funding primarily came from sponsors or people who were a part of the organization and who were very wealthy. Today, we’re dealing with a completely different animal. Now, we have this mix of classic criminal behavior and terrorism and that is actually quite dangerous. These guys are not only fighting for an ideal or to achieve a certain goal, but also to maintain a certain kind of economy within the criminal economy. This also makes them harder and harder to track down.

The day that the Taliban manages to re-conquer Afghanistan, hypothetically, they are not going to become something different. And now, they are criminals and not only in the sense of being terrorists. That is a degeneration of the criminal and terrorist models, linked of course to globalization, that I think is going to make things much worse in the future.

02 December 2009

Q&A with Cindy Gallop: Tackling porn, feminism and big dreams

Advertising whiz Cindy Gallop delivered one of the most talked-about talks at TED2009, so before it was posted the TED Blog had to snag her for an interview. Spirited as usual, she did not disappoint. Keep reading for answers on what people thought of MakeLoveNotPorn.com, Gallop’s bold position on feminism, her new project IfWeRanTheWorld and the story of her success.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on MakeLoveNotPorn.com? What do people think of it?

What MakeLoveNotPorn has in common with my other ventures is that when I encounter something that I feel very strongly about, I do something about it. Incidentally, that’s the whole point of my other venture IfWeRanTheWorld. It’s all about turning good intentions into action, being a very action-oriented person myself.

As I make clear in my talk, MakeLoveNotPorn is designed to address an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I had not encountered it within my personal life and specifically, because I date younger men who tend to be in their twenties, who are part of Generation Y. In this context, when I encountered this issue personally, I really felt that I wanted to do something about it. That is why I created MakeLoveNotPorn.com, and then welcomed the opportunity to launch it at TED.

I will say that I was extremely nervous before I gave my TEDTalk, and I was nervous for two reasons. The first is that I had absolutely no idea how MakeLoveNotPorn.com would be received. I talked to a few people about it in the process of conceiving the idea and then executing it, but predominantly friends of mine. It had received a generally very positive response, but I obviously still had no idea how the wider world would view it. The second reason I was nervous was I knew that in order to launch this I was going to have to really launch it, in the sense that I was going to have to be straightforward in order to have people understand why this was so necessary. I made a deliberate decision to be very frank in the language and the terminology that I used. This isn’t an issue that one can fence around if you want there to be complete clarity and understanding of what makelovenotporn.com is designed to address.

I was enormously gratified by the extraordinarily positive response I received at TED. The talk was obviously BoingBoing’ed immediately. Mark, from BoingBoing, told me it was the highlight of his first day at TED. The Twitter stream went mad. Robin Williams came up to me during the coffee break afterwards, told me how wonderful he thought it was and did an entire ten-minute comedy routine around it, which was terrific. But what I was really pleased about was that for the remaining three days of TED, loads of people came up to me and said it was fantastic. And they said it was fantastic in a number of contexts. Parents were particularly struck by it, and a lot of them said to me that they’d forwarded the site to their 16-year-old daughter or 18-year-old son. I think they particularly welcomed the fact that they could forward the link on without needing to have the conversation themselves, which is precisely why I began the site.

A number of people said that while they love the fact that TED covers science, art and technology, touching on the area of human relationships in the way that I did was really welcomed. A number of young people, and lots of the TED Fellows, said to me, “Oh my God! I love it. That is absolutely what I’ve encountered myself.” So, actually, the response at TED itself was absolutely wonderful in terms of having the audience understand and appreciate what this was intended to do.

Also, the site is very nascent at the moment. I put it up with no money. All you can do there is leave comments, send in your own porn world/real world ideas, and you can write to info@makelovenotporn.com. But judging by the comments that started appearing, I can see that MakeLoveNotPorn.com has achieved what I wanted it to, which is that it’s gotten to young people out in the mainstream, beyond the more TED intelligentsia-inclined audience. I’ve had a huge amount of submissions from people sending in their own porn world/real world ideas. These are very interesting to read, because while the vast majority of them are screamingly funny, some of them are also very serious and very heartfelt. One interesting thing, for me, was that I designed MakeLoveNotPorn to be deliberately gender-equal. It’s talking to men and women equally. A lot of men have submitted ideas that are much more about the male experience and the false expectations of men that porn engenders, which made me realize that when I do develop the site further, I will need to encompass the male experience more. I’ve got fantastic input there.

Also, MakeLoveNotPorn is very much a global concept. I work globally as a consultant, and I’ve encountered a great response to this from people in other countries. It’s absolutely reflected in the visitors to the site as well. I’m not actively promoting MakeLoveNotPorn at the moment because I don’t have the resources and I don’t have a lot to send people to yet. Nevertheless, I monitor it on Google and it pops up on French blogs, Chinese blogs, Greek blogs. One of the last emails I received was from a young guy in Morocco who wrote to me -- by the way, when people write to info@makelovenotporn.com, they have no idea who they’re writing to and I identify as myself when I write back. Anyway, this young guy wrote to say, “Thank you so much. Young people in Morocco are like young people in the US, they are heavily influenced by porn. Now at last I can tell my friends how to make love to a girl, thanks to your wonderful website.” And I just love getting emails like that.

So, what’s next?

I have further plans for development and promotion based on finding far-sighted and broad-minded investors. For the time being I’m very pleased with the response that MakeLoveNotPorn has received, both in terms of overall recognition of the issue and in getting to exactly the audience I wanted to get to.

Your talk and this project seem to convey the words and ideas of a very empowered woman. Do you consider yourself to be a feminist?

I consider myself a rampant feminist. I deplore the shying away that can go on, within women, from the term “feminist.” I am, absolutely, all about being a feminist. My personal cause and platform, if you like, is women’s rights and women’s issues. In the context of my other web venture IfWeRanTheWorld (MakeLoveNotPorn is my secondary venture), if I ran the world, I would help the cause of women everywhere. Unfortunately, that embraces a huge spectrum of problems and issues, a very fractional amount of which I donate money to at the moment and which, when IfWeRanTheWorld is up and operational, I absolutely want to address myself.

Also, I like to describe myself as a proudly visible member of the most invisible segments of our society -- older women. I’m 49. I make an active point of telling people how old I am, as often as possible, because I’d like to confound expectations of what an older woman should be, look and act like. I say that because it’s taken me 49 years to feel this good about myself. As women, from the moment we are born, everything around us, from a socio-cultural perspective, conspires to make us feel insecure about absolutely everything to do with ourselves -- our looks, our bodies, whether people like us, whether boys like us. In many ways, an overarching wish of mine is that, if I ran the world I would give every woman the confidence that she deserves, to feel empowered to live her life the way she wants to live it. The fact is that girls are massively constrained in other parts of the world, but are constrained in First World countries as well. That desire infuses an awful lot of what I do.

I absolutely get involved in women-specific areas within my industry. I work with Advertising Women of New York, with Girls in Tech. I provide advice and help on a regular basis to many, many women on their personal lives, career, business ventures, particularly younger women who, very flatteringly, see me as a role model. I do everything I can to help them. That is something that I feel very strongly about. I’m a rampant feminist and proud to call myself a feminist.

15 October 2009

Q&A with Rory Sutherland: An advertarian's take on the world

The TED Blog caught up with ad man Rory Sutherland the evening before we posted his TEDTalk. Drawing on the work of behavioral economists, Nobel Prize winners and others, he talked at length about his personal philosophy of Advertarianism, about President Obama and the healthcare debate, and even threw in some analysis on the future of media use and advertising. Not bad, considering it was well past bedtime in the UK.

You call yourself an "Advertarian." Would you like to explain what that means?

Now, there’s a thought experiment that behavioral economists perform, one in which a man invents a brilliant new way for scanning X-rays -- so you can do cancer scans and X-rays at one tenth of the previous cost and at twice the speed -- and everybody heralds him as a hero. Then, it’s revealed that there isn’t any clever technology. All he does is scan the X-rays and then email them off to the Philippines, where highly trained, low-cost employees do the actual scanning of the X-rays manually, just as before, only at one tenth of the salary. And the argument that’s used by economists is that people are absolutely scandalized by this, everyone thinks is this absolutely outrageous, and "What a terrible man!" Yet, bizarrely, the effects are identical. The effect of offshoring to a low-wage economy is the same as a technological innovation. Indistinguishable. You might even argue that the second course is better, at least if you’re a Filipino in need of a reasonably well-paid job. But, interestingly, we judge them morally on a very different level. We’re very subjective about that, and the means and the intentionality make a big difference.

And I have a parallel example, where I say, “Imagine there’s a device that costs about 50p per household, per year, and if you install it in your house, it decreases the chance of a house fire by 30 percent.” And everybody goes, “That’s an absolutely brilliant idea. I want to buy one of those. And, actually, I think the government should pay for it and they should issue one to all households.” But, it’s not technically a device: it’s actually a TV commercial. To run the ad costs about 50p per household, per year, and it actually decreases the likelihood of household fires by 30 percent. There is a TV commercial that’s had precisely that effect. And then people go, “No, that’s not quite the same.” And the question you have to ask is, “Why is it not the same?” In other words, why do we regard solutions that involve, to a small extent, tampering with our heads or just supplying information or supplying persuasion ... why do we regard those solutions as lesser value than those that involve technology, for example?

It’s not that marketing-driven or advertising-led solutions can solve everything. That’s absolutely not true. What seems strange to me, though, is that people don’t at least try them first. Instead, governments try to solve their problems by compulsion. My view is that we should try and solve the problem by persuasion, and if that fails we can try compulsion or harder-level nudging. For this reason, I think the book Nudge is one of the most important books of the last five to ten years.

One of the small successes of my TEDTalk is that it’s now Conservative Party policy to spend no more money on speed cameras, but to spend the money on those vehicle-activated signs instead. So, I’ve had a small amount of advertarian success, with at least the prospective next government here in Britain. I’m purely philosophical about this. I’m not an advertarian in the sense that I believe that all problems can be solved this way. But, I think it’s best just to try.

Technology makes for easier persuasion and nudging -- what B.J. Fogg at Stanford calls persuasive technology -- and makes it far more potent. So, the British government’s Central Office of Information, they’ve said, “Look we’ve tried advertising with seatbelts for years. It didn’t really work. And so, we made it illegal not to wear a seatbelt and everybody wore one.” It’s interesting, of course, that at the time when we made it compulsory to wear seatbelts, there wasn’t the technology cheaply available to make a car go “bing” for 60 seconds, or even indefinitely, if you didn’t put your seatbelt on. Now, I would argue that making it a legal requirement that all new cars go “bing” for 90 seconds if you don’t put your seatbelt on when you drive off is a nudge, but it’s not really an infringement of liberties.

Senior people in government spend years getting their hands on very large budgets with which they want to do very big things, and quite often there’s a disproportionality, as the things that make an enormous difference are actually quite trivial. For example, Terminal 5 at Heathrow is magnificent. As a piece of architecture, it’s fabulous. But, the signage is dreadful. It’s a Kafka-esque nightmare of really appalling directions and confusion.

All large organizations need a Director of Trivia or a Director of Detail -- a very senior person with a large budget and great powers, but whose job is actually to take care of little irritants. Most board directors and government ministers, their sense of self-aggrandizement is too great for them to actually get involved here. You haven’t spent all those years becoming a government minister to improve form design, yet what Nudge would say is that if you want people to follow your policy, designing really attractive forms and interfaces is probably a better way of achieving your end than spending loads of time legislating or creating expensive incentives. The world needs people going around and sorting out little interface issues. If pelican crossings (crosswalks) had “Cancel” buttons, they would be more efficient. The thing is, you press the button and then realize there’s a gap in the traffic, you jaywalk across, and then all the cars have to stop for no one to cross the street. All you need there is a simple “Cancel” button so that if you decide to make a run for it you don’t stop all the traffic. And there are hundreds more little problems like these that are unnecessary irritants in our daily lives.

The Advertarian philosophy doesn’t solve all this; it’s just a little thing I made up. But, I do think that you should always try to solve a problem first through voluntary means or persuasive means before resorting to heavy-handed compulsion.

When you bring up advertising and government, the first thing that comes to mind is President Obama’s campaign last year. What did you think of his campaigning style, as well as what he’s doing in government right now? Is there anything you think he should be doing differently?

It’s very interesting. I think he ran a brilliant campaign using both social media and mass media. It’s actually a much more conventional advertising campaign than a lot of people have said. There was an enormous amount of money spent on advertising. And, it was interesting that to some extent he portrayed himself as the underdog, even though he was better funded than anyone. He played that off very cleverly. Because he wasn’t a long-time politician, he could play this game of “little old me” when actually, he had bucketloads of money to campaign with.

What’s peculiar in this case is that he’s failed to take the American people with him on health reform in the way that he undoubtedly co-opted them and created a popular movement around his election campaign. It must be remembered that, in the United States, there are immensely powerful lobby groups who weren’t in action against his election in the same way.

But, Obama did have the amazing effect of getting the British to rise up in defense of the National Health Service. The British are mostly critical of the health service and spend a lot of time complaining about it, but when various things came out in the United States more or less suggesting that we have committee meetings to decide whether you die or not, people found that such a ridiculous misrepresentation of the situation that they leapt to the defense of the system.

Now, just bear in mind that by European standards I’m quite right wing. Not by American standards, but by European standards I’m thought to be quite libertarian and quite keen on free-market solutions. But, there is a simple fact that, strangely, you can’t point out to Americans, which is that when you go to Canada, it’s not like everybody’s dying. They pay vastly less for prescription drugs, because they’re purchased centrally.

Incidentally, what no one actually says is that the United States spends an insane amount of money on health. A brutally statistical discovery, as found by the statistician Robin Hanson, claims that, above a certain level of expenditure, there is no correlation between money spent on healthcare and longevity. So, actually, when you spend above a certain amount per person on health, longevity doesn’t actually improve. And, Hanson’s theory is that excessive intervention by medicine outweighs the benefits of overfunding.

Most people think that the more you spend on healthcare, the better your healthcare is, but it’s not true. Now, it’s not that every heart surgeon is going, “Oh yes, a couple more of these heart operations and I’ll be able to pay for a yacht.” Rather, if you’ve spent 40 years practicing heart surgery and becoming a brilliant heart surgeon, you are unusually biased towards seeing solutions in heart surgery, just as legislators are overly biased to seeing solutions in legislation and people who are engineers are overly biased to seeing the solutions to the world’s ills lying in engineering. And so, overmedication and excessive intervention by doctors in the United States is probably a downside of how much money is poured into healthcare. The bias to intervention is always there in a case where you can either do nothing or do something. People always prefer something. The doctor’s recommendation of “Actually, I’d just leave it. It’ll probably go away,” is never one with which people are comfortable.

However, the inordinate amount of money spent on healthcare in the United States has enormous spillover benefit for other countries. The research and pharmaceutical development that’s funded by the large percentage of GDP devoted to US healthcare ultimately benefits the rest of the world enormously. So, in some ways, as a Brit, I would be quite keen for the United States to carry on with its current barking level of health expenditure.

The fundamental problem that Obama has in this -- and the British also had this for the previous 100 years -- is that when you’re top dog nation, you don’t think that anything could be better anywhere else. I mean, if France had come to us and said, “Actually, you ought to drink wine and not beer,” we would never have accepted that. The very idea comes across as unpatriotic. I’ve met Americans who themselves are quite chippy about the United States, but if you ever go and actually say, “I think your restrictions on drinking out-of-doors are a bit silly,” they get quite jumpy about it. In truth, there are 50 million Italians who sit outside drinking wine, in the open air, and their incidence of alcoholism is probably lower than the US.

I think Paul Romer has the answer, in truth. I thought Paul Romer’s speech at TED was actually magnificent. The idea of charter cities: absolutely fascinating. To change something at a national level is impossible. What you need to do is create cities that operate on new models and new institutions, and trial the new thing at that scale and then, effectively, let it spread outwards. That’s an interesting question, whether you should try it state by state in some form.

