Tag Archives: TED 2014

The last one, TED 2014′s Session12: Onward

Well this is the last posting in what has been an experimental week for me and I’m ending it with Joi Ito’s talk. Here’s more about Ito from his TED biography,

Joichi “Joi” Ito is one of those names threaded through the history of the Internet. From his days kickstarting Internet culture in Japan at Digital Garage, his restless curiosity led him to be an early-stage investor in Twitter, Six Apart, Wikia, Flickr, Last.fm, Kickstarter and other Internet companies, and to serve on countless boards and advisory committees around digital culture and Internet freedom.

He leads the legendary MIT Media Lab as it heads toward its third decade, and is working on a book with Jeff Howe about nine principles for navigating whatever the changing culture throws at us next. As he told Wired, “The amount of money and the amount of permission that you need to create an idea has decreased dramatically.” So: aim for resilience, not strength; seek risk, not safety. The book is meant to be a compass for a world without maps.

Ito (a self-described three-time college dropout) talked about his experience of co-founding SAFECAST in response to the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan as he made the case for making, manufacturing, and innovating in a frictionless fashion without having to write up big business plans and expending energy on attracting investment money. He emphasized a ‘can do’ approach for now and for the future and the importance of learning over education.

That’s it for me. It’s been an exhausting and stimulating week and I thank the TED organizers for the access to their event livestream.

Some final thoughts, this event could be have been held anywhere despite attempts at the beginning of TED 2014 to mention Canada and those fell to the wayside fairly shortly. Overall, the efforts to acknowledge Canada were both clumsy and ultimately inadequate if what they were trying to do was give the participants a sense of being on foreign (to the TED main event) soil for the first time in its history.

One of the problems of course is the organizers’ dedication to producing ‘wow’ moments such as  Edward Snowden’s attendance via a telepresent robot. It was a stunning moment and, even remotely, I felt a frisson of excitement. Inevitably, the conversation became much more US-centric and I noticed speakers scheduled for subsequent days were very much grounded in their US reality. The problem was the sheer number of those speakers coming after Snowden (whose impact was huge) and then there was NSA (US National Security Agency) response.

It’s an interesting problem, How do you orchestrate a ‘wow’ moment without having it overshadow everything that comes after? And in this case, how do you mitigate the US-centric impact (assuming you want to) on an event which is being held on foreign soil?

I hope the organizers can find a way to better integrate the event with its surroundings, not the physical surrounding but the social and the cultural. In any event, I look forward (onward?) to next year and I wish the organizers all the best. One final comment, the organizers pulled off some extraordinary juxtapositions of speakers and ideas.

Should we love our robots or are robots going be smarter than we are? TED’s 2014 All Stars Session 5: The Future is Ours (maybe)

Rodney Brooks seems to be a man who loves robots, from his TED biography,

Rodney Brooks builds robots based on biological principles of movement and reasoning. The goal: a robot who can figure things out.

MIT professor Rodney Brooks studies and engineers robot intelligence, looking for the holy grail of robotics: the AGI, or artificial general intelligence. For decades, we’ve been building robots to do highly specific tasks — welding, riveting, delivering interoffice mail — but what we all want, really, is a robot that can figure things out on its own, the way we humans do.

Brooks makes a plea for easy-to-use (programme) robots and mentions his Baxter robot as an example that should be improved; Brooks issues a challenge to make robots better. (Baxter was used as the base for EDI introduced earlier in TED’s 2014 Session 8 this morning (March 20, 2014).

By contrast, Sir Martin Rees, astrophysicist has some concerns about robots and artificial intelligence as per my Nov. 26, 2012 posting about his (and others’) proposal to create the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk. From his TED biography,

Martin Rees, one of the world’s most eminent astronomers, is a professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge and the UK’s Astronomer Royal. He is one of our key thinkers on the future of humanity in the cosmos.

Sir Martin Rees has issued a clarion call for humanity. His 2004 book, ominously titled Our Final Hour, catalogues the threats facing the human race in a 21st century dominated by unprecedented and accelerating scientific change. He calls on scientists and nonscientists alike to take steps that will ensure our survival as a species.

