Rachel Pike : The science behind a climate headline
In 4 minutes , atmospheric chemist Rachel Pike provides a glimpse of the massive scientific effort behind the bold headlines on climate change , with her team -- one of thousands who contributed -- taking a risky flight over the rainforest in pursuit of data on a key molecule .
I 'd like to talk to you today about the scale of the scientific effort that goes into making the headlines you see in the paper .
Headlines that look like this when they have to do with climate change , and headlines that look like this when they have to do with air quality or smog .
They are both two branches of the same field of atmospheric science .
Recently the headlines looked like this when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , or IPCC , put out their report on the state of understanding of the atmospheric system .
That report was written by 620 scientists from 40 countries .
They wrote almost a thousand pages on the topic .
And all of those pages were reviewed by another 400-plus scientists and reviewers , from 113 countries .
It 's a big community . It 's such a big community , in fact , that our annual gathering is the largest scientific meeting in the world .
Over 15,000 scientists go to San Francisco every year for that .
And every one of those scientists is in a research group , and every research group studies a wide variety of topics .
For us at Cambridge , it 's as varied as the El Niño oscillation , which affects weather and climate , to the assimilation of satellite data , to emissions from crops that produce biofuels , which is what I happen to study .
And in each one of these research areas , of which there are even more , there are PhD students , like me , and we study incredibly narrow topics , things as narrow as a few processes or a few molecules .
And one of the molecules I study is called isoprene , which is here . It 's a small organic molecule . You 've probably never heard of it .
The weight of a paper clip is approximately equal to 900 zeta-illion -- 10 to the 21st -- molecules of isoprene .
But despite its very small weight , enough of it is emitted into the atmosphere every year to equal the weight of all the people on the planet .
It 's a huge amount of stuff . It 's equal to the weight of methane .
And because it 's so much stuff , it 's really important for the atmospheric system .
Because it 's important to the atmospheric system , we go to all lengths to study this thing .
We blow it up and look at the pieces .
This is the EUPHORE Smog Chamber in Spain .
Atmospheric explosions , or full combustion , takes about 15,000 times longer than what happens in your car .
But still , we look at the pieces .
We run enormous models on supercomputers ; this is what I happen to do .
Our models have hundreds of thousands of grid boxes calculating hundreds of variables each , on minute timescales .
And it takes weeks to perform our integrations .
And we perform dozens of integrations in order to understand what 's happening .
We also fly all over the world looking for this thing .
I recently joined a field campaign in Malaysia . There are others .
We found a global atmospheric watchtower there , in the middle of the rainforest , and hung hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scientific equipment off this tower , to look for isoprene , and of course , other things while we were there .
This is the tower in the middle of the rainforest , from above .
And this is the tower from below .
And on part of that field campaign we even brought an aircraft with us .
And this plane , the model , BA146 , which was run by FAAM , normally flies 120 to 130 people .
So maybe you took a similar aircraft to get here today .
But we didn 't just fly it . We were flying at 100 meters above the top of the canopy to measure this molecule -- incredibly dangerous stuff .
We have to fly at a special incline in order to make the measurements .
We hire military and test pilots to do the maneuvering .
We have to get special flight clearance .
And as you come around the banks in these valleys , the forces can get up to two Gs .
And the scientists have to be completely harnessed in in order to make measurements while they 're on board .
So , as you can imagine , the inside of this aircraft doesn 't look like any plane you would take on vacation .
It 's a flying laboratory that we took to make measurements in the region of this molecule .
We do all of this to understand the chemistry of one molecule .
And when one student like me has some sort of inclination or understanding about that molecule , they write one scientific paper on the subject .
And out of that field campaign we 'll probably get a few dozen papers on a few dozen processes or molecules .
And as a body of knowledge builds up , it will form one subsection , or one sub-subsection of an assessment like the IPCC , although we have others .
And each one of the 11 chapters of the IPCC has six to ten subsections .
So you can imagine the scale of the effort .
In each one of those assessments that we write , we always tag on a summary , and the summary is written for a non-scientific audience .
And we hand that summary to journalists and policy makers , in order to make headlines like these .
Thank you very much .
Christopher deCharms : A look inside the brain in real time
Neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms demonstrates a new way to use fMRI to show brain activity -- thoughts , emotions , pain -- while it is happening . In other words , you can actually see how you feel .
Hi . I 'm going to ask you to raise your arms and wave back , just the way I am -- kind of a royal wave .
You can mimic what you can see .
You can program the hundreds of muscles in your arm .
Soon , you 'll be able to look inside your brain and program , control the hundreds of brain areas that you see there .
I 'm going to tell you about that technology .
People have wanted to look inside the human mind , the human brain , for thousands of years .
Well , coming out of the research labs just now , for our generation , is the possibility to do that .
People envision this as being very difficult .
You had to take a spaceship , shrink it down , inject it into the bloodstream .
It was terribly dangerous .
You could be attacked by white blood cells in the arteries .
But now , we have a real technology to do this .
We 're going to fly into my colleague Peter 's brain .
We 're going to do it non-invasively using MRI .
We don 't have to inject anything . We don 't need radiation .
We will be able to fly into the anatomy of Peter 's brain -- literally , fly into his body -- but more importantly , we can look into his mind .
When Peter moves his arm , that yellow spot you see there is the interface to the functioning of Peter 's mind taking place .
Now you 've seen before that with electrodes you can control robotic arms , that brain imaging and scanners can show you the insides of brains .
What 's new is that that process has typically taken days or months of analysis .
We 've collapsed that through technology to milliseconds , and that allows us to let Peter to look at his brain in real time as he 's inside the scanner .
He can look at these 65,000 points of activation per second .
If he can see this pattern in his own brain , he can learn how to control it .
There have been three ways to try to impact the brain : the therapist 's couch , pills and the knife .
This is a fourth alternative that you are soon going to have .
We all know that as we form thoughts , they form deep channels in our minds and in our brains .
Chronic pain is an example . If you burn yourself , you pull your hand away .
But if you 're still in pain in six months ' or six years ' time , it 's because these circuits are producing pain that 's no longer helping you .
If we can look at the activation in the brain that 's producing the pain , we can form 3D models and watch in real time the brain process information , and then we can select the areas that produce the pain .
So put your arms back up and flex your bicep .
Now imagine that you will soon be able to look inside your brain and select brain areas to do that same thing .
What you 're seeing here is , we 've selected the pathways in the brain of a chronic pain patient .
This may shock you , but we 're literally reading this person 's brain in real time .
They 're watching their own brain activation , and they 're controlling the pathway that produces their pain .
They 're learning to flex this system that releases their own endogenous opiates .
As they do it , in the upper left is a display that 's yoked to their brain activation of their own pain being controlled .
When they control their brain , they can control their pain .
This is an investigational technology , but , in clinical trials , we 're seeing a 44 to 64 percent decrease in chronic pain patients .
This is not " The Matrix . " You can only do this to yourself . You take control .
I 've seen inside my brain . You will too , soon .
When you do , what do you want to control ?
You will be able to look at all the aspects that make you yourself , all your experiences .
These are some of the areas we 're working on today that I don 't have time to go into in detail .
But I want to leave with you the big question .
We are the first generation that 's going to be able to enter into , using this technology , the human mind and brain .
Where will we take it ?
Beeban Kidron : The shared wonder of film
Movies have the power to create a shared narrative experience and to shape memories and worldviews . British film director Beeban Kidron invokes iconic film scenes -- from & lt ; em & gt ; Miracle in Milan & lt ; / em & gt ; to & lt ; em & gt ; Boyz n the Hood & lt ; / em & gt ; -- as she shows how her group FILMCLUB shares great films with kids .
Evidence suggests that humans in all ages and from all cultures create their identity in some kind of narrative form .
From mother to daughter , preacher to congregant , teacher to pupil , storyteller to audience .
Whether in cave paintings or the latest uses of the Internet , human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable .
We are inveterate storytellers .
But where , in our increasingly secular and fragmented world , do we offer communality of experience , unmediated by our own furious consumerism ?
And what narrative , what history , what identity , what moral code are we imparting to our young ?
Cinema is arguably the 20th century 's most influential art form .
Its artists told stories across national boundaries , in as many languages , genres and philosophies as one can imagine .
Indeed , it is hard to find a subject that film has yet to tackle .
During the last decade we 've seen a vast integration of global media , now dominated by a culture of the Hollywood blockbuster .
We are increasingly offered a diet in which sensation , not story , is king .
What was common to us all 40 years ago -- the telling of stories between generations -- is now rarified .
As a filmmaker , it worried me .
As a human being , it puts the fear of God in me .
What future could the young build with so little grasp of where they 've come from and so few narratives of what 's possible ?
The irony is palpable ; technical access has never been greater , cultural access never weaker .
And so in 2006 we set up FILMCLUB , an organization that ran weekly film screenings in schools followed by discussions .
If we could raid the annals of 100 years of film , maybe we could build a narrative that would deliver meaning to the fragmented and restless world of the young .
Given the access to technology , even a school in a tiny rural hamlet could project a DVD onto a white board .
In the first nine months we ran 25 clubs across the U.K. , with kids in age groups between five and 18 watching a film uninterrupted for 90 minutes .
The films were curated and contextualized .
But the choice was theirs , and our audience quickly grew to choose the richest and most varied diet that we could provide .
The outcome , immediate .
It was an education of the most profound and transformative kind .
In groups as large as 150 and as small as three , these young people discovered new places , new thoughts , new perspectives .
By the time the pilot had finished , we had the names of a thousand schools that wished to join .
The film that changed my life is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica , " Miracle in Milan . "
It 's a remarkable comment on slums , poverty and aspiration .
I had seen the film on the occasion of my father 's 50th birthday .
Technology then meant we had to hire a viewing cinema , find and pay for the print and the projectionist .
But for my father , the emotional and artistic importance of De Sica 's vision was so great that he chose to celebrate his half-century with his three teenage children and 30 of their friends , " In order , " he said , " to pass the baton of concern and hope on to the next generation . "
In the last shot of " Miracle in Milan , " slum-dwellers float skyward on flying brooms .
Sixty years after the film was made and 30 years after I first saw it , I see young faces tilt up in awe , their incredulity matching mine .
And the speed with which they associate it with " Slumdog Millionaire " or the favelas in Rio speaks to the enduring nature .
In a FILMCLUB season about democracy and government , we screened " Mr. Smith Goes to Washington . "
Made in 1939 , the film is older than most of our members ' grandparents .
Frank Capra 's classic values independence and propriety .
It shows how to do right , how to be heroically awkward .
It is also an expression of faith in the political machine as a force of honor .
Shortly after " Mr. Smith " became a FILMCLUB classic , there was a week of all-night filibustering in the House of Lords .
And it was with great delight that we found young people up and down the country explaining with authority what filibustering was and why the Lords might defy their bedtime on a point of principle .
After all , Jimmy Stewart filibustered for two entire reels .
In choosing " Hotel Rwanda , " they explored genocide of the most brutal kind .
It provoked tears as well as incisive questions about unarmed peace-keeping forces and the double-dealing of a Western society that picks its moral fights with commodities in mind .
And when " Schindler 's List " demanded that they never forget , one child , full of the pain of consciousness , remarked , " We already forgot , otherwise how did ' Hotel Rwanda ' happen ? "
As they watch more films their lives got palpably richer .
" Pickpocket " started a debate about criminality disenfranchisement .
" To Sir , with Love " ignited its teen audience .
They celebrated a change in attitude towards non-white Britons , but railed against our restless school system that does not value collective identity , unlike that offered by Sidney Poitier 's careful tutelage .
By now , these thoughtful , opinionated , curious young people thought nothing of tackling films of all forms -- black and white , subtitled , documentary , non-narrative , fantasy -- and thought nothing of writing detailed reviews that competed to favor one film over another in passionate and increasingly sophisticated prose .
Six thousand reviews each school week vying for the honor of being review of the week .
From 25 clubs , we became hundreds , then thousands , until we were nearly a quarter of a million kids in 7,000 clubs right across the country .
And although the numbers were , and continue to be , extraordinary , what became more extraordinary was how the experience of critical and curious questioning translated into life .
Some of our kids started talking with their parents , others with their teachers , or with their friends .
And those without friends started making them .
The films provided communality across all manner of divide .
And the stories they held provided a shared experience .
" Persepolis " brought a daughter closer to her Iranian mother , and " Jaws " became the way in which one young boy was able to articulate the fear he 'd experienced in flight from violence that killed first his father then his mother , the latter thrown overboard on a boat journey .
Who was right , who wrong ?
What would they do under the same conditions ?
Was the tale told well ?
Was there a hidden message ?
How has the world changed ? How could it be different ?
A tsunami of questions flew out of the mouths of children who the world didn 't think were interested .
And they themselves had not known they cared .
And as they wrote and debated , rather than seeing the films as artifacts , they began to see themselves .
I have an aunt who is a wonderful storyteller .
In a moment she can invoke images of running barefoot on Table Mountain and playing cops and robbers .
Quite recently she told me that in 1948 , two of her sisters and my father traveled on a boat to Israel without my grandparents .
When the sailors mutinied at sea in a demand for humane conditions , it was these teenagers that fed the crew .
I was past 40 when my father died .
He never mentioned that journey .
My mother 's mother left Europe in a hurry without her husband , but with her three-year-old daughter and diamonds sewn into the hem of her skirt .
After two years in hiding , my grandfather appeared in London .
He was never right again .
And his story was hushed as he assimilated .
My story started in England with a clean slate and the silence of immigrant parents .
I had " Anne Frank , " " The Great Escape , " " Shoah , " " Triumph of the Will . "
It was Leni Riefenstahl in her elegant Nazi propaganda who gave context to what the family had to endure .
These films held what was too hurtful to say out loud , and they became more useful to me than the whispers of survivors and the occasional glimpse of a tattoo on a maiden aunt 's wrist .
Purists may feel that fiction dissipates the quest of real human understanding , that film is too crude to tell a complex and detailed history , or that filmmakers always serve drama over truth .
But within the reels lie purpose and meaning .
As one 12-year-old said after watching " Wizard of Oz , " " Every person should watch this , because unless you do you may not know that you too have a heart . "
We honor reading , why not honor watching with the same passion ?
Consider " Citizen Kane " as valuable as Jane Austen .
Agree that " Boyz n the Hood , " like Tennyson , offers an emotional landscape and a heightened understanding that work together .
Each a piece of memorable art , each a brick in the wall of who we are .
And it 's okay if we remember Tom Hanks better than astronaut Jim Lovell or have Ben Kingsley 's face superimposed onto that of Gandhi 's .
And though not real , Eve Harrington , Howard Beale , Mildred Pierce are an opportunity to discover what it is to be human , and no less helpful to understanding our life and times as Shakespeare is in illuminating the world of Elizabethan England .
We guessed that film , whose stories are a meeting place of drama , music , literature and human experience , would engage and inspire the young people participating in FILMCLUB .
What we could not have foreseen was the measurable improvements in behavior , confidence and academic achievement .
Once-reluctant students now race to school , talk to their teachers , fight , not on the playground , but to choose next week 's film -- young people who have found self-definition , ambition and an appetite for education and social engagement from the stories they have witnessed .
Our members defy the binary description of how we so often describe our young .
They are neither feral nor myopically self-absorbed .
They are , like other young people , negotiating a world with infinite choice , but little culture of how to find meaningful experience .
We appeared surprised at the behaviors of those who define themselves by the size of the tick on their shoes , yet acquisition has been the narrative we have offered .
If we want different values we have to tell a different story , a story that understands that an individual narrative is an essential component of a person 's identity , that a collective narrative is an essential component of a cultural identity , and without it it is impossible to imagine yourself as part of a group .
Because when these people get home after a screening of " Rear Window " and raise their gaze to the building next door , they have the tools to wonder who , apart from them , is out there and what is their story .
Thank you .
Ellen Jorgensen : Biohacking -- you can do it , too
We have personal computing , why not personal biotech ? That 's the question biologist Ellen Jorgensen and her colleagues asked themselves before opening Genspace , a nonprofit DIYbio lab in Brooklyn devoted to citizen science , where amateurs can go and tinker with biotechnology . Far from being a sinister Frankenstein 's lab , Genspace offers a long list of fun , creative and practical uses for DIYbio .
It 's a great time to be a molecular biologist .
Reading and writing DNA code is getting easier and cheaper .
By the end of this year , we 'll be able to sequence the three million bits of information in your genome in less than a day and for less than 1,000 euros .
Biotech is probably the most powerful and the fastest-growing technology sector .
It has the power , potentially , to replace our fossil fuels , to revolutionize medicine , and to touch every aspect of our daily lives .
So who gets to do it ?
I think we 'd all be pretty comfortable with this guy doing it .
But what about that guy ?
In 2009 , I first heard about DIYbio .
It 's a movement that -- it advocates making biotechnology accessible to everyone , not just scientists and people in government labs .
The idea is that if you open up the science and you allow diverse groups to participate , it could really stimulate innovation .
Putting technology in the hands of the end user is usually a good idea because they 've got the best idea of what their needs are .
And here 's this really sophisticated technology coming down the road , all these associated social , moral , ethical questions , and we scientists are just lousy at explaining to the public just exactly what it is we 're doing in those labs .
So wouldn 't it be nice if there was a place in your local neighborhood where you could go and learn about this stuff , do it hands-on ?
I thought so .
So , three years ago , I got together with some friends of mine who had similar aspirations and we founded Genspace .
It 's a nonprofit , a community biotech lab in Brooklyn , New York , and the idea was people could come , they could take classes and putter around in the lab in a very open , friendly atmosphere .
None of my previous experience prepared me for what came next . Can you guess ?
The press started calling us .
And the more we talked about how great it was to increase science literacy , the more they wanted to talk about us creating the next Frankenstein , and as a result , for the next six months , when you Googled my name , instead of getting my scientific papers , you got this .
[ " Am I a biohazard ? " ] It was pretty depressing .
The only thing that got us through that period was that we knew that all over the world , there were other people that were trying to do the same thing that we were .
They were opening biohacker spaces , and some of them were facing much greater challenges than we did , more regulations , less resources .
But now , three years later , here 's where we stand .
It 's a vibrant , global community of hackerspaces , and this is just the beginning .
These are some of the biggest ones , and there are others opening every day .
There 's one probably going to open up in Moscow , one in South Korea , and the cool thing is they each have their own individual flavor that grew out of the community they came out of .
Let me take you on a little tour .
Biohackers work alone .
We work in groups , in big cities — — and in small villages .
We reverse engineer lab equipment .
We genetically engineer bacteria .
We hack hardware , software , wetware , and , of course , the code of life .
We like to build things .
Then we like to take things apart .
We make things grow .
We make things glow .
And we make cells dance .
The spirit of these labs , it 's open , it 's positive , but , you know , sometimes when people think of us , the first thing that comes to mind is bio-safety , bio-security , all the dark side stuff .
I 'm not going to minimize those concerns .
Any powerful technology is inherently dual use , and , you know , you get something like synthetic biology , nanobiotechnology , it really compels you , you have to look at both the amateur groups but also the professional groups , because they have better infrastructure , they have better facilities , and they have access to pathogens .
So the United Nations did just that , and they recently issued a report on this whole area , and what they concluded was the power of this technology for positive was much greater than the risk for negative , and they even looked specifically at the DIYbio community , and they noted , not surprisingly , that the press had a tendency to consistently overestimate our capabilities and underestimate our ethics .
As a matter of fact , DIY people from all over the world , America , Europe , got together last year , and we hammered out a common code of ethics .
That 's a lot more than conventional science has done .
Now , we follow state and local regulations .
We dispose of our waste properly , we follow safety procedures , we don 't work with pathogens .
You know , if you 're working with a pathogen , you 're not part of the biohacker community , you 're part of the bioterrorist community , I 'm sorry .
And sometimes people ask me , " Well , what about an accident ? "
Well , working with the safe organisms that we normally work with , the chance of an accident happening with somebody accidentally creating , like , some sort of superbug , that 's literally about as probable as a snowstorm in the middle of the Sahara Desert .
Now , it could happen , but I 'm not going to plan my life around it .
I 've actually chosen to take a different kind of risk .
I signed up for something called the Personal Genome Project .
It 's a study at Harvard where , at the end of the study , they 're going to take my entire genomic sequence , all of my medical information , and my identity , and they 're going to post it online for everyone to see .
There were a lot of risks involved that they talked about during the informed consent portion .
The one I liked the best is , someone could download my sequence , go back to the lab , synthesize some fake Ellen DNA , and plant it at a crime scene .
But like DIYbio , the positive outcomes and the potential for good for a study like that far outweighs the risk .
Now , you might be asking yourself , " Well , you know , what would I do in a biolab ? "
Well , it wasn 't that long ago we were asking , " Well , what would anyone do with a personal computer ? "
So this stuff is just beginning .
We 're only seeing just the tip of the DNA iceberg .
Let me show you what you could do right now .
A biohacker in Germany , a journalist , wanted to know whose dog was leaving little presents on his street ?
Yep , you guessed it . He threw tennis balls to all the neighborhood dogs , analyzed the saliva , identified the dog , and confronted the dog owner .
I discovered an invasive species in my own backyard .
Looked like a ladybug , right ?
It actually is a Japanese beetle .
And the same kind of technology -- it 's called DNA barcoding , it 's really cool -- You can use it to check if your caviar is really beluga , if that sushi is really tuna , or if that goat cheese that you paid so much for is really goat 's .
In a biohacker space , you can analyze your genome for mutations .
You can analyze your breakfast cereal for GMO 's , and you can explore your ancestry .
You can send weather balloons up into the stratosphere , collect microbes , see what 's up there .
You can make a biocensor out of yeast to detect pollutants in water .
You can make some sort of a biofuel cell .
You can do a lot of things .
You can also do an art science project . Some of these are really spectacular , and they look at social , ecological problems from a completely different perspective .
It 's really cool .
Some people ask me , well , why am I involved ?
I could have a perfectly good career in mainstream science .
The thing is , there 's something in these labs that they have to offer society that you can 't find anywhere else .
There 's something sacred about a space where you can work on a project , and you don 't have to justify to anyone that it 's going to make a lot of money , that it 's going to save mankind , or even that it 's feasible .
It just has to follow safety guidelines .
If you had spaces like this all over the world , it could really change the perception of who 's allowed to do biotech .
It 's spaces like these that spawned personal computing .
Why not personal biotech ?
If everyone in this room got involved , who knows what we could do ?
This is such a new area , and as we say back in Brooklyn , you ain 't seen nothin ' yet .
Geert Chatrou : A whistleblower you haven 't heard
In this engaging talk , world champion whistler Geert Chatrou performs the whimsical " Eleonora " by A. Honhoff , and his own " Fête de la Belle . " In a fascinating interlude , he talks about what brought him to the craft . & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
Thank you very much .
That was whistling .
I 'm trying to do this in English .
What is a chubby , curly-haired guy from Holland -- why is he whistling ?
Well actually , I 've [ been ] whistling since the age of four , about four .
My dad was always whistling around the house , and I just thought that 's part of communication in my family .
So I whistled along with him .
And actually , till I was 34 , I always annoyed and irritated people with whistling , because , to be honest , my whistling is a kind of deviant behavior .
I whistled alone . I whistled in the classroom .
I whistled on [ my ] bike . I whistled everywhere .
And I also whistled at a Christmas Eve party with my family-in-law .
And they had some , in my opinion , terrible Christmas music .
And when I hear music that I don 't like , I try to make it better .
So " Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer " -- you know it ?
But it can also sound like this .
But during a Christmas party -- at dinner actually -- it 's very annoying .
So my sister-in-law asked me a few times , " Please stop whistling . "
And I just couldn 't .
And at one point -- and I had some wine , I have to admit that -- at one point I said , " If there was a contest , I would join . "
And two weeks later I received a text message : " You 're going to America . "
So , okay , I 'm going to America .
I would love to , but why ?
So I immediately called her up , of course .
She Googled , and she found this World Whistling Championship in America , of course .
She didn 't expect me to go there .
And I would have lost my face .
I don 't know if that 's correct English .
But the Dutch people here will understand what I mean .
I lost my face .
And she thought , " He will never go there . "
But actually I did .
So I went to Louisburg , North Carolina , southeast United States , and I entered the world of whistling .
And I also entered the world championship , and I won there in 2004 .
That was great fun , of course .
And to defend my title -- like judokas do and sportsmen -- I thought , well let 's go back in 2005 , and I won again .
Then I couldn 't participate for a few years .
And in 2008 I entered again in Japan , Tokyo , and I won again .
So what happened now is I 'm standing here in Rotterdam , in the beautiful city , on a big stage , and I 'm talking about whistling .
And actually I earn my money whistling at the moment .
So I quit my day job as a nurse .
And I try to live my dream -- well , actually , it was never my dream , but it sounds so good .
Okay , I 'm not the only one whistling here .
You say , " Huh , what do you mean ? "
Well actually , you are going to whistle along .
And then always the same thing happens : people are watching each other and think , " Oh , my God .
Why ? Can I go away ? "
No , you can 't .
Actually it 's very simple .
The track that I will whistle is called " Fête de la Belle . "
It 's about 80 minutes long .
No , no , no . It 's four minutes long .
And I want to first rehearse with you your whistling .
So I whistle the tone .
Sorry . I forgot one thing .
You whistle the same tone as me .
I heard a wide variety of tones .
This is very promising .
This is very promising .
I 'll ask the technicians to start the music .
And if it 's started , I just point where you whistle along , and we will see what happens .
Oh , hah .
I 'm so sorry , technicians .
I 'm so used to that .
I start it myself .
Okay , here it is .
Okay .
It 's easy , isn 't it ?
Now comes the solo . I propose I do that myself .
Max Westerman : Geert Chatrou , the World Champion [ of ] Whistling .
Geert Chatrou : Thank you . Thank you .
Roberto D 'Angelo + Francesca Fedeli : In our baby 's illness , a life lesson
Roberto D 'Angelo and Francesca Fedeli thought their baby boy Mario was healthy -- until at 10 days old , they discovered he 'd had a perinatal stroke . With Mario unable to control the left side of his body , they grappled with tough questions : Would he be " normal ? " Could he live a full life ? The poignant story of parents facing their fears -- and how they turned them around .
Francesca Fedeli : Ciao .
So he 's Mario . He 's our son .
He was born two and a half years ago , and I had a pretty tough pregnancy because I had to stay still in a bed for , like , eight months .
But in the end everything seemed to be under control .
So he got the right weight at birth .
He got the right Apgar index .
So we were pretty reassured by this .
But at the end , 10 days later after he was born , we discovered that he had a stroke .
As you might know , a stroke is a brain injury .
A perinatal stroke could be something that can happen during the nine months of pregnancy or just suddenly after the birth , and in his case , as you can see , the right part of his brain has gone .
So the effect that this stroke could have on Mario 's body could be the fact that he couldn 't be able to control the left side of his body .
Just imagine , if you have a computer and a printer and you want to transmit , to input to print out a document , but the printer doesn 't have the right drives , so the same is for Mario .
It 's just like , he would like to move his left side of his body , but he 's not able to transmit the right input to move his left arm and left leg .
So life had to change .
We needed to change our schedule .
We needed to change the impact that this birth had on our life .
As you may imagine , unfortunately , we were not ready .
Nobody taught us how to deal with such kinds of disabilities , and as many questions as possible started to come to our minds .
And that has been really a tough time .
Questions , some basics , like , you know , why did this happen to us ?
And what went wrong ?
Some more tough , like , really , what will be the impact on Mario 's life ?
I mean , at the end , will he be able to work ?
Will he be able to be normal ?
And , you know , as a parent , especially for the first time , why is he not going to be better than us ?
And this , indeed , really is tough to say , but a few months later , we realized that we were really feeling like a failure .
I mean , the only real product of our life , at the end , was a failure .
And you know , it was not a failure for ourselves in itself , but it was a failure that will impact his full life .
Honestly , we went down .
I mean we went really down , but at the end , we started to look at him , and we said , we have to react .
So immediately , as Francesca said , we changed our life .
We started physiotherapy , we started the rehabilitation , and one of the paths that we were following in terms of rehabilitation is the mirror neurons pilot .
Basically , we spent months doing this with Mario .
You have an object , and we showed him how to grab the object .
Now , the theory of mirror neurons simply says that in your brains , exactly now , as you watch me doing this , you are activating exactly the same neurons as if you do the actions .
It looks like this is the leading edge in terms of rehabilitation .
But one day we found that Mario was not looking at our hand .
He was looking at us .
We were his mirror .
And the problem , as you might feel , is that we were down , we were depressed , we were looking at him as a problem , not as a son , not from a positive perspective .
And that day really changed our perspective .
We realized that we had to become a better mirror for Mario .
We restarted from our strengths , and at the same time we restarted from his strengths .
We stopped looking at him as a problem , and we started to look at him as an opportunity to improve .
And really , this was the change , and from our side , we said , " What are our strengths that we really can bring to Mario ? "
And we started from our passions .
I mean , at the end , my wife and myself are quite different , but we have many things in common .
We love to travel , we love music , we love to be in places like this , and we started to bring Mario with us just to show to him the best things that we can show to him .
This short video is from last week .
I am not saying -- — I am not saying it 's a miracle . That 's not the message , because we are just at the beginning of the path .
But we want to share what was the key learning , the key learning that Mario drove to us , and it is to consider what you have as a gift and not only what you miss , and to consider what you miss just as an opportunity .
And this is the message that we want to share with you .
This is why we are here .
Mario !
And this is why -- — And this is why we decided to share the best mirror in the world with him .
And we thank you so much , all of you .
Thank you . Thank you . Bye .
Thank you .
Mark Shaw : One very dry demo
Mark Shaw demos Ultra-Ever Dry , a liquid-repellent coating that acts as an astonishingly powerful shield against water and water-based materials . At the nano level , the spray covers a surface with an umbrella of air so that water bounces right off . Watch for an exciting two-minute kicker .
I 'm here to show you how something you can 't see can be so much fun to look at .
You 're about to experience a new , available and exciting technology that 's going to make us rethink how we waterproof our lives .
What I have here is a cinder block that we 've coated half with a nanotechnology spray that can be applied to almost any material .
It 's called Ultra-Ever Dry , and when you apply it to any material , it turns into a superhydrophobic shield .
So this is a cinder block , uncoated , and you can see that it 's porous , it absorbs water .
Not anymore .
Porous , nonporous .
So what 's superhydrophobic ?
Superhydrophobic is how we measure a drop of water on a surface .
The rounder it is , the more hydrophobic it is , and if it 's really round , it 's superhydrophobic .
A freshly waxed car , the water molecules slump to about 90 degrees .
A windshield coating is going to give you about 110 degrees .
But what you 're seeing here is 160 to 175 degrees , and anything over 150 is superhydrophobic .
So as part of the demonstration , what I have is a pair of gloves , and we 've coated one of the gloves with the nanotechnology coating , and let 's see if you can tell which one , and I 'll give you a hint .
Did you guess the one that was dry ?
When you have nanotechnology and nanoscience , what 's occurred is that we 're able to now look at atoms and molecules and actually control them for great benefits .
And we 're talking really small here .
The way you measure nanotechnology is in nanometers , and one nanometer is a billionth of a meter , and to put some scale to that , if you had a nanoparticle that was one nanometer thick , and you put it side by side , and you had 50,000 of them , you 'd be the width of a human hair .
So very small , but very useful .
And it 's not just water that this works with .
It 's a lot of water-based materials like concrete , water-based paint , mud , and also some refined oils as well .
You can see the difference .
Moving onto the next demonstration , we 've taken a pane of glass and we 've coated the outside of it , we 've framed it with the nanotechnology coating , and we 're going to pour this green-tinted water inside the middle , and you 're going to see , it 's going to spread out on glass like you 'd normally think it would , except when it hits the coating , it stops , and I can 't even coax it to leave .
It 's that afraid of the water .
So what 's going on here ? What 's happening ?
Well , the surface of the spray coating is actually filled with nanoparticles that form a very rough and craggly surface .
You 'd think it 'd be smooth , but it 's actually not .
And it has billions of interstitial spaces , and those spaces , along with the nanoparticles , reach up and grab the air molecules , and cover the surface with air .
It 's an umbrella of air all across it , and that layer of air is what the water hits , the mud hits , the concrete hits , and it glides right off .
So if I put this inside this water here , you can see a silver reflective coating around it , and that silver reflective coating is the layer of air that 's protecting the water from touching the paddle , and it 's dry .
So what are the applications ?
I mean , many of you right now are probably going through your head .
Everyone that sees this gets excited , and says , " Oh , I could use it for this and this and this . "
The applications in a general sense could be anything that 's anti-wetting .
We 've certainly seen that today .
It could be anything that 's anti-icing , because if you don 't have water , you don 't have ice .
It could be anti-corrosion .
No water , no corrosion .
It could be anti-bacterial .
Without water , the bacteria won 't survive .
And it could be things that need to be self-cleaning as well .
So imagine how something like this could help revolutionize your field of work .
And I 'm going to leave you with one last demonstration , but before I do that , I would like to say thank you , and think small .
It 's going to happen . Wait for it . Wait for it .
You guys didn 't hear about us cutting out the Design from TED ?
[ Two minutes later ... ] He ran into all sorts of problems in terms of managing the medical research part .
It 's happening !

Dan Ariely : Our buggy moral code
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code : the hidden reasons we think it 's OK to cheat or steal . Clever studies help make his point that we 're predictably irrational -- and can be influenced in ways we can 't grasp .
I want to talk to you today a little bit about predictable irrationality .
And my interest in irrational behavior started many years ago in the hospital .
I was burned very badly .
And if you spend a lot of time in hospital , you 'll see a lot of types of irrationalities .
And the one that particularly bothered me in the burn department was the process by which the nurses took the bandage off me .
Now , you must have all taken a Band-Aid off at some point , and you must have wondered what 's the right approach .
Do you rip it off quickly -- short duration but high intensity -- or do you take your Band-Aid off slowly -- you take a long time , but each second is not as painful -- which one of those is the right approach ?
The nurses in my department thought that the right approach was the ripping one , so they would grab hold and they would rip , and they would grab hold and they would rip .
And because I had 70 percent of my body burned , it would take about an hour .
And as you can imagine , I hated that moment of ripping with incredible intensity .
And I would try to reason with them and say , " Why don 't we try something else ?
Why don 't we take it a little longer -- maybe two hours instead of an hour -- and have less of this intensity ? "
And the nurses told me two things .
They told me that they had the right model of the patient -- that they knew what was the right thing to do to minimize my pain -- and they also told me that the word patient doesn 't mean to make suggestions or to interfere or ...
This is not just in Hebrew , by the way .
It 's in every language I 've had experience with so far .
And , you know , there 's not much -- there wasn 't much I could do , and they kept on doing what they were doing .
And about three years later , when I left the hospital , I started studying at the university .
And one of the most interesting lessons I learned was that there is an experimental method that if you have a question you can create a replica of this question in some abstract way , and you can try to examine this question , maybe learn something about the world .
So that 's what I did .
I was still interested in this question of how do you take bandages off burn patients .
So originally I didn 't have much money , so I went to a hardware store and I bought a carpenter 's vice .
And I would bring people to the lab and I would put their finger in it , and I would crunch it a little bit .
And I would crunch it for long periods and short periods , and pain that went up and pain that went down , and with breaks and without breaks -- all kinds of versions of pain .
And when I finished hurting people a little bit , I would ask them , so , how painful was this ? Or , how painful was this ?
Or , if you had to choose between the last two , which one would you choose ?
I kept on doing this for a while .
And then , like all good academic projects , I got more funding .
I moved to sounds , electrical shocks -- I even had a pain suit that I could get people to feel much more pain .
But at the end of this process , what I learned was that the nurses were wrong .
Here were wonderful people with good intentions and plenty of experience , and nevertheless they were getting things wrong predictably all the time .
It turns out that because we don 't encode duration in the way that we encode intensity , I would have had less pain if the duration would have been longer and the intensity was lower .
It turns out it would have been better to start with my face , which was much more painful , and move toward my legs , giving me a trend of improvement over time -- that would have been also less painful .
And it also turns out that it would have been good to give me breaks in the middle to kind of recuperate from the pain .
All of these would have been great things to do , and my nurses had no idea .
And from that point on I started thinking , are the nurses the only people in the world who get things wrong in this particular decision , or is it a more general case ?
And it turns out it 's a more general case -- there 's a lot of mistakes we do .
And I want to give you one example of one of these irrationalities , and I want to talk to you about cheating .
And the reason I picked cheating is because it 's interesting , but also it tells us something , I think , about the stock market situation we 're in .
So , my interest in cheating started when Enron came on the scene , exploded all of a sudden , and I started thinking about what is happening here .
Is it the case that there was kind of a few apples who are capable of doing these things , or are we talking a more endemic situation , that many people are actually capable of behaving this way ?
So , like we usually do , I decided to do a simple experiment .
And here 's how it went .
If you were in the experiment , I would pass you a sheet of paper with 20 simple math problems that everybody could solve , but I wouldn 't give you enough time .
When the five minutes were over , I would say , " Pass me the sheets of paper , and I 'll pay you a dollar per question . "
People did this . I would pay people four dollars for their task -- on average people would solve four problems .
Other people I would tempt to cheat .
I would pass their sheet of paper .
When the five minutes were over , I would say , " Please shred the piece of paper .
Put the little pieces in your pocket or in your backpack , and tell me how many questions you got correctly . "
People now solved seven questions on average .
Now , it wasn 't as if there was a few bad apples -- a few people cheated a lot .
Instead , what we saw is a lot of people who cheat a little bit .
Now , in economic theory , cheating is a very simple cost-benefit analysis .
You say , what 's the probability of being caught ?
How much do I stand to gain from cheating ?
And how much punishment would I get if I get caught ?
And you weigh these options out -- you do the simple cost-benefit analysis , and you decide whether it 's worthwhile to commit the crime or not .
So , we try to test this .
For some people , we varied how much money they could get away with -- how much money they could steal .
We paid them 10 cents per correct question , 50 cents , a dollar , five dollars , 10 dollars per correct question .
You would expect that as the amount of money on the table increases , people would cheat more , but in fact it wasn 't the case .
We got a lot of people cheating by stealing by a little bit .
What about the probability of being caught ?
Some people shredded half the sheet of paper , so there was some evidence left .
Some people shredded the whole sheet of paper .
Some people shredded everything , went out of the room , and paid themselves from the bowl of money that had over 100 dollars .
You would expect that as the probability of being caught goes down , people would cheat more , but again , this was not the case .
Again , a lot of people cheated by just by a little bit , and they were insensitive to these economic incentives .
So we said , " If people are not sensitive to the economic rational theory explanations , to these forces , what could be going on ? "
And we thought maybe what is happening is that there are two forces .
At one hand , we all want to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel good about ourselves , so we don 't want to cheat .
On the other hand , we can cheat a little bit , and still feel good about ourselves .
So , maybe what is happening is that there 's a level of cheating we can 't go over , but we can still benefit from cheating at a low degree , as long as it doesn 't change our impressions about ourselves .
We call this like a personal fudge factor .
Now , how would you test a personal fudge factor ?
Initially we said , what can we do to shrink the fudge factor ?
So , we got people to the lab , and we said , " We have two tasks for you today . "
First , we asked half the people to recall either 10 books they read in high school , or to recall The Ten Commandments , and then we tempted them with cheating .
Turns out the people who tried to recall The Ten Commandments -- and in our sample nobody could recall all of The Ten Commandments -- but those people who tried to recall The Ten Commandments , given the opportunity to cheat , did not cheat at all .
It wasn 't that the more religious people -- the people who remembered more of the Commandments -- cheated less , and the less religious people -- the people who couldn 't remember almost any Commandments -- cheated more .
The moment people thought about trying to recall The Ten Commandments , they stopped cheating .
In fact , even when we gave self-declared atheists the task of swearing on the Bible and we give them a chance to cheat , they don 't cheat at all .
Now , Ten Commandments is something that is hard to bring into the education system , so we said , " Why don 't we get people to sign the honor code ? "
So , we got people to sign , " I understand that this short survey falls under the MIT Honor Code . "
Then they shredded it . No cheating whatsoever .
And this is particularly interesting , because MIT doesn 't have an honor code .
So , all this was about decreasing the fudge factor .
What about increasing the fudge factor ?
The first experiment -- I walked around MIT and I distributed six-packs of Cokes in the refrigerators -- these were common refrigerators for the undergrads .
And I came back to measure what we technically call the half-lifetime of Coke -- how long does it last in the refrigerators ?
As you can expect it doesn 't last very long ; people take it .
In contrast , I took a plate with six one-dollar bills , and I left those plates in the same refrigerators .
No bill ever disappeared .
Now , this is not a good social science experiment , so to do it better I did the same experiment as I described to you before .
A third of the people we passed the sheet , they gave it back to us .
A third of the people we passed it to , they shredded it , they came to us and said , " Mr. Experimenter , I solved X problems . Give me X dollars . "
A third of the people , when they finished shredding the piece of paper , they came to us and said , " Mr Experimenter , I solved X problems . Give me X tokens . "
We did not pay them with dollars ; we paid them with something else .
And then they took the something else , they walked 12 feet to the side , and exchanged it for dollars .
Think about the following intuition .
How bad would you feel about taking a pencil from work home , compared to how bad would you feel about taking 10 cents from a petty cash box ?
These things feel very differently .
Would being a step removed from cash for a few seconds by being paid by token make a difference ?
Our subjects doubled their cheating .
I 'll tell you what I think about this and the stock market in a minute .
But this did not solve the big problem I had with Enron yet , because in Enron , there 's also a social element .
People see each other behaving .
In fact , every day when we open the news we see examples of people cheating .
What does this cause us ?
So , we did another experiment .
We got a big group of students to be in the experiment , and we prepaid them .
So everybody got an envelope with all the money for the experiment , and we told them that at the end , we asked them to pay us back the money they didn 't make . OK ?
The same thing happens .
When we give people the opportunity to cheat , they cheat .
They cheat just by a little bit , all the same .
But in this experiment we also hired an acting student .
This acting student stood up after 30 seconds , and said , " I solved everything . What do I do now ? "
And the experimenter said , " If you 've finished everything , go home .
That 's it . The task is finished . "
So , now we had a student -- an acting student -- that was a part of the group .
Nobody knew it was an actor .
And they clearly cheated in a very , very serious way .
What would happen to the other people in the group ?
Will they cheat more , or will they cheat less ?
Here is what happens .
It turns out it depends on what kind of sweatshirt they 're wearing .
Here is the thing .
We ran this at Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh .
And at Pittsburgh there are two big universities , Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh .
All of the subjects sitting in the experiment were Carnegie Mellon students .
When the actor who was getting up was a Carnegie Mellon student -- he was actually a Carnegie Mellon student -- but he was a part of their group , cheating went up .
But when he actually had a University of Pittsburgh sweatshirt , cheating went down .
Now , this is important , because remember , when the moment the student stood up , it made it clear to everybody that they could get away with cheating , because the experimenter said , " You 've finished everything . Go home , " and they went with the money .
So it wasn 't so much about the probability of being caught again .
It was about the norms for cheating .
If somebody from our in-group cheats and we see them cheating , we feel it 's more appropriate , as a group , to behave this way .
But if it 's somebody from another group , these terrible people -- I mean , not terrible in this -- but somebody we don 't want to associate ourselves with , from another university , another group , all of a sudden people 's awareness of honesty goes up -- a little bit like The Ten Commandments experiment -- and people cheat even less .
So , what have we learned from this about cheating ?
We 've learned that a lot of people can cheat .
They cheat just by a little bit .
When we remind people about their morality , they cheat less .
When we get bigger distance from cheating , from the object of money , for example , people cheat more .
And when we see cheating around us , particularly if it 's a part of our in-group , cheating goes up .
Now , if we think about this in terms of the stock market , think about what happens .
What happens in a situation when you create something where you pay people a lot of money to see reality in a slightly distorted way ?
Would they not be able to see it this way ?
Of course they would .
What happens when you do other things , like you remove things from money ?
You call them stock , or stock options , derivatives , mortgage-backed securities .
Could it be that with those more distant things , it 's not a token for one second , it 's something that is many steps removed from money for a much longer time -- could it be that people will cheat even more ?
And what happens to the social environment when people see other people behave around them ?
I think all of those forces worked in a very bad way in the stock market .
More generally , I want to tell you something about behavioral economics .
We have many intuitions in our life , and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong .
The question is , are we going to test those intuitions ?
We can think about how we 're going to test this intuition in our private life , in our business life , and most particularly when it goes to policy , when we think about things like No Child Left Behind , when you create new stock markets , when you create other policies -- taxation , health care and so on .
And the difficulty of testing our intuition was the big lesson I learned when I went back to the nurses to talk to them .
So I went back to talk to them and tell them what I found out about removing bandages .
And I learned two interesting things .
One was that my favorite nurse , Ettie , told me that I did not take her pain into consideration .
She said , " Of course , you know , it was very painful for you .
But think about me as a nurse , taking , removing the bandages of somebody I liked , and had to do it repeatedly over a long period of time .
Creating so much torture was not something that was good for me , too . "
And she said maybe part of the reason was it was difficult for her .
But it was actually more interesting than that , because she said , " I did not think that your intuition was right .
I felt my intuition was correct . "
So , if you think about all of your intuitions , it 's very hard to believe that your intuition is wrong .
And she said , " Given the fact that I thought my intuition was right ... " -- she thought her intuition was right -- it was very difficult for her to accept doing a difficult experiment to try and check whether she was wrong .
But in fact , this is the situation we 're all in all the time .
We have very strong intuitions about all kinds of things -- our own ability , how the economy works , how we should pay school teachers .
But unless we start testing those intuitions , we 're not going to do better .
And just think about how better my life would have been if these nurses would have been willing to check their intuition , and how everything would have been better if we just start doing more systematic experimentation of our intuitions .
Thank you very much .
Jane McGonigal : Massively multi-player … thumb-wrestling ?
What happens when you get an entire audience to stand up and connect with one another ? Chaos , that 's what . At least , that 's what happened when Jane McGonigal tried to teach TED to play her favorite game . Then again , when the game is " massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling , " what else would you expect ?
Today I am going to teach you how to play my favorite game : massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling .
It 's the only game in the world that I know of that allows you , the player , the opportunity to experience 10 positive emotions in 60 seconds or less .
This is true , so if you play this game with me today for just one single minute , you will get to feel joy , relief , love , surprise , pride , curiosity , excitement , awe and wonder , contentment , and creativity , all in the span of one minute .
So this sounds pretty good , right ? Now you 're willing to play .
In order to teach you this game , I 'm going to need some volunteers to come up onstage really quickly , and we 're going to do a little hands-on demo .
While they 're coming up , I should let you know , this game was invented 10 years ago by an artists ' collective in Austria named Monochrom .
So thank you , Monochrom .
Okay , so most people are familiar with traditional , two-person thumb-wrestling .
Sunni , let 's just remind them .
One , two , three , four , I declare a thumb war , and we wrestle , and of course Sunni beats me because she 's the best .
Now the first thing about massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling , we 're the gamer generation .
There are a billion gamers on the planet now , so we need more of a challenge .
So the first thing we need is more thumbs .
So Eric , come on over .
So we could get three thumbs together , and Peter could join us .
We could even have four thumbs together , and the way you win is you 're the first person to pin someone else 's thumb .
This is really important . You can 't , like , wait while they fight it out and then swoop in at the last minute .
That is not how you win .
Ah , who did that ? Eric you did that .
So Eric would have won . He was the first person to pin my thumb .
Okay , so that 's the first rule , and we can see that three or four is kind of the typical number of thumbs in a node , but if you feel ambitious , you don 't have to hold back .
We can really go for it .
So you can see up here .
Now the only other rule you need to remember is , gamer generation , we like a challenge .
I happen to notice you all have some thumbs you 're not using .
So I think we should kind of get some more involved .
And if we had just four people , we would do it just like this , and we would try and wrestle both thumbs at the same time .
Perfect .
Now , if we had more people in the room , instead of just wrestling in a closed node , we might reach out and try and grab some other people .
And in fact , that 's what we 're going to do right now .
We 're going to try and get all , something like , I don 't know , 1,500 thumbs in this room connected in a single node .
And we have to connect both levels , so if you 're up there , you 're going to be reaching down and reaching up .
Now — — before we get started -- This is great . You 're excited to play . — before we get started , can I have the slides back up here really quick , because if you get good at this game , I want you to know there are some advanced levels .
So this is the kind of simple level , right ?
But there are advanced configurations .
This is called the Death Star Configuration .
Any Star Wars fans ?
And this one 's called the Möbius Strip .
Any science geeks , you get that one .
This is the hardest level . This is the extreme .
So we 'll stick with the normal one for now , and I 'm going to give you 30 seconds , every thumb into the node , connect the upper and the lower levels , you guys go on down there .
Thirty seconds . Into the network . Make the node .
Stand up ! It 's easier if you stand up .
Everybody , up up up up up !
Stand up , my friends .
All right .
Don 't start wrestling yet .
If you have a free thumb , wave it around , make sure it gets connected .
Okay . We need to do a last-minute thumb check .
If you have a free thumb , wave it around to make sure .
Grab that thumb !
Reach behind you . There you go .
Any other thumbs ?
Okay , on the count of three , you 're going to go .
Try to keep track . Grab , grab , grab it .
Okay ? One , two , three , go !
Did you win ? You got it ? You got it ? Excellent !
Well done . Thank you . Thank you very much .
All right .
While you are basking in the glow of having won your first massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling game , let 's do a quick recap on the positive emotions .
So curiosity .
I said " massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling . "
You were like , " What the hell is she talking about ? "
So I provoked a little curiosity .
Creativity : it took creativity to solve the problem of getting all the thumbs into the node .
I 'm reaching around and I 'm reaching up .
So you used creativity . That was great .
How about surprise ? The actual feeling of trying to wrestle two thumbs at once is pretty surprising .
You heard that sound go up in the room .
We had excitement . As you started to wrestle , maybe you 're starting to win or this person 's , like , really into it , so you kind of get the excitement going .
We have relief . You got to stand up .
You 've been sitting for awhile , so the physical relief , getting to shake it out .
We had joy . You were laughing , smiling . Look at your faces . This room is full of joy .
We had some contentment .
I didn 't see anybody sending text messages or checking their email while we were playing , so you were totally content to be playing .
The most important three emotions , awe and wonder , we had everybody connected physically for a minute .
When was the last time you were at TED and you got to connect physically with every single person in the room ?
And it 's truly awesome and wondrous .
And speaking of physical connection , you guys know I love the hormone oxytocin , you release oxytocin , you feel bonded to everyone in the room .
You guys know that the best way to release oxytocin quickly is to hold someone else 's hand for at least six seconds .
You guys were all holding hands for way more than six seconds , so we are all now biochemically primed to love each other . That is great .
And the last emotion of pride .
How many people are like me . Just admit it .
You lost both your thumbs .
It just didn 't work out for you .
That 's okay , because you learned a new skill today .
You learned , from scratch , a game you never knew before .
Now you know how to play it . You can teach other people .
So congratulations .
How many of you won just won thumb ?
All right . I have very good news for you .
According to the official rules of massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling , this makes you a grandmaster of the game .
Because there aren 't that many people who know how to play , we have to kind of accelerate the program more than a game like chess .
So congratulations , grandmasters .
Win one thumb once , you will become a grandmaster .
Did anybody win both their thumbs ?
Yes . Awesome . Okay .
Get ready to update your Twitter or Facebook status .
You guys , according to the rules , are legendary grandmasters , so congratulations .
I will just leave you with this tip , if you want to play again .
The best way to become a legendary grandmaster , you 've got your two nodes going on .
Pick off the one that looks easiest .
They 're not paying attention . They look kind of weak .
Focus on that one and do something crazy with this arm .
As soon as you win , suddenly stop .
Everybody is thrown off . You go in for the kill .
That 's how you become a legendary grandmaster of massively multiplayer thumb-wrestling .
Thank you for letting me teach you my favorite game .
Wooo !
Thank you .
David Byrne : How architecture helped music evolve
As his career grew , David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall . He asks : Does the venue make the music ? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock , he explores how context has pushed musical innovation .
This is the venue where , as a young man , some of the music that I wrote was first performed .
It was , remarkably , a pretty good sounding room .
With all the uneven walls and all the crap everywhere , it actually sounded pretty good .
This is a song that was recorded there .
This is not Talking Heads , in the picture anyway .
" by Talking Heads ) So the nature of the room meant that words could be understood .
The lyrics of the songs could be pretty much understood .
The sound system was kind of decent .
And there wasn 't a lot of reverberation in the room .
So the rhythms could be pretty intact too , pretty concise .
Other places around the country had similar rooms .
This is Tootsie 's Orchid Lounge in Nashville .
The music was in some ways different , but in structure and form , very much the same .
The clientele behavior was very much the same too .
And so the bands at Tootsie 's or at CBGB 's had to play loud enough -- the volume had to be loud enough to overcome people falling down , shouting out and doing whatever else they were doing .
Since then , I 've played other places that are much nicer .
I 've played the Disney Hall here and Carnegie Hall and places like that .
And it 's been very exciting .
But I also noticed that sometimes the music that I had written , or was writing at the time , didn 't sound all that great in some of those halls .
We managed , but sometimes those halls didn 't seem exactly suited to the music I was making or had made .
So I asked myself : Do I write stuff for specific rooms ?
Do I have a place , a venue , in mind when I write ?
Is that a kind of model for creativity ?
Do we all make things with a venue , a context , in mind ?
Okay , Africa .
Most of the popular music that we know now has a big part of its roots in West Africa .
And the music there , I would say , the instruments , the intricate rhythms , the way it 's played , the setting , the context , it 's all perfect . It all works perfect .
The music works perfectly in that setting .
There 's no big room to create reverberation and confuse the rhythms .
The instruments are loud enough that they can be heard without amplification , etc . , etc .
It 's no accident .
It 's perfect for that particular context .
And it would be a mess in a context like this . This is a gothic cathedral .
In a gothic cathedral , this kind of music is perfect .
It doesn 't change key , the notes are long , there 's almost no rhythm whatsoever , and the room flatters the music .
It actually improves it .
This is the room that Bach wrote some of his music for . This is the organ .
It 's not as big as a gothic cathedral , so he can write things that are a little bit more intricate .
He can , very innovatively , actually change keys without risking huge dissonances .
This is a little bit later .
This is the kind of rooms that Mozart wrote in .
I think we 're in like 1770 , somewhere around there .
They 're smaller , even less reverberant , so he can write really frilly music that 's very intricate -- and it works .
It fits the room perfectly .
This is La Scala .
It 's around the same time , I think it was built around 1776 .
People in the audience in these opera houses , when they were built , they used to yell out to one another .
They used to eat , drink and yell out to people on the stage , just like they do at CBGB 's and places like that .
If they liked an aria , they would holler and suggest that it be done again as an encore , not at the end of the show , but immediately .
And well , that was an opera experience .
This is the opera house that Wagner built for himself .
And the size of the room is not that big .
It 's smaller than this .
But Wagner made an innovation .
He wanted a bigger band .
He wanted a little more bombast , so he increased the size of the orchestra pit so he could get more low-end instruments in there .
Okay .
This is Carnegie Hall .
Obviously , this kind of thing became popular .
The halls got bigger . Carnegie Hall 's fair-sized .
It 's larger than some of the other symphony halls .
And they 're a lot more reverberant than La Scala .
Around the same , according to Alex Ross who writes for the New Yorker , this kind of rule came into effect that audiences had to be quiet -- no more eating , drinking and yelling at the stage , or gossiping with one another during the show .
They had to be very quiet .
So those two things combined meant that a different kind of music worked best in these kind of halls .
It meant that there could be extreme dynamics , which there weren 't in some of these other kinds of music .
Quiet parts could be heard that would have been drowned out by all the gossiping and shouting .
But because of the reverberation in those rooms like Carnegie Hall , the music had to be maybe a little less rhythmic and a little more textural .
This is Mahler .
It looks like Bob Dylan , but it 's Mahler .
That was Bob 's last record , yeah .
Popular music , coming along at the same time .
This is a jazz band .
According to Scott Joplin , the bands were playing on riverboats and clubs .
Again , it 's noisy . They 're playing for dancers .
There 's certain sections of the song -- the songs had different sections that the dancers really liked .
And they 'd say , " Play that part again . "
Well , there 's only so many times you can play the same section of a song over and over again for the dancers .
So the bands started to improvise new melodies .
And a new form of music was born .
These are played mainly in small rooms .
People are dancing , shouting and drinking .
So the music has to be loud enough to be heard above that .
Same thing goes true for -- that 's the beginning of the century -- for the whole of 20th-century popular music , whether it 's rock or Latin music or whatever .
[ Live music ] doesn 't really change that much .
It changes about a third of the way into the 20th century , when this became one of the primary venues for music .
