By Susan Zimmerman

David Steindl-Rast has the honor of closing this year’s TEDGlobal. Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude.The Benedictine monk, whose words made an appearance in Louie Schwartzberg’s classic talk “Nature. Beauty. Gratitude,” is known for bridging Catholicism and Buddhism. In the book The Ground We Share, he reveals that the key to both faiths, when you boil it down, is gratefulness.

We sat down with Steindl-Rast before his talk to ask him a few questions.

What is your definition of gratefulness?

Two things have to come together for someone to be grateful: First, we have to experience something we really like, and the second is that it has to be a gift. In other words, it must be a free gift — we haven’t bought it, we haven’t traded it in, we haven’t earned it. It is really a gift to us. When these two things come together — something that we really like is given to us — then spontaneously, in every human being, that joy rises up. It is something that happens once in a while – that gratefulness triggers joy. But we can live in such a way where we are constantly triggering joy. That is, if we realize that every moment is a given moment. Every moment is a gift. We have not bought it, we have not earned it. It is simply given to us. And with this moment is given to us opportunity. That is the key word. Every moment gives us another opportunity. And to respond to that opportunity, moment by moment by moment as a free gift, releases that joy that we are really looking forward to as human beings.

In your work you say that faith is deep trust, and that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear.  With many areas of the world in conflict, how do we as individuals and society keep the faith?

This is really our basic choice: to trust in life or not to trust in life. And it is a choice — we can simply refuse to trust in life. We can try it out. If somebody isn’t sure, if somebody doesn’t do that spontaneously, they can try it out and see that by doing so, one lives against the grain and everything goes wrong. If one trusts in life, life will not disappoint us. It may seem at the moment disappointing, but we all know, looking back through the rearview mirror of our lives, that something happened in the past, to practically every one of us, that at the time we thought was absolute disaster and turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. And since we know it in our past, we can trust as we go forward that it will also happen to us in the future.  But it is made very difficult for some people to trust in life. One has to have profound compassion for them, because they may have been so often disappointed. If people are injured and have scar tissue with regard to trust in life, then it is mine and your responsibility to be particularly trustworthy towards them — and particularly loving and kind — so that they regain their trust in life.

For almost five decades, you have been one of the leaders of the Christian-Buddhist dialogue as both a Benedictine Monk and a Zen Buddhist practitioner. How do we encourage a more positive inter-religious dialogue?

For most people this inter-religious dialogue will be something that they only read about, because they have no opportunity to engage in it. But openness towards life through gratefulness is one way in which one is at least prepared when the opportunity comes to engage in it. If you are interested in promoting the inter-religious dialogue — which I think we should be interested in the world today because it’s a very important thing — then we should expose ourselves. Exposure is the key word.  All the people who have been exposed to other traditions — really exposed and not just told about them and not just made fearful about them — meet somebody who is from a different religion. So make a special effort to meet other people from other religions.

Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

I have so many questions — I’m a great admirer of your work. But let me begin with: why photography?

Photography came into my life when I was 29 — very late. When I finally began to take photographs, I discovered that photography is an incredible language. It was possible to move with my camera and capture with my camera, and to communicate with images. It was a language that didn’t need any translation because photography can be read in many languages. I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere.

Photography allowed me to see anything that I wished to see on this planet. Anything that hurts my heart, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that makes me happy, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that I think is beautiful enough to show, I show it. Photography became my life.

You started as a social activist before you were a photographer. Is that how you think of yourself still — as an activist?

No, I don’t believe that I’m an activist photographer. I was, when I was young, an activist — a leftist. I was a Marxist, very concerned for everything, and politics — activism — for me was very important. But when I started photography, it was quite a different thing. I did not make pictures just because I was an activist or because it was necessary to denounce something, I made pictures because it was my life, in the sense that it was how I expressed what was in my mind — my ideology, my ethics — through the language of photography. For me, it is much more than activism. It’s my way of life, photography.

You do these very large, long-term projects. Can we talk a bit about your process at the beginning of a project? How do you conceive of it? How do you build it in your mind before you start?

You know, before you do this kind of project, you must have a huge identification with the subject, because the project is going to be a very big part of your life. If you don’t have this identification, you won’t stay with it.

When I did workers, I did workers because for me, for many years, workers were the reason that I was active politically. I did studies of Marxism, and the base of Marxism is the working class. I saw that we were arriving at the end of the first big industrial revolution, where the role of the worker inside that model was changed. And I saw in this moment that many things would be changed in the worker’s world. And I made a decision to pay homage to the working class. And the name of my body of work was Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. Because they were becoming like archaeology; it was photographs of something that was disappearing, and that for me was very motivating. So that was my identification, and it was a pleasure to do this work. But I was conscious that the majority of the things that were photographed were also ending.

When I did another body of work, Migrations, I saw that a reorganization of all production systems was going on around the planet. We have my country, Brazil, that’s gone from an agricultural country to a huge industrial country — really huge. A few years ago, the most important export products were coffee and sugar. Today, they are cars and planes. When I was photographing the workers, I was looking at how this process of industrialization was modifying all the organizations of the human family.

Now we have incredible migrations. In Brazil, in 40 years, we have gone from a 92% rural population to, today, more than 93% urban population. In India today, more than 50% of the population is an urban population. That was close to 5%, 30 years ago. China, Japan … For many years of my life, I was a migrant. Then after that, I became a refugee. This is a story that was my story. I had a huge identification with it and I wanted for many years to do it.

My last project is Genesis. I started an environmental project in Brazil with my wife. We become so close to nature, we had such a huge pleasure in seeing trees growing there — to see birds coming, insects coming, mammals coming, life coming all around me. And I discovered one of the most fascinating things of our planet — nature.

I had an idea to do this for what I think will be my last project. I’ve become old — I’m 69 years old, close to 70. I had an idea to go and have a look at the planet and try to understand through this process — through pictures — the landscapes and how alive they are. To understand the vegetation of the planet, the trees; to understand the other animals, and to photograph us from the beginning, when we lived in equilibrium with nature. I organized a project, an eight-year project, to photograph Genesis. I talked about how you have to have identification for a project — you cannot hold on for eight years if you are not in love with the things that you are doing. That’s my life in photography.

When you do these large projects, how do you know when it is finished?