Is your advice to Obama that he should sit and have a talk with Paul Romer?

Yes, exactly that. I think so.

It’s a fundamental question about making change happen. In truth, much as people in central government love to issue strategy because it’s what they’re there for, a lot of important change happens from the bottom up. Where Britain’s conservatives have been quite good is in looking round the world for good ideas, in the sense that there are some very good Swedish ideas on education involving starting your own school that they’re currently looking at.

08 October 2009

Q&A with Beau Lotto: On seeing yourself see

Neuroscientist and artist Beau Lotto joined the TED Blog for a short Q&A after his 2009 talk from TEDGlobal. He covered some of the fascinating, perception-bending projects he wasn't able to cover in his talk -- an iPhone game that substitutes sound for sight; a new way for composers to experience their music synesthetically -- and detailed an ingenious education project that gives children the chance to participate in real science experiments.

I see your studio has created a game called Bing Bong. Tell me about that.

Bing Bong is an iPhone game. It's a video game in sound. In the game, the player has to catch a ball, but they must do so without seeing it. They must position a paddle to catch the ball, but they can only hear the ball falling, relative to where the paddle is.

Hopefully, Bing Bong is fun in and of itself -- all of my projects have to work at the immediate level, whether that be aesthetic or fun -- but, more deeply, it's a game that's about getting people to experience the process of having an experience, of seeing themselves see. In doing that, people can better understand how intimately tied they are to their environment, and their interaction with their environment -- in other words, their ecology.

How does Bing Bong fit in with your wider research?

Bing Bong is part of a larger program of research, which is sensory substitution or sensory augmentation.

When I say to people that the light that falls onto our eyes is meaningless, people find that really hard to believe. You open your eyes, you look around, you see nothing but meaning; you ask yourself, How could it be meaningless? But that's of course because you're not seeing the light that falls onto your eye, but your brain's perception of that light. You're seeing that light in the context of the millions of years of evolution that our brains have gone through.

But if I translate that light into sound, and you instead hear the visual information, you directly experience the meaninglessness of it.

Then, through interacting with the world through sensory substitution, you experience yourself literally making sense of it. You begin to hear patterns. Those patterns start having a meaning for you. You're actually an observer of yourself as you do this.

Through sensory substitution, we can create prosthetics for the visually impaired -- to make the world navigable. But we can also do things like make music from color, which is an element that I touched on during my TEDTalk.

The brain almost doesn't seem to care what type of information it receives -- it just starts decoding any information it is given. Do I have that right?

The most fundamental thing the brain does is it evolves to evolve. It adapts to adapt. The brain is wonderfully plastic. Now, it's a plastic of different levels of flexibility -- the brain couldn't function without some stability as well.

The reason why we survive in the world is not because we evolved to see the world as it is; it's because we evolved to be able to adapt to a changing world -- and to continually redefine normality. And that process even exists at the level of evolution. Evolution itself has evolved to have something called evolvability.

In my lab's research, we not only work on networks of the brain, but also networks of genes, and networks generally. In doing that, we evolve what we call artificial life systems, or artificial life agents.

If you give these artificial life agents an environment, and in the environment there is a problem, the agent that evolves the solution to the problem faster will out-compete the one that evolved it slower. Both evolved the solution, but the one that did it faster was better. The successful agent is actually more evolvable. Its evolvability helped it survive.

There is evidence that organisms have evolved to be evolvable. They have evolved to be adaptable. This quality is something that is relevant to any adaptive network -- not merely the brain.

The aim of much of your work seems to be making science and art accessible to everyone. Talk a bit about that.

As far as I'm concerned, science is nothing more than playing games. And in that case, everyone does science. There's nothing special about science or the people that do it. The only thing that makes scientists different is that they formalize the process; they have access to certain tools that other people don't have access to.

In the education center we're trying to build, we want to give people access -- and the confidence -- to do real scientific experiments. The education center will be fundamentally about discovery. It might be discoveries that no one else has made. Or it might be just discoveries that are relevant to each individual that participates.

What's a specific example of the sort of discovery you mean?

The Mother program is about enabling musicians to use musical instruments as an interface to a computer. And what happens is the musician can play the instrument, and the music they play gets visualized -- not in the way that, say, iTunes visualizes music; the Mother visualizations are far more complex than that.

The significance here is that the musician can develop an intuition about the visual images that will be created by the way they gesture, the way they move their hands, the way they play their instrument. And what can then happen is, the musician can now create music not just according to what it sounds like, but also according to what it looks like. And that itself can feed back and alter the kind of music that the musician plays. They discover new music by being able to experience their playing through senses other than hearing.

You mentioned an education center. Talk a bit about your current work on education.

I'm doing a project with a friend and collaborator, Dave Strudwick. His background is working with kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, whom he calls "excluded" kids.

I came to him with this concept of "seeing yourself see." I told him we were exploring this concept in the context of architecture and art. I asked, "What might we be able to do with this, in education?" The premise is that education is fundamental to everything. It's not just school: it's everything that humans do. That question led to a series of conversations and meetings about creating a framework for education that we call My School. We call it My School because the people in the school have ownership of the school.

My School is all about education that is specific to the individual. The aim of the education program is to create a curriculum in architecture grounded in the idea of seeing yourself see, emphasizing everything that the education system does -- what we call the five Cs: compassion, choice, community, creativity and confidence. Seeing yourself see leads to these five Cs.

The education system is about facilitating people to become aware of how they're shaped by their experiences. The point is that when our kids are our age, they will be dealing with careers 90% of which do not exist now. They're going into a world that is incredibly dynamic, unpredictable, uncertain. So, really, the program is about celebrating uncertainty, which was the point of my TEDTalk: giving people the agility of thought to adapt and to thrive in that kind of uncertainty, and to create.

Can you give a specific example of the sort of work you're doing now with kids?

One particular project is taking the bumble bee arena -- we've had it as an installation in the Hayward Art Gallery and various other places -- and taking it to a school, and going through a process of experimentation with the kids where it's very much them-led: the kids lead the process.

We started getting them to think about questions such as, "If you were asking someone a question, but they couldn't communicate an answer except through their behavior, how would you find the answer?" We created games and puzzles to help them figure out how they might solve a problem like that.

We showed them that they can do this sort of puzzle not just with people, but also with other creatures, such as bumble bees. We got them thinking about what kinds of questions they might want to ask a bumble bee if they could. In doing so, they had to put themselves in the perspective of a bumble bee: What's important, what might be interesting to a bumble bee?

The kids came up with a list of questions. They collectively decided on one of those questions. Then they designed a set of experiments to ask that question of a bumble bee using the bee arena.

We installed the arena in an old Norman church next to their school, and I carried out their experiments over the next two weeks. The process is still going on; in total, it's been about three and a half months. The actual experiment took about two and a half weeks. The experiments took place on Sundays during church services. There was a funeral at one point. The whole community got involved. People from the community would come up. Parents would come by before and after school.

We got the data, and then the kids analyzed the data. Then they began writing up the paper. I would open up my laptop and say, "What do we write?" We've now just finished the paper. Everything is in kid-speak. For instance, they wanted to start the paper with "Once upon a time," which we've done. In one of the methods sections, they had to describe the second test for the bumble bees, and they said [ominously] "Bum bum bummmmmmm!" So, that's in there too.

All the figures are hand drawings in crayon.

We'll be submitting it for publication by the end of this week. If it's published, there will be 25 authors, all of whom are 8 years old or younger. If it's published, it means they should all get master's degrees, because by definition they've all made a unique contribution to science.

It will be interesting to find out whether, in fact, their paper will be published. Being someone who does bee research, I know the findings are unique. But a "real" science paper has references in it. You contextualize the study. You say, "This is what's been done before, this is what we've done, and this is what it now means in the context of what other people have done." Of course, as this is a paper by 8-year-olds, they don't have that context. They don't know the literature.

Will the community publish a paper with genuine results, but without the contextualization? It's an interesting question. Their introduction to the paper is what led them to do the experiment. Their discussion is what the results of the experiment might mean to them, and what it might mean to the bumble bees. So, the paper might never get published because it's in kid-speak and it's not contextualized -- but the data is strong.

I wanted to switch gears and circle back to your work on perception. Several TEDTalks feature illusions. How do you respond to artists and scientists who use illusions to show that you can "hack" the human mind?

There's an artist -- I won't bother naming him -- who was up for a prize, and he often used illusions in his work. One critic said his work demonstrated the "fragility" of the human senses. Artists and others often use illusions to demonstrate how our senses are susceptible. But, as I said in my TEDTalk, if our senses were fragile, we wouldn't be here.

The whole concept of an illusion is predicated on a misconception. The misconception is that we evolved to see the world as it is, and that to see the world differently from "as it is" is an illusion. But the point of my TEDTalk is that we actually can't see the world as it actually is. We have no direct access to the physical world. All we can ever do is see it the way it was once useful to see.

Illusion is more a state of the world than it is a state of mind. What's being presented to you is an unusual situation. What you see is what would have been useful, given that situation in the past. That's significant because artists often use context in order to manipulate what people see. But they often don't go beyond that.

The far more interesting question is not that "context matters" -- not that we see illusions -- but why we see them. When you see illusions, you're entertaining two realities at the same time. You're seeing one reality (two gray squares look different) but you also know another reality (that the gray squares are, in fact, physically the same).

You're in the position, at that moment, of actually experiencing yourself having an experience.

Do you find that your work is in conflict with philosophy on perception or consciousness? Are angry philosophy students knocking on your door?

Well, first of all, philosophy isn't going to answer many of these questions about perception.

I have a very good friend, Tom Polger, who is a philosopher, and he and I have written a paper on why we see four colors. He was a great person to talk to -- a very interesting person, generally. The debates were complimentary.

If anything, my research is about taking these concepts in philosophy and trying to ground them. One idea is as good as any other -- but if you can ground them in true, real experiences, and then share these experiences with the public in a way that is intuitive.

So no, my work isn't in conflict with philosophy in that way. I don't get very many angry philosophy students.

What's the takeaway from your work, as a whole -- the big lesson you want your art and science to teach?

The lesson is that the brain evolved to continually re-define normality, and that understanding that creates the capacity for compassion and creativity. What's true at the simplest level, seeing lightness -- it doesn't get any simpler than seeing lightness; even jellyfish see lightness -- has got to be true all the way up.

Find more Q&As on the TED Blog:
+ Oliver Sacks on neurological curiosities
+ Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on Iran's nuclear program
+ Garik Israelian on the secrets of spectroscopy

02 October 2009

Q&A with Garik Israelian: "Your lab should be the vacuum between stars"

Astronomer Garik Israelian (watch his TEDTalk) explained the secrets of spectrography yesterday. And last night, he answered a few of our followup questions by email -- including some questions from TED's Facebook fans:

Tell me about your latest work with lithium and its significance for planet-bearing stars.

Since year 2000, our group has been working very actively to study peculiarities in the chemical composition of planet host stars, with dozens of papers in this field. We have proposed a "Li-6 test" to study planet engulfment and/or planetary matter accretion processes in sun-like stars. Up to now, we had not found a single chemical element with a different behavior in planet-bearing stars, as compared with similar stars without planets. In the new paper, which will appear soon, we present the first such case. We present results on Lithium content for a sample of about 500 stars, including 100 planet host stars, and we find that for planet host solar analogs (stars very similar to our Sun), and only for this kind of star, there is a peculiar behavior in the Li abundance. These stars have on average less than 1% of their initial Li content. Like our Sun, these stars have been very efficiently destroying Lithium. Why? We do not really know. Maybe this is related to their rotational history, strongly influenced by the presence of planetary systems. This is not the case of solar-analog stars in the comparison sample ("single" stars without known planets), where a large fraction preserves a much higher Li abundance -- about 10 times more.

Our "single"-star sample has been monitored by the most precise spectrograph, called HARPS (located in Chile), for years and no planet has been detected. Let me mention that not all sun-like stars host planets -- perhaps about 30% of them are planet-builders. It's not so easy to form a planet!

Our results clearly indicate that solving the long-standing problem of the Li depletion in the Sun, which has been a puzzle for 60 years and has promoted the development of many transport and mixing theories, will require a proper understanding of the interaction of a planetary system with its planet host star.

We find that solar analogs with low Lithium content have a higher probability of hosting planets, and therefore searches of planetary systems can increase their efficiency by performing a spectroscopic observation of Lithium.

And finally, we suggest that the Sun is "Li-poor" because it hosts a planetary system.

How do you like the new Gran Telescopio Canarias so far? What are some of the questions you're working on there?

It's too early to speak about GTCs performance. I think we need a year or two to see the first results. The most interesting instrument for planet-hunters is the camera called CanariCam -- a mid-infrared imager with spectrogroscopic, coronagraphic and polarimetric capabilities. CanariCam works in the thermal infrared between ~7.5 and 25 microns. Planet-hunters plan to conduct a search at 10 microns with CanariCam for substellar objects (brown dwarfs and massive giant planets) around many stars in the northern hemisphere. We keep our fingers crossed!

How soon will you be able to build the new 42-meter E-ELT you talked about, to detect Earth-like planets around sun-like stars?

E-ELT is planned to be operational in 2018, while the telescope site will be selected next year. One of the first light instruments may be the high-resolution spectrograph called CODEX. The high resolution and long-term stability of CODEX, coupled with the large collecting area of the E-ELT, provides an unequaled facility for measuring stellar radial velocities at the few cm/s level. This precision will allow detecting Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone around solar-type stars.

However, recent technological developments open a new window for us. We may discover Earth twins much before the E-ELT era, The so-called "laser frequency grid" (or Astro Comb) technique may allow to hunt other Earths before 2015. The super-precise HARPS-NEF (or HARPS-NORTH) spectrograph is under construction by collaboration between Harvard's Origins of Life Initiative, New Earths Facility, and the HARPS team of the University of Geneva, and is expected to start operation soon after 2011. Our team in Canary Islands is collaborating with astronomers in Harvard and Geneva to install this instrument on the 4.2 meter William Herschel Telescope in La Palma. HARPS-NORTH will use the Doppler technique to discover and characterize Earth-like planets from candidates identified by NASA's Kepler mission, launched on March 6 this year.

Reader Sameena asks three questions:

Is it always right to assume that other forms of life in another planet must have the same beginnings as us -- tectonic plates with volcanic activity, oxygen and water?

No, I do not think that we have to always assume that. This is more a question for biologists. If they tell us, astronomers, that new life forms may exist under x conditions, breathing sulfur (for example) and somehow producing xenon (for example), then we will model the biospheres of those planets and will find out which spectral lines will/may indicate the presence of that form of life. So our task is to carry out very precise spectroscopic analysis of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. We can infer their chemical composition, physical conditions etc. We may find then some "strange" chemicals indicating the presence of other forms of life. This will be fun!

How do you convince yourself/your peers/the world that one unusual peak on your spectroscopy is not through error?

This is more a technical question. Spectra have some noise produced by a detector and other sources. This noise can be modeled and calculated. We always know the level of the noise. Anything considerable above that level is a real signal.

How do sound waves (which need a medium) travel through space?

They don't. But we can still study them in the atmospheres of stars. Imagine observing a volcano on the Earth from Mars. If you have a spectrograph, you can study the motion of the Earth's upper atmosphere triggered by the explosion. Your spectrograph will give you the velocities of gas particles in the atmosphere. If you have a good knowledge of gas-dynamics, physics, etc., you can calculate the sound produced by this volcano at a given distance. This is not so difficult. But the point is this: You are far away observing a motion of gas particles (velocities), their emission (they radiate too) and therefore the state of the matter in the atmospheres. You use those observations to compute the amplitude and frequency of sound waves responsible for those motions. It's pure classical physics.

Reader Mike Ho asks this question: I've read that there is spectroscopic evidence of cellulose elsewhere in the universe; is that accurate? How reliable is spectroscopy for detecting large molecules?