And this was one way that the music got there .
Microphones enabled singers , in particular , and musicians and composers , to completely change the kind of music that they were writing .
So far , a lot of the stuff that was on the radio was live music , but singers , like Frank Sinatra , could use the mic and do things that they could never do without a microphone .
Other singers after him went even further .
This is Chet Baker .
And this kind of thing would have been impossible without a microphone .
It would have been impossible without recorded music as well .
And he 's singing right into your ear .
He 's whispering into your ears .
The effect is just electric .
It 's like the guy is sitting next to you , whispering who knows what into your ear .
So at this point , music diverged .
There 's live music , and there 's recorded music .
And they no longer have to be exactly the same .
Now there 's venues like this , a discotheque , and there 's jukeboxes in bars , where you don 't even need to have a band .
There doesn 't need to be any live performing musicians whatsoever , and the sound systems are good .
People began to make music specifically for discos and for those sound systems .
And , as with jazz , the dancers liked certain sections more than they did others .
So the early hip-hop guys would loop certain sections .
The MC would improvise lyrics in the same way that the jazz players would improvise melodies .
And another new form of music was born .
Live performance , when it was incredibly successful , ended up in what is probably , acoustically , the worst sounding venues on the planet : sports stadiums , basketball arenas and hockey arenas .
Musicians who ended up there did the best they could .
They wrote what is now called arena rock , which is medium-speed ballads .
They did the best they could given that this is what they 're writing for .
The tempos are medium . It sounds big .
It 's more a social situation than a musical situation .
And in some ways , the music that they 're writing for this place works perfectly .
So there 's more new venues .
One of the new ones is the automobile .
I grew up with a radio in a car .
But now that 's evolved into something else .
The car is a whole venue .
The music that , I would say , is written for automobile sound systems works perfectly on it .
It might not be what you want to listen to at home , but it works great in the car -- has a huge frequency spectrum , you know , big bass and high-end and the voice kind of stuck in the middle .
Automobile music , you can share with your friends .
There 's one other kind of new venue , the private MP3 player .
Presumably , this is just for Christian music .
And in some ways it 's like Carnegie Hall , or when the audience had to hush up , because you can now hear every single detail .
In other ways , it 's more like the West African music because if the music in an MP3 player gets too quiet , you turn it up , and the next minute , your ears are blasted out by a louder passage .
So that doesn 't really work .
I think pop music , mainly , it 's written today , to some extent , is written for these kind of players , for this kind of personal experience where you can hear extreme detail , but the dynamic doesn 't change that much .
So I asked myself : Okay , is this a model for creation , this adaptation that we do ?
And does it happen anywhere else ?
Well , according to David Attenborough and some other people , birds do it too -- that the birds in the canopy , where the foliage is dense , their calls tend to be high-pitched , short and repetitive .
And the birds on the floor tend to have lower pitched calls , so that they don 't get distorted when they bounce off the forest floor .
And birds like this Savannah sparrow , they tend to have a buzzing type call .
And it turns out that a sound like this is the most energy efficient and practical way to transmit their call across the fields and savannahs .
Other birds , like this tanager , have adapted within the same species .
The tananger on the East Coast of the United States , where the forests are a little denser , has one kind of call , and the tananger on the other side , on the west has a different kind of call .
So birds do it too .
And I thought : Well , if this is a model for creation , if we make music , primarily the form at least , to fit these contexts , and if we make art to fit gallery walls or museum walls , and if we write software to fit existing operating systems , is that how it works ?
Yeah . I think it 's evolutionary .
It 's adaptive .
But the pleasure and the passion and the joy is still there .
This is a reverse view of things from the kind of traditional Romantic view .
The Romantic view is that first comes the passion and then the outpouring of emotion , and then somehow it gets shaped into something .
And I 'm saying , well , the passion 's still there , but the vessel that it 's going to be injected into and poured into , that is instinctively and intuitively created first .
We already know where that passion is going .
But this conflict of views is kind of interesting .
The writer , Thomas Frank , says that this might be a kind of explanation why some voters vote against their best interests , that voters , like a lot of us , assume , that if they hear something that sounds like it 's sincere , that it 's coming from the gut , that it 's passionate , that it 's more authentic .
And they 'll vote for that .
So that , if somebody can fake sincerity , if they can fake passion , they stand a better chance which seems a little dangerous .
I 'm saying the two , the passion , the joy , are not mutually exclusive .
Maybe what the world needs now is for us to realize that we are like the birds .
We adapt .
We sing .
And like the birds , the joy is still there , even though we have changed what we do to fit the context .
Thank you very much .
Kevin Breel : Confessions of a depressed comic
Kevin Breel didn 't look like a depressed kid : team captain , at every party , funny and confident . But he tells the story of the night he realized that -- to save his own life -- he needed to say four simple words .
For a long time in my life , I felt like I 'd been living two different lives .
There 's the life that everyone sees , and then there 's the life that only I see .
And in the life that everyone sees , who I am is a friend , a son , a brother , a stand-up comedian and a teenager .
That 's the life everyone sees .
If you were to ask my friends and family to describe me , that 's what they would tell you .
And that 's a huge part of me . That is who I am .
And if you were to ask me to describe myself , I 'd probably say some of those same things .
And I wouldn 't be lying , but I wouldn 't totally be telling you the truth , either , because the truth is , that 's just the life everyone else sees .
In the life that only I see , who I am , who I really am , is someone who struggles intensely with depression .
I have for the last six years of my life , and I continue to every day .
Now , for someone who has never experienced depression or doesn 't really know what that means , that might surprise them to hear , because there 's this pretty popular misconception that depression is just being sad when something in your life goes wrong , when you break up with your girlfriend , when you lose a loved one , when you don 't get the job you wanted .
But that 's sadness . That 's a natural thing .
That 's a natural human emotion .
Real depression isn 't being sad when something in your life goes wrong .
Real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right .
That 's real depression , and that 's what I suffer from .
And to be totally honest , that 's hard for me to stand up here and say .
It 's hard for me to talk about , and it seems to be hard for everyone to talk about , so much so that no one 's talking about it .
And no one 's talking about depression , but we need to be , because right now it 's a massive problem .
It 's a massive problem .
But we don 't see it on social media , right ?
We don 't see it on Facebook . We don 't see it on Twitter .
We don 't see it on the news , because it 's not happy , it 's not fun , it 's not light .
And so because we don 't see it , we don 't see the severity of it .
But the severity of it and the seriousness of it is this : every 30 seconds , every 30 seconds , somewhere , someone in the world takes their own life because of depression , and it might be two blocks away , it might be two countries away , it might be two continents away , but it 's happening , and it 's happening every single day .
And we have a tendency , as a society , to look at that and go , " So what ? "
So what ? We look at that , and we go , " That 's your problem .
That 's their problem . "
We say we 're sad and we say we 're sorry , but we also say , " So what ? "
Well , two years ago it was my problem , because I sat on the edge of my bed where I 'd sat a million times before and I was suicidal .
I was suicidal , and if you were to look at my life on the surface , you wouldn 't see a kid who was suicidal .
You 'd see a kid who was the captain of his basketball team , the drama and theater student of the year , the English student of the year , someone who was consistently on the honor roll and consistently at every party .
So you would say I wasn 't depressed , you would say I wasn 't suicidal , but you would be wrong .
You would be wrong . So I sat there that night beside a bottle of pills with a pen and paper in my hand and I thought about taking my own life and I came this close to doing it .
I came this close to doing it .
And I didn 't , so that makes me one of the lucky ones , one of the people who gets to step out on the ledge and look down but not jump , one of the lucky ones who survives .
Well , I survived , and that just leaves me with my story , and my story is this : In four simple words , I suffer from depression .
I suffer from depression , and for a long time , I think , I was living two totally different lives , where one person was always afraid of the other .
I was afraid that people would see me for who I really was , that I wasn 't the perfect , popular kid in high school everyone thought I was , that beneath my smile , there was struggle , and beneath my light , there was dark , and beneath my big personality just hid even bigger pain .
See , some people might fear girls not liking them back .
Some people might fear sharks . Some people might fear death .
But for me , for a large part of my life , I feared myself .
I feared my truth , I feared my honesty , I feared my vulnerability , and that fear made me feel like I was forced into a corner , like I was forced into a corner and there was only one way out , and so I thought about that way every single day .
I thought about it every single day , and if I 'm being totally honest , standing here I 've thought about it again since , because that 's the sickness , that 's the struggle , that 's depression , and depression isn 't chicken pox .
You don 't beat it once and it 's gone forever .
It 's something you live with . It 's something you live in .
It 's the roommate you can 't kick out . It 's the voice you can 't ignore .
It 's the feelings you can 't seem to escape , the scariest part is that after a while , you become numb to it . It becomes normal for you , and what you really fear the most isn 't the suffering inside of you .
It 's the stigma inside of others , it 's the shame , it 's the embarrassment , it 's the disapproving look on a friend 's face , it 's the whispers in the hallway that you 're weak , it 's the comments that you 're crazy .
That 's what keeps you from getting help .
That 's what makes you hold it in and hide it .
It 's the stigma . So you hold it in and you hide it , and you hold it in and you hide it , and even though it 's keeping you in bed every day and it 's making your life feel empty no matter how much you try and fill it , you hide it , because the stigma in our society around depression is very real .
It 's very real , and if you think that it isn 't , ask yourself this : Would you rather make your next Facebook status say you 're having a tough time getting out of bed because you hurt your back or you 're having a tough time getting out of bed every morning because you 're depressed ?
That 's the stigma , because unfortunately , we live in a world where if you break your arm , everyone runs over to sign your cast , but if you tell people you 're depressed , everyone runs the other way .
That 's the stigma .
We are so , so , so accepting of any body part breaking down other than our brains . And that 's ignorance .
That 's pure ignorance , and that ignorance has created a world that doesn 't understand depression , that doesn 't understand mental health .
And that 's ironic to me , because depression is one of the best documented problems we have in the world , yet it 's one of the least discussed .
We just push it aside and put it in a corner and pretend it 's not there and hope it 'll fix itself .
Well , it won 't . It hasn 't , and it 's not going to , because that 's wishful thinking , and wishful thinking isn 't a game plan , it 's procrastination , and we can 't procrastinate on something this important .
The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one .
Well , we haven 't done that , so we can 't really expect to find an answer when we 're still afraid of the question .
And I don 't know what the solution is .
I wish I did , but I don 't -- but I think , I think it has to start here .
It has to start with me , it has to start with you , it has to start with the people who are suffering , the ones who are hidden in the shadows .
We need to speak up and shatter the silence .
We need to be the ones who are brave for what we believe in , because if there 's one thing that I 've come to realize , if there 's one thing that I see as the biggest problem , it 's not in building a world where we eliminate the ignorance of others .
It 's in building a world where we teach the acceptance of ourselves , where we 're okay with who we are , because when we get honest , we see that we all struggle and we all suffer .
Whether it 's with this , whether it 's with something else , we all know what it is to hurt .
We all know what it is to have pain in our heart , and we all know how important it is to heal .
But right now , depression is society 's deep cut that we 're content to put a Band-Aid over and pretend it 's not there .
Well , it is there . It is there , and you know what ? It 's okay .
Depression is okay . If you 're going through it , know that you 're okay .
And know that you 're sick , you 're not weak , and it 's an issue , not an identity , because when you get past the fear and the ridicule and the judgment and the stigma of others , you can see depression for what it really is , and that 's just a part of life , just a part of life , and as much as I hate , as much as I hate some of the places , some of the parts of my life depression has dragged me down to , in a lot of ways I 'm grateful for it .
Because yeah , it 's put me in the valleys , but only to show me there 's peaks , and yeah it 's dragged me through the dark but only to remind me there is light .
My pain , more than anything in 19 years on this planet , has given me perspective , and my hurt , my hurt has forced me to have hope , have hope and to have faith , faith in myself , faith in others , faith that it can get better , that we can change this , that we can speak up and speak out and fight back against ignorance , fight back against intolerance , and more than anything , learn to love ourselves , learn to accept ourselves for who we are , the people we are , not the people the world wants us to be .
Because the world I believe in is one where embracing your light doesn 't mean ignoring your dark .
The world I believe in is one where we 're measured by our ability to overcome adversities , not avoid them .
The world I believe in is one where I can look someone in the eye and say , " I 'm going through hell , " and they can look back at me and go , " Me too , " and that 's okay , and it 's okay because depression is okay . We 're people .
We 're people , and we struggle and we suffer and we bleed and we cry , and if you think that true strength means never showing any weakness , then I 'm here to tell you you 're wrong .
You 're wrong , because it 's the opposite .
We 're people , and we have problems .
We 're not perfect , and that 's okay .
So we need to stop the ignorance , stop the intolerance , stop the stigma , and stop the silence , and we need to take away the taboos , take a look at the truth , and start talking , because the only way we 're going to beat a problem that people are battling alone is by standing strong together , by standing strong together .
And I believe that we can .
I believe that we can . Thank you guys so much .
This is a dream come true . Thank you .
Thank you .
Ronny Edry : Israel and Iran : A love story ?
When war between Israel and Iran seemed imminent , Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry shared a poster on Facebook of himself and his daughter with a bold message : " Iranians ... we [ heart ] you . " Other Israelis quickly created their own posters with the same message -- and Iranians responded in kind . The simple act of communication inspired surprising Facebook communities like " Israel loves Iran , " " Iran loves Israel " and even " Palestine loves Israel . "
On March 14 , this year , I posted this poster on Facebook .
This is an image of me and my daughter holding the Israeli flag .
I will try to explain to you about the context of why and when I posted .
A few days ago , I was sitting waiting on the line at the grocery store , and the owner and one of the clients were talking to each other , and the owner was explaining to the client that we 're going to get 10,000 missiles on Israel .
And the client was saying , no , it 's 10,000 a day .
This is the context . This is where we are now in Israel .
We have this war with Iran coming for 10 years now , and we have people , you know , afraid .
It 's like every year it 's the last minute that we can do something about the war with Iran .
It 's like , if we don 't act now , it 's too late forever , for 10 years now .
So at some point it became , you know , to me , I 'm a graphic designer , so I made posters about it and I posted the one I just showed you before .
Most of the time , I make posters , I post them on Facebook , my friends like it , don 't like it , most of the time don 't like it , don 't share it , don 't nothing , and it 's another day .
So I went to sleep , and that was it for me .
And later on in the night , I woke up because I 'm always waking up in the night , and I went by the computer and I see all these red dots , you know , on Facebook , which I 've never seen before .
And I was like , " What 's going on ? "
So I come to the computer and I start looking on , and suddenly I see many people talking to me , most of them I don 't know , and a few of them from Iran , which is -- What ?
Because you have to understand , in Israel we don 't talk with people from Iran .
We don 't know people from Iran .
It 's like , on Facebook , you have friends only from -- it 's like your neighbors are your friends on Facebook .
And now people from Iran are talking to me .
So I start answering this girl , and she 's telling me she saw the poster and she asked her family to come , because they don 't have a computer , she asked her family to come to see the poster , and they 're all sitting in the living room crying .
So I 'm like , whoa .
I ask my wife to come , and I tell her , you have to see that .
People are crying , and she came , she read the text , and she started to cry .
And everybody 's crying now .
So I don 't know what to do , so my first reflex , as a graphic designer , is , you know , to show everybody what I 'd just seen , and people started to see them and to share them , and that 's how it started .
The day after , when really it became a lot of talking , I said to myself , and my wife said to me , I also want a poster , so this is her .
Because it 's working , put me in a poster now .
But more seriously , I was like , okay , these ones work , but it 's not just about me , it 's about people from Israel who want to say something .
So I 'm going to shoot all the people I know , if they want , and I 'm going to put them in a poster and I 'm going to share them .
So I went to my neighbors and friends and students and I just asked them , give me a picture , I will make you a poster .
And that 's how it started . And that 's how , really , it 's unleashed , because suddenly people from Facebook , friends and others , just understand that they can be part of it .
It 's not just one dude making one poster , it 's -- we can be part of it , so they start sending me pictures and ask me , " Make me a poster . Post it .
Tell the Iranians we from Israel love you too . "
It became , you know , at some point it was really , really intense .
I mean , so many pictures , so I asked friends to come , graphic designers most of them , to make posters with me , because I didn 't have the time .
It was a huge amount of pictures .
So for a few days , that 's how my living room was .
And we received Israeli posters , Israeli images , but also lots of comments , lots of messages from Iran .
And we took these messages and we made posters out of it , because I know people : They don 't read , they see images .
If it 's an image , they may read it .
So here are a few of them .
This one is really moving for me because it 's the story of a girl who has been raised in Iran to walk on an Israeli flag to enter her school every morning , and now that she sees the posters that we 're sending , she starts -- she said that she changed her mind , and now she loves that blue , she loves that star , and she loves that flag , talking about the Israeli flag , and she wished that we 'd meet and come to visit one another , and just a few days after I posted the first poster .
The day after , Iranians started to respond with their own posters .
They have graphic designers . What ?
Crazy , crazy .
So you can see they are still shy , they don 't want to show their faces , but they want to spread the message .
They want to respond . They want to say the same thing .
So . And now it 's communication .
It 's a two-way story . It 's Israelis and Iranians sending the same message , one to each other .
This never happened before , and this is two people supposed to be enemies , we 're on the verge of a war , and suddenly people on Facebook are starting to say , " I like this guy . I love those guys . "
And it became really big at some point .
And then it became news .
Because when you 're seeing the Middle East , you see only the bad news .
And suddenly , there is something that was happening that was good news . So the guys on the news , they say , " Okay , let 's talk about this . "
I remember one day , Michal , she was talking with the journalist , and she was asking him , " Who 's gonna see the show ? " And he said , " Everybody . "
So she said , " Everybody in Palestine , in where ? Israel ?
Who is everybody ? " " Everybody . "
They said , " Syria ? " " Syria . "
" Lebanon ? " " Lebanon . "
At some point , he just said , " 40 million people are going to see you today .
It 's everybody . " The Chinese .
And we were just at the beginning of the story .
Something crazy also happened .
Every time a country started talking about it , like Germany , America , wherever , a page on Facebook popped up with the same logo with the same stories , so at the beginning we had " Iran-Loves-Israel , " which is an Iranian sitting in Tehran , saying , " Okay , Israel loves Iran ?
I give you Iran-Loves-Israel . "
You have Palestine-Loves-Israel .
You have Lebanon that just -- a few days ago .
And this whole list of pages on Facebook dedicated to the same message , to people sending their love , one to each other .
The moment I really understood that something was happening , a friend of mine told me , " Google the word ' Israel . ' " And those were the first images on those days that popped up from Google when you were typing , " Israel " or " Iran . "
We really changed how people see the Middle East .
Because you 're not in the Middle East .
You 're somewhere over there , and then you want to see the Middle East , so you go on Google and you say , " Israel , " and they give you the bad stuff .
And for a few days you got those images .
Today the Israel-Loves-Iran page is this number , 80,831 , and two million people last week went on the page and shared , liked , I don 't know , commented on one of the photos .
So for five months now , that 's what we are doing , me , Michal , a few of my friends , are just making images .
We 're showing a new reality by just making images because that 's how the world perceives us .
They see images of us , and they see bad images .
So we 're working on making good images . End of story .
Look at this one . This is the Iran-Loves-Israel page .
This is not the Israel-Loves-Iran . This is not my page .
This is a guy in Tehran on the day of remembrance of the Israeli fallen soldier putting an image of an Israeli soldier on his page .
This is the enemy .
What ?
And it 's going both ways .
It 's like , we are showing respect , one to each other .
And we 're understanding . And you show compassion .
And you become friends .
And at some point , you become friends on Facebook , and you become friends in life .
You can go and travel and meet people .
And I was in Munich a few weeks ago .
I went there to open an exposition about Iran and I met there with people from the page that told me , " Okay , you 're going to be in Europe , I 'm coming . I 'm coming from France , from Holland , from Germany , " of course , and from Israel people came , and we just met there for the first time in real life .
I met with people that are supposed to be my enemies for the first time . And we just shake hands , and have a coffee and a nice discussion , and we talk about food and basketball .
And that was the end of it .
Remember that image from the beginning ?
At some point we met in real life , and we became friends .
And it goes the other way around .
Some girl that we met on Facebook never been in Israel , born and raised in Iran , lives in Germany , afraid of Israelis because of what she knows about us , decides after a few months of talking on the Internet with some Israelis to come to Israel , and she gets on the plane and arrives at Ben Gurion and says , " Okay , not that big a deal . "
So a few weeks ago , the stress is getting higher , so we start this new campaign called " Not ready to die in your war . "
I mean , it 's plus / minus the same message , but we wanted really to add some aggressivity to it .
And again , something amazing happened , something that we didn 't have on the first wave of the campaign .
Now people from Iran , the same ones who were shy at the first campaign and just sent , you know , their foot and half their faces , now they 're sending their faces , and they 're saying , " Okay , no problem , we 're into it . We are with you . "
Just read where those guys are from .
And for every guy from Israel , you 've got someone from Iran .
Just people sending their pictures .
Crazy , yes ?
So -- So you may ask yourself , who is this dude ?
My name is Ronny Edry , and I 'm 41 , I 'm an Israeli , I 'm a father of two , I 'm a husband , and I 'm a graphic designer . I 'm teaching graphic design .
And I 'm not that naive , because a lot of the time I 've been asked , many times I 've been asked , " Yeah , but , this is really naive , sending flowers over , I mean — " I was in the army . I was in the paratroopers for three years , and I know how it looks from the ground .
I know how it can look really bad .
So to me , this is the courageous thing to do , to try to reach the other side before it 's too late , because when it 's going to be too late , it 's going to be too late .
And sometimes war is inevitable , sometimes , but maybe [ with ] effort , we can avoid it .
Maybe as people , because especially in Israel , we 're in a democracy . We have the freedom of speech , and maybe that little thing can change something .
And really , we can be our own ambassadors .
We can just send a message and hope for the best .
So I want to ask Michal , my wife , to come with me on the stage just to make with you one image , because it 's all about images .
And maybe that image will help us change something .
Just raise that . Exactly .
And I 'm just going to take a picture of it , and I 'm just going to post it on Facebook with kind of " Israelis for peace " or something .
Oh my God .
Don 't cry .
Thank you guys .
Charles Moore : Seas of plastic
Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- an endless floating waste of plastic trash . Now he 's drawing attention to the growing , choking problem of plastic debris in our seas .
Let 's talk trash .
You know , we had to be taught to renounce the powerful conservation ethic we developed during the Great Depression and World War II .
After the war , we needed to direct our enormous production capacity toward creation of products for peacetime .
Life Magazine helped in this effort by announcing the introduction of throwaways that would liberate the housewife from the drudgery of doing dishes .
Mental note to the liberators : throwaway plastics take a lot of space and don 't biodegrade .
Only we humans make waste that nature can 't digest .
Plastics are also hard to recycle .
A teacher told me how to express the under-five-percent of plastics recovered in our waste stream .
It 's diddly-point-squat .
That 's the percentage we recycle .
Now , melting point has a lot to do with this .
Plastic is not purified by the re-melting process like glass and metal .
It begins to melt below the boiling point of water and does not drive off the oily contaminants for which it is a sponge .
Half of each year 's 100 billion pounds of thermal plastic pellets will be made into fast-track trash .
A large , unruly fraction of our trash will flow downriver to the sea .
Here is the accumulation at Biona Creek next to the L.A. airport .
And here is the flotsam near California State University Long Beach and the diesel plant we visited yesterday .
In spite of deposit fees , much of this trash leading out to the sea will be plastic beverage bottles .
We use two million of them in the United States every five minutes , here imaged by TED presenter Chris Jordan , who artfully documents mass consumption and zooms in for more detail .
Here is a remote island repository for bottles off the coast of Baja California .
Isla San Roque is an uninhabited bird rookery off Baja 's sparsely populated central coast .
Notice that the bottles here have caps on them .
Bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate , PET , will sink in seawater and not make it this far from civilization .
Also , the caps are produced in separate factories from a different plastic , polypropylene .
They will float in seawater , but unfortunately do not get recycled under the bottle bills .
Let 's trace the journey of the millions of caps that make it to sea solo .
After a year the ones from Japan are heading straight across the Pacific , while ours get caught in the California current and first head down to the latitude of Cabo San Lucas .
After ten years , a lot of the Japanese caps are in what we call the Eastern Garbage Patch , while ours litter the Philippines .
After 20 years , we see emerging the debris accumulation zone of the North Pacific Gyre .
It so happens that millions of albatross nesting on Kure and Midway atolls in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands National Monument forage here and scavenge whatever they can find for regurgitation to their chicks .
A four-month old Laysan Albatross chick died with this in its stomach .
Hundreds of thousands of the goose-sized chicks are dying with stomachs full of bottle caps and other rubbish , like cigarette lighters ...
but , mostly bottle caps .
Sadly , their parents mistake bottle caps for food tossing about in the ocean surface .
The retainer rings for the caps also have consequences for aquatic animals .
This is Mae West , still alive at a zookeeper 's home in New Orleans .
I wanted to see what my home town of Long Beach was contributing to the problem , so on Coastal Clean-Up Day in 2005 I went to the Long Beach Peninsula , at the east end of our long beach .
We cleaned up the swaths of beach shown .
I offered five cents each for bottle caps .
I got plenty of takers .
Here are the 1,100 bottle caps they collected .
I thought I would spend 20 bucks .
That day I ended up spending nearly 60 .
I separated them by color and put them on display the next Earth Day at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro .
Governor Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria stopped by to discuss the display .
In spite of my " girly man " hat , crocheted from plastic shopping bags , they shook my hand .
I showed him and Maria a zooplankton trawl from the gyre north of Hawaii with more plastic than plankton .
Here 's what our trawl samples from the plastic soup our ocean has become look like .
Trawling a zooplankton net on the surface for a mile produces samples like this .
And this .
Now , when the debris washes up on the beaches of Hawaii it looks like this .
And this particular beach is Kailua Beach , the beach where our president and his family vacationed before moving to Washington .
Now , how do we analyze samples like this one that contain more plastic than plankton ?
We sort the plastic fragments into different size classes , from five millimeters to one-third of a millimeter .
Small bits of plastic concentrate persistent organic pollutants up to a million times their levels in the surrounding seawater .
We wanted to see if the most common fish in the deep ocean , at the base of the food chain , was ingesting these poison pills .
We did hundreds of necropsies , and over a third had polluted plastic fragments in their stomachs .
The record-holder , only two-and-a-half inches long , had 84 pieces in its tiny stomach .
Now , you can buy certified organic produce .
But no fishmonger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish .
This is the legacy we are leaving to future generations .
The throwaway society cannot be contained -- it has gone global .
We simply cannot store and maintain or recycle all our stuff .
We have to throw it away .
Now , the market can do a lot for us , but it can 't fix the natural system in the ocean we 've broken .
All the king 's horses and all the king 's men ...
will never gather up all the plastic and put the ocean back together again .
Narrator : The levels are increasing , the amount of packaging is increasing , the " throwaway " concept of living is proliferating , and it 's showing up in the ocean .
Anchor : He offers no hope of cleaning it up .
Straining the ocean for plastic would be beyond the budget of any country and it might kill untold amounts of sea life in the process .
The solution , Moore says , is to stop the plastic at its source : stop it on land before it falls in the ocean .
And in a plastic-wrapped and packaged world , he doesn 't hold out much hope for that , either .
This is Brian Rooney for Nightline , in Long Beach , California .
Charles Moore : Thank you .
Carolyn Steel : How food shapes our cities
Every day , in a city the size of London , 30 million meals are served . But where does all the food come from ? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city , and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world .
How do you feed a city ?
It 's one of the great questions of our time .
Yet it 's one that 's rarely asked .
We take it for granted that if we go into a shop or restaurant , or indeed into this theater 's foyer in about an hour 's time , there is going to be food there waiting for us , having magically come from somewhere .
But when you think that every day for a city the size of London , enough food has to be produced , transported , bought and sold , cooked , eaten , disposed of , and that something similar has to happen every day for every city on earth , it 's remarkable that cities get fed at all .
We live in places like this as if they 're the most natural things in the world , forgetting that because we 're animals and that we need to eat , we 're actually as dependent on the natural world as our ancient ancestors were .
And as more of us move into cities , more of that natural world is being transformed into extraordinary landscapes like the one behind me -- it 's soybean fields in Mato Grosso in Brazil -- in order to feed us .
These are extraordinary landscapes , but few of us ever get to see them .
And increasingly these landscapes are not just feeding us either .
As more of us move into cities , more of us are eating meat , so that a third of the annual grain crop globally now gets fed to animals rather than to us human animals .
And given that it takes three times as much grain -- actually ten times as much grain -- to feed a human if it 's passed through an animal first , that 's not a very efficient way of feeding us .
And it 's an escalating problem too .
By 2050 , it 's estimated that twice the number of us are going to be living in cities .
And it 's also estimated that there is going to be twice as much meat and dairy consumed .
So meat and urbanism are rising hand in hand .
And that 's going to pose an enormous problem .
Six billion hungry carnivores to feed , by 2050 .
That 's a big problem . And actually if we carry on as we are , it 's a problem we 're very unlikely to be able to solve .
Nineteen million hectares of rainforest are lost every year to create new arable land .
Although at the same time we 're losing an equivalent amount of existing arables to salinization and erosion .
We 're very hungry for fossil fuels too .
It takes about 10 calories to produce every calorie of food that we consume in the West .
And even though there is food that we are producing at great cost , we don 't actually value it .
Half the food produced in the USA is currently thrown away .
And to end all of this , at the end of this long process , we 're not even managing to feed the planet properly .
A billion of us are obese , while a further billion starve .
None of it makes very much sense .
And when you think that 80 percent of global trade in food now is controlled by just five multinational corporations , it 's a grim picture .
As we 're moving into cities , the world is also embracing a Western diet .
And if we look to the future , it 's an unsustainable diet .
So how did we get here ?
And more importantly , what are we going to do about it ?
Well , to answer the slightly easier question first , about 10,000 years ago , I would say , is the beginning of this process in the ancient Near East , known as the Fertile Crescent .
Because , as you can see , it was crescent shaped .
And it was also fertile .
And it was here , about 10,000 years ago , that two extraordinary inventions , agriculture and urbanism , happened roughly in the same place and at the same time .
This is no accident , because agriculture and cities are bound together . They need each other .
Because it was discovery of grain by our ancient ancestors for the first time that produced a food source that was large enough and stable enough to support permanent settlements .
And if we look at what those settlements were like , we see they were compact .
They were surrounded by productive farm land and dominated by large temple complexes like this one at Ur , that were , in fact , effectively , spiritualized , central food distribution centers .
Because it was the temples that organized the harvest , gathered in the grain , offered it to the gods , and then offered the grain that the gods didn 't eat back to the people .
So , if you like , the whole spiritual and physical life of these cities was dominated by the grain and the harvest that sustained them .
And in fact , that 's true of every ancient city .
But of course not all of them were that small .
Famously , Rome had about a million citizens by the first century A.D.
So how did a city like this feed itself ?
The answer is what I call " ancient food miles . "
Basically , Rome had access to the sea , which made it possible for it to import food from a very long way away .
This is the only way it was possible to do this in the ancient world , because it was very difficult to transport food over roads , which were rough .
And the food obviously went off very quickly .
So Rome effectively waged war on places like Carthage and Egypt just to get its paws on their grain reserves .
And , in fact , you could say that the expansion of the Empire was really sort of one long , drawn out militarized shopping spree , really .
In fact -- I love the fact , I just have to mention this : Rome in fact used to import oysters from London , at one stage . I think that 's extraordinary .
So Rome shaped its hinterland through its appetite .
But the interesting thing is that the other thing also happened in the pre-industrial world .
If we look at a map of London in the 17th century , we can see that its grain , which is coming in from the Thames , along the bottom of this map .
So the grain markets were to the south of the city .
And the roads leading up from them to Cheapside , which was the main market , were also grain markets .
And if you look at the name of one of those streets , Bread Street , you can tell what was going on there 300 years ago .
And the same of course was true for fish .
Fish was , of course , coming in by river as well . Same thing .
And of course Billingsgate , famously , was London 's fish market , operating on-site here until the mid-1980s .
Which is extraordinary , really , when you think about it .
Everybody else was wandering around with mobile phones that looked like bricks and sort of smelly fish happening down on the port .
This is another thing about food in cities : Once its roots into the city are established , they very rarely move .
Meat is a very different story because , of course , animals could walk into the city .
So much of London 's meat was coming from the northwest , from Scotland and Wales .
So it was coming in , and arriving at the city at the northwest , which is why Smithfield , London 's very famous meat market , was located up there .
Poultry was coming in from East Anglia and so on , to the northeast .
I feel a bit like a weather woman doing this . Anyway , and so the birds were coming in with their feet protected with little canvas shoes .
And then when they hit the eastern end of Cheapside , that 's where they were sold , which is why it 's called Poultry .
And , in fact , if you look at the map of any city built before the industrial age , you can trace food coming in to it .
You can actually see how it was physically shaped by food , both by reading the names of the streets , which give you a lot of clues .
Friday Street , in a previous life , is where you went to buy your fish on a Friday .
But also you have to imagine it full of food .
Because the streets and the public spaces were the only places where food was bought and sold .
And if we look at an image of Smithfield in 1830 you can see that it would have been very difficult to live in a city like this and be unaware of where your food came from .
In fact , if you were having Sunday lunch , the chances were it was mooing or bleating outside your window about three days earlier .
So this was obviously an organic city , part of an organic cycle .
And then 10 years later everything changed .
This is an image of the Great Western in 1840 .
And as you can see , some of the earliest train passengers were pigs and sheep .
So all of a sudden , these animals are no longer walking into market .
They 're being slaughtered out of sight and mind , somewhere in the countryside .
And they 're coming into the city by rail .
And this changes everything .
To start off with , it makes it possible for the first time to grow cities , really any size and shape , in any place .
Cities used to be constrained by geography ; they used to have to get their food through very difficult physical means .
All of a sudden they are effectively emancipated from geography .
And as you can see from these maps of London , in the 90 years after the trains came , it goes from being a little blob that was quite easy to feed by animals coming in on foot , and so on , to a large splurge , that would be very , very difficult to feed with anybody on foot , either animals or people .
And of course that was just the beginning . After the trains came cars , and really this marks the end of this process .
It 's the final emancipation of the city from any apparent relationship with nature at all .
And this is the kind of city that 's devoid of smell , devoid of mess , certainly devoid of people , because nobody would have dreamed of walking in such a landscape .
In fact , what they did to get food was they got in their cars , drove to a box somewhere on the outskirts , came back with a week 's worth of shopping , and wondered what on earth to do with it .
And this really is the moment when our relationship , both with food and cities , changes completely .
Here we have food -- that used to be the center , the social core of the city -- at the periphery .
It used to be a social event , buying and selling food .
Now it 's anonymous .
We used to cook ; now we just add water , or a little bit of an egg if you 're making a cake or something .
We don 't smell food to see if it 's okay to eat .
We just read the back of a label on a packet .
And we don 't value food . We don 't trust it .
So instead of trusting it , we fear it .
And instead of valuing it , we throw it away .
One of the great ironies of modern food systems is that they 've made the very thing they promised to make easier much harder .
By making it possible to build cities anywhere and any place , they 've actually distanced us from our most important relationship , which is that of us and nature .
And also they 've made us dependent on systems that only they can deliver , that , as we 've seen , are unsustainable .
So what are we going to do about that ?
It 's not a new question .
500 years ago it 's what Thomas More was asking himself .
This is the frontispiece of his book " Utopia . "
And it was a series of semi-independent city-states , if that sounds remotely familiar , a day 's walk from one another where everyone was basically farming-mad , and grew vegetables in their back gardens , and ate communal meals together , and so on .
And I think you could argue that food is a fundamental ordering principle of Utopia , even though More never framed it that way .
And here is another very famous " Utopian " vision , that of Ebenezer Howard , " The Garden City . "
Same idea : series of semi-independent city-states , little blobs of metropolitan stuff with arable land around , joined to one another by railway .
the ordering principle of his vision .
It even got built , but nothing to do with this vision that Howard had .
And that is the problem with these Utopian ideas , that they are Utopian .
Utopia was actually a word that Thomas Moore used deliberately .
It was a kind of joke , because it 's got a double derivation from the Greek .
It can either mean a good place , or no place .
Because it 's an ideal . It 's an imaginary thing . We can 't have it .
And I think , as a conceptual tool for thinking about the very deep problem of human dwelling , that makes it not much use .
So I 've come up with an alternative , which is Sitopia , from the ancient Greek , " sitos " for food , and " topos " for place .
I believe we already live in Sitopia .
We live in a world shaped by food , and if we realize that , we can use food as a really powerful tool -- a conceptual tool , design tool , to shape the world differently .
So if we were to do that , what might Sitopia look like ?
Well I think it looks a bit like this .
I have to use this slide . It 's just the look on the face of the dog .
But anyway , this is -- it 's food at the center of life , at the center of family life , being celebrated , being enjoyed , people taking time for it .
This is where food should be in our society .
But you can 't have scenes like this unless you have people like this .
By the way , these can be men as well .
It 's people who think about food , who think ahead , who plan , who can stare at a pile of raw vegetables and actually recognize them .
We need these people . We 're part of a network .
Because without these kinds of people we can 't have places like this .
Here , I deliberately chose this because it is a man buying a vegetable .
But networks , markets where food is being grown locally .
It 's common . It 's fresh .
It 's part of the social life of the city .
Because without that , you can 't have this kind of place , food that is grown locally and also is part of the landscape , and is not just a zero-sum commodity off in some unseen hell-hole .
Cows with a view .
Steaming piles of humus .
This is basically bringing the whole thing together .
And this is a community project I visited recently in Toronto .
It 's a greenhouse , where kids get told all about food and growing their own food .
Here is a plant called Kevin , or maybe it 's a plant belonging to a kid called Kevin . I don 't know .
But anyway , these kinds of projects that are trying to reconnect us with nature is extremely important .
So Sitopia , for me , is really a way of seeing .
It 's basically recognizing that Sitopia already exists in little pockets everywhere .
The trick is to join them up , to use food as a way of seeing .
And if we do that , we 're going to stop seeing cities as big , metropolitan , unproductive blobs , like this .
We 're going to see them more like this , as part of the productive , organic framework of which they are inevitably a part , symbiotically connected .
But of course , that 's not a great image either , because we need not to be producing food like this anymore .
We need to be thinking more about permaculture , which is why I think this image just sums up for me the kind of thinking we need to be doing .
It 's a re-conceptualization of the way food shapes our lives .
The best image I know of this is from 650 years ago .
It 's Ambrogio Lorenzetti 's " Allegory of Good Government . "
It 's about the relationship between the city and the countryside .
And I think the message of this is very clear .
If the city looks after the country , the country will look after the city .
And I want us to ask now , what would Ambrogio Lorenzetti paint if he painted this image today ?
What would an allegory of good government look like today ?
Because I think it 's an urgent question .
It 's one we have to ask , and we have to start answering .
We know we are what we eat .
We need to realize that the world is also what we eat .
But if we take that idea , we can use food as a really powerful tool to shape the world better .
Thank you very much .
Eddi Reader : " Kiteflyer 's Hill "
Singer / songwriter Eddi Reader performs " Kiteflyer 's Hill , " a tender look back at a lost love . With Thomas Dolby on piano .
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 ... Gracias . Thank you very much .
Christopher C. Deam : The Airstream , restyled
In this low-key , image-packed talk from 2002 , designer Christopher C. Deam talks about his makeover of an American classic : the Airstream travel trailer .
a plastic laminate company , which is the largest plastic laminate company in the world -- they asked me to design a trade show booth for exhibition at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York , in 2000 .
So looking at their three main markets for their product which were basically transportation design , interiors and furniture , we came up with the solution of taking an old Airstream trailer and gutting it , and trying to portray laminate , and a trailer , in kind of a fresh , new contemporary look .
When this trailer showed up at my shop in Berkeley , I 'd actually never stepped foot in an Airstream trailer , or any other trailer .
So I can be somebody that can look at this in a totally fresh perspective and see if I can optimize it in its most idealistic fashion .
I decided I had to do some research and really figure out what had gone wrong somewhere along the history of Airstream .
What I discovered in these interiors is that there was a disconnect between the exterior shell and the interior architecture of the pieces .
In that the shell was originally conceived as a lightweight , modern , futuristic , high-tech pod for hurtling down the freeway , and the interiors were completely out of sync with that .
In fact it appeared like they referenced a mountain cabin .
That seemed really like a crisis to me , that they had never been able to develop a vocabulary about escape , and about travel , and modernity in this trailer that was consistent with the shell .
We really needed to do some archeology in the trailer itself to figure out what 's authentic in an Airstream trailer , and what feels like it has true purpose and utility .
We stripped out all the vinyl and zolatone paint that was covering up this just fantastic aluminum shell .
We took off all the visible hardware and trim that was kind of doing the country cabin thing .
I literally drew on the walls of the trailer , mocked it up in cardboard , we 'd come in and cut , decide things were wrong , pull it out , put it back in .
The main goal was to smooth out the interior , and begin to speak about motion , and mobility , and independence .
The biggest difficulty on one of these trailers is that when you 're designing there 's actually no logical place to stop and start materials because of the continuous form of the trailer .
There 's no such things as two walls and a ceiling coming together , where you can change materials and shapes .
So that became a challenge .
Compounding that , the material of choice , laminate , that I was trying to highlight , only bends in two dimensions .
It 's a compound curve interior .
What I had to devise was a way of fooling the eye into believing that all these panels are curved with the shell .
What I came up with was a series of second skins that basically float over the aluminum shell .
And what I was trying to do there was direct your eye in the space , so that you would perceive the geometry in a different way , and that the casework wouldn 't break up the space .
They also gave us a way to run power and rewire the trailer without tearing out the skin , so they function as an electrical chase .
That 's the trailer , pretty much finished .
That trailer led to another commission , to participate in whats called Tokyo Designers Block .
Its a week of furniture design events in Tokyo , in October .
Teruo Kurosaki , who owns a furniture company called Idee , he asked me to ship him two trailers to Tokyo .
He said one he would like to make a real trailer , functioning , and we would sell that one .
Trailer number two , you have a blank slate , you can to anything you want .
We came up with a fantasy scenario of a DJ traveling around the States , that would collect records and go on tours .
This trailer housed two turntables , mixer , wet bar , fridge , integrated sound system .
It 's got a huge couch , fits quite a few people , and basically we 'd had a great time with this .
And so in this trailer I took it upon myself to think about travel , and escape , in an idiosyncratic sense .
A lot of these ideas migrated into the production trailers for Airstream .
This brings us up to the time that I started consulting to Airstream .
They came to me and said , " Well , what can we do to freshen this thing up ?
And do you think kids , you know , skateboarders , surfers , rock climbers , would use these things ? "
And I said , " Well , not in that interior . "
Anyway , I went out to Airstream about six times during the process of building this prototype , and it 's called the Bambi prototype .
I thought , " Finally , oh yeah great , big company , I 'm gonna work with somebody with money for tooling and molding . "
And I walked in their prototype facility , and it 's exactly like my shop , only bigger -- same tools , same things .
So the problem became -- and they set this dilemma to me -- that you have to design the interior using only our existing technology , and there 's no money for tooling or molding .
The trailers themselves are actually hand-built .
All the casework is hand-scribed in , uniquely , so you can 't just cut 100 parts for 100 trailers , you have to cut them big , and every single one is hand-fit .
They didn 't want to go to a componentized system .
And there it is , that 's the Bambi 16 .
Elliot Krane : The mystery of chronic pain
We think of pain as a symptom , but there are cases where the nervous system develops feedback loops and pain becomes a terrifying disease in itself . Starting with the story of a girl whose sprained wrist turned into a nightmare , Elliot Krane talks about the complex mystery of chronic pain , and reviews the facts we 're just learning about how it works and how to treat it .
I 'm a pediatrician and an anesthesiologist , so I put children to sleep for a living .
And I 'm an academic , so I put audiences to sleep for free .
But what I actually mostly do is I manage the pain management service at the Packard Children 's Hospital up at Stanford in Palo Alto .
And it 's from the experience from about 20 or 25 years of doing that that I want to bring to you the message this morning , that pain is a disease .
Now most of the time , you think of pain as a symptom of a disease , and that 's true most of the time .
It 's the symptom of a tumor or an infection or an inflammation or an operation .
But about 10 percent of the time , after the patient has recovered from one of those events , pain persists .
It persists for months and oftentimes for years , and when that happens , it is its own disease .
And before I tell you about how it is that we think that happens and what we can do about it , I want to show you how it feels for my patients .
So imagine , if you will , that I 'm stroking your arm with this feather , as I 'm stroking my arm right now .
Now , I want you to imagine that I 'm stroking it with this .
Please keep your seat .
A very different feeling .
Now what does it have to do with chronic pain ?
Imagine , if you will , these two ideas together .
Imagine what your life would be like if I were to stroke it with this feather , but your brain was telling you that this is what you are feeling -- and that is the experience of my patients with chronic pain .
In fact , imagine something even worse .
Imagine I were to stroke your child 's arm with this feather , and their brain [ was ] telling them that they were feeling this hot torch .
That was the experience of my patient , Chandler , whom you see in the photograph .
As you can see , she 's a beautiful , young woman .
She was 16 years old last year when I met her , and she aspired to be a professional dancer .
And during the course of one of her dance rehearsals , she fell on her outstretched arm and sprained her wrist .
Now you would probably imagine , as she did , that a wrist sprain is a trivial event in a person 's life .
Wrap it in an ACE bandage , take some ibuprofen for a week or two , and that 's the end of the story .
But in Chandler 's case , that was the beginning of the story .
This is what her arm looked like when she came to my clinic about three months after her sprain .
You can see that the arm is discolored , purplish in color .
It was cadaverically cold to the touch .
The muscles were frozen , paralyzed -- dystonic is how we refer to that .
The pain had spread from her wrist to her hands , to her fingertips , from her wrist up to her elbow , almost all the way to her shoulder .
But the worst part was , not the spontaneous pain that was there 24 hours a day .
The worst part was that she had allodynia , the medical term for the phenomenon that I just illustrated with the feather and with the torch .
The lightest touch of her arm -- the touch of a hand , the touch even of a sleeve , of a garment , as she put it on -- caused excruciating , burning pain .
How can the nervous system get this so wrong ?
How can the nervous system misinterpret an innocent sensation like the touch of a hand and turn it into the malevolent sensation of the touch of the flame ?
Well you probably imagine that the nervous system in the body is hardwired like your house .
In your house , wires run in the wall , from the light switch to a junction box in the ceiling and from the junction box to the light bulb .
And when you turn the switch on , the light goes on .
And when you turn the switch off , the light goes off .
So people imagine the nervous system is just like that .
If you hit your thumb with a hammer , these wires in your arm -- that , of course , we call nerves -- transmit the information into the junction box in the spinal cord where new wires , new nerves , take the information up to the brain where you become consciously aware that your thumb is now hurt .
But the situation , of course , in the human body is far more complicated than that .
Instead of it being the case that that junction box in the spinal cord is just simple where one nerve connects with the next nerve by releasing these little brown packets of chemical information called neurotransmitters in a linear one-on-one fashion , in fact , what happens is the neurotransmitters spill out in three dimensions -- laterally , vertically , up and down in the spinal cord -- and they start interacting with other adjacent cells .
These cells , called glial cells , were once thought to be unimportant structural elements of the spinal cord that did nothing more than hold all the important things together , like the nerves .
But it turns out the glial cells have a vital role in the modulation , amplification and , in the case of pain , the distortion of sensory experiences .
These glial cells become activated .
Their DNA starts to synthesize new proteins , which spill out and interact with adjacent nerves , and they start releasing their neurotransmitters , and those neurotransmitters spill out and activate adjacent glial cells , and so on and so forth , until what we have is a positive feedback loop .
It 's almost as if somebody came into your home and rewired your walls so that the next time you turned on the light switch , the toilet flushed three doors down , or your dishwasher went on , or your computer monitor turned off .
That 's crazy , but that 's , in fact , what happens with chronic pain .
And that 's why pain becomes its own disease .
The nervous system has plasticity .
It changes , and it morphs in response to stimuli .
Well , what do we do about that ?
What can we do in a case like Chandler 's ?
We treat these patients in a rather crude fashion at this point in time .
We treat them with symptom-modifying drugs -- painkillers -- which are , frankly , not very effective for this kind of pain .
We take nerves that are noisy and active that should be quiet , and we put them to sleep with local anesthetics .
And most importantly , what we do is we use a rigorous , and often uncomfortable , process of physical therapy and occupational therapy to retrain the nerves in the nervous system to respond normally to the activities and sensory experiences that are part of everyday life .
And we support all of that with an intensive psychotherapy program to address the despondency , despair and depression that always accompanies severe , chronic pain .
It 's successful , as you can see from this video of Chandler , who , two months after we first met her , is now doings a back flip .
And I had lunch with her yesterday because she 's a college student studying dance at Long Beach here , and she 's doing absolutely fantastic .
But the future is actually even brighter .
The future holds the promise that new drugs will be developed that are not symptom-modifying drugs that simply mask the problem , as we have now , but that will be disease-modifying drugs that will actually go right to the root of the problem and attack those glial cells , or those pernicious proteins that the glial cells elaborate , that spill over and cause this central nervous system wind-up , or plasticity , that so is capable of distorting and amplifying the sensory experience that we call pain .
So I have hope that in the future , the prophetic words of George Carlin will be realized , who said , " My philosophy : No pain , no pain . "
Thank you very much .
Bruce Aylward : How we 'll stop polio for good
Polio is almost completely eradicated . But as Bruce Aylward says : Almost isn 't good enough with a disease this terrifying . Aylward lays out the plan to continue the scientific miracle that ended polio in most of the world -- and to snuff it out everywhere , forever .
I want to share with you over the next 18 minutes a pretty incredible idea .
Actually , it 's a really big idea .
But to get us started , I want to ask if everyone could just close your eyes for two seconds and try and think of a technology or a bit of science that you think has changed the world .
Now I bet , in this audience , you 're thinking of some really incredible technology , some stuff that I haven 't even heard of , I 'm absolutely sure .
But I 'm also sure , pretty sure , that absolutely nobody is thinking of this .
This is a polio vaccine .
And it 's a great thing actually that nobody 's had to think about it here today because it means that we can take this for granted .
This is a great technology .
We can take it completely for granted .
But it wasn 't always that way .
Even here in California , if we were to go back just a few years , it was a very different story .
People were terrified of this disease .
They were terrified of polio , and it would cause public panic .
And it was because of scenes like this .
In this scene , people are living in an iron lung .
These are people who were perfectly healthy two or three days before , and then two days later , they can no longer breathe , and this polio virus has paralyzed not only their arms and their legs , but also their breathing muscles .
And they were going to spend the rest of their lives , usually , in this iron lung to breathe for them .
This disease was terrifying .
There was no cure , and there was no vaccine .
The disease was so terrifying that the president of the United States launched an extraordinary national effort to find a way to stop it .
Twenty years later , they succeeded and developed the polio vaccine .
It was hailed as a scientific miracle in the late 1950s .
Finally , a vaccine that could stop this awful disease , and here in the United States it had an incredible impact .
As you can see , the virus stopped , and it stopped very , very fast .
But this wasn 't the case everywhere in the world .
And it happened so fast in the United States , however , that even just last month Jon Stewart said this : Jon Stewart : Where is polio still active ?
Because I thought that had been eradicated in the way that smallpox had been eradicated .
Bruce Aylward : Oops . Jon , polio 's almost been eradicated .
But the reality is that polio still exists today .
We made this map for Jon to try to show him exactly where polio still exists .
This is the picture .
There 's not very much left in the world .
But the reason there 's not very much left is because there 's been an extraordinary public / private partnership working behind the scenes , almost unknown , I 'm sure to most of you here today .
It 's been working for 20 years to try and eradicate this disease , and it 's got it down to these few cases that you can see here on this graphic .
But just last year , we had an incredible shock and realized that almost just isn 't good enough with a virus like polio .
And this is the reason : in two countries that hadn 't had this disease for more than probably a decade , on opposite sides of the globe , there was suddenly terrible polio outbreaks .
Hundreds of people were paralyzed .
Hundreds of people died -- children as well as adults .
And in both cases , we were able to use genetic sequencing to look at the polio viruses , and we could tell these viruses were not from these countries .
They had come from thousands of miles away .
And in one case , it originated on another continent .
And not only that , but when they came into these countries , then they got on commercial jetliners probably and they traveled even farther to other places like Russia , where , for the first time in over a decade last year , children were crippled and paralyzed by a disease that they had not seen for years .
Now all of these outbreaks that I just showed you , these are under control now , and it looks like they 'll probably stop very , very quickly .
But the message was very clear .
Polio is still a devastating , explosive disease .
It 's just happening in another part of the world .
And our big idea is that the scientific miracle of this decade should be the complete eradication of poliomyelitis .
So I want to tell you a little bit about what this partnership , the Polio Partnership , is trying to do .
We 're not trying to control polio .
We 're not trying to get it down to just a few cases , because this disease is like a root fire ; it can explode again if you don 't snuff it out completely .
So what we 're looking for is a permanent solution .
We want a world in which every child , just like you guys , can take for granted a polio-free world .
So we 're looking for a permanent solution , and this is where we get lucky .
This is one of the very few viruses in the world where there are big enough cracks in its armor that we can try to do something truly extraordinary .
This virus can only survive in people .
It can 't live for a very long time in people .
It doesn 't survive in the environment hardly at all .
And we 've got pretty good vaccines , as I 've just showed you .
So we are trying to wipe out this virus completely .
What the polio eradication program is trying to do is to kill the virus itself that causes polio everywhere on Earth .
Now we don 't have a great track record when it comes to doing something like this , to eradicating diseases .
It 's been tried six times in the last century , and it 's been successful exactly once .
And this is because disease eradication , it 's still the venture capital of public health .
The risks are massive , but the pay-off -- economic , humanitarian , motivational -- it 's absolutely huge .
One congressman here in the United States thinks that the entire investment that the U.S. put into smallpox eradication pays itself off every 26 days -- in foregone treatment costs and vaccination costs .
And if we can finish polio eradication , the poorest countries in the world are going to save over 50 billion dollars in the next 25 years alone .
So those are the kind of stakes that we 're after .
But smallpox eradication was hard ; it was very , very hard .
And polio eradication , in many ways , is even tougher , and there 's a few reasons for that .
The first is that , when we started trying to eradicate polio about 20 years ago , more than twice as many countries were infected than had been when we started off with smallpox .
And there were more than 10 times as many people living in these countries .
So it was a massive effort .
The second challenge we had was -- in contrast to the smallpox vaccine , which was very stable , and a single dose protected you for life -- the polio vaccine is incredibly fragile .
It deteriorates so quickly in the tropics that we 've had to put this special vaccine monitor on every single vial so that it will change very quickly when it 's exposed to too much heat , and we can tell that it 's not a good vaccine to use on a child -- it 's not potent ; it 's not going to protect them .
Even then , kids need many doses of the vaccine .
But the third challenge we have -- and probably even bigger one , the biggest challenge -- is that , in contrast to smallpox where you could always see your enemy -- every single person almost who was infected with smallpox had this telltale rash .
So you could get around the disease ; you could vaccinate around the disease and cut it off .
With polio it 's almost completely different .
The vast majority of people who are infected with the polio virus show absolutely no sign of the disease .
So you can 't see the enemy most of the time , and as a result , we 've needed a very different approach to eradicate polio than what was done with smallpox .
We 've had to create one of the largest social movements in history .
There 's over 10 million people , probably 20 million people , largely volunteers , who have been working over the last 20 years in what has now been called the largest internationally-coordinated operation in peacetime .
These people , these 20 million people , vaccinate over 500 million children every single year , multiple times at the peak of our operation .
Now giving the polio vaccine is simple .
It 's just two drops , like that .
But reaching 500 million people is much , much tougher .
And these vaccinators , these volunteers , they have got to dive headlong into some of the toughest , densest urban slums in the world .
They 've got to trek under sweltering suns to some of the most remote , difficult to reach places in the world .
And they also have to dodge bullets , because we have got to operate during shaky cease-fires and truces to try and vaccinate children , even in areas affected by conflict .
One reporter who was watching our program in Somalia about five years ago -- a place which has eradicated polio , not once , but twice , because they got reinfected .
He was sitting outside of the road , watching one of these polio campaigns unfold , and a few months later he wrote : " This is foreign aid at its most heroic . "
And these heroes , they come from every walk of life , all sorts of backgrounds .
But one of the most extraordinary is Rotary International .
This is a group whose million-strong army of volunteers have been working to eradicate polio for over 20 years .
They 're right at the center of the whole thing .
Now it took years to build up the infrastructure for polio eradication -- more than 15 years , much longer than it should have -- but once it was built , the results were striking .