Rees states that the worst threats to planetary survival come from humans not, as it did in the past, nature. While science offers great possibilities, it has an equally dark side. Rees suggests robots going rogue, activists hijacking synthetic biology to winnow out the population, and more. He suggests that there is a 50% chance that we could suffer a devastating setback. Rees then mentions the proposed Cambridge Centre for Existential Risk and the importance of studying the possibility of human extinction and ways to mitigate risk.

Steven Johnson, writer, was introduced next (from his TED biography),

Steven Berlin Johnson examines the intersection of science, technology and personal experience.

A dynamic writer and speaker, Johnson crafts captivating theories that draw on a dizzying array of disciplines, without ever leaving his audience behind. Author Kurt Anderson described Johnson’s book Emergence as “thoughtful and lucid and charming and staggeringly smart.” The same could be said for Johnson himself. His big-brained, multi-disciplinary theories make him one of his generation’s more intriguing thinkers. His books take the reader on a journey — following the twists and turns his own mind makes as he connects seemingly disparate ideas: ants and cities, interface design and Victorian novels.

He will be hosting a new PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) series, ‘How We Got to Now’ (mentioned in Hector Tobar’s Aug. 7, 2013 article about the PBS series in the Los Angeles Times) and this talk sounds like it might be a preview of sorts. Johnson plays a recording made 20 years before Alexander Graham Bell ‘first’ recorded sound. The story he shares is about an inventor who didn’t think to include a playback feature for his recordings. He simply didn’t think about it as he was interested in doing something else (I can’t quite remember what that was now) and, consequently, his invention and work got lost for decades. Despite that, it forms part of the sound recording story. Thankfully, modern sound recording engineers have developed a technique which allows us to hear those ‘lost’ sounds today.

‘Eddie’ the robot, US National Security Agency talks back to Ed Snowden, at TED 2014′s Session 8: Hacked

The session started 30 minutes earlier than originally scheduled and as a consequence I got to the party a little late. First up, Marco Tempest, magician and technoillusionist, introduced and played with EDI (electronic deceptive intelligence; pronounced Eddy), a large, anthropomorphic robot (it had a comic book style face on the screen used for its face and was reminiscent of Ed Snowden’s appearance in a telepresent robot). This was a slick presentation combining magic and robotics bringing to mind Arthur C. Clarke’s comment, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,which I’m sure Tempest mentioned before I got there. Interestingly, he articulated the robot’s perspective that humans are fragile and unpredictable inspiring fear and uncertainty in the robot. It’s the first time I’ve encountered our relationship from the robot’s perspective,. Thank you Mr. Tempest.

Rick Ledgett, deputy director of the US National Science Agency (NSA), appeared on screen as he attended remotely but not telepresently as Ed Snowden did earlier this week to be interviewed by a TED moderator (Chris Anderson, I think). Technical problems meant the interview was interrupted and stopped while the tech guys scrambled to fix the problem. Before he was interrupted, Ledgett answered a question as to whether or not Snowden could have taken alternative actions. Ledgett made clear that he (and presumably the NSA) does not consider Snowden to be a whistleblower. It was a little confusing to me but it seemed to me that Ledgett was suggesting that whistleblowing is legitimate only when down to the corporate sector. As well, Ledgett said that Snowden could have reported to his superiors and to various oversight agencies rather than making his findings public. These responses, of course, are predictable so what made the interview interesting was Ledgett’s demeanour. He was careful not to say anything inflammatory and seemed reasonable. He is the right person to representing the NSA. He doesn’t seem to know how dangerous and difficult whistleblowing whether it’s done to a corporate entity or a government agency. Whether or not you agree with Snowden’s actions, the response to them is a classic response. I went to a talk some years ago and the speaker, Mark Wexler who teaches business ethics at Simon Fraser University, said that whistleblowers often lose their careers, their relationships, and their families due to the pressures brought to bear on them.

Ledgett rejoins the TED stage after Kurzweil and it sounds like he has been huddling with a communications team as he reframes his and Snowden’s participation as part of an important conversation. Clearly, the TED team has been in touch with Snowden who refutes Ledgett’s suggestions about alternative routes. Now. Ledgett talks tough as he describes Snowden as arrogant. He states somewhere in all this that Snowden’s actions have endangered lives and the moderator presses him for examples. Ledgett’s response features examples that are general and scenario-based. When pressed Ledgett indulges in a little sarcasm suggesting that things would be easier with badboy.com as a site where nefarious individuals would hang out. Ledgett makea some valid points about the need for some secrecy and he does state that he feels transparency is important and the NSA has not been good about it. Ledgett notes that every country in the world has a means of forcing companies to reveal information about users and he notes that some countries are using  the notion (effectively lying) that they don’t force revelations as a marketing tool. the interview switches to a discussion of metadata, its importance, and whether or not it provides more information about them individually than most people realize. Ledgett refutes that notion. I have to go, hope to get back and point you to other reports with more info. about this fascinating interview.

