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I was thinking about my place in the universe, and about my first thought about what infinity might mean, when I was a child. And I thought that if time could reach forwards and backwards infinitely, doesn't that mean that every point in time is really infinitely small, and therefore somewhat meaningless. So we don't really have a place in the universe, as far as on a time line. But nothing else does either. Therefore every moment really is the most important moment that's ever happened, including this moment right now. And so therefore this music you're about to hear is maybe the most important music you'll ever hear in your life. (Laughter) (Applause) (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) (Applause) For those of you who I'll be fortunate enough to meet afterwards, you could please refrain from saying, "Oh my god, you're so much shorter in real life." (Laughter) Because it's like the stage is an optical illusion, for some reason. (Laughter) Somewhat like the curving of the universe. I don't know what it is. I get asked in interviews a lot, "My god, you're guitars are so gigantic!" (Laughter) "You must get them custom made -- special, humongous guitars." (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause)
So magic is a very introverted field. While scientists regularly publish their latest research, we magicians do not like to share our methods and secrets. That's true even amongst peers. But if you look at creative practice as a form of research, or art as a form of R&D for humanity, then how could a cyber illusionist like myself share his research? Now my own speciality is combining digital technology and magic. And about three years ago, I started an exercise in openness and inclusiveness by reaching out into the open-source software community to create new digital tools for magic -- tools that could eventually be shared with other artists to start them off further on in the process and to get them to the poetry faster. Today, I'd like to show you something which came out of these collaborations. It's an augmented reality projection tracking and mapping system, or a digital storytelling tool. Could we bring down the lights please? Thank you. So let's give this a try. And I'm going to use it to give you my take on the stuff of life. (Applause) (Music) Terribly sorry. I forgot the floor. Wake up. Hey. Come on. (Music) Please. (Music) Come on. Ah, sorry about that. Forgot this. (Music) Give it another try. Okay. He figured out the system. (Music) (Laughter) (Applause) (Music) Uh oh. (Music) All right. Let's try this. Come on. (Music) (Laughter) (Music) Hey. (Music) You heard her, go ahead. (Laughter) (Applause) Bye-bye. (Applause)
♫ Like the heather ♫ ♫ on the hillside ♫ ♫ as they drove us ♫ ♫ from the Highlands ♫ ♫ Like the ice flow ♫ ♫ from the Arctic ♫ ♫ where we landed ♫ ♫ in Newfoundland ♫ ♫ There's a color ♫ ♫ to my sorrow ♫ ♫ There's a name for ♫ ♫ all this sadness ♫ ♫ Like the ocean ♫ ♫ in between us ♫ ♫ I am blue ♫ ♫ Blue is a river ♫ ♫ Blue remembered ♫ ♫ Blue water ♫ ♫ running clear ♫ ♫ Blue like a planet ♫ ♫ to a spaceman ♫ ♫ Blue river ♫ ♫ of my tears ♫ (Fiddle and synthesizer) ♫ So I came here ♫ ♫ to the city ♫ ♫ where the dream burns ♫ ♫ like a furnace ♫ ♫ And I dazzled ♫ ♫ in these dark streets ♫ ♫ like a diamond ♫ ♫ in a coalface ♫ ♫ Then the cold wind ♫ ♫ from the islands ♫ ♫ blew a storm cloud ♫ ♫ across the new moon ♫ ♫ Like the gun smoke ♫ ♫ above the houses ♫ ♫ in my home ♫ ♫ Blue is a river ♫ ♫ Blue remembered ♫ ♫ Blue water ♫ ♫ running clear ♫ ♫ Blue like a planet ♫ ♫ to a spaceman ♫ ♫ Blue river ♫ ♫ of my tears ♫ ♫ Blue river ♫ ♫ of my tears ♫ (Fiddle and synthesizer) (Applause)
(Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) Robbie Mizzone: Thank you. Tommy Mizzone: Thank you very much. We're so excited to be here. It's such an honor for us. Like he said, we're three brothers from New Jersey -- you know, the bluegrass capital of the world. (Laughter) We discovered bluegrass a few years ago, and we fell in love with it. We hope you guys will too. This next song is an original we wrote called "Timelapse," and it will probably live up to its name. (Tuning) (Music) (Applause) TM: Thank you very much. RM: I'm just going to take a second to introduce the band. On guitar is my 15-year-old brother Tommy. (Applause) On banjo is 10-year-old Jonny. (Applause) He's also our brother. And I'm Robbie, and I'm 14, and I play the fiddle. (Applause) As you can see, we decided to make it hard on ourselves, and we chose to play three songs in three different keys. Yeah. I'm also going to explain, a lot of people want to know where we got the name Sleepy Man Banjo Boys from. So it started when Jonny was little, and he first started the banjo, he would play on his back with his eyes closed, and we'd say it looked like he was sleeping. So you can probably piece the rest together. TM: We can't really figure out the reason for this. It might have been that it weighs about a million pounds. (Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) TM: Thank you very much. RM: Thank you.
I'm a designer and an educator. I'm a multitasking person, and I push my students to fly through a very creative, multitasking design process. But how efficient is, really, this multitasking? Let's consider for a while the option of monotasking. A couple of examples. Look at that. This is my multitasking activity result. (Laughter) So trying to cook, answering the phone, writing SMS, and maybe uploading some pictures about this awesome barbecue. So someone tells us the story about supertaskers, so this two percent of people who are able to control multitasking environment. But what about ourselves, and what about our reality? When's the last time you really enjoyed just the voice of your friend? So this is a project I'm working on, and this is a series of front covers to downgrade our super, hyper — (Laughter) (Applause) to downgrade our super, hyper-mobile phones into the essence of their function. Another example: Have you ever been to Venice? How beautiful it is to lose ourselves in these little streets on the island. But our multitasking reality is pretty different, and full of tons of information. So what about something like that to rediscover our sense of adventure? I know that it could sound pretty weird to speak about mono when the number of possibilities is so huge, but I push you to consider the option of focusing on just one task, or maybe turning your digital senses totally off. So nowadays, everyone could produce his mono product. Why not? So find your monotask spot within the multitasking world. Thank you. (Applause)
But anyway, this is about the evils of science, so I think it’s perfect. ♫ My oh my, walking by, who’s the apple of my eye? ♫ ♫ Why, it's my very own Clonie. ♫ ♫ Oh, if I should stroll the hood, who knew I could look so good ♫ ♫ just talking on the phone to Clonie. ♫ ♫ We are pals, it's cool, 'cause we're not lonely, ♫ ♫ shallow gene pool is nothing to my only Clonie. ♫ ♫ Me and you, hustling through, holding on through thick and thin, ♫ ♫ just day by day, our DNA, so the Olson twins got nothing on us. ♫ ♫ We'll survive, side by side. Mother Nature, don’t you call her phony, she’s my Clonie. ♫ ♫ Was wealthy, but not healthy, had no one to dwell with me, ♫ ♫ so look who I got born -- Clonie. ♫ ♫ Far from broke, bored, rich folk, we don't need no natural yolk -- ♫ ♫ our babies come full-formed, Clonie. ♫ ♫ We'll be huggable, get a publicist ♫ ♫ and show them, be the most lovable thing since fucking Eminem. ♫ ♫ Oh my friend, multiply, we’re a franchise, like Walt Disney or Hannibal Lecter. ♫ ♫ We can tell our cancer cells are more benign than old Phil Spector. ♫ ♫ We’ll survive side by side, should have signed with Verve instead of Sony. ♫ ♫ You’re my Clonie. ♫ "Oh Clonie, how I love you." "Ha, I'm the only person I ever loved." ♫ Gee, that's swell. I guess you're just my fatal attraction-ie. You’re my Clonie. ♫ Thank you. (Applause)
Basically, there's a major demographic event going on. And it may be that passing the 50 percent urban point is an economic tipping point. So the world now is a map of connectivity. It used to be that Paris and London and New York were the largest cities. What we have now is the end of the rise of the West. That's over. The aggregate numbers are overwhelming. So what's really going on? Well, villages of the world are emptying out. The question is, why? And here's the unromantic truth -- and the city air makes you free, they said in Renaissance Germany. So some people go to places like Shanghai but most go to the squatter cities where aesthetics rule. And these are not really a people oppressed by poverty. They're people getting out of poverty as fast as they can. They're the dominant builders and to a large extent, the dominant designers. They have home-brewed infrastructure and vibrant urban life. One-sixth of the GDP in India is coming out of Mumbai. They are constantly upgrading, and in a few cases, the government helps. Education is the main event that can happen in cities. What's going on in the street in Mumbai? Al Gore knows. It's basically everything. There's no unemployment in squatter cities. Everyone works. One-sixth of humanity is there. It's soon going to be more than that. So here's the first punch line: cities have defused the population bomb. And here's the second punch line. That's the news from downtown. Here it is in perspective. Stars have shined down on earth's life for billions of years. Now we're shining right back up. Thank you.
I’m working a lot with motion and animation, and also I'm an old DJ and a musician. So, music videos are something that I always found interesting, but they always seem to be so reactive. So I was thinking, can you remove us as creators and try to make the music be the voice and have the animation following it? So with two designers, Tolga and Christina, at my office, we took a track -- many of you probably know it. It’s about 25 years old, and it's David Byrne and Brian Eno -- and we did this little animation. And I think that it's maybe interesting, also, that it deals with two problematic issues, which are rising waters and religion. Song: Before God destroyed the people on the Earth, he warned Noah to build an Ark. And after Noah built his Ark, I believe he told Noah to warn the people that they must change all their wicked ways before he come upon them and destroy them. And when Noah had done built his Ark, I understand that somebody began to rend a song. And the song began to move on I understand like this. And when Noah had done built his Ark ... Move on ... In fact ... Concern ... So they get tired, has come dark and rain; they get weary and tired. And then he went and knocked an old lady house. And old lady ran to the door and say, "Who is it?" Jack say, "Me, Mama-san, could we spend the night here? Because we’re far from home, we’re very tired." And the old lady said, "Oh yes, come on in." It was come dark and rain, will make you weary and tired. (Applause)
Forrest North: The beginning of any collaboration starts with a conversation. And I would like to share with you some of the bits of the conversation that we started with. I grew up in a log cabin in Washington state with too much time on my hands. Yves Behar: And in scenic Switzerland for me. FN: I always had a passion for alternative vehicles. This is a land yacht racing across the desert in Nevada. YB: Combination of windsurfing and skiing into this invention there. FN: And I also had an interest in dangerous inventions. This is a 100,000-volt Tesla coil that I built in my bedroom, much to the dismay of my mother. YB: To the dismay of my mother, this is dangerous teenage fashion right there. (Laughter) FN: And I brought this all together, this passion with alternative energy and raced a solar car across Australia -- also the U.S. and Japan. YB: So, wind power, solar power -- we had a lot to talk about. We had a lot that got us excited. So we decided to do a special project together. To combine engineering and design and ... FN: Really make a fully integrated product, something beautiful. YB: And we made a baby. (Laughter) FN: Can you bring out our baby? (Applause) This baby is fully electric. It goes 150 miles an hour. It's twice the range of any electric motorcycle. Really the exciting thing about a motorcycle is just the beautiful integration of engineering and design. It's got an amazing user experience. It was wonderful working with Yves Behar. He came up with our name and logo. We're Mission Motors. And we've only got three minutes, but we could talk about it for hours. YB: Thank you. FN: Thank you TED. And thank you Chris, for having us. (Applause)
(Music) (Applause) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) Chris Anderson: You guys were amazing. That's amazing. (Applause) You just don't hear that every day. (Laughter) Usman, the official story is that you learned to play the guitar by watching Jimmy Page on YouTube. Usman Riaz: Yes, that was the first one. And then I -- That was the first thing I learned, and then I started progressing to other things. And I started watching Kaki King a lot, and she would always cite Preston Reed as a big influence, so then I started watching his videos, and it's very surreal right now to be -- (Laughter) (Applause) CA: Was that piece just now, that was one of his songs that you learned, or how did that happen? UR: I'd never learned it before, but he told me that we would be playing that on stage, so I was familiar with it, so that's why I had so much more fun learning it. And it finally happened, so ... (Laughter) CA: Preston, from your point of view, I mean, you invented this like 20 years ago, right? How does it feel to see someone like this come along taking your art and doing so much with it? Preston Reed: It's mind-blowing, and I feel really proud, really honored. And he's a wonderful musician, so it's cool. (Laughter) CA: I guess, I don't think there is like a one-minute other piece you guys can do? Can you? Do you jam? Do you have anything else? PR: We haven't prepared anything. CA: There isn't. I'll tell you what. If you have another 30 or 40 seconds, and you have another 30 or 40 seconds, and we just see that, I just think -- I can feel it. We want to hear a little more. And if it goes horribly wrong, no worries. (Applause) (Laughter) (Music) (Applause)
♫ Where do we go from here? ♫ ♫ How do we carry on? ♫ ♫ I can't get beyond the questions ♫ ♫ Clambering for the scraps ♫ ♫ in the shatter of us, collapsed ♫ ♫ It cuts me with every could have been ♫ ♫ Pain on pain on play, repeating ♫ ♫ With the backup, makeshift life in waiting ♫ ♫ Everybody says ♫ ♫ time heals everything ♫ ♫ What of the wretched hollow? ♫ ♫ The endless in between? ♫ ♫ Are we just going to wait it out? ♫ ♫ There is nothing to see here now ♫ ♫ Turning the sign around ♫ ♫ We're closed to the Earth 'til further notice ♫ ♫ A crumbling cliche case ♫ ♫ crumpled and puffy faced ♫ ♫ caught dead in the stare of a thousand miles ♫ ♫ All I want, only one street level miracle ♫ ♫ I'll be an out and out born again ♫ ♫ from none more cynical ♫ ♫ Everybody says ♫ ♫ that time heals everything ♫ ♫ But what of the wretched hollow? ♫ ♫ The endless in between? ♫ ♫ Are we just going to wait it out? ♫ ♫ And sit here cold? ♫ ♫ We will be long gone by then ♫ ♫ In lackluster ♫ ♫ In dust we lay around old magazines ♫ ♫ Fluorescent lighting sets the scene ♫ ♫ for all we could and should be being ♫ ♫ in the one life that we've got ♫ ♫ Everybody says ♫ ♫ time heals everything ♫ ♫ And what of the wretched hollow? ♫ ♫ The endless in between? ♫ ♫ Are we just going to wait it out? ♫ ♫ Just going to sweat it out? ♫ ♫ Just going to sweat it out? ♫ ♫ Wait it out ♫ (Applause)
Well, I'm involved in other things, besides physics. In fact, mostly now in other things. One thing is distant relationships among human languages. And the professional, historical linguists in the U.S. and in Western Europe mostly try to stay away from any long-distance relationships, big groupings, groupings that go back a long time, longer than the familiar families. They don't like that. They think it's crank. I don't think it's crank. And there are some brilliant linguists, mostly Russians, who are working on that, at Santa Fe Institute and in Moscow, and I would love to see where that leads. Does it really lead to a single ancestor some 20, 25,000 years ago? And what if we go back beyond that single ancestor, when there was presumably a competition among many languages? How far back does that go? How far back does modern language go? How many tens of thousands of years does it go back? Chris Anderson: Do you have a hunch or a hope for what the answer to that is? Murray Gell-Mann: Well, I would guess that modern language must be older than the cave paintings and cave engravings and cave sculptures and dance steps in the soft clay in the caves in Western Europe, in the Aurignacian Period some 35,000 years ago, or earlier. I can't believe they did all those things and didn't also have a modern language. So, I would guess that the actual origin goes back at least that far and maybe further. But that doesn't mean that all, or many, or most of today's attested languages couldn't descend perhaps from one that's much younger than that, like say 20,000 years, or something of that kind. It's what we call a bottleneck. CA: Well, Philip Anderson may have been right. You may just know more about everything than anyone. So, it's been an honor. Thank you Murray Gell-Mann. (Applause)
(Music) ♫ I don't understand myself, ♫ ♫ why they keep talking of love, ♫ ♫ if they come near me, ♫ ♫ if they look into my eyes and kiss my hand. ♫ ♫ I don't understand myself, ♫ ♫ why they talk of magic, ♫ ♫ that no one withstands, ♫ ♫ if he sees me, if he passes by. ♫ ♫ But if the red light is on ♫ ♫ in the middle of the night ♫ ♫ and everybody listens to my song, ♫ ♫ then it is plain to see. ♫ ♫ My lips, they give so fiery a kiss, ♫ ♫ my limbs, they are supple and white. ♫ ♫ It is written for me in the stars, ♫ ♫ thou shalt kiss, thou shalt love. ♫ ♫ My feet, they glide and float, ♫ ♫ my eyes, they lure and glow. ♫ ♫ And I dance as if entranced, 'cause I know, ♫ ♫ my lips give so fiery a kiss. ♫ ♫ In my veins, ♫ ♫ runs a dancer's blood, ♫ ♫ because my beautiful mother ♫ ♫ was the Queen of dance ♫ ♫ in the gilded Alcazar. ♫ ♫ She was so very beautiful, ♫ ♫ I often saw her in my dreams. ♫ ♫ If she beat the tambourine ♫ ♫ to her beguiling dance, all eyes were glowing admiringly. ♫ ♫ She reawakened in me, ♫ ♫ mine is the same lot. ♫ ♫ I dance like her at midnight ♫ ♫ and from deep within I feel: ♫ ♫ My lips, they give so fiery a kiss, ♫ ♫ my limbs, they are supple and white. ♫ ♫ It is written for me in the stars, ♫ ♫ thou shalt kiss, thou shalt love. ♫ ♫ And I dance as if entranced, 'cause I know, ♫ ♫ my lips give so fiery a kiss. ♫ (Applause)
(Music) (Applause) Thank you. Imagining a solo cello concert, one would most likely think of Johann Sebastian Bach unaccompanied cello suites. As a child studying these eternal masterpieces, Bach's music would intermingle with the singing voices of Muslim prayers from the neighboring Arab village of the northern Kibbutz in Israel where I grew up. Late at night, after hours of practicing, I would listen to Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday as the sounds of tango music would be creeping from my parents' stereo. It all became music to me. I didn't hear the boundaries. I still start every day practicing playing Bach. His music never ceases to sound fresh and surprising to me. But as I was moving away from the traditional classical repertoire and trying to find new ways of musical expression, I realized that with today's technological resources, there's no reason to limit what can be produced at one time from a single string instrument. The power and coherency that comes from one person hearing, perceiving and playing all the voices makes a very different experience. The excitement of a great orchestra performance comes from the attempt to have a collective of musicians producing one unified whole concept. The excitement from using multi-tracking, the way I did in the piece you will hear next, comes from the attempt to build and create a whole universe with many diverse layers, all generated from a single source. My cello and my voice are layered to create this large sonic canvas. When composers write music for me, I ask them to forget what they know about the cello. I hope to arrive at new territories to discover sounds I have never heard before. I want to create endless possibilities with this cello. I become the medium through which the music is being channeled, and in the process, when all is right, the music is transformed and so am I. (Music) (Applause)
(Music) ♫ I don't understand myself, ♫ ♫ why they keep talking of love, ♫ ♫ if they come near me, ♫ ♫ if they look into my eyes and kiss my hand. ♫ ♫ I don't understand myself, ♫ ♫ why they talk of magic, ♫ ♫ that no one withstands, ♫ ♫ if he sees me, if he passes by. ♫ ♫ But if the red light is on ♫ ♫ in the middle of the night ♫ ♫ and everybody listens to my song, ♫ ♫ then it is plain to see. ♫ ♫ My lips, they give so fiery a kiss, ♫ ♫ my limbs, they are supple and soft. ♫ ♫ It is written for me in the stars, ♫ ♫ thou shalt kiss, thou shalt love. ♫ ♫ My feet, they glide and float, ♫ ♫ my eyes, they lure and glow. ♫ ♫ And I dance as if entranced, 'cause I know, ♫ ♫ my lips give so fiery a kiss. ♫ ♫ In my veins, ♫ ♫ runs a dancer's blood, ♫ ♫ because my beautiful mother ♫ ♫ was the Queen of dance ♫ ♫ in the gilded Alcazar. ♫ ♫ She was so very beautiful, ♫ ♫ I often saw her in my dreams. ♫ ♫ If she beat the tambourine ♫ ♫ to her beguiling dance, all eyes were glowing admiringly. ♫ ♫ She reawakened in me, ♫ ♫ mine is the same lot. ♫ ♫ I dance like her at midnight ♫ ♫ and from deep within I feel: ♫ ♫ My lips, they give so fiery a kiss, ♫ ♫ my limbs, they are supple and soft. ♫ ♫ It is written for me in the stars, ♫ ♫ thou shalt kiss, thou shalt love. ♫ ♫ And I dance as if entranced, 'cause I know, ♫ ♫ my lips give so fiery a kiss. ♫ (Applause)
