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Reports on experience of people in extreme circumstances
Avoidance and Endurance
Take traumas and make them part of who you'll be
Mother of a child due to rape: I think of him (rapist) with pity -- he has a beautiful daughter he doesn't know, and I do, and so I’m the lucky one
I'm here but I have cancer vs I have cancer and I'm here
Forge meaning and build identity
Meaning: Change yourself
Identity: change the world
It doesn't make what was wrong right; it makes what was wrong precious (... But you can still be mad as hell)
Barricade in Russian uprising end of communism -- person talked tank into turning around
If you banish the dragons you banish the heroes
Power of gay pride for him. (Though his friend proposed Gay Humility week)
I was finally unconditionally grateful for,a life I'd once have done anything to change
Forge meaning and build identity -- and then change the world
Pat Mitchell with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly (her husband, retired astronaut)
TBI are unpredictable, no idea at shooting what outcome would be
Gabby: a new gabby Giffords, better stronger tougher
What were first signs recovery would be possible
vocabulary was “what” and (no, really) “chicken”
Toughest challenge
talking really hard (aphasia)
know what wants to say words don't come out
I'm optimistic -- long hard haul, French horn, treadmill, Spanish lessons
Used to race motorcycles
First date: death row
(gah I wish the husband wouldn't jump in over her.)
What did you like about being a representative? Fast pace
Keeps her real skull in a fridge
Debt ceiling vote: went back to vote, deadlocked
Resigned subsequently
“deeper relationships”
Americans for responsible solutions -- gun violence
Gabby skydiving: “good stuff!”
Talking solo:
I'm getting better
phys therapy, voice therapy, yoga
be a leader, be courageous, be your best
Global Education
Patrick, South Africa; Debbie, US; Wael, Syria -- all want higher education but cannot afford
Higher education system is failing them and millions of others that are qualified but can't
Why?
Finance
Cultural: “not a place for a woman”
Lack of Capacity
University of the People: open the gated of higher ed to every student
We didn't need to reinvent the wheel
We looked at what wasn't working and used the internet to address it
bricks and mortar vs online. Cost, lack of capacity not a problem
Textbooks vs existing free online ed resources
peer to peer learning
students benefit from study together,
reduce time on professor.
Students placed in small classrooms -- 20 students. Rotated periodically
Each student must participate; each must critique
Every student with high school diploma and adequate English can study
Don't need broadband or even continuous
Tuition free; $100 per exam
if can't afford, there are scholarships
Budget is $1m/year: in 2016 will be break-even
A new era is coming -- witness the disruption of higher ed model -- will become a basic human right
Joi Ito
Japan disaster: news wasn’t about what he wanted to know: who was safe? No reporting in science of what was happening, no data. SafeCast: Now huge network of internet-connected Geiger counters, etc -- huge data set of radiation spread
... Internet : cost of collaboration plummeted
Rainforest of hardware innovation in Shenzen: what we thought you could do with software they're doing with cell phones, agile iteration
Factory-in-a-box 23,000 electronic components per hour
Cost of innovation in bioengineering is plummeting
Gene printing: 200k base pair assembly capability
Traditional rules for institutions don't work any more
Learning over Education
education is what people do to you, learning is what you do to yourself
Compass over maps
Words of #TED2014 via @emckean: Exsanguinate, Tokamak, Technodeterminism, Airpocalypes, Jackpotting, Panpsychism, Additionality, Manhauling, Anternet, Rockism, Restrictulous, Cryptonym, Small private Torque
Erin McKean
Exsanguinate
Tokamak
Technodeterminism
Airpocalypes
Jackpotting
Panpsychism
Additionality
Manhauling
Anternet
Rockism
Restrictulous
11: Small private Torque
? Cryptonym
Friday Morning: Beauty
Sgt Kevin Briggs: Golden Gate guardian
Patrolled southern end of GG Bridge
Inspiring architecture - and magnet for suicide
1600 people have leapt to their death
Free-fall of 4-5 s, 75 mph impact with water.
Most die on impact; rest flail and then down
Once they're on the cord, it's very difficult to bring them back
New officers are trained by veterans and psychologists
Jason, third time flying out to jump; this time was on cord
pandora’s box: the only good thing in the box is hope
what if you open the box and there is no hope?
turned to his right and jumped
Would you know what to say?
What to look for
confront head-on: Others in similar circumstances have killed themselves. Have you had these thoughts?
look for hopelessness, withdrawal
Listen:
Kevin c
on the cord, for one hour talked
he came back over the rail
congratulations - a new beginning. That took courage and hope
what brought you back over? “you listened”
Kevin C now a father and member of society. speaks openly about his thoughts that day
Speaker’s father committed suicide.
Vast majority of those we do contact live
Of those who have let go, they knew they made a mistake and wanted to live
Jennifer Senior: Raising Children
I don't see help in the shelf of parent self-help books, I see panic
We've been doing this successfully for millennia
"Parenthood as crisis”
Interacting with Friends > spouse > other relatives > acquaintances > parents > children =~ strangers
Until recently, kids worked
on the farm, etc
child's job became school
Kids not working means economics changed
we began to work for them: economically worthless, emotionally priceless
All but 7 countries have paid maternity leave -- one is US
Happiness is an outcome not a goal
Oscar the grouch couldn't have been invented today
So focused on protecting them we’re shielding them from the real world
Focus on making productive and moral kids
old scripts: Decency, work ethic, love.
Sarah Jones, playwright
Switches mid-sentence from native British to Long Island accent in intro
(They start throwing questions up about the future that riff on talks’ predictions for the future)
Flying by the seat of my pants
Elderly Jewish lady holy moley
Excited Latina
Rashid the Brooklyn rapper.
... Matches not jus the accents but the pattern of speech idiom
How many of your organs have been 3-D printed?
Indian woman
What's changed now that women rule the world?
valley-girl sorority girl talk character -- and smart feminist
restrictulous -- a word I made up for so strict it's ridiculous
We don't have to have perfect food but maybe it can also not be poison
If anything I've said makes you uncomfortable, you're welcome.
Simon Sinek: Leadership vs Authority
Medal of Honor for W Swenson(sp?)
ran into live fire to rescue wounded and dead
one of the medics had a GoPro -- Swenson gives the wounded man a kiss and runs back for more
Where does that emotion come from? Why don't we have it in business?
It's not that they're better people it's the environment
Why did you to it. They would have done for me
Trust and Cooperation
can't instruct to do: it's a feeling
Early humans - world is filled with danger.
circle of safety in thee tribe
Business: danger is competition and irrelevance
If I break the rules I could get fired -- she does not feel safe
Southwest protects its employees that's why they excel
Great leader is like being a parent
provide opportunity safety and discipline
Charlie Kim next jump -- if you have hard time in your co would you lay off one of your children? They have lifetime employment -- if you are eg falling short they coach you up
Ahat offends us about the banking CEOs is not the size of bonus it's the toxic actions
Would anybody be offended if. Gandhi got a $150m bonus?