Well, I organize these projects like a guideline for a film — I write a project. For the start of Genesis, I did two years of research. When this project started to come into my mind, I started to look around more and more and, in a month, I knew 80% of the places that I’d be going and the way that we’d be organizing it. We needed to have organization for this kind of thing, so I organized a kind of unified structure. I organized a big group of magazines, foundations, companies, that all put money in this project. And that’s because it’s an expensive project — I was spending more than $1.5 million per year to photograph these things, to organize expeditions and many different things. And then I started the project. I changed a few things in between, but the base of the project was there.

Given the changes in digital media, if you were to start a new project now, do you think you’d still go through photography? Or would you try something different?

I would go to photography. One thing that is important is that you don’t just go to photography because you like photography. If you believe that you are a photographer, you must have some tools — without them it would be very complicated — and those tools are anthropology, sociology, economics, politics. These things you must learn a little bit and situate yourself inside the society that you live in, in order for your photography to become a real language of your society. This is the story that you are living. This is the most important thing.

In my moment, I live my moment. I’m older now, but young photographers must live their moment — this moment here — and stand in this society and look deeply at the striking points of this society. These pictures will become important because it’s not just pictures that are important — it’s important that you are in the moment of your society that your pictures show. If you understand this, there is no limit for you. I believe that is the point. As easy as this, and as complicated as this.

Why is this process called 4D printing?

The reason we call it 4D is because the object changes over time. So whereas 3D printing simply creates an object,Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing" the 4D-printed object is printed using smart materials that are activated by various sources — like heat, water, current, sound, pressure, and so on.

Objects are printed with the multi-material printer using a combination of smart material and standard 3D printing material — currently, Stratasys’ Connex highly precise multi-material 3D printers can print two materials — in whatever shape you want. Then when you activate the object, it changes: swells or contracts or moves.

Right now the material we’re using is a polymer-based water-absorbing material that expands 150%. For the non-4D material, Stratasys has a whole line, everything from soft rubber to plastic. Right now we use their hard black plastic, just a standard plastic material, alongside the 4D material as the activator.

So the expanding material does one thing and the rigid material holds the shape, is that right?

Right. The rigid material gives it structure and constraints. If you have two pieces and you want them to fold, how do you make it go the right direction? That way or another way? Well, you put a very thin piece of rigid material on the side you want to fold. So that means that the expanding material is going to expand, and that super thin material is going to bend. And so this basically creates a force. But then the question is, how do you make it so that the bend stops at the correct angle? So you add rigid limiters. You also use the lengths of the segments to achieve the shape you want. The rigid material is the code, and the expanding material is the energy.

It’s just become a really elegant process from start to finish, where my hands are out of it the whole time. I build intent, but the object is manufactured as a streamlined piece. You dip it in water and it goes by itself.

Video above: A demonstration of 4D Printing, the “MIT” self-folding strand in action.

The first time you saw the test object fold by itself in water, were you incredibly excited?

I had one surprising moment. I set it in water, and I had my camera set up doing a time-lapse — the process is so slow you can’t see it moving in real time. A few hours later I came back and it was folded. And I thought, “Oh, cool. It folded. It works.” But then I looked at the time-lapse and went, “Whoa!” — because it looks like a live worm. It’s not just click, click — MIT. It takes weird dynamic forms to get there. So that was cool.

How did you originally connect with Stratasys?

It’s actually a funny story. I was at a coffee shop, in Cambridge, right across from MIT, and the person across from me had a shirt on that said Objet — the 3D printing company that later merged with and became Stratasys. We started talking, and I introduced her to the department of architecture at MIT. I showed her the work I’m doing, saying, “I wish there was a way we could print this stuff so that we could embed the energy directly into it.” She connected me with their materials science division, which was developing this material that expands in water. Together we realized this wasn’t just a weird material that we don’t know what to do with, but a new paradigm for what you can print.

You are the only person working on designs for this material and this particular process. So do you get all the credit for 4D?

Well, Stratasys developed the materials and the machine, so this wouldn’t be possible without them. I had the vision of how this would be a real change in the game of 3D printing. This only became a reality once we produced the prototypes and demonstrated that it is possible. But I think 4D printing is something that in the future anyone can do. If the materials were on the market, everyone would be 4D printing tomorrow.

But you need the design knowledge.

That’s true. There’s the whole democratizing-design world, and they’re trying to make it so anyone can 3D print anything. This falls into that realm. It’s a little bit more complex because you need to be smart enough to figure out, say, if you want to make a fairly complex and intricate shape, you need to then be able to figure out what’s the pattern for it to go from here to here — and that’s not always easy. Going from a line to a circle is pretty straightforward. You can make a strip, and you can make a standard interval, and it will curl uniformly. But if you want to make something more intricate, you need to have the tools to be able to do that. So we started to collaborate with Autodesk to help develop new design tools for this — tools that allow you design around self-assembly principles as well as simulate and optimize the folding patterns.

Video above: A demonstration of a self-folding sheet, created at the MIT Self-Assembly Lab.

So what now? Are you thinking up ways to apply this technology to designs?

Yes. So far we’ve demonstrated that a one-dimensional form folds into a three-dimensional form. One goal is to go as complex as possible. I’m trying to do a 50-foot long strand that folds into eight inches: it’s called the Hilbert curve — a mathematical curve. So that would demonstrate that we can do highly simple first parts that lead to very complex other structures. And it also may have implications for studying protein folding, how they can go from one configuration to another, how they don’t tangle, and what design parameters are essential. But I also want to demonstrate all of the other low-hanging fruit — a flat 2D sheet that folds into a rigid 3D structure. A 3D object like a cube that turns into a sphere. We know we can do it — we just haven’t. There are a ton of these.

After we’ve proved we can build complex things and we can do all geometric transformations, then we can start to use the technology for more real-world applications. Then we will need to push the materials further and make sure we have the right properties so that it is scalable. Part of me is just fascinated by pushing the boundaries of what we know, what’s possible, what materials can do, and how much information you can embed. But I also want to make large-scale things and solve real-world problems with them.

You’ve talked to us about applying self-assembly technology to adaptable infrastructure like piping and bridges, low-energy manufacturing, and passive energy construction techniques. What about potential applications for space?

We have been working with Shackleton Energy as a design advisor to help build space infrastructure systems using these principles. They are looking to build a whole pipeline space infrastructure for fueling and energy extraction. The idea is to provide an infrastructure for all of the private space companies, so that they don’t have to keep going back and forth, but stay in space longer. So they need an energy supply chain, module components and smart ways they can connect to one another.

