Posts Tagged ‘TED’
What is school for?
There has been multiple mentions of Seth Godin’s “Stop Stealing Dreams” on this site
So, finally, there is a TEDx Talk on this and the future of education.
Here it is, invest 18 minutes of your time
STOP STEALING DREAMS: On the future of education & what we can do about it.
http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams#module162576572
Other mentions of TED talks on this site
https://frrl.wordpress.com/tag/ted/
The Age of Networked Intelligence
Living in the world everyday perhaps you don’t notice change. Change where the future is discontinuous is easy to recognize – as in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade buildings. When change happens slowly you may not recognize it. If you don’t recognize it, perhaps, you won’t be able to take advantage of new opportunities.
If you take 20 years as the increment of time representing one generation then there are about 4 generations of individuals living at any time.
Each of these generations seem to live in their own time and their own generation. How often do the generations cross boundaries? It seems a missed opportunity for society in general that later generations (surely productive and some at the peak of their careers) do not recognize the opportunity that the 20-something generation has created and how these innovations can be applied to nearly every aspect of the world we live in.
Perhaps the sum of all the small changes, not recognized since they are small and not disruptive, when added together truly are a revolution.
Check out this TED talk by Don Tapscott to see what the future might look like. Don Tapscott is from a later generation but he certainly can see the opportunity the millennial generation has given to all generations now living.
A Web for One: the danger of agressive personalization
Everything which bars freedom and fullness of communication sets up barriers that divide human beings into sects and cliques, into antagonistic sects and factions, and thereby undermines the democratic way of life – John Dewey
The technology will be so good it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them – Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
There was an entry in the Google blog on December 4,2009. For some, this is the day the world changed – and not in a good way. The headline was “Personalized Search for everyone”.
Eli Pariser and others picked up on the profound significance of this. What personalized search means is that, based on 57 different inputs (signals) Google will deliver custom search results to you. Put a different way, the search results presented to you will be unique to your profile. Compared with others doing the same search your results may exclude or include different links based on the difference in your “signals” and profiles. In a sense, you will see a web customized for you – a web constructed specifically for you a single individual that may be different for everyone else. You might think this is a good thing. Is it?
If I could make this analogy. It’s similar to the Multiverse theory in physics but applied to information. What Google will present to you is a customized universe of information tailored just for you.
The profundity of this should be obvious. You will be caught in a “You Loop”. What will be “erased” is the diversity of ideas, opinion, thoughts, and hard information that the algorithm decides is not relevant to you. And it’s not just Google that is doing aggressive personalization.
What happens to the public debate, when we rely on information from the Internet but come to realize that we no longer get objective results from search engines but rather receive a universe of information that has been “synthesized” specifically for us by an algorithm. What is the nature of that algorithm and how will it steer public opinion in politics, society, and the consumer culture?
Take a watch on this TED presentation by Eli Pariser on Filter Bubbles.
Resources
Read some related articles –
In the articles below, use the terms “Choice Architecture” and “Personalization” interchangeably and think of the power of this new search engine strategy.
https://frrl.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/when-nudge-comes-to-push-and-shove/
https://frrl.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/michelle-obama-and-sarah-palin-at-the-food-court-the-concept-of-libertarian-paternalism/
Who owns Culture?
If creativity is based on the past how can you have a future without remixing the past? Is creativity being strangled by laws of copyright and intellectual property? Will copyright kill new forms of expression? What is the balance between protection and the freedom to creatively remix? Who owns culture? Who owns the right to “read” the culture but also the right to creatively re/write it for the current and next generation? Could a society or nation flourish in a “read-only” culture?
Lessig wants to legalize “what it is to be young”, a “new literacy” and a new “way to speak” for this generation so they can participate in the creation and re/creation of culture.
Who is Larry Lessig?
Lawrence “Larry” Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.
He is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center and a former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Read more – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig
Watch at TED
More about the Creative Commons license – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons
Creativity, Innovation, and Intellectual Property – Lessons from fashion’s free culture
What is the ownership of creativity? Is copying “stealing” or a sign of the creators genius? Does copying within an industry destroy it or enhance it? Without ownership is there any incentive to innovate? Is there an innovation “knock-off”? What are the virtues of not copying? Does copying accelerate innovation? In an industry that has no intellectual property protection can you make things that can not be copied? What is an aesthetic and how can you use this to resist copying? Can white people play bee bop? In what ways are comedians like fashion designers? Are the most profitable industries those that have intellectual property protection of those that don’t?
So, what lessons can be learned from the fashion industry – which does not have copyright or intellectual property protection – about creativity, innovation, and the free culture? How will this inform other industries as they wrestle with the issues of ownership of creativity and intellectual property?