Within a couple of years , every country that started polio eradication rapidly eradicated all three of their polio viruses , with the exception of four countries that you see here .
And in each of those , it was only part of the country .
And then , by 1999 , one of the three polio viruses that we were trying to eradicate had been completely eradicated worldwide -- proof of concept .
And then today , there 's been a 99 percent reduction -- greater than 99 percent reduction -- in the number of children who are being paralyzed by this awful disease .
When we started , over 20 years ago , 1,000 children were being paralyzed every single day by this virus .
Last year , it was 1,000 .
And at the same time , the polio eradication program has been working to help with a lot of other areas .
It 's been working to help control pandemic flu , SARS for example .
It 's also tried to save children by doing other things -- giving vitamin A drops , giving measles shots , giving bed nets against malaria even during some of these campaigns .
But the most exciting thing that the polio eradication program has been doing has been to force us , the international community , to reach every single child , every single community , the most vulnerable people in the world , with the most basic of health services , irrespective of geography , poverty , culture and even conflict .
So things were looking very exciting , and then about five years ago , this virus , this ancient virus , started to fight back .
The first problem we ran into was that , in these last four countries , the strongholds of this virus , we just couldn 't seem to get the virus rooted out .
And then to make the matters even worse , the virus started to spread out of these four places , especially northern India and northern Nigeria , into much of Africa , Asia , and even into Europe , causing horrific outbreaks in places that had not seen this disease for decades .
And then , in one of the most important , tenacious and toughest reservoirs of the polio virus in the world , we found that our vaccine was working half as well as it should have .
In conditions like this , the vaccine just couldn 't get the grip it needed to in the guts of these children and protect them the way that it needed to .
Now at that time , there was a great , as you can imagine , frustration -- let 's call it frustration -- it started to grow very , very quickly .
And all of a sudden , some very important voices in the world of public health started to say , " Hang on .
We should abandon this idea of eradication .
Let 's settle for control -- that 's good enough . "
Now as seductive as the idea of control sounds , it 's a false premise .
The brutal truth is , if we don 't have the will or the skill , or even the money that we need to reach children , the most vulnerable children in the world , with something as simple as an oral polio vaccine , then pretty soon , more than 200,000 children are again going to be paralyzed by this disease every single year .
There 's absolutely no question .
These are children like Umar .
Umar is seven years old , and he 's from northern Nigeria .
He lives in a family home there with his eight brothers and sisters .
Umar also has polio .
Umar was paralyzed for life .
His right leg was paralyzed in 2004 .
This leg , his right leg , now takes an awful beating because he has to half-crawl , because it 's faster to move that way to keep up with his friends , keep up with his brothers and sisters , than to get up on his crutches and walk .
But Umar is a fantastic student . He 's an incredible kid .
As you probably can 't see the detail here , but this is his report card , and you 'll see , he 's got perfect scores .
He got 100 percent in all the important things , like nursery rhymes , for example there .
But you know I 'd love to be able to tell you that Umar is a typical kid with polio these days , but it 's not true .
Umar is an exceptional kid in exceptional circumstances .
The reality of polio today is something very different .
Polio strikes the poorest communities in the world .
It leaves their children paralyzed , and it drags their families deeper into poverty , because they 're desperately searching and they 're desperately spending the little bit of savings that they have , trying in vain to find a cure for their children .
We think children deserve better .
And so when the going got really tough in the polio eradication program about two years ago , when people were saying , " We should call it off , " the Polio Partnership decided to buckle down once again and try and find innovative new solutions , new ways to get to the children that we were missing again and again .
In northern India , we started mapping the cases using satellite imaging like this , so that we could guide our investments and vaccinator shelters , so we could get to the millions of children on the Koshi River basin where there are no other health services .
In northern Nigeria , the political leaders and the traditional Muslim leaders , they got directly involved in the program to help solve the problems of logistics and community confidence .
And now they 've even started using these devices -- speaking of cool technology -- these little devices , little GIS trackers like this , which they put into the vaccine carriers of their vaccinators .
And then they can track them , and at the end of the day , they look and see , did these guys get every single street , every single house .
This is the kind of commitment now we 're seeing to try and reach all of the children we 've been missing .
And in Afghanistan , we 're trying new approaches -- access negotiators .
We 're working closely with the International Committee of the Red Cross to ensure that we can reach every child .
But as we tried these extraordinary things , as people went to this trouble to try and rework their tactics , we went back to the vaccine -- it 's a 50-year-old vaccine -- and we thought , surely we can make a better vaccine , so that when they finally get to these kids , we can have a better bang for our buck .
And this started an incredible collaboration with industry , and within six months , we were testing a new polio vaccine that targeted , just two years ago , the last two types of polio in the world .
Now June the ninth , 2009 , we got the first results from the first trial with this vaccine , and it turned out to be a game-changer .
The new vaccine had twice the impact on these last couple of viruses as the old vaccine had , and we immediately started using this .
Well , in a couple of months we had to get it out of production .
And it started rolling off the production lines and into the mouths of children around the world .
And we didn 't start with the easy places .
The first place this vaccine was used was in southern Afghanistan , because it 's in places like that where kids are going to benefit the most from technologies like this .
Now here at TED , over the last couple of days , I 've seen people challenging the audience again and again to believe in the impossible .
So this morning at about seven o 'clock , I decided that we 'd try to drive Chris and the production crew here berserk by downloading all of our data from India again , so that you could see something that 's just unfolding today , which proves that the impossible is possible .
And only two years ago , people were saying that this is impossible .
Now remember , northern India is the perfect storm when it comes to polio .
Over 500,000 children are born in the two states that have never stopped polio -- Uttar Pradesh and Bihar -- 500,000 children every single month .
Sanitation is terrible , and our old vaccine , you remember , worked half as well as it should have .
And yet , the impossible is happening .
Today marks exactly six months -- and for the first time in history , not a single child has been paralyzed in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar .
India 's not unique .
In Umar 's home country of Nigeria , a 95 percent reduction in the number of children paralyzed by polio last year .
And in the last six months , we 've had less places reinfected by polio than at any other time in history .
Ladies and gentlemen , with a combination of smart people , smart technology and smart investments , polio can now be eradicated anywhere .
We have major challenges , you can imagine , to finish this job , but as you 've also seen , it 's doable , it has great secondary benefits , and polio eradication is a great buy .
And as long as any child anywhere is paralyzed by this virus , it 's a stark reminder that we are failing , as a society , to reach children with the most basic of services .
And for that reason , polio eradication : it 's the ultimate in equity and it 's the ultimate in social justice .
The huge social movement that 's been involved in polio eradication is ready to do way more for these children .
It 's ready to reach them with bed nets , with other things .
But capitalizing on their enthusiasm , capitalizing on their energy means finishing the job that they started 20 years ago .
Finishing polio is a smart thing to do , and it 's the right thing to do .
Now we 're in tough times economically .
But as David Cameron of the United Kingdom said about a month ago when he was talking about polio , " There 's never a wrong time to do the right thing . "
Finishing polio eradication is the right thing to do .
And we are at a crossroads right now in this great effort over the last 20 years .
We have a new vaccine , we have new resolve , and we have new tactics .
We have the chance to write an entirely new polio-free chapter in human history .
But if we blink now , we will lose forever the chance to eradicate an ancient disease .
Here 's a great idea to spread : End polio now .
Help us tell the story .
Help us build the momentum so that very soon every child , every parent everywhere can also take for granted a polio-free life forever .
Thank you .
Bill Gates : Well Bruce , where do you think the toughest places are going to be ?
Where would you say we need to be the smartest ?
B The four places where you saw , that we 've never stopped -- northern Nigeria , northern India , the southern corner of Afghanistan and bordering areas of Pakistan -- they 're going to be the toughest .
But the interesting thing is , of those three , India 's looking real good , as you just saw in the data .
And Afghanistan , Afghanistan , we think has probably stopped polio repeatedly .
It keeps getting reinfected .
So the tough ones : going to get the top of Nigeria finished and getting Pakistan finished .
They 're going to be the tough ones .
Now what about the money ?
Give us a sense of how much the campaign costs a year .
And is it easy to raise that money ?
And what 's it going to be like the next couple of years ?
B It 's interesting .
We spend right now about 750 million to 800 million dollars a year .
That 's what it costs to reach 500 million children .
It sounds like a lot of money ; it is a lot of money .
But when you 're reaching 500 million children multiple times -- 20 , 30 cents to reach a child -- that 's not very much money .
But right now we don 't have enough of that .
We have a big gap in that money . We 're cutting corners , and every time we cut corners , more places get infected that shouldn 't have , and it just slows us down .
And that great buy costs us a little bit more .
Well , hopefully we 'll get the word out , and the governments will keep their generosity up .
So good luck . We 're all in this with you .
Thank you .
Frank Warren : Half a million secrets
" Secrets can take many forms -- they can be shocking , or silly , or soulful . " Frank Warren , the founder of PostSecret.com , shares some of the half-million secrets that strangers have mailed him on postcards .
Hi , my name is Frank , and I collect secrets .
It all started with a crazy idea in November of 2004 .
I printed up 3,000 self-addressed postcards , just like this .
They were blank on one side , and on the other side I listed some simple instructions .
I asked people to anonymously share an artful secret they 'd never told anyone before .
And I handed out these postcards randomly on the streets of Washington , D.C. , not knowing what to expect .
But soon the idea began spreading virally .
People began to buy their own postcards and make their own postcards .
I started receiving secrets in my home mailbox , not just with postmarks from Washington , D.C. , but from Texas , California , Vancouver , New Zealand , Iraq .
Soon my crazy idea didn 't seem so crazy .
PostSecret.com is the most visited advertisement-free blog in the world .
And this is my postcard collection today .
You can see my wife struggling to stack a brick of postcards on a pyramid of over a half-million secrets .
What I 'd like to do now is share with you a very special handful of secrets from that collection , starting with this one .
" I found these stamps as a child , and I have been waiting all my life to have someone to send them to .
I never did have someone . "
Secrets can take many forms .
They can be shocking or silly or soulful .
They can connect us to our deepest humanity or with people we 'll never meet .
Maybe one of you sent this one in .
I don 't know .
This one does a great job of demonstrating the creativity that people have when they make and mail me a postcard .
This one obviously was made out of half a Starbucks cup with a stamp and my home address written on the other side .
" Dear Birthmother , I have great parents .
I 've found love . I 'm happy . "
Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas , of frailty and heroism , playing out silently in the lives of people all around us even now .
" Everyone who knew me before 9 / 11 believes I 'm dead . "
" I used to work with a bunch of uptight religious people , so sometimes I didn 't wear panties , and just had a big smile and chuckled to myself . "
This next one takes a little explanation before I share it with you .
I love to speak on college campuses and share secrets and the stories with students .
And sometimes afterwards I 'll stick around and sign books and take photos with students .
And this next postcard was made out of one of those photos .
And I should also mention that , just like today , at that PostSecret event , I was using a wireless microphone .
" Your mic wasn 't off during sound check .
We all heard you pee . "
This was really embarrassing when it happened , until I realized it could have been worse .
Right . You know what I 'm saying .
" Inside this envelope is the ripped up remains of a suicide note I didn 't use .
I feel like the happiest person on Earth " " One of these men is the father of my son .
He pays me a lot to keep it a secret . "
" That Saturday when you wondered where I was , well , I was getting your ring .
It 's in my pocket right now . "
I had this postcard posted on the PostSecret blog two years ago on Valentine 's Day .
It was the very bottom , the last secret in the long column .
And it hadn 't been up for more than a couple hours before I received this exuberant email from the guy who mailed me this postcard .
And he said , " Frank , I 've got to share with you this story that just played out in my life . "
He said , " My knees are still shaking . "
He said , " For three years , my girlfriend and I , we 've made it this Sunday morning ritual to visit the PostSecret blog together and read the secrets out loud .
I read some to her , she reads some to me . "
He says , " It 's really brought us closer together through the years .
And so when I discovered that you had posted my surprise proposal to my girlfriend at the very bottom , I was beside myself .
And I tried to act calm , not to give anything away .
And just like every Sunday , we started reading the secrets out loud to each other . "
He said , " But this time it seemed like it was taking her forever to get through each one . "
But she finally did .
She got to that bottom secret , his proposal to her .
And he said , " She read it once and then she read it again . "
And she turned to him and said , " Is that our cat ? "
And when she saw him , he was down on one knee , he had the ring out .
He popped the question , she said yes . It was a very happy ending .
So I emailed him back and I said , " Please share with me an image , something , that I can share with the whole PostSecret community and let everyone know your fairy tale ending . "
And he emailed me this picture .
" I found your camera at Lollapalooza this summer .
I finally got the pictures developed and I 'd love to give them to you . "
This picture never got returned back to the people who lost it , but this secret has impacted many lives , starting with a student up in Canada named Matty .
Matty was inspired by that secret to start his own website , a website called IFoundYourCamera .
Matty invites people to mail him digital cameras that they 've found , memory sticks that have been lost with orphan photos .
And Matty takes the pictures off these cameras and posts them on his website every week .
And people come to visit to see if they can identify a picture they 've lost or help somebody else get the photos back to them that they might be desperately searching for .
This one 's my favorite .
Matty has found this ingenious way to leverage the kindness of strangers .
And it might seem like a simple idea , and it is , but the impact it can have on people 's lives can be huge .
Matty shared with me an emotional email he received from the mother in that picture .
" That 's me , my husband and son .
The other pictures are of my very ill grandmother .
Thank you for making your site .
These pictures mean more to me than you know .
My son 's birth is on this camera .
He turns four tomorrow . "
Every picture that you see there and thousands of others have been returned back to the person who lost it -- sometimes crossing oceans , sometimes going through language barriers .
This is the last postcard I have to share with you today .
" When people I love leave voicemails on my phone I always save them in case they die tomorrow and I have no other way of hearing their voice ever again . "
When I posted this secret , dozens of people sent voicemail messages from their phones , sometimes ones they 'd been keeping for years , messages from family or friends who had died .
They said that by preserving those voices and sharing them , it helped them keep the spirit of their loved ones alive .
One young girl posted the last message she ever heard from her grandmother .
Secrets can take many forms .
They can be shocking or silly or soulful .
They can connect us with our deepest humanity or with people we 'll never meet again .
Voicemail recording : First saved voice message .
It 's somebody 's birthday today Somebody 's birthday today The candles are lighted on somebody 's cake And we 're all invited for somebody 's sake You 're 21 years old today .
Have a real happy birthday , and I love you .
I 'll say bye for now .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Frank , that was beautiful , so touching .
Have you ever sent yourself a postcard ?
Have you ever sent in a secret to PostSecret ?
I have one of my own secrets in every book .
I think in some ways , the reason I started the project , even though I didn 't know it at the time , was because I was struggling with my own secrets .
And it was through crowd-sourcing , it was through the kindness that strangers were showing me , that I could uncover parts of my past that were haunting me .
And has anyone ever discovered which secret was yours in the book ?
Has anyone in your life been able to tell ?
Sometimes I share that information , yeah .
Tony Porter : A call to men
At TEDWomen , Tony Porter makes a call to men everywhere : Don 't " act like a man . " Telling powerful stories from his own life , he shows how this mentality , drummed into so many men and boys , can lead men to disrespect , mistreat and abuse women and each other . His solution : Break free of the " man box . "
I grew up in New York City , between Harlem and the Bronx .
Growing up as a boy , we were taught that men had to be tough , had to be strong , had to be courageous , dominating -- no pain , no emotions , with the exception of anger -- and definitely no fear ; that men are in charge , which means women are not ; that men lead , and you should just follow and do what we say ; that men are superior ; women are inferior ; that men are strong ; women are weak ; that women are of less value , property of men , and objects , particularly sexual objects .
I 've later come to know that to be the collective socialization of men , better known as the " man box . "
See this man box has in it all the ingredients of how we define what it means to be a man .
Now I also want to say , without a doubt , there are some wonderful , wonderful , absolutely wonderful things about being a man .
But at the same time , there 's some stuff that 's just straight up twisted , and we really need to begin to challenge , look at it and really get in the process of deconstructing , redefining , what we come to know as manhood .
This is my two at home , Kendall and Jay .
They 're 11 and 12 .
Kendall 's 15 months older than Jay .
There was a period of time when my wife -- her name is Tammie -- and I , we just got real busy and whip , bam , boom : Kendall and Jay .
And when they were about five and six , four and five , Jay could come to me , come to me crying .
It didn 't matter what she was crying about , she could get on my knee , she could snot my sleeve up , just cry , cry it out .
Daddy 's got you . That 's all that 's important .
Now Kendall on the other hand -- and like I said , he 's only 15 months older than her -- he 'd come to me crying , it 's like as soon as I would hear him cry , a clock would go off .
I would give the boy probably about 30 seconds , which means , by the time he got to me , I was already saying things like , " Why are you crying ?
Hold your head up . Look at me .
Explain to me what 's wrong .
Tell me what 's wrong . I can 't understand you .
Why are you crying ? "
And out of my own frustration of my role and responsibility of building him up as a man to fit into these guidelines and these structures that are defining this man box , I would find myself saying things like , " Just go in your room .
Just go on , go on in your room .
Sit down , get yourself together and come back and talk to me when you can talk to me like a -- " what ?
Like a man .
And he 's five years old .
And as I grow in life , I would say to myself , " My God , what 's wrong with me ?
What am I doing ? Why would I do this ? "
And I think back .
I think back to my father .
There was a time in my life where we had a very troubled experience in our family .
My brother , Henry , he died tragically when we were teenagers .
We lived in New York City , as I said .
We lived in the Bronx at the time , and the burial was in a place called Long Island , it was about two hours outside of the city .
And as we were preparing to come back from the burial , the cars stopped at the bathroom to let folks take care of themselves before the long ride back to the city .
And the limousine empties out .
My mother , my sister , my auntie , they all get out , but my father and I stayed in the limousine , and no sooner than the women got out , he burst out crying .
He didn 't want cry in front of me , but he knew he wasn 't going to make it back to the city , and it was better me than to allow himself to express these feelings and emotions in front of the women .
And this is a man who , 10 minutes ago , had just put his teenage son in the ground -- something I just can 't even imagine .
The thing that sticks with me the most is that he was apologizing to me for crying in front of me , and at the same time , he was also giving me props , lifting me up , for not crying .
I come to also look at this as this fear that we have as men , this fear that just has us paralyzed , holding us hostage to this man box .
I can remember speaking to a 12-year-old boy , a football player , and I asked him , I said , " How would you feel if , in front of all the players , your coach told you you were playing like a girl ? "
Now I expected him to say something like , I 'd be sad ; I 'd be mad ; I 'd be angry , or something like that .
No , the boy said to me -- the boy said to me , " It would destroy me . "
And I said to myself , " God , if it would destroy him to be called a girl , what are we then teaching him about girls ? "
It took me back to a time when I was about 12 years old .
I grew up in tenement buildings in the inner city .
At this time we 're living in the Bronx , and in the building next to where I lived there was a guy named Johnny .
He was about 16 years old , and we were all about 12 years old -- younger guys .
And he was hanging out with all us younger guys .
And this guy , he was up to a lot of no good .
He was the kind of kid who parents would have to wonder , " What is this 16-year-old boy doing with these 12-year-old boys ? "
And he did spend a lot of time up to no good .
He was a troubled kid .
His mother had died from a heroin overdose .
He was being raised by his grandmother .
His father wasn 't on the set .
His grandmother had two jobs .
He was home alone a lot .
But I 've got to tell you , we young guys , we looked up to this dude , man .
He was cool . He was fine .
That 's what the sisters said , " He was fine . "
He was having sex .
We all looked up to him .
So one day , I 'm out in front of the house doing something -- just playing around , doing something -- I don 't know what .
He looks out his window ; he calls me upstairs ; he said , " Hey Anthony . "
They called me Anthony growing up as a kid .
" Hey Anthony , come on upstairs . "
Johnny call , you go .
So I run right upstairs .
As he opens the door , he says to me , " Do you want some ? "
Now I immediately knew what he meant .
Because for me growing up at that time , and our relationship with this man box , " Do you want some ? " meant one of two things : sex or drugs -- and we weren 't doing drugs .
Now my box , my card , my man box card , was immediately in jeopardy .
Two things : One , I never had sex .
We don 't talk about that as men .
You only tell your dearest , closest friend , sworn to secrecy for life , the first time you had sex .
For everybody else , we go around like we 've been having sex since we were two .
There ain 't no first time .
The other thing I couldn 't tell him is that I didn 't want any .
That 's even worse . We 're supposed to always be on the prowl .
Women are objects , especially sexual objects .
Anyway , so I couldn 't tell him any of that .
So , like my mother would say , make a long story short , I just simply said to Johnny , " Yes . "
He told me to go in his room .
I go in his room . On his bed is a girl from the neighborhood named Sheila .
She 's 16 years old .
She 's nude .
She 's what I know today to be mentally ill , higher-functioning at times than others .
We had a whole choice of inappropriate names for her .
Anyway , Johnny had just gotten through having sex with her .
Well actually , he raped her , but he would say he had sex with her .
Because , while Sheila never said no , she also never said yes .
So he was offering me the opportunity to do the same .
So when I go in the room , I close the door .
Folks , I 'm petrified .
I stand with my back to the door so Johnny can 't bust in the room and see that I 'm not doing anything , and I stand there long enough that I could have actually done something .
So now I 'm no longer trying to figure out what I 'm going to do ; I 'm trying to figure out how I 'm going to get out of this room .
So in my 12 years of wisdom , I zip my pants down , I walk out into the room , and lo and behold to me , while I was in the room with Sheila , Johnny was back at the window calling guys up .
So now there 's a living room full of guys .
It was like the waiting room in the doctor 's office .
And they asked me how was it , and I say to them , " It was good , " and I zip my pants up in front of them , and I head for the door .
Now I say this all with remorse , and I was feeling a tremendous amount of remorse at that time , but I was conflicted , because , while I was feeling remorse , I was excited , because I didn 't get caught .
But I knew I felt bad about what was happening .
This fear , getting outside the man box , totally enveloped me .
It was way more important to me , about me and my man box card than about Sheila and what was happening to her .
See collectively , we as men are taught to have less value in women , to view them as property and the objects of men .
We see that as an equation that equals violence against women .
We as men , good men , the large majority of men , we operate on the foundation of this whole collective socialization .
We kind of see ourselves separate , but we 're very much a part of it .
You see , we have to come to understand that less value , property and objectification is the foundation and the violence can 't happen without it .
So we 're very much a part of the solution as well as the problem .
The center for disease control says that men 's violence against women is at epidemic proportions , is the number one health concern for women in this country and abroad .
So quickly , I 'd like to just say , this is the love of my life , my daughter Jay .
The world I envision for her -- how do I want men to be acting and behaving ?
I need you on board . I need you with me .
I need you working with me and me working with you on how we raise our sons and teach them to be men -- that it 's okay to not be dominating , that it 's okay to have feelings and emotions , that it 's okay to promote equality , that it 's okay to have women who are just friends and that 's it , that it 's okay to be whole , that my liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman .
I remember asking a nine-year-old boy , I asked a nine-year-old boy , " What would life be like for you , if you didn 't have to adhere to this man box ? "
He said to me , " I would be free . "
Thank you folks .
Stanley McChrystal : Listen , learn ... then lead
Four-star general Stanley McChrystal shares what he learned about leadership over his decades in the military . How can you build a sense of shared purpose among people of many ages and skill sets ? By listening and learning -- and addressing the possibility of failure .
Ten years ago , on a Tuesday morning , I conducted a parachute jump at Fort Bragg , North Carolina .
It was a routine training jump , like many more I 'd done since I became a paratrooper 27 years before .
We went down to the airfield early because this is the Army and you always go early .
You do some routine refresher training , and then you go to put on your parachute and a buddy helps you .
And you put on the T-10 parachute .
And you 're very careful how you put the straps , particularly the leg straps because they go between your legs .
And then you put on your reserve , and then you put on your heavy rucksack .
And then a jumpmaster comes , and he 's an experienced NCO in parachute operations .
He checks you out , he grabs your adjusting straps and he tightens everything so that your chest is crushed , your shoulders are crushed down , and , of course , he 's tightened so your voice goes up a couple octaves as well .
Then you sit down , and you wait a little while , because this is the Army .
Then you load the aircraft , and then you stand up and you get on , and you kind of lumber to the aircraft like this , in a line of people , and you sit down on canvas seats on either side of the aircraft .
And you wait a little bit longer , because this is the Air Force teaching the Army how to wait .
Then you take off .
And it 's painful enough now -- and I think it 's designed this way -- it 's painful enough so you want to jump .
You didn 't really want to jump , but you want out .
So you get in the aircraft , you 're flying along , and at 20 minutes out , these jumpmasters start giving you commands .
They give 20 minutes -- that 's a time warning .
You sit there , OK .
Then they give you 10 minutes .
And of course , you 're responding with all of these .
And that 's to boost everybody 's confidence , to show that you 're not scared .
Then they give you , " Get ready . "
Then they go , " Outboard personnel , stand up . "
If you 're an outboard personnel , now you stand up .
If you 're an inboard personnel , stand up .
And then you hook up , and you hook up your static line .
And at that point , you think , " Hey , guess what ?
I 'm probably going to jump .
There 's no way to get out of this at this point . "
You go through some additional checks , and then they open the door .
And this was that Tuesday morning in September , and it was pretty nice outside .
So nice air comes flowing in .
The jumpmasters start to check the door .
And then when it 's time to go , a green light goes and the jumpmaster goes , " Go . "
The first guy goes , and you 're just in line , and you just kind of lumber to the door .
Jump is a misnomer ; you fall .
You fall outside the door , you 're caught in the slipstream .
The first thing you do is lock into a tight body position -- head down in your chest , your arms extended , put over your reserve parachute .
You do that because , 27 years before , an airborne sergeant had taught me to do that .
I have no idea whether it makes any difference , but he seemed to make sense , and I wasn 't going to test the hypothesis that he 'd be wrong .
And then you wait for the opening shock for your parachute to open .
If you don 't get an opening shock , you don 't get a parachute -- you 've got a whole new problem set .
But typically you do ; typically it opens .
And of course , if your leg straps aren 't set right , at that point you get another little thrill .
Boom .
So then you look around , you 're under a canopy and you say , " This is good . "
Now you prepare for the inevitable .
You are going to hit the ground .
You can 't delay that much .
And you really can 't decide where you hit very much , because they pretend you can steer , but you 're being delivered .
So you look around , where you 're going to land , you try to make yourself ready .
And then as you get close , you lower your rucksack below you on a lowering line , so that it 's not on you when you land , and you prepare to do a parachute-landing fall .
Now the Army teaches you to do five points of performance -- the toes of your feet , your calves , your thighs , your buttocks and your push-up muscles .
It 's this elegant little land , twist and roll .
And that 's not going to hurt .
In 30-some years of jumping , I never did one .
I always landed like a watermelon out of a third floor window .
And as soon as I hit , the first thing I did is I 'd see if I 'd broken anything that I needed .
I 'd shake my head , and I 'd ask myself the eternal question : " Why didn 't I go into banking ? "
And I 'd look around , and then I 'd see another paratrooper , a young guy or girl , and they 'd have pulled out their M4 carbine and they 'd be picking up their equipment .
They 'd be doing everything that we had taught them .
And I realized that , if they had to go into combat , they would do what we had taught them and they would follow leaders .
And I realized that , if they came out of combat , it would be because we led them well .
And I was hooked again on the importance of what I did .
So now I do that Tuesday morning jump , but it 's not any jump -- that was September 11th , 2001 .
And when we took off from the airfield , America was at peace .
When we landed on the drop-zone , everything had changed .
And what we thought about the possibility of those young soldiers going into combat as being theoretical was now very , very real -- and leadership seemed important .
But things had changed ; I was a 46-year-old brigadier general .
I 'd been successful , but things changed so much that I was going to have to make some significant changes , and on that morning , I didn 't know it .
I was raised with traditional stories of leadership : Robert E. Lee , John Buford at Gettysburg .
And I also was raised with personal examples of leadership .
This was my father in Vietnam .
And I was raised to believe that soldiers were strong and wise and brave and faithful ; they didn 't lie , cheat , steal or abandon their comrades .
And I still believe real leaders are like that .
But in my first 25 years of career , I had a bunch of different experiences .
One of my first battalion commanders , I worked in his battalion for 18 months and the only conversation he ever had with Lt. McChrystal was at mile 18 of a 25-mile road march , and he chewed my ass for about 40 seconds .
And I 'm not sure that was real interaction .
But then a couple of years later , when I was a company commander , I went out to the National Training Center .
And we did an operation , and my company did a dawn attack -- you know , the classic dawn attack : you prepare all night , move to the line of departure .
And I had an armored organization at that point .
We move forward , and we get wiped out -- I mean , wiped out immediately .
The enemy didn 't break a sweat doing it .
And after the battle , they bring this mobile theater and they do what they call an " after action review " to teach you what you 've done wrong .
Sort of leadership by humiliation .
They put a big screen up , and they take you through everything : " and then you didn 't do this , and you didn 't do this , etc . "
I walked out feeling as low as a snake 's belly in a wagon rut .
And I saw my battalion commander , because I had let him down .
And I went up to apologize to him , and he said , " Stanley , I thought you did great . "
And in one sentence , he lifted me , put me back on my feet , and taught me that leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure .
When 9 / 11 came , 46-year-old Brig. Gen. McChrystal sees a whole new world .
First , the things that are obvious , that you 're familiar with : the environment changed -- the speed , the scrutiny , the sensitivity of everything now is so fast , sometimes it evolves faster than people have time to really reflect on it .
But everything we do is in a different context .
More importantly , the force that I led was spread over more than 20 countries .
And instead of being able to get all the key leaders for a decision together in a single room and look them in the eye and build their confidence and get trust from them , I 'm now leading a force that 's dispersed , and I 've got to use other techniques .
I 've got to use video teleconferences , I 've got to use chat , I 've got to use everything I can , not just for communication , but for leadership .
A 22-year-old individual operating alone , thousands of miles from me , has got to communicate to me with confidence .
I have to have trust in them and vice versa .
And I also have to build their faith .
And that 's a new kind of leadership for me .
We had one operation where we had to coordinate it from multiple locations .
An emerging opportunity came -- didn 't have time to get everybody together .
So we had to get complex intelligence together , we had to line up the ability to act .
It was sensitive , we had to go up the chain of command , convince them that this was the right thing to do and do all of this on electronic medium .
We failed .
The mission didn 't work .
And so now what we had to do is I had to reach out to try to rebuild the trust of that force , rebuild their confidence -- me and them , and them and me , and our seniors and us as a force -- all without the ability to put a hand on a shoulder .
Entirely new requirement .
Also , the people had changed .
You probably think that the force that I led was all steely-eyed commandos with big knuckle fists carrying exotic weapons .
In reality , much of the force I led looked exactly like you .
It was men , women , young , old -- not just from military ; from different organizations , many of them detailed to us just from a handshake .
And so instead of giving orders , you 're now building consensus and you 're building a sense of shared purpose .
Probably the biggest change was understanding that the generational difference , the ages , had changed so much .
I went down to be with a Ranger platoon on an operation in Afghanistan , and on that operation , a sergeant in the platoon had lost about half his arm throwing a Taliban hand grenade back at the enemy after it had landed in his fire team .
We talked about the operation , and then at the end I did what I often do with a force like that .
I asked , " Where were you on 9 / 11 ? "
And one young Ranger in the back -- his hair 's tousled and his face is red and windblown from being in combat in the cold Afghan wind -- he said , " Sir , I was in the sixth grade . "
And it reminded me that we 're operating a force that must have shared purpose and shared consciousness , and yet he has different experiences , in many cases a different vocabulary , a completely different skill set in terms of digital media than I do and many of the other senior leaders .
And yet , we need to have that shared sense .
It also produced something which I call an inversion of expertise , because we had so many changes at the lower levels in technology and tactics and whatnot , that suddenly the things that we grew up doing wasn 't what the force was doing anymore .
So how does a leader stay credible and legitimate when they haven 't done what the people you 're leading are doing ?
And it 's a brand new leadership challenge .
And it forced me to become a lot more transparent , a lot more willing to listen , a lot more willing to be reverse-mentored from lower .
And yet , again , you 're not all in one room .
Then another thing .
There 's an effect on you and on your leaders .
There 's an impact , it 's cumulative .
You don 't reset , or recharge your battery every time .
I stood in front of a screen one night in Iraq with one of my senior officers and we watched a firefight from one of our forces .
And I remembered his son was in our force .
And I said , " John , where 's your son ? And how is he ? "
And he said , " Sir , he 's fine . Thanks for asking . "
I said , " Where is he now ? "
And he pointed at the screen , he said , " He 's in that firefight . "
Think about watching your brother , father , daughter , son , wife in a firefight in real time and you can 't do anything about it .
Think about knowing that over time .
And it 's a new cumulative pressure on leaders .
And you have to watch and take care of each other .
I probably learned the most about relationships .
I learned they are the sinew which hold the force together .
I grew up much of my career in the Ranger regiment .
And every morning in the Ranger regiment , every Ranger -- and there are more than 2,000 of them -- says a six-stanza Ranger creed .
You may know one line of it , it says , " I 'll never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy . "
And it 's not a mindless mantra , and it 's not a poem .
It 's a promise .
Every Ranger promises every other Ranger , " No matter what happens , no matter what it costs me , if you need me , I 'm coming . "
And every Ranger gets that same promise from every other Ranger .
Think about it . It 's extraordinarily powerful .
It 's probably more powerful than marriage vows .
And they 've lived up to it , which gives it special power .
And so the organizational relationship that bonds them is just amazing .
And I learned personal relationships were more important than ever .
We were in a difficult operation in Afghanistan in 2007 , and an old friend of mine , that I had spent many years at various points of my career with -- godfather to one of their kids -- he sent me a note , just in an envelope , that had a quote from Sherman to Grant that said , " I knew if I ever got in a tight spot , that you would come , if alive . "
And having that kind of relationship , for me , turned out to be critical at many points in my career .
And I learned that you have to give that in this environment , because it 's tough .
That was my journey .
I hope it 's not over .
I came to believe that a leader isn 't good because they 're right ; they 're good because they 're willing to learn and to trust .
This isn 't easy stuff .
It 's not like that electronic abs machine where , 15 minutes a month , you get washboard abs .
And it isn 't always fair .
You can get knocked down , and it hurts and it leaves scars .
But if you 're a leader , the people you 've counted on will help you up .
And if you 're a leader , the people who count on you need you on your feet .
Thank you .
Arunachalam Muruganantham : How I started a sanitary napkin revolution !
When he realized his wife had to choose between buying family meals and buying her monthly " supplies , " Arunachalam Muruganantham vowed to help her solve the problem of the sanitary pad . His research got very very personal -- and led him to a powerful business model .
So I tried to do a small good thing for my wife .
It makes me to stand here , the fame , the money I got out of it .
So what I did , I 'd gone back to my early marriage days .
What you did in the early marriage days , you tried to impress your wife . I did the same .
On that occasion , I found my wife carrying something like this .
I saw . " What is that ? " I asked .
My wife replied , " None of your business . "
Then , being her husband , I ran behind her and saw she had a nasty rag cloth .
I don 't even use that cloth to clean my two-wheeler .
Then I understood this -- adapting that unhygienic method to manage her period days .
Then I immediately asked her , why are you [ using ] that unhygienic method ?
She replied , I also know about [ sanitary pads ] , but myself and my sisters , if they start using that , we have to cut our family milk budget .
Then I was shocked . What is the connection between using a sanitary pad and a milk budget ?
And it 's called affordability .
I tried to impress my new wife by offering her a packet of sanitary pads .
I went to a local shop , I tried to buy her a sanitary pad packet .
That fellow looks left and right , and spreads a newspaper , rolls it into the newspaper , gives it to me like a banned item , something like that .
I don 't know why . I did not ask for a condom .
Then I took that pad . I want to see that . What is inside it ?
The very first time , at the age of 29 , that day I am touching the sanitary pad , first ever .
I must know : How many of the guys here have touched a sanitary pad ?
They are not going to touch that , because it 's not your matter .
Then I thought to myself , white substance , made of cotton -- oh my God , that guy is just using a penny value of raw material -- inside they are selling for pounds , dollars .
Why not make a local sanitary pad for my new wife ?
That 's how all this started , but after making a sanitary pad , where can I check it ?
It 's not like I can just check it in the lab .
I need a woman volunteer . Where can I get one in India ?
Even in Bangalore you won 't get [ one ] , in India .
So only problem : the only available victim is my wife .
Then I made a sanitary pad and handed it to Shanti -- my wife 's name is Shanti .
" Close your eyes . Whatever I give , it will be not a diamond pendant not a diamond ring , even a chocolate , I will give you a surprise with a lot of tinsel paper rolled up with it .
Close your eyes . "
Because I tried to make it intimate .
Because it 's an arranged marriage , not a love marriage .
So one day she said , openly , I 'm not going to support this research .
Then other victims , they got into my sisters .
But even sisters , wives , they 're not ready to support in the research .
That 's why I am always jealous with the saints in India .
They are having a lot of women volunteers around them .
Why I am not getting [ any ] ?
You know , without them even calling , they 'll get a lot of women volunteers .
Then I used , tried to use the medical college girls .
They also refused . Finally , I decide , use sanitary pad myself .
Now I am having a title like the first man to set foot on the moon .
Armstrong . Then Tenzing [ and ] Hillary , in Everest , like that Muruganantham is the first man wore a sanitary pad across the globe .
I wore a sanitary pad . I filled animal blood in a football bottle , I tied it up here , there is a tube going into my panties , while I 'm walking , while I 'm cycling , I made a press , doses of blood will go there .
That makes me bow down to any woman in front of me to give full respect . That five days I 'll never forget -- the messy days , the lousy days , that wetness .
My God , it 's unbelievable .
But here the problem is , one company is making napkin out of cotton . It is working well .
But I am also trying to make sanitary pad with the good cotton . It 's not working .
That makes me to want to refuse to continue this research and research and research .
You need first funds .
Not only financial crises , but because of the sanitary pad research , I come through all sorts of problems , including a divorce notice from my wife .
Why is this ? I used medical college girls .
She suspects I am using as a trump card to run behind medical college girls .
Finally , I came to know it is a special cellulose derived from a pinewood , but even after that , you need a multimillion-dollar plant like this to process that material . Again , a stop-up .
Then I spend another four years to create my own machine tools , a simple machine tool like this .
In this machine , any rural woman can apply the same raw materials that they are processing in the multinational plant , anyone can make a world-class napkin at your dining hall .
That is my invention .
So after that , what I did , usually if anyone got a patent or an invention , immediately you want to make , convert into this .
I never did this . I dropped it just like this , because you do this , if anyone runs after money , their life will not [ have ] any beauty . It is boredom .
A lot of people making a lot of money , billion , billions of dollars accumulating .
Why are they coming for , finally , for philanthropy ?
Why the need for accumulating money , then doing philanthropy ?
What if one decided to start philanthropy from the day one ?
That 's why I am giving this machine only in rural India , for rural women , because in India , [ you 'll be ] surprised , only two percent of women are using sanitary pads . The rest , they 're using a rag cloth , a leaf , husk , [ saw ] dust , everything except sanitary pads .
It is the same in the 21st century . That 's why I am going to decide to give this machine only for poor women across India .
So far , 630 installations happened in 23 states in six other countries .
Now I 'm on my seventh year sustaining against multinational , transnational giants -- makes all MBA students a question mark .
A school dropout from Coimbatore , how he is able to sustaining ?
That makes me a visiting professor and guest lecturer in all IIMs .
Play video one .
Arunachalam Muruganantham : The thing I saw in my wife 's hand , " Why are you using that nasty cloth ? "
She replied immediately , " I know about napkins , but if I start using napkins , then we have to cut our family milk budget . "
Why not make myself a low-cost napkin ?
So I decided I 'm going to sell this new machine only for Women Self Help Groups .
That is my idea .
AM : And previously , you need a multimillion investment for machine and all . Now , any rural woman can .
They are performing puja .
: You just think , competing giants , even from Harvard , Oxford , is difficult .
I make a rural woman to compete with multinationals .
I 'm sustaining on seventh year .
Already 600 installations . What is my mission ?
I 'm going to make India [ into ] a 100-percent-sanitary-napkin-using country in my lifetime .
In this way I 'm going to provide not less than a million rural employment that I 'm going to create .
That 's why I 'm not running after this bloody money .
I 'm doing something serious .
If you chase a girl , the girl won 't like you .
Do your job simply , the girl will chase you .
Like that , I never chased Mahalakshmi .
Mahalakshmi is chasing me , I am keeping in the back pocket .
Not in front pocket . I 'm a back pocket man .
That 's all . A school dropout saw your problem in the society of not using sanitary pad .
I am becoming a solution provider . I 'm very happy .
I don 't want to make this as a corporate entity .
I want to make this as a local sanitary pad movement across the globe . That 's why I put all the details on public domain like an open software .
Now 110 countries are accessing it . Okay ?
So I classify the people into three : uneducated , little educated , surplus educated .
Little educated , done this . Surplus educated , what are you going to do for the society ?
Thank you very much . Bye !
Stephen Hawking : Questioning the universe
In keeping with the theme of TED2008 , professor Stephen Hawking asks some Big Questions about our universe -- How did the universe begin ? How did life begin ? Are we alone ? -- and discusses how we might go about answering them .
There is nothing bigger or older than the universe .
The questions I would like to talk about are : one , where did we come from ?
How did the universe come into being ?
Are we alone in the universe ?
Is there alien life out there ?
What is the future of the human race ?
Up until the 1920s , everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time .
Then it was discovered that the universe was expanding .
Distant galaxies were moving away from us .
This meant they must have been closer together in the past .
If we extrapolate back , we find we must have all been on top of each other about 15 billion years ago .
This was the Big Bang , the beginning of the universe .
But was there anything before the Big Bang ?
If not , what created the universe ?
Why did the universe emerge from the Big Bang the way it did ?
We used to think that the theory of the universe could be divided into two parts .
First , there were the laws like Maxwell 's equations and general relativity that determined the evolution of the universe , given its state over all of space at one time .
And second , there was no question of the initial state of the universe .
We have made good progress on the first part , and now have the knowledge of the laws of evolution in all but the most extreme conditions .
But until recently , we have had little idea about the initial conditions for the universe .
However , this division into laws of evolution and initial conditions depends on time and space being separate and distinct .
Under extreme conditions , general relativity and quantum theory allow time to behave like another dimension of space .
This removes the distinction between time and space , and means the laws of evolution can also determine the initial state .
The universe can spontaneously create itself out of nothing .
Moreover , we can calculate a probability that the universe was created in different states .
These predictions are in excellent agreement with observations by the WMAP satellite of the cosmic microwave background , which is an imprint of the very early universe .
We think we have solved the mystery of creation .
Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence .
I now turn to the second big question : are we alone , or is there other life in the universe ?
We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth , so it must be possible for life to appear on other suitable planets , of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy .
But we don 't know how life first appeared .
We have two pieces of observational evidence on the probability of life appearing .
The first is that we have fossils of algae from 3.5 billion years ago .
The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and was probably too hot for about the first half billion years .
So life appeared on Earth within half a billion years of it being possible , which is short compared to the 10-billion-year lifetime of a planet of Earth type .
This suggests that a probability of life appearing is reasonably high .
If it was very low , one would have expected it to take most of the ten billion years available .
On the other hand , we don 't seem to have been visited by aliens .
I am discounting the reports of UFOs .
Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdoes ?
If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens bring , it seems to have been a singularly ineffective policy so far .
Furthermore , despite an extensive search by the SETI project , we haven 't heard any alien television quiz shows .
This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within a radius of a few hundred light years .
Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet .
This brings me to the last of the big questions : the future of the human race .
If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy , we should make sure we survive and continue .
But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history .
Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially , along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill .
But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past .
It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years , let alone the next thousand or million .
Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth , but to spread out into space .
The answers to these big questions show that we have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years .
But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years , our future is in space .
That is why I am in favor of manned -- or should I say , personed -- space flight .
All of my life I have sought to understand the universe and find answers to these questions .
I have been very lucky that my disability has not been a serious handicap .
Indeed , it has probably given me more time than most people to pursue the quest for knowledge .
The ultimate goal is a complete theory of the universe , and we are making good progress .
Thank you for listening .
Professor , if you had to guess either way , do you now believe that it is more likely than not that we are alone in the Milky Way , as a civilization of our level of intelligence or higher ?
This answer took seven minutes , and really gave me an insight into the incredible act of generosity this whole talk was for TED .
Stephen Hawking : I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years ; otherwise we would have heard radio waves .
The alternative is that civilizations don 't last very long , but destroy themselves .
Professor Hawking , thank you for that answer .
We will take it as a salutary warning , I think , for the rest of our conference this week .
Professor , we really thank you for the extraordinary effort you made to share your questions with us today .
Thank you very much indeed .
Amanda Bennett : We need a heroic narrative for death
Amanda Bennett and her husband were passionate and full of life all throughout their lives together -- and up until the final days , too . Bennett gives a sweet yet powerful talk on why , for the loved ones of the dying , having hope for a happy ending shouldn 't warrant a diagnosis of " denial . " She calls for a more heroic narrative for death -- to match the ones we have in life .
So I 'd like you to come back with me just for a few minutes to a dark night in China , the night I met my husband .
It was a city so long ago that it was still called Peking .
So I went to a party .
I sat down next to a stout , middle-aged man with owl glasses and a bow tie , and he turned out to be a Fulbright scholar , there in China specifically to study Sino-Soviet relations .
What a gift it was to the eager , young foreign correspondent that I was then .
I 'd pump him for information , I 'm mentally scribbling notes for the stories I plan to write .
I talk to him for hours .
Only months later , I discover who he really was .
He was the China representative for the American Soybean Association .
" I don 't understand . Soybeans ?
You told me you were a Fulbright scholar . "
" Well , how long would you have talked to me if I told you we 're in soybeans ? "
I said , " You jerk . "
Only jerk wasn 't the word I used .
I said , " You could 've gotten me fired . "
And he said , " Let 's get married . "
" Travel the world and have lots of kids . "
So we did .
And what an alive man Terence Bryan Foley turned out to be .
He was a Chinese scholar who later , in his 60s , got a Ph.D. in Chinese history .
He spoke six languages , he played 15 musical instruments , he was a licensed pilot , he had once been a San Francisco cable car operator , he was an expert in swine nutrition , dairy cattle , Dixieland jazz , film noir , and we did travel the country , and the world , and we did have a lot of kids .
We followed my job , and it seemed like there was nothing that we couldn 't do .
So when we found the cancer , it doesn 't seem strange to us at all that without saying a word to each other , we believed that , if we were smart enough and strong enough and brave enough , and we worked hard enough , we could keep him from dying ever .
And for years , it seemed like we were succeeding .
The surgeon emerged from the surgery .
What 'd he say ? He said what surgeons always say : " We got it all . "
Then there was a setback when the pathologists looked at the kidney cancer closely .
It turned out to be a rare , exceedingly aggressive type , with a diagnosis that was almost universally fatal in several weeks at most .
And yet , he did not die .
Mysteriously , he lived on .
He coached Little League for our son .
He built a playhouse for our daughter .
And meanwhile , I 'm burying myself in the Internet looking for specialists .
I 'm looking for a cure .
So a year goes by before the cancer , as cancers do , reappears , and with it comes another death sentence , this time nine months .
So we try another treatment , aggressive , nasty .
It makes him so sick , he has to quit it , yet still he lives on .
Then another year goes by .
Two years go by .
More specialists .
We take the kids to Italy .
We take the kids to Australia .
And then more years pass , and the cancer begins to grow .
This time , there 's new treatments on the horizon .
They 're exotic . They 're experimental .
They 're going to attack the cancer in new ways .
So he enters a clinical trial , and it works .
The cancer begins to shrink , and for the third time , we 've dodged death .
So now I ask you , how do I feel when the time finally comes and there 's another dark night , sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. ?
This time it 's on the intensive care ward when a twentysomething resident that I 've never met before tells me that Terence is dying , perhaps tonight .
So what do I say when he says , " What do you want me to do ? "
There 's another drug out there .
It 's newer . It 's more powerful .
He started it just two weeks ago .
Perhaps there 's still hope ahead .
So what do I say ?
I say , " Keep him alive if you can . "
And Terence died six days later .
So we fought , we struggled , we triumphed .
It was an exhilarating fight , and I 'd repeat the fight today without a moment 's hesitation .
We fought together , we lived together .
It turned what could have been seven of the grimmest years of our life into seven of the most glorious .
It was also an expensive fight .
It was the kind of fight and the kind of choices that everyone here agrees pump up the cost of end-of-life care , and of healthcare for all of us .
And for me , for us , we pushed the fight right over the edge , and I never got the chance to say to him what I say to him now almost every day : " Hey , buddy , it was a hell of a ride . "
We never got the chance to say goodbye .
We never thought it was the end .
We always had hope .
So what do we make of all of this ?
Being a journalist , after Terence died , I wrote a book , " The Cost Of Hope . "
I wrote it because I wanted to know why I did what I did , why he did what he did , why everyone around us did what they did .
And what did I discover ?
Well , one of the things I discovered is that experts think that one answer to what I did at the end was a piece of paper , the advance directive , to help families get past the seemingly irrational choices .
Yet I had that piece of paper .
We both did .
And they were readily available .
I had them right at hand .
Both of them said the same thing : Do nothing if there is no further hope .
I knew Terence 's wishes as clearly and as surely as I knew my own .
Yet we never got to no further hope .
Even with that clear-cut paper in our hands , we just kept redefining hope .
I believed I could keep him from dying , and I 'd be embarrassed to say that if I hadn 't seen so many people and have talked to so many people who have felt exactly the same way .
Right up until days before his death , I felt strongly and powerfully , and , you might say , irrationally , that I could keep him from dying ever .
Now , what do the experts call this ?
They say it 's denial .
It 's a strong word , isn 't it ?
Yet I will tell you that denial isn 't even close to a strong enough word to describe what those of us facing the death of our loved ones go through .
And I hear the medical professionals say , " Well , we 'd like to do such-and-such , but the family 's in denial .
The family won 't listen to reason .
They 're in denial .
How can they insist on this treatment at the end ?
It 's so clear , yet they 're in denial . "
Now , I think this maybe isn 't a very useful way of thinking .
It 's not just families either .
The medical professionals too , you out there , you 're in denial too .
You want to help . You want to fix .
You want to do .
You 've succeeded in everything you 've done , and having a patient die , well , that must feel like failure .
I saw it firsthand .
Just days before Terence died , his oncologist said , " Tell Terence that better days are just ahead . "
Days before he died .
Yet Ira Byock , the director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth said , " You know , the best doctor in the world has never succeeded in making anyone immortal . "
So what the experts call " denial , " I call " hope , " and I 'd like to borrow a phrase from my friends in software design .
You just redefine denial and hope , and it becomes a feature of being human .
It 's not a bug .
It 's a feature .
So we need to think more constructively about this very common , very profound and very powerful human emotion .
It 's part of the human condition , and yet our system and our thinking isn 't built to accommodate it .
So Terence told me a story on that long-ago night , and I believed it .
Maybe I wanted to believe it .
And during Terence 's illness , I , we , we wanted to believe the story of our fight together too .
Giving up the fight -- for that 's how it felt , it felt like giving up -- meant giving up not only his life but also our story , our story of us as fighters , the story of us as invincible , and for the doctors , the story of themselves as healers .
So what do we need ?
Maybe we don 't need a new piece of paper .
Maybe we need a new story , not a story about giving up the fight or of hopelessness , but rather a story of victory and triumph , of a valiant battle and , eventually , a graceful retreat , a story that acknowledges that not even the greatest general defeats every foe , that no doctor has ever succeeded in making anyone immortal , and that no wife , no matter how hard she tried , has ever stopped even the bravest , wittiest and most maddeningly lovable husband from dying when it was his time to go .
People did mention hospice , but I wouldn 't listen .
Hospice was for people who were dying , and Terence wasn 't dying .
As a result , he spent just four days in hospice , which I 'm sure , as you all know , is a pretty typical outcome , and we never said goodbye because we were unprepared for the end .
We have a noble path to curing the disease , patients and doctors alike , but there doesn 't seem to be a noble path to dying .
Dying is seen as failing , and we had a heroic narrative for fighting together , but we didn 't have a heroic narrative for letting go .
So maybe we need a narrative for acknowledging the end , and for saying goodbye , and maybe our new story will be about a hero 's fight , and a hero 's goodbye .
Terence loved poetry , and the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy is one of my favorite poets .
So I 'll give you a couple lines from him .
This is a poem about Mark Antony .
You know Mark Antony , the conquering hero , Cleopatra 's guy ?
Actually , one of Cleopatra 's guys .
And he 's been a pretty good general .
He 's won all the fights , he 's eluded all the people that are out to get him , and yet this time , finally , he 's come to the city of Alexandria and realized he 's lost .
The people are leaving . They 're playing instruments .
They 're singing .
And suddenly he knows he 's been defeated .
And he suddenly knows he 's been deserted by the gods , and it 's time to let go .
And the poet tells him what to do .
He tells him how to say a noble goodbye , a goodbye that 's fit for a hero .
" As if long-prepared , as if courageous , as it becomes you who were worthy of such a city , approach the window with a firm step , and with emotion , but not with the entreaties or the complaints of a coward , as a last enjoyment , listen to the sounds , the exquisite instruments of the musical troops , and bid her farewell , the Alexandria you are losing . "
That 's a goodbye for a man who was larger than life , a goodbye for a man for whom anything , well , almost anything , was possible , a goodbye for a man who kept hope alive .
And isn 't that what we 're missing ?
How can we learn that people 's decisions about their loved ones are often based strongly , powerfully , many times irrationally , on the slimmest of hopes ?
The overwhelming presence of hope isn 't denial .
It 's part of our DNA as humans , and maybe it 's time our healthcare system -- doctors , patients , insurance companies , us , started accounting for the power of that hope .
Hope isn 't a bug .
It 's a feature .
Thank you .
Juliana Machado Ferreira : The fight to end rare-animal trafficking in Brazil
Biologist Juliana Machado Ferreira , a TED Senior Fellow , talks about her work helping to save birds and other animals stolen from the wild in Brazil . Once these animals are seized from smugglers , she asks , then what ?
Illegal wildlife trade in Brazil is one of the major threats against our fauna , especially birds , and mainly to supply the pet market with thousands of animals taken from nature every month , and transported far from their origins , to be sold mainly in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo .
It is estimated that all kinds of illegal wildlife trade in Brazil withdraw from nature almost 38 million animals every year , a business worth almost two billion dollars .
The police intercepts these huge cargos with live animals , intended to supply the pet market , or they seize the animals directly from the people 's houses , and this is how we end up , every month , with thousands of seized animals .
And for us to understand what happens with them , we 're going to follow Brad .
In the eyes of many people , after the animals are seized , they say , " Yay , justice has been served .
The good guys arrived , took the cute , mistreated animals from the hands of the evil traffickers , and everyone lived happily ever after . "
But did they ? Actually , no , and this is where many of our problems begin .
Because we have to figure out what to do with all these animals .
In Brazil , they are usually first sent to governmental triage facilities , in which most of the cases , the conditions are as bad as with the traffickers .
In 2002 , these centers received 45,000 animals , of which 37,000 were birds .
And the police estimates that we seize only five percent of what 's being trafficked .
Some lucky ones -- and among them , Brad -- go to serious rehabilitation centers after that .
And in these places they are cared for .
They train their flying , they learn how to recognize the food they will find in nature , and they are able to socialize with others from the same species .
But then what ?
The Brazil Ornithological Society -- so now we 're talking only birds -- claims that we have too little knowledge about the species in nature .
Therefore , it would be too risky to release these animals , both for the released and for the natural populations .
They also claim that we spend too many resources in their rehabilitation .
Following this argument , they suggest that all the birds seized from non-threatened species should be euthanized .
However , this would mean having killed 26,267 birds , only in the state of São Paulo , only in 2006 .
But , some researchers , myself included -- some NGOs and some people from the Brazilian government -- believe there is an alternative .
We think that if and when the animals meet certain criteria concerning their health , behavior , inferred origin and whatever we know about the natural populations , then technically responsible releases are possible , both for the well-being of the individual , and for the conservation of the species and their ecosystems , because we will be returning genes for these populations -- which could be important for them in facing environmental challenges -- and also we could be returning potential seed dispersers , predators , preys , etc .
All of these were released by us .
On the top , the turtles are just enjoying freedom .
On the middle , this guy nested a couple of weeks after the release .
And on the bottom , my personal favorite , the little male over there , four hours after his release he was together with a wild female .
So , this is not new , people have been doing this around the world .
But it 's still a big issue in Brazil .
We believe we have performed responsible releases .
We 've registered released animals mating in nature and having chicks .