This is true. This was reported in Nature, in 1978. Tholins have been detected as well (I think by Carl Sagan).

There are many unidentified bands in the spectra of stars. Wide bands are produced by some complex molecules in the interstellar space. It's really hard to identify them for two reasons:

1. observational
2. theoretical

Observational -- because the spectra are full of absorption lines of stellar origin, and when you have a smooth, weak and extended absorption (such as a diffuse molecular band or DIB) in the spectrum covering some 30-50 angstroms, it's almost impossible to see it unless you are able to carefully eliminate the spectral lines produced by a star and fit the stellar continuum (using models). Your DIBs are hidden under the stellar spectra! There are well-known diffuse molecular bands -- about 200 have been identified. However, the most complex ones, produced by even more complex molecules, are still unidentified.

There is a theoretical difficulty too. One has to make quantum mechanical calculations (N-body) of very complex molecular structures and compute their spectra (thousands of lines). There are lots of approximations in this "game," and you have to be very careful because it's impossible to check them in the lab. (Your lab should be the vacuum between stars!)

My colleagues at the IAC in Canary Islands have detected naphthalene in the interstellar medium, a molecule that, in combination with water, ammonia and ultraviolet radiation, produces many of the amino acids fundamental to the development of life. They have also discovered fullerenes (C320 and C540). This is a terrific field of research, and I believe the interstellar medium hides a lot from your eyes. It's full of mysteries and enigmas -- free-floating planets, isolated stellar mass black holes, and all sorts of stuff.

You suggest that a planet harboring life might decide to change its chemical signature to send a message to other planets. Do you think Earth should be signaling the universe? If so, what should we do to let other planets know we exist?

Yes, technologically advanced civilizations can handle this. I don't think we can do that (and we'd better not try -- the Sun is still clean). I have not done this estimate by myself: how much of this or that chemical element we need to put in the atmosphere of the Sun so that an alien civilization will fix this as a "signal" of an intelligent (or not intelligent!) life in the solar system. Obviously, we need to use an element which is absent in the solar atmosphere (there are quite a few). But then, I can imagine that we will need few thousand tons. Let me do this calculation for an "interesting" element ...

01 October 2009

Q&A with short film curator Jonathan Wells

Jonathan Wells of Flux is helping to curate TED's first-ever short film contest, with winners to be shown at TEDIndia in November. He's been involved in choosing shorts for TED's onstage program for a couple of years. We asked him about curating short films -- and how he ended up with this job:

What qualities do you look for in a TED short film?

The best TED film is smart and beautiful and evokes a sense of wonder. We strive to find films that have all three of these qualities. The best films, like the best TEDTalks, are great ideas that are well delivered.

How did you end up being the short film guy for TED?

For 10 years I ran RESFEST, a festival I founded that toured the world. The festival was lauded for showcasing innovative short films and music videos that otherwise may not be seen.

These types of inventive films, regardless of budget or style or genre, were a perfect match for TED's short film programming.

Tell me a little bit about Flux.

Flux is a creative studio and global creative community. As a company, we curate film/art/music/design experiences of all kinds around the world. Through our projects, events and online journal we foster a creative community that encourages collaboration.

Define a TED short film in 6 words.

A small morsel of visual inspiration -- OR -- A little bit of movie magic.

If you've got a short film that we should see, and it's 30 secs to 3 mins long, enter our short film contest. Deadline is Oct. 12, 2009. Find details and the brief entry form >>

Every day this week on the TED Blog, we're featuring a short film that played live at TED. Today's is a PSA called "Amazing Jumbo Elephant Landing," produced by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "Amazing Jumbo Elephant Landing" screened at TED2009 in Long Beach and Palm Springs.

Enter TED's short film contest >>

28 September 2009

Q&A with Parag Khanna: Redrawing the map for a safe, secure world

Last week, Parag Khanna sat with the TED Blog to discuss no less than the political future of the world we live in. He works in the expansive field of geopolitics, and his TEDTalk discusses the history and future of some of the world’s most troubled states and the possibilities of a borderless world. In this interview, he expanded on his theories, delving into the causes of terrorism, the impact of the G20, a solution for Sudan and more.

Can you explain exactly what it is that you do? Your title is Director of the Global Governance Initiative of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, and I’m not sure that we all know precisely what that means.

It’s essentially designed to be misleading so that no one will ever actually know what I truly do. (Laughter) And most of the ambiguity rests in the fact that what people struggle to grasp is that at think tanks a lot of people, like me, actually get paid to do whatever we want. So that explains it, partially.

But let me start at the top level -- the New America Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, and it’s one of the youngest and definitely the hottest think tank in Washington. And it has, as in other places, a mix of domestic and foreign policy experts, and it’s run by Steve Coll, the former Washington Post editor, and the chairman of the board is Eric Schmidt of Google, and it’s a very dynamic and lively place.

The American Strategy Program is the foreign-policy wing of the think tank, and it has people like Peter Bergen from CNN and myself and others. And the Global Governance Initiative is my particular program, in which I’m exploring the future of diplomacy, not just from the perspective of what happens to intergovernmental relations and the United Nations and standing institutions like the World Bank, but rather how do all of the important actors in the world today, like News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Initiative, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the US government -- all of these players exist in a very complicated diplomatic knit. And my project is intended to clarify what the new patterns of diplomacy are among them: How are they cooperating? What issues are they cooperating on? What’s their purpose? Diplomacy is the future of understanding how we run the world, basically.

That’s a very interesting position to be in. Have you seen any of your work creating any influence or ripples in the world around you?

Should I speak for myself or New America Foundation as a whole?

Both, if you can.

Well, what I do is I tend to go to countries and interview the leaders, but I don’t interview them like a journalist. I talk to their leaders as someone who’s developed a certain knowledge or expertise on emerging markets or rising powers. And I don’t so much interview people as I debate with them, and I argue with them, and I get them to say what they really believe, not what they want to see in the newspaper tomorrow. And that’s how I gathered the material for my book, in addition to reading a hell of a lot and traveling around countries and talking to all sorts of people.

I can’t take responsibility for the policies that other countries develop, but I’ve built up a substantial network of young and current leaders in a lot of countries and I have regular interactions with them on important issues. With the US government, I’ve worked with the Department of Defense advising on the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can’t actually talk about the specific things that went on there. As with many people who’ve been involved in the conflicts over there, I’ve tried to assert a certain way in which things should go, but influence is a very complicated landscape. We keep on pushing and pushing on certain issues, in the hope of seeing some kind of change.

New America Foundation has had a lot of success in areas like education policy, tax policy, climate policy as well -- it’s a very progressive place. But the question of influence is very interesting, and I think people should ask themselves more seriously -- whether they’re journalists or think tank people or academics -- “What’s the measure of my influence?” Is someone influential because millions of people read his column, or does anything actually ever change according to what he suggested or recommended? We tend to conflate the two measurements of visibility versus a change. I, for one, I like to set the bar very high and say, “Did something change?”

That’s very inspiring. I’d like to delve some more into application and talk about relatively current events. Obama’s been in office for a little over half a year, and when he was elected the global attitude toward him was much friendlier. Do you think that this friendlier global climate really will prove advantageous to the United States in diplomacy and foreign relations?

I think when people are struggling to understand public opinion toward the United States between the Bush administration and the Obama administration, there’s a very simple explanation that I never hear people give, which is that when Obama was running for President, he didn’t represent America, he represented the anti-Bush and a different America. But now that he’s President and represents America, he’s conflated again, so that Obama equals America. If American policy is still bad, now Obama takes the blame rather than Bush taking the blame. So if you want to explain the fall-off or drop-off in popularity or approval for Obama, that is how you’d explain it. Because people want or expect change instantaneously, and obviously they’re not going to get that because the power of inertia is so great.

Not only is the power of inertia great, in the case of the war in Iraq -- where in fact he’s been very fast, he’s been pulling troops out -- but it still takes time. In Afghanistan, his very controversial decision is that he’s trying to increase the number of troops there. In many people’s eyes that means deepening an occupation, digging in deeper, and that obviously also isn’t necessarily popular.

Now, I do believe he was quite revolutionary in his early diplomacy. He reached out within the first 100 days to the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and a whole host of countries that the Bush administration considered rogue states. And he said, “Look, it’s time to start anew, it’s time to work on pragmatic interests.” He canceled this whole missile defense plan that had no strategic defense whatsoever and that had been hampering American relations with Russia for years and years. And overnight, he just changed it. So I think he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for quickstarting a process in the first 100 days. And, of course, people will be disappointed if they don’t see reciprocal results right away. But they’re just not going to. That’s not the way it works. I still have a lot of faith in the process that he has initiated.

17 September 2009

Q&A with Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations, neurological curiosities and a passion for understanding

Famed neurologist Oliver Sacks was nice enough to let the TEDBlog into his office for an interview before his talk went up today. He hosted us for over an hour, discussing his new book about vision and the mind and giving details on the visual hallucinations that he's been experiencing since he lost vision in his right eye. Dr. Sacks proved as interesting as all rumors indicate, with an office full of his hobbies and interests -- from his expanding geological collection to an antique crystal radio (made in 1915) and a Wimshurst machine, it was a little oasis for the curious mind.

Well, first of all, it’s lovely to meet you. I think you’re probably very accustomed to people being impressed by your work.

And disappointed when they meet me in the flesh.

(Laughter)

What was TED like for you?

It was a wonderful sort of gathering. You never quite knew what was going to happen next. And there were so many creative people of every sort there. I think it was really rather astounding.

You’re currently writing a new book on hallucinations …

Well, it’s not just hallucinations, but they’ll be about half the book. The current title is The Mind’s Eye and it’s about vision and visions and visual memory, as inspired in the first place by people coming to see me as patients or writing letters. I get something like 200 letters a day, of which I answer about 30. I can't answer them all. But, I really feel very privileged because people write to me from all over and tell me interesting things that are going on with them. And, in a strange way, as a neurologist, I think I sometimes get my ideas in this way. You know, in health things are seamless. You would have no idea that color and motion and texture and depth are separately processed in the brain, because what we perceive, finally, is a whole visual world. But I often communicate with people who’ve lost just color perception or lost just stereo vision, which shows how things can go wrong. So yes, the hallucinations fascinate me, but mostly because they show how the brain works in everyday life.

But also, as a physician, I need to be in a position to reassure people with a particular sort of hallucination that they’re not going mad. They’re not losing their mind. And the word hallucination has bad vibes. It immediately suggests something ominous. It’s sort of a pity we don’t have another word. Although, curiously, I was just reading an 1824 book called The Philosophy of Apparitions and in those days “apparitions” was used, or “phantoms.” They’re both nice words. You talk about phantom limb, you don’t talk about a hallucinatory leg. Somehow, a phantom limb sounds better.

You wrote this book A Leg to Stand On and it was about your experience of having the leg, but having the feeling of leglessness, the opposite of phantom limb. And now you’re writing many years later about hallucinations and I’ve been told that you’re having some hallucinations yourself, in fact.

Well, I don’t have much vision in the right eye. I had a tumor in the right eye, which has been irradiated and lasered, and I hope laid to rest. But that has taken most of the retina with it on that side and so I’ve only got a little sliver of peripheral vision and the rest is a great black area of scotoma, which changes its appearance as soon as I look up at the ceiling -- then it camouflages and turns white, or turns blue if I look at the sky. And it tends to be full of tiny things, of tiny letters and numbers, which look rather like incised hieroglyphics to me, along with a few other simple things like chessboards and spirals and spiders’ webs. So I’m just having fairly simple geometrical hallucinations. I’m not having faces or anything like this, and don’t expect to have them.

But they’re very easy to separate from reality?

Um, yes. Mostly. Although occasionally, I confess, certainly in the early days, when I would perhaps go in to someone’s apartment, I might think, “What an interesting … what a curious stippled wallpaper.” And I’d mention this. And the person would say, “What do you mean stippled? It’s not stippled.” So, now I realize the stippling comes from me, from the visual areas of my brain which area trying to fill in this rather large blind spot.

But with hallucinations that are complex and more plausible and in context, then it can be different. that are complex and more plausible and in context, then it can be different. There’s a historical description, from the Charles Lullin in the 1750s where he first saw a gigantic wheel in mid-air and he thought, “Oh, so that’s a hallucination. We don’t have gigantic wheels in mid-air.” But then his granddaughters came to visit and he said, “Who are these handsome young men with you?” and they looked downcast, because there weren’t any handsome young men. But, there could have been. They were sufficiently plausible.

And it can go the other way around. I got a story about someone who’d become very used to his hallucinations and very cool about it. He lived on the 19th floor of an apartment building, and one day he saw someone hovering outside his window. You don’t have someone hundreds of feet off the ground, so he thought it was a hallucination. And the hallucination apparently waved at him. He paid no attention. And then of course, the window cleaner talked to the person next door and said, “What’s wrong with him? I waved at him and he didn’t respond.” So there, reality was mistaken for a hallucination.

Things like this conjure up, for example, images of that movie A Beautiful Mind, based on the life of John Nash, where the lead character has to learn to recognize what is reality and what is hallucination.

Well, first, that film is quite a long way from the book. There’s a certain distinction from reality -- although I know John Nash a little, and, he was quite approving of the book and the film. On the whole, visual hallucinations are not nearly as common in schizophrenia as voice hallucinations. But, the sort of hallucinations I’m dealing with here are very different from psychotic hallucinations. Psychotic hallucinations seem to be often intimately connected with what one is thinking or feeling and they may address one and command one, or accuse one or seduce one. his is unlike the sort of hallucinations that blind people can get, when the brain is not getting its normal input but the visual parts of the brain still stay active and may develop their own output. The people who have these sorts of hallucinations think they see them on a screen or possibly their room, but they don’t interact with the hallucination. When I talked at TED I think I described one patient with this sort of hallucination. I said to her, “Is it like a dream?” And she said, “No, it’s not. It’s like a movie. A rather boring movie.”

So, one of the things I was saying at the beginning and I have to illustrate this, is that I’m writing about something that is a rather different thing than psychotic hallucinations such as John Nash’s. The next book will be about that. Maybe.

People often use say that I study mental illness. But I am not a psychiatrist; I study people with neurological problems and not primarily mental illness as such.

02 September 2009

Q&A with Cary Fowler: Saving seeds to protect our food supplies

Before Cary Fowler's TEDTalk posted on Monday, the TEDBlog caught up with him in Norway, via phone. We asked the difficult questions and he provided calm, leveled answers on the food crises of today. He's taken on a challenging role, as director of the largest seed bank in the world and the Global Crop Diversity Trust, but his hope and enthusiasm were enough to inspire faith in the largest of skeptics.

What was TED like for you?

I met some extraordinary people, both other speakers and people in the audience. Some people I think I’ll keep in touch with for a long time. But what was really special was being there with my son. You know, all TED speakers can bring one person, and I brought my son. He was the youngest person in the audience. It was wonderful to see it through his eyes. He came away saying, “Everything is possible.”

How does one come to do what you do? Why did you decide to make saving seeds your life’s work?

Well, it was not the result of some sort of logical thought process. It was a combination of personal factors. To begin with, I’ve always known that I was a little bit different. And, I have a lot of relatives who own farms. I grew up in the American South where political issues and issues of justice were at the forefront. What I do now is a combination of all these factors.

The drive behind what I do is really to make sure that people don’t go to bed hungry. It’s not just that I have a love of diversity, it’s the importance of the uses of that diversity.

I first went into social services, and when I did my PhD I looked at intellectual diversity rights as they apply to biological material. At the time, I never thought of what I’m doing now as a career. I thought I wouldn’t find employment doing this.

How often do you go to the remote seed vault in Norway and how much time do you spend there?

Not long. I go up maybe four, five, six times a year for about a week to 10 days. The facility is designed to run by itself. We need to go up there to check on things and to place seeds in the vault, but that’s it. We coordinate the shipments so that we’re not hanging out, waiting for the seeds to arrive. It’s designed to work without human beings and that’s one of the integral functions.