Company that took a 30% cancelled orders hit when economy crashed
“it's better that we all suffer a little than that we all suffer a lot.”
Four week unpaid furloughs, secretary to CEO
people spontaneously started trading hours -- people who could afford the furlough vs people who couldn't
not leaders: authorities. we do what they say because they say not because lead
We call them leaders because they go first. they take the risk.
Hire slow. Give opportunities to fail and coaching to succeed.
Raspini Brothers
Who's seen one of these (a bouncing juggling stick) before? (Nobody) Then how can you be sure you're looking at one now?
Cool trick with a balanced cups of water and eggs and the tablecloth-yanking trick
Chris Kluwe to balance fifteen objects spinning... On one leg!
Shaka Senghor, MIT media lab fellow and ex-convict
23 years ago, I killed a man. I was a drug dealer and used my pistol.
There's a story of acknowledgement and atonement, but not the one you'd think
Growing up: honor roll, dreams of being a doctor
At 17, got shot Three times just standing on the corner.
Nobody counseled him, held him, told him that he'd live in fear, become hyper-paranoid.
Six years later it was me behind the pistol
I rationalized: “better the shooter than get shot”
Reacted with hostility. Worst of the worst. Solitary for seven and a half years.
In the most inhumane place you could find yourself, I found myself.
His seven-year-old son, in a letter: "Dad, don't kill. Jesus watches what you do. pray."
Transformation. Four key things.
I had great mentors. Forced me to look at my life honestly, to make better decisions
Literature: black poets, Malcolm X autobiography
Love: family
Writing: especially about childhood
letter from a relative of the victim, saying forgave him. He started to forgive himself.
Change the 2.5 million people warehoused in jail
Felt like Fred Flintstone
Working help people return to society
Acknowledge. Apologize. Apologize to self. Atone.
The incarcerated are redeemable.
They will eventually return to,their community -- and we have a role in determining what tiptoe of people return to their community,
Isabel Allende: Living and Aging passionately
71 years old. Let's talk about aging.
What is it you intend to do with your one and only wonderful life.
We all feel younger than our real age, because the spirit never ages
What have I lost in the last decades? People, places, energy, independence
What have I gained? I don't have to prove anything any more. Freedom, lightness, softness, spirituality
Death was in the neighborhood before, now it's next door
"There is nothing more sensual than a hot shower every drop of water a blessing to the senses."
Masarat Daud
Balance of sartorial tensions. Feels good? Conforms to others’ perceptions? Fits with your cultural heritage?
Burqa, bikini -- even crocs!
Ben Saunders, arctic explorer
An expert in dragging heavy things
An exercise in giving everything we had, to achieve something never before done
Antarctica size of India and Africa
Equivalent of 69 back-to-back marathons in 105 days
Headline: “two explorers complete a polar expidition that killed everyone the last time it was attempted”
Scott's team reached South Pole -- but Amundsen had beaten them there. All 5 died on the way back.
Manhauling -- each sled was 440 pounds (200 kg). Four months, no sunsets, three pairs of underwear
Solar powered laptop and gps,
Challenges: weather and glide. Whiteout for most of the journey
Reaching the pole was a bit of an anti-climax!
basketball court, tourist shop, hot showers, movie theaters
There is a pole at the South Pole!
...but then we turned around. And then things got interesting.
Exhaust yourself to the point of starvation (shot of him skeletal thin)
Two weeks of fierce headwinds, half rations,
Became increasingly hypoglycemic and susceptible to hypothermia
You like to think your the kind that doesn't quit
But hypogl leaves you helpless like a drunk toddler
Forty six miles short of first depot. Had to get a re supply. He’s put on thirty pounds in last three weeks.
Don't regret calling the plane -- I am here and have my digits
My greatest dream, and it was so nearly perfect.
Crampons broke. Needed repair every hour.
Never felt as small as I did in Antarctica
Less than five weeks ago arrived
I hadn't given much thought to what happens when you reach the goal.
Inside I am a very different person indeed. Challenged and humbled me so deeply I will never be the same
That cliche? Journey > destination? Yep.
Happiness isn't a finish line -- perfection isn't attainable. If we can't feel content here now today, the could-do-better-next-times...
As bob hope says "I feel very humble, but I'm sure I'll get over it."
Sarah Lewis
Success is a moment. But what really propels us is the unfinished
What drive mastery?
the gift of a near-win
Watching archery practice
Archer’s paradox: to hit your target you have to aim at something slightly off it.
to hit the ten-ring, it's as small as a matchstick at arms length
Pursuing excellence in obscurity
Success is hitting the ten-ring; mastery is progress to doing it again and again
An ever-onward almost --the reaching, not the arriving
Ellington: my favorite of my songs? The next one.
A voracious unfinished path that always demands more
Completion is the goal -- but, we hope, never the end.
Mellody Hobson
Sen Harold Ford host of honor at a dinner... Taken for a busboy
“how did they treat you?”
Conversational third rail -- huge risks
First step of action is awareness
White men 30% population; 70% of board seats.
If you walked into a boardroom and everyone was black, that would be weird... But if it were all white men, when will that also be weird?
Color-blindness -- fallacy that wen don't see race
Instead of ignoring race, smart companies deal with it head-on
“comfortable being uncomfortable”
ESPN requires every position have a diverse slate of candidates
Managers asked “do you want us to hire the best person? Or the minority?”
response: “yes”
Be color-brave. Observe your environment.
Invite people into your life who,don't work like you, act like you, think like you
Thursday Afternoon
...
World Peace Game simulation by students to the defense secretary and CINC
Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia Zero
Internet zero: access to Wikipedia free of data charges
Open letter video by South Arican children requesting; three months letter open letter video from MTN cell network doing it.
Michael Schermer: the Moral Arc
Average conservative today more liberal than average liberal in 1950s
Outlawed death penalty
Democracies: 118 of ~200 countries
Gay rights and Same sex marriage
Biblical justification for gay rights and marijuana -- "if a man lies with another man, he must be stoned"
Witch theory of disasters. Bad ideas that have been improved by reason and science
Make world a slightly better world today than yesterday
Elizabeth Pisani
Lies and truths in Indonesia
Suharto massacres; covered up
To own our future we need to own the past,
... But sometimes the lies we tell about the past let us develop the future.
Rodney Brooks
Making robots easier to us
Can be trained on the shop floor
Custom hands needed -- maker movement means can mfr right there
Four challenges
as good as a two-year-old at object recognition
(...)
Susan Cain
Introverts -- so many team-building exercises are horrible
Blueprint for a “quiet” revolution
VC-backed community: Empower introverts
Bringing quiet spaces back to offices(
Helping org's train the worlds next wave of quiet leaders
Gandhi: in a gentle way, you can shake the world
....