Ed Yong, uber science blogger, from his TED biography,

Ed Yong blogs with a mission: igniting excitement for science in everyone, regardless of their education or background.

The award-winning blog Not Exactly Rocket Science (hosted by National Geographic) is the epicenter of Yong’s formidable web and social media presence. In its posts, he tackles the hottest and most bizarre topics in science journalism. When not blogging, he also manages to contribute to Nature, Wired, Scientific American and many other web and print outlets. As he says, “The only one that matters to me, as far as my blog is concerned, is that something interests me. That is, excites or inspires or amuses me.”

Yong talked about mind-controlling parasites such as tapeworms and Gordian worms in the context of his fascination with how the parasites control animal behaviour. (i posted about a parasite infecting and controlling honey bees in an Aug. 2, 2012 piece.) Yong is liberal with his sexual references such as castrating, mind-controliing parasites in a very witty way. He also suggests that humans may in some instances (estimates suggest up to 1/3 of us) be controlled by parasites and our notions of individual autonomy are a little over-blown.

Ray Kurzweil, Mr. Singularity, describes evolution and suggests that humans are not evolving quickly enough given rapidly changing circumstances. He focuses on human brains and the current theories about their processing capabilities and segues into artificial intelligence. He makes the case that we are preparing for a quantitative leap in intelligence as our organic brains are augmented by the artificial.

Kurzweil was last mentioned here in a Jan. 6, 2010 posting in the context of reverse-engineering brains.

All Stars Session 4: I Heart Design

I’ll try to cover design since it is integral to TED (technology entertainment design) even if not to this blog. This session was mostly concerned with how design can make the world a better place and the following is not done in speaker order.

Architect Moshe Safdie talked about rethinking towers and cities to make them more livable. Pattie Maes talked about better design for the ‘internet of Things’ or ‘Network of Smarter Objects’ where the objects respond to us intuitively, e.g. lights that change in response to biofeedback from us as we meditate. Sarah Kay talked about poetry. I agree with her  comment that she didn’t belong in the session but there was something kind of charming about a poet participating in a design session. Aimee Mullins, a paralympian who’s been mentioned here before (my first posting about her was a July 24, 2009 piece on human enhancement) discussed imagination and its importance for creating the future. Stefan Sagmeister talked about asking for what you want in the context of his design practice. I’m excerpting  this from his TED biography,

While a sense of humor invariably surfaces in his designs, Sagmeister is nonetheless very serious about his work; his intimate approach and sincere thoughtfulness elevate his design. A genuine maverick, Sagmeister achieved notoriety in the 1990s as the designer who self-harmed in the name of craft: He created a poster advertising a speaking engagement by carving the salient details onto his torso.

Finally, the moderator asked Sarah Kay to return to the stage for a poem (from the Kia Kaha Tumblr page),

“Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire” by Sarah Kay

They told me that I was meant for the cleaner life.

That you would drag me through the mud.

They said that you would tread all over me.

That they could see right through you.

That you were full of hot air.

That I would always be chasing,

Always watching you disappear after sleeker models.

That it would be a vicious cycle.

But I know better.

I know about your rough edges

and I have seen your perfect curves.

I will fit into whatever spaces you let me.

If loving you means getting dirty, bring on the grime.

I will leave this porcelain home behind.

I’m used to twice a day relationships

but with you, I’ll take all the time.

And I know we live in different worlds,

and we’re always really busy,

but in my dreams you spin around me so fast

I always wake up dizzy.

So, maybe one day you’ll grow tired of the road

and roll on back to me.

And when I blink my eyes into the morning,

your smile will be the only one I see.

There was more; this is not exhaustive description.