So , these genes are indeed going back to the populations .
However this is still a minority for the very lack of knowledge .
So , I say , " Let 's study more , let 's shed light on this issue , let 's do whatever we can . "
I 'm devoting my career to that .
And I 'm here to urge each and every one of you to do whatever is in your reach : Talk to your neighbor , teach your children , make sure your pet is from a legal breeder .
We need to act , and act now , before these ones are the only ones left .
Thank you very much .
Shawn Achor : The happy secret to better work
We believe that we should work to be happy , but could that be backwards ? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk , psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity . & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old , we were playing on top of a bunk bed .
I was two years older than my sister at the time -- I mean , I 'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she had to do everything that I wanted to do , and I wanted to play war .
So we were up on top of our bunk beds .
And on one side of the bunk bed , I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers and weaponry .
And on the other side were all my sister 's My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry charge .
There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon , but since my sister is not here with us today , let me tell you the true story -- -- which is my sister 's a little bit on the clumsy side .
Somehow , without any help or push from her older brother at all , suddenly Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor .
Now I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground .
I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and I played as safely and as quietly as possible .
And seeing as how I had accidentally broken Amy 's arm just one week before ...
... heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet , for which I have yet to be thanked , I was trying as hard as I could -- she didn 't even see it coming -- I was trying as hard as I could to be on my best behavior .
And I saw my sister 's face , this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from the long winter 's nap for which they had settled .
So I did the only thing my little frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy .
And if you have children , you 've seen this hundreds of times before .
I said , " Amy , Amy , wait . Don 't cry . Don 't cry .
Did you see how you landed ?
No human lands on all fours like that .
Amy , I think this means you 're a unicorn . "
Now that was cheating , because there was nothing in the world my sister would want more than not to be Amy the hurt five year-old little sister , but Amy the special unicorn .
Of course , this was an option that was open to her brain at no point in the past .
And you could see how my poor , manipulated sister faced conflict , as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced , or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn .
And the latter won out .
Instead of crying , instead of ceasing our play , instead of waking my parents , with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me , instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn ...
... with one broken leg .
What we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we had no idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain .
What we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology , which is the reason that I 'm here today and the reason that I wake up every morning .
When I first started talking about this research outside of academia , out with companies and schools , the very first thing they said to never do is to start your talk with a graph .
The very first thing I want to do is start my talk with a graph .
This graph looks boring , but this graph is the reason I get excited and wake up every morning .
And this graph doesn 't even mean anything ; it 's fake data .
What we found is -- If I got this data back studying you here in the room , I would be thrilled , because there 's very clearly a trend that 's going on there , and that means that I can get published , which is all that really matters .
The fact that there 's one weird red dot that 's up above the curve , there 's one weirdo in the room -- I know who you are , I saw you earlier -- that 's no problem .
That 's no problem , as most of you know , because I can just delete that dot .
I can delete that dot because that 's clearly a measurement error .
And we know that 's a measurement error because it 's messing up my data .
So one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how , in a statistically valid way , do we eliminate the weirdos .
How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit ?
Which is fantastic if I 'm trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking -- two .
But if I 'm interested in potential , if I 'm interested in your potential , or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity , what we 're doing is we 're creating the cult of the average with science .
If I asked a question like , " How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom ? "
scientists change the answer to " How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom ? "
and then we tailor the class right towards the average .
Now if you fall below the average on this curve , then psychologists get thrilled , because that means you 're either depressed or you have a disorder , or hopefully both .
We 're hoping for both because our business model is , if you come into a therapy session with one problem , we want to make sure you leave knowing you have 10 , so you keep coming back over and over again .
We 'll go back into your childhood if necessary , but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again .
But normal is merely average .
And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average , we will remain merely average .
Then instead of deleting those positive outliers , what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say , why ?
Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability , athletic ability , musical ability , creativity , energy levels , your resiliency in the face of challenge , your sense of humor ?
Whatever it is , instead of deleting you , what I want to do is study you .
Because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up to the average , but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide .
The reason this graph is important to me is , when I turn on the news , it seems like the majority of the information is not positive , in fact it 's negative .
Most of it 's about murder , corruption , diseases , natural disasters .
And very quickly , my brain starts to think that 's the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world .
What that 's doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome -- which , if you know people who 've been to medical school , during the first year of medical training , as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen , suddenly you realize you have all of them .
I have a brother in-law named Bobo -- which is a whole other story .
Bobo married Amy the unicorn .
Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical School , and Bobo said , " Shawn , I have leprosy . "
Which , even at Yale , is extraordinarily rare .
But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause .
See what we 're finding is it 's not necessarily the reality that shapes us , but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality .
And if we can change the lens , not only can we change your happiness , we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time .
When I applied to Harvard , I applied on a dare .
I didn 't expect to get in , and my family had no money for college .
When I got a military scholarship two weeks later , they allowed me to go .
Suddenly , something that wasn 't even a possibility became a reality .
When I went there , I assumed everyone else would see it as a privilege as well , that they 'd be excited to be there .
Even if you 're in a classroom full of people smarter than you , you 'd be happy just to be in that classroom , which is what I felt .
But what I found there is , while some people experience that , when I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students -- Harvard asked me to ; I wasn 't that guy .
I was an officer of Harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years .
And what I found in my research and my teaching is that these students , no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school , two weeks later their brains were focused , not on the privilege of being there , nor on their philosophy or their physics .
Their brain was focused on the competition , the workload , the hassles , the stresses , the complaints .
When I first went in there , I walked into the freshmen dining hall , which is where my friends from Waco , Texas , which is where I grew up -- I know some of you have heard of it .
When they 'd come to visit me , they 'd look around , they 'd say , " This freshman dining hall looks like something out of Hogwart 's from the movie " Harry Potter , " which it does .
This is Hogwart 's from the movie " Harry Potter " and that 's Harvard .
And when they see this , they say , " Shawn , why do you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard ?
Seriously , what does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about ? "
Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness .
Because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels , when in reality , if I know everything about your external world , I can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness .
90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world , but by the way your brain processes the world .
And if we change it , if we change our formula for happiness and success , what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality .
What we found is that only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by I.Q.
75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels , your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat .
I talked to a boarding school up in New England , probably the most prestigious boarding school , and they said , " We already know that .
So every year , instead of just teaching our students , we also have a wellness week .
And we 're so excited . Monday night we have the world 's leading expert coming in to speak about adolescent depression .
Tuesday night it 's school violence and bullying .
Wednesday night is eating disorders .
Thursday night is elicit drug use .
And Friday night we 're trying to decide between risky sex or happiness . "
I said , " That 's most people 's Friday nights . "
Which I 'm glad you liked , but they did not like that at all .
Silence on the phone .
And into the silence , I said , " I 'd be happy to speak at your school , but just so you know , that 's not a wellness week , that 's a sickness week .
What you 've done is you 've outlined all the negative things that can happen , but not talked about the positive . "
The absence of disease is not health .
Here 's how we get to health : We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success .
In the last three years , I 've traveled to 45 different countries , working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn .
And what I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success , which is this : If I work harder , I 'll be more successful .
And if I 'm more successful , then I 'll be happier .
That undergirds most of our parenting styles , our managing styles , the way that we motivate our behavior .
And the problem is it 's scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons .
First , every time your brain has a success , you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like .
You got good grades , now you have to get better grades , you got into a good school and after you get into a better school , you got a good job , now you have to get a better job , you hit your sales target , we 're going to change your sales target .
And if happiness is on the opposite side of success , your brain never gets there .
What we 've done is we 've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society .
And that 's because we think we have to be successful , then we 'll be happier .
But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order .
If you can raise somebody 's level of positivity in the present , then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage , which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative , neutral or stressed .
Your intelligence rises , your creativity rises , your energy levels rise .
In fact , what we 've found is that every single business outcome improves .
Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative , neutral or stressed .
You 're 37 percent better at sales .
Doctors are 19 percent faster , more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative , neutral or stressed .
Which means we can reverse the formula .
If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present , then our brains work even more successfully as we 're able to work harder , faster and more intelligently .
What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of .
Because dopamine , which floods into your system when you 're positive , has two functions .
Not only does it make you happier , it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way .
We 've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive .
In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row , we can actually rewire your brain , allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully .
We 've done these things in research now in every single company that I 've worked with , getting them to write down three new things that they 're grateful for for 21 days in a row , three new things each day .
And at the end of that , their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world , not for the negative , but for the positive first .
Journaling about one positive experience you 've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it .
Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters .
We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we 've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand .
And finally , random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness .
We get people , when they open up their inbox , to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network .
And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies , what we 've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success , and in doing so , not only create ripples of positivity , but create a real revolution .
Thank you very much .
Dan Ariely : What makes us feel good about our work ?
What motivates us to work ? Contrary to conventional wisdom , it isn 't just money . But it 's not exactly joy either . It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose . Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work . & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
I want to talk a little bit today about labor and work .
When we think about how people work , the naive intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze -- that all people care about is money , and the moment we give people money , we can direct them to work one way , we can direct them to work another way .
This is why we give bonuses to bankers and pay in all kinds of ways .
And we really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work and what the labor market looks like .
At the same time , if you think about it , there 's all kinds of strange behaviors in the world around us .
Think about something like mountaineering and mountain climbing .
If you read books of people who climb mountains , difficult mountains , do you think that those books are full of moments of joy and happiness ?
No , they are full of misery .
In fact , it 's all about frostbite and difficulty to walk and difficulty of breathing -- cold , challenging circumstances .
And if people were just trying to be happy , the moment they would get to the top , they would say , " This was a terrible mistake .
I 'll never do it again . "
" Instead , let me sit on a beach somewhere drinking mojitos . "
But instead , people go down , and after they recover , they go up again .
And if you think about mountain climbing as an example , it suggests all kinds of things .
It suggests that we care about reaching the end , a peak .
It suggests that we care about the fight , about the challenge .
It suggests that there 's all kinds of other things that motivate us to work or behave in all kinds of ways .
And for me personally , I started thinking about this after a student came to visit me .
This was a student that was one of my students a few years earlier .
And he came one day back to campus .
And he told me the following story : He said that for more than two weeks , he was working on a PowerPoint presentation .
He was working in a big bank .
This was in preparation for a merger and acquisition .
And he was working very hard on this presentation -- graphs , tables , information .
He stayed late at night every day .
And the day before it was due , he sent his PowerPoint presentation to his boss , and his boss wrote him back and said , " Nice presentation , but the merger is canceled . "
And the guy was deeply depressed .
Now at the moment when he was working , he was actually quite happy .
Every night he was enjoying his work , he was staying late , he was perfecting this PowerPoint presentation .
But knowing that nobody would ever watch that made him quite depressed .
So I started thinking about how do we experiment with this idea of the fruits of our labor .
And to start with , we created a little experiment in which we gave people Legos , and we asked them to build with Legos .
And for some people , we gave them Legos and we said , " Hey , would you like to build this Bionicle for three dollars ?
We 'll pay you three dollars for it . "
And people said yes , and they built with these Legos .
And when they finished , we took it , we put it under the table , and we said , " Would you like to build another one , this time for $ 2.70 ? "
If they said yes , we gave them another one .
And when they finished , we asked them , " Do you want to build another one ? " for $ 2.40 , $ 2.10 , and so on , until at some point people said , " No more . It 's not worth it for me . "
This was what we called the meaningful condition .
People built one Bionicle after another .
After they finished every one of them , we put them under the table .
And we told them that at the end of the experiment , we will take all these Bionicles , we will disassemble them , we will put them back in the boxes , and we will use it for the next participant .
There was another condition .
This other condition was inspired by David , my student .
And this other condition we called the Sisyphic condition .
And if you remember the story about Sisyphus , Sisyphus was punished by the gods to push the same rock up a hill , and when he almost got to the end , the rock would roll over , and he would have to start again .
And you can think about this as the essence of doing futile work .
You can imagine that if he pushed the rock on different hills , at least he would have some sense of progress .
Also , if you look at prison movies , sometimes the way that the guards torture the prisoners is to get them to dig a hole and when the prisoner is finished , they ask him to fill the hole back up and then dig again .
There 's something about this cyclical version of doing something over and over and over that seems to be particularly demotivating .
So in the second condition of this experiment , that 's exactly what we did .
We asked people , " Would you like to build one Bionicle for three dollars ? "
And if they said yes , they built it .
Then we asked them , " Do you want to build another one for $ 2.70 ? "
And if they said yes , we gave them a new one , and as they were building it , we took apart the one that they just finished .
And when they finished that , we said , " Would you like to build another one , this time for 30 cents less ? "
And if they said yes , we gave them the one that they built and we broke .
So this was an endless cycle of them building and us destroying in front of their eyes .
Now what happens when you compare these two conditions ?
The first thing that happened was that people built many more Bionicles -- they built 11 versus seven -- in the meaningful condition versus the Sisyphus condition .
And by the way , we should point out that this was not a big meaning .
People were not curing cancer or building bridges .
People were building Bionicles for a few cents .
And not only that , everybody knew that the Bionicles would be destroyed quite soon .
So there was not a real opportunity for big meaning .
But even the small meaning made a difference .
Now we had another version of this experiment .
In this other version of the experiment , we didn 't put people in this situation , we just described to them the situation , much as I am describing to you now , and we asked them to predict what the result would be .
What happened ?
People predicted the right direction but not the right magnitude .
People who were just given the description of the experiment said that in the meaningful condition people would probably build one more Bionicle .
So people understand that meaning is important , they just don 't understand the magnitude of the importance , the extent to which it 's important .
There was one other piece of data we looked at .
If you think about it , there are some people who love Legos and some people who don 't .
And you would speculate that the people who love Legos will build more Legos , even for less money , because after all , they get more internal joy from it .
And the people who love Legos less will build less Legos because the enjoyment that they derive from it is lower .
And that 's actually what we found in the meaningful condition .
There was a very nice correlation between love of Lego and the amount of Legos people built .
What happened in the Sisyphic condition ?
In that condition the correlation was zero .
There was no relationship between the love of Lego and how much people built , which suggests to me that with this manipulation of breaking things in front of people 's eyes , we basically crushed any joy that they could get out of this activity .
We basically eliminated it .
Soon after I finished running this experiment , I went to talk to a big software company in Seattle .
I can 't tell you who they were , but they were a big company in Seattle .
And this was a group within this software company that was put in a different building .
And they asked them to innovate and create the next big product for this company .
And the week before I showed up , the CEO of this big software company went to that group , 200 engineers , and canceled the project .
And I stood there in front of 200 of the most depressed people I 've ever talked to .
And I described to them some of these Lego experiments , and they said they felt like they had just been through that experiment .
And I asked them , I said , " How many of you now show up to work later than you used to ? "
And everybody raised their hand .
I said , " How many of you now go home earlier than you used to ? "
And everybody raised their hand .
I asked them , " How many of you now add not-so-kosher things to your expense reports ? "
And they didn 't really raise their hands , but they took me out to dinner and showed me what they could do with expense reports .
And then I asked them , I said , " What could the CEO have done to make you not as depressed ? "
And they came up with all kinds of ideas .
They said the CEO could have asked them to present to the whole company about their journey over the last two years and what they decided to do .
He could have asked them to think about which aspect of their technology could fit with other parts of the organization .
He could have asked them to build some prototypes , some next-generation prototypes , and seen how they would work .
But the thing is that any one of those would require some effort and motivation .
And I think the CEO basically did not understand the importance of meaning .
If the CEO , just like our participants , thought the essence of meaning is unimportant , then he [ wouldn 't ] care .
And he would tell them , " At the moment I directed you in this way , and now that I am directing you in this way , everything will be okay . "
But if you understood how important meaning is , then you would figure out that it 's actually important to spend some time , energy and effort in getting people to care more about what they 're doing .
The next experiment was slightly different .
We took a sheet of paper with random letters , and we asked people to find pairs of letters that were identical next to each other .
That was the task .
And people did the first sheet .
And then we asked them if they wanted to do the next sheet for a little bit less money and the next sheet for a little bit less money , and so on and so forth .
And we had three conditions .
In the first condition , people wrote their name on the sheet , found all the pairs of letters , gave it to the experimenter .
The experimenter would look at it , scan it from top to bottom , say " uh huh " and put it on the pile next to them .
In the second condition , people did not write their name on it .
The experimenter looked at it , took the sheet of paper , did not look at it , did not scan it , and simply put it on the pile of pages .
So you take a piece , you just put it on the side .
And in the third condition , the experimenter got the sheet of paper and directly put it into a shredder .
What happened in those three conditions ?
In this plot I 'm showing you at what pay rate people stopped .
So low numbers mean that people worked harder . They worked for much longer .
In the acknowledged condition , people worked all the way down to 15 cents .
At 15 cents per page , they basically stopped these efforts .
In the shredder condition , it was twice as much -- 30 cents per sheet .
And this is basically the result we had before .
You shred people 's efforts , output , you get them not to be as happy with what they 're doing .
But I should point out , by the way , that in the shredder condition , people could have cheated .
They could have done not so good work , because they realized that people were just shredding it .
So maybe the first sheet you would do good work , but then you see nobody is really testing it , so you would do more and more and more .
So in fact , in the shredder condition , people could have submitted more work and gotten more money and put less effort into it .
But what about the ignored condition ?
Would the ignored condition be more like the acknowledged or more like the shredder , or somewhere in the middle ?
It turns out it was almost like the shredder .
Now there 's good news and bad news here .
The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes .
Ignoring gets you a whole way out there .
The good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done , scanning it and saying " uh huh , " that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people 's motivations .
So the good news is that adding motivation doesn 't seem to be so difficult .
The bad news is that eliminating motivations seems to be incredibly easy , and if we don 't think about it carefully , we might overdo it .
So this is all in terms of negative motivation or eliminating negative motivation .
The next part I want to show you is something about the positive motivation .
So there is a store in the U.S. called IKEA .
And IKEA is a store with kind of okay furniture that takes a long time to assemble .
And I don 't know about you , but every time I assemble one of those , it takes me much longer , it 's much more effortful , it 's much more confusing .
I put things in the wrong way .
I can 't say enjoy those pieces .
I can 't say I enjoy the process .
But when I finish it , I seem to like those IKEA pieces of furniture more than I like other ones .
And there 's an old story about cake mixes .
So when they started cake mixes in the ' 40s , they would take this powder and they would put it in a box , and they would ask housewives to basically pour it in , stir some water in it , mix it , put it in the oven , and -- voila ! -- you had cake .
But it turns out they were very unpopular .
People did not want them .
And they thought about all kinds of reasons for that .
Maybe the taste was not good .
No , the taste was great .
What they figured out was that there was not enough effort involved .
It was so easy that nobody could serve cake to their guests and say , " Here is my cake . "
No , no , no , it was somebody else 's cake .
It was as if you bought it in the store .
It didn 't really feel like your own .
So what did they do ?
They took the eggs and the milk out of the powder .
Now you had to break the eggs and add them .
You had to measure the milk and add it , mixing it .
Now it was your cake . Now everything was fine .
Now I think a little bit like the IKEA effect , by getting people to work harder , they actually got them to love what they 're doing to a higher degree .
So how do we look at this question experimentally ?
We asked people to build some origami .
We gave them instructions on how to create origami , and we gave them a sheet of paper .
And these were all novices , and they built something that was really quite ugly -- nothing like a frog or a crane .
But then we told them , we said , " Look , this origami really belongs to us .
You worked for us , but I 'll tell you what , we 'll sell it to you .
How much do you want to pay for it ? "
And we measured how much they were willing to pay for it .
And we had two types of people .
We had the people who built it , and we had the people who did not build it and just looked at it as external observers .
And what we found was that the builders thought that these were beautiful pieces of origami , and they were willing to pay for them five times more than the people who just evaluated them externally .
Now you could say , if you were a builder , do you think that , " Oh , I love this origami , but I know that nobody else would love it ? "
Or do you think , " I love this origami , and everybody else will love it as well ? "
Which one of those two is correct ?
Turns out the builders not only loved the origami more , they thought that everybody would see the world in their view .
They thought everybody else would love it more as well .
In the next version we tried to do the IKEA effect .
We tried to make it more difficult .
So for some people we gave the same task .
For some people we made it harder by hiding the instructions .
At the top of the sheet , we had little diagrams of how do you fold origami .
For some people we just eliminated that .
So now this was tougher . What happened ?
Well in an objective way , the origami now was uglier , it was more difficult .
Now when we looked at the easy origami , we saw the same thing : Builders loved it more , evaluators loved it less .
When you looked at the hard instructions , the effect was larger .
Why ? Because now the builders loved it even more .
They put all this extra effort into it .
And evaluators ? They loved it even less .
Because in reality it was even uglier than the first version .
Of course , this tells you something about how we evaluate things .
Now think about kids .
Imagine I asked you , " How much would you sell your kids for ? "
Your memories and associations and so on .
Most people would say for a lot , a lot of money -- on good days .
But imagine this was slightly different .
Imagine if you did not have your kids , and one day you went to the park and you met some kids , and they were just like your kids .
And you played with them for a few hours .
And when you were about to leave , the parents said , " Hey , by the way , just before you leave , if you 're interested , they 're for sale . "
How much would you pay for them now ?
Most people say not that much .
And this is because our kids are so valuable , not just because of who they are , but because of us , because they are so connected to us and because of the time and connection .
And by the way , if you think that IKEA instructions are not good , think about the instructions that come with kids .
Those are really tough .
By the way , these are my kids , which , of course , are wonderful and so on .
Which comes to tell you one more thing , which is , much like our builders , when they look at the creature of their creation , we don 't see that other people don 't see things our way .
Let me say one last comment .
If you think about Adam Smith versus Karl Marx , Adam Smith had the very important notion of efficiency .
He gave an example of a pin factory .
He said pins have 12 different steps , and if one person does all 12 steps , production is very low .
But if you get one person to do step one and one person to do step two and step three and so on , production can increase tremendously .
And indeed , this is a great example and the reason for the Industrial Revolution and efficiency .
Karl Marx , on the other hand , said that the alienation of labor is incredibly important in how people think about the connection to what they are doing .
And if you make all 12 steps , you care about the pin .
But if you make one step every time , maybe you don 't care as much .
And I think that in the Industrial Revolution , Adam Smith was more correct than Karl Marx , but the reality is that we 've switched and now we 're in the knowledge economy .
And you can ask yourself , what happens in a knowledge economy ?
Is efficiency still more important than meaning ?
I think the answer is no .
I think that as we move to situations in which people have to decide on their own about how much effort , attention , caring , how connected they feel to it , are they thinking about labor on the way to work and in the shower and so on , all of a sudden Marx has more things to say to us .
So when we think about labor , we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing , but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it -- meaning , creation , challenges , ownership , identity , pride , etc .
And the good news is that if we added all of those components and thought about them , how do we create our own meaning , pride , motivation , and how do we do it in our workplace and for the employees , I think we could get people to both be more productive and happier .
Thank you very much .
Amy Lockwood : Selling condoms in the Congo
HIV is a serious problem in the DR Congo , and aid agencies have flooded the country with free and cheap condoms . But few people are using them . Why ? " Reformed marketer " Amy Lockwood offers a surprising answer that upends a traditional model of philanthropy .
I am a reformed marketer , and I now work in international development .
In October , I spent some time in the Democratic Republic of Congo , which is the [ second ] largest country in Africa .
In fact , it 's as large as Western Europe , but it only has 300 miles of paved roads .
The DRC is a dangerous place .
In the past 10 years , five million people have died due to a war in the east .
But war isn 't the only reason that life is difficult in the DRC .
There are many health issues as well .
In fact , the HIV prevalence rate is 1.3 percent among adults .
This might not sound like a large number , but in a country with 76 million people , it means there are 930,000 that are infected .
And due to the poor infrastructure , only 25 percent of those are receiving the life-saving drugs that they need .
Which is why , in part , donor agencies provide condoms at low or no cost .
And so while I was in the DRC , I spent a lot of time talking to people about condoms , including Damien .
Damien runs a hotel outside of Kinshasa .
It 's a hotel that 's only open until midnight , so it 's not a place that you stay .
But it is a place where sex workers and their clients come .
Now Damien knows all about condoms , but he doesn 't sell them .
He said there 's just not in demand .
It 's not surprising , because only three percent of people in the DRC use condoms .
Joseph and Christine , who run a pharmacy where they sell a number of these condoms , said despite the fact that donor agencies provide them at low or no cost , and they have marketing campaigns that go along with them , their customers don 't buy the branded versions .
They like the generics .
And as a marketer , I found that curious .
And so I started to look at what the marketing looked like .
And it turns out that there are three main messages used by the donor agencies for these condoms : fear , financing and fidelity .
They name the condoms things like Vive , " to live " or Trust .
They package it with the red ribbon that reminds us of HIV , put it in boxes that remind you who paid for them , show pictures of your wife or husband and tell you to protect them or to act prudently .
Now these are not the kinds of things that someone is thinking about just before they go get a condom .
What is it that you think about just before you get a condom ?
Sex !
And the private companies that sell condoms in these places , they understand this .
Their marketing is slightly different .
The name might not be much different , but the imagery sure is .
Some brands are aspirational , and certainly the packaging is incredibly provocative .
And this made me think that perhaps the donor agencies had just missed out on a key aspect of marketing : understanding who 's the audience .
And for donor agencies , unfortunately , the audience tends to be people that aren 't even in the country they 're working [ in ] .
It 's people back home , people that support their work , people like these .
But if what we 're really trying to do is stop the spread of HIV , we need to think about the customer , the people whose behavior needs to change -- the couples , the young women , the young men -- whose lives depend on it .
And so the lesson is this : it doesn 't really matter what you 're selling ; you just have to think about who is your customer , and what are the messages that are going to get them to change their behavior .
It might just save their lives .
Thank you .
Vicki Arroyo : Let 's prepare for our new climate
As Vicki Arroyo says , it 's time to prepare our homes and cities for our changing climate , with its increased risk of flooding , drought and uncertainty . She illustrates this inspiring talk with bold projects from cities all over the world -- local examples of thinking ahead .
This is the skyline of my hometown , New Orleans .
It was a great place to grow up , but it 's one of the most vulnerable spots in the world .
Half the city is already below sea level .
In 2005 , the world watched as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were devastated by Hurricane Katrina .
One thousand , eight hundred and thirty-six people died . Nearly 300,000 homes were lost .
These are my mother 's , at the top -- although that 's not her car , it was carried there by floodwaters up to the roof -- and that 's my sister 's , below .
Fortunately , they and other family members got out in time , but they lost their homes , and as you can see , just about everything in them .
Other parts of the world have been hit by storms in even more devastating ways .
In 2008 , Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath killed 138,000 in Myanmar .
Climate change is affecting our homes , our communities , our way of life . We should be preparing at every scale and at every opportunity .
This talk is about being prepared for , and resilient to the changes that are coming and that will affect our homes and our collective home , the Earth .
The changes in these times won 't affect us all equally .
There are important distributional consequences , and they 're not what you always might think .
In New Orleans , the elderly and female-headed households were among the most vulnerable .
For those in vulnerable , low-lying nations , how do you put a dollar value on losing your country where you ancestors are buried ? And where will your people go ?
And how will they cope in a foreign land ?
Will there be tensions over immigration , or conflicts over competition for limited resources ?
It 's already fueled conflicts in Chad and Darfur .
Like it or not , ready or not , this is our future .
Sure , some are looking for opportunities in this new world .
That 's the Russians planting a flag on the ocean bottom to stake a claim for minerals under the receding Arctic sea ice .
But while there might be some short-term individual winners , our collective losses will far outweigh them .
Look no further than the insurance industry as they struggle to cope with mounting catastrophic losses from extreme weather events .
The military gets it . They call climate change a threat multiplier that could harm stability and security , while governments around the world are evaluating how to respond .
So what can we do ? How can we prepare and adapt ?
I 'd like to share three sets of examples , starting with adapting to violent storms and floods .
In New Orleans , the I-10 Twin Spans , with sections knocked out in Katrina , have been rebuilt 21 feet higher to allow for greater storm surge .
And these raised and energy-efficient homes were developed by Brad Pitt and Make It Right for the hard-hit Ninth Ward .
The devastated church my mom attends has been not only rebuilt higher , it 's poised to become the first Energy Star church in the country .
They 're selling electricity back to the grid thanks to solar panels , reflective paint and more .
Their March electricity bill was only 48 dollars .
Now these are examples of New Orleans rebuilding in this way , but better if others act proactively with these changes in mind .
For example , in Galveston , here 's a resilient home that survived Hurricane Ike , when others on neighboring lots clearly did not .
And around the world , satellites and warning systems are saving lives in flood-prone areas such as Bangladesh .
But as important as technology and infrastructure are , perhaps the human element is even more critical .
We need better planning and systems for evacuation .
We need to better understand how people make decisions in times of crisis , and why .
While it 's true that many who died in Katrina did not have access to transportation , others who did refused to leave as the storm approached , often because available transportation and shelters refused to allow them to take their pets .
Imagine leaving behind your own pet in an evacuation or a rescue .
Fortunately in 2006 , Congress passed the Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act — it spells " PETS " — to change that .
Second , preparing for heat and drought .
Farmers are facing challenges of drought from Asia to Africa , from Australia to Oklahoma , while heat waves linked with climate change have killed tens of thousands of people in Western Europe in 2003 , and again in Russia in 2010 .
In Ethiopia , 70 percent , that 's 7-0 percent of the population , depends on rainfall for its livelihood .
Oxfam and Swiss Re , together with Rockefeller Foundation , are helping farmers like this one build hillside terraces and find other ways to conserve water , but they 're also providing for insurance when the droughts do come .
The stability this provides is giving the farmers the confidence to invest .
It 's giving them access to affordable credit .
It 's allowing them to become more productive so that they can afford their own insurance over time , without assistance .
It 's a virtuous cycle , and one that could be replicated throughout the developing world .
After a lethal 1995 heat wave turned refrigerator trucks from the popular Taste of Chicago festival into makeshift morgues , Chicago became a recognized leader , tamping down on the urban heat island impact through opening cooling centers , outreach to vulnerable neighborhoods , planting trees , creating cool white or vegetated green roofs .
This is City Hall 's green roof , next to Cook County 's [ portion of the ] roof , which is 77 degrees Fahrenheit hotter at the surface .
Washington , D.C. , last year , actually led the nation in new green roofs installed , and they 're funding this in part thanks to a five-cent tax on plastic bags .
They 're splitting the cost of installing these green roofs with home and building owners .
The roofs not only temper urban heat island impact but they save energy , and therefore money , the emissions that cause climate change , and they also reduce stormwater runoff .
So some solutions to heat can provide for win-win-wins .
Third , adapting to rising seas .
Sea level rise threatens coastal ecosystems , agriculture , even major cities . This is what one to two meters of sea level rise looks like in the Mekong Delta .
That 's where half of Vietnam 's rice is grown .
Infrastructure is going to be affected .
Airports around the world are located on the coast .
It makes sense , right ? There 's open space , the planes can take off and land without worrying about creating noise or avoiding tall buildings .
Here 's just one example , San Francisco Airport , with 16 inches or more of flooding .
Imagine the staggering cost of protecting this vital infrastructure with levees .
But there might be some changes in store that you might not imagine . For example , planes require more runway for takeoff because the heated , less dense air , provides for less lift .
San Francisco is also spending 40 million dollars to rethink and redesign its water and sewage treatment , as water outfall pipes like this one can be flooded with seawater , causing backups at the plant , harming the bacteria that are needed to treat the waste .
So these outfall pipes have been retrofitted to shut seawater off from entering the system .
Beyond these technical solutions , our work at the Georgetown Climate Center with communities encourages them to look at what existing legal and policy tools are available and to consider how they can accommodate change .
For example , in land use , which areas do you want to protect , through adding a seawall , for example , alter , by raising buildings , or retreat from , to allow the migration of important natural systems , such as wetlands or beaches ?
Other examples to consider . In the U.K. , the Thames Barrier protects London from storm surge .
The Asian Cities Climate [ Change ] Resilience Network is restoring vital ecosystems like forest mangroves .
These are not only important ecosystems in their own right , but they also serve as a buffer to protect inland communities .
New York City is incredibly vulnerable to storms , as you can see from this clever sign , and to sea level rise , and to storm surge , as you can see from the subway flooding .
But back above ground , these raised ventilation grates for the subway system show that solutions can be both functional and attractive . In fact , in New York , San Francisco and London , designers have envisioned ways to better integrate the natural and built environments with climate change in mind .
I think these are inspiring examples of what 's possible when we feel empowered to plan for a world that will be different .
But now , a word of caution .
Adaptation 's too important to be left to the experts .
Why ? Well , there are no experts .
We 're entering uncharted territory , and yet our expertise and our systems are based on the past .
" Stationarity " is the notion that we can anticipate the future based on the past , and plan accordingly , and this principle governs much of our engineering , our design of critical infrastructure , city water systems , building codes , even water rights and other legal precedents .
But we can simply no longer rely on established norms .
We 're operating outside the bounds of CO2 concentrations that the planet has seen for hundreds of thousands of years .
The larger point I 'm trying to make is this .
It 's up to us to look at our homes and our communities , our vulnerabilities and our exposures to risk , and to find ways to not just survive , but to thrive , and it 's up to us to plan and to prepare and to call on our government leaders and require them to do the same , even while they address the underlying causes of climate change .
There are no quick fixes .
There are no one-size-fits-all solutions .
We 're all learning by doing .
But the operative word is doing .
Thank you .
Aubrey de Grey : A roadmap to end aging
Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey argues that aging is merely a disease -- and a curable one at that . Humans age in seven basic ways , he says , all of which can be averted .
18 minutes is an absolutely brutal time limit , so I 'm going to dive straight in , right at the point where I get this thing to work .
Here we go . I 'm going to talk about five different things .
I 'm going to talk about why defeating aging is desirable .
I 'm going to talk about why we have to get our shit together , and actually talk about this a bit more than we do .
I 'm going to talk about feasibility as well , of course .
I 'm going to talk about why we are so fatalistic about doing anything about aging .
And then I 'm going spend perhaps the second half of the talk talking about , you know , how we might actually be able to prove that fatalism is wrong , namely , by actually doing something about it .
I 'm going to do that in two steps .
The first one I 'm going to talk about is how to get from a relatively modest amount of life extension -- which I 'm going to define as 30 years , applied to people who are already in middle-age when you start -- to a point which can genuinely be called defeating aging .
Namely , essentially an elimination of the relationship between how old you are and how likely you are to die in the next year -- or indeed , to get sick in the first place .
And of course , the last thing I 'm going to talk about is how to reach that intermediate step , that point of maybe 30 years life extension .
So I 'm going to start with why we should .
Now , I want to ask a question .
Hands up : anyone in the audience who is in favor of malaria ?
That was easy . OK .
OK . Hands up : anyone in the audience who 's not sure whether malaria is a good thing or a bad thing ?
OK . So we all think malaria is a bad thing .
That 's very good news , because I thought that was what the answer would be .
Now the thing is , I would like to put it to you that the main reason why we think that malaria is a bad thing is because of a characteristic of malaria that it shares with aging .
And here is that characteristic .
The only real difference is that aging kills considerably more people than malaria does .
Now , I like in an audience , in Britain especially , to talk about the comparison with foxhunting , which is something that was banned after a long struggle , by the government not very many months ago .
I mean , I know I 'm with a sympathetic audience here , but , as we know , a lot of people are not entirely persuaded by this logic .
And this is actually a rather good comparison , it seems to me .
You know , a lot of people said , " Well , you know , city boys have no business telling us rural types what to do with our time .
It 's a traditional part of the way of life , and we should be allowed to carry on doing it .
It 's ecologically sound ; it stops the population explosion of foxes . "
But ultimately , the government prevailed in the end , because the majority of the British public , and certainly the majority of members of Parliament , came to the conclusion that it was really something that should not be tolerated in a civilized society .
And I think that human aging shares all of these characteristics in spades .
What part of this do people not understand ?
It 's not just about life , of course -- -- it 's about healthy life , you know -- getting frail and miserable and dependent is no fun , whether or not dying may be fun .
So really , this is how I would like to describe it .
It 's a global trance .
These are the sorts of unbelievable excuses that people give for aging .
And , I mean , OK , I 'm not actually saying that these excuses are completely valueless .
There are some good points to be made here , things that we ought to be thinking about , forward planning so that nothing goes too -- well , so that we minimize the turbulence when we actually figure out how to fix aging .
But these are completely crazy , when you actually remember your sense of proportion .
You know , these are arguments ; these are things that would be legitimate to be concerned about .
But the question is , are they so dangerous -- these risks of doing something about aging -- that they outweigh the downside of doing the opposite , namely , leaving aging as it is ?
Are these so bad that they outweigh condemning 100,000 people a day to an unnecessarily early death ?
You know , if you haven 't got an argument that 's that strong , then just don 't waste my time , is what I say .
Now , there is one argument that some people do think really is that strong , and here it is .
People worry about overpopulation ; they say , " Well , if we fix aging , no one 's going to die to speak of , or at least the death toll is going to be much lower , only from crossing St. Giles carelessly .
And therefore , we 're not going to be able to have many kids , and kids are really important to most people . "
And that 's true .
And you know , a lot of people try to fudge this question , and give answers like this .
I don 't agree with those answers . I think they basically don 't work .
I think it 's true , that we will face a dilemma in this respect .
We will have to decide whether to have a low birth rate , or a high death rate .
A high death rate will , of course , arise from simply rejecting these therapies , in favor of carrying on having a lot of kids .
And , I say that that 's fine -- the future of humanity is entitled to make that choice .
What 's not fine is for us to make that choice on behalf of the future .
If we vacillate , hesitate , and do not actually develop these therapies , then we are condemning a whole cohort of people -- who would have been young enough and healthy enough to benefit from those therapies , but will not be , because we haven 't developed them as quickly as we could -- we 'll be denying those people an indefinite life span , and I consider that that is immoral .
That 's my answer to the overpopulation question .
Right . So the next thing is , now why should we get a little bit more active on this ?
And the fundamental answer is that the pro-aging trance is not as dumb as it looks .
It 's actually a sensible way of coping with the inevitability of aging .
Aging is ghastly , but it 's inevitable , so , you know , we 've got to find some way to put it out of our minds , and it 's rational to do anything that we might want to do , to do that .
Like , for example , making up these ridiculous reasons why aging is actually a good thing after all .
But of course , that only works when we have both of these components .
And as soon as the inevitability bit becomes a little bit unclear -- and we might be in range of doing something about aging -- this becomes part of the problem .
This pro-aging trance is what stops us from agitating about these things .
And that 's why we have to really talk about this a lot -- evangelize , I will go so far as to say , quite a lot -- in order to get people 's attention , and make people realize that they are in a trance in this regard .
So that 's all I 'm going to say about that .
I 'm now going to talk about feasibility .
And the fundamental reason , I think , why we feel that aging is inevitable is summed up in a definition of aging that I 'm giving here .
A very simple definition .
Aging is a side effect of being alive in the first place , which is to say , metabolism .
This is not a completely tautological statement ; it 's a reasonable statement .
Aging is basically a process that happens to inanimate objects like cars , and it also happens to us , despite the fact that we have a lot of clever self-repair mechanisms , because those self-repair mechanisms are not perfect .
So basically , metabolism , which is defined as basically everything that keeps us alive from one day to the next , has side effects .
Those side effects accumulate and eventually cause pathology .
That 's a fine definition . So we can put it this way : we can say that , you know , we have this chain of events .
And there are really two games in town , according to most people , with regard to postponing aging .
They 're what I 'm calling here the " gerontology approach " and the " geriatrics approach . "
The geriatrician will intervene late in the day , when pathology is becoming evident , and the geriatrician will try and hold back the sands of time , and stop the accumulation of side effects from causing the pathology quite so soon .
Of course , it 's a very short-term-ist strategy ; it 's a losing battle , because the things that are causing the pathology are becoming more abundant as time goes on .
The gerontology approach looks much more promising on the surface , because , you know , prevention is better than cure .
But unfortunately the thing is that we don 't understand metabolism very well .
In fact , we have a pitifully poor understanding of how organisms work -- even cells we 're not really too good on yet .
We 've discovered things like , for example , RNA interference only a few years ago , and this is a really fundamental component of how cells work .
Basically , gerontology is a fine approach in the end , but it is not an approach whose time has come when we 're talking about intervention .
So then , what do we do about that ?
I mean , that 's a fine logic , that sounds pretty convincing , pretty ironclad , doesn 't it ?
But it isn 't .
Before I tell you why it isn 't , I 'm going to go a little bit into what I 'm calling step two .
Just suppose , as I said , that we do acquire -- let 's say we do it today for the sake of argument -- the ability to confer 30 extra years of healthy life on people who are already in middle age , let 's say 55 .
I 'm going to call that " robust human rejuvenation . " OK .
What would that actually mean for how long people of various ages today -- or equivalently , of various ages at the time that these therapies arrive -- would actually live ?
In order to answer that question -- you might think it 's simple , but it 's not simple .
We can 't just say , " Well , if they 're young enough to benefit from these therapies , then they 'll live 30 years longer . "
That 's the wrong answer .
And the reason it 's the wrong answer is because of progress .
There are two sorts of technological progress really , for this purpose .
There are fundamental , major breakthroughs , and there are incremental refinements of those breakthroughs .
Now , they differ a great deal in terms of the predictability of time frames .
Fundamental breakthroughs : very hard to predict how long it 's going to take to make a fundamental breakthrough .
It was a very long time ago that we decided that flying would be fun , and it took us until 1903 to actually work out how to do it .
But after that , things were pretty steady and pretty uniform .
I think this is a reasonable sequence of events that happened in the progression of the technology of powered flight .
We can think , really , that each one is sort of beyond the imagination of the inventor of the previous one , if you like .
The incremental advances have added up to something which is not incremental anymore .
This is the sort of thing you see after a fundamental breakthrough .
And you see it in all sorts of technologies .
Computers : you can look at a more or less parallel time line , happening of course a bit later .
You can look at medical care . I mean , hygiene , vaccines , antibiotics -- you know , the same sort of time frame .
So I think that actually step two , that I called a step a moment ago , isn 't a step at all .
That in fact , the people who are young enough to benefit from these first therapies that give this moderate amount of life extension , even though those people are already middle-aged when the therapies arrive , will be at some sort of cusp .
They will mostly survive long enough to receive improved treatments that will give them a further 30 or maybe 50 years .
In other words , they will be staying ahead of the game .
The therapies will be improving faster than the remaining imperfections in the therapies are catching up with us .
This is a very important point for me to get across .
Because , you know , most people , when they hear that I predict that a lot of people alive today are going to live to 1,000 or more , they think that I 'm saying that we 're going to invent therapies in the next few decades that are so thoroughly eliminating aging that those therapies will let us live to 1,000 or more .
I 'm not saying that at all .
I 'm saying that the rate of improvement of those therapies will be enough .
They 'll never be perfect , but we 'll be able to fix the things that 200-year-olds die of , before we have any 200-year-olds .
And the same for 300 and 400 and so on .
I decided to give this a little name , which is " longevity escape velocity . "
Well , it seems to get the point across .
So , these trajectories here are basically how we would expect people to live , in terms of remaining life expectancy , as measured by their health , for given ages that they were at the time that these therapies arrive .
If you 're already 100 , or even if you 're 80 -- and an average 80-year-old , we probably can 't do a lot for you with these therapies , because you 're too close to death 's door for the really initial , experimental therapies to be good enough for you .
You won 't be able to withstand them .
But if you 're only 50 , then there 's a chance that you might be able to pull out of the dive and , you know -- -- eventually get through this and start becoming biologically younger in a meaningful sense , in terms of your youthfulness , both physical and mental , and in terms of your risk of death from age-related causes .
And of course , if you 're a bit younger than that , then you 're never really even going to get near to being fragile enough to die of age-related causes .
So this is a genuine conclusion that I come to , that the first 150-year-old -- we don 't know how old that person is today , because we don 't know how long it 's going to take to get these first-generation therapies .
But irrespective of that age , I 'm claiming that the first person to live to 1,000 -- subject of course , to , you know , global catastrophes -- is actually , probably , only about 10 years younger than the first 150-year-old .
And that 's quite a thought .
Alright , so finally I 'm going to spend the rest of the talk , my last seven-and-a-half minutes , on step one ; namely , how do we actually get to this moderate amount of life extension that will allow us to get to escape velocity ?
And in order to do that , I need to talk about mice a little bit .
I have a corresponding milestone to robust human rejuvenation .
I 'm calling it " robust mouse rejuvenation , " not very imaginatively .
And this is what it is .
I say we 're going to take a long-lived strain of mouse , which basically means mice that live about three years on average .
We do exactly nothing to them until they 're already two years old .
And then we do a whole bunch of stuff to them , and with those therapies , we get them to live , on average , to their fifth birthday .
So , in other words , we add two years -- we treble their remaining lifespan , starting from the point that we started the therapies .
The question then is , what would that actually mean for the time frame until we get to the milestone I talked about earlier for humans ?
Which we can now , as I 've explained , equivalently call either robust human rejuvenation or longevity escape velocity .
Secondly , what does it mean for the public 's perception of how long it 's going to take for us to get to those things , starting from the time we get the mice ?
And thirdly , the question is , what will it do to actually how much people want it ?
And it seems to me that the first question is entirely a biology question , and it 's extremely hard to answer .
One has to be very speculative , and many of my colleagues would say that we should not do this speculation , that we should simply keep our counsel until we know more .
I say that 's nonsense .
I say we absolutely are irresponsible if we stay silent on this .
We need to give our best guess as to the time frame , in order to give people a sense of proportion so that they can assess their priorities .
So , I say that we have a 50 / 50 chance of reaching this RHR milestone , robust human rejuvenation , within 15 years from the point that we get to robust mouse rejuvenation .
15 years from the robust mouse .
The public 's perception will probably be somewhat better than that .
The public tends to underestimate how difficult scientific things are .
So they 'll probably think it 's five years away .
They 'll be wrong , but that actually won 't matter too much .
And finally , of course , I think it 's fair to say that a large part of the reason why the public is so ambivalent about aging now is the global trance I spoke about earlier , the coping strategy .
That will be history at this point , because it will no longer be possible to believe that aging is inevitable in humans , since it 's been postponed so very effectively in mice .
So we 're likely to end up with a very strong change in people 's attitudes , and of course that has enormous implications .
So in order to tell you now how we 're going to get these mice , I 'm going to add a little bit to my description of aging .
I 'm going to use this word " damage " to denote these intermediate things that are caused by metabolism and that eventually cause pathology .
Because the critical thing about this is that even though the damage only eventually causes pathology , the damage itself is caused ongoing-ly throughout life , starting before we 're born .
But it is not part of metabolism itself .
And this turns out to be useful .
Because we can re-draw our original diagram this way .
We can say that , fundamentally , the difference between gerontology and geriatrics is that gerontology tries to inhibit the rate at which metabolism lays down this damage .
And I 'm going to explain exactly what damage is in concrete biological terms in a moment .
And geriatricians try to hold back the sands of time by stopping the damage converting into pathology .
And the reason it 's a losing battle is because the damage is continuing to accumulate .
So there 's a third approach , if we look at it this way .
We can call it the " engineering approach , " and I claim that the engineering approach is within range .
The engineering approach does not intervene in any processes .
It does not intervene in this process or this one .
And that 's good because it means that it 's not a losing battle , and it 's something that we are within range of being able to do , because it doesn 't involve improving on evolution .
The engineering approach simply says , " Let 's go and periodically repair all of these various types of damage -- not necessarily repair them completely , but repair them quite a lot , so that we keep the level of damage down below the threshold that must exist , that causes it to be pathogenic . "
We know that this threshold exists , because we don 't get age-related diseases until we 're in middle age , even though the damage has been accumulating since before we were born .
Why do I say that we 're in range ? Well , this is basically it .
The point about this slide is actually the bottom .
If we try to say which bits of metabolism are important for aging , we will be here all night , because basically all of metabolism is important for aging in one way or another .
This list is just for illustration ; it is incomplete .
The list on the right is also incomplete .
It 's a list of types of pathology that are age-related , and it 's just an incomplete list .
But I would like to claim to you that this list in the middle is actually complete -- this is the list of types of thing that qualify as damage , side effects of metabolism that cause pathology in the end , or that might cause pathology .
And there are only seven of them .
They 're categories of things , of course , but there 's only seven of them .
Cell loss , mutations in chromosomes , mutations in the mitochondria and so on .
First of all , I 'd like to give you an argument for why that list is complete .
Of course one can make a biological argument .
One can say , " OK , what are we made of ? "
We 're made of cells and stuff between cells .
What can damage accumulate in ?
The answer is : long-lived molecules , because if a short-lived molecule undergoes damage , but then the molecule is destroyed -- like by a protein being destroyed by proteolysis -- then the damage is gone , too .
It 's got to be long-lived molecules .
So , these seven things were all under discussion in gerontology a long time ago and that is pretty good news , because it means that , you know , we 've come a long way in biology in these 20 years , so the fact that we haven 't extended this list is a pretty good indication that there 's no extension to be done .
However , it 's better than that ; we actually know how to fix them all , in mice , in principle -- and what I mean by in principle is , we probably can actually implement these fixes within a decade .
Some of them are partially implemented already , the ones at the top .
I haven 't got time to go through them at all , but my conclusion is that , if we can actually get suitable funding for this , then we can probably develop robust mouse rejuvenation in only 10 years , but we do need to get serious about it .
We do need to really start trying .
So of course , there are some biologists in the audience , and I want to give some answers to some of the questions that you may have .
You may have been dissatisfied with this talk , but fundamentally you have to go and read this stuff .
I 've published a great deal on this ; I cite the experimental work on which my optimism is based , and there 's quite a lot of detail there .
The detail is what makes me confident of my rather aggressive time frames that I 'm predicting here .
So if you think that I 'm wrong , you 'd better damn well go and find out why you think I 'm wrong .
And of course the main thing is that you shouldn 't trust people who call themselves gerontologists because , as with any radical departure from previous thinking within a particular field , you know , you expect people in the mainstream to be a bit resistant and not really to take it seriously .
So , you know , you 've got to actually do your homework , in order to understand whether this is true .
And we 'll just end with a few things .
One thing is , you know , you 'll be hearing from a guy in the next session who said some time ago that he could sequence the human genome in half no time , and everyone said , " Well , it 's obviously impossible . "
And you know what happened .
So , you know , this does happen .
We have various strategies -- there 's the Methuselah Mouse Prize , which is basically an incentive to innovate , and to do what you think is going to work , and you get money for it if you win .
There 's a proposal to actually put together an institute .
This is what 's going to take a bit of money .
But , I mean , look -- how long does it take to spend that on the war in Iraq ?
Not very long . OK .
It 's got to be philanthropic , because profits distract biotech , but it 's basically got a 90 percent chance , I think , of succeeding in this .
And I think we know how to do it . And I 'll stop there .
Thank you .
OK . I don 't know if there 's going to be any questions but I thought I would give people the chance .
Audience : Since you 've been talking about aging and trying to defeat it , why is it that you make yourself appear like an old man ?
AG : Because I am an old man . I am actually 158 .
Audience : Species on this planet have evolved with immune systems to fight off all the diseases so that individuals live long enough to procreate .
However , as far as I know , all the species have evolved to actually die , so when cells divide , the telomerase get shorter , and eventually species die .
So , why does -- evolution has -- seems to have selected against immortality , when it is so advantageous , or is evolution just incomplete ?
AG : Brilliant . Thank you for asking a question that I can answer with an uncontroversial answer .
I 'm going to tell you the genuine mainstream answer to your question , which I happen to agree with , which is that , no , aging is not a product of selection , evolution ; [ aging ] is simply a product of evolutionary neglect .
In other words , we have aging because it 's hard work not to have aging ; you need more genetic pathways , more sophistication in your genes in order to age more slowly , and that carries on being true the longer you push it out .
So , to the extent that evolution doesn 't matter , doesn 't care whether genes are passed on by individuals , living a long time or by procreation , there 's a certain amount of modulation of that , which is why different species have different lifespans , but that 's why there are no immortal species .
The genes don 't care but we do ?
AG : That 's right .
Audience : Hello . I read somewhere that in the last 20 years , the average lifespan of basically anyone on the planet has grown by 10 years .
If I project that , that would make me think that I would live until 120 if I don 't crash on my motorbike .
That means that I 'm one of your subjects to become a 1,000-year-old ?
AG : If you lose a bit of weight .
Your numbers are a bit out .
The standard numbers are that lifespans have been growing at between one and two years per decade .
So , it 's not quite as good as you might think , you might hope .
But I intend to move it up to one year per year as soon as possible .
Audience : I was told that many of the brain cells we have as adults are actually in the human embryo , and that the brain cells last 80 years or so .
If that is indeed true , biologically are there implications in the world of rejuvenation ?
If there are cells in my body that live all 80 years , as opposed to a typical , you know , couple of months ?
AG : There are technical implications certainly .
Basically what we need to do is replace cells in those few areas of the brain that lose cells at a respectable rate , especially neurons , but we don 't want to replace them any faster than that -- or not much faster anyway , because replacing them too fast would degrade cognitive function .
What I said about there being no non-aging species earlier on was a little bit of an oversimplification .
There are species that have no aging -- Hydra for example -- but they do it by not having a nervous system -- and not having any tissues in fact that rely for their function on very long-lived cells .
Lewis Pugh : My mind-shifting Everest swim
After he swam the North Pole , Lewis Pugh vowed never to take another cold-water dip . Then he heard of Lake Imja in the Himalayas , created by recent glacial melting , and Lake Pumori , a body of water at an altitude of 5300 m on Everest -- and so began a journey that would teach him a radical new way to approach swimming and think about climate change .
Last year when I was here , I was speaking to you about a swim which I did across the North Pole .
And while that swim took place three years ago , I can remember it as if it was yesterday .
I remember standing on the edge of the ice , about to dive into the water , and thinking to myself , I have never ever seen any place on this earth which is just so frightening .
The water is completely black .
The water is minus 1.7 degrees centigrade , or 29 degrees Fahrenheit .
It 's flipping freezing in that water .
And then a thought came across my mind : if things go pear-shaped on this swim , how long will it take for my frozen body to sink the four and a half kilometers to the bottom of the ocean ?
And then I said to myself , I 've just got to get this thought And the only way I can dive into that freezing cold water and swim a kilometer is by listening to my iPod and really revving myself up , listening to everything from beautiful opera all the way across to Puff Daddy , and then committing myself a hundred percent -- there is nothing more powerful than the made-up mind -- and then walking up to the edge of the ice and just diving into the water .
And that swim took me 18 minutes and 50 seconds , and it felt like 18 days .
And I remember getting out of the water and my hands feeling so painful and looking down at my fingers , and my fingers were literally the size of sausages because -- you know , we 're made partially of water -- when water freezes it expands , and so the cells in my fingers had frozen and expanded and burst .
And the most immediate thought when I came out of that water was the following : I 'm never , ever going to do another cold water swim in my life again .
Anyway , last year , I heard about the Himalayas and the melting of the -- and the melting of the glaciers because of climate change .
I heard about this lake , Lake Imja .
This lake has been formed in the last couple of years because of the melting of the glacier .
The glacier 's gone all the way up the mountain and left in its place this big lake .
And I firmly believe that what we 're seeing in the Himalayas is the next great , big battleground on this earth .
Nearly two billion people -- so one in three people on this earth -- rely on the water from the Himalayas .
And with a population increasing as quickly as it is , and with the water supply from these glaciers -- because of climate change -- decreasing so much , I think we have a real risk of instability .
North , you 've got China ; south , you 've India , Pakistan , Bangladesh , all these countries .
And so I decided to walk up to Mt . Everest , the highest mountain on this earth , and go and do a symbolic swim underneath the summit of Mt . Everest .
Now , I don 't know if any of you have had the opportunity to go to Mt . Everest , but it 's quite an ordeal getting up there .
28 great , big , powerful yaks carrying all the equipment up onto this mountain -- I don 't just have my Speedo , but there 's a big film crew who then send all the images around the world .
The other thing which was so challenging about this swim is not just the altitude .
I wanted to do the swim at 5,300 meters above sea level .
So it 's right up in the heavens .
It 's very , very difficult to breath . You get altitude sickness .
I feels like you 've got a man standing behind you with a hammer just hitting your head all the time .
That 's not the worst part of it .
The worst part was this year was the year where they decided to do a big cleanup operation on Mt . Everest .
Many , many people have died on Mt . Everest , and this was the year they decided to go and recover all the bodies of the mountaineers and then bring them down the mountain .
And when you 're walking up the mountain to attempt to do something which no human has ever done before , and , in fact , no fish -- there are no fish up there swimming at 5,300 meters -- When you 're trying to do that , and then the bodies are coming past you , it humbles you , and you also realize very , very clearly that nature is so much more powerful than we are .
And we walked up this pathway , all the way up .