(Music) ♪ You with the sad eyes ♪ ♪ Don't be discouraged ♪ ♪ Oh, I realize ♪ ♪ It’s hard to take courage ♪ ♪ In a world full of people ♪ ♪ You can lose sight of it all ♪ ♪ And the darkness inside you ♪ ♪ Can make you feel so small ♪ ♪ But I see your true colors ♪ ♪ Shining through ♪ ♪ I see your true colors ♪ ♪ And that's why I love you ♪ ♪ So don't be afraid to let them show ♪ ♪ Your true colors ♪ ♪ True colors are beautiful ♪ ♪ Like a rainbow ♪ ♪ Show me a smile, then ♪ ♪ Don't be unhappy ♪ ♪ Can't remember when ♪ ♪ I last saw you laughing ♪ ♪ If this world makes you crazy ♪ ♪ And you've taken all you can bear ♪ ♪ You can call me up ♪ ♪ Because you know I'll be there ♪ ♪ And I'll see your true colors ♪ ♪ Shining through ♪ ♪ I see your true colors ♪ ♪ And that's why I love you ♪ ♪ So don't be afraid to let them show ♪ ♪ Your true colors ♪ ♪ True colors are beautiful ♪ ♪ Like a rainbow ♪ ♪ If this world makes you crazy ♪ ♪ And you've taken all you can bear ♪ ♪ You can call me up ♪ ♪ Because you know I'll be there ♪ ♪ And I'll see your true colors ♪ ♪ Shining through ♪ ♪ I see your true colors ♪ ♪ And that's why I love you ♪ ♪ So don't be afraid to let them show ♪ ♪ Your true colors ♪ ♪ True colors are beautiful ♪ ♪ Like a rainbow ♪ ♪ So don't be afraid to let them show ♪ ♪ True colors ♪ ♪ True colors ♪ ♪ True colors ♪ ♪ True colors are beautiful ♪ ♪ Like a rainbow ♪ (Applause)
This means, "I'm smiling." So does that. This means "mouse." "Cat." Here we have a story. The start of the story, where this means guy, and that is a ponytail on a passer-by. Here's where it happens. These are when. This is a cassette tape the girl puts into her cassette-tape player. She wears it every day. It's not considered vintage -- she just likes certain music to sound a certain way. Look at her posture; it's remarkable. That's because she dances. Now he, the guy, takes all of this in, figuring, "Honestly, geez, what are my chances?" (Laughter) And he could say, "Oh my God!" or "I heart you!" "I'm laughing out loud." "I want to give you a hug." But he comes up with that, you know. He tells her, "I'd like to hand-paint your portrait on a coffee mug." (Laughter) Put a crab inside it. Add some water. Seven different salts. He means he's got this sudden notion to stand on dry land, but just panhandle at the ocean. He says, "You look like a mermaid, but you walk like a waltz." And the girl goes, "Wha'?" So, the guy replies, "Yeah, I know, I know. I think my heartbeat might be the Morse code for inappropriate. At least, that's how it seems. I'm like a junior varsity cheerleader sometimes -- for swearing, awkward silences, and very simple rhyme schemes. Right now, talking to you, I'm not even really a guy. I'm a monkey -- (Laughter) -- blowing kisses at a butterfly. But I'm still suggesting you and I should meet. First, soon, and then a lot. I'm thinking the southwest corner of 5th and 42nd at noon tomorrow, but I'll stay until you show up, ponytail or not. Hell, ponytail alone. I don't know what else to tell you. I got a pencil you can borrow. You can put it in your phone." But the girl does not budge, does not smile, does not frown. She just says, "No thank you." You know? [ "i don't need 2 write it down." ] (Applause)
The decorative use of wire in southern Africa dates back hundreds of years. But modernization actually brought communication and a whole new material, in the form of telephone wire. Rural to urban migration meant that newfound industrial materials started to replace hard-to-come-by natural grasses. So, here you can see the change from use -- starting to use contemporary materials. These pieces date back from the '40s to the late '50s. In the '90s, my interest and passion for transitional art forms led me to a new form, which came from a squatter camp outside Durban. And I got the opportunity to start working with this community at that point, and started developing, really, and mentoring them in terms of scale, in terms of the design. And the project soon grew from five to 50 weavers in about a year. Soon we had outgrown the scrap yards, what they could provide, so we coerced a wire manufacturer to help us, and not only to supply the materials on bobbins, but to produce to our color specifications. At the same time, I was thinking, well, there's lots of possibility here to produce contemporary products, away from the ethnic, a little bit more contemporary. So I developed a whole range around -- mass-produced range -- that obviously fitted into a much higher-end decor market that could be exported and also service our local market. We started experimenting, as you can see, in terms of shapes, forms. The scale became very important, and it's become our pet project. It's successful, it's been running for 12 years. And we supply the Conran shops, and Donna Karan, and so it's kind of great. This is our group, our main group of weavers. They come on a weekly basis to Durban. They all have bank accounts. They've all moved back to the rural area where they came from. It's a weekly turnaround of production. This is the community that I originally showed you the slide of. And that's also modernized today, and it's supporting work for 300 weavers. And the rest says it all. Thank you very much. (Applause)
At 7:45 a.m., I open the doors to a building dedicated to building, yet only breaks me down. I march down hallways cleaned up after me every day by regular janitors, but I never have the decency to honor their names. Lockers left open like teenage boys' mouths when teenage girls wear clothes that covers their insecurities but exposes everything else. Masculinity mimicked by men who grew up with no fathers, camouflage worn by bullies who are dangerously armed but need hugs. Teachers paid less than what it costs them to be here. Oceans of adolescents come here to receive lessons but never learn to swim, part like the Red Sea when the bell rings. This is a training ground. My high school is Chicago, diverse and segregated on purpose. Social lines are barbed wire. Labels like "Regulars" and "Honors" resonate. I am an Honors but go home with Regular students who are soldiers in territory that owns them. This is a training ground to sort out the Regulars from the Honors, a reoccurring cycle built to recycle the trash of this system. Trained at a young age to capitalize, letters taught now that capitalism raises you but you have to step on someone else to get there. This is a training ground where one group is taught to lead and the other is made to follow. No wonder so many of my people spit bars, because the truth is hard to swallow. The need for degrees has left so many people frozen. Homework is stressful, but when you go home every day and your home is work, you don't want to pick up any assignments. Reading textbooks is stressful, but reading does not matter when you feel your story is already written, either dead or getting booked. Taking tests is stressful, but bubbling in a Scantron does not stop bullets from bursting. I hear education systems are failing, but I believe they're succeeding at what they're built to do -- to train you, to keep you on track, to track down an American dream that has failed so many of us all. (Applause)
In 2008, Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar. Millions of people were in severe need of help. The U.N. wanted to rush people and supplies to the area. But there were no maps, no maps of roads, no maps showing hospitals, no way for help to reach the cyclone victims. When we look at a map of Los Angeles or London, it is hard to believe that as of 2005, only 15 percent of the world was mapped to a geo-codable level of detail. The U.N. ran headfirst into a problem that the majority of the world's populous faces: not having detailed maps. But help was coming. At Google, 40 volunteers used a new software to map 120,000 kilometers of roads, 3,000 hospitals, logistics and relief points. And it took them four days. The new software they used? Google Mapmaker. Google Mapmaker is a technology that empowers each of us to map what we know locally. People have used this software to map everything from roads to rivers, from schools to local businesses, and video stores to the corner store. Maps matter. Nobel Prize nominee Hernando De Soto recognized that the key to economic liftoff for most developing countries is to tap the vast amounts of uncapitalized land. For example, a trillion dollars of real estate remains uncapitalized in India alone. In the last year alone, thousands of users in 170 countries have mapped millions of pieces of information, and created a map of a level of detail never thought viable. And this was made possible by the power of passionate users everywhere. Let's look at some of the maps being created by users right now. So, as we speak, people are mapping the world in these 170 countries. You can see Bridget in Africa who just mapped a road in Senegal. And, closer to home, Chalua, an N.G. road in Bangalore. This is the result of computational geometry, gesture recognition, and machine learning. This is a victory of thousands of users, in hundreds of cities, one user, one edit at a time. This is an invitation to the 70 percent of our unmapped planet. Welcome to the new world. (Applause)
Imagine, if you will -- a gift. I'd like for you to picture it in your mind. It's not too big -- about the size of a golf ball. So envision what it looks like all wrapped up. But before I show you what's inside, I will tell you, it's going to do incredible things for you. It will bring all of your family together. You will feel loved and appreciated like never before and reconnect with friends and acquaintances you haven't heard from in years. Adoration and admiration will overwhelm you. It will recalibrate what's most important in your life. It will redefine your sense of spirituality and faith. You'll have a new understanding and trust in your body. You'll have unsurpassed vitality and energy. You'll expand your vocabulary, meet new people, and you'll have a healthier lifestyle. And get this -- you'll have an eight-week vacation of doing absolutely nothing. You'll eat countless gourmet meals. Flowers will arrive by the truckload. People will say to you, "You look great. Have you had any work done?" And you'll have a lifetime supply of good drugs. You'll be challenged, inspired, motivated and humbled. Your life will have new meaning. Peace, health, serenity, happiness, nirvana. The price? $55,000, and that's an incredible deal. By now I know you're dying to know what it is and where you can get one. Does Amazon carry it? Does it have the Apple logo on it? Is there a waiting list? Not likely. This gift came to me about five months ago. It looked more like this when it was all wrapped up -- not quite so pretty. And this, and then this. It was a rare gem -- a brain tumor, hemangioblastoma -- the gift that keeps on giving. And while I'm okay now, I wouldn't wish this gift for you. I'm not sure you'd want it. But I wouldn't change my experience. It profoundly altered my life in ways I didn't expect in all the ways I just shared with you. So the next time you're faced with something that's unexpected, unwanted and uncertain, consider that it just may be a gift. (Applause)
This song is one of Thomas' favorites, called "What You Do with What You've Got." ♫ You must know someone like him ♫ ♫ He was tall and strong and lean ♫ ♫ With a body like a greyhound ♫ ♫ and a mind so sharp and keen ♫ ♫ But his heart, just like laurel ♫ ♫ grew twisted around itself ♫ ♫ Till almost everything he did ♫ ♫ brought pain to someone else ♫ ♫ It's not just what you're born with ♫ ♫ It's what you choose to bear ♫ ♫ It's not how big your share is ♫ ♫ It's how much you can share ♫ ♫ It's not the fights you dreamed of ♫ ♫ It's those you really fought ♫ ♫ It's not what you've been given ♫ ♫ It's what you do with what you've got ♫ ♫ What's the use of two strong legs ♫ ♫ if you only run away? ♫ ♫ And what's the use of the finest voice ♫ ♫ if you've nothing good to say? ♫ ♫ What's the use of strength and muscle ♫ ♫ if you only push and shove? ♫ ♫ And what's the use of two good ears ♫ ♫ if you can't hear those you love? ♫ ♫ What's the use of two strong legs ♫ ♫ if you only run away? ♫ ♫ And what's the use of the finest voice ♫ ♫ if you've nothing good to say? ♫ ♫ What's the use of strength and muscle ♫ ♫ if you only push and shove? ♫ ♫ And what's the use of two good ears ♫ ♫ if you can't hear those you love? ♫ ♫ Between those who use their neighbors ♫ ♫ and those who use the cane ♫ ♫ Between those in constant power ♫ ♫ and those in constant pain ♫ ♫ Between those who run to glory ♫ ♫ and those who cannot run ♫ ♫ Tell me which ones are the cripples ♫ ♫ and which ones touch the sun ♫ ♫ Which ones touch the sun ♫ ♫ Which ones touch the sun ♫ (Applause) Thank you very much.
This is the exact moment that I started creating something called Tinkering School. Tinkering School is a place where kids can pick up sticks and hammers and other dangerous objects, and be trusted. Trusted not to hurt themselves, and trusted not to hurt others. Tinkering School doesn't follow a set curriculum, and there are no tests. We're not trying to teach anybody any specific thing. When the kids arrive they're confronted with lots of stuff: wood and nails and rope and wheels, and lots of tools, real tools. It's a six-day immersive experience for the kids. And within that context, we can offer the kids time -- something that seems in short supply in their over-scheduled lives. Our goal is to ensure that they leave with a better sense of how to make things than when they arrived, and the deep internal realization that you can figure things out by fooling around. Nothing ever turns out as planned ... ever. (Laughter) And the kids soon learn that all projects go awry -- (Laughter) and become at ease with the idea that every step in a project is a step closer to sweet success, or gleeful calamity. We start from doodles and sketches. And sometimes we make real plans. And sometimes we just start building. Building is at the heart of the experience: hands on, deeply immersed and fully committed to the problem at hand. Robin and I, acting as collaborators, keep the landscape of the projects tilted towards completion. Success is in the doing, and failures are celebrated and analyzed. Problems become puzzles and obstacles disappear. When faced with particularly difficult setbacks or complexities, a really interesting behavior emerges: decoration. (Laughter) Decoration of the unfinished project is a kind of conceptual incubation. From these interludes come deep insights and amazing new approaches to solving the problems that had them frustrated just moments before. All materials are available for use. Even those mundane, hateful, plastic grocery bags can become a bridge stronger than anyone imagined. And the things that they build amaze even themselves. Video: Three, two, one, go! Gever Tulley: A rollercoaster built by seven-year-olds. Video: Yay! (Applause) GT: Thank you. It's been a great pleasure. (Applause)
(Music) (Applause) Thank you. Hi, everybody. Ban-gap-seum-ni-da. I'd like to share with you a little bit of me playing my life. I might look successful and happy being in front of you today, but I once suffered from severe depression and was in total despair. The violin, which meant everything to me, became a grave burden on me. Although many people tried to comfort and encourage me, their words sounded like meaningless noise. When I was just about to give everything up after years of suffering, I started to rediscover the true power of music. (Music) In the midst of hardship, it was the music that gave me -- that restored my soul. The comfort the music gave me was just indescribable, and it was a real eye-opening experience for me too, and it totally changed my perspective on life and set me free from the pressure of becoming a successful violinist. Do you feel like you are all alone? I hope that this piece will touch and heal your heart, as it did for me. (Music) (Applause) Thank you. Now, I use my music to reach people's hearts and have found there are no boundaries. My audience is anyone who is here to listen, even those who are not familiar with classical music. I not only play at the prestigious classical concert halls like Carnegie Hall and Kennedy Center, but also hospitals, churches, prisons, and restricted facilities for leprosy patients, just to mention a few. Now, with my last piece, I'd like to show you that classical music can be so much fun, exciting, and that it can rock you. Let me introduce you to my brand new project, "Baroque in Rock," which became a golden disc most recently. It's such an honor for me. I think, while I'm enjoying my life as a happy musician, I'm earning a lot more recognition than I've ever imagined. But it's now your turn. Changing your perspectives will not only transform you but also the whole world. Just play your life with all you have, and share it with the world. I really look forward to witnessing a transforming world by you, TEDsters. Play your life, and stay tuned. (Music) (Applause)
Everything is interconnected. As a Shinnecock Indian, I was raised to know this. We are a small fishing tribe situated on the southeastern tip of Long Island near the town of Southampton in New York. When I was a little girl, my grandfather took me to sit outside in the sun on a hot summer day. There were no clouds in the sky. And after a while I began to perspire. And he pointed up to the sky, and he said, "Look, do you see that? That's part of you up there. That's your water that helps to make the cloud that becomes the rain that feeds the plants that feeds the animals." In my continued exploration of subjects in nature that have the ability to illustrate the interconnection of all life, I started storm chasing in 2008 after my daughter said, "Mom, you should do that." And so three days later, driving very fast, I found myself stalking a single type of giant cloud called the super cell, capable of producing grapefruit-size hail and spectacular tornadoes, although only two percent actually do. These clouds can grow so big, up to 50 miles wide and reach up to 65,000 feet into the atmosphere. They can grow so big, blocking all daylight, making it very dark and ominous standing under them. Storm chasing is a very tactile experience. There's a warm, moist wind blowing at your back and the smell of the earth, the wheat, the grass, the charged particles. And then there are the colors in the clouds of hail forming, the greens and the turquoise blues. I've learned to respect the lightning. My hair used to be straight. (Laughter) I'm just kidding. (Laughter) What really excites me about these storms is their movement, the way they swirl and spin and undulate, with their lava lamp-like mammatus clouds. They become lovely monsters. When I'm photographing them, I cannot help but remember my grandfather's lesson. As I stand under them, I see not just a cloud, but understand that what I have the privilege to witness is the same forces, the same process in a small-scale version that helped to create our galaxy, our solar system, our sun and even this very planet. All my relations. Thank you. (Applause)
When I was 14 years old, I had low self-esteem. I felt I was not talented at anything. One day, I bought a yo-yo. When I tried my first trick, it looked like this. I couldn't even do the simplest trick, but it was very natural for me, because I was not dextrous, and hated all sports. But after one week of practicing, my throws became more like this. A bit better. I thought, the yo-yo is something for me to be good at, for the first time in my life. I found my passion. I was spending all my time practicing. It took me hours and hours a day to build my skills up to the next level. And then, four years later, when I was 18 years old, I was standing onstage at the World Yo-Yo Contest. And I won. I was so excited. "Yes, I did it! I became a hero. I may get many sponsors, a lot of money, tons of interviews, and be on TV!" I thought. (Laughter) But after coming back to Japan, totally nothing changed in my life. I realized society didn't value my passion. So I went back to my college and became a typical Japanese worker as a systems engineer. I felt my passion, heart and soul, had left my body. I felt I was not alive anymore. So I started to consider what I should do, and I thought, I wanted to make my performance better, and to show onstage how spectacular the yo-yo could be to change the public's image of the yo-yo. So I quit my company and started a career as a professional performer. I started to learn classic ballet, jazz dance, acrobatics and other things to make my performance better. As a result of these efforts, and the help of many others, it happened. I won the World Yo-Yo Contest again in the artistic performance division. I passed an audition for Cirque du Soleil. Today, I am standing on the TED stage with the yo-yo in front of you. (Applause) What I learned from the yo-yo is, if I make enough effort with huge passion, there is no impossible. Could you let me share my passion with you through my performance? (Applause) (Water Sounds) (Music) (Applause) (Music) (Music) (Applause) (Applause) (Music) (Applause) (Applause) (Music) (Applause)
This is about a place in London called Kiteflyer's Hill where I used to go and spend hours going "When is he coming back? When is he coming back?" So this is another one dedicated to that guy ... who I've got over. But this is "Kiteflyer's Hill." It's a beautiful song written by a guy called Martin Evan, actually, for me. Boo Hewerdine, Thomas Dolby, thank you very much for inviting me. It's been a blessing singing for you. Thank you very much. ♫ Do you remember when we used to go ♫ ♫ up to Kiteflyer's Hill? ♫ ♫ Those summer nights, so still ♫ ♫ with all of the city beneath us ♫ ♫ and all of our lives ahead ♫ ♫ before cruel and foolish words ♫ ♫ were cruelly and foolishly said ♫ ♫ Some nights I think of you ♫ ♫ and then I go up ♫ ♫ on Kiteflyer's Hill ♫ ♫ wrapped up against the winter chill ♫ ♫ And somewhere in the city beneath me ♫ ♫ you lie asleep in your bed ♫ ♫ and I wonder if ever just briefly ♫ ♫ do I creep in your dreams now and then ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ My wild summer love ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ Have the years been kind? ♫ ♫ And do you think of me sometimes ♫ ♫ up on Kiteflyer's Hill? ♫ ♫ Oh, I pray you one day will ♫ ♫ We won't say a word ♫ ♫ We won't need them ♫ ♫ Sometimes silence is best ♫ ♫ We'll just stand in the still of the evening ♫ ♫ and whisper farewell to loneliness ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ My wild summer love ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ Do you think of me sometimes? ♫ ♫ And do you ever make that climb? ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ My wild summer love ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ Have the years been kind? ♫ ♫ And do you ever make that climb ♫ ♫ up on Kiteflyer's Hill? Kiteflyer's ... ♫ ♫ [French] ♫ ♫ Where are you? Where are you now? ♫ ♫ Where are you now? ♫ ♫ Kiteflyer's ... ♫ (Applause) Gracias. Thank you very much.