Printing food, changing prostheses, and talking with Google (Larry Page) at TED 2014′s Session 6: Wired

I’m covering two speakers and an interview from this session. First, Avi Reichental, CEO (Chief Executive Officer) 3D Sytems, from his TED biography (Note: A link has been removed),

At 3D Systems, Avi Reichental is helping to imagine a future where 3D scanning-and-printing is an everyday act, and food, clothing, objects are routinely output at home.

Lately, he’s been demo-ing the Cube, a tabletop 3D printer that can print a basketball-sized object, and the ChefJet, a food-grade machine that prints in sugar and chocolate. His company is also rolling out consumer-grade 3D scanning cameras that clip to a tablet to capture three-dimensional objects for printing out later. He’s an instructor at Singularity University (watch his 4-minute intro to 3D printing).

Reichental started by talking about his grandfather, a cobbler who died in the Holocaust and whom he’d never met. Nonetheless, his grandfather had inspired him to be a maker of things in a society where craftsmanship and crafting atrophied until recently with the rise of ‘maker’ culture and 3D printing.

There were a number of items on the stage, shoes, a cake, a guitar and more, all of which had been 3D printed. Reichental’s shoes had also been produced on a 3D printer. If I understand his dream properly, it is to enable everyone to make what they need more cheaply and better.

Next, Hugh Herr, bionics designer, from his TED biography,

Hugh Herr directs the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab, where he is pioneering a new class of biohybrid smart prostheses and exoskeletons to improve the quality of life for thousands of people with physical challenges. A computer-controlled prosthesis called the Rheo Knee, for instance, is outfitted with a microprocessor that continually senses the joint’s position and the loads applied to the limb. A powered ankle-foot prosthesis called the BiOM emulates the action of a biological leg to create a natural gait, allowing amputees to walk with normal levels of speed and metabolism as if their legs were biological.

Herr is the founder and chief technology officer of BiOM Inc., which markets the BiOM as the first in a series of products that will emulate or even augment physiological function through electromechanical replacement. You can call it (as they do) “personal bionics.”

Herr walked on his two bionic limbs onto the TED stage. He not only researches and works in the field of bionics, he lives it. His name was mentioned in a previous presentation by David Sengeh (can be found in my March 17, 2014 posting), a 2014 TED Fellow.

Herr talked about biomimcry, i.e., following nature’s lead in design but he also suggested that design is driving (affecting) nature.  If I understand him rightly, he was referencing some of the work with proteins, ligands, etc. and creating devices that are not what we would consider biological or natural as we have tended to use the term.

His talk contrasted somewhat with Reichental’s as Herr wants to remove the artisanal approach to developing prosthetics and replacing the artisanal with data-driven strategies. Herr covered the mechanical, the dynamic, and the electrical as applied to bionic limbs. I think the term prosthetic is being applied the older, artisanal limbs as opposed to these mechanical, electrical, dynamic marvels known as bionic limbs.

The mechanical aspect has to do with figuring out how your specific limbs are formed and used and getting precise measurements (with robotic tools) because everyone is a little bit different. The dynamic aspect, also highly individual, is how your muscles work. For example, standing still, walking, etc. all require dynamic responses from your muscles. Finally, there’s the integration with the nervous system so you can feel your limb.

Herr shows a few videos including one of a woman who lost part of her leg in last year’s Boston Marathon bombing (April 15, 2013). A ballroom dancer, Herr invites her to the stage so she can perform in front of the TED 2014 audience. She got a standing ovation.

In the midst of session 6, there was an interview conducted by Charlie Rose (US television presenter) with Larry Page, a co-founder of Google.

Very briefly, I was mildly relieved (although I’m not convinced) to hear that Page is devoted to the notion that search is important. I’ve been concerned about the Google search results I get. Those results seem less rich and interesting than they were a few years ago. I attribute the situation to the chase for advertising dollars and a decreasing interest in ‘search’ as the company expands with initiatives such as ‘Google glass’, artificial intelligence, and pursues other interests distinct from what had been the company’s core focus.

I didn’t find much else of interest. Larry Page wants to help people and he’s interested in artificial intelligence and transportation. His perspective seemed a bit simplistic (technology will solve our problems) but perhaps that was for the benefit of people like me. I suspect one of a speaker’s challenges at TED is finding the right level. Certainly, I’ve experienced difficulties with some of the more technical presentations.