If internet went down, we lose
cell phones
money
Imagine: internet is down.
Plan B: a second internet for vital functions
But: panic from citizens could dismantle our society in less than a day
Plan C: “Panic Absorbers”
Job is to keep everyone calm, safe, secure.
Panic is contagious
Need about a million, of 300 people each.
Gen Stanley McCrystal
Information is only of value if you give it to the person who can use it
I'm more scared of
Thursday Midmorning: “Signals”
Will Marshall
Satellites are big expensive and slow. $855 million is typical.
PlanetLabs. Small, light, compatible
Way better resolution at way lower cost
Rapid prototyping. Lots of satellites, manufactured at scale, so they can fail
Agile Aerospace
“How do we use satellites to help humanity?”
Picture of everywhere on the planet every day -- and here are the first released
Can now see
Real-time urban growth
water security
crop yield
You see much of the worlds news every day: floods, fires, etc
Ensure universal access to the data
3-5 meters. Can't see people, can see airplanes. Malaysia air should never happen again.
{OK this is a thing Apple should do with its money...}
Andrew Connolly
42 supernovae showing deviation -- and showing dark energy exists.
Lots of different models, way different methodologies. How do you tell?
In first might of operation, will find ten times as many supernovae as the ones that showed dark energy
By 2030, will be able to validate a theory of our universe.
Randall Monroe
How many punchcards would equal what's in all google datacenters?
Posts answer, but says “I guess well never know”
Google sends a batch of punch cards
which encode a puzzle
which lead to formulae
which ultimately lead to the message from Google: “No Comment”
Debra Gordon: Ants
Ants use interactions differently in different environments
This has lessons for many things
There's no central control. Sterile females. Queen has no global influence
nobody in charge
All such systems coordinate by interactions
Network Graph!
High operating costs for a desert ant
ants only go out if lots of positive interactions with foragers
Model as neuron: both add up stimulations to decide to /forage|fire/
Evolutionary questions need to understand reproductive success
offspring colonies use same decisions -- but are too far too meet. So must be transmitted genetically!
Colony 154 forages less during dry days -- and is a huge success.
First time documented evolution of a collective behavior
Now what when operating costs are low?
Low operating costs, high competition
Interactions used when something negative happens, not when something positive happens
Collective search: cheap agents exchanging minimal information
Tried it in microgravity!
Relationship between how crowded and how often they meet is messed up
still figuring out data
... But want schools to help by doing experiment locally with many species
Recruitment
Sara Lewis: Fireflies
Firefly landscape all blinking in synchrony
They're charismatic, charming, celebrated in art thru the ages
Some fireflies only females - light up and sit on branch with a lantern out for mates
Bioluminescence
How did this light benefit a proto-firefly?
Two years in a larval form. Every larva can light up, even when adults can't
They are quite toxic; and so the display is a warning lie, saying “go ahead, make my day”
Some evolved laterns. They only live for two weeks, need to mate mate mate
Silent love songs of male fireflies. Very romantic
Females are picky. Lots of options. When they like a flash, they give a come hither flash
and so commences a call response dance
They prefer males who give... Longer lasting flashes.
They stay together all night long
Male gives female not just sperm but a nutrient package - A nuptial gift!
This powers the egg construction
The firefly dance helps female decide which male can give the best gift -- bling!
A firefly lost the ability to generate toxins
Femmes fatales. A different species start a dance.
interloper mimics the signal from first one
attracts male, and exsanguinates him collecting his toxins
An insect vampire!
Fireflies are threatened in many places -- extinguishing candles leaves the room dark
Elizabeth Gilbert
(Got a chance to ask her questions during speaker conversations)
When writing, YOU ARE A PACK MULE. So, no editing, no rewriting. Let it suck.
When blocked, get a ten-minute hourglass and write one thing during that time.
Don't write for a population ("qualified programmer or database engineer"), write for a person (my friend Huston, two years ago). Write to make that person awesome
CA: that's kinda bullshit, don't you think? (but put nicely)
RL: arrogant to put himself above govt structure
Specific example of way he put American at risk?
capability driven organization
capabilities applied in discreet controlled ways
now the bad guys can realize where they're vulnerable
and have been observed to move away from it
(yeah, and so are the rest of us)
BULL RUN (weakening tech standards)?
Bad guys use the internet. So we have to go after them.
two missions: secure our communications, penetrate others
they use those same standards
CA: you're saying when it comes to internet anything is fair game. That's like putting a device into every book saying who read what
RL: I love the internet
international conversation
NSA has not done a good job about being transparent
but they don't need to be transparent about operational capabilities.
{what they do vs how they do it}
Companies impact?
RL: Companies are in a tough situation. We compel them to release.
but every country does
so being seized as a marketing advantage
Constitution guarantees freedom from search and seizure
NSA defends our privacy
his email provider is same as #1 choice of terrorists
minimization procedures, publish recommendations of how to secure
absolutely folks have a right to privacy
Do other countries have a right to privacy?
mostly
Is terrorism the #1 threat.
yes
"arcs of instability"
Syria - people learning how to Jihad
weak governments from a breeding ground
#2 threat is cyber
theft of intellectual property: esp business intelligence or technology
denial of service attacks
semi-anonymous reprisals
Apart from 9/11, 500 deaths per year mostly from domestic terrorists. fewer deaths than from lightning
RL: we’re safe because of us
54 alleged incidents prevented
CA: but these methods did t reveal those 54.
RL: two key sections, FISA/PRISM; a dozen were tied to those
crime story starts with the body, works forward. NSA want to solve crime before the body
PRISM was hugely material
CA: "cover for action"
authorized by two presidents and congress
CA: isn't this mostly not-true? (Phrased more nicely)
I’d say most members of congress had chance to know it was going on
World disagrees weakening encryption is legit
RL: You said weaken encryption, not me,
We eat our own dogfood, we use the same standards and protocols, our mandate is to protect
Isn't this an important conversation.
RL: Could have done it so that our security was safe
Snowden amnesty
"room for discussion"
this is a department of justice question, “I'll defer to them”
Idea worth spreading?
It's not just the NSA who needs to protect privacy, it's companies and more.
“look at the data”
{as if I couldn't disagree with him more: he is a Cowboys fan.}
Ray Kurzweil
The story of the neocortex.
(only in mammals)
Mouse evolved it. Capable of a new type of thinking: inventing new behaviors.
Learn from peers
65 million years ago, 75% of animal and plant species went extinct, mammals took over.
MRI resolution doubling regularly
Can now see into the working brain
Modules that can see a capital "A"'s crossbar, that's it.
backpressure from higher modules makes it more likely to see a P, etc
As you go up hierarchy the pattern get more and more complex
Watson: Hierarchical Hidden Markov model.