Now, if President Obama invited me to be the next Czar of Mathematics, then I would have a suggestion for him that I think would vastly improve the mathematics education in this country. And it would be easy to implement and inexpensive. The mathematics curriculum that we have is based on a foundation of arithmetic and algebra. And everything we learn after that is building up towards one subject. And at top of that pyramid, it's calculus. And I'm here to say that I think that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid ... that the correct summit -- that all of our students, every high school graduate should know -- should be statistics: probability and statistics. (Applause) I mean, don't get me wrong. Calculus is an important subject. It's one of the great products of the human mind. The laws of nature are written in the language of calculus. And every student who studies math, science, engineering, economics, they should definitely learn calculus by the end of their freshman year of college. But I'm here to say, as a professor of mathematics, that very few people actually use calculus in a conscious, meaningful way, in their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, statistics -- that's a subject that you could, and should, use on daily basis. Right? It's risk. It's reward. It's randomness. It's understanding data. I think if our students, if our high school students -- if all of the American citizens -- knew about probability and statistics, we wouldn't be in the economic mess that we're in today. (Laughter) (Applause) Not only -- thank you -- not only that ... but if it's taught properly, it can be a lot of fun. I mean, probability and statistics, it's the mathematics of games and gambling. It's analyzing trends. It's predicting the future. Look, the world has changed from analog to digital. And it's time for our mathematics curriculum to change from analog to digital, from the more classical, continuous mathematics, to the more modern, discrete mathematics -- the mathematics of uncertainty, of randomness, of data -- that being probability and statistics. In summary, instead of our students learning about the techniques of calculus, I think it would be far more significant if all of them knew what two standard deviations from the mean means. And I mean it. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Has anyone ever been to Aspen, Colorado? It's not a joke yet; those aren't the jokes. Is this thing off? I went to Aspen recently and stumbled into this song. ♫ Black men go to Aspen ♫ ♫ and rent colorful chalets. ♫ ♫ Giggle at the questions ♫ ♫ their mere presence seems to raise. ♫ ♫ Get taken for men ♫ ♫ we don't resemble in the least. ♫ "Are you ... ?" "No." ♫ It's a winter wonderland ♫ ♫ in the belly of the beast. ♫ ♫ And black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men send back sushi ♫ ♫ with a scorned Yakuza's flair. ♫ ♫ We make postmodern art ♫ ♫ with bacon grease ♫ ♫ and hot combed hair. ♫ ♫ We secretly play Beethoven ♫ ♫ inside our bassmobiles. ♫ ♫ We can tell you how cool looks ♫ ♫ but cannot show you how it feels ♫ ♫ when black men ski. ♫ ♫ When black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men now are students ♫ ♫ of gay sensibility. ♫ ♫ We wear ironic T-shirts ♫ ♫ drenched in code unknown to thee. ♫ ♫ We get baptized in Walden Pond ♫ ♫ amongst a searing mob ♫ ♫ because the cleansing blood of Jesus ♫ ♫ could not do a thorough job. ♫ ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Chinese guys can jump real high ♫ ♫ and Germans cook soul food. ♫ ♫ White boys rap and hippies nap ♫ ♫ their dreads up to look rude. ♫ ♫ Jazz is now suburban ♫ ♫ it's Marsalisly clean. ♫ ♫ And now we've got Viagra ♫ ♫ everyone's a sex machine. ♫ ♫ So black men ski. ♫ What else can we do? ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Some kids I'll describe as friends ♫ ♫ say I am race-obsessed. ♫ ♫ The luxury of your opinion ♫ ♫ shows that you are blessed. ♫ ♫ See, I have poems about sunsets ♫ ♫ flowers and the rain. ♫ ♫ I've read them to policemen ♫ ♫ but it was all in vain. ♫ ♫ So black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men ski ... ♫ elegantly. ♫ Black men ski. ♫ ♫ Black men ski. ♫
I've been playing TED for nearly a decade, and I've very rarely played any new songs of my own. And that was largely because there weren't any. (Laughter) So I've been busy with a couple of projects, and one of them was this: The Nutmeg. A 1930s ship's lifeboat, which I've been restoring in the garden of my beach house in England. And, so now, when the polar ice caps melt, my recording studio will rise up like an ark, and I'll float off into the drowned world like a character from a J.G. Ballard novel. During the day, the Nutmeg collects energy from solar panels on the roof of the wheelhouse, and from a 450 watt turbine up the mast. So that when it gets dark, I've got plenty of power. And I can light up the Nutmeg like a beacon. And so I go in there until the early hours of the morning, and I work on new songs. I'd like to play to you guys, if you're willing to be the first audience to hear it. (Applause) It's about Billie Holiday. And it appears that, some night in 1947 she left her physical space and was missing all night, until she reappeared in the morning. But I know where she was. She was with me on my lifeboat. And she was hot. (Music) ♫ Billie crept softly ♫ ♫ into my waking arms ♫ ♫ warm like a sip of sour mash ♫ ♫ Strange fruit for ♫ ♫ a sweet hunk of trash ♫ ♫ Panic at the stage door ♫ ♫ of Carnegie Hall ♫ ♫ "Famous Jazz Singer Gone AWOL" ♫ ♫ Must have left the building ♫ ♫ body and soul ♫ ♫ On a creaky ♫ ♫ piano stool tonight ♫ ♫ as the moon is my ♫ ♫ only witness ♫ ♫ She was breathing ♫ ♫ in my ear ♫ ♫ "This time it's love" ♫ ♫ But love is a loaded pistol ♫ ♫ By daybreak she's gone ♫ ♫ Over the frozen river, home ♫ ♫ Me and Johnny Walker ♫ ♫ See in the new age ♫ ♫ alone ♫ ♫ Stay with me ♫ ♫ again tonight ♫ ♫ Billie, time, ♫ ♫ time is a wily trickster ♫ ♫ Still an echo ♫ ♫ in my heart says, ♫ ♫ "This time it's love" ♫ (Applause)
Humanity takes center stage at TED, but I would like to add a voice for the animals, whose bodies and minds and spirits shaped us. Some years ago, it was my good fortune to meet a tribal elder on an island not far from Vancouver. His name is Jimmy Smith, and he shared a story with me that is told among his people, who call themselves the Kwikwasut'inuxw. Once upon a time, he told me, all animals on Earth were one. Even though they look different on the outside, inside, they're all the same, and from time to time they would gather at a sacred cave deep inside the forest to celebrate their unity. When they arrived, they would all take off their skins. Raven shed his feathers, bear his fur, and salmon her scales, and then, they would dance. But one day, a human made it to the cave and laughed at what he saw because he did not understand. Embarrassed, the animals fled, and that was the last time they revealed themselves this way. The ancient understanding that underneath their separate identities, all animals are one, has been a powerful inspiration to me. I like to get past the fur, the feathers and the scales. I want to get under the skin. No matter whether I'm facing a giant elephant or a tiny tree frog, my goal is to connect us with them, eye to eye. You may wonder, do I ever photograph people? Sure. People are always present in my photos, no matter whether they appear to portray tortoises or cougars or lions. You just have to learn how to look past their disguise. As a photographer, I try to reach beyond the differences in our genetic makeup to appreciate all we have in common with every other living thing. When I use my camera, I drop my skin like the animals at that cave so I can show who they really are. As animals blessed with the power of rational thought, we can marvel at the intricacies of life. As citizens of a planet in trouble, it is our moral responsibility to deal with the dramatic loss in diversity of life. But as humans with hearts, we can all rejoice in the unity of life, and perhaps we can change what once happened in that sacred cave. Let's find a way to join the dance. Thank you. (Applause)
How many of you love rhythm? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. (Cheers) (Drumming) I mean, I love all kinds of rhythm. I like to play jazz, a little funk, and hip hop, a little pop, a little R&B, a little Latin, African. And this groove right here, comes from the Crescent City, the old second line. (Cheers) Now, one thing all those rhythms have in common is math, and I call it a-rhythm-etic. Can you repeat after me? A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. Clayton Cameron: A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: A-rhythm a-rhythm. Audience: A-rhythm a-rhythm. CC: A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: Yeah. Now all those styles of rhythm are all counted in four and then subdivided by three. What? Yeah. Three is a magic number. Three is a groovin' number. Three is a hip-hop kind of number. But what does subdividing by three mean? And counting off by four? Well, look, think of it this way. A measure of music as a dollar. Now a dollar has four quarters, right? And so does a 4/4 measure of music. It has four quarter notes. Now, how do you subdivide? Now let's envision this: three dollars' worth of quarters. You would have three groups of four, and you would count it, a-one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. Together. All: A-one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. CC: Okay, now you feel that? Now let's take those three groups of four and make them four groups of three. And listen to this. A-one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, with me. One-two-three-four, one-two-three, come on, y'all! All: One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, ah. CC: There you go. All right, second line. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. Yeah. Now, that's what I call a-rhythm-etic. Can you say it? A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: A-rhythm a-rhythm. Audience: A-rhythm a-rhythm. CC: A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: Yeah. Now pick the swing beat, and do the same thing. One, two, one, two, a-one-two-three-four. Yeah. Mm. One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. Whoo. So I want to take the second line beat and the swing beat and put them together, and it sounds something like this. Aha. A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: A-rhythm a-rhythm. Audience: A-rhythm a-rhythm. CC: A-rhythm-etic. Audience: A-rhythm-etic. CC: Yeah. Hip-hop. Now it's using a faster group of three we call a triplet. Triplet-triplet. Say it with me. All: Triplet-triplet. CC: Triplet-triplet. Triplet-triplet. CC: So I'll take all the rhythms that you heard earlier, we'll put them together, and they sound like this. A-rhythm-etic. (Applause)
I collaborate with bacteria. And I'm about to show you some stop-motion footage that I made recently where you'll see bacteria accumulating minerals from their environment over the period of an hour. So what you're seeing here is the bacteria metabolizing, and as they do so they create an electrical charge. And this attracts metals from their local environment. And these metals accumulate as minerals on the surface of the bacteria. One of the most pervasive problems in the world today for people is inadequate access to clean drinking water. And the desalination process is one where we take out salts. We can use it for drinking and agriculture. Removing the salts from water -- particularly seawater -- through reverse osmosis is a critical technique for countries who do not have access to clean drinking water around the globe. So seawater reverse osmosis is a membrane-filtration technology. We take the water from the sea and we apply pressure. And this pressure forces the seawater through a membrane. This takes energy, producing clean water. But we're also left with a concentrated salt solution, or brine. But the process is very expensive and it's cost-prohibitive for many countries around the globe. And also, the brine that's produced is oftentimes just pumped back out into the sea. And this is detrimental to the local ecology of the sea area that it's pumped back out into. So I work in Singapore at the moment, and this is a place that's really a leading place for desalination technology. And Singapore proposes by 2060 to produce [900] million liters per day of desalinated water. But this will produce an equally massive amount of desalination brine. And this is where my collaboration with bacteria comes into play. So what we're doing at the moment is we're accumulating metals like calcium, potassium and magnesium from out of desalination brine. And this, in terms of magnesium and the amount of water that I just mentioned, equates to a $4.5 billion mining industry for Singapore -- a place that doesn't have any natural resources. So I'd like you to image a mining industry in a way that one hasn't existed before; imagine a mining industry that doesn't mean defiling the Earth; imagine bacteria helping us do this by accumulating and precipitating and sedimenting minerals out of desalination brine. And what you can see here is the beginning of an industry in a test tube, a mining industry that is in harmony with nature. Thank you. (Applause)
I'm used to thinking of the TED audience as a wonderful collection of some of the most effective, intelligent, intellectual, savvy, worldly and innovative people in the world. And I think that's true. However, I also have reason to believe that many, if not most, of you are actually tying your shoes incorrectly. (Laughter) Now I know that seems ludicrous. I know that seems ludicrous. And believe me, I lived the same sad life until about three years ago. And what happened to me was I bought, what was for me, a very expensive pair of shoes. But those shoes came with round nylon laces, and I couldn't keep them tied. So I went back to the store and said to the owner, "I love the shoes, but I hate the laces." He took a look and said, "Oh, you're tying them wrong." Now up until that moment, I would have thought that, by age 50, one of the life skills that I had really nailed was tying my shoes. But not so -- let me demonstrate. This is the way that most of us were taught to tie our shoes. Now as it turns out -- thank you. Wait, there's more. As it turns out, there's a strong form and a weak form of this knot, and we were taught to tie the weak form. And here's how to tell. If you pull the strands at the base of the knot, you will see that the bow will orient itself down the long axis of the shoe. That's the weak form of the knot. But not to worry. If we start over and simply go the other direction around the bow, we get this, the strong form of the knot. And if you pull the cords under the knot, you will see that the bow orients itself along the transverse axis of the shoe. This is a stronger knot. It will come untied less often. It will let you down less, and not only that, it looks better. We're going to do this one more time. (Applause) Start as usual, go the other way around the loop. This is a little hard for children, but I think you can handle it. Pull the knot. There it is: the strong form of the shoe knot. Now, in keeping with today's theme, I'd like to point out -- and something you already know -- that sometimes a small advantage someplace in life can yield tremendous results someplace else. Live long and prosper. (Applause)
Now, since this is TEDGlobal, who can tell me what this is called in French? I see you're all up on the history of hurdy-gurdy -- "vielle à roue." And in Spanish, "zanfona." And in Italian, "ghironda," okay? Hurdy-gurdy, or wheel fiddle. So, these are the different kinds and shapes of the hurdy-gurdy. The hurdy-gurdy is the only musical instrument that uses a crank to turn a wheel to rub strings, like the bow of a violin, to produce music. It has three different kinds of strings. The first string is the drone string, which plays a continuous sound like the bagpipe. The second string is a melody string, which is played with a wooden keyboard tuned like a piano. And the third string is pretty innovative. It's also the only instrument that uses this kind of technique. It activates what's called the buzzing bridge, or the dog. When I turn the crank and I apply pressure, it makes a sound like a barking dog. So all of this is pretty innovative, if you consider that the hurdy-gurdy appeared about a thousand years ago and it took two people to play it; one to turn the crank, and another person -- yes -- to play the melody by physically pulling up large wooden pegs. Luckily, all of this changed a couple of centuries later. So, one person could actually play and almost -- this is pretty heavy -- carry the hurdy-gurdy. The hurdy-gurdy has been used, historically, through the centuries in mostly dance music because of the uniqueness of the melody combined with the acoustic boombox here. And today, the hurdy-gurdy is used in all sorts of music -- traditional folk music, dance, contemporary and world music -- in the U.K., in France, in Spain and in Italy. And this kind of hurdy-gurdy takes anywhere from three to five years [to order and receive it]. It's made by specialized luthiers, also in Europe. And it's very difficult to tune. So without further ado, would you like to hear it? (Audience: Yes.) Caroline Phillips: I didn't hear you. Would you like to hear it? (Audience: Yes!) CP: Okay. There I go. I'd like to sing in Basque, which is the language spoken in the Basque Country where I live, in the region in France and Spain. (Music) [Basque] (Music) Thank you. (Applause) This is a song that I wrote based on traditional Basque rhythms. And this is a song that has a kind of a Celtic feel. (Music) Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)
I'm used to thinking of the TED audience as a wonderful collection of some of the most effective, intelligent, intellectual, savvy, worldly and innovative people in the world. And I think that's true. However, I also have reason to believe that many, if not most, of you are actually tying your shoes incorrectly. (Laughter) Now I know that seems ludicrous. I know that seems ludicrous. And believe me, I lived the same sad life until about three years ago. And what happened to me was I bought, what was for me, a very expensive pair of shoes. But those shoes came with round nylon laces, and I couldn't keep them tied. So I went back to the store and said to the owner, "I love the shoes, but I hate the laces." He took a look and said, "Oh, you're tying them wrong." Now up until that moment, I would have thought that, by age 50, one of the life skills that I had really nailed was tying my shoes. (Laughter) But not so -- let me demonstrate. This is the way that most of us were taught to tie our shoes. Now as it turns out -- thank you. (Applause) Wait, there's more. As it turns out -- (Laughter) there's a strong form and a weak form of this knot, and we were taught the weak form. And here's how to tell. If you pull the strands at the base of the knot, you will see that the bow will orient itself down the long axis of the shoe. That's the weak form of the knot. But not to worry. If we start over and simply go the other direction around the bow, we get this, the strong form of the knot. And if you pull the cords under the knot, you will see that the bow orients itself along the transverse axis of the shoe. This is a stronger knot. It will come untied less often. It will let you down less, and not only that, it looks better. We're going to do this one more time. (Applause) Start as usual -- (Applause) go the other way around the loop. This is a little hard for children, but I think you can handle it. Pull the knot. There it is: the strong form of the shoe knot. Now, in keeping with today's theme, I'd like to point out -- something you already know -- that sometimes a small advantage someplace in life can yield tremendous results someplace else. (Laughter) Live long and prosper. (Applause)
When I first arrived in beautiful Zimbabwe, it was difficult to understand that 35 percent of the population is HIV positive. It really wasn't until I was invited to the homes of people that I started to understand the human toll of the epidemic. For instance, this is Herbert with his grandmother. When I first met him, he was sitting on his grandmother's lap. He has been orphaned, as both of his parents died of AIDS, and his grandmother took care of him until he too died of AIDS. He liked to sit on her lap because he said that it was painful for him to lie in his own bed. When she got up to make tea, she placed him in my own lap and I had never felt a child that was that emaciated. Before I left, I actually asked him if I could get him something. I thought he would ask for a toy, or candy, and he asked me for slippers, because he said that his feet were cold. This is Joyce who's -- in this picture -- 21. Single mother, HIV positive. I photographed her before and after the birth of her beautiful baby girl, Issa. And I was last week walking on Lafayette Street in Manhattan and got a call from a woman who I didn't know, but she called to tell me that Joyce had passed away at the age of 23. Joyce's mother is now taking care of her daughter, like so many other Zimbabwean children who've been orphaned by the epidemic. So a few of the stories. With every picture, there are individuals who have full lives and stories that deserve to be told. All these pictures are from Zimbabwe. Chris Anderson: Kirsten, will you just take one minute, just to tell your own story of how you got to Africa? Kirsten Ashburn: Mmm, gosh. CA: Just -- KA: Actually, I was working at the time, doing production for a fashion photographer. And I was constantly reading the New York Times, and stunned by the statistics, the numbers. It was just frightening. So I quit my job and decided that that's the subject that I wanted to tackle. And I first actually went to Botswana, where I spent a month -- this is in December 2000 -- then went to Zimbabwe for a month and a half, and then went back again this March 2002 for another month and a half in Zimbabwe. CA: That's an amazing story, thank you. KB: Thanks for letting me show these.