And to the right hand side of us was this great Khumbu Glacier .
And all the way along the glacier we saw these big pools of melting ice .
And then we got up to this small lake underneath the summit of Mt . Everest , and I prepared myself the same way as I 've always prepared myself , for this swim which was going to be so very difficult .
I put on my iPod , I listened to some music , I got myself as aggressive as possible -- but controlled aggression -- and then I hurled myself into that water .
I swam as quickly as I could for the first hundred meters , and then I realized very , very quickly , I had a huge problem on my hands .
I could barely breathe .
I was gasping for air .
I then began to choke , and then it quickly led to me vomiting in the water .
And it all happened so quickly : I then -- I don 't know how it happened -- but I went underwater .
And luckily , the water was quite shallow , and I was able to push myself off the bottom of the lake and get up and then take another gasp of air .
And then I said , carry on . Carry on . Carry on .
I carried on for another five or six strokes , and then I had nothing in my body , and I went down to the bottom of the lake .
And I don 't where I got it from , but I was able to somehow get to the side of the lake .
I 've heard it said that drowning is the most peaceful death that you can have .
I have never , ever heard such utter bollocks .
It is the most frightening and panicky feeling that you can have .
I got myself to the side of the lake .
My crew grabbed me , and then we walked as quickly as we could down -- over the rubble -- down to our camp .
And there , we sat down , and we did a debrief about what had gone wrong there on Mt . Everest .
And my team just gave it to me straight .
They said , Lewis , you need to have a radical tactical shift if you want to do this swim .
Every single thing which you have learned in the past 23 years of swimming , you must forget .
Every single thing which you learned when you were serving in the British army , about speed and aggression , you put that to one side .
We want you to walk up the hill in another two days ' time .
Take some time to rest and think about things .
We want you to walk up the mountain in two days ' time , and instead of swimming fast , swim as slowly as possible .
Instead of swimming crawl , swim breaststroke .
And remember , never ever swim with aggression .
This is the time to swim with real humility .
And so we walked back up to the mountain two days later .
And I stood there on the edge of the lake , and I looked up at Mt . Everest -- and she is one of the most beautiful mountains on the earth -- and I said to myself , just do this slowly .
And I swam across the lake .
And I can 't begin to tell you how good I felt when I came to the other side .
But I learned two very , very important lessons there on Mt . Everest , and I thank my team of Sherpas who taught me this .
The first one is that just because something has worked in the past so well , doesn 't mean it 's going to work in the future .
And similarly , now , before I do anything , I ask myself what type of mindset do I require to successfully complete a task .
And taking that into the world of climate change -- which is , frankly , the Mt . Everest of all problems -- just because we 've lived the way we have lived for so long , and populated the earth the way we have for so long , doesn 't mean that we can carry on the way we are carrying on .
The warning signs are all there .
When I was born , the world 's population was 3.5 billion people .
We 're now 6.8 billion people , and we 're expected to be 9 billion people by 2050 .
And then the second lesson , the radical , tactical shift .
And I 've come here to ask you today : what radical tactical shift can you take in your relationship to the environment , which will ensure that our children and our grandchildren live in a safe world and a secure world , and most importantly , in a sustainable world ?
And I ask you , please , to go away from here and think about that one radical tactical shift which you could make , which will make that big difference , and then commit a hundred percent to doing it .
Blog about it , tweet about it , talk about it , and commit a hundred percent , because very , very few things are impossible to achieve if we really put our whole minds to it .
So thank you very , very much .
John Hodgman : Design , explained .
John Hodgman , comedian and resident expert , " explains " the design of three iconic modern objects . & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
Today I 'm going to unpack for you three examples of iconic design , and it makes perfect sense that I should be the one to do it because I have a Bachelor 's degree in Literature .
But I 'm also a famous minor television personality and an avid collector of Design Within Reach catalogs , so I pretty much know everything there is .
Now , I 'm sure you recognize this object ; many of you probably saw it as you were landing your private zeppelins at Los Angeles International Airport over the past couple of days .
This is known as the Theme Building ; that is its name for reasons that are still very murky .
And it is perhaps the best example we have in Los Angeles of ancient extraterrestrial architecture .
It was first excavated in 1961 as they were building LAX , although scientists believe that it dates back to the year 2000 Before Common Era , when it was used as a busy transdimensional space port by the ancient astronauts who first colonized this planet and raised our species from savagery by giving us the gift of written language and technology and the gift of revolving restaurants .
It is thought to have been a replacement for the older space ports located , of course , at Stonehenge and considered to be quite an improvement due to the uncluttered design , the lack of druids hanging around all the time and obviously , the much better access to parking .
When it was uncovered , it ushered in a new era of streamlined , archaically futuristic design called Googie , which came to be synonymous with the Jet Age , a misnomer .
After all , the ancient astronauts who used it did not travel by jet very often , preferring instead to travel by feathered serpent powered by crystal skulls .
Ah yes , a table .
We use these every day .
And on top of it , the juicy salif .
This is a design by Philippe Starck , who I believe is in the audience at this very moment .
And you can tell it is a Starck design by its precision , its playfulness , its innovation and its promise of imminent violence .
It is a design that challenges your intuition -- it is not what you think it is when you first see it .
It is not a fork designed to grab three hors d 'oeuvres at a time , which would be useful out in the lobby , I would say .
And despite its obvious influence by the ancient astronauts and its space agey-ness and tripodism , it is not something designed to attach to your brain and suck out your thoughts .
It is in fact a citrus juicer and when I say that , you never see it as anything else again .
It is also not a monument to design , it is a monument to design 's utility .
You can take it home with you , unlike the Theme Building , which will stay where it is forever .
This is affordable and can come home with you and , as such , it can sit on your kitchen counter -- it can 't go in your drawers ; trust me , I found that out the hard way -- and make your kitchen counter into a monument to design .
One other thing about it , if you do have one at home , let me tell you one of the features you may not know : when you fall asleep , it comes alive and it walks around your house and goes through your mail and watches you as you sleep .
Okay , what is this object ?
I have no idea . I don 't know what that thing is .
It looks terrible . Is it a little hot plate ?
I don 't get it .
Does anyone know ? Chi ?
It 's an ... iPhone. iPhone .
Oh yes , that 's right , I remember those ; I had my whole bathroom tiles redone with those back in the good old days .
No , I have an iPhone . Of course I do .
Here is my well-loved iPhone .
I do so many things on this little device .
I like to read books on it .
More than that , I like to buy books on it that I never have to feel guilty about not reading because they go in here and I never look at them again and it 's perfect .
I use it every day to measure the weight of an ox , for example .
Every now and then , I admit that I complete a phone call on it occasionally .
And yet I forget about it all the time .
This is a design that once you saw it , you forgot about it .
It is easy to forget the gasp-inducement that occurred in 2007 when you first touched this thing because it became so quickly pervasive and because of how instantly we adopted these gestures and made it an extension of our life .
Unlike the Theme Building , this is not alien technology .
Or I should say , what it did was it took technology which , unlike people in this room , to many other people in the world , still feels very alien , and made it immediately and instantly feel familiar and intimate .
And unlike the juicy salif , it does not threaten to attach itself to your brain , rather , it simply attaches itself to your brain .
And you didn 't even notice it happened .
So there you go . My name is John Hodgman .
I just explained design .
Thank you very much .
Lakshmi Pratury : The lost art of letter-writing
Lakshmi Pratury remembers the lost art of letter-writing and shares a series of notes her father wrote to her before he died . Her short but heartfelt talk may inspire you to set pen to paper , too .
So I thought , " I will talk about death . "
Seemed to be the passion today .
Actually , it 's not about death .
It 's inevitable , terrible , but really what I want to talk about is , I 'm just fascinated by the legacy people leave when they die .
That 's what I want to talk about .
So Art Buchwald left his legacy of humor with a video that appeared soon after he died , saying , " Hi ! I 'm Art Buchwald , and I just died . "
And Mike , who I met at Galapagos , a trip which I won at TED , is leaving notes on cyberspace where he is chronicling his journey through cancer .
And my father left me a legacy of his handwriting through letters and a notebook .
In the last two years of his life , when he was sick , he filled a notebook with his thoughts about me .
He wrote about my strengths , weaknesses , and gentle suggestions for improvement , quoting specific incidents , and held a mirror to my life .
After he died , I realized that no one writes to me anymore .
Handwriting is a disappearing art .
I 'm all for email and thinking while typing , but why give up old habits for new ?
Why can 't we have letter writing and email exchange in our lives ?
There are times when I want to trade all those years that I was too busy to sit with my dad and chat with him , and trade all those years for one hug .
But too late .
But that 's when I take out his letters and I read them , and the paper that touched his hand is in mine , and I feel connected to him .
So maybe we all need to leave our children with a value legacy , and not a financial one .
A value for things with a personal touch -- an autograph book , a soul-searching letter .
If a fraction of this powerful TED audience could be inspired to buy a beautiful paper -- John , it 'll be a recycled one -- and write a beautiful letter to someone they love , we actually may start a revolution where our children may go to penmanship classes .
So what do I plan to leave for my son ?
I collect autograph books , and those of you authors in the audience know I hound you for them -- and CDs too , Tracy .
I plan to publish my own notebook .
As I witnessed my father 's body being swallowed by fire , I sat by his funeral pyre and wrote .
I have no idea how I 'm going to do it , but I am committed to compiling his thoughts and mine into a book , and leave that published book for my son .
I 'd like to end with a few verses of what I wrote at my father 's cremation .
And those linguists , please pardon the grammar , because I 've not looked at it in the last 10 years .
I took it out for the first time to come here .
" Picture in a frame , ashes in a bottle , boundless energy confined in the bottle , forcing me to deal with reality , forcing me to deal with being grown up .
I hear you and I know that you would want me to be strong , but right now , I am being sucked down , surrounded and suffocated by these raging emotional waters , craving to cleanse my soul , trying to emerge on a firm footing one more time , to keep on fighting and flourishing just as you taught me .
Your encouraging whispers in my whirlpool of despair , holding me and heaving me to shores of sanity , to live again and to love again . "
Thank you .
Sergey Brin : Why Google Glass ?
It 's not a demo , more of a philosophical argument : Why did Sergey Brin and his team at Google want to build an eye-mounted camera / computer , codenamed Glass ? Onstage at TED2013 , Brin calls for a new way of seeing our relationship with our mobile computers -- not hunched over a screen but meeting the world heads-up .
Okay , it 's great to be back at TED .
Why don 't I just start by firing away with the video ?
Okay , Glass , record a video .
This is it . We 're on in two minutes .
Okay Glass , hang out with The Flying Club .
Google " photos of tiger heads . " Hmm .
You ready ? You ready ?
Right there . Okay , Glass , take a picture .
Go !
Man 6 : Holy [ beep ] ! That is awesome .
Whoa ! Look at that snake !
Woman 3 : Okay , Glass , record a video !
Man 7 : After this bridge , first exit .
Man 8 : Okay , A12 , right there !
Man 9 : Google , say " delicious " in Thai .
Google Glass : อร ่ อยMan 9 : Mmm , อร ่ อย .
Woman 4 : Google " jellyfish . "
Man 10 : It 's beautiful .
Sergey Brin : Oh , sorry , I just got this message from a Nigerian prince .
He needs help getting 10 million dollars .
I like to pay attention to these because that 's how we originally funded the company , and it 's gone pretty well .
Though in all seriousness , this position that you just saw me in , looking down at my phone , that 's one of the reasons behind this project , Project Glass .
Because we ultimately questioned whether this is the ultimate future of how you want to connect to other people in your life , how you want to connect to information .
Should it be by just walking around looking down ?
But that was the vision behind Glass , and that 's why we 've created this form factor .
Okay . And I don 't want to go through all the things it does and whatnot , but I want to tell you a little bit more about the motivation behind what led to it .
In addition to potentially socially isolating yourself when you 're out and about looking at your phone , it 's kind of , is this what you 're meant to do with your body ?
You 're standing around there and you 're just rubbing this featureless piece of glass .
You 're just kind of moving around .
So when we developed Glass , we thought really about , can we make something that frees your hands ?
You saw all of the things people are doing in the video back there .
They were all wearing Glass , and that 's how we got that footage .
And also you want something that frees your eyes .
That 's why we put the display up high , out of your line of sight , so it wouldn 't be where you 're looking and it wouldn 't be where you 're making eye contact with people .
And also we wanted to free up the ears , so the sound actually goes through , conducts straight to the bones in your cranium , which is a little bit freaky at first , but you get used to it .
And ironically , if you want to hear it better , you actually just cover your ear , which is kind of surprising , but that 's how it works .
My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn 't have to have a search query at all .
You 'd just have information come to you as you needed it .
And this is now , 15 years later , sort of the first form factor that I think can deliver that vision when you 're out and about on the street talking to people and so forth .
This project has lasted now , been just over two years .
We 've learned an amazing amount .
It 's been really important to make it comfortable .
So our first prototypes we built were huge .
It was like cell phones strapped to your head .
It was very heavy , pretty uncomfortable .
We had to keep it secret from our industrial designer until she actually accepted the job , and then she almost ran away screaming .
But we 've come a long way .
And the other really unexpected surprise was the camera .
Our original prototypes didn 't have cameras at all , but it 's been really magical to be able to capture moments spent with my family , my kids .
I just never would have dug out a camera or a phone or something else to take that moment .
And lastly I 've realized , in experimenting with this device , that I also kind of have a nervous tic .
The cell phone is -- yeah , you have to look down on it and all that , but it 's also kind of a nervous habit .
Like if I smoked , I 'd probably just smoke instead .
I would just light up a cigarette . It would look cooler .
You know , I 'd be like -- But in this case , you know , I whip this out and I sit there and look as if I have something very important to do or attend to .
But it really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent just secluding away , be it email or social posts or whatnot , even though it wasn 't really -- there 's nothing really that important or that pressing .
And with this , I know I will get certain messages if I really need them , but I don 't have to be checking them all the time .
Yeah , I 've really enjoyed actually exploring the world more , doing more of the crazy things like you saw in the video .
Thank you all very much .
Brené Brown : Listening to shame
Shame is an unspoken epidemic , the secret behind many forms of broken behavior . Brené Brown , whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit , explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on . Her own humor , humanity and vulnerability shine through every word .
I 'm going to tell you a little bit about my TEDxHouston Talk .
I woke up the morning after I gave that Talk with the worst vulnerability hangover of my life .
And I actually didn 't leave my house for about three days .
The first time I left was to meet a friend for lunch .
And when I walked in , she was already at the table .
And I sat down , and she said , " God , you look like hell . "
I said , " Thanks . I feel really -- I 'm not functioning . "
And she said , " What 's going on ? "
And I said , " I just told 500 people that I became a researcher to avoid vulnerability .
And that when being vulnerable emerged from my data , as absolutely essential to whole-hearted living , I told these 500 people that I had a breakdown .
I had a slide that said Breakdown .
At what point did I think that was a good idea ? "
And she said , " I saw your Talk live-streamed .
It was not really you .
It was a little different than what you usually do .
But it was great . "
And I said , " This can 't happen .
YouTube , they 're putting this thing on YouTube .
And we 're going to be talking about 600 , 700 people . "
And she said , " Well , I think it 's too late . "
And I said , " Let me ask you something . "
And she said , " Yeah . "
And I said , " Do you remember when we were in college and really wild and kind of dumb ? "
And she said , " Yeah . "
And I said , " Remember when we 'd leave a really bad message on our ex-boyfriend 's answering machine ?
Then we 'd have to break into his dorm room and then erase the tape ? "
And she goes , " Uh ... no . "
So of course , the only thing I could think of to say at that point was , " Yeah , me neither .
That ... me neither . "
And I 'm thinking to myself , " Brene , what are you doing ? What are you doing ?
Why did you bring this up ? Have you lost your mind ?
Your sisters would be perfect for this . "
So I looked back up and she said , " Are you really going to try to break in and steal the video before they put it on YouTube ? "
And I said , " I 'm just thinking about it a little bit . "
She said , " You 're like the worst vulnerability role model ever . "
And then I looked at her and I said something that at the time felt a little dramatic , but ended up being more prophetic than dramatic .
I said , " If 500 turns into 1,000 or 2,000 , my life is over . "
I had no contingency plan for four million .
And my life did end when that happened .
And maybe the hardest part about my life ending is that I learned something hard about myself , and that was that , as much as I would frustrated about not being able to get my work out to the world , there was a part of me that was working very hard to engineer staying small , staying right under the radar .
But I want to talk about what I 've learned .
There 's two things that I 've learned in the last year .
The first is vulnerability is not weakness .
And that myth is profoundly dangerous .
Let me ask you honestly -- and I 'll give you this warning , I 'm trained as a therapist , so I can out-wait you uncomfortably -- so if you could just raise your hand that would be awesome -- how many of you honestly , when you 're thinking about doing something vulnerable or saying something vulnerable , think , " God , vulnerability 's weakness . This is weakness ? "
How many of you think of vulnerability and weakness synonymously ?
The majority of people .
Now let me ask you this question : This past week at TED , how many of you , when you saw vulnerability up here , thought it was pure courage ?
Vulnerability is not weakness .
I define vulnerability as emotional risk , exposure , uncertainty .
It fuels our daily lives .
And I 've come to the belief -- this is my 12th year doing this research -- that vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage -- to be vulnerable , to let ourselves be seen , to be honest .
One of the weird things that 's happened is , after the TED explosion , I got a lot of offers to speak all over the country -- everyone from schools and parent meetings to Fortune 500 companies .
And so many of the calls went like this , " Hey , Dr. Brown . We loved your TEDTalk .
We 'd like you to come in and speak .
We 'd appreciate it if you wouldn 't mention vulnerability or shame . "
What would you like for me to talk about ?
There 's three big answers .
This is mostly , to be honest with you , from the business sector : innovation , creativity and change .
So let me go on the record and say , vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation , creativity and change .
To create is to make something that has never existed before .
There 's nothing more vulnerable than that .
Adaptability to change is all about vulnerability .
The second thing , in addition to really finally understanding the relationship between vulnerability and courage , the second thing I learned is this : We have to talk about shame .
And I 'm going to be really honest with you .
When I became a " vulnerability researcher " and that became the focus because of the TEDTalk -- and I 'm not kidding .
I 'll give you an example .
About three months ago , I was in a sporting goods store buying goggles and shin guards and all the things that parents buy at the sporting goods store .
About from a hundred feet away , this is what I hear : " Vulnerability TED ! Vulnerability TED ! "
I 'm a fifth generation Texan .
Our family motto is " Lock and load . "
I am not a natural vulnerability researcher .
So I 'm like , just keep walking , she 's on my six .
And then I hear , " Vulnerability TED ! "
I turn around , I go , " Hi . "
She 's right here and she said , " You 're the shame researcher who had the breakdown . "
At this point parents are , like , pulling their children close .
" Look away . "
And I 'm so worn out at this point in my life , I look at her and I actually say , " It was a frickin ' spiritual awakening . "
And she looks back and does this , " I know . "
And she said , " We watched your TEDTalk in my book club .
Then we read your book and we renamed ourselves ' The Breakdown Babes . ' " And she said , " Our tagline is : ' We 're falling apart and it feels fantastic . ' " You can only imagine what it 's like for me in a faculty meeting .
So when I became Vulnerability TED , like an action figure -- like Ninja Barbie , but I 'm Vulnerability TED -- I thought , I 'm going to leave that shame stuff behind , because I spent six years studying shame before I really started writing and talking about vulnerability .
And I thought , thank God , because shame is this horrible topic , no one wants to talk about it .
It 's the best way to shut people down on an airplane .
" What do you do ? " " I study shame . " " Oh . "
And I see you .
But in surviving this last year , I was reminded of a cardinal rule -- not a research rule , but a moral imperative from my upbringing -- you 've got to dance with the one who brung ya .
And I did not learn about vulnerability and courage and creativity and innovation from studying vulnerability .
I learned about these things from studying shame .
And so I want to walk you in to shame .
Jungian analysts call shame the swampland of the soul .
And we 're going to walk in .
And the purpose is not to walk in and construct a home and live there .
It is to put on some galoshes and walk through and find our way around .
Here 's why .
We heard the most compelling call ever to have a conversation in this country , and I think globally , around race , right ?
Yes ? We heard that .
Yes ?
Cannot have that conversation without shame , because you cannot talk about race without talking about privilege .
And when people start talking about privilege , they get paralyzed by shame .
We heard a brilliant simple solution to not killing people in surgery , which is have a checklist .
You can 't fix that problem without addressing shame , because when they teach those folks how to suture , they also teach them how to stitch their self-worth to being all-powerful .
And all-powerful folks don 't need checklists .
And I had to write down the name of this TED Fellow so I didn 't mess it up here .
Myshkin Ingawale , I hope I did right by you .
I saw the TED Fellows my first day here .
And he got up and he explained how he was driven to create some technology to help test for anemia because people were dying unnecessarily .
And he said , " I saw this need .
So you know what I did ? I made it . "
And everybody just burst into applause , and they were like " Yes ! "
And he said , " And it didn 't work .
And then I made it 32 more times , and then it worked . "
You know what the big secret about TED is ?
I can 't wait to tell people this .
I guess I 'm doing it right now .
This is like the failure conference .
No , it is .
You know why this place is amazing ?
Because very few people here are afraid to fail .
And no one who gets on the stage , so far that I 've seen , has not failed .
I 've failed miserably , many times .
I don 't think the world understands that because of shame .
There 's a great quote that saved me this past year by Theodore Roosevelt .
A lot of people refer to it as the " Man in the Arena " quote .
And it goes like this : " It is not the critic who counts .
It is not the man who sits and points out how the doer of deeds could have done things better and how he falls and stumbles .
The credit goes to the man in the arena whose face is marred with dust and blood and sweat .
But when he 's in the arena , at best he wins , and at worst he loses , but when he fails , when he loses , he does so daring greatly . "
And that 's what this conference , to me , is about .
That 's what life is about , about daring greatly , about being in the arena .
When you walk up to that arena and you put your hand on the door , and you think , " I 'm going in and I 'm going to try this , " shame is the gremlin who says , " Uh , uh .
You 're not good enough .
You never finished that MBA . Your wife left you .
I know your dad really wasn 't in Luxembourg , he was in Sing Sing .
I know those things that happened to you growing up .
I know you don 't think that you 're pretty enough or smart enough or talented enough or powerful enough .
I know your dad never paid attention , even when you made CFO . "
Shame is that thing .
And if we can quiet it down and walk in and say , " I 'm going to do this , " we look up and the critic that we see pointing and laughing , 99 percent of the time is who ?
Us .
Shame drives two big tapes -- " never good enough " and , if you can talk it out of that one , " who do you think you are ? "
The thing to understand about shame is it 's not guilt .
Shame is a focus on self , guilt is a focus on behavior .
Shame is " I am bad . "
Guilt is " I did something bad . "
How many of you , if you did something that was hurtful to me , would be willing to say , " I 'm sorry . I made a mistake ? "
How many of you would be willing to say that ?
Guilt : I 'm sorry . I made a mistake .
Shame : I 'm sorry . I am a mistake .
There 's a huge difference between shame and guilt .
And here 's what you need to know .
Shame is highly , highly correlated with addiction , depression , violence , aggression , bullying , suicide , eating disorders .
And here 's what you even need to know more .
Guilt , inversely correlated with those things .
The ability to hold something we 've done or failed to do up against who we want to be is incredibly adaptive .
It 's uncomfortable , but it 's adaptive .
The other thing you need to know about shame is it 's absolutely organized by gender .
If shame washes over me and washes over Chris , it 's going to feel the same .
Everyone sitting in here knows the warm wash of shame .
We 're pretty sure that the only people who don 't experience shame are people who have no capacity for connection or empathy .
Which means , yes , I have a little shame ; no , I 'm a sociopath .
So I would opt for , yes , you have a little shame .
Shame feels the same for men and women , but it 's organized by gender .
For women , the best example I can give you is Enjoli the commercial : " I can put the wash on the line , pack the lunches , hand out the kisses and be at work at five to nine .
I can bring home the bacon , fry it up in the pan and never let you forget you 're a man . "
For women , shame is do it all , do it perfectly and never let them see you sweat .
I don 't know how much perfume that commercial sold , but I guarantee you , it moved a lot of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds .
Shame , for women , is this web of unobtainable , conflicting , competing expectations about who we 're supposed to be .
And it 's a straight-jacket .
For men , shame is not a bunch of competing , conflicting expectations .
Shame is one , do not be perceived as what ?
Weak .
I did not interview men for the first four years of my study .
And it wasn 't until a man looked at me one day after a book signing , said , " I love what you have to say about shame , I 'm curious why you didn 't mention men . "
And I said , " I don 't study men . "
And he said , " That 's convenient . "
And I said , " Why ? "
And he said , " Because you say to reach out , tell our story , be vulnerable .
But you see those books you just signed for my wife and my three daughters ? "
I said , " Yeah . "
" They 'd rather me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall down .
When we reach out and be vulnerable we get the shit beat out of us .
And don 't tell me it 's from the guys and the coaches and the dads , because the women in my life are harder on me than anyone else . "
So I started interviewing men and asking questions .
And what I learned is this : You show me a woman who can actually sit with a man in real vulnerability and fear , I 'll show you a woman who 's done incredible work .
You show me a man who can sit with a woman who 's just had it , she can 't do it all anymore , and his first response is not , " I unloaded the dishwasher , " but he really listens -- because that 's all we need -- I 'll show you a guy who 's done a lot of work .
Shame is an epidemic in our culture .
And to get out from underneath it , to find our way back to each other , we have to understand how it affects us and how it affects the way we 're parenting , the way we 're working , the way we 're looking at each other .
Very quickly , some research by Mahalik at Boston College .
He asked , what do women need to do to conform to female norms ?
The top answers in this country : nice , thin , modest and use all available resources for appearance .
When he asked about men , what do men in this country need to do to conform with male norms , the answers were : always show emotional control , work is first , pursue status and violence .
If we 're going to find our way back to each other , we have to understand and know empathy , because empathy 's the antidote to shame .
If you put shame in a Petri dish , it needs three things to grow exponentially : secrecy , silence and judgment .
If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy , it can 't survive .
The two most powerful words when we 're in struggle : me too .
And so I 'll leave you with this thought .
If we 're going to find our way back to each other , vulnerability is going to be that path .
And I know it 's seductive to stand outside the arena , because I think I did it my whole life , and think to myself , I 'm going to go in there and kick some ass when I 'm bulletproof and when I 'm perfect .
And that is seductive .
But the truth is that never happens .
And even if you got as perfect as you could and as bulletproof as you could possibly muster when you got in there , that 's not what we want to see .
We want you to go in .
We want to be with you and across from you .
And we just want , for ourselves and the people we care about and the people we work with , to dare greatly .
So thank you all very much . I really appreciate it .
Eric Whitacre : Virtual Choir Live
Composer and conductor Eric Whitacre has inspired millions by bringing together " virtual choirs , " singers from many countries spliced together on video . Now , for the first time ever , he creates the experience in real time , as 32 singers from around the world Skype in to join an onstage choir for an epic performance of Whitacre 's " Cloudburst , " based on a poem by Octavio Paz .
In 1991 I had maybe the most profound and transformative experience of my life .
I was in the third year of my seven-year undergraduate degree .
I took a couple victory laps in there .
And I was on a college choir tour up in Northern California , and we had stopped for the day after all day on the bus , and we were relaxing next to this beautiful idyllic lake in the mountains .
And there were crickets and birds and frogs making noise , and as we sat there , over the mountains coming in from the north were these Steven Spielbergian clouds rolling toward us , and as the clouds got about halfway over the valley , so help me God , every single animal in that place stopped making noise at the same time .
This electric hush , as if they could sense what was about to happen .
And then the clouds came over us , and then , boom ! This massive thunderclap , and sheets of rain .
It was just extraordinary , and when I came back home I found a poem by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz , and decided to set it to music , a piece for choir called " Cloudburst , " which is the piece that we 'll perform for you in just a moment .
Now fast forward to just three years ago .
And we released to YouTube this , the Virtual Choir Project , 185 singers from 12 different countries .
You can see my little video there conducting these people , alone in their dorm rooms or in their living rooms at home .
Two years ago , on this very stage , we premiered Virtual Choir 2 , 2,052 singers from 58 different countries , this time performing a piece that I had written called " Sleep . "
And then just last spring we released Virtual Choir 3 , " Water Night , " another piece that I had written , this time nearly 4,000 singers from 73 different countries .
And when I was speaking to Chris about the future of Virtual Choir and where we might be able to take this , he challenged me to push the technology as far as we possibly could .
Could we do this all in real time ?
Could we have people singing together in real time ?
And with the help of Skype , that is what we are going to attempt today .
Now , we 'll perform " Cloudburst " for you .
The first half will be performed by the live singers here on stage .
I 'm joined by singers from Cal State Long Beach , Cal State Fullerton and Riverside Community College , some of the best amateur choirs in the country , and — -- and in the second half of the piece , the virtual choir will join us , 30 different singers from 30 different countries .
Now , we 've pushed the technology as far as it can go , but there 's still less than a second of latency , but in musical terms , that 's a lifetime .
We deal in milliseconds .
So what I 've done is , I 've adapted " Cloudburst " so that it embraces the latency and the performers sing into the latency instead of trying to be exactly together .
So with deep humility , and for your approval , we present " Cloudburst . "
[ The rain ... ] [ Eyes of shadow-water ] [ eyes of well-water ] [ eyes of dream-water . ] [ Blue suns , green whirlwinds , ] [ birdbeaks of light pecking open ] [ pomegranate stars . ] [ But tell me , burnt earth , is there no water ? ] [ Only blood , only dust , ] [ only naked footsteps on the thorns ? ] [ The rain awakens ... ] [ We must sleep with open eyes , ] [ we must dream with our hands , ] [ we must dream the dreams of a river seeking its course , ] [ of the sun dreaming its worlds . ] [ We must dream aloud , ] [ we must sing till the song puts forth roots , ] [ trunk , branches , birds , stars . ] [ We must find the lost word , ] [ and remember what the blood , ] [ the tides , the earth , and the body say , ] [ and return to the point of departure ... ] [ " Cloudburst " Octavio Paz ] [ translation by Lysander Kemp , adapted by Eric Whitacre ] Eric Whitacre : Beth . Annabelle , where are you ? Jacob .
Thank you .
Laura Trice : Remember to say thank you
In this deceptively simple 3-minute talk , Dr. Laura Trice muses on the power of the magic words " thank you " -- to deepen a friendship , to repair a bond , to make sure another person knows what they mean to you . Try it .
Hi . I 'm here to talk to you about the importance of praise , admiration and thank you , and having it be specific and genuine .
And the way I got interested in this was , I noticed in myself , when I was growing up , and until about a few years ago , that I would want to say thank you to someone , I would want to praise them , I would want to take in their praise of me and I 'd just stop it .
And I asked myself , why ?
I felt shy , I felt embarrassed .
And then my question became , am I the only one who does this ?
So , I decided to investigate .
I 'm fortunate enough to work in the rehab facility , so I get to see people who are facing life and death with addiction .
And sometimes it comes down to something as simple as , their core wound is their father died without ever saying he 's proud of them .
But then , they hear from all the family and friends that the father told everybody else that he was proud of him , but he never told the son .
It 's because he didn 't know that his son needed to hear it .
So my question is , why don 't we ask for the things that we need ?
I know a gentleman , married for 25 years , who 's longing to hear his wife say , " Thank you for being the breadwinner , so I can stay home with the kids , " but won 't ask .
I know a woman who 's good at this .
She , once a week , meets with her husband and says , " I 'd really like you to thank me for all these things I did in the house and with the kids . "
And he goes , " Oh , this is great , this is great . "
And praise really does have to be genuine , but she takes responsibility for that .
And a friend of mine , April , who I 've had since kindergarten , she thanks her children for doing their chores .
And she said , " Why wouldn 't I thank it , even though they 're supposed to do it ? "
So , the question is , why was I blocking it ?
Why were other people blocking it ?
Why can I say , " I 'll take my steak medium rare , I need size six shoes , " but I won 't say , " Would you praise me this way ? "
And it 's because I 'm giving you critical data about me .
I 'm telling you where I 'm insecure .
I 'm telling you where I need your help .
And I 'm treating you , my inner circle , like you 're the enemy .
Because what can you do with that data ?
You could neglect me .
You could abuse it .
Or you could actually meet my need .
And I took my bike into the bike store-- I love this -- same bike , and they 'd do something called " truing " the wheels .
The guy said , " You know , when you true the wheels , it 's going to make the bike so much better . "
I get the same bike back , and they 've taken all the little warps out of those same wheels I 've had for two and a half years , and my bike is like new .
So , I 'm going to challenge all of you .
I want you to true your wheels : be honest about the praise that you need to hear .
What do you need to hear ? Go home to your wife -- go ask her , what does she need ?
Go home to your husband -- what does he need ?
Go home and ask those questions , and then help the people around you .
And it 's simple .
And why should we care about this ?
We talk about world peace .
How can we have world peace with different cultures , different languages ?
I think it starts household by household , under the same roof .
So , let 's make it right in our own backyard .
And I want to thank all of you in the audience for being great husbands , great mothers , friends , daughters , sons .
And maybe somebody 's never said that to you , but you 've done a really , really good job .
And thank you for being here , just showing up and changing the world with your ideas .
Thank you .
Carter Emmart : A 3D atlas of the universe
For the last 12 years , Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists , artists and programmers to build a complete 3D visualization of our known universe . He demos this stunning tour and explains how it 's being shared with facilities around the world .
It 's a great honor today to share with you The Digital Universe , which was created for humanity to really see where we are in the universe .
And so I think we can roll the video that we have .
[ The Himalayas . ] The flat horizon that we 've evolved with has been a metaphor for the infinite : unbounded resources and unlimited capacity for disposal of waste .
It wasn 't until we really left Earth , got above the atmosphere and had seen the horizon bend back on itself , that we could understand our planet as a limited condition .
The Digital Universe Atlas has been built at the American Museum of Natural History over the past 12 years .
We maintain that , put that together as a project to really chart the universe across all scales .
What we see here are satellites around the Earth and the Earth in proper registration against the universe , as we see .
NASA supported this work 12 years ago as part of the rebuilding of the Hayden Planetarium so that we would share this with the world .
The Digital Universe is the basis of our space show productions that we do -- our main space shows in the dome .
But what you see here is the result of , actually , internships that we hosted with Linkoping University in Sweden .
I 've had 12 students work on this for their graduate work , and the result has been this software called Uniview and a company called SCISS in Sweden .
This software allows interactive use , so this actual flight path and movie that we see here was actually flown live .
I captured this live from my laptop in a cafe called Earth Matters on the Lower East Side of Manhattan , where I live , and it was done as a collaborative project with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art for an exhibit on comparative cosmology .
And so as we move out , we see continuously from our planet all the way out into the realm of galaxies , as we see here , light-travel time , giving you a sense of how far away we are .
As we move out , the light from these distant galaxies have taken so long , we 're essentially backing up into the past .
We back so far up we 're finally seeing a containment around us -- the afterglow of the Big Bang .
This is the WMAP microwave background that we see .
We 'll fly outside it here , just to see this sort of containment .
If we were outside this , it would almost be meaningless , in the sense as before time .
But this our containment of the visible universe .
We know the universe is bigger than that which we can see .
Coming back quickly , we see here the radio sphere that we jumped out of in the beginning , but these are positions , the latest positions of exoplanets that we 've mapped , and our sun here , obviously , with our own solar system .
What you 're going to see -- we 're going to have to jump in here pretty quickly between several orders of magnitude to get down to where we see the solar system -- these are the paths of Voyager 1 , Voyager 2 , Pioneer 11 and Pioneer 10 , the first four spacecraft to have left the solar system .
Coming in closer , picking up Earth , orbit of the Moon , and we see the Earth .
This map can be updated , and we can add in new data .
I know Dr. Carolyn Porco is the camera P.I.
for the Cassini mission .
But here we see the complex trajectory of the Cassini mission color coded for different mission phases , ingeniously developed so that 45 encounters with the largest moon , Titan , which is larger that the planet Mercury , diverts the orbit into different parts of mission phase .
This software allows us to come close and look at parts of this .
This software can also be networked between domes .
We have a growing user base of this , and we network domes .
And we can network between domes and classrooms .
We 're actually sharing tours of the universe with the first sub-Saharan planetarium in Ghana as well as new libraries that have been built in the ghettos in Columbia and a high school in Cambodia .
And the Cambodians have actually controlled the Hayden Planetarium from their high school .
This is an image from Saturday , photographed by the Aqua satellite , but through the Uniview software .
So you 're seeing the edge of the Earth .
This is Nepal .
This is , in fact , right here is the valley of Lhasa , right here in Tibet .
But we can see the haze from fires and so forth in the Ganges valley down below in India .
This is Nepal and Tibet .
And just in closing , I 'd just like to say this beautiful world that we live on -- here we see a bit of the snow so I 'd like to just say that what the world needs now is a sense of being able to look at ourselves in this much larger condition now and a much larger sense of what home is .
Because our home is the universe , and we are the universe , essentially .
We carry that in us .
And to be able to see our context in this larger sense at all scales helps us all , I think , in understanding where we are and who we are in the universe .
Thank you .
Esther Perel : The secret to desire in a long-term relationship
In long-term relationships , we often expect our beloved to be both best friend and erotic partner . But as Esther Perel argues , good & lt ; em & gt ; and & lt ; / em & gt ; committed sex draws on two conflicting needs : our need for security and our need for surprise . So how do you sustain desire ? With wit and eloquence , Perel lets us in on the mystery of erotic intelligence .
So , why does good sex so often fade , even for couples who continue to love each other as much as ever ?
And why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex , contrary to popular belief ?
Or , the next question would be , can we want what we already have ?
That 's the million-dollar question , right ?
And why is the forbidden so erotic ?
What is it about transgression that makes desire so potent ?
And why does sex make babies , and babies spell erotic disaster in couples ?
It 's kind of the fatal erotic blow , isn 't it ?
And when you love , how does it feel ?
And when you desire , how is it different ?
These are some of the questions that are at the center of my exploration on the nature of erotic desire and its concomitant dilemmas in modern love .
So I travel the globe , and what I 'm noticing is that everywhere where romanticism has entered , there seems to be a crisis of desire .
A crisis of desire , as in owning the wanting -- desire as an expression of our individuality , of our free choice , of our preferences , of our identity -- desire that has become a central concept as part of modern love and individualistic societies .
You know , this is the first time in the history of humankind where we are trying to experience sexuality in the long term , not because we want 14 children , for which we need to have even more because many of them won 't make it , and not because it is exclusively a woman 's marital duty .
This is the first time that we want sex over time about pleasure and connection that is rooted in desire .
So what sustains desire , and why is it so difficult ?
And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship , I think is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs .
On the one hand , our need for security , for predictability , for safety , for dependability , for reliability , for permanence -- all these anchoring , grounding experiences of our lives that we call home .
But we also have an equally strong need -- men and women -- for adventure , for novelty , for mystery , for risk , for danger , for the unknown , for the unexpected , surprise -- you get the gist -- for journey , for travel .
So reconciling our need for security and our need for adventure into one relationship , or what we today like to call a passionate marriage , used to be a contradiction in terms .
Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship .
But now we want our partner to still give us all these things , but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot , and we live twice as long .
So we come to one person , and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide : Give me belonging , give me identity , give me continuity , but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one .
Give me comfort , give me edge .
Give me novelty , give me familiarity .
Give me predictability , give me surprise .
So now we get to the existential reality of the story , right ?
Because I think , in some way -- and I 'll come back to that -- but the crisis of desire is often a crisis of the imagination .
So why does good sex so often fade ?
What is the relationship between love and desire ?
How do they relate , and how do they conflict ?
Because therein lies the mystery of eroticism .
So if there is a verb , for me , that comes with love , it 's " to have . "
And if there is a verb that comes with desire , it is " to want . "
In love , we want to have , we want to know the beloved .
We want to minimize the distance . We want to contract that gap .
We want to neutralize the tensions . We want closeness .
But in desire , we tend to not really want to go back to the places we 've already gone .
Forgone conclusion does not keep our interest .
In desire , we want an Other , somebody on the other side that we can go visit , that we can go spend some time with , that we can go see what goes on in their red light district .
In desire , we want a bridge to cross .
Or in other words , I sometimes say , fire needs air .
Desire needs space .
And when it 's said like that , it 's often quite abstract .
But then I took a question with me .
And I 've gone to more than 20 countries in the last few years with " Mating in Captivity , " and I asked people , when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner ?
Not attracted sexually , per se , but most drawn .
And across culture , across religion , and across gender -- except for one -- there are a few answers that just keep coming back .
So the first group is : I am most drawn to my partner when she is away , when we are apart , when we reunite .
Basically , when I get back in touch with my ability to imagine myself with my partner , when my imagination comes back in the picture , and when I can root it in absence and in longing , which is a major component of desire .
But then the second group is even more interesting : I am most drawn to my partner when I see him in the studio , when she is onstage , when he is in his element , when she 's doing something she 's passionate about , when I see him at a party and other people are really drawn to him , when I see her hold court .
Basically , when I look at my partner radiant and confident , probably the biggest turn-on across the board .
Radiant , as in self-sustaining .
I look at this person -- by the way , in desire people rarely talk about it , when we are blended into one , five centimeters from each other . I don 't know in inches how much that is .
But it 's also not when the other person is that far apart that you no longer see them .
It 's when I 'm looking at my partner from a comfortable distance , where this person that is already so familiar , so known , is momentarily once again somewhat mysterious , somewhat elusive .
And in this space between me and the other lies the erotic élan , lies that movement toward the other .
Because sometimes , as Proust says , mystery is not about traveling to new places , but it 's about looking with new eyes .
And so , when I see my partner on his own or her own , doing something in which they are enveloped , I look at this person and I momentarily get a shift in perception , and I stay open to the mysteries that are living right next to me .
And then , more importantly , in this description about the other or myself -- it 's the same -- what is most interesting is that there is no neediness in desire .
Nobody needs anybody .
There is no caretaking in desire .
Caretaking is mightily loving . It 's a powerful anti-aphrodisiac .
I have yet to see somebody who is so turned on by somebody who needs them .
Wanting them is one thing . Needing them is a shutdown , and women have known that forever , because anything that will bring up parenthood will usually decrease the erotic charge .
For good reasons , right ?
And then the third group of answers usually would be when I 'm surprised , when we laugh together , as somebody said to me in the office today , when he 's in his tux , so I said , you know , it 's either the tux or the cowboy boots .
But basically it 's when there is novelty .
But novelty isn 't about new positions . It isn 't a repertoire of techniques .
Novelty is , what parts of you do you bring out ?
What parts of you are just being seen ?
Because in some way one could say sex isn 't something you do , eh ?
Sex is a place you go . It 's a space you enter inside yourself and with another , or others .
So where do you go in sex ?
What parts of you do you connect to ?
What do you seek to express there ?
Is it a place for transcendence and spiritual union ?
Is it a place for naughtiness and is it a place to be safely aggressive ?
Is it a place where you can finally surrender and not have to take responsibility for everything ?
Is it a place where you can express your infantile wishes ?
What comes out there ? It 's a language .
It isn 't just a behavior .
And it 's the poetic of that language that I 'm interested in , which is why I began to explore this concept of erotic intelligence .
You know , animals have sex .
It 's the pivot , it 's biology , it 's the natural instinct .
We are the only ones who have an erotic life , which means that it 's sexuality transformed by the human imagination .
We are the only ones who can make love for hours , have a blissful time , multiple orgasms , and touch nobody , just because we can imagine it .
We can hint at it . We don 't even have to do it .
We can experience that powerful thing called anticipation , which is a mortar to desire , the ability to imagine it , as if it 's happening , to experience it as if it 's happening , while nothing is happening and everything is happening at the same time .
So when I began to think about eroticism , I began to think about the poetics of sex , and if I look at it as an intelligence , then it 's something that you cultivate .
What are the ingredients ? Imagination , playfulness , novelty , curiosity , mystery .
But the central agent is really that piece called the imagination .
But more importantly , for me to begin to understand who are the couples who have an erotic spark , what sustains desire , I had to go back to the original definition of eroticism , the mystical definition , and I went through it through a bifurcation by looking actually at trauma , which is the other side , and I looked at it looking at the community that I had grown up in , which was a community in Belgium , all Holocaust survivors , and in my community there were two groups : those who didn 't die , and those who came back to life .
And those who didn 't die lived often very tethered to the ground , could not experience pleasure , could not trust , because when you 're vigilant , worried , anxious , and insecure , you can 't lift your head to go and take off in space and be playful and safe and imaginative .
Those who came back to life were those who understood the erotic as an antidote to death .
They knew how to keep themselves alive .
And when I began to listen to the sexlessness of the couples that I work with , I sometimes would hear people say , " I want more sex , " but generally people want better sex , and better is to reconnect with that quality of aliveness , of vibrancy , of renewal , of vitality , of eros , of energy that sex used to afford them , or that they 've hoped it would afford them .
And so I began to ask a different question .
" I shut myself off when ... " began to be the question .
" I turn off my desires when ... " which is not the same question as , " What turns me off is ... " and " You turn me off when ... "
And people began to say , " I turn myself off when I feel dead inside , when I don 't like my body , when I feel old , when I haven 't had time for myself , when I haven 't had a chance to even check in with you , when I don 't perform well at work , when I feel low self esteem , when I don 't have a sense of self-worth , when I don 't feel like I have a right to want , to take , to receive pleasure . "
And then I began to ask the reverse question .
" I turn myself on when ... " Because most of the time , people like to ask the question , " You turn me on , what turns me on , " and I 'm out of the question . You know ?
Now , if you are dead inside , the other person can do a lot of things for Valentine 's .
It won 't make a dent . There is nobody at the reception desk .
So I turn myself on when , I turn my desires , I wake up when ...
Now , in this paradox between love and desire , what seems to be so puzzling is that the very ingredients that nurture love -- mutuality , reciprocity , protection , worry , responsibility for the other -- are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire .
Because desire comes with a host of feelings that are not always such favorites of love : jealousy , possessiveness , aggression , power , dominance , naughtiness , mischief .
Basically most of us will get turned on at night by the very same things that we will demonstrate against during the day .
You know , the erotic mind is not very politically correct .
If everybody was fantasizing on a bed of roses , we wouldn 't be having such interesting talks about this .
But no , in our mind up there are a host of things going on that we don 't always know how to bring to the person that we love , because we think love comes with selflessness and in fact desire comes with a certain amount of selfishness in the best sense of the word : the ability to stay connected to one 's self in the presence of another .
So I want to draw that little image for you , because this need to reconcile these two sets of needs , we are born with that .
Our need for connection , our need for separateness , or our need for security and adventure , or our need for togetherness and for autonomy , and if you think about the little kid who sits on your lap and who is cozily nested here and very secure and comfortable , and at some point all of us need to go out into the world to discover and to explore .
That 's the beginning of desire , that exploratory needs curiosity , discovery .
And then at some point they turn around and they look at you , and if you tell them , " Hey kiddo , the world 's a great place . Go for it .
There 's so much fun out there , " then they can turn away and they can experience connection and separateness at the same time .
They can go off in their imagination , off in their body , off in their playfulness , all the while knowing that there 's somebody when they come back .
But if on this side there is somebody who says , " I 'm worried . I 'm anxious . I 'm depressed .
My partner hasn 't taken care of me in so long .
What 's so good out there ? Don 't we have everything you need together , you and I ? "
then there are a few little reactions that all of us can pretty much recognize .
Some of us will come back , came back a long time ago , and that little child who comes back is the child who will forgo a part of himself in order not to lose the other .
I will lose my freedom in order not to lose connection .
And I will learn to love in a certain way that will become burdened with extra worry and extra responsibility and extra protection , and I won 't know how to leave you in order to go play , in order to go experience pleasure , in order to discover , to enter inside myself .
Translate this into adult language .
It starts very young . It continues into our sex lives up to the end .
Child number two comes back but looks like that over their shoulder all the time .
" Are you going to be there ?
Are you going to curse me ? Are you going to scold me ?
Are you going to be angry with me ? "
And they may be gone , but they 're never really away , and those are often the people that will tell you , in the beginning it was super hot .
Because in the beginning , the growing intimacy wasn 't yet so strong that it actually led to the decrease of desire .
The more connected I became , the more responsible I felt , the less I was able to let go in your presence .
The third child doesn 't really come back .
So what happens , if you want to sustain desire , it 's that real dialectic piece .
On the one hand you want the security in order to be able to go .
On the other hand if you can 't go , you can 't have pleasure , you can 't culminate , you don 't have an orgasm , you don 't get excited because you spend your time in the body and the head of the other and not in your own .
So in this dilemma about reconciling these two sets of fundamental needs , there are a few things that I 've come to understand erotic couples do .
One , they have a lot of sexual privacy .
They understand that there is an erotic space that belongs to each of them .
They also understand that foreplay is not something you do five minutes before the real thing .
Foreplay pretty much starts at the end of the previous orgasm .
They also understand that an erotic space isn 't about , you begin to stroke the other .
It 's about you create a space where you leave Management Inc . , maybe where you leave the agile program , and you actually just enter that place where you stop being the good citizen who is taking care of things and being responsible .
Responsibility and desire just butt heads .
They don 't really do well together .
Erotic couples also understand that passion waxes and wanes .
It 's pretty much like the moon . It has intermittent eclipses .
But what they know is they know how to resurrect it .
They know how to bring it back , and they know how to bring it back because they have demystified one big myth , which is the myth of spontaneity , which is that it 's just going to fall from heaven while you 're folding the laundry like a deus ex machina , and in fact they understood that whatever is going to just happen in a long-term relationship already has .
Committed sex is premeditated sex .
It 's willful . It 's intentional .
It 's focus and presence .
Merry Valentine 's .
Nalini Nadkarni : Life science in prison
Nalini Nadkarni challenges our perspective on trees and prisons -- she says both can be more dynamic than we think . Through a partnership with the state of Washington , she brings science classes and conservation programs to inmates , with unexpected results .
Trees epitomize stasis .
Trees are rooted in the ground in one place for many human generations , but if we shift our perspective from the trunk to the twigs , trees become very dynamic entities , moving and growing .
And I decided to explore this movement by turning trees into artists .
I simply tied the end of a paintbrush onto a twig .
I waited for the wind to come up and held up a canvas , and that produced art .
The piece of art you see on your left is painted by a western red cedar and that on your right by a Douglas fir , and what I learned was that different species have different signatures , like a Picasso versus a Monet .
But I was also interested in the movement of trees and how this art might let me capture that and quantify it , so to measure the distance that a single vine maple tree -- which produced this painting -- moved in a single year , I simply measured and summed each of those lines .
I multiplied them by the number of twigs per branch and the number of branches per tree and then divided that by the number of minutes per year .
And so I was able to calculate how far a single tree moved in a single year .
You might have a guess .
The answer is actually 186,540 miles , or seven times around the globe .
And so simply by shifting our perspective from a single trunk to the many dynamic twigs , we are able to see that trees are not simply static entities , but rather extremely dynamic .
And I began to think about ways that we might consider this lesson of trees , to consider other entities that are also static and stuck , but which cry for change and dynamicism , and one of those entities is our prisons .
Prisons , of course , are where people who break our laws are stuck , confined behind bars .
And our prison system itself is stuck .
The United States has over 2.3 million incarcerated men and women .
That number is rising .
Of the 100 incarcerated people that are released , 60 will return to prison .
Funds for education , for training and for rehabilitation are declining , so this despairing cycle of incarceration continues .
I decided to ask whether the lesson I had learned from trees as artists could be applied to a static institution such as our prisons , and I think the answer is yes .
In the year 2007 , I started a partnership with the Washington State Department of Corrections .
Working with four prisons , we began bringing science and scientists , sustainability and conservation projects to four state prisons .
We give science lectures , and the men here are choosing to come to our science lectures instead of watching television or weightlifting .
That , I think , is movement .
We partnered with the Nature Conservancy for inmates at Stafford Creek Correctional Center to grow endangered prairie plants for restoration of relic prairie areas in Washington state .
That , I think , is movement .
We worked with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife to grow endangered frogs -- the Oregon spotted frog -- for later release into protected wetlands .
That , I think , is movement .
And just recently , we 've begun to work with those men who are segregated in what we call Supermax facilities .
They 've incurred violent infractions by becoming violent with guards and with other prisoners .
They 're kept in bare cells like this for 23 hours a day .
When they have meetings with their review boards or mental health professionals , they 're placed in immobile booths like this .
For one hour a day they 're brought to these bleak and bland exercise yards .
Although we can 't bring trees and prairie plants and frogs into these environments , we are bringing images of nature into these exercise yards , putting them on the walls , so at least they get contact with visual images of nature .
This is Mr. Lopez , who has been in solitary confinement for 18 months , and he 's providing input on the types of images that he believes would make him and his fellow inmates more serene , more calm , less apt to violence .
And so what we see , I think , is that small , collective movements of change can perhaps move an entity such as our own prison system in a direction of hope .
We know that trees are static entities when we look at their trunks .
But if trees can create art , if they can encircle the globe seven times in one year , if prisoners can grow plants and raise frogs , then perhaps there are other static entities that we hold inside ourselves , like grief , like addictions , like racism , that can also change .
Thank you very much .
Sleepy Man Banjo Boys : Bluegrass virtuosity from ... New Jersey ?
All under the age of 16 , brothers Jonny , Robbie and Tommy Mizzone are from New Jersey , a US state that 's better known for the rock of Bruce Springsteen than the bluegrass of Earl Scruggs . Nonetheless , the siblings began performing bluegrass covers , as well as their own compositions , at a young age . Here , they play three dazzling songs in three different keys , passing the lead back and forth from fiddle to banjo to guitar .
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 .
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 .
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 .
On banjo is 10-year-old Jonny .
He 's also our brother .
And I 'm Robbie , and I 'm 14 , and I play the fiddle .
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 .
TM : Thank you very much .
RM : Thank you .
Michael Hansmeyer : Building unimaginable shapes
Inspired by cell division , Michael Hansmeyer writes algorithms that design outrageously fascinating shapes and forms with millions of facets . No person could draft them by hand , but they 're buildable -- and they could revolutionize the way we think of architectural form .
As an architect , I often ask myself , what is the origin of the forms that we design ?
What kind of forms could we design if we wouldn 't work with references anymore ?
If we had no bias , if we had no preconceptions , what kind of forms could we design if we could free ourselves from our experience ?
If we could free ourselves from our education ?
What would these unseen forms look like ?
Would they surprise us ? Would they intrigue us ?
Would they delight us ?
If so , then how can we go about creating something that is truly new ?
I propose we look to nature .
Nature has been called the greatest architect of forms .
And I 'm not saying that we should copy nature , I 'm not saying we should mimic biology , instead I propose that we can borrow nature 's processes .
We can abstract them and to create something that is new .
Nature 's main process of creation , morphogenesis , is the splitting of one cell into two cells .
And these cells can either be identical , or they can be distinct from each other through asymmetric cell division .
If we abstract this process , and simplify it as much as possible , then we could start with a single sheet of paper , one surface , and we could make a fold and divide the surface into two surfaces .
We 're free to choose where we make the fold .
And by doing so , we can differentiate the surfaces .
Through this very simple process , we can create an astounding variety of forms .
Now , we can take this form and use the same process to generate three-dimensional structures , but rather than folding things by hand , we 'll bring the structure into the computer , and code it as an algorithm .
And in doing so , we can suddenly fold anything .
We can fold a million times faster , we can fold in hundreds and hundreds of variations .
And as we 're seeking to make something three-dimensional , we start not with a single surface , but with a volume .
A simple volume , the cube .
If we take its surfaces and fold them again and again and again and again , then after 16 iterations , 16 steps , we end up with 400,000 surfaces and a shape that looks , for instance , like this .
And if we change where we make the folds , if we change the folding ratio , then this cube turns into this one .
We can change the folding ratio again to produce this shape , or this shape .
So we exert control over the form by specifying the position of where we 're making the fold , but essentially you 're looking at a folded cube .
And we can play with this .
We can apply different folding ratios to different parts of the form to create local conditions .
We can begin to sculpt the form .
And because we 're doing the folding on the computer , we are completely free of any physical constraints .
So that means that surfaces can intersect themselves , they can become impossibly small .
We can make folds that we otherwise could not make .
Surfaces can become porous .
They can stretch . They can tear .
And all of this expounds the scope of forms that we can produce .
But in each case , I didn 't design the form .
I designed the process that generated the form .
In general , if we make a small change to the folding ratio , which is what you 're seeing here , then the form changes correspondingly .
But that 's only half of the story -- 99.9 percent of the folding ratios produce not this , but this , the geometric equivalent of noise .
The forms that I showed before were made actually through very long trial and error .
A far more effective way to create forms , I have found , is to use information that is already contained in forms .