5 years til search engines are plumbing pages for meaning
2030s mixture of biological and non-biological thinking
Leap in technology and culture
Seth Godin
Took clarinet lessons as a kid. For years. Then saw a professional. Couldn't make a single note sound like that
Raise your arm as far as you can, (audience does) now raise it higher (audience does). (Than realizes what just happened)
We need to care enough to put ourselves at risk, to ship before it's ready
Gutenberg press preceded readers (8% of pop coud), Benz car precede good roads
Will you choose to matter?
Ed Yong: parasites
You think we are in charge of our behavior
Sea Monkey shrimp
The tapeworm castrates them, makes them live longer, and makes them travel in groups (so tapeworm can mate)
Suicidal Cricket -- parasite needs to breed in water. Releases proteins that addle the cricket, make them seek out and drown in water. Worm crawls out and HOLY SMOKES THERES A LOT OF WORM IN THAT CRICKET
A head banging zombie body guard caterpillar defending the cocoons of the creatures that killed it!
You are busy hoping these are outliers...
Parasites in extreme numbers
Those crickets? 60% of the diet of local trout
An emerald wasp stabs cockroach in the brain and REPROGRAMS ITS BRAIN. By rooting around inside and injecting venom.
Roach's motivation to walk is gone...
wasp leads the roach by its antenna like reins
The roach has no more independent than your car.
And so are there dark controlling parasites reprogramming our behavior? (besides the NSA?) (Laughter)
Toxoplasmosis that makes rodent host love Cat Piss.
Single cell organism -- that manipulates mammals.
Now we find that one in three humans have toxo in their brains
more likely to be in car accidents! score differently on tests, more likely to be schizophrenic
Standing Ovation -- rare for presentational virtue (not emotional)
Chris Anderson: you just explained why the Internet is full of cat videos
David Epstein
Hell yeah, this was my fave strata talk
(technical glitch, no slides. Chris Anderson starts small talk. DE tells started: running partner dies, got parent to give him med records, started investigating)
2012 marathon winner beat the 1904 winner by 1 hour 2 minutes
Bolt vs Jesse Owens 1936 would have won by 14 feet
Owens ran on cinders, digging a hole
Owens on a modern track would have been within one stride!
Training science
Technology making difference in all sports
Swimming times: slow decline, with big cliffs
flip turn; gutters on side of pool; skin suits
Record for distance ridden in one hour: Eddie Merckx 30 miles; 1996 aerodynamic bike 35 miles
today, have to use basically same bike as Mercx:
current record: 30 miles, only feet farther than him
Explosion of range of heights and weights
One out of six Americans 7+ feet tall are in the NBA
reach discrepancy even more lopsided
gymnasts got smaller, water polo players have longer arms
Michael phelps 6'4, champion runner 5'9; they have the same length pants!
Mindset.
An electric shock throwing you across the room: that's your body. It can do that. But ordinarily your body doesn't let you.
Humans Arch sprin feet, big butt muscles, hairless with lots of sweat glands. We're well suited to endurance sports.
Ah, pooh -- didn't include the data driven training part: Strata Talk English Javelin thrower hacked the physics and won the last Olympics
Maria Kalman
I'm going to speak for the NSA now. "It's all going to be OK", that's what I'll say. (Laughter)
--
Left Poland for Parents went to Tel Aviv in the 1930s.
An emigration of Jewish musicians form Orchestra
Toscanini takes a stand against fascism -- conducted firs performance of Palestinian philharmonic
Toscanini moved to the Bronx (so did her parents)
Toscanini grandson died and She heard estate sale including the pants T wore at debut of Pal Phil'c
And so, there she is, wearing Toscanini's pants
Keren Elazari: security expert
Barnaby Jack, "Sometimes you have to demo a threat to motivate a solution"
We need hackers.
The immune system for the Information Age
Growing up, was judged too nerdy by the D&D kids -- Angelina Jolie from Hackers became her inspiration
As a Script kiddie found the rush of power
Hackers found a full access bug on ASUS router --ASUS ignored. Hackers used it to drop a warning file in all affected users' documents folder
Fight Hackers and you Stifle Innovation
Anonymous -- leading Hacktivism group
can rally the masses from their keyboards to the streets
in the business of redistribution: not of your money, or documents, but of your attention
the ideas they fight for are ones that matter
Hackers can do more than break things,they can change things
The internet doesn't like it when you remove things -- but they really don't like it when you remove the internet.
Egypt
found 20 year old analog dialin infrastructure and brought partial access back
when Syria happened, telesomethingex was ready, and had partial access restored
Syrian electronic Army -- hacking AP wire twitter acct posted stories that caused a 150-point drop in stock Market
"Keep calm and love/hate hackers" -- same people who denounce hackers use them
Who is more likely to intrude? Hackers or NSA? The issues are not that simple.
If we keep expecting them to be the bad guys, how can we expect them it be the heroes too?
It's not information that wants to be free, it's us
Marco Tempest: Magic and Robots
Well a cartoon smiley face bridges the uncanny valley quite nicely
Line at Ballroom D (back of auditorium) is one-fourth the line at the front
An opening line that is genuine but not fanboy: "Hi, you were one of the people I was hoping to run into - I'd love to hear what you're working on now"
Wednesday Afternoon
...
This is
Aaron Swartz was the one who made Lessig focus on corruption not just copyright,
"How are you going to solve that if you don't fix this flaw?" LL: "But that's not my field." AS: "as an academic?" "Yeah". AS: "what about as a citizen?"
this is how Aaron was. He didn't tell, he asked questions. Questions as clear as a four-year-old's hug
90+% of people are angry about excess influence of money in politics
90+% of people think we can't do anything about it
Harvey Milk: Give 'em Hope
this is how Aaron's friends failed him: we let him lose hope. I loved him like a son.
and I love my country and I'm not going to let it fail that way.
Next year: 1000 in New Hampshire. 2016 election: 10,000 people
on Mayday, May 1st, launching a Super PAC.
figure out How much would it cost?
Small-dollar contributions
Barry Schwartz:
David Brooks: eulogy attribute vs resume attributes.
external success vs internal value
Clay Shirky: saying
"There has never been a way to divide media, or people, into two groups one serious one silly"
Social media revolutions are powered by "Anti-Power"
by now every dictator sees the encroachment on social media as a mortal threat
But democracies don't have insurgents. Control communications and you can control dissent
In Thailand, first symmetric use of anti-power. Redshirt party used social protest one year., won; Yellow party used next year, won!
Amanda Palmer “I tweeted together a show in 3 days, never met the stage manager”.
(7 yrs ago you’d need an hour to explain that sentence)
Ann Cuddy, Power Poses: a non-physical person (aka handicapped) can simply visualize power poses and get the benefit
Wednesday Midmorning
Hugh Herr, bionics designer
Lost his legs due to frostbite incurred during a climbing expedition
Center for Extreme Bionics
Allow the repair of humans.