Imagine spending seven years at MIT and research laboratories, only to find out that you're a performance artist. (Laughter) I'm also a software engineer, and I make lots of different kinds of art with the computer. And I think the main thing that I'm interested in is trying to find a way of making the computer into a personal mode of expression. And many of you out there are the heads of Macromedia and Microsoft, and in a way those are my bane: I think there's a great homogenizing force that software imposes on people and limits the way they think about what's possible on the computer. Of course, it's also a great liberating force that makes possible, you know, publishing and so forth, and standards, and so on. But, in a way, the computer makes possible much more than what most people think, and my art has just been about trying to find a personal way of using the computer, and so I end up writing software to do that. Chris has asked me to do a short performance, and so I'm going to take just this time -- maybe 10 minutes -- to do that, and hopefully at the end have just a moment to show you a couple of my other projects in video form. Thank you. (Applause) We've got about a minute left. I'd just like to show a clip from a most recent project. I did a performance with two singers who specialize in making strange noises with their mouths. And this just came off last September at ARS Electronica; we repeated it in England. And the idea is to visualize their speech and song behind them with a large screen. We used a computer vision tracking system in order to know where they were. And since we know where their heads are, and we have a wireless mic on them that we're processing the sound from, we're able to create visualizations which are linked very tightly to what they're doing with their speech. This will take about 30 seconds or so. He's making a, kind of, cheek-flapping sound. Well, suffice it to say it's not all like that, but that's part of it. Thanks very much. There's always lots more. I'm overtime, so I just wanted to say you can, if you're in New York, you can check out my work at the Whitney Biennial next week, and also at Bitforms Gallery in Chelsea. And with that, I think I should give up the stage, so, thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, gather around. I would love to share with you a story. Once upon a time in 19th century Germany, there was the book. Now during this time, the book was the king of storytelling. It was venerable. It was ubiquitous. But it was a little bit boring. Because in its 400 years of existence, storytellers never evolved the book as a storytelling device. But then one author arrived, and he changed the game forever. (Music) His name was Lothar, Lothar Meggendorfer. Lothar Meggendorfer put his foot down, and he said, "Genug ist genug!" He grabbed his pen, he snatched his scissors. This man refused to fold to the conventions of normalcy and just decided to fold. History would know Lothar Meggendorfer as -- who else? -- the world's first true inventor of the children's pop-up book. (Music) For this delight and for this wonder, people rejoiced. (Cheering) They were happy because the story survived, and that the world would keep on spinning. Lothar Meggendorfer wasn't the first to evolve the way a story was told, and he certainly wasn't the last. Whether storytellers realized it or not, they were channeling Meggendorfer's spirit when they moved opera to vaudville, radio news to radio theater, film to film in motion to film in sound, color, 3D, on VHS and on DVD. There seemed to be no cure for this Meggendorferitis. And things got a lot more fun when the Internet came around. (Laughter) Because, not only could people broadcast their stories throughout the world, but they could do so using what seemed to be an infinite amount of devices. For example, one company would tell a story of love through its very own search engine. One Taiwanese production studio would interpret American politics in 3D. (Laughter) And one man would tell the stories of his father by using a platform called Twitter to communicate the excrement his father would gesticulate. And after all this, everyone paused; they took a step back. They realized that, in 6,000 years of storytelling, they've gone from depicting hunting on cave walls to depicting Shakespeare on Facebook walls. And this was a cause for celebration. The art of storytelling has remained unchanged. And for the most part, the stories are recycled. But the way that humans tell the stories has always evolved with pure, consistent novelty. And they remembered a man, one amazing German, every time a new storytelling device popped up next. And for that, the audience -- the lovely, beautiful audience -- would live happily ever after. (Applause)
♫ Feminists don't have a sense of humor. ♫ ♫ Feminists just want to be alone -- boo hoo, hoo, hoo. ♫ ♫ Feminists spread vicious lies and rumors. ♫ ♫ They have a tumor on their funny bone. ♫ ♫ They say child molestation isn't funny -- ha, ha, ha, ha. ♫ ♫ Rape and degradation's just a crime -- lighten up, ladies. ♫ ♫ Rampant prostitution's sex for money -- what’s wrong with that? ♫ ♫ Can't these chicks do anything but whine? ♫ ♫ Dance break! Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. ♫ ♫ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. ♫ ♫ Woo-hoo! ♫ ♫ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da -- ♫ ♫ yeah, take it off. ♫ ♫ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, dum. ♫ ♫ They say cheap objectification isn’t witty -- it’s hot! ♫ ♫ Equal work and wages worth the fight -- ♫ ♫ sing us a new one. ♫ ♫ On-demand abortion every city -- OK, but no gun control. ♫ ♫ Won’t these women ever get a life? ♫ ♫ Feminists don’t have a sense of humor -- poor Hillary. ♫ ♫ Feminists and vegetarians -- make mine a Big Mac. ♫ ♫ Feminists spread vicious lies and rumors. ♫ ♫ They're far too sensitive to ever be a ham, ♫ ♫ that's why these feminists just need to find a man. ♫ ♫ Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. ♫ I’m Dennis Kucinich and I approved this message. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Thank you. I asked my mother, you know, should I say anything in support of anyone? And she said, "Oh no! Just dis everybody, except Ralph Nader." (Laughter) ♫ I could show the world how to smile, ♫ ♫ I could be glad all of the while. ♫ ♫ I could turn the gray skies to blue, if I had you. ♫ ♫ I could leave the old days behind, ♫ ♫ leave all my pals, I’d never mind. ♫ ♫ I could start my life all anew, if I had you. ♫ ♫ I could climb the snow-capped mountains, ♫ ♫ sail the mighty ocean wide. ♫ ♫ I could cross the burning desert, if I had you by my side. ♫ ♫ I could be a king, dear, uncrowned, humble or poor, rich or renowned. ♫ ♫ There is nothing I couldn’t do, if I had you. ♫ Thank you. Well, thank you so much.
Today, I'm going to talk to you about sketching electronics. I'm, among several other things, an electrical engineer, and that means that I spend a good amount of time designing and building new pieces of technology, and more specifically designing and building electronics. And what I've found is that the process of designing and building electronics is problematic in all sorts of ways. So it's a really slow process, it's really expensive, and the outcome of that process, namely electronic circuit boards, are limited in all sorts of kind of interesting ways. So they're really small, generally, they're square and flat and hard, and frankly, most of them just aren't very attractive, and so my team and I have been thinking of ways to really change and mix up the process and the outcome of designing electronics. And so what if you could design and build electronics like this? So what if you could do it extremely quickly, extremely inexpensively, and maybe more interestingly, really fluidly and expressively and even improvisationally? Wouldn't that be so cool, and that wouldn't that open up all sorts of new possibilities? I'm going to share with you two projects that are investigations along these lines, and we'll start with this one. (Video) Magnetic electronic pieces and ferrous paper. A conductive pen from the Lewis lab at UIUC. Sticker templates. Speed x 4. Making a switch. Music: DJ Shadow. Adding some intelligence with a microcontroller. Sketching an interface. (Music) (Laughter) (Applause) Pretty cool, huh? We think so. So now that we developed these tools and found these materials that let us do these things, we started to realize that, essentially, anything that we can do with paper, anything that we can do with a piece of paper and a pen we can now do with electronics. So the next project that I want to show you is kind of a deeper exploration of that possibility. And I'll kind of let it speak for itself. (Music) (Applause) So the next step for us in this process is now to find a way to let all of you build things like this, and so the way that we're approaching that is by teaching workshops to people where we explain how they can use these kinds of tools, and then also working to get the tools and the materials and techniques out into the real world in a variety of ways. And so sometime soon, you'll be able to play and build and sketch with electronics in this fundamentally new way. So thank you very much. (Applause)
Five hundred seventy-one million two hundred thirty thousand pounds of paper towels are used by Americans every year. If we could -- correction, wrong figure -- 13 billion used every year. If we could reduce the usage of paper towels, one paper towel per person per day, 571,230,000 pounds of paper not used. We can do that. Now there are all kinds of paper towel dispensers. There's the tri-fold. People typically take two or three. There's the one that cuts it, that you have to tear off. People go one, two, three, four, tear. This much, right? There's the one that cuts itself. People go, one, two, three, four. Or there's the same thing, but recycled paper, you have to get five of those because they're not as absorbant, of course. The fact is, you can do it all with one towel. The key, two words: This half of the room, your word is "shake." Let's hear it. Shake. Louder. Audience: Shake. Joe Smith: Your word is "fold." Audience: Fold. JS: Again. Audience: Fold. JS: Really loud. Audience: Shake. Fold. JS: Okay. Wet hands. Shake -- one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Why 12? Twelve apostles, twelve tribes, twelve zodiac signs, twelve months. The one I like the best: It's the biggest number with one syllable. (Laughter) Tri-fold. Fold ... Dry. (Applause) Audience: Shake. Fold. JS: Cuts itself. Fold. The fold is important because it allows interstitial suspension. You don't have to remember that part, but trust me. (Laughter) Audience: Shake. Fold. JS: Cuts itself. You know the funny thing is, I get my hands drier than people do with three or four, because they can't get in between the cracks. If you think this isn't as good... Audience: Shake. Fold. JS: Now, there's now a real fancy invention, it's the one where you wave your hand and it kicks it out. It's way too big a towel. Let me tell you a secret. If you're really quick, if you're really quick -- and I can prove this -- this is half a towel from the dispenser in this building. How? As soon as it starts, you just tear it off. It's smart enough to stop. And you get half a towel. Audience: Shake. Fold. JS: Now, let's all say it together. Shake. Fold. You will for the rest of your life remember those words every time you pick up a paper towel. And remember, one towel per person for one year -- 571,230,000 pounds of paper. No small thing. And next year, toilet paper. (Laughter)
A few years ago, my eyes were opened to the dark side of the construction industry. In 2006, young Qatari students took me to go and see the migrant worker camps. And since then I've followed the unfolding issue of worker rights. In the last six months, more than 300 skyscrapers in the UAE have been put on hold or canceled. Behind the headlines that lay behind these buildings is the fate of the often-indentured construction worker. 1.1 million of them. Mainly Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Nepalese, these laborers risk everything to make money for their families back home. They pay a middle-man thousands of dollars to be there. And when they arrive, they find themselves in labor camps with no water, no air conditioning, and their passports taken away. While it's easy to point the finger at local officials and higher authorities, 99 percent of these people are hired by the private sector, and so therefore we're equally, if not more, accountable. Groups like Buildsafe UAE have emerged, but the numbers are simply overwhelming. In August 2008, UAE public officials noted that 40 percent of the country's 1,098 labor camps had violated minimum health and fire safety regulations. And last summer, more than 10,000 workers protested for the non-payment of wages, for the poor quality of food, and inadequate housing. And then the financial collapse happened. When the contractors have gone bust, as they've been overleveraged like everyone else, the difference is everything goes missing, documentation, passports, and tickets home for these workers. Currently, right now, thousands of workers are abandoned. There is no way back home. And there is no way, and no proof of arrival. These are the boom-and-bust refugees. The question is, as a building professional, as an architect, an engineer, as a developer, if you know this is going on, as we go to the sights every single week, are you complacent or complicit in the human rights violations? So let's forget your environmental footprint. Let's think about your ethical footprint. What good is it to build a zero-carbon, energy efficient complex, when the labor producing this architectural gem is unethical at best? Now, recently I've been told I've been taking the high road. But, quite frankly, on this issue, there is no other road. So let's not forget who is really paying the price of this financial collapse. And that as we worry about our next job in the office, the next design that we can get, to keep our workers. Let's not forget these men, who are truly dying to work. Thank you. (Applause)
I was a student in the '60s, a time of social upheaval and questioning, and -- on a personal level -- an awakening sense of idealism. The war in Vietnam was raging, the Civil Rights movement was under way and pictures had a powerful influence on me. Our political and military leaders were telling us one thing and photographers were telling us another. I believed the photographers and so did millions of other Americans. Their images fuelled resistance to the war and to racism. They not only recorded history -- they helped change the course of history. Their pictures became part of our collective consciousness and, as consciousness evolved into a shared sense of conscience, change became not only possible, but inevitable. It puts a human face on issues which, from afar, can appear abstract or ideological or monumental in their global impact. What happens at ground level, far from the halls of power, happens to ordinary citizens one by one. And I understood that documentary photography has the ability to interpret events from their point of view. It gives a voice to those who otherwise would not have a voice. My TED wish. There’s a vital story that needs to be told and I wish for TED to help me gain access to it and then to help me come up with innovative and exciting ways to use news photography in the digital era. Thank you very much. [ 10.3.08 -- The story breaks. ] [ "I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony." ] [ South Africa ] [ This is happening now. ] [ Cambodia ] [ Swaziland ] [ One person dies every 20 seconds. ] [ Thailand ] [ An ancient disease is taking on a deadly new form. ] [ Siberia ] [ Lesotho ] [ Tuberculosis: the next pandemic? ] [ India ] [ TB is preventable and curable, ] [ but it is mutating due to inadequate treatment. ] [ XDR-TB: ] [ extreme drug resistant tuberculosis. ] [ There is no reliable cure. ] [ Patients often die within weeks of diagnosis. ] [ 49 countries have reported XDR-TB. ] [ XDR-TB is a critical threat to global health. ] [ Extreme outbreak, suffering, affliction ] [ Extreme loss, pain, pandemic ] [ Extremely preventable. ] [ XDR-TB. ] [ We can stop this now. ] [ Spread the story. Stop the disease. ] [ Go to XDRTB.org now. ] [ XDRTB.org: we are the treatment. ] [ We are the treatment. ] [ Made possible through the kind support of BD. ]
As an artist, connection is very important to me. Through my work I'm trying to articulate that humans are not separate from nature and that everything is interconnected. I first went to Antarctica almost 10 years ago, where I saw my first icebergs. I was in awe. My heart beat fast, my head was dizzy, trying to comprehend what it was that stood in front of me. The icebergs around me were almost 200 feet out of the water, and I could only help but wonder that this was one snowflake on top of another snowflake, year after year. Icebergs are born when they calve off of glaciers or break off of ice shelves. Each iceberg has its own individual personality. They have a distinct way of interacting with their environment and their experiences. Some refuse to give up and hold on to the bitter end, while others can't take it anymore and crumble in a fit of dramatic passion. It's easy to think, when you look at an iceberg, that they're isolated, that they're separate and alone, much like we as humans sometimes view ourselves. But the reality is far from it. As an iceberg melts, I am breathing in its ancient atmosphere. As the iceberg melts, it is releasing mineral-rich fresh water that nourishes many forms of life. I approach photographing these icebergs as if I'm making portraits of my ancestors, knowing that in these individual moments they exist in that way and will never exist that way again. It is not a death when they melt; it is not an end, but a continuation of their path through the cycle of life. Some of the ice in the icebergs that I photograph is very young -- a couple thousand years old. And some of the ice is over 100,000 years old. The last pictures I'd like to show you are of an iceberg that I photographed in Qeqetarsuaq, Greenland. It's a very rare occasion that you get to actually witness an iceberg rolling. So here it is. You can see on the left side a small boat. That's about a 15-foot boat. And I'd like you to pay attention to the shape of the iceberg and where it is at the waterline. You can see here, it begins to roll, and the boat has moved to the other side, and the man is standing there. This is an average-size Greenlandic iceberg. It's about 120 feet above the water, or 40 meters. And this video is real time. (Music) And just like that, the iceberg shows you a different side of its personality. Thank you. (Applause)
Great creativity. In times of need, we need great creativity. Discuss. Great creativity is astonishingly, absurdly, rationally, irrationally powerful. Great creativity can spread tolerance, champion freedom, make education seem like a bright idea. (Laughter) Great creativity can turn a spotlight on deprivation, or show that deprivation ain't necessarily so. Great creativity can make politicians electable, or parties unelectable. It can make war seem like tragedy or farce. Creativity is the meme-maker that puts slogans on our t-shirts and phrases on our lips. It's the pathfinder that shows us a simple road through an impenetrable moral maze. Science is clever, but great creativity is something less knowable, more magical. And now we need that magic. This is a time of need. Our climate is changing quickly, too quickly. And great creativity is needed to do what it does so well: to provoke us to think differently with dramatic creative statements. To tempt us to act differently with delightful creative scraps. Here is one such scrap from an initiative I'm involved in using creativity to inspire people to be greener. (Video) Man: You know, rather than drive today, I'm going to walk. Narrator: And so he walked, and as he walked he saw things. Strange and wonderful things he would not otherwise have seen. A deer with an itchy leg. A flying motorcycle. A father and daughter separated from a bicycle by a mysterious wall. And then he stopped. Walking in front of him was her. The woman who as a child had skipped with him through fields and broken his heart. Sure, she had aged a little. In fact, she had aged a lot. But he felt all his old passion for her return. "Ford," he called softly. For that was her name. "Don't say another word, Gusty," she said, for that was his name. "I know a tent next to a caravan, exactly 300 yards from here. Let's go there and make love. In the tent." Ford undressed. She spread one leg, and then the other. Gusty entered her boldly and made love to her rhythmically while she filmed him, because she was a keen amateur pornographer. The earth moved for both of them. And they lived together happily ever after. And all because he decided to walk that day. (Applause) Andy Hobsbawm: We've got the science, we've had the debate. The moral imperative is on the table. Great creativity is needed to take it all, make it simple and sharp. To make it connect. To make it make people want to act. So this is a call, a plea, to the incredibly talented TED community. Let's get creative against climate change. And let's do it soon. Thank you. (Applause)
♫ I think I'm ready to do my thing ♫ ♫ I think I'm ready to take my chances ♫ ♫ I've been dining out and all stressed out ♫ ♫ Due to the circumstances. See? ♫ ♫ I gotta get up, get up, get up, get up ♫ ♫ Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up ♫ ♫ I see what you're saying ♫ ♫ We sent a demo to the world, they said it sounds like Take 6 ♫ ♫ I said "Hold on, wait a minute, I'll be back with the remix" ♫ ♫ They looking at us funny, we can't make any money ♫ ♫ It took us years to figure out that we was dealing with dummies ♫ ♫ They didn't understand the sound from the Bronx, that's the boogie down ♫ ♫ to Huntsville, Alabama, there's no circles in my planner, so ♫ ♫ It was time to make the product, so we hooked up with Townsend ♫ ♫ Made a deal with John Neal, on the road sold ten thousand ♫ ♫ WBA, that means a trip to Nashville ♫ ♫ Festplatte showed up and said them boys are naturals ♫ ♫ Can you hear what they were hearing? See what they were seeing? ♫ ♫ From Bronx to Berlin, we took the tour European ♫ ♫ All vocal yeah, we widit, call the album "What is it?" ♫ ♫ With Sarah Connor, set the goal for number one and we hit it ♫ ♫ But now it's Kev, Sim, Drew, Stew, time for a new day ♫ ♫ Ring the alarm, hit 'em on Skype or a two-way ♫ ♫ Sung by the words, we ready to fly! ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Time to leave that nest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! This ain't no time to rest ♫ ♫ Come on fly baby, we got work to do ♫ ♫ Here we go, spread my wings and ... ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Time to leave that nest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! This ain't no time to rest. Come on ♫ ♫ Fly baby! We got work to do ♫ ♫ Here we go. Spread my wings and fly. One more time ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Time to leave that nest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! This ain't no time to rest ♫ ♫ Fly baby! We got work to do ♫ ♫ Here we go, spread my wings and ... ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Fly baby fly ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Fly baby high ♫ ♫ Fly baby! Up to the sky ♫ ♫ Spread my wings and fly ♫ Instrumental! ♫ We're ready to fly! ♫ (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause)