The opposite paradigm is the International Space Station: it comprises extremely complex and expensive technology made all around the world, coming together in complex ways. Nearly no module is the same. In contrast, we want to develop simple systems that can be shipped, then expand in orbit and are reconfigurable. These would be standard components that come together in many, many ways, so you have massive design possibility with a minimum number of components.

Adaptable infrastructure: pipes that expand and contract according to need. Photo: MIT Self-Assembly Lab

Why is 4D — and self-assembly — necessary?

The short answer is that I don’t like manual labor. People always comment that my work reduces energy consumption. But I never say that; I say it uses alternative energy sources like heat, shaking, and so on. The extra energy required to make smarter parts that self-assemble could be offset by reducing the expensive and huge amount of energy used in construction.

Well, 4D radically modifies that argument, because the manufacturing side would also be streamlined. There isn’t excessive labor to make the parts “smart”: I don’t have to embed magnets in every single piece, for example. It goes right from design to reality — and it doesn’t stop at reality. Smart materials can even continue to adapt — changing shape or texture. But the manufacturing process is streamlined.

How did you become interested in self-assembly in the first place?

Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?It all began in 2007, when I was in architecture school, as an undergrad in Philly. I was building these huge sculptures and breaking my back.

Were you originally an artist?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist. I was always drawing, and also making stuff. And I was into photography in middle school and high school. But somehow I thought architecture was a lucrative art form. Architecture was all software-based, but at a certain point, you get to the limits of software. I started learning how to write code. And the code is what led to the sculptures.

Generative art was a brand-new field at the time. At the same time, digital fabrication began. It was all brand new: fab labs were popping up, architecture schools were getting robotic fabrication machines, and laser cutters and 3D printers. Suddenly there was this code explosion, which meant that people like me could make stuff that no one else could make. It was the students that were pumped about this new technology. “Wow, we have all these crazy design tools and digital fabrication tools. Now we can build stuff that hadn’t been possible before — and with one percent of the budget.”

Tibbits’ first installation, “Flat Panel Quadrilateral Tessellations,” 2008.

What was your big break?

I got a huge opportunity to do an exhibition in Philly in 2007, at the Real World house in this old bank. It’s two floors, balcony. They offered me the whole space. I pitched to do something called “Scripted by Purpose,” which was a collaboration with TED Fellow Marc Fornes. The idea was using scripted processes for design. And so we brought anyone from around the world that we knew that was doing generative design at the time.

We had architects, but we also had Vito Acconci there, Marius Watz and Francois Roche, and other well-known architects, artists and designers. We were the first ones in the design world to put together such an exhibition, so people started inviting us to do exhibitions around the world. For us, it was an opportunity to make stuff in ways that people weren’t making before. And we could compete. Big architects were doing wild projects with billions of dollars. We could do wild geometries in smarter ways, because we could write code and run machines ourselves — for little money. But it was manual labor — people fabricating, assembling, connecting things, finishing the parts. Eventually the labor side of it made me realize that there had to be a better way. Not just code to design stuff, not just code to make stuff, but code to assemble stuff as well.

Somewhere in there, I joined MIT Design Computation Group and started working on programmable matter and robotics, artificial intelligence, and eventually the biology stuff crept in. That showed me possibilities of construction at other length-scales that used computational processes and embedded assembly information. That led to the research on self-assembly!

So you did ultimately get to be an artist.

Yes, I am an artist, but I also think of myself as an architect. My art was always trying to prove an architectural point. My first installation was called “Flat Panel Quadrilateral Tessellations.” It basically said that we can make complex, doubly curved surfaces, out of flat pieces of material. So it’s super cheap and super easy to build, all through code and coded machines.

For me, the most exciting challenge is not to do the same thing ever again, or to keep critiquing myself each time: how could it be smarter, how could this thing be more streamlined or do things that we didn’t expect? Each time I start something new, I want to do something I couldn’t have imagined was possible.

How has the TED Fellowship had an impact on your life and work so far?

The TED Fellowship has given me the opportunity, network and confidence to start my own lab at MIT, the Self-Assembly Lab. I likely wouldn’t have been able to take that trajectory otherwise. TED has also really been a research testbed and an opportunity to experiment. I’ve been fortunate enough to exhibit work during three of the four conferences that I’ve attended — putting the work out there, getting feedback, getting exposure and using it as a stage for development. I think this has really been a unique experience, much more tangible and direct than I could have imagined.

Video above: Watch Tibbits’ recently posted TED-Ed animation: “Self-assembly: The power of organizing the unorganized.”

You’ve said that until recently, your family didn’t know about your art. What do they think you do?

My grandmother is always trying to find me a job. When you visit her, the first thing she’ll tell you is, “If you have an extra job, if you can get a job for my boy here, he needs one.” She doesn’t understand the meaning of art and being an artist.

My mother and father don’t know my art, but when I left Nairobi to come here to TED, they all wanted to know why. So they Googled me, saw my work, and said, “OK, so this is what he does.” In our family, they don’t bother with art, except for my brother. He encourages me.

Wait – your family didn’t know that you were an artist until you came here to TED?

They know that I’m an artist, but they never bothered about what kind of art I do. They didn’t know my artwork until this week. My sister has a Facebook page, but we’ve never been “friends.” Today she sent a friend request, and said, “Oh Cyrus, congrats. I saw your work. Keep it up.” So she discovered it today.

C-STUNNERS: African mask

I live very far, far away from my family. It takes two hours from my father’s place to mine, driving.My mom and dad, they live at the eastern edge of Nairobi, and I live at the northern edge. I used to visit them every weekend. But now I visit them every two months.

Being an artist, for me, was that I was a rebel — I was a bit rude to everyone. I don’t care. I don’t follow what people want — I follow what I want. I don’t really like people. I want to go my own way. So I do everything the opposite to others, and they feel this guy is a bit of a rebel. When I was a little boy, grownups thought I was a bad example. They used to tell their kids, “Work hard. If you won’t work hard, you’ll be like Cyrus.” I was very different. I was always in my house, doing art, painting and making sculptures, and no one understood what I was doing. I didn’t study, I wore shaggy clothes. To them it was a bit weird. I didn’t know Sunday, I didn’t know Monday, I didn’t know.

In Africa, we live in a package.