Wow. I admit that a facility that functions without people conjures up images of the end of the world or Armageddon for me.

A lot of people ask about Armageddon, but really it’s just an insurance policy for all the different seed banks in the world. We don’t need Armageddon to make this a useful facility. Unfortunately, we’ll probably have to use it quite frequently.

But, the facility is a sign of hope, not hopelessness or fear or dread about the future. We know that there are problems, my sense of despair comes when I know we’re not addressing the problem.

Speaking of addressing problems, in your talk, you mentioned the goal of finding crops that could weather climate change. How far out are we from doing that?

We have a long way to go because we’re going to have to do it for the every crop. The means for adaptation are also very complicated. Not only is the temperature going to rise but, for example, in Southern Africa we’re going to have a big increase in very hot days, so that will reduce the growing season of the crops. There are many ways to address this. One of the things heat does is to kill pollen, so maybe the plant needs to flower earlier in the day, before the pollen dies. We have a lot of work to do just to identify these traits. Sometimes it will be earlier flowering, sometimes a different leaf structure. There are a lot of things we need to learn about how plants adapt to less water and more heat.

20 July 2009

Q&A with Nina Jablonski: Society and skin

Before her TEDTalk went up on Friday, anthropologist and skin expert Nina Jablonski took some time out of writing her new book to talk to the the TEDBlog. Nina had a lot to say about how our skin affects how we are perceived, sometimes in ways we want it to and sometimes in much more pernicious ways.

Are you excited that your TEDTalk is being posted?

I’m very excited, very happy. I greatly enjoyed being at TED and the atmosphere of the gathering. Also, I think the spread of TEDTalks via the Internet is even more important than being there. It’s all over the world. I know people all over the world who watch TEDTalks. It’s important to get these ideas out to more and more people. One can never predict where one’s idea might go.

So, of all the things you could study, why skin?

It started as an accident more than 15 years ago. I was asked by a colleague to give a lecture in his class, on skin. This lecture was being give to an introductory class of human biology. I read up on the relevant materials, but then realized that I also wanted to tell the students about the evolution of skin. As I started looking for information, I discovered that the research on that topic was scarce. My interest was piqued by this deficiency of information on the evolution of our largest organ.
Then, I went to a seminar where I saw a lecture by a colleague on skin that gave me incredible insight. The insight was sufficiently important that I decided it was time to run with it, despite my lack of experience in this research area. The next step was that I wrote a paper to propose my new hypothesis. That was 17 years ago, in 1992. I just put it out there, and I thought if anything ever arises, at least I’ve written it. In the meantime, I kept my antennae twitching for new research.

Then, in 1995 to ’96, new data on UV radiation at the Earth’s surface was released from NASA. This allowed me to investigate my hypothesis rigorously. With my husband’s help, he’s a geographer and statistician, that’s when the project really started. We began developing data on why UV levels and skin color correlated. Then, in 2003, the University of California press said, “You really should write a book on skin in general.” So, I said, “OK.” One thing led to another. It was the prompting of my editor that got me to think about including the evolution of skin, not just skin and the sun. It’s a very broad topic.

Speaking of which, in your book you talk about skin decoration and how humans are unique in decorating our skin by tattoos, make-up and more. What do you think this means?

We do have an awareness of ourselves that allows us to engage in willful decoration that other animals do not engage in. These dramatically change our appearance and how we are perceived. You can put on a particular set of clothes and make-up or body paint and have a completely different perception.

We can make ourselves appear more sexually appealing to members of a particular group, or more threatening. At football games, people wear all sorts of face paint because they want to look fierce and war-like. These are very specific visual signals that are meant to get particular responses. These things have real evolutionary value. There’s an advantage to being good at putting on make-up and sending the correct signal. You don’t have to look very far. Open up any women’s magazine and you’ll see tips on applying make-up. But all those tips are geared to creating a particular appearance that we know from evolutionary biology makes one appear more sexually attractive.

All the ways of decorating skin make statements that impact how people treat you. Knowing how to decorate can even make one more successful at attracting certain groups of friends.

One of the most obvious factors in our skin’s appearance is its color, and you talk about the origins of color in your talk. But, what about how skin color has historically affected our behavior towards each other?

Skin color is the story of pigment in the skin, having been determined by UV radiation. If your ancestors were closer to the equator, you are dark and if further away, you are lighter. The biology is very straightforward. But, history is much more complicated and hard to comprehend.

People have placed values in skin color based on who interacted with who. The most insidious of these interactions is the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 1500s. A lightly-pigmented people in a position of power and mobility went by ship to a different part of the world where they found a darkly-pigmented people. As we know, they created slaves of these people on the African continent, in the equatorial area. Many of the problems with color we face today came to be because of interactions started by the slave trade.

The easiest way to establish the dominance needed for the system of slavery to function is to establish visual mechanisms, which in this case was the color of these slaves. What you then see is the literary development of black as bad, negative, as mentally and spiritually inefficient. This is the toxin that created created much of the race debate.

People are color-coded in very visible ways. We are very visually-oriented as primates and color makes a big difference to us. We notice subtle differences in color and these can be perceived as social value if given the right narrative. These values exist in India, Japan, China and elsewhere. In most places where you find a gradation of color, you get this phenomenon of colorism. There’s a general prejudice against darkly pigmented skin and a bias toward lightly pigmented skin.

Even within African-American, Caribbean and Latin American communities you can find this prejudice and it’s a derivative of the slave trade. Light brown versus dark brown. And it can be very subtle, this color difference, but it’s just enough for us to distinguish. And this really concerns me, because -- what happens to that dark-colored child? They feel that they have limited prospects or possibilities. This to me is the most poisonous aspect. This is one of the most injurious things we can do to a child. Stopping this is part of my life’s work now. I’ll tell you more about that a little later on.

09 July 2009

Q&A with Sophal Ear: From refugee stories to international policies

In yesterday's TEDTalk, development economist and political scientist Sophal Ear shared the deeply personal story of his family's escape from the Khmer Rouge. In today's interview with the TED Blog, he continues that story and gives us details on his current path in international aid policy.

Your mother cleverly pretended to be Vietnamese to escape the Khmer Rouge, but how did your family continue to survive after reaching Vietnam?

Yes, you see, just getting to Vietnam we weren’t off the hook. The Vietnamese required that people who had returned from Cambodia be picked up by their relatives, or they would be sent to “kinh tế mới” (New Economic Life) -- which was essentially hard-labor, working in agriculture.

My aunt, my mother’s sister, was married to a Vietnamese man and living in Vietnam. Somehow, my mother got to the market and managed to meet a friend who then got word to her sister that we had arrived in Vietnam. It was a completely random occurrence. Her sister’s husband managed -- I think he must have bribed his way through -- to get us in the middle of the night from where we were detained. Then we went to Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, where we spent one and a half years before we got out.

There was no way to get to the US, where my mother had another sister living in California. We redeclared ourselves as Cambodian, and as we were not Vietnamese there was suddenly no problem with letting us leave. They wanted us out! My mother had a nephew in France who was a university student. He was really poor, just a starving student. And, he had to somehow figure out a way to get us all there. My aunt in the US sent him some money. Then, he happened to meet a French gentleman who, for some unknown reason, decided that he wanted to help. This gentleman went to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find out what could be done. He then found a lady whose last name was the same as my mother’s, and convinced her to sign paperwork claiming familial ties.

Now, keep in my mind that through all of this my mother has five kids with her, and two of them she hadn’t given birth to. One was my half-sibling and another is an adopted daughter. When this opportunity came about, people offered her money left and right to switch their children with hers. She could have compromised her principles, she needed the money. But, she didn’t.

We all managed to make it to France by ’78. We were only supposed to be staying there temporarily. But, for some reason, my mother just decides that she’s had enough and we’re going to stay put indefinitely. It ended up being seven years before we moved to the US, to California. That’s when I started seventh grade as an American kid.

My mother struggled so much, sacrificed so much, and by doing so she allowed all the kids to pursue their dreams. And our story, it’s about the kindness of strangers, about people taking critical actions at critical points. It’s not Schindler’s List, but just five siblings who were able to succeed despite difficult circumstances.

Can you speak a little more to the value of civil complaints like the one you filed about your father?

I feel that the tribunal as it’s currently set up at least allows for civil complaints, which I think is important, but I’ve been a skeptic. It’s deeply troubled. I’m not trying to be an advocate for the tribunal itself. I don’t want to lend credibility to a process by sanctifying the tribunal in some way. I have to accept that it’s deeply troubled -- with corruption and such. In 2002, I wrote to The New York Times and praised the UN for pulling out of discussions with the authorities, as the UN was clearly being manipulated.

For me, the complaint is really about justice for the past accountability for the future. If you have a situation where nearly two million people die and no-one is held to account, then it can happen again. Impunity is a problem in Cambodia. If you’ve got power and money, then nothing can happen to you. As a victim -- and I hate to call myself that -- but, this could be a step towards holding those who are responsible to account.

Also, although some in the international community consider the state of affairs in Cambodia to be disagreeable, they don’t see what’s happening now as unacceptable because if you’re better than the Khmer Rouge, then you’re OK. Many current political leaders are, let’s face it, former Khmer Rouge lower-ranking cadres. Obviously, there are issues of reconciliation and governance when some of your own people caused this.

But, at least, I can put it on record that my father passed away and that it was as a result of the conditions he was subjected to.

Today you work on post-conflict reconstruction and development. How much of what you do today has been influenced by the events of your childhood and your experiences? Did you always want to do this?

I grew up as a refugee. My experience has been very different from that of people who haven’t. I’ve traveled and lived around the world. It’s shaped my view of my responsibility to others. I feel like I have a responsibility to help other people in conflict situations.

I went back to Cambodia in 1996. I was riding around in a cyclo, which is essentially a rickshaw, and being led by this young boy who was about my age at the time. I couldn’t help thinking, “If I had stayed here, if my family hadn’t been able to escape, I would have been him.” I’ve been very lucky.

And, because I was a refugee in France, I speak fluent French. People think that I’ve had a privileged childhood because of my languages and my traveling. But, no, I haven’t. And as a result of all this, I was able to work for The World Bank as my first job coming out of Princeton. There, because of my French, I ended-up working on Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

You’ve spoken to your family’s achievements, but you’ve achieved quite a lot in your own right. Could you tell us about your personal journey as a young man?

I think I was very lucky. Just as we talked about those refugee stories and how random those things can be, that’s how my life continued. As a kid, I was going to school in the Bay Area and so I knew, of the universities around, I needed to go to Berkeley. Now, when I came to the US, I was placed in seventh grade at 10, so that I was at Berkeley at 16. And the opportunities were all very rich.

I got to Princeton because I saw a flyer on the Berkeley campus for a public policy program at Princeton. I decided to apply because, naively, I wanted to see New York. I had this idea that Princeton was much nearer the city than it is! Anyway, I was accepted and I went.

Then, I ended up at Princeton doing my Masters, and while I was there I remember being asked what I wanted to do. I said that I wanted to be a governor at the World Bank, and I didn’t realize then that I would first have to be the Finance Minister of a country in order to be a governor. And then, my first day out of Princeton, I did a phone interview for a job with the World Bank and I became a consultant for something called social protection -- I didn’t even know what that was at the time. I do now!

On July 1, 1997, I was in DC and started work at the World Bank. Social protection turned out to be, essentially, international welfare policy. I had grown up on welfare, so now to be working on these policies was simply amazing.

But then, what do I do next? I was 25, I had all this experience, but I really looked like I was still a kid. I decided to do a PhD. I ended up working on a dissertation that explored aid dependence and governance. You see, I discovered at the World Bank that things were not working quite the way they were supposed to. It was at the point where religious organizations were promoting debt forgiveness because countries simply could not repay their debts.

I’ve really been lucky. It’s been a series of random occurrences. I could not have imagined all that has happened to me. To work at the World Bank, to get to work on Cambodia, to think that my country of origin could benefit from what I’m doing is amazing. Now, I feel that I’ve had some impact on the issues around Cambodian development. I’m glad that at a critical point I could make a difference.

22 June 2009

Facebook asked Philip Zimbardo absolutely anything -- and he answered

Today, eminent psychologist and TEDTalks star Philip Zimbardo (see his talks on evil and the paradox of time) agreed to answer TED's Facebook fans' questions on Absolutely Anything -- and he did! Read on:

Does time orientation influence which children become bullies? -- Kathy Hermanv

Interesting question, but there's no research on this relationship. Bullies are often people who are shy and can't make friends easily, so, as the theme of the movie A Bronx Tale tells us, it is better to be feared if you can't be loved. They substitute dominance for social support, and may have been abused earlier so carry on the use of power in dealing with others. They graduate onto becoming workplace bullies and making many other worker's lives miserable. However, bullies may be the perpetrators of evil but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse.

[Ed: Check out Dr. Zimbardo's book, The Time Paradox for a detailed look at his new thinking on the hidden psychological power of time.]

What causes feelings of embarrassment in shy people? -- Malin Frankenhaeuser

Lots of stuff: feeling as the object of the other's attention, feeling being evaluated or judged, singled out even for commendation, alone with a member of opposite sex, feeling inadequate around superiors, even imagining future scenarios of social failures. Check out my books: Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It, and The Shy Child.

How do you keep love alive? -- Chris West

Remembering and enacting the song: "I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow." Say each day, "l love you." Do something that makes the object of love feel special, wanted, and desired. Put Post-its around with hearts and your initials and that of your loved one. If it is romantic love, work at making love as often as possible and with as much sensuous pleasure as possible. Don't have sex when you are tired, overfed or drunk or bored; just go to sleep and do it the next day.

Is suffering a part of what it means to be a hero? -- Pedro Fontes

Not at all. My definition of heroism is "taking action on behalf of others (or a moral cause) in need, with awareness of potential personal cost and no expectation of tangible rewards." Others may be suffering of being unfairly wronged, and the hero recognizes that injustice or pain and acts socio-centrically to prevent or mitigate the wrong or the pain. See my website, TheLuciferEffect.com (celebrating heroism), EverydayHeroism.org.

What is the greatest mistake the field of psychology has made? -- Justin Paine

Focusing for so long on the negatives in human nature, like mental illness, aggression, prejudice and antisocial behavior. Psychologists are optimists who believe that understanding the causal mechanisms in such phenomena they can begin to prevent, modify or change such negative states and behaviors. However, this focus on the Yin prevented most psychologists from recognizing the Yang -- the positives about people and human nature. That focus on the negative is being corrected by the Positive Psychology movement, started by U. Penn. Professor Martin Seligman in 1998. Just this weekend that group held the first annual International Positive Psychology Association World Congress in Philadelphia, attended by more than 1,700 people from more than 30 nations. Their focus is recognizing and building human strengths and virtues, and doing so across the school curriculum, in business and the military and more. It is an exciting new field of scientific research, education and application.

Which political system is the most humane? -- Xenia Benivolski

People want fairness, justice and to have the opportunity to make a difference in the world they inhabit. They want to succeed by merit and effort. In general, participatory democracy can help best to achieve such goals and needs, where it is truly created and maintained by the will of the people and is not merely illusionary democracies, where votes are rigged or fraud and corruption dominates. We are in the midst of a unique world experience in Iran, created by the electronic revolution that is making the entire world instantly aware of that likely fraudulent vote and the need for an honest, supervised re-casting of votes. In the past, the United States government has supported a bunch of pseudo-democracies around the world as long as their leaders were anti-Communism or even fascist juntas.

Is there such a thing as a good cult? -- Christopher Glass

Great question. It is one I used to pose in my Mind Control course at Stanford University, going one step further and inviting students to design such a cult. Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a "cult"; they become one when their errant ways are exposed. A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them.