A very simple form such as this one actually contains a lot of information that may not be visible to the human eye .
So , for instance , we can plot the length of the edges .
White surfaces have long edges , black ones have short ones .
We can plot the planarity of the surfaces , their curvature , how radial they are -- all information that may not be instantly visible to you , but that we can bring out , that we can articulate , and that we can use to control the folding .
So now I 'm not specifying a single ratio anymore to fold it , but instead I 'm establishing a rule , I 'm establishing a link between a property of a surface and how that surface is folded .
And because I 've designed the process and not the form , I can run the process again and again and again to produce a whole family of forms .
These forms look elaborate , but the process is a very minimal one .
There is a simple input , it 's always a cube that I start with , and it 's a very simple operation -- it 's making a fold , and doing this over and over again .
So let 's bring this process to architecture .
How ? And at what scale ?
I chose to design a column .
Columns are architectural archetypes .
They 've been used throughout history to express ideals about beauty , about technology .
A challenge to me was how we could express this new algorithmic order in a column .
I started using four cylinders .
Through a lot of experimentation , these cylinders eventually evolved into this .
And these columns , they have information at very many scales .
We can begin to zoom into them .
The closer one gets , the more new features one discovers .
Some formations are almost at the threshold of human visibility .
And unlike traditional architecture , it 's a single process that creates both the overall form and the microscopic surface detail .
These forms are undrawable .
An architect who 's drawing them with a pen and a paper would probably take months , or it would take even a year to draw all the sections , all of the elevations , you can only create something like this through an algorithm .
The more interesting question , perhaps , is , are these forms imaginable ?
Usually , an architect can somehow envision the end state of what he is designing .
In this case , the process is deterministic .
There 's no randomness involved at all , but it 's not entirely predictable .
There 's too many surfaces , there 's too much detail , one can 't see the end state .
So this leads to a new role for the architect .
One needs a new method to explore all of the possibilities that are out there .
For one thing , one can design many variants of a form , in parallel , and one can cultivate them .
And to go back to the analogy with nature , one can begin to think in terms of populations , one can talk about permutations , about generations , about crossing and breeding to come up with a design .
And the architect is really , he moves into the position of being an orchestrator of all of these processes .
But enough of the theory .
At one point I simply wanted to jump inside this image , so to say , I bought these red and blue 3D glasses , got up very close to the screen , but still that wasn 't the same as being able to walk around and touch things .
So there was only one possibility -- to bring the column out of the computer .
There 's been a lot of talk now about 3D printing .
For me , or for my purpose at this moment , there 's still too much of an unfavorable tradeoff between scale , on the one hand , and resolution and speed , on the other .
So instead , we decided to take the column , and we decided to build it as a layered model , made out of very many slices , thinly stacked over each other .
What you 're looking at here is an X-ray of the column that you just saw , viewed from the top .
Unbeknownst to me at the time , because we had only seen the outside , the surfaces were continuing to fold themselves , to grow on the inside of the column , which was quite a surprising discovery .
From this shape , we calculated a cutting line , and then we gave this cutting line to a laser cutter to produce -- and you 're seeing a segment of it here -- very many thin slices , individually cut , on top of each other .
And this is a photo now , it 's not a rendering , and the column that we ended up with after a lot of work , ended up looking remarkably like the one that we had designed in the computer .
Almost all of the details , almost all of the surface intricacies were preserved .
But it was very labor intensive .
There 's a huge disconnect at the moment still between the virtual and the physical .
It took me several months to design the column , but ultimately it takes the computer about 30 seconds to calculate all of the 16 million faces .
The physical model , on the other hand , is 2,700 layers , one millimeter thick , it weighs 700 kilos , it 's made of sheet that can cover this entire auditorium .
And the cutting path that the laser followed goes from here to the airport and back again .
But it is increasingly possible .
Machines are getting faster , it 's getting less expensive , and there 's some promising technological developments just on the horizon .
These are images from the Gwangju Biennale .
And in this case , I used ABS plastic to produce the columns , we used the bigger , faster machine , and they have a steel core inside , so they 're structural , they can bear loads for once .
Each column is effectively a hybrid of two columns .
You can see a different column in the mirror , if there 's a mirror behind the column that creates a sort of an optical illusion .
So where does this leave us ?
I think this project gives us a glimpse of the unseen objects that await us if we as architects begin to think about designing not the object , but a process to generate objects .
I 've shown one simple process that was inspired by nature ; there 's countless other ones .
In short , we have no constraints .
Instead , we have processes in our hands right now that allow us to create structures at all scales that we couldn 't even have dreamt up .
And , if I may add , at one point we will build them .
Thank you .
David Hoffman : Sputnik mania
Filmmaker David Hoffman shares footage from his feature-length documentary Sputnik Mania , which shows how the Soviet Union 's launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to both the space race and the arms race -- and jump-started science and math education around the world .
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 .
Thank you , Chris .
Harish Manwani : Profit 's not always the point
You might not expect the chief operating officer of a major global corporation to look too far beyond either the balance sheet or the bottom line . But Harish Manwani , COO of Unilever , makes a passionate argument that doing so to include value , purpose and sustainability in top-level decision-making is not just savvy , it 's the only way to run a 21st century business responsibly .
The entire model of capitalism and the economic model that you and I did business in , and , in fact , continue to do business in , was built around what probably Milton Friedman put more succinctly .
And Adam Smith , of course , the father of modern economics actually said many , many years ago , the invisible hand , which is , " If you continue to operate in your own self-interest you will do the best good for society . "
Now , capitalism has done a lot of good things and I 've talked about a lot of good things that have happened , but equally , it has not been able to meet up with some of the challenges that we 've seen in society .
The model that at least I was brought up in and a lot of us doing business were brought up in was one which talked about what I call the three G 's of growth : growth that is consistent , quarter on quarter ; growth that is competitive , better than the other person ; and growth that is profitable , so you continue to make more and more shareholder value .
And I 'm afraid this is not going to be good enough and we have to move from this 3G model to a model of what I call the fourth G : the G of growth that is responsible .
And it is this that has to become a very important part of creating value .
Of not just creating economic value but creating social value .
And companies that will thrive are those that will actually embrace the fourth G.
And the model of 4G is quite simple : Companies cannot afford to be just innocent bystanders in what 's happening around in society .
They have to begin to play their role in terms of serving the communities which actually sustain them .
And we have to move to a model of an and / and model which is how do we make money and do good ?
How do we make sure that we have a great business but we also have a great environment around us ?
And that model is all about doing well and doing good .
But the question is easier said than done .
But how do we actually get that done ?
And I do believe that the answer to that is going to be leadership .
It is going to be to redefine the new business models which understand that the only license to operate is to combine these things .
And for that you need businesses that can actually define their role in society in terms of a much larger purpose than the products and brands that they sell .
And companies that actually define a true north , things that are nonnegotiable whether times are good , bad , ugly -- doesn 't matter .
There are things that you stand for .
Values and purpose are going to be the two drivers of software that are going to create the companies of tomorrow .
And I 'm going to now shift to talking a little bit about my own experiences .
I joined Unilever in 1976 as a management trainee in India .
And on my first day of work I walked in and my boss tells me , " Do you know why you 're here ? "
I said , " I 'm here to sell a lot of soap . "
And he said , " No , you 're here to change lives . "
You 're here to change lives .
You know , I thought it was rather facetious .
We are a company that sells soap and soup .
What are we doing about changing lives ?
And it 's then I realized that simple acts like selling a bar of soap can save more lives than pharmaceutical companies .
I don 't know how many of you know that five million children don 't reach the age of five because of simple infections that can be prevented by an act of washing their hands with soap .
We run the largest hand-washing program in the world .
We are running a program on hygiene and health that now touches half a billion people .
It 's not about selling soap , there is a larger purpose out there .
And brands indeed can be at the forefront of social change .
And the reason for that is , when two billion people use your brands that 's the amplifier .
Small actions can make a big difference .
Take another example , I was walking around in one of our villages in India .
Now those of you who have done this will realize that this is no walk in the park .
And we had this lady who was one of our small distributors -- beautiful , very , very modest , her home -- and she was out there , dressed nicely , her husband in the back , her mother-in-law behind and her sister-in-law behind her .
The social order was changing because this lady is part of our Project Shakti that is actually teaching women how to do small business and how to carry the message of nutrition and hygiene .
We have 60,000 such women now in India .
It 's not about selling soap , it 's about making sure that in the process of doing so you can change people 's lives .
Small actions , big difference .
Our R & amp ; D folks are not only working to give us some fantastic detergents , but they 're working to make sure we use less water .
A product that we 've just launched recently , One Rinse product that allows you to save water every time you wash your clothes .
And if we can convert all our users to using this , that 's 500 billion liters of water .
By the way , that 's equivalent to one month of water for a whole huge continent .
So just think about it .
There are small actions that can make a big difference .
And I can go on and on .
Our food chain , our brilliant products -- and I 'm sorry I 'm giving you a word from the sponsors -- Knorr , Hellman 's and all those wonderful products .
We are committed to making sure that all our agricultural raw materials are sourced from sustainable sources , 100-percent sustainable sources .
We were the first to say we are going to buy all of our palm oil from sustainable sources .
I don 't know how many of you know that palm oil , and not buying it from sustainable sources , can create deforestation that is responsible for 20 percent of the greenhouse gasses in the world .
We were the first to embrace that , and it 's all because we market soap and soup .
And the point I 'm making here is that companies like yours , companies like mine have to define a purpose which embraces responsibility and understands that we have to play our part in the communities in which we operate .
We introduced something called The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan , which said , " Our purpose is to make sustainable living commonplace , and we are gong to change the lives of one billion people over 2020 . "
Now the question here is , where do we go from here ?
And the answer to that is very simple : We 're not going to change the world alone .
There are plenty of you and plenty of us who understand this .
The question is , we need partnerships , we need coalitions and importantly , we need that leadership that will allow us to take this from here and to be the change that we want to see around us .
Thank you very much .
Susan Cain : The power of introverts
In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else , it can be difficult , even shameful , to be an introvert . But , as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk , introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world , and should be encouraged and celebrated .
When I was nine years old I went off to summer camp for the first time .
And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books , which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do .
Because in my family , reading was the primary group activity .
And this might sound antisocial to you , but for us it was really just a different way of being social .
You have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you , but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind .
And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this , but better .
I had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns .
Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol .
And on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit .
And it went like this : " R-O-W-D-I-E , that 's the way we spell rowdie .
Rowdie , rowdie , let 's get rowdie . "
Yeah .
So I couldn 't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy , or why we had to spell this word incorrectly .
But I recited a cheer . I recited a cheer along with everybody else .
I did my best .
And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my books .
But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase , the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me , " Why are you being so mellow ? " -- mellow , of course , being the exact opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E .
And then the second time I tried it , the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing .
And so I put my books away , back in their suitcase , and I put them under my bed , and there they stayed for the rest of the summer .
And I felt kind of guilty about this .
I felt as if the books needed me somehow , and they were calling out to me and I was forsaking them .
But I did forsake them and I didn 't open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer .
Now , I tell you this story about summer camp .
I could have told you 50 others just like it -- all the times that I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go , that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert .
And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were .
But for years I denied this intuition , and so I became a Wall Street lawyer , of all things , instead of the writer that I had always longed to be -- partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too .
And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends .
And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively , that I wasn 't even aware that I was making them .
Now this is what many introverts do , and it 's our loss for sure , but it is also our colleagues ' loss and our communities ' loss .
And at the risk of sounding grandiose , it is the world 's loss .
Because when it comes to creativity and to leadership , we need introverts doing what they do best .
A third to a half of the population are introverts -- a third to a half .
So that 's one out of every two or three people you know .
So even if you 're an extrovert yourself , I 'm talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society .
We all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we 're doing .
Now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion is .
It 's different from being shy .
Shyness is about fear of social judgment .
Introversion is more about , how do you respond to stimulation , including social stimulation .
So extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation , whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they 're in quieter , more low-key environments .
Not all the time -- these things aren 't absolute -- but a lot of the time .
So the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us .
But now here 's where the bias comes in .
Our most important institutions , our schools and our workplaces , they are designed mostly for extroverts and for extroverts ' need for lots of stimulation .
And also we have this belief system right now that I call the new groupthink , which holds that all creativity and all productivity comes from a very oddly gregarious place .
So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays : When I was going to school , we sat in rows .
We sat in rows of desks like this , and we did most of our work pretty autonomously .
But nowadays , your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other .
And kids are working in countless group assignments .
Even in subjects like math and creative writing , which you think would depend on solo flights of thought , kids are now expected to act as committee members .
And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone , those kids are seen as outliers often or , worse , as problem cases .
And the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert , even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable , according to research .
Okay , same thing is true in our workplaces .
Now , most of us work in open plan offices , without walls , where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers .
And when it comes to leadership , introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions , even though introverts tend to be very careful , much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we might all favor nowadays .
And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do , because when they are managing proactive employees , they 're much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas , whereas an extrovert can , quite unwittingly , get so excited about things that they 're putting their own stamp on things , and other people 's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface .
Now in fact , some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts .
I 'll give you some examples .
Eleanor Roosevelt , Rosa Parks , Gandhi -- all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy .
And they all took the spotlight , even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to .
And this turns out to have a special power all its own , because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm , not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at ; they were there because they had no choice , because they were driven to do what they thought was right .
Now I think at this point it 's important for me to say that I actually love extroverts .
I always like to say some of my best friends are extroverts , including my beloved husband .
And we all fall at different points , of course , along the introvert / extrovert spectrum .
Even Carl Jung , the psychologist who first popularized these terms , said that there 's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert .
He said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum , if he existed at all .
And some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert / extrovert spectrum , and we call these people ambiverts .
And I often think that they have the best of all worlds .
But many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other .
And what I 'm saying is that culturally we need a much better balance .
We need more of a yin and yang between these two types .
This is especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity , because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people , what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas , but who also have a serious streak of introversion in them .
And this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity .
So Darwin , he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner party invitations .
Theodor Geisel , better known as Dr. Seuss , he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla , California .
And he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this kind of jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona .
Steve Wozniak invented the first Apple computer sitting alone in his cubical in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at the time .
And he says that he never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up .
Now of course , this does not mean that we should all stop collaborating -- and case in point , is Steve Wozniak famously coming together with Steve Jobs to start Apple Computer -- but it does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe .
And in fact , we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude .
It 's only recently that we 've strangely begun to forget it .
If you look at most of the world 's major religions , you will find seekers -- Moses , Jesus , Buddha , Muhammad -- seekers who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community .
So no wilderness , no revelations .
This is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology .
It turns out that we can 't even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring , mimicking their opinions .
Even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you 're attracted to , you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that 's what you 're doing .
And groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room , even though there 's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas -- I mean zero .
So ...
You might be following the person with the best ideas , but you might not .
And do you really want to leave it up to chance ?
Much better for everybody to go off by themselves , generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics , and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there .
Now if all this is true , then why are we getting it so wrong ?
Why are we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces ?
And why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time ?
One answer lies deep in our cultural history .
Western societies , and in particular the U.S. , have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and " man " of contemplation .
But in America 's early days , we lived in what historians call a culture of character , where we still , at that point , valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude .
And if you look at the self-help books from this era , they all had titles with things like " Character , the Grandest Thing in the World . "
And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming .
Ralph Waldo Emerson called him " A man who does not offend by superiority . "
But then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality .
What happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business .
And so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities .
And instead of working alongside people they 've known all their lives , now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers .
So , quite understandably , qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important .
And sure enough , the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like " How to Win Friends and Influence People . "
And they feature as their role models really great salesmen .
So that 's the world we 're living in today .
That 's our cultural inheritance .
Now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant , and I 'm also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all .
The same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust .
And the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together .
But I am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves , the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems .
So now I 'd like to share with you what 's in my suitcase today .
Guess what ?
Books .
I have a suitcase full of books .
Here 's Margaret Atwood , " Cat 's Eye . "
Here 's a novel by Milan Kundera .
And here 's " The Guide for the Perplexed " by Maimonides .
But these are not exactly my books .
I brought these books with me because they were written by my grandfather 's favorite authors .
My grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a small apartment in Brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when I was growing up , partly because it was filled with his very gentle , very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books .
I mean literally every table , every chair in this apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of books .
Just like the rest of my family , my grandfather 's favorite thing to do in the whole world was to read .
But he also loved his congregation , and you could feel this love in the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi .
He would takes the fruits of each week 's reading and he would weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought .
And people would come from all over to hear him speak .
But here 's the thing about my grandfather .
Underneath this ceremonial role , he was really modest and really introverted -- so much so that when he delivered these sermons , he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years .
And even away from the podium , when you called him to say hello , he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time .
But when he died at the age of 94 , the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the crowd of people who came out to mourn him .
And so these days I try to learn from my grandfather 's example in my own way .
So I just published a book about introversion , and it took me about seven years to write .
And for me , that seven years was like total bliss , because I was reading , I was writing , I was thinking , I was researching .
It was my version of my grandfather 's hours of the day alone in his library .
But now all of a sudden my job is very different , and my job is to be out here talking about it , talking about introversion .
And that 's a lot harder for me , because as honored as I am to be here with all of you right now , this is not my natural milieu .
So I prepared for moments like these as best I could .
I spent the last year practicing public speaking every chance I could get .
And I call this my " year of speaking dangerously . "
And that actually helped a lot .
But I 'll tell you , what helps even more is my sense , my belief , my hope that when it comes to our attitudes to introversion and to quiet and to solitude , we truly are poised on the brink on dramatic change .
I mean , we are .
And so I am going to leave you now with three calls for action for those who share this vision .
Number one : Stop the madness for constant group work .
Just stop it .
Thank you .
And I want to be clear about what I 'm saying , because I deeply believe our offices should be encouraging casual , chatty cafe-style types of interactions -- you know , the kind where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of ideas .
That is great .
It 's great for introverts and it 's great for extroverts .
But we need much more privacy and much more freedom and much more autonomy at work .
School , same thing .
We need to be teaching kids to work together , for sure , but we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own .
This is especially important for extroverted children too .
They need to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from in part .
Okay , number two : Go to the wilderness .
Be like Buddha , have your own revelations .
I 'm not saying that we all have to now go off and build our own cabins in the woods and never talk to each other again , but I am saying that we could all stand to unplug and get inside our own heads a little more often .
Number three : Take a good look at what 's inside your own suitcase and why you put it there .
So extroverts , maybe your suitcases are also full of books .
Or maybe they 're full of champagne glasses or skydiving equipment .
Whatever it is , I hope you take these things out every chance you get and grace us with your energy and your joy .
But introverts , you being you , you probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what 's inside your own suitcase .
And that 's okay .
But occasionally , just occasionally , I hope you will open up your suitcases for other people to see , because the world needs you and it needs the things you carry .
So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly .
Thank you very much .
Thank you . Thank you .
Yves Behar : Designing objects that tell stories
Designer Yves Behar digs up his creative roots to discuss some of the iconic objects he 's created . Then he turns to the witty , surprising , elegant objects he 's working on now -- including the " $ 100 laptop . "
Being a child , and sort of crawling around the house , I remember these Turkish carpets , and there were these scenes , these battle scenes , these love scenes .
I mean , look , this animal is trying to fight back this spear from this soldier .
And my mom took these pictures actually , last week , of our carpets , and I remember this to this day .
There was another object , this sort of towering piece of furniture with creatures and gargoyles and nudity -- pretty scary stuff , when you 're a little kid .
What I remember today from this is that objects tell stories , so storytelling has been a really strong influence in my work .
And then there was another influence .
I was a teenager , and at 15 or 16 , I guess like all teenagers , we want to just do what we love and what we believe in .
And so , I fused together the two things I loved the most , which was skiing and windsurfing .
Those are pretty good escapes from the drab weather in Switzerland .
So , I created this compilation of the two : I took my skis and I took a board and I put a mast foot in there , and some foot straps , and some metal fins , and here I was , going really fast on frozen lakes .
It was really a death trap . I mean , it was incredible , it worked incredibly well , but it was really dangerous .
And I realized then I had to go to design school .
I mean , look at those graphics there .
So , I went to design school , and it was the early ' 90s when I finished .
And I saw something extraordinary happening in Silicon Valley , so I wanted to be there , and I saw that the computer was coming into our homes , that it had to change in order to be with us in our homes .
And so I got myself a job and I was working for a consultancy , and we would get in to these meetings , and these managers would come in , and they would say , " Well , what we 're going to do here is really important , you know . "
And they would give the projects code names , you know , mostly from " Star Wars , " actually : things like C3PO , Yoda , Luke .
So , in anticipation , I would be this young designer in the back of the room , and I would raise my hand , and I would ask questions .
I mean , in retrospect , probably stupid questions , but things like , " What 's this Caps Lock key for ? "
or " What 's this Num Lock key for ? " You know , that thing ?
" You know , do people really use it ?
Do they need it ? Do they want it in their homes ? "
What I realized then is , they didn 't really want to change the legacy stuff ; they didn 't want to change the insides .
They were really looking for us , the designers , to create the skins , to put some pretty stuff outside of the box .
And I didn 't want to be a colorist .
It wasn 't what I wanted to do .
I didn 't want to be a stylist in this way .
And then I saw this quote : " advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal . "
So , I had to start on my own . So I moved to San Francisco , and I started a little company , fuseproject .
And what I wanted to work on is important stuff .
And I wanted to really not just work on the skins , but I wanted to work on the entire human experience .
And so the first projects were sort of humble , but they took technology and maybe made it into things that people would use in a new way , and maybe finding some new functionality .
This is a watch we made for Mini Cooper , the car company , right when it launched , and it 's the first watch that has a display that switches from horizontal to vertical .
And that allows me to check my timer discretely , here , without bending my elbow .
And other projects , which were really about transformation , about matching the human need .
This is a little piece of furniture for an Italian manufacturer , and it ships completely flat , and then it folds into a coffee table and a stool and whatnot .
And something a little bit more experimental : this is a light fixture for Swarovski , and what it does is , it changes shape .
So , it goes from a circle , to a round , to a square , to a figure eight .
And just by drawing on a little computer tablet , the entire light fixture adjusts to what shape you want .
And then finally , the leaf lamp for Herman Miller .
This is a pretty involved process ; it took us about four and a half years .
But I really was looking for creating a unique experience of light , a new experience of light .
So , we had to design both the light and the light bulb .
And that 's a unique opportunity , I would say , in design .
And the new experience I was looking for is giving the choice for the user to go from a warm , sort of glowing kind of mood light , all the way to a bright work light .
So , the light bulb actually does that .
It allows the person to switch , and to mix these two colorations .
And it 's done in a very simple way : one just touches the base of the light , and on one side , you can mix the brightness , and on the other , the coloration of the light .
So , all of these projects have a humanistic sense to them , and I think as designers we need to really think about how we can create a different relationship between our work and the world , whether it 's for business , or , as I 'm going to show , on some civic-type projects .
Because I think everybody agrees that as designers we bring value to business , value to the users also , but I think it 's the values that we put into these projects that ultimately create the greater value .
And the values we bring can be about environmental issues , about sustainability , about lower power consumption .
You know , they can be about function and beauty ; they can be about business strategy .
But designers are really the glue that brings these things together .
So Jawbone is a project that you 're familiar with , and it has a humanistic technology .
It feels your skin . It rests on your skin , and it knows when it is you 're talking .
And by knowing when it is you 're talking , it gets rid of the other noises that it knows about , which is the environmental noises .
But the other thing that is humanistic about Jawbone is that we really decided to take out all the techie stuff , and all the nerdy stuff out of it , and try to make it as beautiful as we can .
I mean , think about it : the care we take in selecting sunglasses , or jewelry , or accessories is really important , so if it isn 't beautiful , it really doesn 't belong on your face .
And this is what we 're pursuing here .
But how we work on Jawbone is really unique .
I want to point at something here , on the left .
This is the board , this is one of the things that goes inside that makes this technology work .
But this is the design process : there 's somebody changing the board , putting tracers on the board , changing the location of the ICs , as the designers on the other side are doing the work .
So , it 's not about slapping skins , anymore , on a technology .
It 's really about designing from the inside out .
And then , on the other side of the room , the designers are making small adjustments , sketching , drawing by hand , putting it in the computer .
And it 's what I call being design driven .
You know , there is some push and pull , but design is really helping define the whole experience from the inside out .
And then , of course , design is never done .
And this is -- the other new way that is unique in how we work is , because it 's never done , you have to do all this other stuff .
The packaging , and the website , and you need to continue to really touch the user , in many ways .
But how do you retain somebody , when it 's never done ?
And Hosain Rahman , the CEO of Aliph Jawbone , you know , really understands that you need a different structure .
So , in a way , the different structure is that we 're partners , it 's a partnership . We can continue to work and dedicate ourselves to this project , and then we also share in the rewards .
And here 's another project , another partnership-type approach .
This is called Y Water , and it 's this guy from Los Angeles , Thomas Arndt , Austrian originally , who came to us , and all he wanted to do was to create a healthy drink , or an organic drink for his kids , to replace the high-sugar-content sodas that he 's trying to get them away from .
So , we worked on this bottle , and it 's completely symmetrical in every dimension .
And this allows the bottle to turn into a game .
The bottles connect together , and you can create different shapes , different forms .
Thank you .
And then while we were doing this , the shape of the bottle upside down reminded us of a Y , and then we thought , well these words , " why " and " why not , " are probably the most important words that kids ask .
So we called it Y Water . And so this is another place where it all comes together in the same room : the three-dimensional design , the ideas , the branding , it all becomes deeply connected .
And then the other thing about this project is , we bring intellectual property , we bring a marketing approach , we bring all this stuff , but I think , at the end of the day , what we bring is these values , and these values create a soul for the companies we work with .
And it 's especially rewarding when your design work becomes a creative endeavor , when others can be creative and do more with it .
Here 's another project , which I think really emulates that .
This is the One Laptop per Child , the $ 100 laptop .
This picture is incredible .
In Nigeria , people carry their most precious belongings on their heads .
This girl is going to school with a laptop on her head .
I mean , to me , it just means so much .
But when Nicholas Negroponte -- and he has spoken about this project a lot , he 's the founder of OLPC -- came to us about two and a half years ago , there were some clear ideas .
He wanted to bring education and he wanted to bring technology , and those are pillars of his life , but also pillars of the mission of One Laptop per Child .
But the third pillar that he talked about was design .
And at the time , I wasn 't really working on computers .
I didn 't really want to , from the previous adventure .
But what he said was really significant , is that design was going to be why the kids were going to love this product , how we were going to make it low cost , robust .
And plus , he said he was going to get rid of the Caps Lock key -- -- and the Num Lock key , too .
So , I was convinced . We designed it to be iconic , to look different . To look like it 's for a kid , but not like a toy .
And then the integration of all these great technologies , which you 've heard about , the Wi-Fi antennas that allow the kids to connect ; the screen , which you can read in sunlight ; the keyboard , which is made out of rubber , and it 's protected from the environment .
You know , all these great technologies really happened because of the passion and the OLPC people and the engineers .
They fought the suppliers , they fought the manufacturers .
I mean , they fought like animals for this to remain they way it is .
And in a way , it is that will that makes projects like this one -- allows the process from not destroying the original idea .
And I think this is something really important .
So , now you get these pictures -- you get up in the morning , and you see the kids in Nigeria and you see them in Uruguay with their computers , and in Mongolia .
And we went away from obviously the beige .
I mean it 's colorful , it 's fun .
In fact , you can see each logo is a little bit different .
It 's because we were able to run , during the manufacturing process , 20 colors for the X and the O , which is the name of the computer , and by mixing them on the manufacturing floor , you get 20 times 20 : you get 400 different options there .
So , the lessons from seeing the kids using them in the developing world are incredible .
But this is my nephew , Anthony , in Switzerland , and he had the laptop for an afternoon , and I had to take it back . It was hard .
And it was a prototype . And a month and a half later , I come back to Switzerland , and there he is playing with his own version .
Like paper , paper and cardboard .
So , I 'm going to finish with one last project , and this is a little bit more of adult play .
Some of you might have heard about the New York City condom .
It 's actually just launched , actually launched on Valentine 's Day , February 14 , about 10 days ago .
So , the Department of Health in New York came to us , and they needed a way to distribute 36 million condoms for free to the citizens of New York .
So a pretty big endeavor , and we worked on the dispensers .
These are the dispensers . There 's this friendly shape .
It 's a little bit like designing a fire hydrant , and it has to be easily serviceable : you have to know where it is and what it does .
And we also designed the condoms themselves .
And I was just in New York at the launch , and I went to see all these places where they 're installed : this is at a Puerto Rican little mom-and-pop store ; at a bar in Christopher Street ; at a pool hall .
I mean , they 're being installed in homeless clinics -- everywhere .
Of course , clubs and discos , too .
And here 's the public service announcement for this project .
Get some .
So , this is really where design is able to create a conversation .
I was in these venues , and people were , you know , really into getting them . They were excited .
It was breaking the ice , it was getting over a stigma , and I think that 's also what design can do .
So , I was going to throw some condoms in the room and whatnot , but I 'm not sure it 's the etiquette here .
Yeah ? All right , all right . I have only a few .
So , I have more , you can always ask me for some more later .
And if anybody asks why you 're carrying a condom , you can just say you like the design .
So , I 'll finish with just one thought : if we all work together on creating value , but if we really keep in mind the values of the work that we do , I think we can change the work that we do .
We can change these values , can change the companies we work with , and eventually , together , maybe we can change the world .
So , thank you .
Paul Root Wolpe : It 's time to question bio-engineering
Bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe describes an astonishing series of recent bio-engineering experiments , from glowing dogs to mice that grow human ears . He asks : Isn 't it time to set some ground rules ? & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
Today I want to talk about design , but not design as we usually think about it .
I want to talk about what is happening now in our scientific , biotechnological culture , where , for really the first time in history , we have the power to design bodies , to design animal bodies , to design human bodies .
In the history of our planet , there have been three great waves of evolution .
The first wave of evolution is what we think of as Darwinian evolution .
So , as you all know , species lived in particular ecological niches and particular environments , and the pressures of those environments selected which changes , through random mutation in species , were going to be preserved .
Then human beings stepped out of the Darwinian flow of evolutionary history and created the second great wave of evolution , which was we changed the environment in which we evolved .
We altered our ecological niche by creating civilization .
And that has been the second great -- couple 100,000 years , 150,000 years -- flow of our evolution .
By changing our environment , we put new pressures on our bodies to evolve .
Whether it was through settling down in agricultural communities , all the way through modern medicine , we have changed our own evolution .
Now we 're entering a third great wave of evolutionary history , which has been called many things : " intentional evolution , " " evolution by design " -- very different than intelligent design -- whereby we are actually now intentionally designing and altering the physiological forms that inhabit our planet .
So I want to take you through a kind of whirlwind tour of that and then at the end talk a little bit about what some of the implications are for us and for our species , as well as our cultures , because of this change .
Now we actually have been doing it for a long time .
We started selectively breeding animals many , many thousands of years ago .
And if you think of dogs for example , dogs are now intentionally-designed creatures .
There isn 't a dog on this earth that 's a natural creature .
Dogs are the result of selectively breeding traits that we like .
But we had to do it the hard way in the old days by choosing offspring that looked a particular way and then breeding them .
We don 't have to do it that way anymore .
This is a beefalo .
A beefalo is a buffalo-cattle hybrid .
And they are now making them , and someday , perhaps pretty soon , you will have beefalo patties in your local supermarket .
This is a geep , a goat-sheep hybrid .
The scientists that made this cute little creature ended up slaughtering it and eating it afterwards .
I think they said it tasted like chicken .
This is a cama .
A cama is a camel-llama hybrid , created to try to get the hardiness of a camel with some of the personality traits of a llama .
And they are now using these in certain cultures .
Then there 's the liger .
This is the largest cat in the world -- the lion-tiger hybrid .
It 's bigger than a tiger .
And in the case of the liger , there actually have been one or two that have been seen in the wild .
But these were created by scientists using both selective breeding and genetic technology .
And then finally , everybody 's favorite , the zorse .
None of this is Photoshopped . These are real creatures .
And so one of the things we 've been doing is using genetic enhancement , or genetic manipulation , of normal selective breeding pushed a little bit through genetics .
And if that were all this was about , then it would be an interesting thing .
But something much , much more powerful is happening now .
These are normal mammalian cells genetically engineered with a bioluminescent gene taken out of deep-sea jellyfish .
We all know that some deep-sea creatures glow .
Well , they 've now taken that gene , that bioluminescent gene , and put it into mammal cells .
These are normal cells .
And what you see here is these cells glowing in the dark under certain wavelengths of light .
Once they could do that with cells , they could do it with organisms .
So they did it with mouse pups , kittens .
And by the way , the reason the kittens here are orange and these are green is because that 's a bioluminescent gene from coral , while this is from jellyfish .
They did it with pigs .
They did it with puppies .
And , in fact , they did it with monkeys .
And if you can do it with monkeys -- though the great leap in trying to genetically manipulate is actually between monkeys and apes -- if they can do it in monkeys , they can probably figure out how to do it in apes , which means they can do it in human beings .
In other words , it is theoretically possible that before too long we will be biotechnologically capable of creating human beings that glow in the dark .
Be easier to find us at night .
And in fact , right now in many states , you can go out and you can buy bioluminescent pets .
These are zebra fish . They 're normally black and silver .
These are zebra fish that have been genetically engineered to be yellow , green , red , and they are actually available now in certain states .
Other states have banned them .
Nobody knows what to do with these kinds of creatures .
There is no area of the government -- not the EPA or the FDA -- that controls genetically-engineered pets .
And so some states have decided to allow them , some states have decided to ban them .
Some of you may have read about the FDA 's consideration right now of genetically-engineered salmon .
The salmon on top is a genetically engineered Chinook salmon , using a gene from these salmon and from one other fish that we eat , to make it grow much faster using a lot less feed .
And right now the FDA is trying to make a final decision on whether , pretty soon , you could be eating this fish -- it 'll be sold in the stores .
And before you get too worried about it , here in the United States , the majority of food you buy in the supermarket already has genetically-modified components to it .
So even as we worry about it , we have allowed it to go on in this country -- much different in Europe -- without any regulation , and even without any identification on the package .
These are all the first cloned animals of their type .
So in the lower right here , you have Dolly , the first cloned sheep -- now happily stuffed in a museum in Edinburgh ; Ralph the rat , the first cloned rat ; CC the cat , for cloned cat ; Snuppy , the first cloned dog -- Snuppy for Seoul National University puppy -- created in South Korea by the very same man that some of you may remember had to end up resigning in disgrace because he claimed he had cloned a human embryo , which he had not .
He actually was the first person to clone a dog , which is a very difficult thing to do , because dog genomes are very plastic .
This is Prometea , the first cloned horse .
It 's a Haflinger horse cloned in Italy , a real " gold ring " of cloning , because there are many horses that win important races who are geldings .
In other words , the equipment to put them out to stud has been removed .
But if you can clone that horse , you can have both the advantage of having a gelding run in the race and his identical genetic duplicate can then be put out to stud .
These were the first cloned calves , the first cloned grey wolves , and then , finally , the first cloned piglets : Alexis , Chista , Carrel , Janie and Dotcom .
In addition , we 've started to use cloning technology to try to save endangered species .
This is the use of animals now to create drugs and other things in their bodies that we want to create .
So with antithrombin in that goat -- that goat has been genetically modified so that the molecules of its milk actually include the molecule of antithrombin that GTC Genetics wants to create .
And then in addition , transgenic pigs , knockout pigs , from the National Institute of Animal Science in South Korea , to try to create all kinds of drugs and other industrial types of chemicals that they want the blood and the milk of these animals to produce for them , instead of producing them in an industrial way .
These are two creatures that were created in order to save endangered species .
The guar is an endangered Southeast Asian ungulate .
A somatic cell , a body cell , was taken from its body , gestated in the ovum of a cow , and then that cow gave birth to a guar .
Same thing happened with the mouflon , where it 's an endangered species of sheep .
It was gestated in a regular sheep body , which actually raises an interesting biological problem .
We have two kinds of DNA in our bodies .
We have our nucleic DNA that everybody thinks of as our DNA , but we also have DNA in our mitochondria , which are the energy packets of the cell .
That DNA is passed down through our mothers .
So really , what you end up having here is not a guar and not a mouflon , but a guar with cow mitochondria , and therefore cow mitochondrial DNA , and a mouflon with another species of sheep 's mitochondrial DNA .
These are really hybrids , not pure animals .
And it raises the question of how we 're going to define animal species in the age of biotechnology -- a question that we 're not really sure yet how to solve .
This lovely creature is an Asian cockroach .
And what they 've done here is they 've put electrodes in its ganglia and its brain and then a transmitter on top , and it 's on a big computer tracking ball .
And now , using a joystick , they can send this creature around the lab and control whether it goes left or right , forwards or backwards .
They 've created a kind of insect bot , or bugbot .
It gets worse than that -- or perhaps better than that .
This actually is one of DARPA 's very important -- DARPA is the Defense Research Agency -- one of their projects .
These goliath beetles are wired in their wings .
They have a computer chip strapped to their backs , and they can fly these creatures around the lab .
They can make them go left , right . They can make them take off .
They can 't actually make them land .
They put them about one inch above the ground , and then they shut everything off and they go pfft .
But it 's the closest they can get to a landing .
And in fact , this technology has gotten so developed that this creature -- this is a moth -- this is the moth in its pupa stage , and that 's when they put the wires in and they put in the computer technology , so that when the moth actually emerges as a moth , it is already prewired .
The wires are already in its body , and they can just hook it up to their technology , and now they 've got these bugbots that they can send out for surveillance .
They can put little cameras on them and perhaps someday deliver other kinds of ordinance to warzones .
It 's not just insects .
This is the ratbot , or the robo-rat by Sanjiv Talwar at SUNY Downstate .
Again , it 's got technology -- it 's got electrodes going into its left and right hemispheres ; it 's got a camera on top of its head .
The scientists can make this creature go left , right .
They have it running through mazes , controlling where it 's going .
They 've now created an organic robot .
The graduate students in Sanjiv Talwar 's lab said , " Is this ethical ?
We 've taken away the autonomy of this animal . "
I 'll get back to that in a minute .
There 's also been work done with monkeys .
This is Miguel Nicolelis of Duke .
He took owl monkeys , wired them up so that a computer watched their brains while they moved , especially looking at the movement of their right arm .
The computer learned what the monkey brain did to move its arm in various ways .
They then hooked it up to a prosthetic arm , which you see here in the picture , put the arm in another room .
Pretty soon , the computer learned , by reading the monkey 's brainwaves , to make that arm in the other room do whatever the monkey 's arm did .
Then he put a video monitor in the monkey 's cage that showed the monkey this prosthetic arm , and the monkey got fascinated .
The monkey recognized that whatever she did with her arm , this prosthetic arm would do .
And eventually she was moving it and moving it , and eventually stopped moving her right arm and , staring at the screen , could move the prosthetic arm in the other room only with her brainwaves -- which means that monkey became the first primate in the history of the world to have three independent functional arms .
And it 's not just technology that we 're putting into animals .
This is Thomas DeMarse at the University of Florida .
He took 20,000 and then 60,000 disaggregated rat neurons -- so these are just individual neurons from rats -- put them on a chip .
They self-aggregated into a network , became an integrated chip .
And he used that as the IT piece of a mechanism which ran a flight simulator .
So now we have organic computer chips made out of living , self-aggregating neurons .
Finally , Mussa-Ivaldi of Northwestern took a completely intact , independent lamprey eel brain .
This is a brain from a lamprey eel .
It is living -- fully-intact brain in a nutrient medium with these electrodes going off to the sides , attached photosensitive sensors to the brain , put it into a cart -- here 's the cart , the brain is sitting there in the middle -- and using this brain as the sole processor for this cart , when you turn on a light and shine it at the cart , the cart moves toward the light ; when you turn it off , it moves away .
It 's photophilic .
So now we have a complete living lamprey eel brain .
Is it thinking lamprey eel thoughts , sitting there in its nutrient medium ?
I don 't know , but in fact it is a fully living brain that we have managed to keep alive to do our bidding .
So , we are now at the stage where we are creating creatures for our own purposes .
This is a mouse created by Charles Vacanti of the University of Massachusetts .
He altered this mouse so that it was genetically engineered to have skin that was less immunoreactive to human skin , put a polymer scaffolding of an ear under it and created an ear that could then be taken off the mouse and transplanted onto a human being .
Genetic engineering coupled with polymer physiotechnology coupled with xenotransplantation .
This is where we are in this process .
Finally , not that long ago , Craig Venter created the first artificial cell , where he took a cell , took a DNA synthesizer , which is a machine , created an artificial genome , put it in a different cell -- the genome was not of the cell he put it in -- and that cell then reproduced as the other cell .
In other words , that was the first creature in the history of the world that had a computer as its parent -- it did not have an organic parent .
And so , asks The Economist : " The first artificial organism and its consequences . "
So you may have thought that the creation of life was going to happen in something that looked like that .
But in fact , that 's not what Frankenstein 's lab looks like .
This is what Frankenstein 's lab looks like .
This is a DNA synthesizer , and here at the bottom are just bottles of A , T , C and G -- the four chemicals that make up our DNA chain .
And so , we need to ask ourselves some questions .
For the first time in the history of this planet , we are able to directly design organisms .
We can manipulate the plasmas of life with unprecedented power , and it confers on us a responsibility .
Is everything okay ?
Is it okay to manipulate and create whatever creatures we want ?
Do we have free reign to design animals ?
Do we get to go someday to Pets ' R ' Us and say , " Look , I want a dog .
I 'd like it to have the head of a Dachshund , the body of a retriever , maybe some pink fur , and let 's make it glow in the dark " ?
Does industry get to create creatures who , in their milk , in their blood , and in their saliva and other bodily fluids , create the drugs and industrial molecules we want and then warehouse them as organic manufacturing machines ?
Do we get to create organic robots , where we remove the autonomy from these animals and turn them just into our playthings ?
And then the final step of this , once we perfect these technologies in animals and we start using them in human beings , what are the ethical guidelines that we will use then ?
It 's already happening . It 's not science fiction .
We are not only already using these things in animals , some of them we 're already beginning to use on our own bodies .
We are now taking control of our own evolution .
We are directly designing the future of the species of this planet .
It confers upon us an enormous responsibility that is not just the responsibility of the scientists and the ethicists who are thinking about it and writing about it now .
It is the responsibility of everybody because it will determine what kind of planet and what kind of bodies we will have in the future .
Thanks .
Péter Fankhauser : Meet Rezero , the dancing ballbot
Engineering student Péter Fankhauser demonstrates Rezero , a robot that balances on a ball . Designed and built by students , Rezero is the first ballbot made to move quickly and gracefully -- and even dance .
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 .
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 .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Deborah Rhodes : A test that finds 3x more breast tumors , and why it 's not available to you
Working with a team of physicists , Dr. Deborah Rhodes developed a new tool for tumor detection that 's 3 times as effective as traditional mammograms for women with dense breast tissue . The life-saving implications are stunning . So why haven 't we heard of it ? Rhodes shares the story behind the tool 's creation , and the web of politics and economics that keep it from mainstream use .
There are two groups of women when it comes to screening mammography -- women in whom mammography works very well and has saved thousands of lives and women in whom it doesn 't work well at all .
Do you know which group you 're in ?
If you don 't , you 're not alone .
Because the breast has become are very political organ .
The truth has become lost in all the rhetoric coming from the press , politicians , radiologists and medical imaging companies .
I will do my best this morning to tell you what I think is the truth .
But first , my disclosures .
I am not a breast cancer survivor .
I 'm not a radiologist .
I don 't have any patents , and I 've never received any money from a medical imaging company , and I am not seeking your vote .
What I am is a doctor of internal medicine who became passionately interested in this topic about 10 years ago when a patient asked me a question .
She came to see me after discovering a breast lump .
Her sister had been diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s .
She and I were both very pregnant at that time , and my heart just ached for her , imagining how afraid she must be .
Fortunately , her lump proved to be benign .
But she asked me a question : how confident was I that I would find a tumor early on her mammogram if she developed one ?
So I studied her mammogram , and I reviewed the radiology literature , and I was shocked to discover that , in her case , our chances of finding a tumor early on the mammogram were less than the toss of a coin .
You may recall a year ago when a firestorm erupted after the United States Preventive Services Task Force reviewed the world 's mammography screening literature and issued a guideline recommending against screening mammograms in women in their 40s .
Now everybody rushed to criticize the Task Force , even though most of them weren 't in anyway familiar with the mammography studies .
It took the Senate just 17 days to ban the use of the guidelines in determining insurance coverage .
Radiologists were outraged by the guidelines .
The pre-eminent mammographer in the United States issued the following quote to the Washington Post .
The radiologists were , in turn , criticized for protecting their own financial self-interest .
But in my view , the radiologists are heroes .
There 's a shortage of radiologists qualified to read mammograms , and that 's because mammograms are one of the most complex of all radiology studies to interpret , and because radiologists are sued more often over missed breast cancer than any other cause .
But that very fact is telling .
Where there is this much legal smoke , there is likely to be some fire .
The factor most responsible for that fire is breast density .
Breast density refers to the relative amount of fat -- pictured here in yellow -- versus connective and epithelial tissues -- pictured in pink .
And that proportion is primarily genetically determined .
Two-thirds of women in their 40s have dense breast tissue , which is why mammography doesn 't work as well in them .
And although breast density generally declines with age , up to a third of women retain dense breast tissue for years after menopause .
So how do you know if your breasts are dense ?
Well , you need to read the details of your mammography report .
Radiologists classify breast density into four categories based on the appearance of the tissue on a mammogram .
If the breast is less than 25 percent dense , that 's called fatty-replaced .
The next category is scattered fibroglandular densities , followed by heterogeneously dense and extremely dense .
And breasts that fall into these two categories are considered dense .
The problem with breast density is that it 's truly the wolf in sheep 's clothing .
Both tumors and dense breast tissue appear white on a mammogram , and the X-ray often can 't distinguish between the two .
So it 's easy to see this tumor in the upper part of this fatty breast .
But imagine how difficult it would be to find that tumor in this dense breast .
That 's why mammograms find over 80 percent of tumors in fatty breasts , but as few as 40 percent in extremely dense breasts .
Now it 's bad enough that breast density makes it hard to find a cancer , but it turns out that it 's also a powerful predictor of your risk for breast cancer .
It 's a stronger risk factor than having a mother or a sister with breast cancer .
At the time my patient posed this question to me , breast density was an obscure topic in the radiology literature , and very few women having mammograms , or the physicians ordering them , knew about this .
But what else could I offer her ?
Mammograms have been around since the 1960 's , and it 's changed very little .
There have been surprisingly few innovations , until digital mammography was approved in 2000 .
Digital mammography is still an X-ray of the breast , but the images can be stored and manipulated digitally , just like we can with a digital camera .
The U.S. has invested four billion dollars converting to digital mammography equipment , and what have we gained from that investment ?
In a study funded by over 25 million taxpayer dollars , digital mammography was found to be no better over all than traditional mammography , and in fact , it was worse in older women .
But it was better in one group , and that was women under 50 who were pre-menopausal and had dense breasts , and in those women , digital mammography found twice as many cancers , but it still only found 60 percent .
So digital mammography has been a giant leap forward for manufacturers of digital mammography equipment , but it 's been a very small step forward for womankind .
What about ultrasound ?
Ultrasound generates more biopsies that are unnecessary relative to other technologies , so it 's not widely used .
And MRI is exquisitely sensitive for finding tumors , but it 's also very expensive .
If we think about disruptive technology , we see an almost ubiquitous pattern of the technology getting smaller and less expensive .
Think about iPods compared to stereos .
But it 's the exact opposite in health care .
The machines get ever bigger and ever more expensive .
Screening the average young woman with an MRI is kind of like driving to the grocery store in a Hummer .
It 's just way too much equipment .
One MRI scan costs 10 times what a digital mammogram costs .
And sooner or later , we 're going to have to accept the fact that health care innovation can 't always come at a much higher price .
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in the New Yorker on innovation , and he made the case that scientific discoveries are rarely the product of one individual 's genius .
Rather , big ideas can be orchestrated , if you can simply gather people with different perspectives in a room and get them to talk about things that they don 't ordinarily talk about .
It 's like the essence of TED .
He quotes one innovator who says , " The only time a physician and a physicist get together is when the physicist gets sick . "
This makes no sense , because physicians have all kinds of problems that they don 't realize have solutions .
And physicists have all kinds of solutions for things that they don 't realize are problems .
Now , take a look at this cartoon that accompanied Gladwell 's article , and tell me if you see something disturbing about this depiction of innovative thinkers .
So if you will allow me a little creative license , I will tell you the story of the serendipitous collision of my patient 's problem with a physicist 's solution .
Shortly after her visit , I was introduced to a nuclear physicist at Mayo named Michael O 'Conner , who was a specialist in cardiac imaging , something I had nothing to do with .
And he happened to tell me about a conference he 'd just returned from in Israel , where they were talking about a new type of gamma detector .
Now gamma imaging has been around for a long time to image the heart , and it had even been tried to image the breast .
But the problem was that the gamma detectors were these huge , bulky tubes , and they were filled with these scintillating crystals , and you just couldn 't get them close enough around the breast to find small tumors .
But the potential advantage was that gamma rays , unlike X-rays , are not influenced by breast density .
But this technology could not find tumors when they 're small , and finding a small tumor is critical for survival .
If you can find a tumor when it 's less than a centimeter , survival exceeds 90 percent , but drops off rapidly as tumor size increases .
But Michael told me about a new type of gamma detector that he 'd seen , and this is it .
It 's made not of a bulky tube , but of a thin layer of a semiconductor material that serves as the gamma detector .
And I started talking to him about this problem with breast density , and we realized that we might be able to get this detector close enough around the breast to actually find small tumors .
So after putting together a grid of these cubes with tape -- -- Michael hacked off the X-ray plate of a mammography machine that was about to be thrown out , and we attached the new detector , and we decided to call this machine Molecular Breast Imaging , or MBI .
This is an image from our first patient .
And you can see , using the old gamma technology , that it just looked like noise .
But using our new detector , we could begin to see the outline of a tumor .
So here we were , a nuclear physicist , an internist , soon joined by Carrie Hruska , a biomedical engineer , and two radiologists , and we were trying to take on the entrenched world of mammography with a machine that was held together by duct tape .
To say that we faced high doses of skepticism in those early years is just a huge understatement , but we were so convinced that we might be able to make this work that we chipped away with incremental modifications to this system .
This is our current detector .
And you can see that it looks a lot different .
The duct tape is gone , and we added a second detector on top of the breast , which has further improved our tumor detection .
So how does this work ?
The patient receives an injection of a radio tracer that 's taken up by rapidly proliferating tumor cells , but not by normal cells , and this is the key difference from mammography .
Mammography relies on differences in the appearance of the tumor from the background tissue , and we 've seen that those differences can be obscured in a dense breast .
But MBI exploits the different molecular behavior of tumors , and therefore , it 's impervious to breast density .
After the injection , the patient 's breast is placed between the detectors .
And if you 've ever had a mammogram -- if you 're old enough to have had a mammogram -- you know what comes next : pain .
You may be surprised to know that mammography is the only radiologic study that 's regulated by federal law , and the law requires that the equivalent of a 40-pound car battery come down on your breast during this study .
But with MBI , we use just light , pain-free compression .
And the detector then transmits the image to the computer .
So here 's an example .
You can see , on the right , a mammogram showing a faint tumor , the edges of which are blurred by the dense tissue .
But the MBI image shows that tumor much more clearly , as well as a second tumor , which profoundly influence that patient 's surgical options .
In this example , although the mammogram found one tumor , we were able to demonstrate three discrete tumors -- one is small as three millimeters .
Our big break came in 2004 .
After we had demonstrated that we could find small tumors , we used these images to submit a grant to the Susan G. Komen Foundation .
And we were elated when they took a chance on a team of completely unknown investigators and funded us to study 1,000 women with dense breasts , comparing a screening mammogram to an MBI .
Of the tumors that we found , mammography found only 25 percent of those tumors .
MBI found 83 percent .
Here 's an example from that screening study .
The digital mammogram was read as normal and shows lots of dense tissue , but the MBI shows an area of intense uptake , which correlated with a two-centimeter tumor .
In this case , a one-centimeter tumor .
And in this case , a 45-year-old medical secretary at Mayo , who had lost her mother to breast cancer when she was very young , wanted to enroll in our study .
And her mammogram showed an area of very dense tissue , but her MBI showed an area of worrisome uptake , which we can also see on a color image .
And this corresponded to a tumor the size of a golf ball .
But fortunately it was removed before it had spread to her lymph nodes .
So now that we knew that this technology could find three times more tumors in a dense breast , we had to solve one very important problem .
We had to figure out how to lower the radiation dose , and we have spent the last three years making modifications to every aspect of the imaging system to allow this .
And I 'm very happy to report that we 're now using a dose of radiation that is equivalent to the effective dose from one digital mammogram .
And at this low dose , we 're continuing this screening study , and this image from three weeks ago in a 67-year-old woman shows a normal digital mammogram , but an MBI image showing an uptake that proved to be a large cancer .
So this is not just young women that it 's benefiting .
It 's also older women with dense tissue .
And we 're now routinely using one-fifth the radiation dose that 's used in any other type of gamma technology .
MBI generates four images per breast .
MRI generates over a thousand .
It takes a radiologist years of specialty training to become expert in differentiating the normal anatomic detail from the worrisome finding .
But I suspect even the non-radiologists in the room can find the tumor on the MBI image .
But this is why MBI is so potentially disruptive -- it 's as accurate as MRI , and it 's a fraction of the cost .
But you can understand why there may be forces in the breast-imaging world who prefer the status quo .
After achieving what we felt were remarkable results , our manuscript was rejected by four journals .
After the fourth rejection , we requested reconsideration of the manuscript , because we strongly suspected that one of the reviewers who had rejected it had a financial conflict of interest in a competing technology .
Our manuscript was then accepted and will be published later this month in the journal Radiology .
We still need to complete the screening study using the low dose , and then our findings will need to be replicated at other institutions , and this could take five or more years .
If this technology is widely adopted , I will not benefit financially in any way , and that is very important to me , because it allows me to continue to tell you the truth .
But I recognize -- I recognize that the adoption of this technology will depend as much on economic and political forces as it will on the soundness of the science .
The MBI unit has now been FDA approved , but it 's not yet widely available .
So until something is available for women with dense breasts , there are things that you should know to protect yourself .
First , know your density .
Ninety percent of women don 't , and 95 percent of women don 't know that it increases your breast cancer risk .
The State of Connecticut became the first and only state to mandate that women receive notification of their breast density after a mammogram .
I was at a conference of 60,000 people in breast-imaging last week in Chicago , and I was stunned that there was a heated debate as to whether we should be telling women what their breast density is .
Of course we should .
And if you don 't know , please ask your doctor or read the details of your mammography report .
Second , if you 're pre-menopausal , try to schedule your mammogram in the first two weeks of your menstrual cycle , when breast density is relatively lower .
Third , if you notice a persistent change in your breast , insist on additional imaging .
And fourth and most important , the mammography debate will rage on , but I do believe that all women 40 and older should have an annual mammogram .
Mammography isn 't perfect , but it 's the only test that 's been proven to reduce mortality from breast cancer .
But this mortality banner is the very sword which mammography 's most ardent advocates use to deter innovation .
Some women who develop breast cancer die from it many years later , and most women , thankfully , survive .
So it takes 10 or more years for any screening method to demonstrate a reduction in mortality from breast cancer .
Mammography 's the only one that 's been around long enough to have a chance of making that claim .
It is time for us to accept both the extraordinary successes of mammography and the limitations .
We need to individualize screening based on density .
For women without dense breasts , mammography is the best choice .
But for women with dense breasts ; we shouldn 't abandon screening altogether , we need to offer them something better .
The babies that we were carrying when my patient first asked me this question are now both in middle school , and the answer has been so slow to come .
She 's given me her blessing to share this story with you .
After undergoing biopsies that further increased her risk for cancer and losing her sister to cancer , she made the difficult decision to have a prophylactic mastectomy .
We can and must do better , not just in time for her granddaughters and my daughters , but in time for you .
Thank you .
Pranav Mistry : The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
At TEDIndia , Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new , paradigm-shifting paper " laptop . " In an onstage Q & amp ; A , Mistry says he 'll open-source the software behind SixthSense , to open its possibilities to all .
We grew up interacting with the physical objects around us .
There are an enormous number of them that we use every day .
Unlike most of our computing devices , these objects are much more fun to use .
When you talk about objects , one other thing automatically comes attached to that thing , and that is gestures : how we manipulate these objects , how we use these objects in everyday life .