What do you mean?

Monday you need to go to work up to Friday. Saturday you need to wash your clothes, you need to prepare for Sunday and Saturday. Sunday you need to go to church. You need to walk around in town and see friends. But me, I don’t have Sunday or Monday or Saturday. So if it’s visiting people, I visit any day, any time. I didn’t do homework, I didn’t study, I didn’t do exams.

But you didn’t fail at school?

All my classmates used to be much more clever than me. So they used to do homework for me. I’d pay them with artwork. “You do the exam for me, I’ll pay you in a sketch, sculpture, glasses, anything you want.”

You’ve been making glasses since you were a child?

Yeah. My dad is the one who wanted me to make the glasses: he challenged me to make them. He used to have real glasses when he was young. And one day, he messed with them and crushed them by accident. He was beaten by my grandmother because of this. So he hid the glasses from that day. And I used to admire wearing glasses when I was young. He used to say, “Cyrus, if you want to wear the glasses, maybe make your own glasses.” And that’s how I started making my own glasses. I was about seven years old.

So I think I did only one exam in my life. My dad used to be angry with me because of that. He knew. And I never performed well. After I finished high school, he said he wanted me to go to college to do electronic engineering. And I refused to join. I don’t like reading. Even after I finished high school, he used to say, “Cyrus, you know, I feel ashamed when I meet friends.” “Why?” “Because they keep asking the grades you got, your performance. And I feel ashamed to tell them.” And I was like, “Don’t listen to them. It’s my life.” And he said, “Okay.”

But then he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that “I want to do what I do: art.” And he told me to get into art school, and he’d pay for me.

I told him, “No, I don’t want to study. I want to do what I’m doing. Because if I got to school I’ll follow teachers. But I have my own art. I have my own way. So if I follow a teacher, I’ll follow his way.” He said, “Cyrus, if you refuse even to go to art college, go and start your life in another place. Go do what you want.”

C-STUNNERS: fingerprints

He only wanted me to have a certificate. We believe much, in Africa, in a certificate. We believe that if you have one, that’s the life. As I told you, we live in a package. You study, you finish school, you go to college, you marry, you start your own life, you get kids — as many as you can — that’s the end of life. You go around like that. So if you miss one of those things, you look like you’re not normal. So when you miss a step — maybe you’re late getting married — you look abnormal.

So my dad told me that if I wouldn’t go to college, to walk out of his house. And that’s what I did. I started my own life.

How old were you?

This was six years ago, I think. But he was right, because he never supported me. I think if I relied much on him, it was a bit impossible for me to reach where I am. I think he did the right thing — to show me that I need to be myself. And I remember, I moved from his house with around 3,000 shillings — that’s around $40 — with a mattress and a stove. But the lucky thing is that I have this thing of finding money anywhere, collecting money.

You find money on the ground?

Yeah.

You’re just lucky that way?

Yeah. That’s how I survived to reach where I am. My studio used to be nine kilometers from where I live. Sometimes I used to walk every day. I remember, one day I was supposed to pay rent, and I only had 20 shillings — less than one dollar. I was supposed to pay $40. I remember, I crossed the road and in the road, I found exactly the money I needed to pay it.And one day, I went with a matatu — a bus — without any money. The conductor came to get the money. I pretended I was looking for it in my empty wallet. But I couldn’t find it and turned to look for it, and I found 500 shillings in my seat.

Has this always happened?

Yeah, it’s always happened. Every week I find money. Even most of my friends don’t believe me. They they ask, “Cyrus, there is something that you are doing to get the money.” When I walk with my friends in a group, they joke, but when they walk with me they find it too. When they collect money they laugh: “Cyrus, this was your money, but it’s now mine.”

Bird from the African nature sculpture series.

Where did you practice art before you moved?

I used to work at my dad’s home. And one of my grandmothers, who used to live in Nairobi, sometimes would go to rural areas and leave me her house, which I’d use as a studio. When I moved, I moved with my art and I rented a studio somewhere. It’s in the Yaya Centre. That’s how I started my life on my own, walking long distances to work, to the studio.

Was it on your walks that you found the objects to make your art?

Yes, when I walk, I get inspired by the things that I find in the street. So I’m just walking and collecting. I don’t have high-class friends. Because they know me: I’m the person who just collects everything on the street. People feel ashamed when they are with me. When you collect in the street, you look like a street boy or madman.

You use so many materials in your art, it seems like you would spend a lot of time collecting it. You also find very beautiful things.

Yeah. And even my studio now, the place I work, it’s like a museum. Everyone takes photos of the place because it’s half very beautiful junk, and I can’t work without it.

Do you think much about the problem of waste and reuse? Or is it really simply free material for you?

The place where I grew up faced the Nairobi dump site. All the trash, all the waste of Nairobi, used to be dumped in my neighborhood. So whenever I woke up, the first thing I saw was garbage. I used to tell my dad I would like to give trash a second chance. I would like to work with trash. And that’s why, up to now, that’s what I’ve done.

I also make sculpture with rubbish. They’re fun too — and made of recycled bottle tops, wire, plastics. I have sculpture series of street musicians and wildlife.

From the Street Musician sculpture series.

What else are you working on?

Right now I have a project called Outreach. I travel in Kenya to different places, like rural areas, showing them how to work with the materials they have. Most recently I was in a deforested arid region, plagued by famine and drought. I targeted the older generation of a community known for their sculpture, because in Africa we believe much in older people. I know if I want to make an impact, the older generation will teach their youth. I went to show them how to work with alternative materials, such as plastic, wire. And I did a workshop there for two weeks, for 30 people. I showed them how to recycle Western materials as a resource for art.

Do you sell your work in Kenya? Are you well known as an artist in Nairobi?

I sell to the people who visit Kenya, mostly. Locally, people don’t understand my work.

How do your clients find you?

I’m doing well on the internet. Most of the people find me when they visit Kenya and just Google good places to visit. Sometimes they Google and get my name, and come visit my studio. The internet is helping me much. Galleries in Kenya don’t deal with anyone who isn’t from an established artist family. In my family, we’ve never had an artist, so I’m an unestablished artist to them. Two years ago, I put together an exhibition called Established Artists, whereby I gathered the artists who believe that they are unknown.

But I think now things are changing. Because, as I told you, having grown up as a bad example, I’m changing, and I’m now a good example to the community.