17 June 2009

Q&A with Diane Benscoter: Joining, leaving and ultimately defeating the cult

Today, we posted Diane Benscoter's revealing talk on being a Moonie and how cult thought can lead people to do the unthinkable. It's a topic that's not often talked about and that fascinates many, so, to bring you more from Diane the TEDBlog caught up with her for an interview. We talked about her time with the Moonies, her efforts as a deprogrammer and her ideas about how we should be fighting cults and extremism around the world.

Could you speak a little more about how you came to join the Moonies?

I had just turned 17. I was very idealistic. The Vietnam War really bothered me. I had a good friend with a brother in Vietnam. I was determined to find a community that would stop the madness. I went off in search of something like that. I went off on this Walk for World Peace. It was a five day walk, and during the entire walk there would be two people walking with me at all times, talking about this new world they were going to build, saying that I was special and chosen by God to be a part of this, otherwise I wouldn’t be there. There were lectures every night. And slowly I came to believe that they were right, and that Sun Myung Moon was the second coming of the Messiah.

What was it like once you were in the group? What was it like to live as a Moonie?

It was constantly reinforced that we had a purpose that was much higher than that of anyone else in the world. It was pretty appealing to be a part of something like that. But, I missed my freedom. There were times when I really missed being like the people I saw on the street every day. But, it was constantly reinforced that I was saving the world, so I trusted my beliefs and gave up my freedom.

I spent most of my days fundraising -- selling candy and flowers. I started in Nebraska and began living in their Nebraska center. I cut my hair off and cut my ties with my family. I was shipped off not long after I joined, for training at a “monastery” in upstate New York. Then I began my mission -- fundraising. We lived in vans and went from place to place selling candy and flowers. We also went back for training over and over, and the trainings were pretty long. One of them was 120 days. They reinforced beliefs and erased any doubts during their training. They kept the circular logic intact.

What was this experience like for your family?

They were desperate. You see, it wasn’t like I came from a family that was dysfunctional or abusive. I came from a normal, loving home. My mother was especially desperate to get me out. And when they did talk to me, all I wanted was to get them to join. I thought Satan was using them, was talking through them. They suffered greatly. Now that I’m a parent, I can’t imagine how hard it was for them.

They did everything they could. My mom really wanted to have me deprogrammed, my dad wasn’t as sure. It’s a drastic measure. And what if it didn’t work? He was afraid that if they tried, and it didn’t work, that they might lose me forever.

Could you speak a little bit about deprogramming? You were deprogrammed and became a deprogrammer, but it’s a rather controversial practice and many think that it brings up ethical issues relating to free will.

Yeah, I have a lot to say on this topic, but I’ll try to give the main points first. One -- involuntary deprogrammings, which I was involved with, aren’t really taking place anymore and definitely not as they were. Looking back on it, I think there are ethical issues there. Still, I totally understand why people did it, why I did it -- desperation, not knowing what to do, love of their child. You’re dealing with a problem that hasn’t been defined psychologically, so you can’t lock people in a mental hospital for it.

Now, I had one foot in and one foot out of the Moonies when I was deprogrammed. My faith was already wavering. Also, I had a loving family. But, to pull a belief system away from someone who doesn’t have the correct support system can be very dangerous. It’s like chemotherapy. Chemotherapy many times cures cancer, but it can also kill people. So, I’m not going to say that deprogramming is the way. And that‘s why I’ve gone in the direction of prevention.

Also, some people came to deprogramming more professionally that others. Some made mistakes and some used really admirable techniques. For the most part, in the ones that I was a part of, we just talked to the person and made sure that they ate and slept well. We were trying to introduce rational thought and a healthy mental state. We presented no new philosophy and no desire for them to take up any of our personal beliefs. We simply tried to explain that much of what they had been told was not true and was possibly brainwashing. We based our techniques on psychological theory, especially the work of Robert Lifton.

05 June 2009

Q&A with Yann Arthus-Bertrand: The environmentalist behind the camera

Today, photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand launched his movie Home, an environmentally conscious tour of our planet through panoramic vistas that focuses on human impact -- our mistakes and possibilities for improvement. Yann took some time out of this busy day to answer a few questions for the TEDBlog by email, going beyond his recent TEDTalk to give us insight on his attempts to document and save our home and humanity.

How was your experience at TED? Did you enjoy giving a TEDTalk?

Wonderful experience, especially the audience and the people I met during the sessions. It would be great if we did something similar to TED in France.

As you can see and hear, even with a lot of rehearsals, I’m not a great speaker. I guess that’s why I take pictures and made a movie.

Have you seen your TEDTalk online? What did you think of it?

Not yet. The last few days have been hectic.

Today is Home’s world premiere. It’s happening in more than 100 countries, in 33 languages and on 65 TV channels from Nepal to Burkina Faso, from Russia to Argentina, and of course in the United States.

Is there anything you would have liked to say in your TEDTalk, but didn’t have time to?

Don’t tempt me. I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.

Why the aerial photography? How did you come to decide that this was the perspective for you? Not scared of heights, we take it?

I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masaï Mara Reserve, in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.

What are the mechanics behind getting your aerial shots? Your website says that helicopters are best, but what do use when one isn’t available? Do you use harnesses for safety?

I have the impression that I'm photographing life, not landscapes. For me an aerial picture is no different than a close-up portrait. It’s a question of framing and angle. Helicopters are great for that. But I’ve also used planes. Of course, I always have a harness.

Any close calls when leaning out of an aircraft to capture an amazing shot? Would you like to share the story?

After Hurricane Katrina, over New Orleans, my helicopter crashed and the pilot and I were only saved because we fell on the roof of a flooded house that absorbed the shock. When the helicopter was spiraling downward out of control, I didn’t expect to survive at all.

You’re a photographer, but also an environmentalist in many ways. Was there a particular experience or time in your life, maybe in your childhood, that sparked your commitment to building awareness of our environment and your fascination with nature?

My fondness for nature goes back to childhood, but it was as an adult that I became an advocate. Like a lot of people, it was in 1992, during the Earth Summit in Rio, that for the first time I heard expressions like climate change, biodiversity, sustainable development. I felt like an urgency to act -- or to put it in another way, to use my work for this cause.

29 May 2009

Q&A with Kaki King: The evolution of a guitarist

In 2008, Kaki King charmed and impressed the TED community with her melodic and exuberant style of guitar-playing. Yesterday, TED's Media Production Specialist Angela Cheng spoke with Kaki over the phone in hopes of learning more about her influences, the ever-changing music writing process, and what she gleaned from TED.

How was your day?

Good. I ran around a lot and lost track of time. It would have been more fun if it wasn’t for the rain. I’m doing this new project where I’m looking for twelve artists to provide blank guitars for them to design or re-create. And the theme of each piece would be the title of one of my songs. I haven’t been on tour for the last two months, which is rare, and I’m a bit of a workaholic so I’m keeping busy. Otherwise I go stir-crazy.

Do you enjoy touring?

I’m very used to it. There are a lot of places that I know extremely well. Like if I were to visit Sydney, Australia, I’d feel very comfortable there. I’m very comfortable in many many cities.

You’re originally from Atlanta, but New York is now your home. Do you ever miss the South?

Yes. My mom and dad and uncle and sister all live in Atlanta. I have relatives in Texas. I do try to visit as much as possible. It’s wonderful that all my family is there and I get to go there and chill out. It’s very peaceful. I have a very strong tie – not necessarily to the South – but to nature.

How much of the South is in your music?

I definitely will say that being in the vicinity gave me a lot more access to bluegrass music. Bluegrass is not a clear influence. But you have to play bluegrass music at a very high level of skill. Anything involved with taking things to a higher level of skill really interests me.

A lot of people have characterized your music as “percussive.” In fact, you started off wanting to play drums. Does it make sense to say that percussion has a lot of influence on your style?

Yes it does, and not only "percussion," but the independence between the hands that you learn as a drummer helped me become a much more creative guitar player.

You started off as a solo musician, but now you collaborate with a full band. What was it like making the transition, in both writing and playing?

The writing remains the same. I write almost every single part of my songs, even the actual drum parts sometimes, whether they be simple or layered with many different instruments. The great thing about havinga band for the first time was that I didn't have to work as hard onstage at making all of these different sounds myself. I could just sit back and let the band play the parts I had written.

Do you have a typical music writing process?

Right now I’m at the very beginning of the new writing process for a new album. The process changes for every record, every song. For my first two records, there was an intimacy between me and the songs because I hung out with them so much. You have less time the busier you get. At this point, after putting out an album, I have to re-learn the songs that I’ve written.

In the past, most of what I’ve written, I’ve written during times of pain or loneliness, and the music is therapy. Things change when you get older. I’ve followed the lives of great musicians and have learned that you don’t have to always write in pain. You have all of your past experiences, feelings, and thoughts that you can turn on when you need them and turn off when you don’t. Right now I feel a bit older and wiser and I don’t need to go out and create a painful or sad situation or feel estranged from the universe.

Also, all experiences are relevant to making art or music. Right now I’m learning the piano. I’m not going to become a piano player, but I do know that in some way it will open up my world and give me inspiration for my music.

20 May 2009

Q&A with Mary Roach: Revealing the science of sex

Yesterday, the TEDBlog caught up with author Mary Roach to discuss her brand new TEDTalk and her latest book, Bonk, that captures the most interesting tidbits on the science of sex throughout history. With amazing ease, Mary frankly addressed lack of orgasms among women, her sex life, and participating in clinical sex research with her husband. It's our sexiest Q&A yet.

So, are you excited to see your TEDTalk go up?

I’m delighted! I’m so excited about it. I just hope I don’t create moral outrage and sully the good name of TED with my little talk.

I’m sure you won’t. Jumping off, I’d like to ask at least one serious question -- you had such funny facts about orgasm, but what about the less funny, large proportion of women that have difficulty achieving orgasm? Did you come across research on this?

Well, I didn’t really go into the therapy aspect of sexual dysfunction. Mainly, I was looking at lab-tested physiological research. But, there’s a chapter in Bonk about the distance between the clitoris and the vagina and if a physical difference there could play a role in orgasm. You know, asking: Is there a single physical factor? I loved that research.

Actually, the guy doing this research was re-running numbers originally gathered by Marie Bonaparte, who is Napoleon’s niece, and had great personal difficulty achieving orgasm. She even had her clitoris surgically moved closer to her vagina. Unfortunately, she later became a Freudian theorist, and of course Freud said that the clitoris was for little girls and that all pleasure really came from the vagina. That couldn’t have helped her in her quest.

But, even if that physical difference is a factor, it’s not very large. You can change positions. I think it’s much more about how comfortable you are. They say that women’s sexual peaks are in their 30s or 40s, and I think that it happens because they’re more comfortable. It’s not some hormonal change that happens at that age. Of course, it would be nice to have more physiological insight on that.

By the way, Marie Bonparte’s husband turned out to be gay. But we know that’s not why she didn’t have orgasms as she had an affair with the Prime Minister of France, who was not gay, and couldn’t climax with him either.

You’re full of fun facts! Another semi-serious question -- the pig stimulation looks like a lot of work. Is a six percent increase in probability of fertilization really worth all that?

Well, I don’t have the numbers, but I’m guessing that it’s not as popular with smaller pig farmers. I can’t imagine them doing this for 12 piglets or so more a year. But, at larger farms with a big bottom line, it’s probably well worth it. Yeah, any mom and pop pig farmers would say, “Are you out of your mind?”

Now that we’re on the topic of animal orgasms, just wondering, have you come across any research of which species have orgasms? Do cockroaches have orgasms?

When researchers have bothered to look into it with different species, they’ve always found that they do have orgasms. But it’s not common that they do unless they’re trying to produce more pigs. I think it’s a big unknown.

And how do you prove it? How many iterations do you need -- you know, how many cockroaches do you need to examine before you can prove the negative? And how do you know what an orgasm looks like in all these different species? The pig in the video doesn’t look to us like she’s having an orgasm. Anne Marie Hedeboe, the representative from the Danish National Committee actually said, "Speaking for myself, I hope she does. But we're really just hoping to produce more pigs."

So, after two years of researching and writing a book about sex, is your sex life better?

Yeah, in very subtle ways. The book’s not a how-to but you do learn lot about how bodies work.

Also, there was a period of time when I was reading Human Sexual Response by Masters and Johnson, which is very detailed -- and that was hard because knowing this stuff turns you into a spectator in your own bedroom. You find yourself going,“Oh, are you having post-ejaculatory sensitivity today, honey?” So that was disturbing, particularly for my husband.

What about how other people see you? Now that you’ve written a book about sex, do people find you sexier?

You know, I was looking forward to that but it hasn’t happened. When I wrote Stiff, people thought I was this really twisted, weird person. Now, I thought they would think, “Mary’s really into sex. She’s really hot.” But, I haven’t gotten it. I’ve gotten three emails from men saying here’s my address if you want to try some new things. But that was it. Literally, three emails.

Well, there’s still time. And your TEDTalk is going up tomorrow.

That’s true. We’ll see!

15 May 2009

Q&A with Hans Rosling (Part 2): How to change Fidel Castro's mind ... and everybody else's

In the second half of the TEDBlog's interview with global health professor and stats expert Hans Rosling, he gets personal. With his usual wit, Hans tells stories of winning over Fidel Castro, remembers his battle with testicular cancer and explains why we can't get enough of him. If you need to catch up before diving into Part 2, read Part 1 of the interview or watch his newest TEDTalk, posted on Wednesday.

While we’re discussing world leaders -- rumor has it that you have out-talked Fidel Castro. Would you like to tell that story?

Oh, that’s a very good story. It was 1993 in Cuba, and there was a huge outbreak of neuropathy which is basically damage to the nerves. It causes great damage to the legs and the eyes. There were 40,000 cases across the island. In May of ’93, I was approached by the Cuban Embassy in Sweden and invited to join a team of scientists going to Cuba. I agreed.

We were very well received in Cuba. I discovered that the Cuban government and professionals are great to make deals with. They keep to their word. If they don’t want something, they don’t want it, but if they say yes ...

Fidel Castro actually came to me on the first day and chatted with me. It was a chat to go through my CV and check if it was true. Because of my work and time living in Africa, I have a Fidel-loving CV and he wanted to be sure all of this was true. He asked a lot of trick questions, but I passed the test.

I liked that he had stopped smoking, as leader of a country famous for their cigars. But, I also decided not to fall into calling him a great leader and all these things. I did not want to either promote or criticize the Cuban government, but to do what I was invited to do.

I told Castro that I would like to use qualitative research methods, incorporate some anthropology. But this was 1993, and it was very early to be using these methods in public health research. Now it’s totally accepted, but then it was a very new idea. And it was important to use in this case as I had noticed that the tobacco-growing provinces had much higher frequency of the condition. Also, the food distribution was equal in Cuba but the disease distribution was unequal, so that link was gone. So I said, “Let’s not just do a questionnaire here.” Quantitative people don’t like you to say that. So there was some argument, and that was the moment when Castro came in.

We sat for three or four hours and we got into a discussion over the details, the very smallest details. At one point I said, “We need to do good research.” He misunderstood me and thought that I meant that the research of his scientists was low quality. So he also had to give me a long lecture about how good the Cubans were at epidemiology. And it’s difficult to stop Castro when he begins talking -- almost as difficult as it is to stop me. But then I said, “Can I tell you a story?” And as a Cuban, he immediately said, “Yes.”

So, I told him that I had watched a documentary on him, and he asked me more questions to verify that I remembered it all correctly and it was all true -- and I passed. And then I said, “I liked especially when you lived in the Sierra Maestra. You worked along with the people, you ate with them, you played with their children. You must have learnt so much about them.” And he said, “Yes. Yes, we did.” And I replied, “But you didn’t have any questionnaires!” He laughed at that. So, I told him, “You see, today the methods of Sierra Maestra have become science.” He sort of liked that.