(Applause) Thank you. (Music) ♫ Slide into the shimmering surface ♫ ♫ between two worlds. ♫ ♫ Standing at the center of time ♫ ♫ as it uncurls. ♫ ♫ Cutting through the veil of illusion. ♫ ♫ Moving beyond past conclusions. ♫ ♫ Wondering if all my doubt and confusion will clear. ♫ ♫ If I could be anywhere, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere right now, ♫ ♫ I would want to be here. ♫ ♫ Searching for the future ♫ ♫ among the things we're throwing away. ♫ ♫ Trying to see the world ♫ ♫ through the junk we produce everyday. ♫ ♫ They say nothing lasts forever, ♫ ♫ but all the plastic ever made is still here. ♫ ♫ And no amount of closing our eyes ♫ ♫ will make it disappear. ♫ ♫ If I could be anywhere, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere in history, ♫ ♫ I would want to be here. ♫ ♫ The Romans, the Spanish ♫ ♫ the British, the Dutch, ♫ ♫ American exceptionalism, so out of touch. ♫ ♫ The folly of empire repeating its course, ♫ ♫ imposing its will ♫ ♫ and ruling by force ♫ ♫ on and on through time. ♫ ♫ But the world can't take it very much longer. ♫ ♫ We're not going to make it ♫ ♫ unless we're smarter and stronger. ♫ ♫ The world is going to shake itself free of our greed ♫ ♫ somehow. ♫ ♫ If I could be anywhere, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere in time, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere and change things, ♫ ♫ it would have to be now. ♫ ♫ They say nothing last forever, ♫ ♫ but all the plastic ever made is still here. ♫ ♫ And no amount of closing our eyes ♫ ♫ will make it disappear. ♫ ♫ And the world can't take it ♫ ♫ very much longer. ♫ ♫ We're not going to make it ♫ ♫ unless we're smarter and stronger. ♫ ♫ The world's gonna shake itself free of our greed ♫ ♫ somehow. ♫ ♫ And the world can't take it, that you can see. ♫ ♫ If the oceans don't make it, neither will we. ♫ ♫ The world's gonna shake itself all the way free ♫ ♫ somehow. ♫ ♫ If I could be anywhere, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere in time, ♫ ♫ if I could be anywhere and change the outcome, ♫ ♫ it would have to be now. ♫ (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)
Along the ancient path of the Monongahela River, Braddock, Pennsylvania sits in the eastern region of Allegheny County, approximately nine miles outside of Pittsburgh. An industrial suburb, Braddock is home to Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill, the Edgar Thomson Works. Operating since 1875, it is the last functioning steel mill in the region. For 12 years, I have produced collaborative portraits, still lifes, landscapes and aerial views in order to build a visual archive to address the intersection of the steel industry, the environment, and the health care system's impact on the bodies of my family and community. The tradition and grand narrative of Braddock is mostly comprised of stories of industrialists and trade unions. Currently, the new narrative about Braddock, a poster child for Rust Belt revitalization, is a story of urban pioneers discovering a new frontier. Mass media has omitted the fact that Braddock is predominantly black. Our existence has been co-opted, silenced and erased. Fourth generation in a lineage of women, I was raised under the protection and care of Grandma Ruby, off 8th Street at 805 Washington Avenue. She worked as a manager for Goodwill. Mom was a nurse's aid. She watched the steel mills close and white flight to suburban developments. By the time my generation walked the streets, disinvestment at the local, state and federal level, eroded infrastructure, and the War on Drugs dismantled my family and community. Grandma Ruby's stepfather Gramps was one of few black men to retire from Carnegie's mill with his pension. He worked in high temperatures, tearing down and rebuilding furnaces, cleaning up spilt metal and slag. The history of a place is written on the body and the landscape. Areas of heavy truck traffic, exposure to benzene and atomized metals, risk cancer and lupus. One hundred twenty-three licensed beds, 652 employees, rehabilitation programs decimated. A housing discrimination lawsuit against Allegheny County removed where the projects Talbot Towers once stood. Recent rezoning for more light industry has since appeared. Google Maps and Google Earth pixelations conceal the flammable waste being used to squeeze the Bunn family off their home and land. In 2013, I chartered a helicopter with my cameras to document this aggressive dispossession. In flight, my observation reveals thousands of plastic white bundles owned by a conservation industry that claims it's eco-friendly and recycles millions of tires to preserve people's lives and to improve people's lives. My work spirals from the micro to the macro level, excavating hidden histories. Recently, at the Seattle Art Museum, Isaac Bunn and I mounted this exhibition, and the exhibition was used as a platform to launch his voice. Through reclamation of our narrative, we will continue to fight historic erasure and socioeconomic inequality. Thank you. (Applause)
Today I'm going to show you an electric vehicle that weighs less than a bicycle, that you can carry with you anywhere, that you can charge off a normal wall outlet in 15 minutes, and you can run it for 1,000 kilometers on about a dollar of electricity. But when I say the word electric vehicle, people think about vehicles. They think about cars and motorcycles and bicycles, and the vehicles that you use every day. But if you come about it from a different perspective, you can create some more interesting, more novel concepts. So we built something. I've got some of the pieces in my pocket here. So this is the motor. This motor has enough power to take you up the hills of San Francisco at about 20 miles per hour, about 30 kilometers an hour, and this battery, this battery right here has about six miles of range, or 10 kilometers, which is enough to cover about half of the car trips in the U.S. alone. But the best part about these components is that we bought them at a toy store. These are from remote control airplanes. And the performance of these things has gotten so good that if you think about vehicles a little bit differently, you can really change things. So today we're going to show you one example of how you can use this. Pay attention to not only how fun this thing is, but also how the portability that comes with this can totally change the way you interact with a city like San Francisco. (Music) [6 Mile Range] [Top Speed Near 20mph] [Uphill Climbing] [Regenerative Braking] (Applause) (Cheers) So we're going to show you what this thing can do. It's really maneuverable. You have a hand-held remote, so you can pretty easily control acceleration, braking, go in reverse if you like, also have braking. It's incredible just how light this thing is. I mean, this is something you can pick up and carry with you anywhere you go. So I'll leave you with one of the most compelling facts about this technology and these kinds of vehicles. This uses 20 times less energy for every mile or kilometer that you travel than a car, which means not only is this thing fast to charge and really cheap to build, but it also reduces the footprint of your energy use in terms of your transportation. So instead of looking at large amounts of energy needed for each person in this room to get around in a city, now you can look at much smaller amounts and more sustainable transportation. So next time you think about a vehicle, I hope, like us, you're thinking about something new. Thank you. (Applause)
My travels to Afghanistan began many, many years ago on the eastern border of my country, my homeland, Poland. I was walking through the forests of my grandmother's tales. A land where every field hides a grave, where millions of people have been deported or killed in the 20th century. Behind the destruction, I found a soul of places. I met humble people. I heard their prayer and ate their bread. Then I have been walking East for 20 years -- from Eastern Europe to Central Asia -- through the Caucasus Mountains, Middle East, North Africa, Russia. And I ever met more humble people. And I shared their bread and their prayer. This is why I went to Afghanistan. One day, I crossed the bridge over the Oxus River. I was alone on foot. And the Afghan soldier was so surprised to see me that he forgot to stamp my passport. But he gave me a cup of tea. And I understood that his surprise was my protection. So I have been walking and traveling, by horses, by yak, by truck, by hitchhiking, from Iran's border to the bottom, to the edge of the Wakhan Corridor. And in this way I could find noor, the hidden light of Afghanistan. My only weapon was my notebook and my Leica. I heard prayers of the Sufi -- humble Muslims, hated by the Taliban. Hidden river, interconnected with the mysticism from Gibraltar to India. The mosque where the respectful foreigner is showered with blessings and with tears, and welcomed as a gift. What do we know about the country and the people that we pretend to protect, about the villages where the only one medicine to kill the pain and to stop the hunger is opium? These are opium-addicted people on the roofs of Kabul 10 years after the beginning of our war. These are the nomad girls who became prostitutes for Afghan businessmen. What do we know about the women 10 years after the war? Clothed in this nylon bag, made in China, with the name of burqa. I saw one day, the largest school in Afghanistan, a girls' school. 13,000 girls studying here in the rooms underground, full of scorpions. And their love [for studying] was so big that I cried. What do we know about the death threats by the Taliban nailed on the doors of the people who dare to send their daughters to school as in Balkh? The region is not secure, but full of the Taliban, and they did it. My aim is to give a voice to the silent people, to show the hidden lights behind the curtain of the great game, the small worlds ignored by the media and the prophets of a global conflict. Thanks. (Applause)
Good afternoon. My name is Uldus. I am a photo-based artist from Russia. I started my way around six years ago with ironic self-portraits to lay open so many stereotypes about nationalities, genders, and social issues — ["I am Russian. I sell drugs, guns, porno with kids!"] ["Vodka = water. I love vodka!"] (Laughter) — using photography as my tool to send a message. ["Marry me, I need a visa."] Today, I am still performing in front of the camera and trying to be brave like Wonder Woman. I focus on balancing meaningful message, aesthetic, beauty, composition, some irony, and artifacts. Today, I'm going to tell you about my project, which is named Desperate Romantics. They're my artifacts, or paintings from pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood England mid-19th century. I took the painting and gifted new, contemporary meaning talking about issues which are surrounding me in Russia, capturing people who are non-models but have an interesting story. This boy is a professional dancer, only 12 years old, but at secondary school, he hides his dancing classes and is wearing the mask of brutality, trying to be united with the rest of his classmates like a storm trooper has no personality. But this boy has goals and dreams but hides it to be socially accepted, because being different isn't easy, especially in Russia. Next portrait interpretation is metaphoric. And this is Nikita, a security guard from one of the bars in St. Petersburg. He likes to say, "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry," quoting Hulk from the movie, but I've never seen him angry. He hides his sensitivities and romantic side, because in Russia, among guys, that's not cool to be romantic, but it's cool to be surrounded with women and look like an aggressive hulk. (Laughter) Sometimes, in my project, I would take the painting and give it new meaning and new temptation about it. Sometimes, I would compare facial features and playing with words: irony, Iron Man, ironing man. (Laughter) Through the artifacts, I bring social issues which surround me in Russia into the conversation. Interesting fact about marriage in Russia, that most of the 18, 19-year-old girls are already ready, and dream to get married. We're taught from childhood, successful marriage means successful life, so most of the girls kind of fight to get a good husband. And what about me? I'm 27 years old. For Russian society, I'm an old maid and hopeless to ever get married. That's why you see me in a Mexican fighter mask, in the wedding dress, all desperate in my garden. But remember, irony is the key, and this is actually to motivate girls to fight for goals, for dreams, and change stereotypes. Be brave. Be ironic — it helps. Be funny and create some magic. (Applause)
Why grow homes? Because we can. Right now, America is in an unremitting state of trauma. And there's a cause for that, all right. We've got McPeople, McCars, McHouses. As an architect, I have to confront something like this. So what's a technology that will allow us to make ginormous houses? Well, it's been around for 2,500 years. It's called pleaching, or grafting trees together, or grafting inosculate matter into one contiguous, vascular system. And we do something different than what we did in the past; we add kind of a modicum of intelligence to that. We use CNC to make scaffolding to train semi-epithetic matter, plants, into a specific geometry that makes a home that we call a Fab Tree Hab. It fits into the environment. It is the environment. It is the landscape, right? And you can have a hundred million of these homes, and it's great because they suck carbon. They're perfect. You can have 100 million families, or take things out of the suburbs, because these are homes that are a part of the environment. Imagine pre-growing a village -- it takes about seven to 10 years -- and everything is green. So not only do we do the veggie house, we also do the in-vitro meat habitat, or homes that we're doing research on now in Brooklyn, where, as an architecture office, we're for the first of its kind to put in a molecular cell biology lab and start experimenting with regenerative medicine and tissue engineering and start thinking about what the future would be if architecture and biology became one. So we've been doing this for a couple of years, and that's our lab. And what we do is we grow extracellular matrix from pigs. We use a modified inkjet printer, and we print geometry. We print geometry where we can make industrial design objects like, you know, shoes, leather belts, handbags, etc., where no sentient creature is harmed. It's victimless. It's meat from a test tube. So our theory is that eventually we should be doing this with homes. So here is a typical stud wall, an architectural construction, and this is a section of our proposal for a meat house, where you can see we use fatty cells as insulation, cilia for dealing with wind loads and sphincter muscles for the doors and windows. (Laughter) And we know it's incredibly ugly. It could have been an English Tudor or Spanish Colonial, but we kind of chose this shape. And there it is kind of grown, at least one particular section of it. We had a big show in Prague, and we decided to put it in front of the cathedral so religion can confront the house of meat. That's why we grow homes. Thanks very much. (Applause)
It's great being here at TED. You know, I think there might be some presentations that will go over my head, but the most amazing concepts are the ones that go right under my feet. The little things in life, sometimes that we forget about, like pollination, that we take for granted. And you can't tell the story about pollinators -- bees, bats, hummingbirds, butterflies -- without telling the story about the invention of flowers and how they co-evolved over 50 million years. I've been filming time-lapse flowers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for over 35 years. To watch them move is a dance I'm never going to get tired of. It fills me with wonder, and it opens my heart. Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature's tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with. Their relationship is a love story that feeds the Earth. It reminds us that we are a part of nature, and we're not separate from it. When I heard about the vanishing bees, Colony Collapse Disorder, it motivated me to take action. We depend on pollinators for over a third of the fruits and vegetables we eat. And many scientists believe it's the most serious issue facing mankind. It's like the canary in the coalmine. If they disappear, so do we. It reminds us that we are a part of nature and we need to take care of it. What motivated me to film their behavior was something that I asked my scientific advisers: "What motivates the pollinators?" Well, their answer was, "It's all about risk and reward." Like a wide-eyed kid, I'd say, "Why is that?" And they'd say, "Well, because they want to survive." I go, "Why?" "Well, in order to reproduce." "Well, why?" And I thought that they'd probably say, "Well, it's all about sex." And Chip Taylor, our monarch butterfly expert, he replied, "Nothing lasts forever. Everything in the universe wears out." And that blew my mind. Because I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward, as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment. It's the mystical moment where life regenerates itself, over and over again. So here is some nectar from my film. I hope you'll drink, tweet and plant some seeds to pollinate a friendly garden. And always take time to smell the flowers, and let it fill you with beauty, and rediscover that sense of wonder. Here are some images from the film. (Music) (Applause) Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you. (Applause)
Organic chemists make molecules, very complicated molecules, by chopping up a big molecule into small molecules and reverse engineering. And as a chemist, one of the things I wanted to ask my research group a couple of years ago is, could we make a really cool universal chemistry set? In essence, could we "app" chemistry? Now what would this mean, and how would we do it? Well to start to do this, we took a 3D printer and we started to print our beakers and our test tubes on one side and then print the molecule at the same time on the other side and combine them together in what we call reactionware. And so by printing the vessel and doing the chemistry at the same time, we may start to access this universal toolkit of chemistry. Now what could this mean? Well if we can embed biological and chemical networks like a search engine, so if you have a cell that's ill that you need to cure or bacteria that you want to kill, if you have this embedded in your device at the same time, and you do the chemistry, you may be able to make drugs in a new way. So how are we doing this in the lab? Well it requires software, it requires hardware and it requires chemical inks. And so the really cool bit is, the idea is that we want to have a universal set of inks that we put out with the printer, and you download the blueprint, the organic chemistry for that molecule and you make it in the device. And so you can make your molecule in the printer using this software. So what could this mean? Well, ultimately, it could mean that you could print your own medicine. And this is what we're doing in the lab at the moment. But to take baby steps to get there, first of all we want to look at drug design and production, or drug discovery and manufacturing. Because if we can manufacture it after we've discovered it, we could deploy it anywhere. You don't need to go to the chemist anymore. We can print drugs at point of need. We can download new diagnostics. Say a new super bug has emerged. You put it in your search engine, and you create the drug to treat the threat. So this allows you on-the-fly molecular assembly. But perhaps for me the core bit going into the future is this idea of taking your own stem cells, with your genes and your environment, and you print your own personal medicine. And if that doesn't seem fanciful enough, where do you think we're going to go? Well, you're going to have your own personal matter fabricator. Beam me up, Scotty. (Applause)
We are drowning in news. Reuters alone puts out three and a half million news stories a year. That's just one source. My question is: How many of those stories are actually going to matter in the long run? That's the idea behind The Long News. It's a project by The Long Now Foundation, which was founded by TEDsters including Kevin Kelly and Stewart Brand. And what we're looking for is news stories that might still matter 50 or 100 or 10,000 years from now. And when you look at the news through that filter, a lot falls by the wayside. To take the top stories from the A.P. this last year, is this going to matter in a decade? Or this? Or this? Really? Is this going to matter in 50 or 100 years? Okay, that was kind of cool. (Laughter) But the top story of this past year was the economy, and I'm just betting that, sooner or later, this particular recession is going to be old news. So, what kind of stories might make a difference for the future? Well, let's take science. Someday, little robots will go through our bloodstreams fixing things. That someday is already here if you're a mouse. Some recent stories: nanobees zap tumors with real bee venom; they're sending genes into the brain; a robot they built that can crawl through the human body. What about resources? How are we going to feed nine billion people? We're having trouble feeding six billion today. As we heard yesterday, there's over a billion people hungry. Britain will starve without genetically modified crops. Bill Gates, fortunately, has bet a billion on [agricultural] research. What about global politics? The world's going to be very different when and if China sets the agenda, and they may. They've overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest car market, they've overtaken Germany as the largest exporter, and they've started doing DNA tests on kids to choose their careers. We're finding all kinds of ways to push back the limits of what we know. Some recent discoveries: There's an ant colony from Argentina that has now spread to every continent but Antarctica; there's a self-directed robot scientist that's made a discovery -- soon, science may no longer need us, and life may no longer need us either; a microbe wakes up after 120,000 years. It seems that with or without us, life will go on. But my pick for the top Long News story of this past year was this one: water found on the moon. Makes it a lot easier to put a colony up there. And if NASA doesn't do it, China might, or somebody in this room might write a big check. My point is this: In the long run, some news stories are more important than others. (Applause)
Let me introduce to you Rezero. This little fellow was developed by a group of 10 undergraduate students at the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at ETH-Zurich. Our robot belongs to a family of robots called Ballbots. Instead of wheels, a Ballbot is balancing and moving on one single ball. The main characteristics of such a system is that there's one sole contact point to the ground. This means that the robot is inherently unstable. It's like when I am trying to stand on one foot. You might ask yourself, what's the usefulness of a robot that's unstable? Now we'll explain that in a second. Let me first explain how Rezero actually keeps his balance. Rezero keeps his balance by constantly measuring his pitch angle with a sensor. He then counteracts and avoids toppling over by turning the motors appropriately. This happens 160 times per second, and if anything fails in this process, Rezero would immediately fall to the ground. Now to move and to balance, Rezero needs to turn the ball. The ball is driven by three special wheels that allow Rezero to move into any direction and also move around his own axis at the same time. Due to his instability, Rezero is always in motion. Now here's the trick. It's indeed exactly this instability that allows a robot to move very [dynamically]. Let's play a little. You may have wondered what happens if I give the robot a little push. In this mode, he's trying to maintain his position. For the next demo, I'd like you to introduce to my colleagues Michael, on the computer, and Thomas who's helping me onstage. In the next mode, Rezero is passive, and we can move him around. With almost no force I can control his position and his velocity. I can also make him spin. In the next mode, we can get Rezero to follow a person. He's now keeping a constant distance to Thomas. This works with a laser sensor that's mounted on top of Rezero. With the same method, we can also get him to circle a person. We call this the orbiting mode. All right, thank you, Thomas. (Applause) Now, what's the use of this technology? For now, it's an experiment, but let me show you some possible future applications. Rezero could be used in exhibitions or parks. With a screen it could inform people or show them around in a fun and entertaining way. In a hospital, this device could be used to carry around medical equipment. Due to the Ballbot system, it has a very small footprint and it's also easy to move around. And of course, who wouldn't like to take a ride on one of these. And these are more practical applications. But there's also a certain beauty within this technology. (Music) (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Thank you.