When I was growing up, I used to have a group of youths who used to follow my life, how I live. They used to admire me. If I had long hair or nails, all of the boys in the area did too. One day the parents told me, “Cyrus, cut your nails, because our children are now refusing to cut theirs.”And now I’m trying to help whoever follows me. One lady told me, “Cyrus, I think you changed my son’s life, because he used to follow your lifestyle. In our family we never studied, but you encouraged him to finish school and he is now finished.” Being a role model came with responsibility. For example, I don’t party. I used to fear partying because kids, they’d follow what I do. If I got drunk, they got drunk. If I smoked, they smoked. I couldn’t walk with ladies in public. That’s another reason I moved away.

But I don’t encourage anyone to be an artist. I try to encourage them to follow their own dreams. Being an artist, for me, is a bit of a hard life, and I can’t encourage someone to be an artist, because he’ll suffer. I’ve suffered a lot. Growing up, we were six, plus my mom and my dad. We grew up in two small rooms for eight people. One room was my mom and my dad’s bedroom, and the remaining room was kitchen, dining room, and kids’ bedroom. So I used to admire living a good life.

You think you have that now?

Maybe, almost. I’m trying to live now the life I used to admire.

But you’re going to keep doing what you’re doing, right?

Yeah. I can’t live without doing what I am doing. No art, no life.

Painting: “Rock ‘n’ roll”

We sat down with Van Ort to learn more about the global crisis of land mines and what we can all do about it.

What first got you interested in the land mine crisis?          

It was a slow progression. It started with my interest in modern man’s impact on the topography of the physical landscape. In 2009, I wanted to find landscapes that still harbored fear and limited movement much the way forests, mountains and rivers inhibited development many centuries ago. After some thought, the idea of minefields and how they restrict movement came to me.  To get at the core of that, I decided to photograph the actual fields where the devices were embedded.  From there, I learned much more about the topic. As a result, I usually include information in my talks about what we can do to stop creating and using these devices.

What are the impacts land mines have on a country after a war is over?

Obviously, land mines kill and maim. But land mines also restrict movement, discourage agricultural and economic development, and break down the necessary social interaction between neighboring communities. They also affect families — an entire family unit must learn to care for the survivor and aid in chores while he/she is seeking constant medical attention.

Of all the countries affected by land mines, why were you drawn to Bosnia and Herzegovina?

After the war ended in 1995, Bosnia had the highest proliferation of mines in the earth. There were 152 mines per square mile, according to Human Rights Watch in 1996. Today, about 2.8% of the land area is considered a minefield.

Also, I felt the audience needed to have a connection to the landscape.  Afghanistan, Angola, Egypt and Iraq, with their desert locals, and Cambodia, Colombia and Laos, with their jungles and rice patties, seem distant and foreign to majority of Americans and Europeans. Westerners can relate to the Bosnian landscape.  The Dinaric Alps resemble the Sierra Nevada. With lush, coniferous canopies, these areas closely resemble the places we walk with our dog or family in the early evening during summer.

Did you feel in danger when you were walking around these mine fields?

Yes.  The width of the safe space is delineated by caution tape on the ground.  That space is no more than the width an airplane aisle in some spots.  It feels as if you are on a tight rope.  Even when I would take a photograph from well outside the restricted zone, I still had an overwhelming sense of fear.

How is technology aiding land mine eradication?

The metal detector, along with a thin metal probe and a trowel, is still the preferred method for removal.  However, there are land mine removal “tanks” that chew up the ground and set off the land mines in the process.  The British military designed a Python Minefield Breaching System — a rocket is shot out attached to a 200 yard cord, which, after it is laid, carries a charge which will detonate every mine within a seven meter-wide area. Then there are mine sniffing dogs and the HERORats from Mozambique that can smell out the TNT in a mine.  Lastly there is Mahmoud Hassaini’s Mine Kafon.  The wind-blown, tumbleweed-like device, costs about 40 Euros and can detonate several mines in a single pass across a plain.  Specifically, the Mine Kafon device allows for locals to inexpensively survey an area to see if their suspicions are correct.

What else can be done to eradicate land mines globally? What can we do?

The first thing we can do as Americans is pressure our representatives in Congress to ratify and sign the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention Treaty, a.k.a. The Ottawa Treaty. We need to join in condemning and outlawing these indiscriminate killing machines.

Supporting local NGOs that do work supporting mine victims is another step.  However, passing the word on and telling your friends and family to pressure their representatives is the most direct action we can take.  If the United States can formally ratify the treaty and sign it, then hopefully this will put pressure on states like Russia, China, India and Pakistan.

Minescape is available for Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone.

Snow was a 19th-century English doctor who’s credited with proving that cholera, a sometimes deadly infection that attacks the small intestine, spreads through contaminated water — and not by “bad air” as was generally believed at the time.

Steven Johnson tours the Ghost MapAs described in Steven Johnson’s 2006 TED Talk, “The Ghost Map,” a particularly vicious cholera outbreak in 1854 at a popular water pump in London killed an astonishing 10 percent of the people who lived nearby. Snow created a map showing which people had consumed the water from the pump and whether they had gotten sick. His map helped convince local health authorities that his theory was the correct one, and by the next severe outbreak in 1866 they officially recommended that people boil water before drinking or using it, curbing the spread.

March 15 marks the 200th anniversary of Snow’s birth, which the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and affiliates are celebrating in a series of meetings and exhibits. Our present to Snow? We spoke to author Steven Johnson about the impact the doctor has had on the sustainability of modern cities.

When did you first discover the story of John Snow and his cholera map, and what was your first reaction to it?

I first came to it as an information design story in Edward Tufte’s amazingly beautiful design books, and then I kept encountering it in other fields. I’d be reading about a history of epidemiology and I’d stumble across it, or I’d be reading about the history of disease and would stumble across it. I think that is what makes the story and Snow’s role in it so interesting — the way it connects to so many fields.

What were other characteristics of the story that made you decide to write The Ghost Map?

It turned out to fit my expectations or visions of a beautiful story about the interaction between different scales of experience. It’s a story in some ways about the collusion of bacteria and the flow of water: the clean drinking water, contaminated drinking water, and waste in this huge stinking metropolis — the biggest city the world had seen at that point, with two and a half million people. Between those two scales — basically the smallest form that life takes on the planet and in some ways the largest form, the metropolis — you have this individual who’s trying to make sense of patterns that are happening in the city and trying to connect them to patterns and behavior that is happening on a microscopic scale that he can’t even see. That’s crucial to the story — that he cannot see the bacterium. He has to infer its existence from the patterns he’s detecting in the streets of London.