Here's how my legs work
Shoes still give us blisters, that's nuts
My bionic limbs are attached by synthetic skins tailored to support parts biologically compatible
started with analytic model
Imaging and robotic measurement of compliance
optimally where body is stiff, be soft; where soft be stiff
data driven, not artisanal
Material that can be stiffness adjusted on the fly
Exoskeleton to shield body during running. Everyone who can afford will have these
Bionic propulsion: stiffness and active propulsion, powering you into standing position — mimic your feet
Woman with / without bionic: women going up stairs
Exoskeleton to augment human walking
(he walks naturally on the stage — if he wasn't wearing short suit pants you wouldn't notice)
First demonstration of a running gate under neural control
(Can we address the concussion problem?)
Avi Reichental
With 3d printing, complexity is free. Printer doesn't care how intricate. A complete game-changer.
Grandfather was a carpenter, made custom shoes. (and perished in Holocaust)
He could make shoes from local material; we can't
3D printing
Local distributed manufacturing
Paralyzed woman -- had an exosuit that let her walk, some. Avi's company remade it, custom to her
I can reclaim my symmetry and my mobility
She wants to walk in high heels
Scoliosis brace (wow I wish I had that)
No longer exclusive to big companies
Space satellite, less than a dozen moving pieces
What about food? Wedding cakes? Personalized nutritional?
With 3d printing, complexity is free. Printer doesn't care how intricate. A complete game-changer.
Not the death of manufacturing, but its distribution
Which brings Counterfeiting, copyright violation
3d printed shoes and dresses at fashion show
"Thanks to 3d printing, I'm a cobbler, I'm honoring my past by manufacturing the future"
Jeremy Kasdin, planet finder
Block out sun by inter posing screen
Use a feather edge to control diffraction
Make it 10 billion times dimmer
Screen must be 50,000 km away, unfurl to precise place
Same place every time within 0.5 mm
Occultor would resolve the earth
Chris Kluwe
What do augmented reality and sports have to do with Empathy?
(wearing Google Glass)
See what I see. See what it's like to be a professional athlete on the field
Get a direct sense of what it's like to be on the field
A 200 pound man running at you full speed trying to decapitate you
Cant show pro practice -- NFL thinks emergent technology is what happens when a submarine surfaces
How do we take a step past GoPro and Google Glass?
Oculus Rift — imagine being Adrian Peterson busting the line, being Messi threading the field, Federer serving at Wimbledon?
197x wristband
1994 helmet radios. More exciting. More people watched the game
2018? Heads-up display of play. coache want this Missed assignments lose games
Your IT department will be as important as your players for winning games.
Data mining isn't for nerds it's for Jocks
AR will be a part of sports — it's too profitable not to.
But is that all we want to?
Literally experience what it's like to walk a
show a bully what it is like to receive it
show anyone what it's like to live under persecution.
Charlie Rose and Larry Page
Video by man in Africa saying "how do I design an internet my grandmother can use?"
Balloons for internet. Weather simulations: you can steer the balloons by adjusting the altitude. They can build a global mesh of them,
NSA:
Tremendously disappointing they did it and didn't tell us about it.
we need to know what the parameters are.
they've done us a disservice by doing it in secret
I'm sad that people have to rely on Google to protect them.
I'm just very worried that with med records were throwing out the baby with the bath water. There's tremendous good that can come with letting the right people have access to data in the right way
Transportation: leading cause of death in under 34. Half of Los Angeles is parking lots and roads
Well over 100k miles fully automated
What quality of mind has enabled you to think about the future and change the present?
what do companies do wrong? They miss the future.
so what is the future going to be, and how do we create it?
how do I drive it at a high rate? Working on things nobody else is working on?
Del Harvey, User Trust at Twitter
One-in-a-million events happen five hundred times a day
And people do WEIRD things. Some examples:
"Yo bitch" (a photo of a dog)
Same tweet atsigning different accounts over and over and over -- ISS telling person who registered to know when it's overhead
Her job is to ask, "How could this go horribly wrong?"
(Aside: that's also what Atul Gawande told my brother to ask, over and over, as a surgeon)
Almost all are positive — but the exceptions matter
(Q: How do you manage psyche of those who have to review?)
Margaret Gould Stewart: UX
UX at google, YouTube, Facebook.
You need two things. Audacity: everyone wants what you're building. Humility: it's not about you, it's about the user
Little things matter
The like button:
size
different languages
degrade in old browsers
Designer spent 280 hours on redesign
Seen 22 billion times average every day on 7 million sites
How to design with data
Lots of photos
message your friends for takedown - only 20% did
consulted conflict resolution experts
had to express to their friend how it made them feel
"your feedback may help her post better photos in the future"
"Data driven" = argh! It would be irresponsible to not test and measure. But no replacement for design intuition
Manage change carefully. People can become very efficient using bad design
five star rating on YouTube was treated binary -- almost all fives and ones. Replaced with thumbs up-down
community angry (natch)
shared the data, explained. That helped
Designing for all humanity -- you find the edges of the bubble you live in
Designing for low end cell phones -- doesn't seem glamorous. But that's the next 5 billion people coming on line.
"Everything I've ever designed has by now gone away, but what I created will live forever"
Wednesday Morning: "Us"
David Chalmers, philosopher: Hard Problem of Consciousness
You have a movie in your head right now. All the senses, emotions, a voice over
The stream of consciousness
MRI etc is a Science of correlations not of explanations
Host asks he obvious question: um what
the not-convincing reply, well if we can see
A Geena Rocero, model: I was once a boy
Model from Philippines
Assigned boy at birth because of genitalia
(You wouldn't know it from her swimsuit shots)
Got green card, didn't want to go initially. Mom said "Did you know, if you moved to US you could change your name and gender marker?"
reassignment surgery in Thailand
California drivers license saying her new name and reading "F"
For some people your drivers license is freedom to drive... For me it was freedom to live
Suicide rate is 9% higher than gen population
I hope all of you will be my allies
C Jon Moallen, Writer
Roosevelt, not shooting a bear tied to a tree on hunting trip; cartooned -- then became the "teddy bear"
There's a story about how our ideas about nature can change
In 1902, bears were monsters, bears terrified kids. Govt was wiping them out
More television a person watches more likely to believe a bear will eat them
Lobsters are more important than pigeons but regarded as dumber
Women with high sense of esteem significantly more likely to identify with dancing cats
(... Some of this feels like Bonferroni fallacy)
Letters from kids about polar bears to president about global warming
Total flip of perception
When Roosevelt left office, Toy companies looking for the replacement for a teddy bear because regarded as a fad. "The Billy Possum!"
Relentless promotion -- didn't make it to Xmas.
... Sure, possums are hideous. But that wasn't the story.
Bears are independent, but being wiped out. Power balance changed. Tied to a tree was symbol that resonated
Now we teach Condors to not perch on pole lines, monitor rabbits with drones, Line between conservation and domestication blurred
Our imagination -- How we feel about an animal -- has more to do with its survival than other factors
A Ze Frank, hell yeah
The human test:
"Have you ever eaten a booger?"