One more observation, there was no mention of a current scandal at Google profiled in the April 2014 issue of Vanity Fair, (by Vanessa Grigoriadis)

 O.K., Glass: Make Google Eyes

The story behind Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s liaison with Google Glass marketing manager Amanda Rosenberg—and his split from his wife, genetic-testing entrepreneur Anne Wojcicki— has a decidedly futuristic edge. But, as Vanessa Grigoriadis reports, the drama leaves Silicon Valley debating emotional issues, from office romance to fear of mortality.

Given that Page agreed to be on the TED stage in the last 10 days, this appearance seems like an attempt at damage control especially with the mention of Brin who had his picture taken with the telepresent Ed Snowden on Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at TED 2014.

Brains, guts, health, and consciouness at TED 2014′s Session 5: Us

While most of the speakers I’m mentioning are the ‘science’ speakers in this session, they are more precisely ‘medical science’ speakers which takes me further than usual out of my comfort zone. That said, Nancy Kanwisher, brain researcher, opened the session (from her TED biography),

Using cutting-edge fMRI technology as her lens, Nancy Kanwisher zooms in on the brain regions responsible for some surprisingly specific elements of cognition.

Does the brain use specialized processors to solve complex problems, or does it rely instead on more general-purpose systems?

This question has been at the crux of brain research for centuries. MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] researcher Nancy Kanwisher seeks to answer this question by discovering a “parts list” for the human mind and brain. “Understanding the nature of the human mind,” she says, “is arguably the greatest intellectual quest of all time.”

As many of us now know courtesy of researchers like Kanwisher, the brain has both general purpose regions and specialized regions for perception and complex processing but Kanwisher’s presentation was as much about the process of discovery as it was about the discoveries she and her colleagues have made. She talked about her personal experiences with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as she tested (many times) her own brain first and then spent years looking at grayscale images as she decoded what she was observing and tested over and over and over again.

Next came the ‘gut guy’, or as microbial ecologist Rob Knight’s TED biography describes him,

Rob Knight explores the unseen microbial world that exists literally right under our noses — and everywhere else on (and in) our bodies.

Using scatological research methods that might repel the squeamish, microbial researcher Rob Knight uncovers the secret ecosystem (or “microbiome”) of microbes that inhabit our bodies — and the bodies of every creature on earth. In the process, he’s discovered a complex internal ecology that affects everything from weight loss to our susceptibility to disease. As he said to Nature in 2012, “What motivates me, from a pragmatic standpoint, is how understanding the microbial world might help us improve human and environmental health.”

Knight made the case that our microbes are what give us our individuality by noting that 99.99% of our DNA is the same from one person to the next but out microbial communities vary greatly person to person and the community in your mouth varies greatly from the community on your skin. He and his colleagues are using the information to consider new types of medical interventions. For example, research has shown that giving children antibiotics before the age of six months affects their future health.

Interestingly, we carry about 3 lbs. of microbes individually and Knight and his colleagues are still gathering information about those lbs. He mentioned the American Gut project (and solicited future volunteers from the live audience by mentioning he had just happened to bring 100 kits which were available at his table outside). This project is for US participant only.

Stephen Friend, oncologist and open science advocate was featured next. From his TED biography,

Inspired by open-source software models, Sage Bionetworks co-founder Stephen Friend builds tools that facilitate research sharing on a massive and revolutionary scale.

While working for Merck, Stephen Friend became frustrated by the slow pace at which big pharma created new treatments for desperate patients. Studying shared models like Wikipedia, Friend realized that the complexities of disease could only be understood — and combated — with collaboration and transparency, not by isolated scientists working in secret with proprietary data

Friend has a great name for someone who advocates for transparency and openness. He opened with stories about his work and how he came to be inspired to look for health rather than disease. He noted that for the most part, medical research is focused on the question of what went wrong with a patient rather than asking if healthy people have some sort of natural immunity or protection from cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc. Perhaps by examining health people we can find ways to more effectively intervene.

He provided two examples of research that examined natural immunity such as research in San Francisco (California) into why a small but significant percentage of people with HIV never developed AIDS; his other example was regarding research into lipid levels and why some people with high levels never develop heart disease.

I’m a little foggy about this point but I think he made a request for information about these medical phenomena and people from around the world shared their research with him in an open and transparent fashion.