Once I actually sat down to research it, there were a number of things that I found that surprised me and that had not been in the traditional telling of the story. It’s conventionally told as: Snow made the map, he saw the pattern of death pointing to the pump, and he developed the waterborne theory. But in fact, he’d been working on the waterborne theory for a very long time. The map was a marketing vehicle for his idea.

The other thing was the important role, which is very relevant today, of public data. The city had begun releasing more complex mortality reports a decade before the outbreak, and instead of just listing so-and-so died on this date, they would list so-and-so died of this age, this gender, this disease, this exact address. Whatever data they had, they would release in these reports. The whole premise was: You create more data, you release it to the public, and the city is filled with all these interesting amateurs who don’t work for the government who might detect patterns in it. Snow ended up using a lot of that data, in addition to his on-the-ground detective work to build a map, to build his case for the waterborne theory. It’s very much connected to the kind of open data, transparency argument of today. Snow was doing it without computers, but it’s the same idea. So that was a cool surprise.

Finally, Henry Whitehead, Snow’s collaborator. I mean, almost nobody talks about him, and he was crucial to the story. The more I dug in, the more I realized that Whitehead had done all this work Snow really couldn’t have done, because Snow was not a great social connector. A lot of the investigation needed Whitehead’s social intelligence to track down additional data on people who had left the neighborhood. And there’s an argument that without Whitehead’s contributions, the authorities might not have come around to Snow’s theory. I love that because it’s a great example of multidisciplinary collaboration where you have two very different types of intelligence coming together to solve a problem.

In your TED Talk, you mention that modern, massive cities that exist today wouldn’t be possible without Snow’s contributions to epidemiology. Can you elaborate?

This is why the period is so interesting in a sense. There were all these people looking around London in 1854 and saying: This is not sustainable. Human beings are not meant to live in this state, two and a half million people is just too large for a city to work. And they were right on some level — certain things had to be figured out that hadn’t been yet.

One of the biggest was how to deal with all the human waste that is created with two and a half million people so densely populated. [Snow helped make] it clear that the separating of drinking water and waste was an absolute imperative for the city to grow. Making it clear that that could happen — and conquering cholera within 12 years — is just a staggering achievement. And that became a blueprint for every big city in the world. It enabled us to build cities of 10 million and 20 million people without necessarily having to battle these diseases.

Now, developing-world megacities are trying to figure it out with 25 million people. And we haven’t solved all those problems. But one of the things that is so important about Snow’s achievement is that it wasn’t all that long ago. You look back 160 or 170 years and you can point to how awful London was as a city, and compare it to the amount of progress we’ve made since then, and use it as a kind of inspiration for what we need to do now.

That nicely leads to my next question. What are the main challenges these new megacities face?

The root cause is that the growth in these megacities is coming in areas without traditional infrastructure. When you look at the favelas in São Paulo, you have millions and millions and millions of people without a traditional electric grid, without traditional sewage, in improvised communities. It may be that the way to deal this is to just build infrastructure and support them in a traditional way that we pioneered in the 19th century. Or maybe there are new solutions.

Are there mapping tools that are the modern-day, John Snow/cholera equivalent that are helping solve some of these problems?

There are actually. There are a million examples of things like this, precisely because we now have Google Maps where we can drop datasets and anybody can do new dynamic maps of interesting social problems. There were some great improvised maps that were created after the earthquake and cholera epidemic in Haiti.

You just got back from TED2013 in Long Beach, California. What was the most memorable moment for you?

There was a talk by Alastair Parvin about this kind of open-source Creative Commons kit for building small houses, where two people with a 3D printer can assemble one in 48 hours. It was really cool, and his point was about releasing tools so that anyone can build a structure in those developing world megacities that we are talking about. An overwhelming number of the houses are actually built by members of the community cobbled with existing materials. If you have this kind of technology, it helps produce more reliable housing. And I kind of thought, that is a great. That fits perfectly with the Ghost Map.

Additional reading:

Haven’t had enough John Snow? For more, check out the UCLA Department of Epidemiology’s John Snow archive, which has original writing and images, as well as other treats, or try these books:

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump: John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera by Sandra Hempel

Cholera, Chloroform and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow Peter Vinten-Johansen et al.

So how did Hansen happen upon such fascinating methods? By embracing a major limitation — a hand tremor that made it impossible for him to do the pointillist drawings he loved.

The theme of transcending constraints and roadblocks was a major theme at TED2013. While Hansen said in his talk, “Embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity … We need to first be limited in order to become limitless,” filmmaker Martin Villeneuve echoed the sentiment in his talk about making a sci-fi movie for $2 million. He said, “If you treat the problems as possibilities, life will start to dance with you in the most amazing ways.” And TED’s own Lisa Bu shared how she found her true calling when her dream of being an opera singer died. In a powerful moment of her talk, she said, “‘Coming true’ is not the only purpose of a dream. Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from, where passion comes from, where happiness comes from. Even a shattered dream can do that for you.”

Fascinated by this message, I asked Hansen a few questions at TED2013.

The power of limitations has been a real theme so far this conference. Why do you think this hasn’t traditionally been a part of the conversation about creativity?

I think due to the economy, we’ve been running into a spike of constraints while at the same time being more culturally fascinated with creativity than ever. One of the speakers, Danny Hillis, said “It’s hard to get people to focus on plan B when plan A is working so well.” Now we are in a place where lots of “plans As” are no longer working. Being forced to reevaluate is allowing us to see this connection between limitations and creativity that has always been right in front of us. Within this process, we are bringing curiosity back — curiosity about new possibilities that we hadn’t explored when plan A was working so well. And we are discovering better alternatives, as I’ve witnessed here from a lot of speakers so far at TED.

I’m curious — have you had any ideas for works since being at TED?

There’s really not an off button — I’m always running ideas in my head. A lot of ideas have surfaced in conversations with other attendees about possible collaborations that I’m really excited about.

I’ve been contemplating a text art project where I ask people to share their stories about limitations with me. I’ve had so many people come up to me and share their stories that I feel inspired to take this project on a bigger scale. I want everyone who looks at this piece to be able to find a story that they can relate to in looking at their own limitations.