A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out, 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit -- like watching the news -- from your life. There's a few things I learned while doing these 30-day challenges. The first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture every day for a month. And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-confidence grew. I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work -- for fun. Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that adventurous before I started my 30-day challenges. I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days. Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000-word novel from scratch in 30 days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you've written your words for the day. You might be sleep-deprived, but you'll finish your novel. Now is my book the next great American novel? No. I wrote it in a month. It's awful. But for the rest of my life, if I meet John Hodgman at a TED party, I don't have to say, "I'm a computer scientist." No, no, if I want to, I can say, "I'm a novelist." (Laughter) So here's one last thing I'd like to mention. I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There's nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they're a ton of fun. But they're less likely to stick. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 31 looked like this. (Laughter) So here's my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days. Thanks. (Applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, at TED we talk a lot about leadership and how to make a movement. So let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under three minutes and dissect some lessons from it. First, of course you know, a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed. What he's doing is so easy to follow. Here's his first follower with a crucial role; he's going to show everyone else how to follow. Now, notice that the leader embraces him as an equal. Now it's not about the leader anymore; it's about them, plural. Now, there he is calling to his friends. Now, if you notice that the first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. (Laughter) (Applause) And here comes a second follower. Now it's not a lone nut, it's not two nuts -- three is a crowd, and a crowd is news. So a movement must be public. It's important to show not just the leader, but the followers, because you find that new followers emulate the followers, not the leader. Now, here come two more people, and immediately after, three more people. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point. Now we've got a movement. (Laughter) So, notice that, as more people join in, it's less risky. So those that were sitting on the fence before now have no reason not to. They won't stand out, they won't be ridiculed, but they will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry. (Laughter) So, over the next minute, you'll see all of those that prefer to stick with the crowd because eventually they would be ridiculed for not joining in. And that's how you make a movement. But let's recap some lessons from this. So first, if you are the type, like the shirtless dancing guy that is standing alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals so it's clearly about the movement, not you. (Laughter) Okay, but we might have missed the real lesson here. The biggest lesson, if you noticed -- did you catch it? -- is that leadership is over-glorified. Yes, it was the shirtless guy who was first, and he'll get all the credit, but it was really the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader. So, as we're told that we should all be leaders, that would be really ineffective. If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in. And what a perfect place to do that, at TED. Thanks. (Applause)
A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30 days. It turns out 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit or subtract a habit -- like watching the news -- from your life. There's a few things I learned while doing these 30-day challenges. The first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture every day for a month. And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-confidence grew. I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work. For fun! (Laughter) Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that adventurous before I started my 30-day challenges. I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days. Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November, tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000-word novel, from scratch, in 30 days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you've written your words for the day. You might be sleep-deprived, but you'll finish your novel. Now is my book the next great American novel? No. I wrote it in a month. It's awful. (Laughter) But for the rest of my life, if I meet John Hodgman at a TED party, I don't have to say, "I'm a computer scientist." No, no, if I want to, I can say, "I'm a novelist." (Laughter) So here's one last thing I'd like to mention. I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There's nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they're a ton of fun. But they're less likely to stick. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 31 looked like this. (Laughter) So here's my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot! For the next 30 days. Thanks. (Applause)
Two years ago here at TED I reported that we had discovered at Saturn, with the Cassini Spacecraft, an anomalously warm and geologically active region at the southern tip of the small Saturnine moon Enceladus, seen here. This region seen here for the first time in the Cassini image taken in 2005. This is the south polar region, with the famous tiger-stripe fractures crossing the south pole. And seen just recently in late 2008, here is that region again, now half in darkness because the southern hemisphere is experiencing the onset of August and eventually winter. And I also reported that we'd made this mind-blowing discovery -- this once-in-a-lifetime discovery of towering jets erupting from those fractures at the south pole, consisting of tiny water ice crystals accompanied by water vapor and simple organic compounds like carbon dioxide and methane. And at that time two years ago I mentioned that we were speculating that these jets might in fact be geysers, and erupting from pockets or chambers of liquid water underneath the surface, but we weren't really sure. However, the implications of those results -- of a possible environment within this moon that could support prebiotic chemistry, and perhaps life itself -- were so exciting that, in the intervening two years, we have focused more on Enceladus. We've flown the Cassini Spacecraft by this moon now several times, flying closer and deeper into these jets, into the denser regions of these jets, so that now we have come away with some very precise compositional measurements. And we have found that the organic compounds coming from this moon are in fact more complex than we previously reported. While they're not amino acids, we're now finding things like propane and benzene, hydrogen cyanide, and formaldehyde. And the tiny water crystals here now look for all the world like they are frozen droplets of salty water, which is a discovery that suggests that not only do the jets come from pockets of liquid water, but that that liquid water is in contact with rock. And that is a circumstance that could supply the chemical energy and the chemical compounds needed to sustain life. So we are very encouraged by these results. And we are much more confident now than we were two years ago that we might indeed have on this moon, under the south pole, an environment or a zone that is hospitable to living organisms. Whether or not there are living organisms there, of course, is an entirely different matter. And that will have to await the arrival, back at Enceladus, of the spacecrafts, hopefully some time in the near future, specifically equipped to address that particular question. But in the meantime I invite you to imagine the day when we might journey to the Saturnine system, and visit the Enceladus interplanetary geyser park, just because we can. Thank you. (Applause)
So, imagine you're standing on a street anywhere in America and a Japanese man comes up to you and says, "Excuse me, what is the name of this block?" And you say, "I'm sorry, well, this is Oak Street, that's Elm Street. This is 26th, that's 27th." He says, "OK, but what is the name of that block?" You say, "Well, blocks don't have names. Streets have names; blocks are just the unnamed spaces in between streets." He leaves, a little confused and disappointed. So, now imagine you're standing on a street, anywhere in Japan, you turn to a person next to you and say, "Excuse me, what is the name of this street?" They say, "Oh, well that's Block 17 and this is Block 16." And you say, "OK, but what is the name of this street?" And they say, "Well, streets don't have names. Blocks have names. Just look at Google Maps here. There's Block 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. All of these blocks have names, and the streets are just the unnamed spaces in between the blocks. And you say then, "OK, then how do you know your home address?" He said, "Well, easy, this is District Eight. There's Block 17, house number one." You say, "OK, but walking around the neighborhood, I noticed that the house numbers don't go in order." He says, "Of course they do. They go in the order in which they were built. The first house ever built on a block is house number one. The second house ever built is house number two. Third is house number three. It's easy. It's obvious." So, I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions we didn't even know we had, and realize that the opposite of them may also be true. So, for example, there are doctors in China who believe that it's their job to keep you healthy. So, any month you are healthy you pay them, and when you're sick you don't have to pay them because they failed at their job. They get rich when you're healthy, not sick. (Applause) In most music, we think of the "one" as the downbeat, the beginning of the musical phrase: one, two, three, four. But in West African music, the "one" is thought of as the end of the phrase, like the period at the end of a sentence. So, you can hear it not just in the phrasing, but the way they count off their music: two, three, four, one. And this map is also accurate. (Laughter) There's a saying that whatever true thing you can say about India, the opposite is also true. So, let's never forget, whether at TED, or anywhere else, that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear, that the opposite may also be true. Domo arigato gozaimashita.
Thank you very much. Now, I've got a story for you. When I arrived off the plane, after a very long journey from the West of England, my computer, my beloved laptop, had gone mad, and had -- oh! -- a bit like that! -- and the display on it -- anyway, the whole thing had burst. And I went to the IT guys here and a gentleman mended my computer, and then he said, "What are you doing here?" and I said "I'm playing the cello and I'm doing a bit of singing," and he said, "Oh, I sort of play the cello as well." And I said, "Do you really?" Anyway, so you're in for a treat, because he's fantastic, and his name's Mark. (Applause) I am also joined by my partner in crime, Thomas Dolby. (Applause) This song is called "Farther than the Sun." (Music) ♫ Strung in the wind I called you ♫ ♫ but you did not hear ... ♫ ♫ And you're a plant that needs poor soil ♫ ♫ and I have treated you too well ♫ ♫ to give up flowers ... ♫ ♫ Oh, I have been too rich for you ... ♫ ♫ Farther than the sun from me ♫ ♫ Farther than I'd have you be ♫ ♫ And I go north, I get so cold ♫ ♫ My heart is lava under stone ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ... ♫ ♫ With your calculating eyes ♫ ♫ spinning figures ♫ ♫ you cannot see me ♫ ♫ You cannot see me ... ♫ ♫ And if I tell myself enough ♫ ♫ I'll believe it ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ The sea, it freezes over ... ♫ ♫ to trap the light ♫ ♫ And I'm in love with being in love ♫ ♫ and you were never quite the one ♫ ♫ In Gerda's eyes ♫ ♫ Fragments of what you've become ♫ ♫ And all the moths that fly at night ♫ ♫ believe electric light is bright ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ With your calculating eyes ♫ ♫ Spinning figures ♫ ♫ You cannot see me, no ♫ ♫ And if I tell myself enough ♫ ♫ I'll believe it ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ Farther than the sun from me ♫ ♫ Farther than I'd have you be ♫ ♫ And I go north, I get so cold ♫ ♫ My heart is lava under stone ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ You are not worthy ♫ ♫ With your calculating eyes ♫ ♫ Spinning figures ♫ ♫ You cannot see me, no ... ♫ ♫ And if I tell myself enough, I'll believe it ♫ (Applause) Thank you very much.
So, ladies and gentlemen, at TED we talk a lot about leadership and how to make a movement. So let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under three minutes and dissect some lessons from it. First, of course you know, a leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed. But what he's doing is so easy to follow. So here's his first follower with a crucial role; he's going to show everyone else how to follow. Now, notice that the leader embraces him as an equal. So, now it's not about the leader anymore; it's about them, plural. Now, there he is calling to his friends. Now, if you notice that the first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. (Laughter) (Applause) And here comes a second follower. Now it's not a lone nut, it's not two nuts -- three is a crowd, and a crowd is news. So a movement must be public. It's important to show not just to show the leader, but the followers, because you find that new followers emulate the followers, not the leader. Now, here come two more people, and immediately after, three more people. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point. Now we've got a movement. So, notice that, as more people join in, it's less risky. So those that were sitting on the fence before, now have no reason not to. They won't stand out, they won't be ridiculed, but they will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry. (Laughter) So, over the next minute, you'll see all of those that prefer to stick with the crowd because eventually they would be ridiculed for not joining in. And that's how you make a movement. But let's recap some lessons from this. So first, if you are the type, like the shirtless dancing guy that is standing alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals so it's clearly about the movement, not you. Okay, but we might have missed the real lesson here. The biggest lesson, if you noticed -- did you catch it? -- is that leadership is over-glorified. That, yes, it was the shirtless guy who was first, and he'll get all the credit, but it was really the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader. So, as we're told that we should all be leaders, that would be really ineffective. If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in. And what a perfect place to do that, at TED. Thanks. (Applause)
So my name is Taylor Wilson. I am 17 years old and I am a nuclear physicist, which may be a little hard to believe, but I am. And I would like to make the case that nuclear fusion will be that point, that the bridge that T. Boone Pickens talked about will get us to. So nuclear fusion is our energy future. And the second point, making the case that kids can really change the world. So you may ask -- (Applause) You may ask me, well how do you know what our energy future is? Well I built a fusion reactor when I was 14 years old. That is the inside of my nuclear fusion reactor. I started building this project when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I decided I wanted to make a star. Now most of you are probably saying, well there's no such thing as nuclear fusion. I don't see any nuclear power plants with fusion energy. Well it doesn't break even. It doesn't produce more energy out than I put in, but it still does some pretty cool stuff. And I assembled this in my garage, and it now lives in the physics department of the University of Nevada, Reno. And it slams together deuterium, which is just hydrogen with an extra neutron in it. So this is similar to the reaction of the proton chain that's going on inside the Sun. And I'm slamming it together so hard that that hydrogen fuses together, and in the process it has some byproducts, and I utilize those byproducts. So this previous year, I won the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. I developed a detector that replaces the current detectors that Homeland Security has. For hundreds of dollars, I've developed a system that exceeds the sensitivity of detectors that are hundreds of thousands of dollars. I built this in my garage. (Applause) And I've developed a system to produce medical isotopes. Instead of requiring multi-million-dollar facilities I've developed a device that, on a very small scale, can produce these isotopes. So that's my fusion reactor in the background there. That is me at the control panel of my fusion reactor. Oh, by the way, I make yellowcake in my garage, so my nuclear program is as advanced as the Iranians. So maybe I don't want to admit to that. This is me at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, which is the preeminent particle physics laboratory in the world. And this is me with President Obama, showing him my Homeland Security research. (Applause) So in about seven years of doing nuclear research, I started out with a dream to make a "star in a jar," a star in my garage, and I ended up meeting the president and developing things that I think can change the world, and I think other kids can too. So thank you very much. (Applause)
I used to be a Malthusian. This was my mental model of the world: exploding population, small planet; it's going to lead to ugly things. But I'm moving past Malthus, because I think that we just might be about 150 years from a kind of new enlightenment. Here's why. This is the U.N.'s population data, you may have seen, for the world. And the world's population expected to top out at something hopefully a bit less than 10 billion, late this century. And after that, most likely it's going to begin to decline. So what then? Most of the economic models are built around scarcity and growth. So a lot of economists look at declining population and expect to see stagnation, maybe depression. But a declining population is going to have at least two very beneficial economic effects. One: fewer people on a fixed amount of land make investing in property a bad bet. In the cities, a lot of the cost of property is actually wrapped up in its speculative value. Take away land speculation, price of land drops. And that begins to lift a heavy burden off the world's poor. Number two: a declining population means scarce labor. Scarce labor drives wages. As wages increase that also lifts the burden on the poor and the working class. Now I'm not talking about a radical drop in population like we saw in the Black Death. But look what happened in Europe after the plague: rising wages, land reform, technological innovation, birth of the middle class; and after that, forward-looking social movements like the Renaissance, and later the Enlightenment. Most of our cultural heritage has tended to look backward, romanticizing the past. All of the Western religions begin with the notion of Eden, and descend through a kind of profligate present to a very ugly future. So human history is viewed as sort of this downhill slide from the good old days. But I think we're in for another change, about two generations after the top of that curve, once the effects of a declining population start to settle in. At that point, we'll start romanticizing the future again, instead of the nasty, brutish past. So why does this matter? Why talk about social-economic movements that may be more than a century away? Because transitions are dangerous times. When land owners start to lose money, and labor demands more pay, there are some powerful interests that are going to fear for the future. Fear for the future leads to some rash decisions. If we have a positive view about the future then we may be able to accelerate through that turn, instead of careening off a cliff. If we can make it through the next 150 years, I think that your great great grandchildren will forget all about Malthus. And instead, they'll be planning for the future and starting to build the 22nd Century Enlightenment. Thank you. (Applause)
I’d like to dedicate this next song to Carmelo, who was put to sleep a couple of days ago, because he got too old. But apparently he was a very nice dog and he always let the cat sleep in the dog bed. ♫ (Dog panting noise) Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh. ♫ ♫ I'm just a'walking my dog, singing my song, strolling along. ♫ ♫ Yeah, it's just me and my dog, catching some sun. We can't go wrong. ♫ ♫ My life was lonely and blue. ♫ ♫ Yeah, I was sad as a sailor, ♫ ♫ I was an angry 'un too. ♫ ♫ Then there was you -- appeared when I was entangled with youth and fear, ♫ ♫ and nerves jingle jangled, vermouth and beer were getting me mangled up. ♫ ♫ But then I looked in your eyes ♫ ♫ and I was no more a failure. ♫ ♫ You looked so wacky and wise. ♫ ♫ And I said, "Lord, I'm happy, 'cause I'm just a'walking my dog, ♫ ♫ catching some sun. We can't go wrong." ♫ ♫ Yeah, it's just me and my dog, singing our song, strolling along. ♫ ♫ 'Cause I don't care about your hating and your doubt, ♫ ♫ and I don't care what the politicians spout. ♫ ♫ If you need a companion, why, just go out to the pound, ♫ ♫ and find yourself a hound, and make that doggie proud, ♫ ♫ 'cause that's what it's all about. ♫ ♫ (Dog panting noise) Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh. ♫ ♫ My life was tragic and sad. ♫ ♫ I was the archetypal loser. ♫ ♫ I was a pageant gone bad. ♫ ♫ And then there was you -- on time, and wagging your tail ♫ ♫ in the cutest mime that you was in jail. ♫ ♫ I said, "Woof, be mine!" and you gave a wail and then ♫ ♫ I was no longer alone. ♫ ♫ And I was no more a boozer. ♫ ♫ We'll make the happiest home. ♫ ♫ And I said, "Lord, I'm happy, 'cause I’m just a'walking my dog, ♫ ♫ singing my song, strolling along." ♫ ♫ Yeah, it's just me and my dog, catching some sun. We can't go wrong, ♫ ♫ 'cause I don't care about your hating and your doubt, ♫ ♫ and I don’t care what the politicians spout. ♫ ♫ If you need a companion, why, just go out to the pound, ♫ ♫ and find yourself a hound, and make that doggie proud, ♫ ♫ 'cause that's what it's all about, ♫ ♫ that's what it's all about, ♫ ♫ that's what it's all abou-BOW-WOW-WOW-WOW ♫ ♫ that's what it's all about. ♫ ♫ (Dog panting noise) Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh. ♫ Good dog! Thank you.