"Have you ever made a small noise when you recall an embarrassing memory?"
"Have you ever ended a text with a period to signify aggression?"
"Have you ever ..."
B Steven Friend, Open-Science advocate
Diseases we can diagnose for... But can't treat
We do lots of studies of people who are sick, building lists of components we can swap out.
We should also be studying people who don't get sick.
Are there people who are walking around with the conditions to get sick... But something prevents that?
Study if people who didn't get sick as kids but had the conditions to do so
Study of people exposed to aids, or with high lipid levels, who didn't get the respective disease
Resilience problem
Looking a million samples
Costs less to generate and analyze the data than to ship and process it.
Wow a bio lab looks way swanker than anything I saw in physics grad school
A few places: Not only do we have samples, we can run analysis
They need a swab of DNA and willingness to be re-contacted
At the break, by the Robert Johnson booth, have kits
A Rob Knight, Microbial Ecologist
Egyptians didn't save the brain when mummified, drained it and threw it away... That's how science is regarding the gut
You know how some people get more mosquito bites? That's a microbe in your skin
For certain fruit flies, microbes drive who they mate with
Clustering on microbe DNA shows clear groups for microbes in different parts of the body.
Human is about 10 trillion cells -- but we host 100 trillion microbe cells
We host 20,000 genes -- and 2,000,000 to 20,ooo,000 genes
Even people who live together don't converge
Csection babys have microbes that look like skin; natural birth looks like vaginal microbes.
Infant fecal microbes start by living in vaginal community.
Week to week, differences in microbes larger than typical person-to-person differences
gets antibiotics: reversion of several weeks; rebounds
day 838: has reached adult fecal community
antibiotics taken in infancy have significant impact on later obesity
We may someday regard antibiotics with same horror as the tool Egyptians used to drain the brain in mummification
The three pounds of microbes in your gut have more to do with whether you're obese than your genetic material
Microbes are affecting the behavior: it's cause they eat more, not cause they digest differently
8000 people have donated their microbe sample
Reaction shot of school kids hearing his research is "we use lasers to understand poop"
Kits at the speaker table
Curing a certain diarrheal disease by transferring fecal community microbes
(How did the new microbes get evolutionarily selected? Are there statistically significant differences from TED attendees and say a sample of incarcerated prisoners?)
A Nancy Kanwisher, Brain researcher: Mapping the Brain
Damage to a particular part of the brain can destroy ability to discern faces. Just faces: they all look similar.
Through that, and MRI, and more, we know that certain brain functions are constrained to certain parts of the brain
When parts of brain are used, they use more blood
Nancy sat in an MRI for hours looking at images of faces and of objects
Lit up in her, and in each other subject
Wow responds to faces of any kind: Ernie puppet, silhouette, dog face
A patient with electrodes for epilepsy. A smallest poke to the face part of the brain and the patient reported that the person "turned into someone else; nose sagged. Kinda looked like someone I knew, but different"
Other regions: color region, spaces (rooms etc), processing dots, bodies and body parts
Regions for hearing: sounds with pitch (siren or trumpet, not drums or wind)
Region for speech
Region for language
A region for thinking about what other people are thinking
So how do we process all the other stuff we don't have regions for?
Now able to trace wiring diagram -- network of connections
Also scanning infants and other species
(My question: how do you parallelize the search?)
(Do humans grow regions differently? To what extent do their brains according to the map from their parents, that is: do they download a pre-compiled "machine image"?)
Scratch
MG Stewart UX lead at Google, YouTube then FB: Everything I’ve ever designed has by now gone away, but what I created will live forever #TED
Del Harvey, security at twtr: ask "How could this go horribly wrong?"— also what Atul Gawande told my brother, a surgeon, to always ask #TED
"it's not about making learning happen, it's about letting it happen".
"Self-organized learning environments"
skype team made a platform
schoolinthecloud.org
Award: Charmian Gooch, Global Witness -- enemy of dictators and thieves
Laid low dictators, illegal money launderers, illegal acts by large corporations. Truly fearless; tackling worlds darkest forces with wits and good use of computers and information
A serious problem: Anonymous Companies.
Born troublemaker
"But, why?"
Dinner conversation about Civil war in Cambodia led to question "but, why? Why can't we fix this?"
Uncover the people funding war and really responsible for corruption
Much if this is possible because of accepted biz practices.
In the DRC, secret deals had deprived it of over $1 billion
Secretly filmed as person told their investigator exactly how they used anonymous corporations to make secret deals
Mortgage companies in the US
Horsemeat scandal in Europe; $100M Medicare fraud; in recent revolution in Ukraine
What is an anonymous company? How do I get one?
to start, choose a place. Aruba? Nope. London or Delaware
web site: "you can form your business today"
you can legally pay a "nominee", who will own your company
it can even be another company
it's easy and cheap... But it doesn't stop there.
Now, start adding layers. Companies owning companies. In country after country. A global web, impervious to law enforcement.
Rio nightclub fire, 200 dead. Anonymous companies made it difficult to find who was responsible
Companies were intended to be a financial structure. Companies never intended to be a moral shield
"My wish: for us to know who owns and controls companies, so they can no longer be used anonymously against the common good. Together, let's launch a new era of openness in business."
In what ways,is it acceptable to use company structure
Nerds: help build a Prototype public registry. (There's that talis data)
Jehane Noujaim says she will shoot a film
Man at the front takes the mike and says he'll fund and promote that film
Wow, a guy in the office runs one of those registration ccompanies: registers 1000 corporations a week. Offers to be a part of the planning meeting
Man from a panel with folks from Frog, Wieland and Kennedy, more: "I can offer the best UX designers in the world to help
Background: Nearly half of all public corporations in the United States are incorporated in Delaware. Last year, 133,297 businesses set up here. And, at last count, Delaware had more corporate entities, public and private, than people — 945,326 to 897,934.
(I'm curious how much of the data is
Not in digital form at all
available in digital form, but no way to request it
Digital form, but Available only on request singly
Big dry period, ended when he went back home, talked to the shipyard workers, reconnected with where he came from
Cool story in character of shipyard foreman that transitioned into booming song
A: Bill and Melinda Gates
1993 trip to Africa. Saw poverty: "does it have to be like this?"
1997 diarrheal diseases. Talked to scientists, found out what had been tried and what should be
We picked two causes:
globally: child diseases
in US: phenomenal education system
Asked B & M for a picture each to show impact
Melinda: days of empty stock for contraception, women walk ten miles to clinic, find its not there.
Melinda is a Roman Catholic -- "even though I'm a Carholic I believe in contraception, just like most women Catholics in the US"
Bill: children who die before age 5: from 20 million in 1960 down to 6 million in 2014. Goal less than a million within our lifetime
This work is having an effect
There are VC investments that are well meaning but have no effect. There are aid investments that are well meaning but have no effect. But the overall record is strong
How do you work together as husband and wife? M: "When I come home I know Bill's going to be interested in what I've learned"
Asks about a failure.