The next day the Minister of Health and the head of the Armed Forces and such all sat down with me for a meeting and said, “We would like you to stay in Cuba for the next six months. Tell us who you would like to work with.” So I stayed, and we did exactly the studies I had proposed.

I stayed for only three months, but I learned a lot about Cuba. And I will say this: What you think is good in Cuba is much better than you think. And what you think is bad in Cuba is much worse than you think.

14 May 2009

Q&A with Hans Rosling (Part 1): A deeper look at AIDS transmission and disease stats

On Monday, the TEDBlog had a long chat with Hans Rosling, the extraordinary global health professor that makes data come alive. He had his third TEDTalk posted yesterday and again wowed us all, explaining complex information with animated graphs -- and humor. In this interview, he delves into his theories on concurrency and AIDS transmission, our ideological ruts and developing the Obama-meter!

Hans had so much interesting news to share, that we had to split our interview in two! Return tomorrow for Part 2 of the interview, when Hans will recount meeting Fidel Castro, explain how cancer changed him and divulge the secret of why we love him so.

So, you’ve seen your TEDTalk already?

Oh yes, and I got so disappointed because, first, I went over the time. Also, we had technical problems and spent the last two hours before my talk debugging the presentation. So, the presentation I gave is not as good as the version that was on my computer. It just did not come out well at all. You know, it’s a real challenge to talk about a subject as complicated as AIDS in front of a large audience.

And I made that one mistake. I said male circumcision prevents HIV transmission when really it reduces it in a population. And when someone hears this, he will think, “If I have a circumcision, I can’t contract HIV,” and this is not the case. However, at least this part was edited out of the talk.

I thought the talk was very good. Do you always feel this way about your talks? Have you given a talk that you thought was good?

TheTEDTalk from 2006 is almost perfect. Even the mistakes I made in that talk were almost perfect. Then, the screen was low and you could see the graphics around me while I was talking. It was so good for my style of presenting. But in 2007, you raised the screen.

Anyway, I didn’t know that format was going to be so good. This was a technique I discovered by serendipity, like the joke in my talk about solidifying the beam of the laser. People really liked that, because they are so fed up with laser pointers which are such an overused technology. Now, I’m working on a bamboo version so that it will be biodegradable.

We know AIDS spreads more rapidly with concurrent sex partners, but what exactly do Africa’s concurrent partner relationships look like?

Well, this concurrency I have only observed in some parts of southern and eastern Africa. You must remember that there are tremendous variations between practices in all of Africa. Remember in the talk, I spoke about the difference between Salt Lake City and San Francisco. For example, the gay community in Salt Lake City is not that strong. But where there is the practice of concurrent partners, between the ages of 15 and 30 you may have less partners and less intercourse and have 50 times more HIV.

Now, Swedes have serial monogamy, which is one partner after another but no overlap. And then there is polygamy. Concurrent partners does not mean polygamy. These are as different as snow and sand. I want to carefully explain this, because this area is so heavy with moral judgment.

Having concurrent partners means that during a one month period, on a regular basis, you have sex with more than one person. There is not one main partner and then little affairs, either. In these societies, sex is linked to the social transaction. Sex has a different social role. There’s not as much jealousy with regard to sex. Now, it sounds as if I am defending concurrent partners. But with the Swedish way, serial monogamy, you just drop partners. It’s not very nice.

There is another model as well. In the Middle East, you marry when you are between 17 and 21 and you only have sex with the person you marry. And, actually these people probably have more intercourse, with their spouse, than anyone else. Many of these couples have a great sex life, too.

Also, as I said in the talk, HIV doesn’t have the same risk of transmission at all times. From the time of infection, the virus’ levels grow and peak in the blood in the first six weeks. With no other STD present, the risk of transmission is actually very low at other times. So with serial monogamy, even if a person is infected, they continue to have sex only with the person that infected them until their viral levels have fallen. Whereas, if you have sex with two other people just after infection, the virus is more likely to spread.

Promiscuous parts of the gay community in the United States, and in Sweden, also have concurrent partners. Note that I said promiscuous. For heroin abusers, this concurrency pattern is also the same as they reuse needles from many different people. This is also significant as blood is more contagious than any other bodily fluid.

There is no research consensus on concurrency, but it is the most probable hypothesis.

12 May 2009

You asked Seth Godin absolutely anything -- and he answered

If you were a James Bond villain, how would you take over the world? -- Andrew Noseworthy

I'd release a pheremone that increases the fear that people have about doing great things. It would only increase it by 3%, but that would be enough to wipe out most competition. I'm convinced someone is already doing this, by the way.

In the age of tribes, will the benefits outweigh the problems? Specifically, if society fractions into increasingly small groups, won't we wind up with more rules, more conflict, and more difficulty in communicating, as each develops its own norms and goals? Does this internet-enabled tribal age have implications for how we are going to coexist in society as the "other" becomes an increasingly large part of the population? -- David Stewart

I think the idea of negative tribal behavior is older than the Cro Magnon man. Tribes online, in work and in communities aren't going to make us more violent. We don't run the risk of more us/them conflicts. I think, instead, we're going to see more movements that benefit all of us. When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate. Remember, it's the doing, more than what gets done, that defines tribe.

How do you make "limited edition" physical products feel limited? Especially when they're limited because you don't have the capability to produce too many -- like hand-made clothes. Should you even try? -- John-Phillip Johansson

Of course. There's a real need for scarcity. The question is how you demonstrate it. Berkin bags? Signed prints? TED invites? By exposing the insiders, you create demand among the outsiders.

What have you learned today? -- Antonio Ortiz

I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.

While getting people to support causes (sign petitions, join a group, etc.) on social networking sites like Facebook has been done very successfully, getting them to donate time and money to the same causes has not. Why do you think this is so? -- Pavithra Sankaran

I'm not sure that signing petitions does a thing. I think that easy in/easy out is an axiom, and if you want to make change you need to ask people to do more than just nod at you.

How can small business coffee shops survive a Starbucks next door? -- Pascal Lacroix

By being not only different, but better in ways Starbucks cannot. You can't win by imitating them. Consider having a membership fee, or a different social group. Serve a different item, in a different way, at a different price. Emphasize the 'Cheers' friendly element over the 'get in and get out' mindset. Exclude certain people or practices. Offer clothes or community performances ... stuff they can't do!

Can you offer any dating pointers? -- Mark Smith

I've tried the Gregorian, but I find the Julian calendar is a lot more useful.

Among my blogging peers in the marketing/PR/social media niche, I often hear people toss around comments like "he's the next Seth Godin," or, "My goal is to be the next Seth Godin." I'm curious what your advice would be to the next generation of emerging thought leaders -- especially the ones eyeing your particular seat. -- Tiffany Monhollon

I'm still trying to be pretty good at being 'this' Seth Godin, so I wish people who want to be the next one a lot of luck. There's never been a next Elvis Costello or a next Jill Sobule. There wasn't even a next Chuck Berry or a next Charlie Chaplin ... I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.

11 May 2009

Ask Seth Godin absolutely anything

Today, TEDTalks star Seth Godin will answer your questions -- on absolutely anything! Post your questions in the comments here on the TED Blog, or email them to contact@ted.com. We'll select our five favorites from the bunch and post Seth's responses on the TED Blog.

A marketing guru with eclectic interests and insights, Seth is game for questions on ANY topic you can think of. Be creative!

05 May 2009

Q&A with TEDFellow Erik Hersman: When technology goes African

In his 2009 TEDTalk, techno-blogger Erik Hersman breaks down the framework of and uses for Ushahidi, a crisis reporting platform that emerged to help Kenyans avoid violence during riots after the 2008 elections. During this follow-up interview with the TEDBlog, he talks about his African ties, how the TEDFellows program has impacted him and the very beginnings of Ushahidi.

How did Ushahidi begin? We know it began during the aftermath of the 2008 Kenyan elections, but who were the key players and how did they come to contact each other and form this system?

It was very, very fast and loose. We quickly combined our thoughts around the basic idea via Skype and then got the whole thing going in a couple days. Ory, Juliana, Daudi and I knew each other from the Kenyan blogosphere, and as past TEDAfrica Fellows. I knew David Kobia, our lead developer from an interview I had done of him on my WhiteAfrican blog.

Could you give some examples, from your recollections, of the most successful moments of Ushahidi -- moments where you knew you were part of an important structure?

The first week was the first indicator. To us, the system was rudimentary, but it worked. To outsiders, especially those in the humanitarian field, it was the first time they had really seen a technology tool used to bypass the establishment and go directly to ordinary people on the ground to get information. It seemed like the only thing to do to us, but it was revolutionary to them.

The other big moments were when we started to get approached by people and organizations from the rest of the world asking us to create one for them. Needless to say, we couldn't due to our having our own full-time jobs, but it proved there was a need.

Finally, having Al Jazeera pick the tool up for use to collect and monitor the Gaza situation back in January was big. It was the first time an established media organization had used our tool.

What are the elements of the system that contribute most to its success? Anonymity of reports, ability of the population to vote credibility of reports -- which to you are the most important or essential?

Well, I think the biggest thing is that Ushahidi fills the gap. It makes it easy for the traditionally unconnected, those in developing world countries and in rural areas, to start sending information in and getting alerts of things that happen around them -- all from a simple SMS only enabled mobile phone.

Beyond that there are two very important issues. First, the need for anonymity in environments where you can't trust the governing bodies. Second, a way to verify information as it comes in.

Just to probe, it seems that Al Jazeera is the only non-grassroots media group using Ushahidi? Why do you think this is? What makes Al Jazeera and Ushahidi a good fit?

There are some other NGOs using Ushahidi, but Al Jazeera is the largest organization using it to date. I happened to be in Qatar last week and had the chance to visit Al Jazeera's new media team in person. We spent a good portion of the day talking about what they're trying to do and why Ushahidi makes sense for them. It turns out that they're really trying to stretch the traditional news in new ways. Ushahidi isn't the only tool in their repertoire as they get into ways to both gather and disseminate news via mobiles. Finally, because Al Jazeera is largely focused on the parts of the world that most other large media organizations are not, it's a good fit since that's where Ushahidi works best as well.

30 April 2009

Q&A with Laurie Garrett: "This is a huge wake-up call"

TED took 20 minutes with Laurie Garrett this afternoon to follow up on her TEDTalk from 2007, posted today, about pandemic flu. Garrett is the author of The Coming Plague, and a fellow on the Council for Foreign Relations who studied global health and emerging diseases. (As you can imagine, she is very busy this week.) We asked Garrett: What has changed since the last pandemic panic, 2007's avian flu? What does she worry about now? And really, should we not wash our hands?

Did the avian flu scare of two years ago prompt real action from the government?

Yeah, I think actually there's been a serious maturation in not only US response but all over the world and within the WHO. We're in a different era in terms of how the public is getting information. The CDC even has a Twitter account -- hundreds of thousands of people are twittering the CDC.

So the situation of 2007 has changed?

Yes, we're way beyond that now. All the thought processes that went on, all the practices and drills -- and criticisms from people like myself -- has paid off.

The WHO seems much more open now -- with daily briefings on the web, news releases, the announcement today that we're not longer calling it "swine flu" ...

That was because the pork industry went bananas. They've seen countries ban US and Mexican pork products. It's affecting the US meat industry in ways that couldn't be predicted. It's what we saw in the chicken industry with H5N1 [avian flu].

But it's really important to understand -- in the big picture, stepping away from the immediate situation -- it's not coincidental that we're looking at a virus that seems to have elements genetically from at least three species of host, human, bird and pig, and even the pig pieces seem to come from a minimum of six different input points. This is the most deeply mosaiced virus that we've seen circulating in humans. And it has erupted from the pork industry. So we have these giant industrial-scaled pork plants where the pigs are literally snout to snout -- you have an infection start at one end, and it just zips through the whole darn place.

One of our Facebook commenters noted this -- that "packing 500,000 animals in a space of the size of a football field is a recipe for disaster."

Pigs are passing their viruses to humans, but more significantly, humans are passing their viruses to pigs. H1N1 appears to have been a human virus that passed through pigs, through birds, back through pigs, it took a few more turns, and then back to humans.

We have these new ecologies that are complete artificial and completely bizarre. Imagine a row of neatly stacked dominoes all stacked in the same way. Think of the pork industry as the dominoes. You're creating these perfect environments for disease. We know it's better to have a heterogeneous population, and this is a huge wake-up call.

Do you feel differently now than you did then about any of the points you made -- about masks or handwashing, for instance?

I think the primary purpose of a mask is to scare the heck out of the people you're talking to, and then they stay 5 feet away. They don't keep viruses away, they keep people away.

For those who are health professionals and first responders, who have to get up close and personal with people, I remain convinced that only an N95 mask, a fitted N95 mask, offers the proper protection.

For the average person, I really think the primary person of the mask is to scare other people. Although, if you are sick and you cough, most of the droplets do end up inside the mask, so you are protecting other people.

And handwashing?

Well, I think handwashing is going to help, and you should wash your hands.

But the interesting thing is, Why do we have flu so late in the year? Usually the flu season has been over for quite some time, so this is a very unusual situation. And one of the things that's interesting about why flu is seasonal, and is the sort of bad-news endpoint of the paragraph I am now uttering: When flu is coughed or you sneeze it, the virus is suspended in a liquid environment. Ideally an environment with lots of polysaccharides and sugars, an environment like mucus. Suspended in mucus, the virus can go from your hand to a doorknob, from a doorknob to another person's hand; it can go onto the surface of a telephone ... all those things are contagious to others. Mucus also protects the virus from ultraviolet rays. One reason flu is seasonal -- as the temperature rises, these things tend to dry out. So in the summer, it's very, very unusual to see flu virus circulating. The bad new is, if this virus has indeed taken hold, it will move to the Southern hemisphere for their winter, and it will come back to us, possibly in a different mutation, this fall. As our temperatures drop, we may see a return. This is the ominous issue.

29 April 2009

Race and the city: An exclusive interview with Nate Silver

In his TEDTalk, blogger and statistics whiz Nate Silver explained how race may have affected the 2008 election. In this interview with the TEDBlog he further explores the relationships between urban spaces, race and President Obama.

Here's an excerpt:

I see Obama as being our first urban president in a long time. His racial heritage is mixed, he was raised by a single mother, he’s lived in several places, from Indonesia to Hawaii to the Midwest. For many people living in our cities, especially in their 20s and 30s, this is normal. I think urban-ness is the real factor.

Read the full interview, after the jump >>

28 April 2009

Q&A on swine flu with virus hunter Nathan Wolfe: "We've created a perfect storm for viruses"

Swine flu has made this a busy week for virus hunter Nathan Wolfe, who spoke at TED2009 about preventing the next pandemic. His groundbreaking Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (supported by grants from Google.org, the Skoll Foundation and others) monitors people in close contact with animals (such as subsistence hunters in central Africa) to catch new diseases before they spread. We caught up with Wolfe yesterday by phone, before his appearance on CNN with Anderson Cooper (who plays a cameo role in Wolfe's TEDTalk), and asked him about this latest outbreak.

SARS, avian flu, swine flu ... what's going on here? Why are we suddenly seeing so many more outbreaks of viruses from animals?

Viruses have always passed from humans to animals. In fact, the vast majority of human diseases have animal origins. But the human population is different from what it once was. For most of our history, we lived in geographically disparate populations. So viruses could enter from animals into humans, spread locally and go extinct. But the human population has gone through a connectivity explosion. All humans on the planet are now connected to each other spatially and temporally in a way that's unprecedented in the history of vertebrate biology. Humans -- as well as our domestic animals and wild animals we trade -- move around the planet at biological warp speed. This provides new opportunities for viruses that would have gone extinct locally to have the population density fuel they need to establish themselves and spread globally.