About a year ago, I asked myself a question: "Knowing what I know, why am I not a vegetarian?" After all, I'm one of the green guys: I grew up with hippie parents in a log cabin. I started a site called TreeHugger -- I care about this stuff. I knew that eating a mere hamburger a day can increase my risk of dying by a third. Cruelty: I knew that the 10 billion animals we raise each year for meat are raised in factory farm conditions that we, hypocritically, wouldn't even consider for our own cats, dogs and other pets. Environmentally, meat, amazingly, causes more emissions than all of transportation combined: cars, trains, planes, buses, boats, all of it. And beef production uses 100 times the water that most vegetables do. I also knew that I'm not alone. We as a society are eating twice as much meat as we did in the 50s. So what was once the special little side treat now is the main, much more regular. So really, any of these angles should have been enough to convince me to go vegetarian. Yet, there I was -- chk, chk, chk -- tucking into a big old steak. So why was I stalling? I realized that what I was being pitched was a binary solution. It was either you're a meat eater or you're a vegetarian, and I guess I just wasn't quite ready. Imagine your last hamburger. (Laughter) So my common sense, my good intentions, were in conflict with my taste buds. And I'd commit to doing it later, and not surprisingly, later never came. Sound familiar? So I wondered, might there be a third solution? And I thought about it, and I came up with one. I've been doing it for the last year, and it's great. It's called weekday veg. The name says it all: Nothing with a face Monday through Friday. On the weekend, your choice. Simple. If you want to take it to the next level, remember, the major culprits in terms of environmental damage and health are red and processed meats. So you want to swap those out with some good, sustainably harvested fish. It's structured, so it ends up being simple to remember, and it's okay to break it here and there. After all, cutting five days a week is cutting 70 percent of your meat intake. The program has been great, weekday veg. My footprint's smaller, I'm lessening pollution, I feel better about the animals, I'm even saving money. Best of all, I'm healthier, I know that I'm going to live longer, and I've even lost a little weight. So, please ask yourselves, for your health, for your pocketbook, for the environment, for the animals: What's stopping you from giving weekday veg a shot? After all, if all of us ate half as much meat, it would be like half of us were vegetarians. Thank you. (Applause)
You know, what I do is write for children, and I'm probably America's most widely read children's author, in fact. And I always tell people that I don't want to show up looking like a scientist. You can have me as a farmer, or in leathers, and no one has ever chose farmer. I'm here today to talk to you about circles and epiphanies. And you know, an epiphany is usually something you find that you dropped someplace. You've just got to go around the block to see it as an epiphany. That's a painting of a circle. A friend of mine did that -- Richard Bollingbroke. It's the kind of complicated circle that I'm going to tell you about. My circle began back in the '60s in high school in Stow, Ohio where I was the class queer. I was the guy beaten up bloody every week in the boys' room, until one teacher saved my life. She saved my life by letting me go to the bathroom in the teachers' lounge. She did it in secret. She did it for three years. And I had to get out of town. I had a thumb, I had 85 dollars, and I ended up in San Francisco, California -- met a lover -- and back in the '80s, found it necessary to begin work on AIDS organizations. About three or four years ago, I got a phone call in the middle of the night from that teacher, Mrs. Posten, who said, "I need to see you. I'm disappointed that we never got to know each other as adults. Could you please come to Ohio, and please bring that man that I know you have found by now. And I should mention that I have pancreatic cancer, and I'd like you to please be quick about this." Well, the next day we were in Cleveland. We took a look at her, we laughed, we cried, and we knew that she needed to be in a hospice. We found her one, we got her there, and we took care of her and watched over her family, because it was necessary. It's something we knew how to do. And just as the woman who wanted to know me as an adult got to know me, she turned into a box of ashes and was placed in my hands. And what had happened was the circle had closed, it had become a circle -- and that epiphany I talked about presented itself. The epiphany is that death is a part of life. She saved my life; I and my partner saved hers. And you know, that part of life needs everything that the rest of life does. It needs truth and beauty, and I'm so happy it's been mentioned so much here today. It also needs -- it needs dignity, love and pleasure, and it's our job to hand those things out. Thank you. (Applause)
I don't know if you've noticed, but there's been a spate of books that have come out lately contemplating or speculating on the cognition and emotional life of dogs. Do they think, do they feel and, if so, how? So this afternoon, in my limited time, I wanted to take the guesswork out of a lot of that by introducing you to two dogs, both of whom have taken the command "speak" quite literally. The first dog is the first to go, and he is contemplating an aspect of his relationship to his owner, and the title is "A Dog on His Master." "As young as I look, I am growing older faster than he. Seven to one is the ratio, they tend to say. Whatever the number, I will pass him one day and take the lead, the way I do on our walks in the woods, and if this ever manages to cross his mind, it would be the sweetest shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass." (Applause) Thank you. And our next dog speaks in something called the revenant, which means a spirit that comes back to visit you. "I am the dog you put to sleep, as you like to call the needle of oblivion, come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you." (Laughter) "When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose. When I watched you toweling yourself dry, I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap. I resented the way you moved, your lack of animal grace, the way you would sit in a chair to eat, a napkin on your lap, a knife in your hand. I would have run away but I was too weak, a trick you taught me while I was learning to sit and heel and, greatest of insults, shake hands without a hand. I admit the sight of the leash would excite me, but only because it meant I was about to smell things you had never touched. You do not want to believe this, but I have no reason to lie: I hated the car, hated the rubber toys, disliked your friends, and worse, your relatives. The jingling of my tags drove me mad. You always scratched me in the wrong place." (Laughter) "All I ever wanted from you was food and water in my bowls. While you slept, I watched you breathe as the moon rose in the sky. It took all of my strength not to raise my head and howl. Now, I am free of the collar, free of the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater, the absurdity of your lawn, and that is all you need to know about this place, except what you already supposed and are glad it did not happen sooner, that everyone here can read and write, the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose." Thank you. (Applause)
(Music) ♫ They stood together ♫ ♫ under a tree in tall grass ♫ ♫ on TV ♫ ♫ telling the world ♫ ♫ their story ♫ ♫ We will be left to wander ♫ ♫ and fade away ♫ ♫ Soldiers came and took our husbands ♫ ♫ at the break of day ♫ ♫ We will live on ♫ ♫ then fade away ♫ ♫ Soldiers came and killed our children ♫ ♫ at the break of day ♫ ♫ Women of hope ♫ ♫ Women of change ♫ ♫ Women of war and pain ♫ ♫ I believe ♫ ♫ I believe the almighty knows each and every one of you ♫ ♫ by your name ♫ ♫ Women of hope ♫ ♫ Women of change ♫ ♫ Women of love, joy, no shame ♫ ♫ You've got something this little life ♫ ♫ can never take away ♫ ♫ Running through the darkness of night ♫ ♫ with a child by her side ♫ ♫ Oh Lord, won't you give them ♫ ♫ a shining armor of light ♫ ♫ Oh Lord, won't you give them ♫ ♫ a shining armor of light ♫ ♫ Daybreak brings a sign of new life ♫ ♫ with the power to stand ♫ ♫ Crossing the border ♫ ♫ she said, "You will grow free on this land" ♫ ♫ Women of hope ♫ ♫ Women of change ♫ ♫ Women of war and pain ♫ ♫ I can feel your power ♫ ♫ in these words she said ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ Nobody really knows ♫ ♫ how far they will go ♫ ♫ to keep on living ♫ ♫ Nobody really knows ♫ ♫ how far they will go ♫ ♫ to keep on giving ♫ ♫ and forgiving ♫ ♫ Aung San Suu Kyi ♫ ♫ living under house arrest ♫ ♫ for her peaceful protest ♫ ♫ under house arrest ♫ ♫ for her peaceful protest ♫ ♫ When her people asked her for a message ♫ ♫ she said ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ Now we know the words, let's sing. ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ If you're feeling helpless ♫ ♫ help someone ♫ ♫ People of hope ♫ ♫ People of change ♫ ♫ People of love, joy, no shame ♫ ♫ I believe the almighty ♫ ♫ knows each and every one of you ♫ ♫ by your name ♫ Thank you. (Applause)
From all outward appearances, John had everything going for him. He had just signed the contract to sell his New York apartment at a six-figure profit, and he'd only owned it for five years. The school where he graduated from with his master's had just offered him a teaching appointment, which meant not only a salary, but benefits for the first time in ages. And yet, despite everything going really well for John, he was struggling, fighting addiction and a gripping depression. On the night of June 11th, 2003, he climbed up to the edge of the fence on the Manhattan Bridge and he leaped to the treacherous waters below. Remarkably -- no, miraculously -- he lived. The fall shattered his right arm, broke every rib that he had, punctured his lung, and he drifted in and out of consciousness as he drifted down the East River, under the Brooklyn Bridge and out into the pathway of the Staten Island Ferry, where passengers on the ferry heard his cries of pain, contacted the boat's captain who contacted the Coast Guard who fished him out of the East River and took him to Bellevue Hospital. And that's actually where our story begins. Because once John committed himself to putting his life back together -- first physically, then emotionally, and then spiritually -- he found that there were very few resources available to someone who has attempted to end their life in the way that he did. Research shows that 19 out of 20 people who attempt suicide will fail. But the people who fail are 37 times more likely to succeed the second time. This truly is an at-risk population with very few resources to support them. And what happens when people try to assemble themselves back into life, because of our taboos around suicide, we're not sure what to say, and so quite often we say nothing. And that furthers the isolation that people like John found themselves in. I know John's story very well because I'm John. And this is, today, the first time in any sort of public setting I've ever acknowledged the journey that I have been on. But after having lost a beloved teacher in 2006 and a good friend last year to suicide, and sitting last year at TEDActive, I knew that I needed to step out of my silence and past my taboos to talk about an idea worth spreading -- and that is that people who have made the difficult choice to come back to life need more resources and need our help. As the Trevor Project says, it gets better. It gets way better. And I'm choosing to come out of a totally different kind of closet today to encourage you, to urge you, that if you are someone who has contemplated or attempted suicide, or you know somebody who has, talk about it; get help. It's a conversation worth having and an idea worth spreading. Thank you. (Applause)
How does the news shape the way we see the world? Here's the world based on the way it looks -- based on landmass. And here's how news shapes what Americans see. This map -- (Applause) -- this map shows the number of seconds that American network and cable news organizations dedicated to news stories, by country, in February of 2007 -- just one year ago. Now, this was a month when North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities. There was massive flooding in Indonesia. And in Paris, the IPCC released its study confirming man's impact on global warming. The U.S. accounted for 79 percent of total news coverage. And when we take out the U.S. and look at the remaining 21 percent, we see a lot of Iraq -- that's that big green thing there -- and little else. The combined coverage of Russia, China and India, for example, reached just one percent. When we analyzed all the news stories and removed just one story, here's how the world looked. What was that story? The death of Anna Nicole Smith. This story eclipsed every country except Iraq, and received 10 times the coverage of the IPCC report. And the cycle continues; as we all know, Britney has loomed pretty large lately. So, why don't we hear more about the world? One reason is that news networks have reduced the number of their foreign bureaus by half. Aside from one-person ABC mini-bureaus in Nairobi, New Delhi and Mumbai, there are no network news bureaus in all of Africa, India or South America -- places that are home to more than two billion people. The reality is that covering Britney is cheaper. And this lack of global coverage is all the more disturbing when we see where people go for news. Local TV news looms large, and unfortunately only dedicates 12 percent of its coverage to international news. And what about the web? The most popular news sites don't do much better. Last year, Pew and the Colombia J-School analyzed the 14,000 stories that appeared on Google News' front page. And they, in fact, covered the same 24 news events. Similarly, a study in e-content showed that much of global news from U.S. news creators is recycled stories from the AP wire services and Reuters, and don't put things into a context that people can understand their connection to it. So, if you put it all together, this could help explain why today's college graduates, as well as less educated Americans, know less about the world than their counterparts did 20 years ago. And if you think it's simply because we are not interested, you would be wrong. In recent years, Americans who say they closely follow global news most of the time grew to over 50 percent. The real question: is this distorted worldview what we want for Americans in our increasingly interconnected world? I know we can do better. And can we afford not to? Thank you.
When I turned 19, I started my career as the first female photojournalist in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. My work as a woman photographer was considered a serious insult to local traditions, and created a lasting stigma for me and my family. The male-dominated field made my presence unwelcome by all possible means. They made clear that a woman must not do a man's job. Photo agencies in Gaza refused to train me because of my gender. The "No" sign was pretty clear. Three of my colleagues went as far as to drive me to an open air strike area where the explosion sounds were the only thing I could hear. Dust was flying in the air, and the ground was shaking like a swing beneath me. I only realized we weren't there to document the event when the three of them got back into the armored Jeep and drove away, waving and laughing, leaving me behind in the open air strike zone. For a moment, I felt terrified, humiliated, and sorry for myself. My colleagues' action was not the only death threat I have received, but it was the most dangerous one. The perception of women's life in Gaza is passive. Until a recent time, a lot of women were not allowed to work or pursue education. At times of such doubled war including both social restrictions on women and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, women's dark and bright stories were fading away. To men, women's stories were seen as inconsequential. I started paying closer attention to women's lives in Gaza. Because of my gender, I had access to worlds where my colleagues were forbidden. Beyond the obvious pain and struggle, there was a healthy dose of laughter and accomplishments. In front of a police compound in Gaza City during the first war in Gaza, an Israeli air raid managed to destroy the compound and break my nose. For a moment, all I saw was white, bright white, like these lights. I thought to myself I either got blind or I was in heaven. By the time I managed to open my eyes, I had documented this moment. Mohammed Khader, a Palestinian worker who spent two decades in Israel, as his retirement plan, he decided to build a four-floor house, only by the first field operation at his neighborhood, the house was flattened to the ground. Nothing was left but the pigeons he raised and a jacuzzi, a bathtub that he got from Tel Aviv. Mohammed got the bathtub on the top of the rubble and started giving his kids an every morning bubble bath. My work is not meant to hide the scars of war, but to show the full frame of unseen stories of Gazans. As a Palestinian female photographer, the journey of struggle, survival and everyday life has inspired me to overcome the community taboo and see a different side of war and its aftermath. I became a witness with a choice: to run away or stand still. Thank you. (Applause)
I have the answer to a question that we've all asked. The question is, Why is it that the letter X represents the unknown? Now I know we learned that in math class, but now it's everywhere in the culture -- The X prize, the X-Files, Project X, TEDx. Where'd that come from? About six years ago I decided that I would learn Arabic, which turns out to be a supremely logical language. To write a word or a phrase or a sentence in Arabic is like crafting an equation, because every part is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. That's one of the reasons so much of what we've come to think of as Western science and mathematics and engineering was really worked out in the first few centuries of the Common Era by the Persians and the Arabs and the Turks. This includes the little system in Arabic called al-jebra. And al-jebr roughly translates to "the system for reconciling disparate parts." Al-jebr finally came into English as algebra. One example among many. The Arabic texts containing this mathematical wisdom finally made their way to Europe -- which is to say Spain -- in the 11th and 12th centuries. And when they arrived there was tremendous interest in translating this wisdom into a European language. But there were problems. One problem is there are some sounds in Arabic that just don't make it through a European voice box without lots of practice. Trust me on that one. Also, those very sounds tend not to be represented by the characters that are available in European languages. Here's one of the culprits. This is the letter SHeen, and it makes the sound we think of as SH -- "sh." It's also the very first letter of the word shalan, which means "something" just like the the English word "something" -- some undefined, unknown thing. Now in Arabic, we can make this definite by adding the definite article "al." So this is al-shalan -- the unknown thing. And this is a word that appears throughout early mathematics, such as this 10th century derivation of proofs. The problem for the Medieval Spanish scholars who were tasked with translating this material is that the letter SHeen and the word shalan can't be rendered into Spanish because Spanish doesn't have that SH, that "sh" sound. So by convention, they created a rule in which they borrowed the CK sound, "ck" sound, from the classical Greek in the form of the letter Kai. Later when this material was translated into a common European language, which is to say Latin, they simply replaced the Greek Kai with the Latin X. And once that happened, once this material was in Latin, it formed the basis for mathematics textbooks for almost 600 years. But now we have the answer to our question. Why is it that X is the unknown? X is the unknown because you can't say "sh" in Spanish. (Laughter) And I thought that was worth sharing. (Applause)
Let's talk about manias. Let's start with Beatle mania: hysterical teenagers, crying, screaming, pandemonium. Sports mania: deafening crowds, all for one idea -- get the ball in the net. Okay, religious mania: there's rapture, there's weeping, there's visions. Manias can be good. Manias can be alarming. Or manias can be deadly. The world has a new mania. A mania for learning English. Listen as Chinese students practice their English by screaming it. Teacher: ... change my life! Students: I will change my life. T: I don't want to let my parents down. S: I don't want to let my parents down. T: I don't ever want to let my country down. S: I don't ever want to let my country down. T: Most importantly ... S: Most importantly ... T: I don't want to let myself down. S: I don't want to let myself down. Jay Walker: How many people are trying to learn English worldwide? Two billion of them. Students: A t-shirt. A dress. JW: In Latin America, in India, in Southeast Asia, and most of all in China. If you are a Chinese student you start learning English in the third grade, by law. That's why this year China will become the world's largest English-speaking country. (Laughter) Why English? In a single word: Opportunity. Opportunity for a better life, a job, to be able to pay for school, or put better food on the table. Imagine a student taking a giant test for three full days. Her score on this one test literally determines her future. She studies 12 hours a day for three years to prepare. 25 percent of her grade is based on English. It's called the Gaokao, and 80 million high school Chinese students have already taken this grueling test. The intensity to learn English is almost unimaginable, unless you witness it. Teacher: Perfect! Students: Perfect! T: Perfect! S: Perfect! T: I want to speak perfect English. S: I want to speak perfect English. T: I want to speak -- S: I want to speak -- T: perfect English. S: perfect English. T: I want to change my life! S: I want to change my life! JW: So is English mania good or bad? Is English a tsunami, washing away other languages? Not likely. English is the world's second language. Your native language is your life. But with English you can become part of a wider conversation: a global conversation about global problems, like climate change or poverty, or hunger or disease. The world has other universal languages. Mathematics is the language of science. Music is the language of emotions. And now English is becoming the language of problem-solving. Not because America is pushing it, but because the world is pulling it. So English mania is a turning point. Like the harnessing of electricity in our cities or the fall of the Berlin Wall, English represents hope for a better future -- a future where the world has a common language to solve its common problems. Thank you very much. (Applause)
As a boy, I loved cars. When I turned 18, I lost my best friend to a car accident. Like this. And then I decided I'd dedicate my life to saving one million people every year. Now I haven't succeeded, so this is just a progress report, but I'm here to tell you a little bit about self-driving cars. I saw the concept first in the DARPA Grand Challenges where the U.S. government issued a prize to build a self-driving car that could navigate a desert. And even though a hundred teams were there, these cars went nowhere. So we decided at Stanford to build a different self-driving car. We built the hardware and the software. We made it learn from us, and we set it free in the desert. And the unimaginable happened: it became the first car to ever return from a DARPA Grand Challenge, winning Stanford 2 million dollars. Yet I still hadn't saved a single life. Since, our work has focused on building driving cars that can drive anywhere by themselves -- any street in California. We've driven 140,000 miles. Our cars have sensors by which they magically can see everything around them and make decisions about every aspect of driving. It's the perfect driving mechanism. We've driven in cities, like in San Francisco here. We've driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles on Highway 1. We've encountered joggers, busy highways, toll booths, and this is without a person in the loop; the car just drives itself. In fact, while we drove 140,000 miles, people didn't even notice. Mountain roads, day and night, and even crooked Lombard Street in San Francisco. (Laughter) Sometimes our cars get so crazy, they even do little stunts. (Video) Man: Oh, my God. What? Second Man: It's driving itself. Sebastian Thrun: Now I can't get my friend Harold back to life, but I can do something for all the people who died. Do you know that driving accidents are the number one cause of death for young people? And do you realize that almost all of those are due to human error and not machine error, and can therefore be prevented by machines? Do you realize that we could change the capacity of highways by a factor of two or three if we didn't rely on human precision on staying in the lane -- improve body position and therefore drive a little bit closer together on a little bit narrower lanes, and do away with all traffic jams on highways? Do you realize that you, TED users, spend an average of 52 minutes per day in traffic, wasting your time on your daily commute? You could regain this time. This is four billion hours wasted in this country alone. And it's 2.4 billion gallons of gasoline wasted. Now I think there's a vision here, a new technology, and I'm really looking forward to a time when generations after us look back at us and say how ridiculous it was that humans were driving cars. Thank you. (Applause)
Fifty years ago in the old Soviet Union, a team of engineers was secretly moving a large object through a desolate countryside. With it, they were hoping to capture the minds of people everywhere by being the first to conquer outer space. The rocket was huge. And packed in its nose was a silver ball with two radios inside. On October 4, 1957, they launched their rocket. One of the Russian scientists wrote at the time: "We are about to create a new planet that we will call Sputnik. In the olden days, explorers like Vasco da Gama and Columbus had the good fortune to open up the terrestrial globe. Now we have the good fortune to open up space. And it is for those in the future to envy us our joy." You're watching snippets from "Sputnik," my fifth documentary feature, which is just about completed. It tells the story of Sputnik, and the story of what happened to America as a result. For days after the launch, Sputnik was a wonderful curiosity. A man-made moon visible by ordinary citizens, it inspired awe and pride that humans had finally launched an object into space. But just three days later, on a day they called Red Monday, the media and the politicians told us, and we believed, that Sputnik was proof that our enemy had beaten us in science and technology, and that they could now attack us with hydrogen bombs, using their Sputnik rocket as an IBM missile. All hell broke loose. Sputnik quickly became one of the three great shocks to hit America -- historians say the equal of Pearl Harbor or 9/11. It provoked the missile gap. It exploded an arms race. It began the space race. Within a year, Congress funded huge weapons increases, and we went from 1,200 nuclear weapons to 20,000. And the reactions to Sputnik went far beyond weapons increases. For example, some here will remember this day, June 1958, the National Civil Defense Drill, where tens of millions of people in 78 cities went underground. Or the Gallup Poll that showed that seven in 10 Americans believed that a nuclear war would happen, and that at least 50 percent of our population was going to be killed. But Sputnik provoked wonderful changes as well. For example, some in this room went to school on scholarship because of Sputnik. Support for engineering, math and science -- education in general -- boomed. And Vint Cerf points out that Sputnik led directly to ARPA, and the Internet, and, of course, NASA. My feature documentary shows how a free society can be stampeded by those who know how to use media. But it also shows how we can turn what appears at first to be a bad situation, into something that was overall very good for America. "Sputnik" will soon be released. In closing, I would like to take a moment to thank one of my investors: longtime TEDster, Jay Walker. And I'd like to thank you all. (Applause). Thank you, Chris.