We were naive about a drug for a bad disease in India... Drug worked but the distribution problems were unworkable.
Education: we thought small schools were key. And that does help: dropout rate drops, scores go up
if you don't have a great teacher it doesn't matter how big that school is.
How do you bring up three children when you are the worlds richest family?
Want to enable them to do anything, but know responsibility.
they guarded privacy fiercely,
they need to have the sense that their own work is important. Not a favor to society or the kids.
"Warren Buffet's big on delegation" if you've got someone doing something well, and they'll do it for free... So he is giving 80% of his wealth to the foundation
More than 95% of Gates' wealth will be given to the foundation
Showing people that putting their ideas behind philanthropy
Hard how to figure out how to spend that much money?
Can't take it with you, it's not good for your kids so let's put it to work
M: "You change systems. We're reinventing the education system."
B: Zak Ebrahim, a Peace activist and son of terrorist El Sayad Nosim (first WTC attack)
Trip to shooting range with his father
Moved 20 times in his childhood, bullied
Growing up in a bigoted household didn't prepare for real life
What changed mind? At a youth violence conference, made a friend...
...and then found out the friend was Jewish
Summer job at Busch Gardens. Met people of all kinds.
worked with gay performers, found they were kind and
Being bullied as a kid made him develop natural empathy
"I don't know what it's like being gay but I know what it's like to be judged on something that's beyond my control"
Jon Stewart forced me to be intellectually honest every night
"the fact that a Jewish comedian taught me more than my extremist father is an irony not lost on me"
He changed name. Why out himself? So someone else can choose to do the same.
I stand here as simple proof that the son does not have to follow the father.
A: Allan Adams
Omfg Gravity Waves
If you hit a bell it will ring and ring and ring, eventually die out.
But here the bell is space-time itself and the hammer is Quantum Mechanics
The gravitational waves put little twists in the light, we can measure those...
...If you spend three years on the South pole taking pictures through the clearest air on earth
Something deep about the universe: We are one large bubble surrounded by... Something else.
we can't know what that is
but it's likely that it's not the only one!
Inflation theory has been around but nobody thought we'd be able to say anything about it. This confirms it.
Aside from Andrew Connoly, Astronomer sitting next to me: "this is Nobel Prize material, no doubt about it."
And remember, kids: if they can't see the stars they can't find things like this out.
Tuesday Day
B Michel Laberge, plasma physics: ITER, General Fusion and the search for hot fusion
Nuclear fission: energy dense, economical, no carbon.
Fusion: put two hydrogen get helium
Only short term waste, no risk of meltdown
Comes from seawater at .001 cents per kilowatt hour
Ok so why don't we have it? Heat. So: Tokamak
Fusion progress is following Moores law
Magnetized Target Fusion
which is great, except the part where it doesn't quite work
... Mic drops out, not what you want to see for the head of ITER
B: Peggy Liu, sustainability: China and Climate
Advantages china has:
Few Key decision makers
China is not just a country it's a multinational organization
Willing to learn from others. Foreign teacher earns more at a private school than a Chinese teacher
Clean tech laboratory of the world
Communist party willing to experiment at large scale. Trying multiple strategies in different cities; then scale out the one that works
Desperate for change. 4x the population on fewer resources.
China: change at gigascale
Small precise focused interventions: "acupuncture points":
Who could help:
Integration expert
Cultural bridge
Collaboration concierge
Storyteller
Maybe you think it takes a massive nation. No: it takes a few passionate individuals to make change.
If you care about climate change, why aren't you in China?
B: Gavin Schmidt, Climate Scientist
14 orders of magnitude needed.
Resolved physicsonly a part
current models: 4 orders of magnitude, 10 to go.
How?
One piece at a time:
Turn the equations of a small part, eg sea ice, into code
...and do that process by process: clouds, sun through atmosphere, winds changing ocean currents, vegetation
What happens when we kick the system?
volcanos
deforestation
contrails -- clouds where there weren't -- change the climate
and carbon emissions
Mount Pinatubo - less radiation
Can successfully describe changes from
volcanos,
sunspots,
solar cycles
Orbital changes over 6000 years
More: atmospheric particles, eg sands in the Sahara
(yikes glitch in slides, no visualization)
Choices:
Some mitigation. Aggressive mitigation. Business-as-usual.
what is the use of having developed a science useful enough to make predictions if all we're willing to do is sit around and wait for them to become true"
"What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?" -- Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland (referring then to ozone depletion)
B David Wong, magician and cruciverbalist
Solving: Order from chaos.
England: crossword
China: tangrams.
England: Jigsaw Puzzle
Don Quixote (QUIXOTRY, highest scoring scrabble word)
Gwen ("your name is worth eight points in Scrabble")
Red donkey: "Raise your hand if you've **Read Don Quixote"
A: Amanda Burden, Urban Planner: cities for people
Redesigned NYC
Cities are fundamentally for people
Lively enjoyable public spaces are the key to building a lively appealing city
She is An animal behaviorist!
Paley park: required incredible dedication and attention to detail
she'd sit in park and watch. What made it appealing?
moveable comfortable chairs
Green. Comfort and greenery is what New Yorkers crave.
Open, spare plazas: architects love them: plinths to their success. Facilities loves them: easy to maintain. People hate them: bleak places.
These are opportunities for the common good
Made planning commissioner for NYC
Where do you out an extra million people?
Lets use one of our singular advantages: our transit system.
Have to fight a Zoning
Used height restrictions, All new development would be predictable and near transit.
40% of NYC redesigned. 12,500 blocks
Almost all is within 10 minutes of a subway.
But re-zoning wasn't the goal. Great public spaces was.
Amazing to here joy in her voice talking about park openings, about people using a ferry as if it had always been there.
Reclaimed two miles of lower manhattan waterfront.
Railings have to be wider: so designed bar style seating.
"Wow there's Brooklyn! It's so close!" (and so maybe
To design great spaces, Dont tap into your design sensibility, Tap into your humanity. Would you want to go there?
At the mention of the word high line spontaneous applause
when I went up on that aqueduct I fell in love like you fall in love with a person. If there was a day I didn't care about the high line it was coming down.
Still one of the most contested public places
Developers see customers. They say hey, put in shops, not planters. NO. It would be a mall, not a park.
Hudson Yards: took 9 months to prohibit its demolition. Two years ago. It can never
Public spaces need vigilant champions, to claim them design them, maintain them
Public spaces have power.
C: Bob Greenberg, founder of R/GA: Deconstructionist Architecture
Intersection of digital and architecture
B: Matthew Carter, type designer
Connection between technology and time
Effect of tools on form:
modern K, all straight lines
antique gothic, cut into steel, none of the lines are straight
... But both were rendered on computer. Tools do not need to control the for,
What I design has function: to be read, to convey meaning. But also aesthetics.