We use gestures not only to interact with these objects , but we also use them to interact with each other .
A gesture of " Namaste ! " , maybe , to respect someone , or maybe -- in India I don 't need to teach a kid that this means " four runs " in cricket .
It comes as a part of our everyday learning .
So , I am very interested , from the beginning , that how -- how our knowledge about everyday objects and gestures , and how we use these objects , can be leveraged to our interactions with the digital world .
Rather than using a keyboard and mouse , why can I not use my computer in the same way that I interact in the physical world ?
So , I started this exploration around eight years back , and it literally started with a mouse on my desk .
Rather than using it for my computer , I actually opened it .
Most of you might be aware that , in those days , the mouse used to come with a ball inside , and there were two rollers that actually guide the computer where the ball is moving , and , accordingly , where the mouse is moving .
So , I was interested in these two rollers , and I actually wanted more , so I borrowed another mouse from a friend -- never returned to him -- and I now had four rollers .
Interestingly , what I did with these rollers is , basically , I took them off of these mouses and then put them in one line .
It had some strings and pulleys and some springs .
What I got is basically a gesture interface device that actually acts as a motion-sensing device made for two dollars .
So , here , whatever movement I do in my physical world is actually replicated inside the digital world just using this small device that I made , around eight years back , in 2000 .
Because I was interested in integrating these two worlds , I thought of sticky notes .
I thought , " Why can I not connect the normal interface of a physical sticky note to the digital world ? "
A message written on a sticky note to my mom on paper can come to an SMS , or maybe a meeting reminder automatically syncs with my digital calendar -- a to-do list that automatically syncs with you .
But you can also search in the digital world , or maybe you can write a query , saying , " What is Dr. Smith 's address ? "
and this small system actually prints it out -- so it actually acts like a paper input-output system , just made out of paper .
In another exploration , I thought of making a pen that can draw in three dimensions .
So , I implemented this pen that can help designers and architects not only think in three dimensions , but they can actually draw so that it 's more intuitive to use that way .
Then I thought , " Why not make a Google Map , but in the physical world ? "
Rather than typing a keyword to find something , I put my objects on top of it .
If I put a boarding pass , it will show me where the flight gate is .
A coffee cup will show where you can find more coffee , or where you can trash the cup .
So , these were some of the earlier explorations I did because the goal was to connect these two worlds seamlessly .
Among all these experiments , there was one thing in common : I was trying to bring a part of the physical world to the digital world .
I was taking some part of the objects , or any of the intuitiveness of real life , and bringing them to the digital world , because the goal was to make our computing interfaces more intuitive .
But then I realized that we humans are not actually interested in computing .
What we are interested in is information .
We want to know about things .
We want to know about dynamic things going around .
So I thought , around last year -- in the beginning of the last year -- I started thinking , " Why can I not take this approach in the reverse way ? "
Maybe , " How about I take my digital world and paint the physical world with that digital information ? "
Because pixels are actually , right now , confined in these rectangular devices that fit in our pockets .
Why can I not remove this confine and take that to my everyday objects , everyday life so that I don 't need to learn the new language for interacting with those pixels ?
So , in order to realize this dream , I actually thought of putting a big-size projector on my head .
I think that 's why this is called a head-mounted projector , isn 't it ?
I took it very literally , and took my bike helmet , put a little cut over there so that the projector actually fits nicely .
So now , what I can do -- I can augment the world around me with this digital information .
But later , I realized that I actually wanted to interact with those digital pixels , also .
So I put a small camera over there , that acts as a digital eye .
Later , we moved to a much better , consumer-oriented pendant version of that , that many of you now know as the SixthSense device .
But the most interesting thing about this particular technology is that you can carry your digital world with you wherever you go .
You can start using any surface , any wall around you , as an interface .
The camera is actually tracking all your gestures .
Whatever you 're doing with your hands , it 's understanding that gesture .
And , actually , if you see , there are some color markers that in the beginning version we are using with it .
You can start painting on any wall .
You stop by a wall , and start painting on that wall .
But we are not only tracking one finger , here .
We are giving you the freedom of using all of both of your hands , of a map just by pinching all present .
The camera is actually doing -- just , getting all the images -- is doing the edge recognition and also the color recognition and so many other small algorithms are going on inside .
So , technically , it 's a little bit complex , but it gives you an output which is more intuitive to use , in some sense .
But I 'm more excited that you can actually take it outside .
Rather than getting your camera out of your pocket , you can just do the gesture of taking a photo and it takes a photo for you .
Thank you .
And later I can find a wall , anywhere , and start browsing those photos or maybe , " OK , I want to modify this photo a little bit and send it as an email to a friend . "
So , we are looking for an era where computing will actually merge with the physical world .
And , of course , if you don 't have any surface , you can start using your palm for simple operations .
Here , I 'm dialing a phone number just using my hand .
The camera is actually not only understanding your hand movements , but , interestingly , is also able to understand what objects you are holding in your hand .
What we 're doing here is actually -- for example , in this case , the book cover is matched with so many thousands , or maybe millions of books online , and checking out which book it is .
Once it has that information , it finds out more reviews about that , or maybe New York Times has a sound overview on that , so you can actually hear , on a physical book , a review as sound .
This was Obama 's visit last week to MIT .
So , I was seeing the live [ video ] of his talk , outside , on just a newspaper .
Your newspaper will show you live weather information rather than having it updated -- like , you have to check your computer in order to do that , right ?
When I 'm going back , I can just use my boarding pass to check how much my flight has been delayed , because at that particular time , I 'm not feeling like opening my iPhone , and checking out a particular icon .
And I think this technology will not only change the way -- yes .
It will change the way we interact with people , also , not only the physical world .
The fun part is , I 'm going to the Boston metro , and playing a pong game inside the train on the ground , right ?
And I think the imagination is the only limit of what you can think of when this kind of technology merges with real life .
But many of you argue , actually , that all of our work is not only about physical objects .
We actually do lots of accounting and paper editing and all those kinds of things ; what about that ?
And many of you are excited about the next generation tablet computers to come out in the market .
So , rather than waiting for that , I actually made my own , just using a piece of paper .
So , what I did here is remove the camera -- All the webcam cameras have a microphone inside the camera .
I removed the microphone from that , and then just pinched that -- like I just made a clip out of the microphone -- and clipped that to a piece of paper , any paper that you found around .
So now the sound of the touch is getting me when exactly I 'm touching the paper .
But the camera is actually tracking where my fingers are moving .
You can of course watch movies .
and I am a Wilderness Explorer in Tribe 54 . " ) And you can of course play games .
Here , the camera is actually understanding how you 're holding the paper and playing a car-racing game .
Many of you already must have thought , OK , you can browse .
Yeah . Of course you can browse to any websites or you can do all sorts of computing on a piece of paper wherever you need it .
So , more interestingly , I 'm interested in how we can take that in a more dynamic way .
When I come back to my desk I can just pinch that information back to my desktop so I can use my full-size computer .
And why only computers ? We can just play with papers .
Paper world is interesting to play with .
Here , I 'm taking a part of a document and putting over here a second part from a second place -- and I 'm actually modifying the information that I have over there .
Yeah . And I say , " OK , this looks nice , let me print it out , that thing . "
So I now have a print-out of that thing , and now -- the workflow is more intuitive the way we used to do it maybe 20 years back , rather than now switching between these two worlds .
So , as a last thought , I think that integrating information to everyday objects will not only help us to get rid of the digital divide , the gap between these two worlds , but will also help us , in some way , to stay human , to be more connected to our physical world .
And it will actually help us not end up being machines sitting in front of other machines .
That 's all . Thank you .
Thank you .
So , Pranav , first of all , you 're a genius .
This is incredible , really .
What are you doing with this ? Is there a company being planned ?
Or is this research forever , or what ?
Pranav Mistry : So , there are lots of companies -- actually sponsor companies of Media Lab -- interested in taking this ahead in one or another way .
Companies like mobile phone operators want to take this in a different way than the NGOs in India , [ who ] are thinking , " Why can we only have ' Sixth Sense ' ?
We should have a ' Fifth Sense ' for missing-sense people who cannot speak .
This technology can be used for them to speak out in a different way with maybe a speaker system . "
What are your own plans ? Are you staying at MIT , or are you going to do something with this ?
PM : I 'm trying to make this more available to people so that anyone can develop their own SixthSense device , because the hardware is actually not that hard to manufacture or hard to make your own .
We will provide all the open source software for them , maybe starting next month .
Open source ? Wow .
Are you going to come back to India with some of this , at some point ?
PM : Yeah . Yes , yes , of course .
What are your plans ? MIT ?
India ? How are you going to split your time going forward ?
PM : There is a lot of energy here . Lots of learning .
All of this work that you have seen is all about my learning in India .
And now , if you see , it 's more about the cost-effectiveness : this system costs you $ 300 compared to the $ 20,000 surface tables , or anything like that .
Or maybe even the $ 2 mouse gesture system at that time was costing around $ 5,000 ?
So , we actually -- I showed that , at a conference , to President Abdul Kalam , at that time , and then he said , " OK , we should use this in Bhabha Atomic Research Centre for some use of that . "
So I 'm excited about how I can bring the technology to the masses rather than just keeping that technology in the lab environment .
Based on the people we 've seen at TED , I would say you 're truly one of the two or three best inventors in the world right now .
It 's an honor to have you at TED .
Thank you so much .
That 's fantastic .
Kevin Stone : The bio-future of joint replacement
Arthritis and injury grind down millions of joints , but few get the best remedy -- real biological tissue . Kevin Stone shows a treatment that could sidestep the high costs and donor shortfall of human-to-human transplants with a novel use of animal tissue .
So let me just start with my story .
So I tore my knee joint meniscus cartilage playing soccer in college .
Then I went on to tear my ACL , the ligament in my knee , and then developed an arthritic knee .
And I 'm sure that many of you in this audience have that same story , and , by the way , I married a woman who has exactly the same story .
So this motivated me to become an orthopedic surgeon and to see if I couldn 't focus on solutions for those problems that would keep me playing sports and not limit me .
So with that , let me just show you a quick video to get you in the mood of what we 're trying to explain .
We are all aware of the risk of cancer , but there 's another disease that 's destined to affect even more of us : arthritis .
Cancer may kill you , but when you look at the numbers , arthritis ruins more lives .
Assuming you live a long life , there 's a 50 percent chance you 'll develop arthritis .
And it 's not just aging that causes arthritis .
Common injuries can lead to decades of pain , until our joints quite literally grind to a halt .
Desperate for a solution , we 've turned to engineering to design artificial components to replace our worn-out body parts , but in the midst of the modern buzz around the promises of a bionic body , shouldn 't we stop and ask if there 's a better , more natural way ?
Let 's consider an alternative path .
What if all the replacements our bodies need already exist in nature , or within our own stem cells ?
This is the field of biologic replacements , where we replace worn-out parts with new , natural ones .
Kevin Stone : And so , the mission is : how do I treat these things biologically ?
And let 's talk about both what I did for my wife , and what I 've done for hundreds of other patients .
First thing for my wife , and the most common thing I hear from my patients , particularly in the 40- to 80-year-old age group , 70-year-old age group , is they come in and say , " Hey , Doc , isn 't there just a shock absorber you can put in my knee ?
I 'm not ready for joint replacement . "
And so for her , I put in a human meniscus allograft donor right into that [ knee ] joint space .
And [ the allograft ] replaces [ the missing meniscus ] .
And then for that unstable ligament , we put in a human donor ligament to stabilize the knee .
And then for the damaged arthritis on the surface , we did a stem cell paste graft , which we designed in 1991 , to regrow that articular cartilage surface and give it back a smooth surface there .
So here 's my wife 's bad knee on the left , and her just hiking now four months later in Aspen , and doing well .
And it works , not just for my wife , but certainly for other patients .
The girl on the video , Jen Hudak , just won the Superpipe in Aspen just nine months after having destroyed her knee , as you see in the other image -- and having a paste graft to that knee .
And so we can regrow these surfaces biologically .
So with all this success , why isn 't that good enough , you might ask .
Well the reason is because there 's not enough donor cycles .
There 's not enough young , healthy people falling off their motorcycle and donating that tissue to us .
And the tissue 's very expensive .
And so that 's not going to be a solution that 's going to get us global with biologic tissue .
But the solution is animal tissue because it 's plentiful , it 's cheap , you can get it from young , healthy tissues , but the barrier is immunology .
And the specific barrier is a specific epitope called the galactosyl , or gal epitope .
So if we 're going to transplant animal tissues to people , we have to figure out a way to get rid of that epitope .
So my story in working with animal tissues starts in 1984 .
And I started first with cow Achilles tendon , where we would take the cow Achilles tendon , which is type-I collagen , strip it of its antigens by degrading it with an acid and detergent wash and forming it into a regeneration template .
We would then take that regeneration template and insert it into the missing meniscus cartilage to regrow that in a patient 's knee .
We 've now done that procedure , and it 's been done worldwide in over 4,000 cases , so it 's an FDA-approved and worldwide-accepted way to regrow the meniscus .
And that 's great when I can degrade the tissue .
But what happens for your ligament when I need an intact ligament ?
I can 't grind it up in a blender .
So in that case , I have to design -- and we designed with Uri Galili and Tom Turek -- an enzyme wash to wash away , or strip , those galactosyl epitopes with a specific enzyme .
And we call that a " gal stripping " technique .
What we do is humanize the tissue .
It 's by gal stripping that tissue we humanize it , and then we can put it back into a patient 's knee .
And we 've done that . Now we 've taken pig ligament -- young , healthy , big tissue , put it into 10 patients in an FDA-approved trial -- and then one of our patients went on to have three Canadian Masters Downhill championships -- on his " pig-lig , " as he calls it . So we know it can work .
And there 's a wide clinical trial of this tissue now pending .
So what about the next step ?
What about getting to a total biologic knee replacement , not just the parts ?
How are we going to revolutionize artificial joint replacement ?
Well here 's how we 're going to do it .
So what we 're going to do is take an articular cartilage from a young , healthy pig , strip it of its antigens , load it with your stem cells , then put it back on to that arthritic surface in your knee , tack it on there , have you heal that surface and then create a new biologic surface for your knee .
So that 's our biologic approach right now .
We 're going to rebuild your knee with the parts .
We 're going to resurface it with a completely new surface .
But we have other advantages from the animal kingdom .
There 's a benefit of 400 million years of ambulation .
We can harness those benefits .
We can use thicker , younger , better tissues than you might have injured in your knee , or that you might have when you 're 40 , 50 or 60 .
We can do it as an outpatient procedure .
We can strip that tissue very economically , and so this is how we can get biologic knee replacement to go global .
And so welcome to super biologics .
It 's not hardware .
It 's not software .
It 's bioware .
It 's version 2.0 of you .
And so with that , coming to a -- coming to an operating theater near you soon , I believe .
Thank you very much .
Marcel Dicke : Why not eat insects ?
Marcel Dicke makes an appetizing case for adding insects to everyone 's diet . His message to squeamish chefs and foodies : delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavor , nutrition and eco-friendliness .
Okay , I 'm going to show you again something about our diets .
And I would like to know what the audience is , and so who of you ever ate insects ?
That 's quite a lot .
But still , you 're not representing the overall population of the Earth .
Because there 's 80 percent out there that really eats insects .
But this is quite good .
Why not eat insects ? Well first , what are insects ?
Insects are animals that walk around on six legs .
And here you see just a selection .
There 's six million species of insects on this planet , six million species .
There 's a few hundreds of mammals -- six million species of insects .
In fact , if we count all the individual organisms , we would come at much larger numbers .
In fact , of all animals on Earth , of all animal species , 80 percent walks on six legs .
But if we would count all the individuals , and we take an average weight of them , it would amount to something like 200 to 2,000 kilograms for each of you and me on Earth .
That means that in terms of biomass , insects are more abundant than we are , and we 're not on a planet of men , but we 're on a planet of insects .
Insects are not only there in nature , but they also are involved in our economy , usually without us knowing .
There was an estimation , a conservative estimation , a couple of years ago that the U.S. economy benefited by 57 billion dollars per year .
It 's a number -- very large -- a contribution to the economy of the United States for free .
And so I looked up what the economy was paying for the war in Iraq in the same year .
It was 80 billion U.S. dollars .
Well we know that that was not a cheap war .
So insects , just for free , contribute to the economy of the United States with about the same order of magnitude , just for free , without everyone knowing .
And not only in the States , but in any country , in any economy .
What do they do ?
They remove dung , they pollinate our crops .
A third of all the fruits that we eat are all a result of insects taking care of the reproduction of plants .
They control pests , and they 're food for animals .
They 're at the start of food chains .
Small animals eat insects .
Even larger animals eat insects .
But the small animals that eat insects are being eaten by larger animals , still larger animals .
And at the end of the food chain , we are eating them as well .
There 's quite a lot of people that are eating insects .
And here you see me in a small , provincial town in China , Lijiang -- about two million inhabitants .
If you go out for dinner , like in a fish restaurant , where you can select which fish you want to eat , you can select which insects you would like to eat .
And they prepare it in a wonderful way .
And here you see me enjoying a meal with caterpillars , locusts , bee pupae -- delicacies .
And you can eat something new everyday .
There 's more than 1,000 species of insects that are being eaten all around the globe .
That 's quite a bit more than just a few mammals that we 're eating , like a cow or a pig or a sheep .
More than 1,000 species -- an enormous variety .
And now you may think , okay , in this provincial town in China they 're doing that , but not us .
Well we 've seen already that quite some of you already ate insects maybe occasionally , but I can tell you that every one of you is eating insects , without any exception .
You 're eating at least 500 grams per year .
What are you eating ?
Tomato soup , peanut butter , chocolate , noodles -- any processed food that you 're eating contains insects , because insects are here all around us , and when they 're out there in nature they 're also in our crops .
Some fruits get some insect damage .
Those are the fruits , if they 're tomato , that go to the tomato soup .
If they don 't have any damage , they go to the grocery .
And that 's your view of a tomato .
But there 's tomatoes that end up in a soup , and as long as they meet the requirements of the food agency , there can be all kinds of things in there , no problem .
In fact , why would we put these balls in the soup , there 's meat in there anyway ?
In fact , all our processed foods contain more proteins than we would be aware of .
So anything is a good protein source already .
Now you may say , " Okay , so we 're eating 500 grams just by accident . "
We 're even doing this on purpose .
In a lot of food items that we have -- I have only two items here on the slide -- pink cookies or surimi sticks or , if you like , Campari -- a lot of our food products that are of a red color are dyed with a natural dye .
The surimi sticks [ of ] crabmeat , or is being sold as crab meat , is white fish that 's being dyed with cochineal .
Cochineal is a product of an insect that lives off these cacti .
It 's being produced in large amounts , 150 to 180 metric tons per year in the Canary Islands in Peru , and it 's big business .
One gram of cochineal costs about 30 euros .
One gram of gold is 30 euros .
So it 's a very precious thing that we 're using to dye our foods .
Now the situation in the world is going to change for you and me , for everyone on this Earth .
The human population is growing very rapidly and is growing exponentially .
Where , at the moment , we have something between six and seven billion people , it will grow to about nine billion in 2050 .
That means that we have a lot more mouths to feed , and this is something that worries more and more people .
There was an FAO conference last October that was completely devoted to this .
How are we going to feed this world ?
And if you look at the figures up there , it says that we have a third more mouths to feed , but we need an agricultural production increase of 70 percent .
And that 's especially because this world population is increasing , and it 's increasing , not only in numbers , but we 're also getting wealthier , and anyone that gets wealthier starts to eat more and also starts to eat more meat .
And meat , in fact , is something that costs a lot of our agricultural production .
Our diet consists , [ in ] some part , of animal proteins , and at the moment , most of us here get it from livestock , from fish , from game .
And we eat quite a lot of it .
In the developed world it 's on average 80 kilograms per person per year , which goes up to 120 in the United States and a bit lower in some other countries , but on average 80 kilograms per person per year .
In the developing world it 's much lower .
It 's 25 kilograms per person per year .
But it 's increasing enormously .
In China in the last 20 years , it increased from 20 to 50 , and it 's still increasing .
So if a third of the world population is going to increase its meat consumption from 25 to 80 on average , and a third of the world population is living in China and in India , we 're having an enormous demand on meat .
And of course , we are not there to say that 's only for us , it 's not for them .
They have the same share that we have .
Now to start with , I should say that we are eating way too much meat in the Western world .
We could do with much , much less -- and I know , I 've been a vegetarian for a long time , and you can easily do without anything .
You 'll get proteins in any kind of food anyway .
But then there 's a lot of problems that come with meat production , and we 're being faced with that more and more often .
The first problem that we 're facing is human health .
Pigs are quite like us .
They 're even models in medicine , and we can even transplant organs from a pig to a human .
That means that pigs also share diseases with us .
And a pig disease , a pig virus , and a human virus can both proliferate , and because of their kind of reproduction , they can combine and produce a new virus .
This has happened in the Netherlands in the 1990s during the classical swine fever outbreak .
You get a new disease that can be deadly .
We eat insects -- they 're so distantly related from us that this doesn 't happen .
So that 's one point for insects .
And there 's the conversion factor .
You take 10 kilograms of feed , you can get one kilogram of beef , but you can get nine kilograms of locust meat .
So if you would be an entrepreneur , what would you do ?
With 10 kilograms of input , you can get either one or nine kg. of output .
So far we 're taking the one , or up to five kilograms of output .
We 're not taking the bonus yet .
We 're not taking the nine kilograms of output yet .
So that 's two points for insects .
And there 's the environment .
If we take 10 kilograms of food -- and it results in one kilogram of beef , the other nine kilograms are waste , and a lot of that is manure .
If you produce insects , you have less manure per kilogram of meat that you produce .
So less waste .
Furthermore , per kilogram of manure , you have much , much less ammonia and fewer greenhouse gases when you have insect manure So you have less waste , and the waste that you have is not as environmental malign as it is with cow dung .
So that 's three points for insects .
Now there 's a big " if , " of course , and it is if insects produce meat that is of good quality .
Well there have been all kinds of analyses and in terms of protein , or fat , or vitamins , it 's very good .
In fact , it 's comparable to anything we eat as meat at the moment .
And even in terms of calories , it is very good .
One kilogram of grasshoppers has the same amount of calories as 10 hot dogs , or six Big Macs .
So that 's four points for insects .
I can go on , and I could make many more points for insects , but time doesn 't allow this .
So the question is , why not eat insects ?
I gave you at least four arguments in favor .
We 'll have to .
Even if you don 't like it , you 'll have to get used to this because at the moment , 70 percent of all our agricultural land is being used to produce livestock .
That 's not only the land where the livestock is walking and feeding , but it 's also other areas where the feed is being produced and being transported .
We can increase it a bit at the expense of rainforests , but there 's a limitation very soon .
And if you remember that we need to increase agricultural production by 70 percent , we 're not going to make it that way .
We could much better change from meat , from beef , to insects .
And then 80 percent of the world already eats insects , so we are just a minority -- in a country like the U.K. , the USA , the Netherlands , anywhere .
On the left-hand side , you see a market in Laos where they have abundantly present all kinds of insects that you choose for dinner for the night .
On the right-hand side you see a grasshopper .
So people there are eating them , not because they 're hungry , but because they think it 's a delicacy .
It 's just very good food .
You can vary enormously .
It has many benefits .
In fact , we have delicacy that 's very much like this grasshopper : shrimps , a delicacy being sold at a high price .
Who wouldn 't like to eat a shrimp ?
There are a few people who don 't like shrimp , but shrimp , or crabs , or crayfish , are very closely related .
They are delicacies .
In fact , a locust is a " shrimp " of the land , and it would make very good into our diet .
So why are we not eating insects yet ?
Well that 's just a matter of mindset .
We 're not used to it , and we see insects as these organisms that are very different from us .
That 's why we 're changing the perception of insects .
And I 'm working very hard with my colleague , Arnold van Huis , in telling people what insects are , what magnificent things they are , what magnificent jobs they do in nature .
And in fact , without insects , we would not be here in this room , because if the insects die out , we will soon die out as well .
If we die out , the insects will continue very happily .
So we have to get used to the idea of eating insects .
And some might think , well they 're not yet available .
Well they are .
There are entrepreneurs in the Netherlands that produce them , and one of them is here in the audience , Marian Peeters , who 's in the picture .
I predict that later this year , you 'll get them in the supermarkets -- not visible , but as animal protein in the food .
And maybe by 2020 , you 'll buy them just knowing that this is an insect that you 're going to eat .
And they 're being made in the most wonderful ways .
A Dutch chocolate maker .
So there 's even a lot of design to it .
Well in the Netherlands , we have an innovative Minister of Agriculture , and she puts the insects on the menu in her restaurant in her ministry .
And when she got all the Ministers of Agriculture of the E.U.
over to the Hague recently , she went to a high-class restaurant , and they ate insects all together .
It 's not something that is a hobby of mine .
It 's really taken off the ground .
So why not eat insects ?
You should try it yourself .
A couple of years ago , we had 1,750 people all together in a square in Wageningen town , and they ate insects at the same moment , and this was still big , big news .
I think soon it will not be big news anymore when we all eat insects , because it 's just a normal way of doing .
So you can try it yourself today , and I would say , enjoy .
And I 'm going to show to Bruno some first tries , and he can have the first bite .
Look at them first . Look at them first .
Marcel Dicke : It 's all protein .
That 's exactly the same [ one ] you saw in the video actually .
And it looks delicious .
They just make it [ with ] nuts or something .
MD : Thank you .
Cameron Sinclair : The refugees of boom-and-bust
At TEDGlobal U , Cameron Sinclair shows the unreported cost of real estate megaprojects gone bust : thousands of migrant construction laborers left stranded and penniless . To his fellow architects , he says there is only one ethical response .
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 .
Kevin Surace : Eco-friendly drywall
Kevin Surace suggests we rethink basic construction materials -- such as the familiar wallboard -- to reduce the huge carbon footprint generated by the manufacturing and construction of our buildings . He introduces EcoRock , a clean , recyclable and energy-efficient drywall created by his team at Serious Materials .
What 's happening to the climate ?
It is unbelievably bad .
This is , obviously , that famous view now of the Arctic , which is likely to be gone at this point in the next three or four or five years . Very , very , very scary .
So we all look at what we can do .
And when you look at the worldwide sources of CO2 , 52 percent are tied to buildings .
Only nine percent is passenger cars , interestingly enough .
So we ran off to a sushi bar .
And at that sushi bar we came up with a great idea .
And it was something called EcoRock .
And we said we could redesign the 115-year-old gypsum drywall process that generates 20 billion pounds of CO2 a year .
So it was a big idea . We wanted to reduce that by 80 percent , which is exactly what we 've done .
We started R & amp ; D in 2006 .
Decided to use recycled content from cement and steel manufacturing .
There is the inside of our lab . We haven 't shown this before .
But our people had to do some 5,000 different mixes to get this right , to hit our targets .
And they worked absolutely very , very , very hard .
So then we went forward and built our production line in China .
We don 't build this production equipment any longer in the U.S. , unfortunately .
We did the line install over the summer .
We started right there , with absolutely nothing .
You 're seeing for the first time , a brand new drywall production line , not made using gypsum at all .
That 's the finished production line there .
We got our first panel out on December third .
That is the slurry being poured onto paper , basically . That 's the line running .
The exciting thing is , look at the faces of the people .
These are people who worked this project for two to three years .
And they are so excited . That 's the first board off the line .
Our Vice President of Operation kissing the board . Obviously very , very excited .
But this has a huge , huge impact on the environment .
We signed the first panel just a few weeks after that , had a great signing ceremony , leading to people hopefully using these products across the world .
And we 've got Cradle-to-Cradle Gold on this thing .
We happened to win , just recently , the Green Product of the Year for " The Re-Invention of Drywall , " from Popular Science .
Thank you . Thank you .
So here is what we learned : 8,000 gallons of gas equivalent to build one house .
You probably had no idea . It 's like driving around the world six times .
We must change everything .
Look around the room : chairs , wood , everything around us has to change or we 're not going to lick this problem .
Don 't listen to the people who say you can 't do this , because anyone can .
And these job losses , we can fix them with green-collar jobs .
We 've got four plants . We 're building this stuff around the country .
We 're going as fast as we can .
Two and a half million cars worth of gypsum , you know , CO2 generated . Right ?
So what will you do ? I 'll tell you what I did and why I did it . And I know my time 's up .
Those are my kids , Natalie and David .
When they have their kids , 2050 , they 'd better look back at Grandpa and say , " Hey , you gave it a good shot . You did the best you could with the team that you had . "
So my hope is that when you leave TED , you will look at reducing your carbon footprint in however you can do it .
And if you don 't know how , please find me -- I will help you .
Last but not least , Bill Gates , I know you invented Windows .
Wait till you see , maybe next year , what kind of windows we 've invented .
Thank you so much .
Shigeru Ban : Emergency shelters made from paper
Long before sustainability was a buzzword , Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban had begun his experiments with ecologically sound building materials such as cardboard tubes . His remarkable structures are often intended as temporary housing for disaster-struck nations such as Haiti , Rwanda , Japan . Yet often the buildings remain a beloved part of the landscape long after they have served their intended purpose .
Hi . I am an architect .
I am the only architect in the world making buildings out of paper like this cardboard tube , and this exhibition is the first one I did using paper tubes .
1986 , much , much longer before people started talking about ecological issues and environmental issues , I just started testing the paper tube in order to use this as a building structure .
It 's very complicated to test the new material for the building , but this is much stronger than I expected , and also it 's very easy to waterproof , and also , because it 's industrial material , it 's also possible to fireproof .
Then I built the temporary structure , 1990 .
This is the first temporary building made out of paper .
There are 330 tubes , diameter 55 [ centimeters ] , there are only 12 tubes with a diameter of 120 centimeters , or four feet , wide .
As you see it in the photo , inside is the toilet .
In case you 're finished with toilet paper , you can tear off the inside of the wall .
So it 's very useful .
Year 2000 , there was a big expo in Germany .
I was asked to design the building , because the theme of the expo was environmental issues .
So I was chosen to build the pavilion out of paper tubes , recyclable paper .
My goal of the design is not when it 's completed .
My goal was when the building was demolished , because each country makes a lot of pavilions but after half a year , we create a lot of industrial waste , so my building has to be reused or recycled .
After , the building was recycled .
So that was the goal of my design .
Then I was very lucky to win the competition to build the second Pompidou Center in France in the city of Metz .
Because I was so poor , I wanted to rent an office in Paris , but I couldn 't afford it , so I decided to bring my students to Paris to build our office on top of the Pompidou Center in Paris by ourselves .
So we brought the paper tubes and the wooden joints to complete the 35-meter-long office .
We stayed there for six years without paying any rent .
Thank you . I had one big problem .
Because we were part of the exhibition , even if my friend wanted to see me , they had to buy a ticket to see me .
That was the problem .
Then I completed the Pompidou Center in Metz .
It 's a very popular museum now , and I created a big monument for the government .
But then I was very disappointed at my profession as an architect , because we are not helping , we are not working for society , but we are working for privileged people , rich people , government , developers .
They have money and power .
Those are invisible .
So they hire us to visualize their power and money by making monumental architecture .
That is our profession , even historically it 's the same , even now we are doing the same .
So I was very disappointed that we are not working for society , even though there are so many people who lost their houses by natural disasters .
But I must say they are no longer natural disasters .
For example , earthquakes never kill people , but collapse of the buildings kill people .
That 's the responsibility of architects .
Then people need some temporary housing , but there are no architects working there because we are too busy working for privileged people .
So I thought , even as architects , we can be involved in the reconstruction of temporary housing .
We can make it better .
So that is why I started working in disaster areas .
1994 , there was a big disaster in Rwanda , Africa .
Two tribes , Hutu and Tutsi , fought each other .
Over two million people became refugees .
But I was so surprised to see the shelter , refugee camp organized by the U.N.
They 're so poor , and they are freezing with blankets during the rainy season , In the shelters built by the U.N. , they were just providing a plastic sheet , and the refugees had to cut the trees , and just like this .
But over two million people cut trees .
It just became big , heavy deforestation and an environmental problem .
That is why they started providing aluminum pipes , aluminum barracks .
Very expensive , they throw them out for money , then cutting trees again .
So I proposed my idea to improve the situation using these recycled paper tubes because this is so cheap and also so strong , but my budget is only 50 U.S. dollars per unit .
We built 50 units to do that as a monitoring test for the durability and moisture and termites , so on .
And then , year afterward , 1995 , in Kobe , Japan , we had a big earthquake .
Nearly 7,000 people were killed , and the city like this Nagata district , all the city was burned in a fire after the earthquake .
And also I found out there 's many Vietnamese refugees suffering and gathering at a Catholic church -- all the building was totally destroyed .
So I went there and also I proposed to the priests , " Why don 't we rebuild the church out of paper tubes ? "
And he said , " Oh God , are you crazy ?
After a fire , what are you proposing ? "
So he never trusted me , but I didn 't give up .
I started commuting to Kobe , and I met the society of Vietnamese people .
They were living like this with very poor plastic sheets in the park .
So I proposed to rebuild . I raised -- did fundraising .
I made a paper tube shelter for them , and in order to make it easy to be built by students and also easy to demolish , I used beer crates as a foundation .
I asked the Kirin beer company to propose , because at that time , the Asahi beer company made their plastic beer crates red , which doesn 't go with the color of the paper tubes .
The color coordination is very important .
And also I still remember , we were expecting to have a beer inside the plastic beer crate , but it came empty .
So I remember it was so disappointing .
So during the summer with my students , we built over 50 units of the shelters .
Finally the priest , finally he trusted me to rebuild .
He said , " As long as you collect money by yourself , bring your students to build , you can do it . "
So we spent five weeks rebuilding the church .
It was meant to stay there for three years , but actually it stayed there 10 years because people loved it .
Then , in Taiwan , they had a big earthquake , and we proposed to donate this church , so we dismantled them , we sent them over to be built by volunteer people .
It stayed there in Taiwan as a permanent church even now .
So this building became a permanent building .
Then I wonder , what is a permanent and what is a temporary building ?
Even a building made in paper can be permanent as long as people love it .
Even a concrete building can be very temporary if that is made to make money .
In 1999 , in Turkey , the big earthquake , I went there to use the local material to build a shelter .
2001 , in West India , I built also a shelter .
In 2004 , in Sri Lanka , after the Sumatra earthquake and tsunami , I rebuilt Islamic fishermen 's villages .
And in 2008 , in Chengdu , Sichuan area in China , nearly 70,000 people were killed , and also especially many of the schools were destroyed because of the corruption between the authority and the contractor .
I was asked to rebuild the temporary church .
I brought my Japanese students to work with the Chinese students .
In one month , we completed nine classrooms , over 500 square meters .
It 's still used , even after the current earthquake in China .
In 2009 , in Italy , L 'Aquila , also they had a big earthquake .
And this is a very interesting photo : former Prime Minister Berlusconi and Japanese former former former former Prime Minister Mr. Aso -- you know , because we have to change the prime minister ever year .
And they are very kind , affording my model .
I proposed a big rebuilding , a temporary music hall , because L 'Aquila is very famous for music and all the concert halls were destroyed , so musicians were moving out .
So I proposed to the mayor , I 'd like to rebuild the temporary auditorium .
He said , " As long as you bring your money , you can do it . "
And I was very lucky .
Mr. Berlusconi brought G8 summit , and our former prime minister came , so they helped us to collect money , and I got half a million euros from the Japanese government to rebuild this temporary auditorium .
Year 2010 in Haiti , there was a big earthquake , but it 's impossible to fly over , so I went to Santo Domingo , next-door country , to drive six hours to get to Haiti with the local students in Santo Domingo to build 50 units of shelter out of local paper tubes .
This is what happened in Japan two years ago , in northern Japan .
After the earthquake and tsunami , people had to be evacuated in a big room like a gymnasium .
But look at this . There 's no privacy .
People suffer mentally and physically .
So we went there to build partitions with all the student volunteers with paper tubes , just a very simple shelter out of the tube frame and the curtain .
However , some of the facility authority doesn 't want us to do it , because , they said , simply , it 's become more difficult to control them .
But it 's really necessary to do it .
They don 't have enough flat area to build standard government single-story housing like this one .
Look at this . Even civil government is doing such poor construction of the temporary housing , so dense and so messy because there is no storage , nothing , water is leaking , so I thought , we have to make multi-story building because there 's no land and also it 's not very comfortable .
So I proposed to the mayor while I was making partitions .
Finally I met a very nice mayor in Onagawa village in Miyagi .
He asked me to build three-story housing on baseball [ fields ] .
I used the shipping container and also the students helped us to make all the building furniture to make them comfortable , within the budget of the government but also the area of the house is exactly the same , but much more comfortable .
Many of the people want to stay here forever .
I was very happy to hear that .
Now I am working in New Zealand , Christchurch .
About 20 days before the Japanese earthquake happened , also they had a big earthquake , and many Japanese students were also killed , and the most important cathedral of the city , the symbol of Christchurch , was totally destroyed .
And I was asked to come to rebuild the temporary cathedral .
So this is under construction .
And I 'd like to keep building monuments that are beloved by people .
Thank you very much .
Thank you .
Thank you very much .
Neil Burgess : How your brain tells you where you are
How do you remember where you parked your car ? How do you know if you 're moving in the right direction ? Neuroscientist Neil Burgess studies the neural mechanisms that map the space around us , and how they link to memory and imagination .
When we park in a big parking lot , how do we remember where we parked our car ?
Here 's the problem facing Homer .
And we 're going to try to understand what 's happening in his brain .
So we 'll start with the hippocampus , shown in yellow , which is the organ of memory .
If you have damage there , like in Alzheimer 's , you can 't remember things including where you parked your car .
It 's named after Latin for " seahorse , " which it resembles .
And like the rest of the brain , it 's made of neurons .
So the human brain has about a hundred billion neurons in it .
And the neurons communicate with each other by sending little pulses or spikes of electricity via connections to each other .
The hippocampus is formed of two sheets of cells , which are very densely interconnected .
And scientists have begun to understand how spatial memory works by recording from individual neurons in rats or mice while they forage or explore an environment looking for food .
So we 're going to imagine we 're recording from a single neuron in the hippocampus of this rat here .
And when it fires a little spike of electricity , there 's going to be a red dot and a click .
So what we see is that this neuron knows whenever the rat has gone into one particular place in its environment .
And it signals to the rest of the brain by sending a little electrical spike .
So we could show the firing rate of that neuron as a function of the animal 's location .
And if we record from lots of different neurons , we 'll see that different neurons fire when the animal goes in different parts of its environment , like in this square box shown here .
So together they form a map for the rest of the brain , telling the brain continually , " Where am I now within my environment ? "
Place cells are also being recorded in humans .
So epilepsy patients sometimes need the electrical activity in their brain monitoring .
And some of these patients played a video game where they drive around a small town .
And place cells in their hippocampi would fire , become active , start sending electrical impulses whenever they drove through a particular location in that town .
So how does a place cell know where the rat or person is within its environment ?
Well these two cells here show us that the boundaries of the environment are particularly important .
So the one on the top likes to fire sort of midway between the walls of the box that their rat 's in .
And when you expand the box , the firing location expands .
The one below likes to fire whenever there 's a wall close by to the south .
And if you put another wall inside the box , then the cell fires in both place wherever there 's a wall to the south as the animal explores around in its box .
So this predicts that sensing the distances and directions of boundaries around you -- extended buildings and so on -- is particularly important for the hippocampus .
And indeed , on the inputs to the hippocampus , cells are found which project into the hippocampus , which do respond exactly to detecting boundaries or edges at particular distances and directions from the rat or mouse as it 's exploring around .
So the cell on the left , you can see , it fires whenever the animal gets near to a wall or a boundary to the east , whether it 's the edge or the wall of a square box or the circular wall of the circular box or even the drop at the edge of a table , which the animals are running around .
And the cell on the right there fires whenever there 's a boundary to the south , whether it 's the drop at the edge of the table or a wall or even the gap between two tables that are pulled apart .
So that 's one way in which we think place cells determine where the animal is as it 's exploring around .
We can also test where we think objects are , like this goal flag , in simple environments -- or indeed , where your car would be .
So we can have people explore an environment and see the location they have to remember .
And then , if we put them back in the environment , generally they 're quite good at putting a marker down where they thought that flag or their car was .
But on some trials , we could change the shape and size of the environment like we did with the place cell .
In that case , we can see how where they think the flag had been changes as a function of how you change the shape and size of the environment .
And what you see , for example , if the flag was where that cross was in a small square environment , and then if you ask people where it was , but you 've made the environment bigger , where they think the flag had been stretches out in exactly the same way that the place cell firing stretched out .
It 's as if you remember where the flag was by storing the pattern of firing across all of your place cells at that location , and then you can get back to that location by moving around so that you best match the current pattern of firing of your place cells with that stored pattern .
That guides you back to the location that you want to remember .
But we also know where we are through movement .
So if we take some outbound path -- perhaps we park and we wander off -- we know because our own movements , which we can integrate over this path roughly what the heading direction is to go back .
And place cells also get this kind of path integration input from a kind of cell called a grid cell .
Now grid cells are found , again , on the inputs to the hippocampus , and they 're a bit like place cells .
But now as the rat explores around , each individual cell fires in a whole array of different locations which are laid out across the environment in an amazingly regular triangular grid .
And if you record from several grid cells -- shown here in different colors -- each one has a grid-like firing pattern across the environment , and each cell 's grid-like firing pattern is shifted slightly relative to the other cells .
So the red one fires on this grid and the green one on this one and the blue on on this one .
So together , it 's as if the rat can put a virtual grid of firing locations across its environment -- a bit like the latitude and longitude lines that you 'd find on a map , but using triangles .
And as it moves around , the electrical activity can pass from one of these cells to the next cell to keep track of where it is , so that it can use its own movements to know where it is in its environment .
Do people have grid cells ?
Well because all of the grid-like firing patterns have the same axes of symmetry , the same orientations of grid , shown in orange here , it means that the net activity of all of the grid cells in a particular part of the brain should change according to whether we 're running along these six directions or running along one of the six directions in between .
So we can put people in an MRI scanner and have them do a little video game like the one I showed you and look for this signal .
And indeed , you do see it in the human entorhinal cortex , which is the same part of the brain that you see grid cells in rats .
So back to Homer .
He 's probably remembering where his car was in terms of the distances and directions to extended buildings and boundaries around the location where he parked .
And that would be represented by the firing of boundary-detecting cells .
He 's also remembering the path he took out of the car park , which would be represented in the firing of grid cells .
Now both of these kinds of cells can make the place cells fire .
And he can return to the location where he parked by moving so as to find where it is that best matches the firing pattern of the place cells in his brain currently with the stored pattern where he parked his car .
And that guides him back to that location irrespective of visual cues like whether his car 's actually there .
Maybe it 's been towed .
But he knows where it was , so he knows to go and get it .
So beyond spatial memory , if we look for this grid-like firing pattern throughout the whole brain , we see it in a whole series of locations which are always active when we do all kinds of autobiographical memory tasks , like remembering the last time you went to a wedding , for example .
So it may be that the neural mechanisms for representing the space around us are also used for generating visual imagery so that we can recreate the spatial scene , at least , of the events that have happened to us when we want to imagine them .
So if this was happening , your memories could start by place cells activating each other via these dense interconnections and then reactivating boundary cells to create the spatial structure of the scene around your viewpoint .
And grid cells could move this viewpoint through that space .
Another kind of cell , head direction cells , which I didn 't mention yet , they fire like a compass according to which way you 're facing .
They could define the viewing direction from which you want to generate an image for your visual imagery , so you can imagine what happened when you were at this wedding , for example .
So this is just one example of a new era really in cognitive neuroscience where we 're beginning to understand psychological processes like how you remember or imagine or even think in terms of the actions of the billions of individual neurons that make up our brains .
Thank you very much .
Nigel Marsh : How to make work-life balance work
Work-life balance , says Nigel Marsh , is too important to be left in the hands of your employer . Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time , personal time and productivity -- and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen .
What I thought I would do is I would start with a simple request .
I 'd like all of you to pause for a moment , you wretched weaklings , and take stock of your miserable existence .
Now that was the advice that St. Benedict gave his rather startled followers in the fifth century .
It was the advice that I decided to follow myself when I turned 40 .
Up until that moment , I had been that classic corporate warrior -- I was eating too much , I was drinking too much , I was working too hard and I was neglecting the family .
And I decided that I would try and turn my life around .
In particular , I decided I would try to address the thorny issue of work-life balance .
So I stepped back from the workforce , and I spent a year at home with my wife and four young children .
But all I learned about work-life balance from that year was that I found it quite easy to balance work and life when I didn 't have any work .
Not a very useful skill , especially when the money runs out .
So I went back to work , and I 've spent these seven years since struggling with , studying and writing about work-life balance .
And I have four observations I 'd like to share with you today .
The first is : if society 's to make any progress on this issue , we need an honest debate .
But the trouble is so many people talk so much rubbish about work-life balance .
All the discussions about flexi-time or dress-down Fridays or paternity leave only serve to mask the core issue , which is that certain job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family .
Now the first step in solving any problem is acknowledging the reality of the situation you 're in .
And the reality of the society that we 're in is there are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet , screaming desperation , where they work long , hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don 't need to impress people they don 't like .
It 's my contention that going to work on Friday in jeans and [ a ] T-shirt isn 't really getting to the nub of the issue .
The second observation I 'd like to make is we need to face the truth that governments and corporations aren 't going to solve this issue for us .
We should stop looking outside .
It 's up to us as individuals to take control and responsibility for the type of lives that we want to lead .
If you don 't design your life , someone else will design it for you , and you may just not like their idea of balance .
It 's particularly important -- this isn 't on the World Wide Web , is it ? I 'm about to get fired -- it 's particularly important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation .
Now I 'm not talking here just about the bad companies -- the " abattoirs of the human soul , " as I call them .
I 'm talking about all companies .
Because commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you [ as ] they can get away with .
It 's in their nature ; it 's in their DNA ; it 's what they do -- even the good , well-intentioned companies .
On the one hand , putting childcare facilities in the workplace is wonderful and enlightened .
On the other hand , it 's a nightmare -- it just means you spend more time at the bloody office .
We have to be responsible for setting and enforcing the boundaries that we want in our life .
The third observation is we have to be careful with the time frame that we choose upon which to judge our balance .
Before I went back to work after my year at home , I sat down and I wrote out a detailed , step-by-step description of the ideal balanced day that I aspired to .
And it went like this : wake up well rested after a good night 's sleep .
Have sex .
Walk the dog .
Have breakfast with my wife and children .
Have sex again .
Drive the kids to school on the way to the office .
Do three hours ' work .
Play a sport with a friend at lunchtime .
Do another three hours ' work .
Meet some mates in the pub for an early evening drink .
Drive home for dinner with my wife and kids .
Meditate for half an hour .
Have sex .
Walk the dog . Have sex again .
Go to bed .
How often do you think I have that day ?
We need to be realistic .
You can 't do it all in one day .
We need to elongate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life , but we need to elongate it without falling into the trap of the " I 'll have a life when I retire , when my kids have left home , when my wife has divorced me , my health is failing , I 've got no mates or interests left . "
A day is too short ; " after I retire " is too long .
There 's got to be a middle way .
A fourth observation : We need to approach balance in a balanced way .
A friend came to see me last year -- and she doesn 't mind me telling this story -- a friend came to see me last year and said , " Nigel , I 've read your book .
And I realize that my life is completely out of balance .
It 's totally dominated by work .
I work 10 hours a day ; I commute two hours a day .
All of my relationships have failed .
There 's nothing in my life apart from my work .
So I 've decided to get a grip and sort it out .
So I joined a gym . "
Now I don 't mean to mock , but being a fit 10-hour-a-day office rat isn 't more balanced ; it 's more fit .
Lovely though physical exercise may be , there are other parts to life -- there 's the intellectual side ; there 's the emotional side ; there 's the spiritual side .
And to be balanced , I believe we have to attend to all of those areas -- not just do 50 stomach crunches .
Now that can be daunting .
Because people say , " Bloody hell mate , I haven 't got time to get fit .
You want me to go to church and call my mother . "
And I understand .
I truly understand how that can be daunting .
But an incident that happened a couple of years ago gave me a new perspective .
My wife , who is somewhere in the audience today , called me up at the office and said , " Nigel , you need to pick our youngest son " -- Harry -- " up from school . "
Because she had to be somewhere else with the other three children for that evening .
So I left work an hour early that afternoon and picked Harry up at the school gates .
We walked down to the local park , messed around on the swings , played some silly games .
I then walked him up the hill to the local cafe , and we shared a pizza for two , then walked down the hill to our home , and I gave him his bath and put him in his Batman pajamas .
I then read him a chapter of Roald Dahl 's " James and the Giant Peach . "
I then put him to bed , tucked him in , gave him a kiss on his forehead and said , " Goodnight , mate , " and walked out of his bedroom .
As I was walking out of his bedroom , he said , " Dad ? " I went , " Yes , mate ? "
He went , " Dad , this has been the best day of my life , ever . "
I hadn 't done anything , hadn 't taken him to Disney World or bought him a Playstation .
Now my point is the small things matter .
Being more balanced doesn 't mean dramatic upheaval in your life .
With the smallest investment in the right places , you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life .
Moreover , I think , it can transform society .
Because if enough people do it , we can change society 's definition of success away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins , to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well lived looks like .
And that , I think , is an idea worth spreading .
Sam Harris : Science can answer moral questions
Questions of good and evil , right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science . But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues , shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life .
I 'm going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values .
Now , it 's generally understood that questions of morality -- questions of good and evil and right and wrong -- are questions about which science officially has no opinion .
It 's thought that science can help us get what we value , but it can never tell us what we ought to value .
And , consequently , most people -- I think most people probably here -- think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life : questions like , " What is worth living for ? "
" What is worth dying for ? "
" What constitutes a good life ? "
So , I 'm going to argue that this is an illusion -- that the separation between science and human values is an illusion -- and actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history .
Now , it 's often said that science cannot give us a foundation for morality and human values , because science deals with facts , and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres .
It 's often thought that there 's no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be .
But I think this is quite clearly untrue .
Values are a certain kind of fact .
They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures .
Why is it that we don 't have ethical obligations toward rocks ?
Why don 't we feel compassion for rocks ?
It 's because we don 't think rocks can suffer . And if we 're more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects , as indeed we are , it 's because we think they 're exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering .
Now , the crucial thing to notice here is that this is a factual claim : This is something that we could be right or wrong about . And if we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience well then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects .
And there 's no notion , no version of human morality and human values that I 've ever come across that is not at some point reducible to a concern about conscious experience and its possible changes .
Even if you get your values from religion , even if you think that good and evil ultimately relate to conditions after death -- either to an eternity of happiness with God or an eternity of suffering in hell -- you are still concerned about consciousness and its changes .
And to say that such changes can persist after death is itself a factual claim , which , of course , may or may not be true .
Now , to speak about the conditions of well-being in this life , for human beings , we know that there is a continuum of such facts .
We know that it 's possible to live in a failed state , where everything that can go wrong does go wrong -- where mothers cannot feed their children , where strangers cannot find the basis for peaceful collaboration , where people are murdered indiscriminately .
And we know that it 's possible to move along this continuum towards something quite a bit more idyllic , to a place where a conference like this is even conceivable .
And we know -- we know -- that there are right and wrong answers to how to move in this space .
Would adding cholera to the water be a good idea ?
Probably not .
Would it be a good idea for everyone to believe in the evil eye , so that when bad things happened to them they immediately blame their neighbors ? Probably not .
There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish , whether or not we understand these truths .
And morality relates to these truths .
So , in talking about values we are talking about facts .
Now , of course our situation in the world can be understood at many levels -- from the level of the genome on up to the level of economic systems and political arrangements .
But if we 're going to talk about human well-being we are , of necessity , talking about the human brain .
Because we know that our experience of the world and of ourselves within it is realized in the brain -- whatever happens after death .
Even if the suicide bomber does get 72 virgins in the afterlife , in this life , his personality -- his rather unfortunate personality -- is the product of his brain .
So the contributions of culture -- if culture changes us , as indeed it does , it changes us by changing our brains .
And so therefore whatever cultural variation there is in how human beings flourish can , at least in principle , be understood in the context of a maturing science of the mind -- neuroscience , psychology , etc .
So , what I 'm arguing is that value 's reduced to facts -- to facts about the conscious experience of conscious beings .
And we can therefore visualize a space of possible changes in the experience of these beings .
And I think of this as kind of a moral landscape , with peaks and valleys that correspond to differences in the well-being of conscious creatures , both personal and collective .
And one thing to notice is that perhaps there are states of human well-being that we rarely access , that few people access .
And these await our discovery .
Perhaps some of these states can be appropriately called mystical or spiritual .
Perhaps there are other states that we can 't access because of how our minds are structured but other minds possibly could access them .
Now , let me be clear about what I 'm not saying . I 'm not saying that science is guaranteed to map this space , or that we will have scientific answers to every conceivable moral question .
I don 't think , for instance , that you will one day consult a supercomputer to learn whether you should have a second child , or whether we should bomb Iran 's nuclear facilities , or whether you can deduct the full cost of TED as a business expense .
But if questions affect human well-being then they do have answers , whether or not we can find them .
And just admitting this -- just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish -- will change the way we talk about morality , and will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future .
For instance , there are 21 states in our country where corporal punishment in the classroom is legal , where it is legal for a teacher to beat a child with a wooden board , hard , and raising large bruises and blisters and even breaking the skin .
And hundreds of thousands of children , incidentally , are subjected to this every year .
The locations of these enlightened districts , I think , will fail to surprise you .
We 're not talking about Connecticut .
And the rationale for this behavior is explicitly religious .
The creator of the universe himself has told us not to spare the rod , lest we spoil the child -- this is in Proverbs 13 and 20 , and I believe , 23 .
But we can ask the obvious question : Is it a good idea , generally speaking , to subject children to pain and violence and public humiliation as a way of encouraging healthy emotional development and good behavior ?
Is there any doubt that this question has an answer , and that it matters ?
Now , many of you might worry that the notion of well-being is truly undefined , and seemingly perpetually open to be re-construed .
And so , how therefore can there be an objective notion of well-being ?
Well , consider by analogy , the concept of physical health .
The concept of physical health is undefined .
As we just heard from Michael Specter , it has changed over the years .
When this statue was carved the average life expectancy was probably 30 .
It 's now around 80 in the developed world .
There may come a time when we meddle with our genomes in such a way that not being able to run a marathon at age 200 will be considered a profound disability .
People will send you donations when you 're in that condition .
Notice that the fact that the concept of health is open , genuinely open for revision , does not make it vacuous .
The distinction between a healthy person and a dead one is about as clear and consequential as any we make in science .
Another thing to notice is there may be many peaks on the moral landscape : There may be equivalent ways to thrive ; there may be equivalent ways to organize a human society so as to maximize human flourishing .
Now , why wouldn 't this undermine an objective morality ?
Well think of how we talk about food : I would never be tempted to argue to you that there must be one right food to eat .
There is clearly a range of materials that constitute healthy food .
But there 's nevertheless a clear distinction between food and poison .
The fact that there are many right answers to the question , " What is food ? "
does not tempt us to say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition .
Many people worry that a universal morality would require moral precepts that admit of no exceptions .
So , for instance , if it 's really wrong to lie , it must always be wrong to lie , and if you can find an exception , well then there 's no such thing as moral truth .
Why would we think this ?
Consider , by analogy , the game of chess .
Now , if you 're going to play good chess , a principle like , " Don 't lose your Queen , " is very good to follow .
But it clearly admits some exceptions .
There are moments when losing your Queen is a brilliant thing to do .
There are moments when it is the only good thing you can do .
And yet , chess is a domain of perfect objectivity .
The fact that there are exceptions here does not change that at all .
Now , this brings us to the sorts of moves that people are apt to make in the moral sphere .
Consider the great problem of women 's bodies : What to do about them ?
Well this is one thing you can do about them : You can cover them up .
Now , it is the position , generally speaking , of our intellectual community that while we may not like this , we might think of this as " wrong " in Boston or Palo Alto , who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags ?
And who are we to say , even , that they 're wrong to beat them with lengths of steel cable , or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way ?
Well , who are we not to say this ?
Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this ?
I 'm not talking about voluntary wearing of a veil -- women should be able to wear whatever they want , as far as I 'm concerned .
But what does voluntary mean in a community where , when a girl gets raped , her father 's first impulse , rather often , is to murder her out of shame ?
Just let that fact detonate in your brain for a minute : Your daughter gets raped , and what you want to do is kill her .
What are the chances that represents a peak of human flourishing ?
Now , to say this is not to say that we have got the perfect solution in our own society .
For instance , this is what it 's like to go to a newsstand almost anywhere in the civilized world .
Now , granted , for many men it may require a degree in philosophy to see something wrong with these images .