This next bit was clear to me, he and his colleagues are moving to another stage with their research initiative which they have named the Resilience Project; Unexpected Heroes. He too solicited volunteers from the audience. I haven’t been able to locate a website for the project but there maybe some on the Sage Bionetworks website, the organization Friend co-founded. Good luck!

Finally, I wasn’t expecting to write about David Chalmers so my notes aren’t very good. A philosopher, here’s an excerpt from Chalmers’ TED biography,

In his work, David Chalmers explores the “hard problem of consciousness” — the idea that science can’t ever explain our subjective experience.

David Chalmers is a philosopher at the Australian National University and New York University. He works in philosophy of mind and in related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. While he’s especially known for his theories on consciousness, he’s also interested (and has extensively published) in all sorts of other issues in the foundations of cognitive science, the philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology.

Chalmers provided an interesting bookend to a session started with a brain researcher (Nancy Kanwisher) who breaks the brain down into various processing regions (vastly oversimplified but the easiest way to summarize her work in this context). Chalmers reviewed the ‘science of consciousness’ and noted that current work in science tends to be reductionist, i.e., examining parts of things such as brains and that same reductionism has been brought to the question of consciousness.

Rather than trying to prove consciousness, Chalmers proposes that we consider it a fundamental in the same way that we consider time, space, and mass to be fundamental. He noted that there’s precedence for additions and gave the example of James Clerk Maxwell and his proposal to consider electricity and magnetism as fundamental.

Chalmers next suggestion is a little more outré and based on some thinking (sorry I didn’t catch the theorist’s name) that suggests everything, including photons, has a type of consciousness (but not intelligence).

Africa and a quantum future at TED 2014′s All Stars session 2: Beauty and the Brain

This is my last piece for today, March 18, 2014  As I noted earlier , I wish I could cover everyone. For this session I’m covering Neil Turok, physicist and director of the Perimeter Institute, from his TED biography (Note: Links have been removed),

Neil Turok is working on a model of the universe that explains the big bang — while, closer to home, he’s founded a network of math and science academies across Africa.

Neil Turok works on understanding the universe’s very beginnings. With Stephen Hawking, he developed the Hawking-Turok instanton solutions, describing the birth of an inflationary universe — positing that, big bang or no, the universe came from something, not from utter nothingness.

Recently, with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton, Turok has been working on a cyclic model for the universe in which the big bang is explained as a collision between two “brane-worlds.” The two physicists cowrote the popular-science book Endless Universe.

In 2003, Turok, who was born in South Africa, founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, a postgraduate center supporting math and science. His TED Prize wish: Help him grow AIMS and promote the study and math and science in Africa, so that the world’s next Einstein may be African.

Turok is the Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada. In 2010, the Canadian government funded a $20million expansion of the AIMS schools, working with the Perimeter Institute to start five new AIMS schools in different African nations.

I featured Turok in an Oct.17, 2012 posting about purpose in nature and in the universe.

Thankfully, Turok was not reading aloud as he did in 2012 when he was in Vancouver with his ‘What banged?’ talk and he immediately engaged the audience with his stories about AIMS (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences) in particular about two AIMS students, Marciel (?) and Kitsis (?) who have gone on to postgraduate degrees and work respectively in the fields of tropical medicine and fluid mechanics.

He segued to quantum physics and how important quantum computing will be in the future and will change everything and how we need to help Africa prepare for the quantum future.

I was a little confused by Turok’s plea to help Africa achieve a quantum future as it seemed to me that AIMS and efforts like that would mean that Africa and Africans might lead in the future, quantum or otherwise.

That’s it for me today. This is a very intriguing session although despite its title seems primarily focused on brains over beauty, which has scarcely been mentioned.

Kayaks, communication by bacteria, wind power, and biomimcry at TED 2014′s All Stars session 1: Planet Dearth

These are short talks (shorter than the 18 min. TED talk).  Wish I could cover everyone but I’m beginning to tire so I’ve started with George Dyson, historian of science, from his TED biography,

In telling stories of technologies and the individuals who created them, George Dyson takes a clear-eyed view of our scientific past — while illuminating what lies ahead.