So let’s say you’re a writer/artist/musician and you’re feeling a bit blocked. What are some things you can do to get the juice flowing again?

Creativity is simply connecting information, so we have to be in a relaxed mental state that is open to seeing these connections, but aware enough to capture them. Getting to this mental state is different for everyone, so I always suggest people experiment and find what works for them. Whenever I feel creatively stumped, my first instinct is to do something to get myself relaxed. I usually go on a long walk, like two hours long, because it takes at least 45 minutes for me to get out of my head and into the ether.

In order to be in the creative flow, it’s really important to be process driven and hold the results loosely. Sometimes it’s better to keep pushing through it. If you’re a writer, keep writing — even if it’s gibberish — and eventually it will flow again. Sometimes it’s better to destroy and start over. Or, if what you’re working on is too broad, impose a limitation to spark your creativity.

City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There is a new TED Books anthology that seeks to answer some of the key questions about how to develop thriving cities — tackling everything from issues of sustainability to infrastructure to the happiness of urban dwellers. Born out of The City 2.0, a broad initiative for citizen-powered change that began with the 2012 TED Prize, this collection of essays offers potential answers to the question: How can we ensure that our cities are sustainable, efficient, beautiful and invigorating? Produced in partnership with The Atlantic Cities, the 12 authors featured in this book offer fascinating ideas, from transportation to food to public art.

Over the next three days, we’ll hear from three City 2.0 essay authors. Today, we sat down with Diana Lind, the editor-in-chief and executive director of Next City, to discuss her essay that envisions cities without highways.

Why do highways have a bad effect on cities?

While highways connect cities that are hundreds of miles apart and allow us to move people and goods across this vast country, many highways were built at the height of suburban development. They are not designed to bring people into cities so much as to allow people to drive past them. As a result, these highways often bisect neighborhoods, cut cities off from their waterfronts and obstruct the natural development that occurs along boulevards and streets. The land beside or under urban highways is often underdeveloped, creating no-go zones that are bad for the city’s economy, safety and appearance. Highways carry loud, polluting cars, and research has shown links between road pollution and asthma. The impervious highway surface creates stormwater runoff and heat-island effects, which are bad for a city’s resilience in climate change. And unlike other kinds of property, highways don’t generate tax revenue, preventing dozens of acres from being productively used. Simply put: highways are a blight on livable cities.

I don’t think we should keep investing in highways. In this era of climate change, downtown revitalization and population density, they can no longer be the solution. As cities see their highways become structurally obsolete, it’s a perfect time to start thinking about how to connect cities through other modes of infrastructure.

What are some of the alternatives to highways?

Any plan to replace a highway needs to account for the cars that will be displaced. Ideally, you replace a highway with more transit options so people can take a bus or train instead of a car. In New York, when the city decided not to replace the West Side Highway, it cleverly took federal highway funds and used them towards improving transit. In San Francisco, a former highway was replaced with a trolley line. The footprint of the highway itself might become a boulevard, property for new development, a park or a bike lane. On a larger scale, our national network of highways should be replaced with a better rail network that allows people the option of taking a train between cities rather than having to choose between driving or flying.

You say in your essay that more walkable neighborhoods contribute to lower foreclosure rates. Why would that be?

It’s plain math. Imagine a couple that has to pay for two cars in addition to a mortgage; they’re less likely to be able to handle their monthly bills. Each car costs the average driver nearly $9,000 a year. Compare that with a monthly MetroCard pass in New York City — it’s less than $1,250 a year, and that’s as expensive as public transit gets. If you can bike or walk to take care of your daily needs, life gets even cheaper. The money saved on not owning a car actually helps keep people in their homes.

You also say that there’s a connection between highways and obesity. Share more on that!

It’s really a connection between obesity and driving. Researchers have found that driving and obesity have a shocking 99 percent correlation. The more you drive, the more likely you are to be obese, because you have less time to walk for daily errands and otherwise be active.

What have been some of the benefits of replacing highways in New York and San Francisco?

There have been many. Removing the highways has increased area property values, significantly reduced car traffic along these thoroughfares and reconnected both cities to their waterfronts. Local gems such as San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Hudson River Park in New York are just two examples of how improving the area instead of improving highways has resulted in deeper investments in the city’s assets.

City 2.0 is available for Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone.

The City 2.0 is an online forum that showcase stories and projects for urban innovation, and also doled out 10 grants for thinkers with great ideas for cities throughout 2012. Here, meet 8 of the winners and hear their fascinating ideas »

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

At TED2013, Mitra invited the world to embrace child-driven learning by setting up Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) and helping him design a learning lab in India, where children can “embark on intellectual adventures.”

We gave Mitra a call and asked him to reflect on his TED Prize win, dive deeper into his thoughts about learning and share the personal experiences that inspired his passion for igniting curiosity in children across the globe.

Here’s our conversation:

What does winning the TED Prize mean to you?

To me, it is a great symbol of recognition — that my work of the last few decades does have acceptability and is of real interest to the world. I was nervous that my work would get put aside as “out of the box,” a phrase I dislike immensely, and forgotten. I am more confident now, thanks to TED.

How did your upbringing shape your interest in self-directed learning?

I did not know anything about self-directed learning until 1999 when I stumbled upon it because of the Hole in the Wall experiment. I grew up more or less by myself in a big bungalow in Delhi with a large garden that had lots of trees and all sorts of birds, animals and insects. We used to learn together, if that makes any sense.

If you were part of a SOLE as a child, what big question do you imagine you might have asked first?

I think I have always been in a SOLE. I grew up quite alone and used to experiment constantly with my surroundings — trees and animals and birds and myself. There were no computers, so I used to ask questions to nature, and often, she would answer.

What is the first thing you remember learning on your own? Did you enjoy the process?

When I was 4 or so, we used to live in my mother’s house in Calcutta. The morning newspaper was rolled up and tossed into our first-floor balcony by the newspaper man. I was always up very early and used to pick it up and take it to my grandfather. I did not know he was dying from cancer. One day when I went to his room with the paper, it was empty and there were people crying. I went back to the balcony and put the paper back where it had fallen and stood for some time wondering if I should pick it up and try again. I learned you can’t turn back time. I did not enjoy the process, I am afraid.

Some people have misunderstood your strategy as anti-teacher, when in fact you are arguing that teachers have a crucial role to play — just a different one — in this technological age. Who was your favorite teacher and why?