Transition from hot type to photo
only eighteen spacing units
almost fully determined the design: only three variants possible.
now: 1000 spacings; but that wouldn't change.
Shows a pixel font
Letters in. Helvetica designed to be as similar as possible: not good for small sizes
Bell Centenial: cut outs for legibility at small size
Charter: painfully eliminated data size of font, told the engineers how byte-light it was. "Oh we fixed that: we just figured out how to compress fonts, so use as any curves etc as you like". But low curve count made it un fussy
Verdana: designed for the screen. Carter: "It's a self-obsoleting product." MS: high res screens are a decade away. So Carter builds Verdana from the pixel up.
would make three or four variants
was no best "a", had to choose the least bad
but if you're working at the edge of technology, having to choose the least bad is high design.
... And of course though Verdana and other screen-designed fonts are carrying on.
Tuesday Morning
A: Edward Snowden omg
You can hate me but move on
I'm not a traitor, a patriot, a hero. I'm an American and a citizen.
Important thing about PRISM is that it outsources intel to corporations
huh, it only cost $20 million a year!
NSA broke into the datacenters. NSA isn't satisfied with companies merely cooperating. Corporations need to take action to defend rights of users
Best thing providers can do: Enable SSL on every page on the internet
Amazon "The worlds library" doesnt allow SSL
BOUNDLESS INFORMANT ("One of my favorite crpytonyms"). "We can't tells you how many people are American in collected communications" (whoops, they not only can they already do
More collection from Americans about Americans than Russians in Russia"
Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney is a piece of work. (From Dick Cheney: "Julian Assange is a flea bite; Snowden is the lion that bit the head off the dog"
Going to war with people who aren't our enemy doesn't make us safe. In Iraq or on the internet or on the economy
Absolutely more revelations to come. Some of the most important ones not reported yet,
BULL RUN, EDGE HILL. Named for Civil War battlefields -- and these are programs that that undermine security. Mislead companies
Prioritize defense over offense. American secrets are more valuable than others' secrets
Programs had never stopped a single terrorist attack in the US. All three branches agree.
Terrorism is what intel community calls a "Cover for Action"
In 1970s asked for permission for programs like BULL RUN, but was denied. Then terrorism justified, so did it without open debate. The kind of government in secret is not what we want
How do you deal with the fear? "I go to sleep thinking about how I can help my country"
We shouldn't be threatening businesses, criminalizing journalism
Maybe 1 in 50 reckless; maybe 70 in 100 patriotic
Tim Berners Lee!
"Democracy dies behind closed doors; but People are born behind closed doors. We don't have to give up our liberty to have security. We can have Open Government but Private Lives."
Ed Snowden is a really good speaker actually
B: Yoruba Richen, Documentary Filmmaker
1955 Rosa Parks: "I'm tired of your foot on my Neck"
1969: Stonewall Riots
1963 Civil Rights march on Washington "we are visible and many in number"
1979 March on Washington for Gay Rights; in 1993 a million people. October 11 Natl coming out day
1967 Loving v Virginia "Loving" strategy
2013 Unites States v Windsor. 17 states allow Gay Marriage. Utah!
Clip of changing a man's idea on how he'll vote: "You as a black man have the opportunity to stand for my rights"
(noted by I: opportunity" not "obligation". Invite people to do the right thing. They already know they should; let them step into being a person who does.)
A: Marc Kushner
Architect -- 30 yrs of architectural history.
New Jersey: his childhood home -- and how much he hated it -- that's architecture
Building things is terrifying. It's expensive, it takes time.
We want to play it safe
Seattle library. How we consume information. A place to gather and share.
Architecture is a pendulum. Innovation: we wear all black, become hate able, irrelevant. Then we get staid, you love us.
1970s: brutalism. Small windows and concrete.
1980s: old forms, neon; Chippendale furniture as a skyscraper
... Olive Garden restaurant. We're making memories. Tuscany in Ohio
Deconstruction. Hate it
... But then something happened: Bilbao Guggenheim. Love it. Tourism up 2500%. Gehry is everywhere. First "Starchitect"
These forms meant culture. And tourism
Liebeskind, Saha.
Digital media means the speed at which we can consume architecture
Architecture moves quite quickly. 3-4 years to build, but not to think about a building
Never been a good feedback mechanism. That's how brutalism happens
Greatest revolution in arch: since concrete, steel, elevator, it's media. Changes relationship with the public.
Fire island pines. Used Facebook to share an audacious plan to the community. By time it was built, it was already a part of the community.
Building built by a cow.
No building too small to be innovative. Reindeer lodge for viewing reindeer
Buildings don't just reflect our society they shape our society,
C: Brian Greene
History of the Universe
If natural world were a day, 11:59:59 Ben Franklin
Hubble changed from Lawyer to Scientist: there's hope for everyone!
Every so often, see that humanity could lift itself from the challenges of survival
B: Brian Ferren
Co-founder, Applied Minds
You get one to one-and-a-half miracles
Talent to notice the miracles everyone else solved
The oculus in the pantheon meant couldn't use arch technology -- but changed the weight distribution so that it could only be built with it
Smartphone -- soon half the people in the world will have one
Autonomous vehicles: save million lives a year globally; redesign cities; recapture productivity
restricted access autonomous vehicle lanes
need to know exactly where you are and what time it is
legibility
communication where you are
machine vision
intervention of human -- but as it is explained, the network learns
Failure and grit necessary for success
Key: A = extraordinary delivery of extraordinary ideas. B = only one out of extraordinary delivery and extraordinary ideas. C = well-crafted but nothing I'll be thinking on in a month. A "C" is still an amazing talk; it just wasn't as powerful as an A or B talk. D = short of TED standards.
My company, now a part of CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation), sells technology for analyzing and combining data of any size shape or scale, a platform for the next generation of computer infrastructure. We give this software away for free, then make money selling managed applications built atop it to large enterprises.
One of the most important next-generation technology projects is Accumulo, a database made open-source by the NSA. It can store billions of objects in a way that lets you instantly retrieve any record but still find patterns in their global whole with cell-level access control and ok I'd better geeking out but yeah it's really cool. And a tool that lets people discover important truths within otherwise-unmanageably many facts.
Now a year ago, I say to a person "it was designed and built by the NSA, and has deep security features, so you know it's secure." Now I can't say that. Instead I have to say "it was designed and built by the NSA, nobutwaitholdon, let me explain why the fact it's open source makes it secure anyway". Without the peer review that a community of open-source hackers provides, those deep security features must now be regarded a source of risk.
What people need to realize is this: every technology product sold by an American company is now viewed in this light. We used to be "it's from America -- so rest assured, its secure". Now we're "it's from America, but let me assure you why it's secure in spite of that".
Without united action to change this, our global brand will be no longer the eagle, it will be the eye on the pyramid.