Dyson described Vancouver of 16,000 years ago under an ice sheet and then 10,000 years ago people showed up. 5000 years ago the rainforest emerged and became the setting for a culture and society unique in the world. Most traces of that culture are gone.  Dyson then segued into a description of his love for kayaks and how he arrived in Vancouver at age 17 (19?). He now lives in Washington state. He wants to suggest that commercial sail will return or as they are saying in this session, become ‘de-extinct’.

Then there was Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist, from her TED biography,

Bonnie Bassler studies how bacteria can communicate with one another, through chemical signals, to act as a unit. Her work could pave the way for new, more potent medicine.

She talked about quorum sensing (chemical communication), the means by which bacteria communicate with each other. They in Bassler’s lab can change the molecule which signals quorum sensing the means by which bacteria communicate to create biofilm, a precursor to toxin secretion and infection. (I forget which disease she mentioned) By changing the molecule they can stop the process in the laboratory. You can find out more about bacteria and quorum sensing here.

Next, there was Amory Lovins, physicist and energy guru, from his TED biography (Note: A link has been removed),

Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front — or even back — page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he’s written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects — cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar — to focus the world’s attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation.

He talked about wind and solar power and mass production of equipment to produce this energy. He debunked the notion that alternatives such as wind and solar power are not dependable sources by citing statistics from France showing that they can predict how energy is needed and can be produced in situations of uncertainty.

Finally, Robert Full, biologist, from his TED biography,

Robert Full studies cockroach legs and gecko feet. His research is helping build the perfect “distributed foot” for tomorrow’s robots, based on evolution’s ancient engineering.

Difference between human and nature’s design is robustness, i.e., able to adapt to changing terrain and use same structures for different tasks. He also mentions fault tolerance, i.e., change in a structure does not have to unduly affect the animal/insect, e.g., a  cockroach has an alternative means of achieving the same ends, e.g. walking without feet. Full’s conclusion is that you never know where curiosity-driven research will take you as he mentions the possibility of cockroach-inspired robots while showing scenes of disaster (building rubble) where a suit based on an insect exoskeleton which survives compression could be very handy.

New energy (nuclear) with fusion at TED 2014′s Session 3: Reshape

Michel Laberge, plasma physicist and founder and Chief Scientist of company General Fusion, describes how his company is working to change our energy sources from fossil fuels to nuclear power (I wrote about General Fusion in a Dec. 2, 2011 posting).

He and his company are currently involved in a large international collaboration, ITER (China. European Union, India, Korea, Russia, and USA as per the website tagline) in the south of France. From the ITER project page (images not included),

ITER is a large-scale scientific experiment that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce commercial energy from fusion.

The Q in the formula on the right symbolizes the ratio of fusion power to input power. Q ≥ 10 represents the scientific goal of the ITER project: to deliver ten times the power it consumes. From 50 MW of input power, the ITER machine is designed to produce 500 MW of fusion power—the first of all fusion experiments to produce net energy.

During its operational lifetime, ITER will test key technologies necessary for the next step: the demonstration fusion power plant that will prove that it is possible to capture fusion energy for commercial use.

The science going on at ITER—and all around the world in support of ITER—will benefit all of mankind.

We firmly believe that to harness fusion energy is the only way to reconcile huge conflicting demands which will confront humanity sooner or later.

The issue at stake is how to reconcile the imperative, constantly growing demand of the majority of the world’s population to raise their standard of living … with the enormous environmental hazards resulting from the present energy supply …

… In our opinion, the use of fusion energy is a “must” if we want to be serious about embarking on sustainable development for future generations.

Laberge is speaking very quickly and since I’m not at all familiar with his area of expertise all I can say is he’s clearly very excited about his work and its potential to shift how we produce energy. He provides more than one technical explanation and I look forward to viewing his presentation again when it’s made public.

As for other speakers in this session. they were very interesting but as I noted yesterday I am am trying to focus on speakers whose topics have been covered here in one fashion or another.

The Pantheon and technology, history of the world from Big Bang to the end, and architecture evolving into a dynamic, interactive process at TED 2014′s Session 2: Retrospect

Now to Retrospect, session two of the TED 2014. As the first scheduled speaker, Bran Ferren kicked off the session. From Ferren’s TED biography,

After dropping out of MIT in 1970, Bran Ferren became a designer and engineer for theater, touring rock bands, and dozens of movies, including Altered States and Little Shop of Horrors, before joining Disney as a lead Imagineer, then becoming president of R&D for the Walt Disney Company.