My favorite teacher was Father Lewicki at St. Xavier’s High School. When I was 16, I told him I don’t see why I should believe in God. He said I should read Teilhard de Chardin and decide for myself.

Will child-driven education work differently depending on a child’s culture, gender and access to resources?

Easy access to an unsupervised, publicly visible computer with broadband is critical. But children are impacted differently depending on their reading comprehension, particularly in English. Culture does not matter so much when you are dealing with 8-12-year-olds. Neither does gender.

How has parenting informed your perspective on self-directed learning?

My father did his Ph.D. under Benjamin Bloom in Chicago, in the days of objective-driven and “programmed” learning. He then became one of the first psychoanalysts in India. I think he taught me a lot of things by not telling me to do things — by not teaching and only listening.

I learnt how to listen and that people will tell you everything if you listen and say “hmmm” once in a while. My mother, who was once a student of Rabindranath Tagore, taught me how to do lots of things just by thinking about them.

Your Hole in the Wall experiment inspired Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, the book that Slumdog Millionaire is based on. How do you think your TED Prize wish will impact popular culture?

In an age where “knowing” may be obsolete, Homo sapiens will have to reinvent ourselves. The wish, I hope, will be a tiny step in that direction. If children have wings, they will learn how to fly.

Did your experience as a parent impact your views about self-directed learning?

The Hole in the Wall experiment was based on what I had learned from my son when he was 6. It was 1987 and I had bought my first PC, spending nearly a year’s salary at the time. When it arrived, I said to my son, “Don’t even think about it.”

About three days later, I was looking for a file on the DOS system. Every time I typed DIR, all the file names would scroll up too fast for me to read them. As I was trying the third time, a little voice from behind said. “If you type DIR/W/P, it will show up like a page.” I was a bit shocked. “How did you know that?” I asked. “Well, that’s what you did yesterday!” he said. From then on, I let him use the computer.

In a couple of weeks, I was asking my son how to do things that I did not know my computer could do. I wrote a paper suggesting that children can learn to use computers by themselves just by watching each other. It was very badly received. Twelve years later, in 1999, my friend and employer Rajendra Pawar let me do the Hole in the Wall. He had no clue what I was trying to find out. The rest is history.

Learn more about Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize wish »

Video still from Le Chal, courtesy Anthony Vipin Das.

A haunting black-and-white video screened during the TED Fellows talks depicted people speaking into a device and then walking — at first taking halting steps, then more confident strides. As the video unfolds, the camera zooms in on the faces of the walkers — revealing that they are blind.

With his team, TED Senior Fellow Anthony Vipin Das, an eye surgeon, has been developing haptic shoes that use vibration and GPS technology to guide the blind. This innovation — which could radically change the lives of the vision-impaired — has drawn the interest of the United States Department of Defense, which has recently shortlisted the project for a $2 million research grant. Anthony tells us the story behind the shoe.

Tell us about the haptic shoe.

The shoe is called Le Chal, which means “take me there” in Hindi. My team, Anirudh Sharma and Krispian Lawrence and I, are working on a haptic shoe that uses GPS to guide the blind. The most difficult problems that the blind usually face when they navigate is orientation and direction, as well as obstacle detection. The shoe is in its initial phase of testing: We’ve crafted the technology down to an insole that can fit into any shoe and is not limited by the shape of the footwear, and it vibrates to guide the user. It’s so intuitive that if I tap on your right shoulder, you will turn to your right; if I tap on your left shoulder, you turn to your left.

The shoe basically guides the user on the foot on which he’s supposed to take a turn. This is for direction. The shoe also keeps vibrating if you’re not oriented in the direction of your initial path, and will stop vibrating when you’re headed in the right direction. It basically brings the wearer back on track as we check orientation at regular intervals. Currently I’m conducting the first clinical study at LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India. It’s very encouraging to see the kind of response we’ve had from wearers. They were so moved because it was probably the very first time that they had the sense of independence to move confidently — that the shoe was talking to them, telling them where to go and what to do.

How do you tell the shoe where you want to go?

It uses GPS tracking, and we’ve put in smart taps: gestures that the shoe can learn. You tap twice, and it’ll take you home. If you lift your heel for five seconds, the shoe might understand, “This is one of my favorite locations.” And not just that. If a shoe detects a fall, it can automatically call an emergency number. Moving forward, we want to try to decrease the dependency on the phone and the network to a great extent. We hope to crowdsource maps and build up enough data to store on the shoe itself.

The second phase we are working on is obstacle detection. India has got such a varied terrain. The shoe can detect immediate obstacles like stones, potholes, steps. It’s not a replacement for the cane, but it’s an additive benefit for a visually impaired person to offer a sense of direction and orientation.

Are you still in the development stage?

The insole is already done. We are currently testing it. I’m using simple and complex paths — simple paths like a square, rectangle, triangle and a circle, and complex paths include a zigzag or a random path. Then we are going to step it up with navigation into a neighborhood. From there we’ll develop navigation to distant locations, including the use of public transportation. It will be a stepwise study that we’ll finish over the middle of this year, then go in for manufacturing the product.

You’re an eye doctor. How did you get involved in this?

I’m an eye surgeon who loves to step out of my box and try to see others who are working in similar areas of technology that are helpful for my patients. So Anirudh Sharma and I, we’re on the same TR35 list of India in 2012. I said, “Dude, I think we can be doing stuff with the shoe and my patients. Let’s see how we can refine it.” There was already an initial prototype when he presented last year at EmTech in Bangalore. Anirudh teamed up with one of his friends, Krispian Lawrence of Ducere Technologies in Hyderabad, who is leading the development and logistics to get this into the market. We just formed a really cool team, and started working on the shoe, started testing it on our patients and refining the model further and further. Finally we’ve come to a stage where my patients are walking and building a bond with the shoe.

Are these patients comfortable with the shoe?

Yes, it’s totally unobtrusive. And more importantly, we are working on developing the first vibration language in the world for the Haptic Shoe. We’re looking at standardizing the vibration, like Braille, which is multilingual. But even more crucial than the technology, the shoe is basically talking to the walker. How they can trust the shoe? So that’s an angle that we are looking at. Because at the end of the day, it’s the shoe that’s guiding you to the destination. We’re trying to build that bond between the walker and the sole.

Building a bond with the sole. That’s good. I’m going to use that.