Another TED talk: Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion’s free culture
On Creating Intangible Value and Tinkering with Perception
Or, the beauty of advertising and illusion
Many problems can be solved by altering perception rather than reality. If there are fewer material goods then why not supplement intrinsic value with intangible value to make the overall value greater?
Some problems of how to increase value may have an expensive material engineering solution but perhaps the better and less costly solution can be accomplished by an ad man rather than an engineer.
Why mess with reality when its easier and less expensive to deal with perception? What about placebos in general? If they work then why not use them? Placebos are less expensive than what they replace. If placebos have any side effects – they can only be imaginary so how could they harm anyone? What about placebo education? Convince people that they are well-educated and they will have the self-confidence and high self-esteem needed to succeed without really having a very good education at all.
Can you change consumption habits by tinkering with perception? What is undesirable can become desireable and what was desireable can become undesirable. How’s that Hummer in your driveway?
How do we change material goods without changing them? How do we increase the perceived value of a product without really changing the product in the slightest? Is a diamond shape higher value than a square? Is a diamond and a square only a matter of perception?
Real value may not be created by making material goods through labor and engineering. Real value may be the manufacture of value through illusion and alchemy – as an act of creation by illusion – much more expedient and of greater economic efficiency than producing material goods in a factory by traditional physical labor. If we have limited material goods then why not enhance their value simply through changes in perception?
Watch Rory Sutherland at TED – Life Lessons of an ad man
Part 2
Clifford Stoll on Everything
I ran across this TED talk by Clifford Stoll – Clifford Stoll on Everything
You need to prepare yourself for this talk. This is not for everyone. A combination of eccentricity, insight, the bizarre, Klein bottles, and how children learned how to measure the speed of sound.
Very entertaining. Strap in, my friends… Read the rest of this entry »
Having Fun with the Desktop Metaphor
Innovation and unconventional thinking as applied to the desktop metaphor. The motto of one entrepreneurial company is “Lets have fun – and make money.” When I saw this demo of BumpTop I knew Anand was, at least, having fun. Check out the demo at TED on BumpTop.
I am filing this entry under “Playful”.
Anand Agarawala demos BumpTop
Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered “walls.”
http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_agarawala_demos_his_bumptop_desktop.html
Living in an era of Idea Diffusion & the Remarkable Purple Cow
Another remarkable talk by marketing guru Seth Godin ( bio )
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html
And a little more wisdom from Seth…
… If you want customers to flock to you, it’s tempting to race to the bottom of the price chart. There’s not a lot of room for profit there, though…In a world that relentlessly races to the bottom, you lose if you also race to the bottom. The only way to win is to race to the top. When your organization becomes more human, more remarkable, faster on its feet, and more likely to connect directly with customers, it becomes indispensable….
…Second, the people that work for you, the ones you freed to be artists [i.e. creators of unique, compelling, and substantial value], will rise to a level you can’t even imagine. When people realize that they are not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, they take the challenge and grow. They produce more than you pay them to, because you are paying them with something worth more than money….
… As a result of these priceless gifts, expect that the linchpins on your staff won’t abuse their power. In fact, they’ll work harder, stay longer, and produce more than you pay them to. Because everyone is a person, and people crave connection and respect..
On the power of being genuine and transparent: “Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or manipulative, they fail.
… The linchin is coming from a posture of generosity; she’s there to give a gift [no-strings support of your efforts to succeed]. If that’s your intent, the words almost don’t matter. What we’ll perceive are your wishes, not the script…
…This is why telemarketing has such a ridiculously low conversion rate. Why corporate blogs are so lame. Why frontline workers in the service business have such stress. We can sense it when you read the script because we’re so good at finding the honest signals…
Google Liquid Galaxy live demo at TED
Google’s Liquid Galaxy is engineer Jason Holt’s 20% time project, a wraparound view of 8 LCD screens providing a truly immersive experience of Google Earth and Street View.
The Neural Micro-circuitry of the Brain & Exceeding the Limits of Human Biological Intelligence
Suppose you could determine the basic structure of the human brains neocortex. Suppose you could understand the basic elements and connections that make up that structure. Suppose you could write equations that simulated those entities and connections.
Now suppose you you had the backing of IBM (Big Blue) and 10,000+ machines to run a simulation of the human brain. What would you find out?
Watch this 15 minute TED presentation with Prof. Henry Markram of the Neural Microcircuity Laboratory and wonder at the trajectory of brain research. Such research into the micro circuitry of the human brain may lead to the ultimate understanding of human perception (construction) of Reality, the origin of human consciousness, and perhaps signal an impending future when the capability of computers to simulate human intelligence in silicon may exceed the capability of human biological intelligence.
http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html
The blue brain project – http://bluebrain.epfl.ch
Related –
The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity.
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