In 2000, Ferren and partner Danny Hillis left Disney to found Applied Minds, a playful design and invention firm dedicated to distilling game-changing inventions from an eclectic stew of the brightest creative minds culled from every imaginable discipline.

Ferren used a standard storytelling technique as do many of the TED speakers. (Note: Techniques become standard because they work.) He started with personal stories of his childhood which apparently included exposure to art and engineering. His family of origin was heavily involved in the visual arts while other family members were engineers. His moment of truth was during childhood when he was taken to view the Pantheon and its occulus (from its Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

The Pantheon (/ˈpænθiən/ or US /ˈpænθiɒn/;[1] Latin: Pantheon,[nb 1] [pantʰewn] from Greek: Πάνθεον [ἱερόν], an adjective understood as “[temple consecrated] to all gods”) is a building in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD) as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome, and rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian about 126 AD.[2]

The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon’s dome is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.[3] The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).[4]

It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to “St. Mary and the Martyrs” but informally known as “Santa Maria Rotonda.”[5] The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda.

I cannot adequately convey Ferren’s appreciation and moment of inspiration where all in a moment he understood how engineering and art could be one and he also understood something new about light; it can have ‘weight’. He then describes the engineering feat in more detail and notes that we are barely able to achieve a structure like the Pantheon with today’s battery of technological innovations and understanding. He talked about what the ‘miracles’ need to achieve similar feats today and then he segued into autonomous cars and that’s where he lost me. Call me a peasant and an ignoramus (perhaps once these talks are made public it will be obvious I misunderstood his point)  but I am never going to view an autonomous car as being an engineering feat similar to the Pantheon. As I see it, Ferren left out the emotional/spiritual (not religious) aspect that great work can inspire in someone. While the light bulb was an extraordinary achievement in its own right, as is electricity for that matter, neither will are likely to take your breath away in an inspirational fashion.

Brian Greene (not listed on the programme) was introduced next. Greene’s Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Brian Randolph Greene [1] (born February 9, 1963) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. He has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Hidden Reality, and related PBS television specials. Greene also appeared on The Big Bang Theory episode “The Herb Garden Germination”, as well as the films Frequency and The Last Mimzy.

He also recently launched World Science U (free science classes online) as per a Feb. 26, 2014 post by David Bruggeman on his Pasco Phronesis blog.

The presentation was a history of the world from Big Bang to the end of the world. It’s the fastest 18 minutes I’ve experienced so far and it provided a cosmic view of history. Briefly, everything disintegrates, the sun, the galaxy and, eventually, photons.

The last speaker I’m mentioning is Marc Kushner, architect. from his TED biography (Note: Links have been removed),

Marc Kushner is a practicing architect who splits his time between designing buildings at HWKN, the architecture firm he cofounded, and amassing the world’s architecture on the website he runs, Architizer.com. Both have the same mission: to reconnect the public with architecture.

Kushner’s core belief is that architecture touches everyone — and everyone is a fan of architecture, even if they don’t know it yet. New forms of media empower people to shape the built environment, and that means better buildings, which make better cities, which make a better world.

Kushner, too, started with a childhood story where he confessed he didn’t like the architecture of the home where he and his family lived. This loathing inspired him to pursue architecture and he then segued into a history of architecture from the 1970’s to present day. Apparently the 1970s spawned something called ‘brutalism’ which is very much about concrete. (Arthur Erickson a local, Vancouver (Canada) architect who was internationally lauded for his work loved concrete; I do not.) According to Kushner, I’m not the only one who doesn’t like ‘brutalism’ and so by the 1980s architects fell back on tried and true structures and symbols. Kushner noted a back and forth movement between architects attempting to push the limits of technology and alienating the populace and then attempting to please the populace and going overboard in their efforts with exaggerated and ornate forms which eventually become offputting. Kushner then pointed to Guggenheim Bilbao as an architecture game-changer (from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a “signal moment in the architectural culture”, because it represents “one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something.”[3] The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.[3]

Kushner’s own work has clearly been influenced by Gehry and others who changed architecture in the 1990s but his approach is focused on attempting to integrate the community into the process and he described how he and his team have released architectural illustrations onto the internet years before a building is constructed to make the process more accessible.