(Music) This is the human test, a test to see if you are a human. Please raise your hand if something applies to you. Are we agreed? Yes? Then let's begin. Have you ever eaten a booger long past your childhood? (Laughter) It's okay, it's safe here. Have you ever made a small, weird sound when you remembered something embarrassing? Have you ever purposely lowercased the first letter of a text in order to come across as sad or disappointed? (Laughter) Okay. Have you ever ended a text with a period as a sign of aggression? Okay. Period. Have you ever laughed or smiled when someone said something shitty to you and then spent the rest of the day wondering why you reacted that way? Yes. Have you ever seemed to lose your airplane ticket a thousand times as you walked from the check-in to the gate? Yes. Have you ever put on a pair of pants and then much later realized that there was a loose sock smushed up against your thigh? (Laughter) Good. Have you ever tried to guess someone else's password so many times that it locked their account? Mmm. Have you ever had a nagging feeling that one day you will be discovered as a fraud? Yes, it's safe here. Have you ever hoped that there was some ability you hadn't discovered yet that you were just naturally great at? Mmm. Have you ever broken something in real life, and then found yourself looking for an "undo" button in real life? Have you ever misplaced your TED badge and then immediately started imagining what a three-day Vancouver vacation might look like? Have you ever marveled at how someone you thought was so ordinary could suddenly become so beautiful? Have you ever stared at your phone smiling like an idiot while texting with someone? Have you ever subsequently texted that person the phrase "I'm staring at the phone smiling like an idiot"? Have you ever been tempted to, and then gave in to the temptation, of looking through someone else's phone? Have you ever had a conversation with yourself and then suddenly realized you're a real asshole to yourself? (Laughter) Has your phone ever run out of battery in the middle of an argument, and it sort of felt like the phone was breaking up with both of you? Have you ever thought that working on an issue between you was futile because it should just be easier than this, or this is supposed to happen just naturally? Have you ever realized that very little, in the long run, just happens naturally? Have you ever woken up blissfully and suddenly been flooded by the awful remembrance that someone had left you? Have you ever lost the ability to imagine a future without a person that no longer was in your life? Have you ever looked back on that event with the sad smile of autumn and the realization that futures will happen regardless? Congratulations. You have now completed the test. You are all human. (Applause)
My big idea is a very, very small idea that can unlock billions of big ideas that are at the moment dormant inside us. And my little idea that will do that is sleep. (Laughter) (Applause) This is a room of type-A women. This is a room of sleep-deprived women. And I learned the hard way, the value of sleep. Two-and-a-half years ago, I fainted from exhaustion. I hit my head on my desk. I broke my cheekbone, I got five stitches on my right eye. And I began the journey of rediscovering the value of sleep. And in the course of that, I studied, I met with medical doctors, scientists, and I'm here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is getting enough sleep. (Applause) And we women are going to lead the way in this new revolution, this new feminist issue. We are literally going to sleep our way to the top, literally. (Laughter) (Applause) Because unfortunately for men, sleep deprivation has become a virility symbol. I was recently having dinner with a guy who bragged that he had only gotten four hours sleep the night before. And I felt like saying to him -- but I didn't say it -- I felt like saying, "You know what? If you had gotten five, this dinner would have been a lot more interesting." (Laughter) There is now a kind of sleep deprivation one-upmanship. Especially here in Washington, if you try to make a breakfast date, and you say, "How about eight o'clock?" they're likely to tell you, "Eight o'clock is too late for me, but that's okay, I can get a game of tennis in and do a few conference calls and meet you at eight." And they think that means that they are so incredibly busy and productive, but the truth is they're not, because we, at the moment, have had brilliant leaders in business, in finance, in politics, making terrible decisions. So a high I.Q. does not mean that you're a good leader, because the essence of leadership is being able to see the iceberg before it hits the Titanic. And we've had far too many icebergs hitting our Titanics. In fact, I have a feeling that if Lehman Brothers was Lehman Brothers and Sisters, they might still be around. (Applause) While all the brothers were busy just being hyper-connected 24/7, maybe a sister would have noticed the iceberg, because she would have woken up from a seven-and-a-half- or eight-hour sleep and have been able to see the big picture. So as we are facing all the multiple crises in our world at the moment, what is good for us on a personal level, what's going to bring more joy, gratitude, effectiveness in our lives and be the best for our own careers is also what is best for the world. So I urge you to shut your eyes and discover the great ideas that lie inside us, to shut your engines and discover the power of sleep. Thank you. (Applause)
I was here about four years ago, talking about the relationship of design and happiness. At the very end of it, I showed a list under that title. I learned very few things in addition since (Laughter) -- but made a whole number of them into projects since. These are inflatable monkeys in every city in Scotland: "Everybody always thinks they are right." They were combined in the media. "Drugs are fun in the beginning but become a drag later on." We're doing changing media. This is a projection that can see the viewer as the viewer walks by. You can't help but actually ripping that spider web apart. All of these things are pieces of graphic design. We do them for our clients. They are commissioned. I would never have the money to actually pay for the installment or pay for all the billboards or the production of these, so there's always a client attached to them. These are 65,000 coat hangers in a street that's lined with fashion stores. "Worrying solves nothing." "Money does not make me happy" appeared first as double-page spreads in a magazine. The printer lost the file, didn't tell us. When the magazine -- actually, when I got the subscription -- it was 12 following pages. It said, "Money does does make me happy." And a friend of mine in Austria felt so sorry for me that he talked the largest casino owner in Linz into letting us wrap his building. So this is the big pedestrian zone in Linz. It just says "Money," and if you look down the side street, it says, "does not make me happy." We had a show that just came down last week in New York. We steamed up the windows permanently, and every hour we had a different designer come in and write these things that they've learned into the steam in the window. Everybody participated -- Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli. Singapore was quite in discussion. This is a little spot that we filmed there that's to be displayed on the large JumboTrons in Singapore. And, of course, it's one that's dear to my heart, because all of these sentiments -- some banal, some a bit more profound -- all originally had come out of my diary. And I do go often into the diary and check if I wanted to change something about the situation. If it's -- see it for a long enough time, I actually do something about it. And the very last one is a billboard. This is our roof in New York, the roof of the studio. This is newsprint plus stencils that lie on the newsprint. We let that lie around in the sun. As you all know, newsprint yellows significantly in the sun. After a week, we took the stencils and the leaves off, shipped the newsprints to Lisbon to a very sunny spot, so on day one the billboard said, "Complaining is silly. Either act or forget." Three days later it faded, and a week later, no more complaining anywhere. (Laughter) Thank you so much. (Applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, the history of music and television on the Internet in three minutes. A TED medley -- a TEDley. ♫ It's nine o' clock on a Saturday ♫ ♫ The record store's closed for the night ♫ ♫ So I fire up the old iTunes music store ♫ ♫ And soon I am feelin' all right ♫ ♫ I know Steve Jobs can find me a melody ♫ ♫ With one dollar pricing that rocks ♫ ♫ I can type in the track and get album names back ♫ ♫ While still in my PJs and socks ♫ ♫ Sell us a song, you're the music man ♫ ♫ My iPod's still got 10 gigs to go ♫ ♫ Yes, we might prefer more compatibility ♫ ♫ But Steve likes to run the whole show ♫ ♫ I heard "Desperate Housewives" was great last night ♫ ♫ But I had a bad piece of cod ♫ ♫ As I threw up my meal, I thought, "It's no big deal" ♫ ♫ I'll watch it tonight on my 'Pod ♫ ♫ And now all of the networks are joining in ♫ ♫ Two bucks a show without ads ♫ ♫ It's a business those guys always wanted to try ♫ ♫ But only Steve Jobs had the 'nads ♫ ♫ They say we're young, don't watch TV ♫ ♫ They say the Internet is all we see ♫ ♫ But that's not true; they've got it wrong ♫ ♫ See, all our shows are just two minutes long ♫ ♫ Hey ♫ ♫ I got YouTube ♫ ♫ I got YouTube ♫ And now, ladies and gentlemen, a tribute to the Recording Industry Association of America -- the RIAA! ♫ Young man, you were surfin' along ♫ ♫ And then, young man, you downloaded a song ♫ ♫ And then, dumb man, copied it to your 'Pod ♫ ♫ Then a phone call came to tell you ... ♫ ♫ You've just been sued by the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ You've just been screwed by the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ Their attorneys say you committed a crime ♫ ♫ And there'd better not be a next time ♫ ♫ They've lost their minds at the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ Justice is blind at the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ You're depriving the bands ♫ ♫ You are learning to steal ♫ ♫ You can't do whatever you feel ♫ ♫ CD sales have dropped every year ♫ ♫ They're not greedy, they're just quaking with fear ♫ ♫ Yes indeedy, what if their end is near ♫ ♫ And we download all our music ♫ ♫ Yeah, that would piss off the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ No plastic discs from the R-I-A-A ♫ ♫ What a way to make friends ♫ ♫ It's a plan that can't fail ♫ ♫ All your customers off to jail ♫ ♫ Who'll be next for the R-I-A-A? ♫ ♫ What else is vexing the R-I-A-A? ♫ ♫ Maybe whistling a tune ♫ ♫ Maybe humming along ♫ ♫ Maybe mocking 'em in a song ♫
Daffodil Hudson: Hello? Yeah, this is she. What? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I accept. What are the dates again? Pen. Pen. Pen. March 17 through 21. Okay, all right, great. Thanks. Lab Partner: Who was that? DH: It was TED. LP: Who's TED? DH: I've got to prepare. ["Give Your Talk: A Musical"] (Music) ["My Talk"] ♪ Procrastination. ♪ What do you think? (Doorbell) Can I help you? (Music) Speaker Coach 1: ♪ Let's prepare for main stage. ♪ ♪ It's your time to shine. ♪ ♪ If you want to succeed then ♪ ♪ you must be primed. ♪ Speaker Coach 2: ♪ Your slides are bad ♪ ♪ but your idea is good ♪ ♪ so you can bet before we're through, ♪ ♪ speaker, we'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ Speaker Coach 3: ♪ We know about climate change, ♪ ♪ but what can you say that's new? ♪ ♪ SC 1: Once you find your focus ♪ ♪ then the talk comes into view. ♪ SC 2: ♪ Don't ever try to sell something ♪ ♪ from up on that stage ♪ ♪ or we won't post your talk online. ♪ All: ♪ Somehow we'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ (Music) SC 1: Ready to practice one more time? DH: Right now? Stagehand: Break a leg. DH: ♪ I'll never remember all this. ♪ ♪ Will the clicker work when I press it? ♪ ♪ Why must Al Gore go right before me? ♪ ♪ Oh man, I'm scared to death. ♪ ♪ I hope I don't pass out onstage ♪ ♪ and now I really wish I wasn't wearing green. ♪ All: ♪ Give your talk. ♪ SC 1: ♪ You must be be sweet like Brené Brown. ♪ All: ♪ Give your talk. ♪ SC 2: ♪ You must be funny like Ken Robinson. ♪ All: ♪ Give your talk. ♪ SC 3: ♪ You must be cool like Reggie Watts ♪ All: ♪ and bring out a prop like Jill Bolte Taylor. ♪ DH: ♪ My time is running over. The clock now says nil. ♪ ♪ I'm saying my words faster. Understand me still. ♪ ♪ I'm too nervous to give this TED Talk. ♪ All: ♪ Don't give up. Rehearse. You're good. ♪ ♪ We'll edit out the mistakes that you make. ♪ ♪ Give your talk. ♪ DH: ♪ I will be big like Amy Cuddy. ♪ All: ♪ Give your talk. ♪ DH: ♪ I will inspire like Liz Gilbert. ♪ All: ♪ Give your talk. ♪ DH: ♪ I will engage like Hans Rosling ♪ ♪ and release mosquitos ♪ ♪ like Bill Gates. ♪ SC 2: ♪ I'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ ♪ I'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ ♪ I'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ ♪ I'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ ♪ I'll make a TED Talk out of you. ♪ (Applause) ["Brought to you by TED staff and friends"] (Music)
So the type of magic I like, and I'm a magician, is magic that uses technology to create illusions. So I would like to show you something I've been working on. It's an application that I think will be useful for artists -- multimedia artists in particular. It synchronizes videos across multiple screens of mobile devices. I borrowed these three iPods from people here in the audience to show you what I mean. And I'm going to use them to tell you a little bit about my favorite subject: deception. (Music) One of my favorite magicians is Karl Germain. He had this wonderful trick where a rosebush would bloom right in front of your eyes. But it was his production of a butterfly that was the most beautiful. (Recording) Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, the creation of life. (Applause) (Music) Marco Tempest: When asked about deception, he said this: Announcer: Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you -- and he does. MT: I like to think of myself as an honest magician. I use a lot of tricks, which means that sometimes I have to lie to you. Now I feel bad about that. But people lie every day. (Ringing) Hold on. Phone: Hey, where are you? MT: Stuck in traffic. I'll be there soon. You've all done it. (Laughter) (Music) Right: I'll be ready in just a minute, darling. Center: It's just what I've always wanted. Left: You were great. MT: Deception, it's a fundamental part of life. Now polls show that men tell twice as many lies as women -- assuming the women they asked told the truth. (Laughing) We deceive to gain advantage and to hide our weaknesses. The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance. Some people deceive for money. Let's play a game. Three cards, three chances. Announcer: One five will get you 10, 10 will get you 20. Now, where's the lady? Where is the queen? MT: This one? Sorry. You lose. Well, I didn't deceive you. You deceived yourself. Self-deception. That's when we convince ourselves that a lie is the truth. Sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart. Compulsive gamblers are experts at self-deception. (Slot machine) They believe they can win. They forget the times they lose. The brain is very good at forgetting. Bad experiences are quickly forgotten. Bad experiences quickly disappear. Which is why in this vast and lonely cosmos, we are so wonderfully optimistic. Our self-deception becomes a positive illusion -- why movies are able to take us onto extraordinary adventures; why we believe Romeo when he says he loves Juliet; and why single notes of music, when played together, become a sonata and conjure up meaning. That's "Clair De lune." Its composer, called Debussy, said that art was the greatest deception of all. Art is a deception that creates real emotions -- a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic. [MAGIC] (Music fades slowly) (Applause) Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause)
End of preview. Expand in Dataset Viewer.

Ted Talks 

from datasets import load_dataset

load_dataset("tdtunlp/ted_talks_iwslt_en")
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2,293