We've created a "perfect storm" for viruses. And we'll continue to see -- as we have in the past few years -- a whole range of new animal diseases as outbreaks in human populations. But we have to stop being surprised by them. Right now, global public health is like cardiology in the '50s -- just waiting for the heart attack, without understanding why they occur or the many ways to monitor for them, detect them early and ultimately prevent them. Swine flu is not an anomaly. We know that swine flu -- like the vast majority of new outbreaks -- comes from animals. We should be monitoring those animals and the humans that come into contact with them, so we can catch these viruses early, before they infect major cities and spread throughout the world.

Can we stop swine flu? Or is it too late?
If you catch one of these outbreaks early on, there may be the potential to do what we call containment, where you limit the outbreak to a particular site. But the reality is: By the time swine flu got on the radar screen of global public health, it had already spread. It was already in the States, it was in Mexico, it was in New Zealand. By the time it reaches that point, you've lost the ability to contain it. There are ways to decrease the spread of the pandemic, but by that point, it can't be contained. (Editor's note: See Larry Brilliant's 2006 TEDTalk for more on the importance of early containment.)

The more fundamental question is: How do we prevent these pandemics from occurring? There are commonalities among all the pandemics that occur, and we can learn from them. One commonality is that they all come from animals. And the other commonality is that we wait too long.

At the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, our approach is to take it a step back. If we can contain and monitor animal viruses at an earlier stage -- when they're first entering human populations, preferably before they've had a chance to become human-adapted, certainly before they've had a chance to spread -- we can head off pandemics altogether.

Swine flu may or may not end up being an important human pandemic. But it's a perfect illustration of the need for a paradigm shift in the way we approach global disease control.

In your TEDTalk, you lay out plans for monitoring humans who have close contact with animals in African jungles and Asian "wet markets." Should you be monitoring pig farms as well?

Absolutely. What we do is all of the above. We monitor people with contact with wild animals as well as domestic animals. Chickens, ducks, pigs, monkeys ... wherever people have contact with animals, that's where we want to be, so we can catch potential pandemics at the moment that they're born.

The good news is: For a variety of reasons, the percentage of the human population that's in direct contact with animals is decreasing. So that gives us the potential to put a substantive percentage of that population into regular monitoring. Maybe we won't catch everything, but we can create a much more substantive safety net for capturing these things before they go international or global.

27 April 2009

The future of cooperation -- and economic growth: Exclusive interview with Alex Tabarrok

Alex Tabarrok is co-author of hit economics blog Marginal Revolution. At TED2009, he talked about how a lesson from 1929 teaches us that ideas trump economic crises. The TED Blog interviewed Tabarrok over the phone to find out what else makes him optimistic about the future of economic development:

What do you say to the argument that the Third World will not develop because we don't have the natural resources to sustain the development?

I utterly reject the view that the Third World is doomed to poverty and starvation. Not only is this wrong, I think this attitude verges on the immoral, like thinking that slavery is an unalterable facet of the human condition so why bother doing anything about it? Moreover, thinking of this kind -- I call it the Lebensraum point of view -- leads to war and destruction. The Lebensraum point of view, however, is rejected by evidence from the second half of the twentieth century. Peace and free trade are the routes to wealth -- not a grab for "limited" resources.

The term natural resources confuses people. "Natural resources" are not like a finite number of gifts under the Christmas tree. Nature is given but resources are created. Oil was around for millions of years before people realized it could power civilization. Who would have thought that an utterly common element like silicon would drive 21st century growth? Or that atoms could light homes? At any point in time, resources are limited but what counts as a resource changes over time. Perhaps in the future people will worry that we are running out of asteroids to mine! Of course, the ultimate "natural resource" is the power of the human mind, and more minds are going to come online in the 21st century than ever before.

None of this is to say that the environment and global climate change are not a huge concern. We need to adapt, use more sustainable sources of energy, and think for the long term to a greater extent than our species has done in the past. I worry that we will not do these things. But if we do accept and meet these challenges I have little doubt that world as a whole will be a better and a richer place.

In your talk, you called China "the world's greatest anti-poverty program of the last few decades." Could you elaborate on that?

With the death of Mao and the rise of Deng Xiao Ping, China began to grow at tremendous rates -- 10 percent per year. Without any foreign aid to speak of, this "program" raised hundreds of millions of people out of the very worst kind of poverty. China in 1979 had among the highest poverty rates in the world. Its economic growth has brought several hundred million people from making less than a dollar a day out of that starvation-level poverty. Remember that, during the Great Leap Forward 30 to 40 million people starved in China.

TED is going to host a conference in India in November, so, in the same vein, could you talk about where India might be going?

India is a bit behind China, but in the 1990s they also freed up their economy, and they have unleashed an incredible amount of entrepreneurialism involving world trade. The India-China story is exciting, because India has a lot of advantages going for it -- English speaking being one. China's trying to catch up on that score. Whether India can overcome some of its bureaucracy will be interesting to see. Also, the role of democracy is fascinating.

A lot of people say that India has been held back by its democracy. But let’s remember that despite being a poor country India’s democracy meant that its government never let millions of people starve. No politician wants to starve potential voters. In the long run, I think India is going to benefit from its democracy and not be harmed by it. Democracy is, in a sense, like markets. It provides information and feedback, it leads to a more open system and it constrains government from the worst kinds of abuses. I think that the more China proceeds along the wealth path, the more difficult they will find it not to have a democracy.

Why is there so much fear about the rise of nations like China?

Under Communism, China and the Soviet Union -- with their nuclear weapons and their anti-trade, anti-Western ideology -- certainly were threats. But with their integration into the world economy as trade has increased, that threat has declined.

Cordell Hull, U.S. Secretary of State under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is said to have remarked, "When goods don't cross borders, armies will." Free trade unites the world and reduces the threats from other nations. It doesn't eliminate it, but we have much less to fear from a rich, prosperous China than we do from a poor, starving China.

Clay Shirky talks about a thing that he calls a "cognitive surplus" -- the idea that as we work less, we can spend our mental energy on other things. And in the past 50 years, we've spent lots of that surplus watching TV. What do you think about that?

Julian Simon said that our ultimate resource is the power of the human mind. And I think that's true. As fewer people work as coal miners or farmers, more time is freed for thinking. In Africa, China and India today, I guarantee there are millions of people working on the farms who could be scientists and engineers -- if the world were richer.

As we get richer, we do spend more time in leisure. But I think television's pretty good. (Laughs) I like television; I like The Sopranos, I like The Wire, I loved the first season of Veronica Mars. Television is much more complex, brain-challenging and involved than it used to be. It's almost impossible to watch a television show from 15 years ago; it's just too boring. I think modern television shows, with their intricate plots, are stimulating our minds. This is one reason IQs have been going up.

20 April 2009

Crocheting in hyperbolic space: Exclusive interview with Margaret Wertheim on TED.com

Masterminding a project to model a coral reef in crochet, Margaret Wertheim hopes to share some of the most complicated mathematical models embodied in our universe with the minds (and hands) of the masses. TED's film + video editor Kari Mulholland talked with Margaret Wertheim last week about the Crochet Coral Reef -- as well as her theories of kindergarten, the beauty of pi, and the next homes for the Reef. For the full interview, hit the jump. A sample:

There is no such thing as a perfect hyperbolic surface in nature. After crocheting mathematically curved surfaces for about two years, Chrissy came in one day and said, you know what? I'm really sick of crocheting perfectly, I'm sick of all the geometry. I want to try something irregular. So what would happen, for instance, if I crocheted at variable rates? What would happen if I increase a bit faster on this side of the model and a bit slower on that side?

As soon as we started to mix these variations, the whole thing immediately looked more natural. And we realized this is what nature's doing. Nature doesn't feel compelled to stick to a mathematically precise algorithm; in fact, nature probably can't stick to an algorithm. Conditions in the water, amount of sunlight, availability of nutrients would all cause an organism to grow a bit faster in one direction then in the other. That's what we realized we were doing with these varying rates of increase; we were simulating various conditions that might happen in nature.

Read the full interview >>

Watch Margaret Wertheim's TEDTalk >>

15 April 2009

Mapping terrain in space and time: Exclusive interview with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin of the AlloSphere

Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin works on the AlloSphere, one of the largest scientific and artistic instruments in the world. Based at UC Santa Barbara, the AlloSphere maps complex data in time and space. Dr. Kuchera-Morin, a composer, demoed the AlloSphere at TED2009 in February, showing five films of scientific data mapped visually and sonically into compelling art. Last week I talked with Dr. Kuchera-Morin about the AlloSphere -- what it does, how it works, who uses it, and how you turn raw data into sound. From the interview:

Some of my mathematician colleagues are working with 6-dimensional figures. What happens when your math starts to get so complex that you can't draw it by hand anymore? Scientists have such tremendously rich math data that the instruments they use now can't actually see it. You get measurements from it, but can you take those math coordinates that describe it and map it visually and sonically?

There are scientists who have lost the ability to perceive their data. Now they might have the ability to perceive this data again through portals that let them see and hear their data, not just see a string of numbers.

Read the full interview >>

More: If you're around Santa Barbara next week, hear JoAnn Kuchera-Morin's work at the Primavera Festival

More: For a celebration of boundary-breaking science research, read "In search of the black swans," Physicsworld April 2009

13 April 2009

From software exec to electric car revolutionary: Exclusive interview with Shai Agassi

Shai Agassi has a record of accomplishing huge tasks in record time -- from completing his college degree by 18 to founding several successful software companies before 30. In recent years, he has shifted his intense focus to the global problem of climate change.

He discusses his blow-by-blow plan to propagate the electric car in today's TEDTalk. It's a remarkable move for a highly successful young businessman, and in this interview with the TEDBlog he explains how his country and his children, with a little help from TED, pushed him to try to change the world.

Here's an excerpt:

"The first week my wife and I went to Costa Rica, and the second week to my first TED. I was awed and inspired by what I saw on stage. I sat back and watched 50-odd people, and 1,000 others in the crowd, applying themselves to serve humanity. When I came out of that TED, I knew for sure what I had to do. I wanted to be one of those people."

Read the full interview, after the jump >>

09 April 2009

George Ayittey on "Dead Aid"

Economist George Ayittey gave a blistering talk at TEDGlobal 2007, laying out his case that not only has Western aid not helped in most African countries -- it's actually hurting.

We asked Ayittey for his thoughts on the new book Dead Aid, which has lately been burning up the talk shows and opinion columns with a message similar to Ayittey's. Author Dambisa Moyo says that aid is killing the very countries it's supposed to help. She singles out for criticism the celebrity crusades to "save Africa," and the skewing view they present of African life. Here's a snippet of what Ayittey says about the issues Moyo raises; for the full interview, hit the jump:

If you want to help American farmers, you ask them what sort of help they need and whether such assistance is working. Why don’t Americans ask Africans what type of aid they need and whether the aid Americans have provided is working? So what is wrong with an African, Dambisa, telling Americans that the foreign aid they are providing isn’t working and it is “Dead Aid”?

Read the full interview, after the jump >>

Download the unedited notes for this interview, including reading list, sources and much more >>

08 April 2009

The secret, social lives of bacteria: Exclusive interview with Bonnie Bassler

Bonnie Bassler: We came from bacteria. Who do you think thought up the rules?

In 2002, bearing her microscope on a microbe that lives in the gut of fish, Bonnie Bassler isolated an elusive molecule called AI-2, which showed not only that almost all bacteria can communicate -- but that they do so all the time. (Watch her 2009 TEDTalk!)

The TED Blog interviewed Bassler over the phone to talk about this secret, social life of bacteria. She told us why the chemical language evolved the way it did, what the applications of her research outside of medicine might be, and what the daily life of a scientist is like. Here's a snippet:

The fantasy is, since an anti-quorum sensing drug won't kill bacteria, it won't select as readily for resistance. Even if some bacterium is fortuitously resistant, it won't get the growth advantage that comes when its siblings die as happens with resistance to a traditional antibiotic. The hope is that an anti-quorum sensing therapeutic will have a long shelf-life, that is, it will take bacteria a long while to evolve ways around the anti-quorum sensing therapy. That, in turn, gives scientists time to develop more new ways to combat harmful bacteria or to enhance good bacteria.

Read the full interview, after the jump >>

03 April 2009

Pakistan, Afghanistan and Battlestar Galactica: An exclusive interview with P.W. Singer on the future of war

On Friday, March 27, just as a surge of new deployments was being announced for Afghanistan, the TED Blog talked with military analyst P.W. Singer. Posted today, his TEDTalk discusses the use of robots in modern combat zones.

In this interview, he applies his intensive knowledge of robotics and war to the situations the U.S. military faces in months ahead. Singer clarifies the questions we should all be asking, as these weapons of the future find their place in our conflicts at present. Interestingly, many are questions that science fiction has been addressing for some time.

Here's an excerpt:

"When new technologies are developed, we can’t know the broader ripple effect that they will have. When the Internet first appeared, we couldn’t know that this thing was going to cause mothers in Pennsylvania to worry about predators in Seattle that might prey on their children. Now we know that the Internet can allow an extremist Mullah in Pakistan to inspire a young man in Birmingham, England, to blow himself up."

For the full interview, read after the jump >>

02 April 2009

The fate of the newspaper: Exclusive interview with Jacek Utko

Newspaper designer Jacek Utko suggests that it's time for a fresh, top-to-bottom rethink of the newspaper. (At this point, why not try it?) In his work, he's proved that good design can help readers reconnect with newspapers. A former architect, Utko took on the job of redesigning several newspapers in former Soviet Bloc nations, starting from basic principles.

The TED Blog interviewed Jacek Utko over the phone yesterday to get a deeper look into his approach to newspaper design and his thoughts on the future of news media. Here's a snippet:

Many people think that newspapers have to survive because they have a mission for society, for democracy. Most of them say that newspapers should stay because, if newspapers die, nothing will replace them. But that's not actually true. It's already slowly being replaced by the Internet. Blogs, for example, are an opinion-making medium. They'll probably become more powerful than the newspapers were.

Read the full interview with Jacek Utko, after the jump >>

27 March 2009

An immune system for the planet: Exclusive interview with Nathan Wolfe

Using genetic sequencing, needle-in-a-haystack research, and dogged persistence (crucial to getting spoilage-susceptible samples through the jungle and to the lab), Nathan Wolfe has proven what was science-fiction conjecture only a few decades ago -- not only do viruses jump from animals to humans, but they do so all the time. Along the way Wolfe has discovered several new viruses, and is poised to discover many more.

The TED Blog interviewed Wolfe over the phone shortly before his appearance at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. He discusses the fact that vaccines often act as a crutch after the failure of preventative measures against disease, the need for a "global immune system" implemented through communication technologies such as SMS, and occasions when it's professionally acceptable -- and socially crucial -- to eat rodents. Here's a snippet:

I think about the secondary effects of diseases like AIDS that cause a population's immune system to be suppressed, as a whole. I think of this as a tear in the planet's meta-immune system. This tear increases the possibility that a new virus will enter. With immunosuppressed hunters, a virus that normally couldn't survive or adapt to human populations might get a few extra generations and be permitted to adapt to these individuals and humanity.

Read the full interview, after the jump >>

26 March 2009

How John Wooden changed my life: Exclusive interview with Steve Jamison

Steve Jamison has co-authored five books with John Wooden, produced a documentary about him, and is consultant to his leadership program at UCLA. All this came about after one fateful meeting, for an innocuous interview.

Coach Wooden has influenced the lives of many, and he discusses his inspirational philosophy on personal success in today's heartwarming TEDTalk. To understand why Steve got hooked by the story of this legendary basketball coach, read below the fold >>

An excerpt from the interview:
When I got back to transcribe the conversation, I realized that every single sentence was fully formed, enlightening and substantive. I just kept re-reading it. And it was about leadership and life, not basketball. He said things like, "Don't forget, Steve, the most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."

13 March 2009

Dan Ariely offers 3 irrational lessons from the Bernie Madoff scandal

Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, presented a jaw-dropping talk on cheating and dishonesty at TED2009. We're posting Ariely's TEDTalk next Tuesday, and we asked him for his thoughts on the Bernie Madoff scandal unfolding now in New York:

The first chapter of the Bernie Madoff fiasco has come to a close, with Madoff pleading guilty to 11 charges of fraud yesterday.

Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme was horrific on many levels. But while we watch the next phase of the scandal, it's important to ask: What lessons are we going to learn from this? I can see three lessons that relate to my work studying human irrationality -- and in particular, some non-useful lessons we might learn.

One lesson that individuals and foundations are likely to take from the Madoff scandal is that in addition to diversifying their portfolio across several investments (stock, bonds, equity, cash), they also need to diversify their investments among several advisors. While the idea of diversifying among advisors has some merit -- and it could reduce the exposure risk of another Madoff scandal -- it will also make the task of managing portfolios much more difficult and much less efficient. Imagine that you have $1,000,000, split among four advisors. You will need a whole new level of coordination among them so they can have the right amount of cash, bonds, stocks etc., across all of your assets.

And I think that people will begin to over-diversify across investors. Why? Because when we have one large and salient instance in our minds, it can be so powerful that we overemphasize it. This same effect is very apparent in what we call "the identifiable victim effect," and it is the reason that we overemphasize the risks of a shark attack, and underestimate the risks of riding a bike without a helmet. In general, what we find when there's one single vivid event is that people overweight it -- we focus on it too much. So that's the first lesson: We're going to learn from the Madoff scandal, but we are going to overdo it.

Read the full essay from Dan Ariely -- including two more non-useful lessons -- after the jump >>

And watch for Dan Ariely's TEDTalk next Tuesday, March 17.

Dan Ariely will be speaking in New York City on Monday, March 16, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Details here >>

Photo: TED / Asa Mathat

11 March 2009

An interview with Pranav Mistry, the genius behind Sixth Sense

Pranav Mistry is the MIT grad student behind Sixth Sense, a tool that connects the physical world with the world of data. He and his advisor at the MIT Media Lab, Pattie Maes, unveiled Sixth Sense at TED2009, and the Sixth Sense demo premiered yesterday on TED.com -- and in both places, it has fired people's imaginations. The TED Blog spoke with Pranav this morning, to ask him some questions that have arisen on TED.com and at the TED office. From the interview:

Why choose a projector versus goggles?
We actually thought a lot about this. At MIT, lots of research has been done with glasses -- there's even research going on to put information in your contact lenses. But this particular project has an important aspect: We want this thing to merge with the physical world in a real physical sense. You are touching that object and projecting info onto that object. The information will look like it is part of the object.

Read the full interview with Pranav Mistry, after the jump >>

Watch the Sixth Sense demo on TED.com >>

06 March 2009

A striking evolution in jazz: Exclusive interview with Eric Lewis

Not without a struggle (and a measure of healthy angst), acclaimed pianist Eric Lewis is driving the next evolution of jazz -- forging new musical alloys of classic blue note scuttles, delicate improvisations and heady alt rock hooks. Now, with a roster of sold-out shows and a growing list of celebrity supporters, his iconoclastic arrangements are fast catching insular music communities' attention. His possessed, finger-bloodying performances have erased a few old taboos, too: Miles Davis and Linkin Park suddenly seem less dissimilar.

The TED Blog interviewed Eric Lewis by phone on Wednesday to find out what brought him from a strictly jazz repertoire into the intense explorations of rock music that brought the TED2009 crowd to its feet. Here's a snippet:

The irony of it all, at the end of all this, is I ended up doing what jazz musicians have always done: taking pop culture tunes and playing their own variations upon them. It's all so funny, because now the jazz community is starting to embrace me, slowly but surely. It's a weird, circuitous, cyclical, ironic, paradoxical story.

Read the full interview with Eric Lewis, after the jump >>

05 March 2009

Michael Montes on the TEDTalks ringtone

Michael Montes is the composer who created the TEDTalks opening themes (now available as ringtones). We're curious about what it's like to have one's music being experienced through a phone.

Who or what inspired you in creating the TEDTalks theme?
TED itself inspired me greatly. I tried to put the feelings that I retained from being at the conference into the music, the emotions that surround the idea of grappling with global modernity. This brought me to a compositional place of energy, complexity and anticipation.

Is this the first ringtone you've created? How do you feel about it?
I have created others for advertisers. But this is most special to me because it's for TED, and for the enormous worldwide audience that the TEDTalks have reached.

What makes a great ringtone?
In this case, the music was meant to communicate that something very compelling is coming, and that it's not about passive viewing, it's a real call to action. Transfers nicely to an arriving phone call. Also, I hope it will start conversations with bystanders who recognize the theme and with those who don't.

What ringtones are on your phone?
Standard iPhone. But now I've switched!

Do you think this ringtone could be likened to a poem?
If the poem was being read by someone with a megaphone in front of an excited crowd, then yes.

What's on your music playlist these days?
Peruvian folk songs, cellist Erik Friedlander, Toru Takemitsu, the soundtrack to the original Planet of the Apes by Jerry Goldsmith, lots more ...

What are you reading?
Reading and rereading John Berger's books. Very inspiring for me. He mixes art with politics. Right up my alley. Hold Everything Dear, Here Is Where We Meet, Pig Earth, Photocopies, etc.

02 March 2009

Exclusive interview with Brenda Laurel: We "brought girls roaring into the online game space"

Brenda Laurel spoke at TED in early 1998 -- at a watershed moment. In 1997, she launched Purple Moon to make smart computer games aimed at girls. By 1999, the company had come to a much-publicized end. But between start and finish, Purple Moon marked a sea change in the girl-game market. The TED Blog interview Laurel via email last week, to get the rest of the Purple Moon story, and to talk about how the experience changed her and (just maybe) changed the world.

From the interview: I adored those [games]. I still get email from young women who still play them in order to hear the stories at the end of each path, because they "need to." We even found a couple of girl-generated sites for trading stones outside of the Purple Moon world, as some of them became "rare." I see that Facebook has this sort of feature now, and it makes me smile.

Read the full interview after the jump >>

Watch Brenda Laurel's TEDTalk >>

25 February 2009

On living and diving: An exclusive interview with Richard Pyle

To say that Richard Pyle is a multifaceted personality is an understatement. He is a world-renowned diver, evolutionary biologist, dive technology pioneer, database developer and author. But all his talents have grown to facilitate one love -- fish. His 2004 TEDTalk demonstrates how he pushed the boundaries of diving in his endeavor to document new species.

In an interview with the TED Blog on Friday, Richard shared his environmental convictions, his life philosophy and an intimate story on losing a friend.

Here's an excerpt:

In human history, we are the equivalent of a bunch of kindergartners running through the Library of Congress, not realizing the true value of its books. 100 years from now, we'll be in high school and understand the difference between "See Spot Run" and Shakespeare. But, if extinction rates continue, we may not learn to read properly before it's actually gone.

Read the full interview after the jump >>

23 February 2009

On building blocks: exclusive interview with David Merrill on Siftables

David Merrill is a grad student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT's Media Lab. He and his fellow students in this group work on new technologies that give us more and better abilities to do things we want to do. At TED2009 he gave a demo of his main project, Siftables.

Today the TED Blog interviewed Merrill to get some details about the Siftables project -- and answers to some questions that many have asked since his demo. Here's a snippet:

I have heard so many people say: "My kids will love these. When can I get some?" The realization has been hitting us over the past few months that the potential for kid-oriented interactions is huge and meaningful.

Find the full interview with David Merrill below the fold >>

20 February 2009

Exclusive interview with TED Prize-winner Jill Tarter of SETI

Astronomer Jill Tarter is director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute. She was awarded the TED Prize in 2009, and at the TED Conference she wished that the TED community would "empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company." (Her talk on why the search for alien intelligence matters is now online.)

Yesterday the TED Blog interviewed Tarter over the phone about her TED Prize wish. She talked about some of the challenges and practicalities of SETI research, her new plans to help bring the world into the search for cosmic company, and a few new ideas about extraterrestrial intelligence that intrigue her. It's a fascinating look at the pragmatic thinking that goes into this "stellar" project. Here's a snippet:

If we could start out by recording data and having people develop algorithms for this class of signals in higher dimensions for us, then we could take the best algorithms and see if we can get them made efficient enough to run real time and put those on the telescope as well. And now you open up a whole universe of looking for something completely different -- something we weren't sensitive to before.

But what about the folks that don't have that technological know-how? Can we get them involved too, if they're passionate and eager to participate? Well, the eye is just a fabulous pattern-detection machine. It took a lot of years of evolution to make that work well. And so perhaps what we could do is involve people in using their eyeballs to find these complex signals.

Read the complete interview, below the fold >>

12 February 2009

Inspired by TED: Three astonishing art shows in Long Beach

Across from the Long Beach Arena complex where TED2009 just finished up, a more local -- but no less ambitious -- cluster of art shows inspired by TED are running through March 14. Phantom Galleries LA, a project that helps artists mount gallery shows in empty storefronts, presents three shows and performances in Long Beach around TED: "Emergence Enchanted"; "Super Elastic"; and "Bluetooth's Castle."

At the intersection of art and science, communication and dreamscape, "Emergence Enchanted" collects the work of 20 artists -- painters, sculptors, animators, videographers -- who explore the edges of science and creativity in fresh ways. Daniel Marlos from What's That Bug contributes two glorious images of arachnids ... Lita Albuquerque shows a powerful video projection called BeeKeeper that harnesses new pixel-handling techniques to explode and coalesce a life-size image ... and an eerily wonderful video work from Semiconductor imagines the life of magnetic fields (see a still above). I interviewed co-curator Stephanie Allespach via email.

What was your brief to the participating artists in this show?

Krista Chael and I started to think about the numerous artists we knew who were working with new technologies in their art, as well as artists who were engaging with scientific thought and theories. These artists' practices are as diverse as the speakers at TED. Some work within political activism (Fallen Fruit), while others take a more sci-fi approach (Micol Hebron and Nora Jean Petersen). Then we have artist like Lita Albuquerque who work in collaboration with software engineers/biologist, as well as drawing attention to the plight of bees in BeeKeeper. We wanted to create a dialog from the various approaches and hoped that something larger than the sum of its parts could emerge.

So we called the artists about the show and everyone responded with an overwhelming YES! They are all big fans of TED and wanted to participate.

How many gallery spaces are involved?

We have two main gallery spaces, a performance space, and we have a fourth exterior rotunda space which will exhibit a site-specific installation. We also have six separate windows at another location within the mall, displaying photographs of Anne Hars' clover/Financial Times pots. So that would be five locations within the mall. We kind of took it over.

------

Two more TED-inspired shows run concurrently through March 14 in Long Beach. "Super Elastic" brings together large-scale works from four Southern California artists who question how we see -- and how art helps us visualize the unseen forces of physics. As curator Timothy Nolan writes: "Although each artist is very literate in the history of pattern-based abstraction, conceptually and aesthetically, they are inspired by and draw liberally from an infinite pool of scientific inquiry." And the installation piece "Bluetooth's Castle," from the Long Beach media collective FLOOD, celebrates the deep connection between innovation and mystery through sound.

You can see images from the shows here -- including clips from opening-night performances by Cloud Eye Control, Anna Oxygen and Miwa Matreyek. And learn more about about Phantom Galleries LA -- you might remember them from their work with James Nachtwey's TED Prize wish.

07 February 2009

Interview with Jason Hackenwerth, balloon artist

The TED Blog sat down with Jason Hackenwerth, Palm Springs' balloon artist-in-residence to talk about the challenge of being an artist.

What's your biggest challenge, as an artist?

Getting your work recognized is the biggest and hardest part. I think it requires a certain kind of venue or a certain kind of persistence, and making the work even though it may not be seen or it may be rejected or there may be obstacles to getting it out there. And then once you are getting it out there, or are in the process of trying to do that, how do you pay for your living, how do you pay for the materials in order to get it out there if no one's paying you to do that. So in order to have money to make the work, if the work isn't paying for itself, first you have to find a creative way to pay yourself or earn money so you can make this work.

Why balloons?

I was going to art school. My mother taught me how to twist balloons for street performance. Originally she made me a clown outfit and I made poodles and swords on the street for kids. And I started doing that in '89.

I was doing that for years and years. Even just this past January, you know, from time to time I had to go out to Times Square and twist balloons in freezing weather for grocery money. There have been years when I've made great money with installations around the world. A lot of times when I'm doing events that are fantastic, I'm not necessarily getting paid. But the exposure is good.

So the balloons are something that I'd been using for years, and I had very intimate knowledge of this material, but with a background in fine art and a masters in painting and a curious mind, using these balloons with a lot of down time, I started using them in the subway in New York City. I was amazed at peoples' response to them. I realized that I was on to something, and a way of making people smile and feel so happy.

There's something magical, but also impermanent, about balloons.

They're temporary. They are. Which is nice in a way because it creates this metaphor, and an urgency, and a rarity, which I think is just like you and just like me. If someone wants to know you they'd better get over here and know you. Once they're gone, there might be a snapshot or something, but we have a limited time.

Photo: TED / Michael Brands

06 February 2009

Bill Gates' Q&A with Chris Anderson: Video unveiled

And here's the much-discussed Q&A between Bill Gates and TED's Chris Anderson, which follows Gates' brand-new TEDTalk. Listen for the answers to more big questions:

Download the Q&A here:

Bill Gates + Chris Anderson Q&A (Standard MP4)

Bill Gates + Chris Anderson Q&A (Hi-Res MP4)

Bill Gates + Chris Anderson Q&A (Zipped MP4)

06 February 2009

Palm Springs only: Meet Seth Aylmer and Jose Serrano-Reyes of TrustArt.org

Seth Aylmer and Jose Serrano-Reyes took the TEDDIY stage today to tell us about TrustArt.org, a new organization whose goal is to bring a microfinance model into the art world. As says their website, "Artists introduce their big ideas for works of social art on this site. Shares to fund each project are immediately up for grabs, and are offered henceforth at one dollar per share. The shares are redeemable in a public auction of the finished work one year later. The proceeds of the auction are shared 50/50 between the artist and the network of shareholders, aligning the two groups."

The TED Blog talked to them just after Friday's TEDDIY session:

Let's say you got an extra minute on the TEDDIY stage. What would you say?

We would have talked about some of the actual projects. You can see many of our projects on our site. There's a documentary starring everybody in the world that's going to debut at Grand Central Station. It features 700,000 photographs. They created an algorithm so they can represent 6.7 billion people. They'll play it for about 12 days in a row to represent everybody that's on the face of this planet. There's a worldwide commercial campaign launching in Ghana and all over the world to spread the idea of bamboo bikes and manufacturing them. They're trying to spread the idea that people should be riding plants. One artist is creating a home completely out of garbage. An artist is working on a perfumed water fountain. She's going to Mexico and bringing all her shareholders into the project. There's a performance artist doing healing rituals at the most polluted sites.

What do you say to the cynics?

Watch. Sit back and watch. These are cool projects. This isn't for everybody, but keeping an open mind for now -- This is the time to try things out that are not the most straightforward. This is definitely a risk. We're taking a risk ourselves. But it's worth trying, whatever this is. And for the cynics ... we have an ad agency on board that's helping us. [Laughs] This is a way for people to propose their big idea and see if this microfinance model can help make it a reality.

What's Gawker going to say to this?

[Laughs] Gawker needs to renew themselves. This "creative underclass" bullshit is not going to last much longer. It's like people sniping from the commenting section, and it paralyzes you. If people read Gawker -- it makes people think that everybody is a hater and that if you try anything in this world, somebody's going to hate it and you're going to fail, and it's going to appear on Gawker. It paralyzes creativity. It paralyzes people taking creative risks. And, whatever. Nick Denton and I know each other, so ... he knows how I feel about it. If there's people sniping and showing cynicism, we'll turn that into a beautiful thing. We've done that before. We're taking this idea of turning a financial market into a beautiful thing.

Photo: TED / Michael Brands

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