But if we are in a reflective mood , we can ask , " Is this the perfect expression of psychological balance with respect to variables like youth and beauty and women 's bodies ? "
I mean , is this the optimal environment in which to raise our children ?
Probably not . OK , so perhaps there 's some place on the spectrum between these two extremes that represents a place of better balance .
Perhaps there are many such places -- again , given other changes in human culture there may be many peaks on the moral landscape .
But the thing to notice is that there will be many more ways not to be on a peak .
Now the irony , from my perspective , is that the only people who seem to generally agree with me and who think that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions are religious demagogues of one form or another .
And of course they think they have right answers to moral questions because they got these answers from a voice in a whirlwind , not because they made an intelligent analysis of the causes and condition of human and animal well-being .
In fact , the endurance of religion as a lens through which most people view moral questions has separated most moral talk from real questions of human and animal suffering .
This is why we spend our time talking about things like gay marriage and not about genocide or nuclear proliferation or poverty or any other hugely consequential issue .
But the demagogues are right about one thing : We need a universal conception of human values .
Now , what stands in the way of this ?
Well , one thing to notice is that we do something different when talking about morality -- especially secular , academic , scientist types .
When talking about morality we value differences of opinion in a way that we don 't in any other area of our lives .
So , for instance the Dalai Lama gets up every morning meditating on compassion , and he thinks that helping other human beings is an integral component of human happiness .
On the other hand , we have someone like Ted Bundy ; Ted Bundy was very fond of abducting and raping and torturing and killing young women .
So , we appear to have a genuine difference of opinion about how to profitably use one 's time .
Most Western intellectuals look at this situation and say , " Well , there 's nothing for the Dalai Lama or for Ted Bundy to be really wrong about that admits of a real argument that potentially falls within the purview of science .
He likes chocolate , he likes vanilla .
There 's nothing that one should be able to say to the other that should persuade the other . "
Notice that we don 't do this in science .
On the left you have Edward Witten .
He 's a string theorist .
If you ask the smartest physicists around who is the smartest physicist around , in my experience half of them will say Ed Witten .
The other half will tell you they don 't like the question .
So , what would happen if I showed up at a physics conference and said , " String theory is bogus .
It doesn 't resonate with me . It 's not how I chose to view the universe at a small scale .
I 'm not a fan . "
Well , nothing would happen because I 'm not a physicist ; I don 't understand string theory .
I 'm the Ted Bundy of string theory .
I wouldn 't want to belong to any string theory club that would have me as a member .
But this is just the point .
Whenever we are talking about facts certain opinions must be excluded .
That is what it is to have a domain of expertise .
That is what it is for knowledge to count .
How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise , or moral talent , or moral genius even ?
How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count ?
How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering ?
Does the Taliban have a point of view on physics that is worth considering ? No .
How is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human well-being ?
So , this , I think , is what the world needs now .
It needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing , and morality relates to that domain of facts .
It is possible for individuals , and even for whole cultures , to care about the wrong things , which is to say that it 's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering .
Just admitting this will transform our discourse about morality .
We live in a world in which the boundaries between nations mean less and less , and they will one day mean nothing .
We live in a world filled with destructive technology , and this technology cannot be uninvented ; it will always be easier to break things than to fix them .
It seems to me , therefore , patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads , or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes .
We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life .
And to do that , we have to admit that these questions have answers .
Thank you very much .
So , some combustible material there .
Whether in this audience or people elsewhere in the world , hearing some of this , may well be doing the screaming-with-rage thing , after as well , some of them .
Language seems to be really important here .
When you 're talking about the veil , you 're talking about women dressed in cloth bags .
I 've lived in the Muslim world , spoken with a lot of Muslim women .
And some of them would say something else . They would say , " No , you know , this is a celebration of female specialness , it helps build that and it 's a result of the fact that " -- and this is arguably a sophisticated psychological view -- " that male lust is not to be trusted . "
I mean , can you engage in a conversation with that kind of woman without seeming kind of cultural imperialist ?
Sam Harris : Yeah , well I think I tried to broach this in a sentence , watching the clock ticking , but the question is : What is voluntary in a context where men have certain expectations , and you 're guaranteed to be treated in a certain way if you don 't veil yourself ?
And so , if anyone in this room wanted to wear a veil , or a very funny hat , or tattoo their face -- I think we should be free to voluntarily do whatever we want , but we have to be honest about the constraints that these women are placed under .
And so I think we shouldn 't be so eager to always take their word for it , especially when it 's 120 degrees out and you 're wearing a full burqa .
A lot of people want to believe in this concept of moral progress .
But can you reconcile that ?
I think I understood you to say that you could reconcile that with a world that doesn 't become one dimensional , where we all have to think the same .
Paint your picture of what rolling the clock 50 years forward , 100 years forward , how you would like to think of the world , balancing moral progress with richness .
SH : Well , I think once you admit that we are on the path toward understanding our minds at the level of the brain in some important detail , then you have to admit that we are going to understand all of the positive and negative qualities of ourselves in much greater detail .
So , we 're going to understand positive social emotion like empathy and compassion , and we 're going to understand the factors that encourage it -- whether they 're genetic , whether they 're how people talk to one another , whether they 're economic systems , and insofar as we begin to shine light on that we are inevitably going to converge on that fact space .
So , everything is not going to be up for grabs .
It 's not going to be like veiling my daughter from birth is just as good as teaching her to be confident and well-educated in the context of men who do desire women .
I mean I don 't think we need an NSF grant to know that compulsory veiling is a bad idea -- but at a certain point we 're going to be able to scan the brains of everyone involved and actually interrogate them .
Do people love their daughters just as much in these systems ?
And I think there are clearly right answers to that .
And if the results come out that actually they do , are you prepared to shift your instinctive current judgment on some of these issues ?
SH : Well yeah , modulo one obvious fact , that you can love someone in the context of a truly delusional belief system .
So , you can say like , " Because I knew my gay son was going to go to hell if he found a boyfriend , I chopped his head off . And that was the most compassionate thing I could do . "
If you get all those parts aligned , yes I think you could probably be feeling the emotion of love .
But again , then we have to talk about well-being in a larger context .
It 's all of us in this together , not one man feeling ecstasy and then blowing himself up on a bus .
Sam , this is a conversation I would actually love to continue for hours .
We don 't have that , but maybe another time . Thank you for coming to TED .
SH : Really an honor . Thank you .
Kathryn Schulz : On being wrong
Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong . But what if we 're wrong about that ? " Wrongologist " Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility .
So it 's 1995 , I 'm in college , and a friend and I go on a road trip from Providence , Rhode Island to Portland , Oregon .
And you know , we 're young and unemployed , so we do the whole thing on back roads through state parks and national forests -- basically the longest route we can possibly take .
And somewhere in the middle of South Dakota , I turn to my friend and I ask her a question that 's been bothering me for 2,000 miles .
" What 's up with the Chinese character I keep seeing by the side of the road ? "
My friend looks at me totally blankly .
There 's actually a gentleman in the front row who 's doing a perfect imitation of her look .
And I 'm like , " You know , all the signs we keep seeing with the Chinese character on them . "
She just stares at me for a few moments , and then she cracks up , because she figures out what I 'm talking about .
And what I 'm talking about is this .
Right , the famous Chinese character for picnic area .
I 've spent the last five years of my life thinking about situations exactly like this -- why we sometimes misunderstand the signs around us , and how we behave when that happens , and what all of this can tell us about human nature .
In other words , as you heard Chris say , I 've spent the last five years thinking about being wrong .
This might strike you as a strange career move , but it actually has one great advantage : no job competition .
In fact , most of us do everything we can to avoid thinking about being wrong , or at least to avoid thinking about the possibility that we ourselves are wrong .
We get it in the abstract .
We all know everybody in this room makes mistakes .
The human species , in general , is fallible -- okay fine .
But when it comes down to me , right now , to all the beliefs I hold , here in the present tense , suddenly all of this abstract appreciation of fallibility goes out the window -- and I can 't actually think of anything I 'm wrong about .
And the thing is , the present tense is where we live .
We go to meetings in the present tense ; we go on family vacations in the present tense ; we go to the polls and vote in the present tense .
So effectively , we all kind of wind up traveling through life , trapped in this little bubble of feeling very right about everything .
I think this is a problem .
I think it 's a problem for each of us as individuals , in our personal and professional lives , and I think it 's a problem for all of us collectively as a culture .
So what I want to do today is , first of all , talk about why we get stuck inside this feeling of being right .
And second , why it 's such a problem .
And finally , I want to convince you that it is possible to step outside of that feeling and that if you can do so , it is the single greatest moral , intellectual and creative leap you can make .
So why do we get stuck in this feeling of being right ?
One reason , actually , has to do with a feeling of being wrong .
So let me ask you guys something -- or actually , let me ask you guys something , because you 're right here : How does it feel -- emotionally -- how does it feel to be wrong ?
Dreadful . Thumbs down .
Embarrassing . Okay , wonderful , great .
Dreadful , thumbs down , embarrassing -- thank you , these are great answers , but they 're answers to a different question .
You guys are answering the question : How does it feel to realize you 're wrong ?
Realizing you 're wrong can feel like all of that and a lot of other things , right ?
I mean it can be devastating , it can be revelatory , it can actually be quite funny , like my stupid Chinese character mistake .
But just being wrong doesn 't feel like anything .
I 'll give you an analogy .
Do you remember that Loony Tunes cartoon where there 's this pathetic coyote who 's always chasing and never catching a roadrunner ?
In pretty much every episode of this cartoon , there 's a moment where the coyote is chasing the roadrunner and the roadrunner runs off a cliff , which is fine -- he 's a bird , he can fly .
But the thing is , the coyote runs off the cliff right after him .
And what 's funny -- at least if you 're six years old -- is that the coyote 's totally fine too .
He just keeps running -- right up until the moment that he looks down and realizes that he 's in mid-air .
That 's when he falls .
When we 're wrong about something -- not when we realize it , but before that -- we 're like that coyote after he 's gone off the cliff and before he looks down .
You know , we 're already wrong , we 're already in trouble , but we feel like we 're on solid ground .
So I should actually correct something I said a moment ago .
It does feel like something to be wrong ; it feels like being right .
So this is one reason , a structural reason , why we get stuck inside this feeling of rightness .
I call this error blindness .
Most of the time , we don 't have any kind of internal cue to let us know that we 're wrong about something , until it 's too late .
But there 's a second reason that we get stuck inside this feeling as well -- and this one is cultural .
Think back for a moment to elementary school .
You 're sitting there in class , and your teacher is handing back quiz papers , and one of them looks like this .
This is not mine , by the way .
So there you are in grade school , and you know exactly what to think about the kid who got this paper .
It 's the dumb kid , the troublemaker , the one who never does his homework .
So by the time you are nine years old , you 've already learned , first of all , that people who get stuff wrong are lazy , irresponsible dimwits -- and second of all , that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes .
We learn these really bad lessons really well .
And a lot of us -- and I suspect , especially a lot of us in this room -- deal with them by just becoming perfect little A students , perfectionists , over-achievers .
Right , Mr. CFO , astrophysicist , ultra-marathoner ?
You 're all CFO , astrophysicists , ultra-marathoners , it turns out .
Okay , so fine .
Except that then we freak out at the possibility that we 've gotten something wrong .
Because according to this , getting something wrong means there 's something wrong with us .
So we just insist that we 're right , because it makes us feel smart and responsible and virtuous and safe .
So let me tell you a story .
A couple of years ago , a woman comes into Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for a surgery .
Beth Israel 's in Boston .
It 's the teaching hospital for Harvard -- one of the best hospitals in the country .
So this woman comes in and she 's taken into the operating room .
She 's anesthetized , the surgeon does his thing -- stitches her back up , sends her out to the recovery room .
Everything seems to have gone fine .
And she wakes up , and she looks down at herself , and she says , " Why is the wrong side of my body in bandages ? "
Well the wrong side of her body is in bandages because the surgeon has performed a major operation on her left leg instead of her right one .
When the vice president for health care quality at Beth Israel spoke about this incident , he said something very interesting .
He said , " For whatever reason , the surgeon simply felt that he was on the correct side of the patient . "
The point of this story is that trusting too much in the feeling of being on the correct side of anything can be very dangerous .
This internal sense of rightness that we all experience so often is not a reliable guide to what is actually going on in the external world .
And when we act like it is , and we stop entertaining the possibility that we could be wrong , well that 's when we end up doing things like dumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico , or torpedoing the global economy .
So this is a huge practical problem .
But it 's also a huge social problem .
Think for a moment about what it means to feel right .
It means that you think that your beliefs just perfectly reflect reality .
And when you feel that way , you 've got a problem to solve , which is , how are you going to explain all of those people who disagree with you ?
It turns out , most of us explain those people the same way , by resorting to a series of unfortunate assumptions .
The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they 're ignorant .
They don 't have access to the same information that we do , and when we generously share that information with them , they 're going to see the light and come on over to our team .
When that doesn 't work , when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us , then we move on to a second assumption , which is that they 're idiots .
They have all the right pieces of the puzzle , and they are too moronic to put them together correctly .
And when that doesn 't work , when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart , then we move on to a third assumption : they know the truth , and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes .
So this is a catastrophe .
This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly .
But to me , what 's most baffling and most tragic about this is that it misses the whole point of being human .
It 's like we want to imagine that our minds are just these perfectly translucent windows and we just gaze out of them and describe the world as it unfolds .
And we want everybody else to gaze out of the same window and see the exact same thing .
That is not true , and if it were , life would be incredibly boring .
The miracle of your mind isn 't that you can see the world as it is .
It 's that you can see the world as it isn 't .
We can remember the past , and we can think about the future , and we can imagine what it 's like to be some other person in some other place .
And we all do this a little differently , which is why we can all look up at the same night sky and see this and also this and also this .
And yeah , it is also why we get things wrong .
1,200 years before Descartes said his famous thing about " I think therefore I am , " this guy , St. Augustine , sat down and wrote " Fallor ergo sum " -- " I err therefore I am . "
Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up , it 's not some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system , something we can eradicate or overcome .
It 's totally fundamental to who we are .
Because , unlike God , we don 't really know what 's going on out there .
And unlike all of the other animals , we are obsessed with trying to figure it out .
To me , this obsession is the source and root of all of our productivity and creativity .
Last year , for various reasons , I found myself listening to a lot of episodes of the Public Radio show This American Life .
And so I 'm listening and I 'm listening , and at some point , I start feeling like all the stories are about being wrong .
And my first thought was , " I 've lost it .
I 've become the crazy wrongness lady .
I just imagined it everywhere , " which has happened .
But a couple of months later , I actually had a chance to interview Ira Glass , who 's the host of the show .
And I mentioned this to him , and he was like , " No actually , that 's true .
In fact , " he says , " as a staff , we joke that every single episode of our show has the same crypto-theme .
And the crypto-theme is : ' I thought this one thing was going to happen and something else happened instead . ' And the thing is , " says Ira Glass , " we need this .
We need these moments of surprise and reversal and wrongness to make these stories work . "
And for the rest of us , audience members , as listeners , as readers , we eat this stuff up .
We love things like plot twists and red herrings and surprise endings .
When it comes to our stories , we love being wrong .
But , you know , our stories are like this because our lives are like this .
We think this one thing is going to happen and something else happens instead .
George Bush thought he was going to invade Iraq , find a bunch of weapons of mass destruction , liberate the people and bring democracy to the Middle East .
And something else happened instead .
And Hosni Mubarak thought he was going to be the dictator of Egypt for the rest of his life , until he got too old or too sick and could pass the reigns of power onto his son .
And something else happened instead .
And maybe you thought you were going to grow up and marry your high school sweetheart and move back to your hometown and raise a bunch of kids together .
And something else happened instead .
And I have to tell you that I thought I was writing an incredibly nerdy book about a subject everybody hates for an audience that would never materialize .
And something else happened instead .
I mean , this is life .
For good and for ill , we generate these incredible stories about the world around us , and then the world turns around and astonishes us .
No offense , but this entire conference is an unbelievable monument to our capacity to get stuff wrong .
We just spent an entire week talking about innovations and advancements and improvements , but you know why we need all of those innovations and advancements and improvements ?
Because half the stuff that 's the most mind-boggling and world-altering -- TED 1998 -- eh .
Didn 't really work out that way , did it ?
Where 's my jet pack , Chris ?
So here we are again .
And that 's how it goes .
We come up with another idea .
We tell another story .
We hold another conference .
The theme of this one , as you guys have now heard seven million times , is the rediscovery of wonder .
And to me , if you really want to rediscover wonder , you need to step outside of that tiny , terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say , " Wow , I don 't know .
Maybe I 'm wrong . "
Thank you .
Thank you guys .
Neil MacGregor : 2600 years of history in one object
A clay cylinder covered in Akkadian cuneiform script , damaged and broken , the Cyrus Cylinder is a powerful symbol of religious tolerance and multi-culturalism . In this enthralling talk Neil MacGregor , Director of the British Museum , traces 2600 years of Middle Eastern history through this single object .
The things we make have one supreme quality -- they live longer than us .
We perish , they survive ; we have one life , they have many lives , and in each life they can mean different things .
Which means that , while we all have one biography , they have many .
I want this morning to talk about the story , the biography -- or rather the biographies -- of one particular object , one remarkable thing .
It doesn 't , I agree , look very much .
It 's about the size of a rugby ball .
It 's made of clay , and it 's been fashioned into a cylinder shape , covered with close writing and then baked dry in the sun .
And as you can see , it 's been knocked about a bit , which is not surprising because it was made two and a half thousand years ago and was dug up in 1879 .
But today , this thing is , I believe , a major player in the politics of the Middle East .
And it 's an object with fascinating stories and stories that are by no means over yet .
The story begins in the Iran-Iraq war and that series of events that culminated in the invasion of Iraq by foreign forces , the removal of a despotic ruler and instant regime change .
And I want to begin with one episode from that sequence of events that most of you would be very familiar with , Belshazzar 's feast -- because we 're talking about the Iran-Iraq war of 539 BC .
And the parallels between the events of 539 BC and 2003 and in between are startling .
What you 're looking at is Rembrandt 's painting , now in the National Gallery in London , illustrating the text from the prophet Daniel in the Hebrew scriptures .
And you all know roughly the story .
Belshazzar , the son of Nebuchadnezzar , Nebuchadnezzar who 'd conquered Israel , sacked Jerusalem and captured the people and taken the Jews back to Babylon .
Not only the Jews , he 'd taken the temple vessels .
He 'd ransacked , desecrated the temple .
And the great gold vessels of the temple in Jerusalem had been taken to Babylon .
Belshazzar , his son , decides to have a feast .
And in order to make it even more exciting , he added a bit of sacrilege to the rest of the fun , and he brings out the temple vessels .
He 's already at war with the Iranians , with the king of Persia .
And that night , Daniel tells us , at the height of the festivities a hand appeared and wrote on the wall , " You are weighed in the balance and found wanting , and your kingdom is handed over to the Medes and the Persians . "
And that very night Cyrus , king of the Persians , entered Babylon and the whole regime of Belshazzar fell .
It is , of course , a great moment in the history of the Jewish people .
It 's a great story . It 's story we all know .
" The writing on the wall " is part of our everyday language .
What happened next was remarkable , and it 's where our cylinder enters the story .
Cyrus , king of the Persians , has entered Babylon without a fight -- the great empire of Babylon , which ran from central southern Iraq to the Mediterranean , falls to Cyrus .
And Cyrus makes a declaration .
And that is what this cylinder is , the declaration made by the ruler guided by God who had toppled the Iraqi despot and was going to bring freedom to the people .
In ringing Babylonian -- it was written in Babylonian -- he says , " I am Cyrus , king of all the universe , the great king , the powerful king , king of Babylon , king of the four quarters of the world . "
They 're not shy of hyperbole as you can see .
This is probably the first real press release by a victorious army that we 've got .
And it 's written , as we 'll see in due course , by very skilled P.R. consultants .
So the hyperbole is not actually surprising .
And what is the great king , the powerful king , the king of the four quarters of the world going to do ?
He goes on to say that , having conquered Babylon , he will at once let all the peoples that the Babylonians -- Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar -- have captured and enslaved go free .
He 'll let them return to their countries .
And more important , he will let them all recover the gods , the statues , the temple vessels that had been confiscated .
All the peoples that the Babylonians had repressed and removed will go home , and they 'll take with them their gods .
And they 'll be able to restore their altars and to worship their gods in their own way , in their own place .
This is the decree , this object is the evidence for the fact that the Jews , after the exile in Babylon , the years they 'd spent sitting by the waters of Babylon , weeping when they remembered Jerusalem , those Jews were allowed to go home .
They were allowed to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple .
It 's a central document in Jewish history .
And the Book of Chronicles , the Book of Ezra in the Hebrew scriptures reported in ringing terms .
This is the Jewish version of the same story .
" Thus said Cyrus , king of Persia , ' All the kingdoms of the earth have the Lord God of heaven given thee , and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem .
Who is there among you of his people ?
The Lord God be with him , and let him go up . ' " " Go up " -- aaleh .
The central element , still , of the notion of return , a central part of the life of Judaism .
As you all know , that return from exile , the second temple , reshaped Judaism .
And that change , that great historic moment , was made possible by Cyrus , the king of Persia , reported for us in Hebrew in scripture and in Babylonian in clay .
Two great texts , what about the politics ?
What was going on was the fundamental shift in Middle Eastern history .
The empire of Iran , the Medes and the Persians , united under Cyrus , became the first great world empire .
Cyrus begins in the 530s BC .
And by the time of his son Darius , the whole of the eastern Mediterranean is under Persian control .
This empire is , in fact , the Middle East as we now know it , and it 's what shapes the Middle East as we now know it .
It was the largest empire the world had known until then .
Much more important , it was the first multicultural , multifaith state on a huge scale .
And it had to be run in a quite new way .
It had to be run in different languages .
The fact that this decree is in Babylonian says one thing .
And it had to recognize their different habits , different peoples , different religions , different faiths .
All of those are respected by Cyrus .
Cyrus sets up a model of how you run a great multinational , multifaith , multicultural society .
And the result of that was an empire that included the areas you see on the screen , and which survived for 200 years of stability until it was shattered by Alexander .
It left a dream of the Middle East as a unit , and a unit where people of different faiths could live together .
The Greek invasions ended that .
And of course , Alexander couldn 't sustain a government and it fragmented .
But what Cyrus represented remained absolutely central .
The Greek historian Xenophon wrote his book " Cyropaedia " promoting Cyrus as the great ruler .
And throughout European culture afterward , Cyrus remained the model .
This is a 16th century image to show you how widespread his veneration actually was .
And Xenophon 's book on Cyrus on how you ran a diverse society was one of the great textbooks that inspired the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution .
Jefferson was a great admirer -- the ideals of Cyrus obviously speaking to those 18th century ideals of how you create religious tolerance in a new state .
Meanwhile , back in Babylon , things had not been going well .
After Alexander , the other empires , Babylon declines , falls into ruins , and all the traces of the great Babylonian empire are lost -- until 1879 when the cylinder is discovered by a British Museum exhibition digging in Babylon .
And it enters now another story .
It enters that great debate in the middle of the 19th century : Are the scriptures reliable ? Can we trust them ?
We only knew about the return of the Jews and the decree of Cyrus from the Hebrew scriptures .
No other evidence .
Suddenly , this appeared .
And great excitement to a world where those who believed in the scriptures had had their faith in creation shaken by evolution , by geology , here was evidence that the scriptures were historically true .
It 's a great 19th century moment .
But -- and this , of course , is where it becomes complicated -- the facts were true , hurrah for archeology , but the interpretation was rather more complicated .
Because the cylinder account and the Hebrew Bible account differ in one key respect .
The Babylonian cylinder is written by the priests of the great god of Bablyon , Marduk .
And , not surprisingly , they tell you that all this was done by Marduk .
" Marduk , we hold , called Cyrus by his name . "
Marduk takes Cyrus by the hand , calls him to shepherd his people and gives him the rule of Babylon .
Marduk tells Cyrus that he will do these great , generous things of setting the people free .
And this is why we should all be grateful to and worship Marduk .
The Hebrew writers in the Old Testament , you will not be surprised to learn , take a rather different view of this .
For them , of course , it can 't possibly by Marduk that made all this happen .
It can only be Jehovah .
And so in Isaiah , we have the wonderful texts giving all the credit of this , not to Marduk but to the Lord God of Israel -- the Lord God of Israel who also called Cyrus by name , also takes Cyrus by the hand and talks of him shepherding his people .
It 's a remarkable example of two different priestly appropriations of the same event , two different religious takeovers of a political fact .
God , we know , is usually on the side of the big battalions .
The question is , which god was it ?
And the debate unsettles everybody in the 19th century to realize that the Hebrew scriptures are part of a much wider world of religion .
And it 's quite clear the cylinder is older than the text of Isaiah , and yet , Jehovah is speaking in words very similar to those used by Marduk .
And there 's a slight sense that Isaiah knows this , because he says , this is God speaking , of course , " I have called thee by thy name though thou hast not known me . "
I think it 's recognized that Cyrus doesn 't realize that he 's acting under orders from Jehovah .
And equally , he 'd have been surprised that he was acting under orders from Marduk .
Because interestingly , of course , Cyrus is a good Iranian with a totally different set of gods who are not mentioned in any of these texts .
That 's 1879 .
40 years on and we 're in 1917 , and the cylinder enters a different world .
This time , the real politics of the contemporary world -- the year of the Balfour Declaration , the year when the new imperial power in the Middle East , Britain , decides that it will declare a Jewish national home , it will allow the Jews to return .
And the response to this by the Jewish population in Eastern Europe is rhapsodic .
And across Eastern Europe , Jews display pictures of Cyrus and of George V side by side -- the two great rulers who have allowed the return to Jerusalem .
And the Cyrus cylinder comes back into public view and the text of this as a demonstration of why what is going to happen after the war is over in 1918 is part of a divine plan .
You all know what happened .
The state of Israel is setup , and 50 years later , in the late 60s , it 's clear that Britain 's role as the imperial power is over .
And another story of the cylinder begins .
The region , the U.K. and the U.S. decide , has to be kept safe from communism , and the superpower that will be created to do this would be Iran , the Shah .
And so the Shah invents an Iranian history , or a return to Iranian history , that puts him in the center of a great tradition and produces coins showing himself with the Cyrus cylinder .
When he has his great celebrations in Persepolis , he summons the cylinder and the cylinder is lent by the British Museum , goes to Tehran , and is part of those great celebrations of the Pahlavi dynasty .
Cyrus cylinder : guarantor of the Shah .
10 years later , another story : Iranian Revolution , 1979 .
Islamic revolution , no more Cyrus ; we 're not interested in that history , we 're interested in Islamic Iran -- until Iraq , the new superpower that we 've all decided should be in the region , attacks .
Then another Iran-Iraq war .
And it becomes critical for the Iranians to remember their great past , their great past when they fought Iraq and won .
It becomes critical to find a symbol that will pull together all Iranians -- Muslims and non-Muslims , Christians , Zoroastrians , Jews living in Iran , people who are devout , not devout .
And the obvious emblem is Cyrus .
So when the British Museum and Tehran National Musuem cooperate and work together , as we 've been doing , the Iranians ask for one thing only as a loan .
It 's the only object they want .
They want to borrow the Cyrus cylinder .
And last year , the Cyrus cylinder went to Tehran for the second time .
It 's shown being presented here , put into its case by the director of the National Museum of Tehran , one of the many women in Iran in very senior positions , Mrs. Ardakani .
It was a huge event .
This is the other side of that same picture .
It 's seen in Tehran by between one and two million people in the space of a few months .
This is beyond any blockbuster exhibition in the West .
And it 's the subject of a huge debate about what this cylinder means , what Cyrus means , but above all , Cyrus as articulated through this cylinder -- Cyrus as the defender of the homeland , the champion , of course , of Iranian identity and of the Iranian peoples , tolerant of all faiths .
And in the current Iran , Zoroastrians and Christians have guaranteed places in the Iranian parliament , something to be very , very proud of .
To see this object in Tehran , thousands of Jews living in Iran came to Tehran to see it .
It became a great emblem , a great subject of debate about what Iran is at home and abroad .
Is Iran still to be the defender of the oppressed ?
Will Iran set free the people that the tyrants have enslaved and expropriated ?
This is heady national rhetoric , and it was all put together in a great pageant launching the return .
Here you see this out-sized Cyrus cylinder on the stage with great figures from Iranian history gathering to take their place in the heritage of Iran .
It was a narrative presented by the president himself .
And for me , to take this object to Iran , to be allowed to take this object to Iran was to be allowed to be part of an extraordinary debate led at the highest levels about what Iran is , what different Irans there are and how the different histories of Iran might shape the world today .
It 's a debate that 's still continuing , and it will continue to rumble , because this object is one of the great declarations of a human aspiration .
It stands with the American constitution .
It certainly says far more about real freedoms than Magna Carta .
It is a document that can mean so many things , for Iran and for the region .
A replica of this is at the United Nations .
In New York this autumn , it will be present when the great debates about the future of the Middle East take place .
And I want to finish by asking you what the next story will be in which this object figures .
It will appear , certainly , in many more Middle Eastern stories .
And what story of the Middle East , what story of the world , do you want to see reflecting what is said , what is expressed in this cylinder ?
The right of peoples to live together in the same state , worshiping differently , freely -- a Middle East , a world , in which religion is not the subject of division or of debate .
In the world of the Middle East at the moment , the debates are , as you know , shrill .
But I think it 's possible that the most powerful and the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing , the Cyrus cylinder .
Thank you .
Joshua Klein : A thought experiment on the intelligence of crows
Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows . After a long amateur study of corvid behavior , he 's come up with an elegant thought experiment : a machine that could form a new bond between animal and human .
How many of you have seen the Alfred Hitchcock film " The Birds " ?
Any of you get really freaked out by that ?
You might want to leave now .
So , this is a vending machine for crows .
And over the past few days , many of you have been asking me , " How did you come to this ? How did you get started doing this ? "
And it started , as with many great ideas , or many ideas you can 't get rid of anyway , at a cocktail party .
About 10 years ago , I was at a cocktail party with a friend of mine , and we 're sitting there , and he was complaining about the crows that he had seen that were all over his yard and making a big mess .
And he was telling me that really , we ought to try and eradicate these things .
We gotta kill them because they 're making a mess .
I said that was stupid , you know , maybe we should just train them to do something useful .
And he said that was impossible .
And I 'm sure I 'm in good company in finding that tremendously annoying -- when someone tells you it 's impossible .
So , I spent the next 10 years reading about crows in my spare time .
And after 10 years of this , my wife eventually said , " Look , you know , you gotta do this thing you 've been talking about , and build the vending machine . "
So I did .
But part of the reason that I found this interesting is that I started noticing that we are very aware of all the species that are going extinct on the planet as a result of human habitation expansion , and no one seems to be paying attention to all the species that are actually living -- that are surviving .
And I 'm talking specifically about synanthropic species , which are species that have adapted specifically for human ecologies , species like rats and cockroaches and crows .
And as I started looking at them , I was finding that they had hyper-adapted .
They 'd become extremely adept at living with us .
And in return , we just tried to kill them all the time .
And in doing so , we were breeding them for parasitism .
We were giving them all sorts of reasons to adapt new ways .
So , for example , rats are incredibly responsive breeders .
And cockroaches , as anyone who 's tried to get rid of them knows , have become really immune to the poisons that we 're using .
So , I thought , let 's build something that 's mutually beneficial .
Well , then let 's build something that we can both benefit from , and find some way to make a new relationship with these species .
And so I built the vending machine .
But the story of the vending machine is a little more interesting if you know more about crows .
It turns out that crows aren 't just surviving with human beings -- they 're actually really thriving .
They 're found everywhere on the planet except for the Arctic and the southern tip of South America .
And in all that area , they 're only rarely found breeding more than five kilometers away from human beings .
So we may not think about them , but they 're always around .
And not surprisingly , given the human population growth , more than half of the human population is living in cities now .
And out of those , nine-tenths of the human growth population is occurring in cities .
We 're seeing a population boom with crows .
So bird counts are indicating that we might be seeing up to exponential growth in their numbers .
So that 's no great surprise .
But what was really interesting to me was to find out that the birds were adapting in a pretty unusual way .
And I 'll give you an example of that .
So this is Betty . She 's a New Caledonian crow .
And these crows use sticks in the wild to get insects and whatnot out of pieces of wood .
Here , she 's trying to get a piece of meat out of a tube .
But the researchers had a problem .
They messed up and left just a stick of wire in there .
And she hadn 't had the opportunity to do this before .
You see , it wasn 't working very well .
So she adapted .
Now this is completely unprompted . She had never seen this done before .
No one taught her to bend this into a hook , had shown her how it could happen .
But she did it all on her own .
So keep in mind that she 's never seen this done .
Right .
Yeah . All right .
That 's the part where the researchers freak out .
So , it turns out we 've been finding more and more that crows are really , really intelligent .
Their brains are proportionate , in the same proportion as chimpanzee brains are .
There are all kinds of anecdotes for different kinds of intelligence they have .
For example , in Sweden , crows will wait for fishermen to drop lines through holes in the ice .
And when the fishermen move off , the crows fly down , reel up the lines , and eat the fish or the bait .
It 's pretty annoying for the fishermen .
On an entirely different tack , at University of Washington , they , a few years ago , were doing an experiment where they captured some crows on campus .
Some students went out and netted some crows , brought them in , and were -- weighed them , and measured them and whatnot , and then let them back out again .
And were entertained to discover that for the rest of the week , these crows , whenever these particular students walked around campus , these crows would caw at them , and run around and make their life kind of miserable .
They were significantly less entertained when this went on for the next week .
And the next month . And after summer break .
Until they finally graduated and left campus , and -- glad to get away , I 'm sure -- came back sometime later , and found the crows still remembered them .
So -- the moral being , don 't piss off crows .
So now , students at the University of Washington that are studying these crows do so with a giant wig and a big mask .
It 's fairly interesting .
So we know that these crows are really smart , but the more I dug into this , the more I found that they actually have an even more significant adaptation .
Crows have become highly skilled at making a living in these new urban environments .
In this Japanese city , they have devised a way of eating a food that normally they can 't manage : drop it among the traffic .
The problem now is collecting the bits , without getting run over .
Wait for the light to stop the traffic .
Then , collect your cracked nut in safety .
Joshua Klein : Yeah , yeah . Pretty interesting .
So what 's significant about this isn 't that crows are using cars to crack nuts .
In fact , that 's old hat for crows .
This happened about 10 years ago in a place called Sendai City , at a driving school in the suburbs of Tokyo .
And since that time , all of the crows in the neighborhood are picking up this behavior .
And now , every crow within five kilometers is standing by a sidewalk , waiting to collect its lunch .
So , they 're learning from each other . And research bears this out .
Parents seem to be teaching their young .
They 've learned from their peers . They 've learned from their enemies .
If I have a little extra time , I 'll tell you about a case of crow infidelity that illustrates that nicely .
The point being that they 've developed cultural adaptation .
And as we heard yesterday , that 's the Pandora 's box that 's getting human beings in trouble , and we 're starting to see it with them .
They 're able to very quickly and very flexibly adapt to new challenges and new resources in their environment , which is really useful if you live in a city .
So we know that there 's lots of crows .
We found out they 're really smart , and we found out that they can teach each other .
And when all this became clear to me , I realized the only obvious thing to do is build a vending machine .
So that 's what we did .
This is a vending machine for crows .
And it uses Skinnerian training to shape their behavior over four stages .
It 's pretty simple .
Basically , what happens is that we put this out in a field , or someplace where there 's lots of crows , and we put coins and peanuts all around the base of the machine .
And crows eventually come by , and eat the peanuts and get used to the machine being there .
And eventually , they eat up all the peanuts .
And then they see that there are peanuts here on the feeder tray , and they hop up and help themselves .
And then they leave , and the machine spits up more coins and peanuts , and life is really dandy , if you 're a crow .
Then you can come back anytime and get yourself a peanut .
So , when they get really used to that , we move on to the crows coming back .
Now , they 're used to the sound of the machine , and they keep coming back , and digging out these peanuts from amongst the pile of coins that 's there .
And when they get really happy about this , we go ahead and stymie them .
And we move to the third stage , where we only give them a coin .
Now , like most of us who have gotten used to a good thing , this really pisses them off .
So , they do what they do in nature when they 're looking for something -- they sweep things out of the way with their beak .
And they do that here , and that knocks the coins down the slot , and when that happens , they get a peanut .
And so this goes on for some time .
The crows learn that all they have to do is show up , wait for the coin to come out , put the coin in the slot , and then they get their peanut .
And when they 're really good and comfortable with that , we move to the final stage , in which they show up and nothing happens .
And this is where we see the difference between crows and other animals .
Squirrels , for example , would show up , look for the peanut , go away .
Come back , look for the peanut , go away .
They do this maybe half a dozen times before they get bored , and then they go off and play in traffic .
Crows , on the other hand , show up , and they try and figure it out .
They know that this machine 's been messing with them , through three different stages of behavior .
They figure it 's gotta have more to it .
So , they poke at it and peck at it and whatnot .
And eventually some crow gets a bright idea that , " Hey , there 's lots of coins lying around from the first stage , lying around on the ground , " hops down , picks it up , drops it in the slot .
And then , we 're off to the races .
That crow enjoys a temporary monopoly on peanuts , until his friends figure out how to do it , and then there we go .
So , what 's significant about this to me isn 't that we can train crows to pick up peanuts .
Mind you , there 's 216 million dollars ' worth of change lost every year , but I 'm not sure I can depend on that ROI from crows .
Instead , I think we should look a little bit larger .
I think that crows can be trained to do other things .
For example , why not train them to pick up garbage after stadium events ?
Or find expensive components from discarded electronics ?
Or maybe do search and rescue ?
The main thing , the main point of all this for me is that we can find mutually beneficial systems for these species .
We can find ways to interact with these other species that doesn 't involve exterminating them , but involves finding an equilibrium with them that 's a useful balance .
Thanks very much .
David Logan : Tribal leadership
David Logan talks about the five kinds of tribes that humans naturally form -- in schools , workplaces , even the driver 's license bureau . By understanding our shared tribal tendencies , we can help lead each other to become better individuals .
What we 're really here to talk about is the " how . "
Okay , so how exactly do we create this world-shattering , if you will , innovation ?
Now , I want to tell you a quick story .
We 'll go back a little more than a year .
In fact , the date -- I 'm curious to know if any of you know what happened on this momentous date ?
It was February 3rd , 2008 .
Anyone remember what happened , February 3rd , 2008 ?
Super Bowl . I heard it over here . It was the date of the Super Bowl .
And the reason that this date was so momentous is that what my colleagues , John King and Halee Fischer-Wright , and I noticed as we began to debrief various Super Bowl parties , is that it seemed to us that across the United States , if you will , tribal councils had convened .
And they had discussed things of great national importance .
Like , " Do we like the Budweiser commercial ? "
and , " Do we like the nachos ? " and , " Who is going to win ? "
But they also talked about which candidate they were going to support .
And if you go back in time to February 3rd , it looked like Hilary Clinton was going to get the Democratic nomination .
And there were even some polls that were saying she was going to go all the way .
But when we talked to people , it appeared that a funnel effect had happened in these tribes all across the United States .
Now what is a tribe ? A tribe is a group of about 20 -- so kind of more than a team -- 20 to about 150 people .
And it 's within these tribes that all of our work gets done .
But not just work . It 's within these tribes that societies get built , that important things happen .
And so as we surveyed the , if you will , representatives from various tribal councils that met , also known as Super Bowl parties , we sent the following email off to 40 newspaper editors the following day .
February 4th , we posted it on our website . This was before Super Tuesday .
We said , " The tribes that we 're in are saying it 's going to be Obama . "
Now , the reason we knew that was because we spent the previous 10 years studying tribes , studying these naturally occurring groups .
All of you are members of tribes .
In walking around at the break , many of you had met members of your tribe . And you were talking to them .
And many of you were doing what great , if you will , tribal leaders do , which is to find someone who is a member of a tribe , and to find someone else who is another member of a different tribe , and make introductions .
That is in fact what great tribal leaders do .
So here is the bottom line .
If you focus in on a group like this -- this happens to be a USC game -- and you zoom in with one of those super satellite cameras and do magnification factors so you could see individual people , you would in fact see not a single crowd , just like there is not a single crowd here , but you would see these tribes that are then coming together .
And from a distance it appears that it 's a single group .
And so people form tribes .
They always have . They always will .
Just as fish swim and birds fly , people form tribes . It 's just what we do .
But here 's the rub .
Not all tribes are the same , and what makes the difference is the culture .
Now here is the net out of this .
You 're all a member of tribes .
If you can find a way to take the tribes that you 're in and nudge them forward , along these tribal stages to what we call Stage Five , which is the top of the mountain .
But we 're going to start with what we call Stage One .
Now , this is the lowest of the stages .
You don 't want this . Okay ?
This is a bit of a difficult image to put up on the screen .
But it 's one that I think we need to learn from .
Stage One produces people who do horrible things .
This is the kid who shot up Virginia Tech .
Stage One is a group where people systematically sever relationships from functional tribes , and then pool together with people who think like they do .
Stage One is literally the culture of gangs and it is the culture of prisons .
Now , again , we don 't often deal with Stage One .
And I want to make the point that as members of society , we need to .
It 's not enough to simply write people off .
But let 's move on to Stage Two .
Now , Stage One , you 'll notice , says , in effect , " Life Sucks . "
So , this other book that Steve mentioned , that just came out , called " The Three Laws of Performance , " my colleague , Steve Zaffron and I , argue that as people see the world , so they behave .
Well , if people see the world in such a way that life sucks , then their behavior will follow automatically from that .
It will be despairing hostility .
They 'll do whatever it takes to survive , even if that means undermining other people .
Now , my birthday is coming up shortly , and my driver 's license expires .
And the reason that that 's relevant is that very soon I will be walking into what we call a Stage Two tribe , which looks like this .
Now , am I saying that in every Department of Motor Vehicles across the land , you find a Stage Two culture ?
No . But in the one near me , where I have to go in just a few days , what I will say when I 'm standing in line is , " How can people be so dumb , and yet live ? "
Now , am I saying that there are dumb people working here ?
Actually , no , I 'm not .
But I 'm saying the culture makes people dumb .
So in a Stage Two culture -- and we find these in all sorts of different places -- you find them , in fact , in the best organizations in the world .
You find them in all places in society .
I 've come across them at the organizations that everybody raves about as being best in class .
But here is the point . If you believe and you say to people in your tribe , in effect , " My life sucks .
I mean , if I got to go to TEDx USC my life wouldn 't suck . But I don 't . So it does . "
If that 's how you talked , imagine what kind of work would get done .
What kind of innovation would get done ?
The amount of world-changing behavior that would happen ?
In fact it would be basically nil .
Now when we go on to Stage Three : this is the one that hits closest to home for many of us .
Because it is in Stage Three that many of us move .
And we park . And we stay .
Stage Three says , " I 'm great . And you 're not . "
I 'm great and you 're not .
Now imagine having a whole room of people saying , in effect , " I 'm great and you 're not . "
Or , " I 'm going to find some way to compete with you and come out on top as a result of that . "
A whole group of people communicating that way , talking that way .
I know this sounds like a joke . Three doctors walk into a bar .
But , in this case , three doctors walk into an elevator .
I happened to be in the elevator collecting data for this book .
And one doctor said to the others , " Did you see my article in the New England Journal of Medicine ? "
And the other said , " No . That 's great . Congratulations ! "
The next one got kind of a wry smile on his face and said , " Well while you were , you know , doing your research , " -- notice the condescending tone -- " While you were off doing your research , I was off doing more surgeries than anyone else in the department of surgery at this institution . "
And the third one got the same wry smile and said , " Well , while you were off doing your research , and you were off doing your monkey meatball surgery , that eventually we 'll train monkeys to do , or cells or robots , or maybe not even need to do it at all , I was off running the future of the residency program , which is really the future of medicine . "
And they all kind of laughed and they patted him on the back .
And the elevator door opened , and they all walked out .
That is a meeting of a Stage Three tribe .
Now , we find these in places where really smart , successful people show up .
Like , oh , I don 't know , TEDx USC .
Here is the greatest challenge we face in innovation .
It is moving from Stage Three to Stage Four .
Let 's take a look at a quick video snippet .
This is from a company called Zappos , located outside Las Vegas .
And my question on the other side is just going to be , " What do you think they value ? "
It was not Christmas time . There was a Christmas tree .
This is their lobby .
Employees volunteer time in the advice booth .
Notice it looks like something out of a Peanuts cartoon .
Okay , we 're going through the hallway here at Zappos .
This is a call center . Notice how it 's decorated .
Notice people are applauding for us .
They don 't know who we are and they don 't care . And if they did they probably wouldn 't applaud .
But you 'll notice the level of excitement .
Notice , again , how they decorate their office .
Now , what 's important to people at Zappos , these may not be the things that are important to you .
But they value things like fun . And they value creativity .
One of their stated values is , " Be a little bit weird . "
And you 'll notice they are a little bit weird .
So when individuals come together and find something that unites them that 's greater than their individual competence , then something very important happens .
The group gels . And it changes from a group of highly motivated but fairly individually-centric people into something larger , into a tribe that becomes aware of its own existence .
Stage Four tribes can do remarkable things .
But you 'll notice we 're not at the top of the mountain yet .
There is , in fact , another stage .
Now , some of you may not recognize the scene that 's up here .
And if you take a look at the headline of Stage Five , which is " Life is Great , " this may seem a little incongruous .
This is a scene or snippet from the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa for which Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Prize .
Now think about that . South Africa , terrible atrocities had happened in the society .
And people came together focused only on those two values : truth and reconciliation .
There was no road map . No one had ever done anything like this before .
And in this atmosphere , where the only guidance was people 's values and their noble cause , what this group accomplished was historic .
And people , at the time , feared that South Africa would end up going the way that Rwanda has gone , descending into one skirmish after another in a civil war that seems to have no end .
In fact , South Africa has not gone down that road .
Largely because people like Desmond Tutu set up a Stage Five process to involve the thousands and perhaps millions of tribes in the country , to bring everyone together .
So , people hear this and they conclude the following , as did we in doing the study .
Okay , got it . I don 't want to talk Stage One .
That 's like , you know , " Life sucks . " Who wants to talk that way ?
I don 't want to talk like they do at the particular DMV that 's close to where Dave lives .
I really don 't want to just say " I 'm great , " because that kind of sounds narcissistic , and then I won 't have any friends .
Saying , " We 're great " -- that sounds pretty good .
But I should really talk Stage Five , right ? " Life is great . "
Well , in fact , there are three somewhat counter-intuitive findings that come out of all this .
The first one , if you look at the Declaration of Independence and actually read it , the phrase that sticks in many of our minds is things about inalienable rights .
I mean , that 's Stage Five , right ? Life is great , oriented only by our values , no other guidance .
In fact , most of the document is written at Stage Two .
" My life sucks because I live under a tyrant , also known as King George .
We 're great ! Who is not great ? England ! "
Sorry .
Well , what about other great leaders ? What about Gandhi ?
What about Martin Luther King ?
I mean , surely these were just people who preached , " Life is great , " right ?
Just one little bit of happiness and joy after another .
In fact , Martin Luther King 's most famous line was at Stage Three .
He didn 't say " We have a dream . " He said , " I have a dream . "
Why did he do that ? Because most people are not at Stage Five .
Two percent are at Stage One .
About 25 percent are at Stage Two , saying , in effect , " My life sucks . "
48 percent of working tribes say , these are employed tribes , say , " I 'm great and you 're not . "
And we have to duke it out every day , so we resort to politics .
Only about 22 percent of tribes are at Stage Four , oriented by our values , saying " We 're great .
And our values are beginning to unite us . "
Only two percent , only two percent of tribes get to Stage Five .
And those are the ones that change the world .
So the first little finding from this is that leaders need to be able to talk all the levels so that you can touch every person in society .
But you don 't leave them where you found them . Okay ?
Tribes can only hear one level above and below where they are .
So we have to have the ability to talk all the levels , to go to where they are .
And then leaders nudge people within their tribes to the next level .
I 'd like to show you some examples of this .
One of the people we interviewed was Frank Jordan , former Mayor of San Francisco . Before that he was Chief of Police in San Francisco .
And he grew up essentially in Stage One .
And you know what changed his life ? It was walking into one of these , a Boys and Girls Club .
Now here is what happened to this person who eventually became Mayor of San Francisco .
He went from being alive and passionate at Stage One -- remember , " Life sucks , despairing hostility , I will do whatever it takes to survive " -- to walking into a Boys and Girls Club , folding his arms , sitting down in a chair , and saying , " Wow . My life really sucks .
I don 't know anybody .
I mean , if I was into boxing , like they were , then my life wouldn 't suck . But I don 't . So it does .
So I 'm going to sit here in my chair and not do anything . "
In fact , that 's progress .
We move people from Stage One to Stage Two by getting them in a new tribe and then , over time , getting them connected .
So , what about moving from Stage Three to Stage Four ?
I want to argue that we 're doing that right here .
TED represents a set of values , and as we unite around these values , something really interesting begins to emerge .
If you want this experience to live on as something historic , then at the reception tonight I 'd like to encourage you to do something beyond what people normally do and call networking .
Which is not just to meet new people and extend your reach , extend your influence , but instead , find someone you don 't know , and find someone else you don 't know , and introduce them .
That 's called a triadic relationship .
See , people who build world-changing tribes do that .
They extend the reach of their tribes by connecting them , not just to myself , so that my following is greater , but I connect people who don 't know each other to something greater than themselves .
And ultimately that adds to their values .
But we 're not done yet . Because then how do we go from Stage Four , which is great , to Stage Five ?
The story that I like to end with is this . It comes out of a place called the Gallup Organization .
You know they do polls , right ?
So it 's Stage Four . We 're great . Who is not great ?
Pretty much everybody else who does polls .
If Gallup releases a poll on the same day that NBC releases a poll , people will pay attention to the Gallup poll . Okay , we understand that .
So , they were bored .
They wanted to change the world . So here is the question someone asked .
" How could we , instead of just polling what Asia thinks or what the United States thinks , or who thinks what about Obama versus McCain or something like that , what does the entire world think ? "
And they found a way to do the first-ever world poll .
They had people involved who were Nobel laureates in economics , who reported being bored .
And suddenly they pulled out sheets of paper and were trying to figure out , " How do we survey the population of Sub-Saharan Africa ?
How do we survey populations that don 't have access to technology , and speak languages we don 't speak , and we don 't know anyone who speaks those languages . Because in order to achieve on this great mission , we have to be able to do it .
Incidentally , they did pull it off .
And they released the first-ever world poll .
So I 'd like to leave you with these thoughts .
First of all : we all form tribes , all of us .
You 're in tribes here . Hopefully you 're extending the reach of the tribes that you have .
But the question on the table is this : What kind of an impact are the tribes that you are in making ?
You 're hearing one presentation after another , often representing a group of people , a tribe , about how they have changed the world .
If you do what we 've talked about , you listen for how people actually communicate in the tribes that you 're in .
And you don 't leave them where they are . You nudge them forward .
You remember to talk all five culture stages .
Because we 've got people in all five , around us .
And the question that I 'd like to leave you with is this : Will your tribes change the world ?
Thank you very much .
Frederick Balagadde : Bio-lab on a microchip
Drugs alone can 't stop disease in sub-Saharan Africa : We need diagnostic tools to match . TED Senior Fellow Frederick Balagadde shows how we can multiply the power and availability of an unwieldy , expensive diagnostic lab -- by miniaturizing it to the size of a chip .
The greatest irony in global health is that the poorest countries carry the largest disease burden .
If we resize the countries of the globe in proportion to the subject of interest , we see that Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst hit region by HIV / AIDS .
This is the most devastating epidemic of our time .
We also see that this region has the least capability in terms of dealing with the disease .
There are very few doctors and , quite frankly , these countries do not have the resources that are needed to cope with such epidemics .
So what the Western countries , developed countries , have generously done is they have proposed to provide free drugs to all people in Third World countries who actually can 't afford these medications .
And this has already saved millions of lives , and it has prevented entire economies from capsizing in Sub-Saharan Africa .
But there is a fundamental problem that is killing the efforts in fighting this disease , because if you keep throwing drugs out at people who don 't have diagnostic services , you end up creating a problem of drug resistance .
This is already beginning to happen in Sub-Saharan Africa .
The problem is that , what begins as a tragedy in the Third World could easily become a global problem .
And the last thing we want to see is drug-resistant strains of HIV popping up all over the world , because it will make treatment more expensive and it could also restore the pre-ARV carnage of HIV / AIDS .
I experienced this firsthand as a high school student in Uganda .
This was in the 90s during the peak of the HIV epidemic , before there were any ARVs in Sub-Saharan Africa .
And during that time , I actually lost more relatives , as well as the teachers who taught me , to HIV / AIDS .
So this became one of the driving passions of my life , to help find real solutions that could address these kinds of problems .
We all know about the miracle of miniaturization .
Back in the day , computers used to fill this entire room , and people actually used to work inside the computers .
But what electronic miniaturization has done is that it has allowed people to shrink technology into a cell phone .
And I 'm sure everyone here enjoys cell phones that can actually be used in the remote areas of the world , in the Third World countries .
The good news is that the same technology that allowed miniaturization of electronics is now allowing us to miniaturize biological laboratories .
So , right now , we can actually miniaturize biological and chemistry laboratories onto microfluidic chips .
I was very lucky to come to the US right after high school , and was able to work on this technology and develop some devices .
This is a microfluidic chip that I developed .
A close look at how the technology works : These are channels that are about the size of a human hair -- so you have integrated valves , pumps , mixers and injectors -- so you can fit entire diagnostic experiments onto a microfluidic system .
So what I plan to do with this technology is to actually take the current state of the technology and build an HIV kit in a microfluidic system .
So , with one microfluidic chip , which is the size of an iPhone , you can actually diagnose 100 patients at the same time .
For each patient , we will be able to do up to 100 different viral loads per patient .
And this is only done in four hours , 50 times faster than the current state of the art , at a cost that will be five to 500 times cheaper than the current options .
So this will allow us to create personalized medicines in the Third World at a cost that is actually achievable and make the world a safer place .
I invite your interest as well as your involvement in driving this vision to a point of practical reality .
Thank you very much .
Jonathan Drori : The beautiful tricks of flowers
In this visually dazzling talk , Jonathan Drori shows the extraordinary ways flowering plants -- over a quarter million species -- have evolved to attract insects to spread their pollen : growing ' landing-strips ' to guide the insects in , shining in ultraviolet , building elaborate traps , and even mimicking other insects in heat .
Do you know how many species of flowering plants there are ?
There are a quarter of a million -- at least those are the ones we know about -- a quarter of a million species of flowering plants .
And flowers are a real bugger .
They 're really difficult for plants to produce .
They take an enormous amount of energy and a lot of resources .
Why would they go to that bother ?
And the answer of course , like so many things in the world , is sex .
I know what 's on your mind when you 're looking at these pictures .
And the reason that sexual reproduction is so important -- there are lots of other things that plants can do to reproduce .
You can take cuttings ; they can sort of have sex with themselves ; they can pollinate themselves .
But they really need to spread their genes to mix with other genes so that they can adapt to environmental niches .
Evolution works that way .
Now the way that plants transmit that information is through pollen .
Some of you may have seen some of these pictures before .
As I say , every home should have a scanning electron microscope to be able to see these .
And there is as many different kinds of pollen as there are flowering plants .
And that 's actually rather useful for forensics and so on .
Most pollen that causes hay fever for us is from plants that use the wind to disseminate the pollen , and that 's a very inefficient process , which is why it gets up our noses so much .
Because you have to chuck out masses and masses of it , hoping that your sex cells , your male sex cells , which are held within the pollen , will somehow reach another flower just by chance .
So all the grasses , which means all of the cereal crops , and most of the trees have wind-borne pollen .
But most species actually use insects to do their bidding , and that 's more intelligent in a way , because the pollen , they don 't need so much of it .
The insects and other species can take the pollen , transfer it directly to where it 's required .
So we 're aware , obviously , of the relationship between insects and plants .
There 's a symbiotic relationship there , whether it 's flies or birds or bees , they 're getting something in return , and that something in return is generally nectar .
Sometimes that symbiosis has led to wonderful adaptations -- the hummingbird hawk-moth is beautiful in its adaptation .
The plant gets something , and the hawk-moth spreads the pollen somewhere else .
Plants have evolved to create little landing strips here and there for bees that might have lost their way .
There are markings on many plants that look like other insects .
These are the anthers of a lily , cleverly done so that when the unsuspecting insect lands on it , the anther flips up and whops it on the back with a great load of pollen that it then goes to another plant with .
And there 's an orchid that might look to you as if it 's got jaws , and in a way , it has ; it forces the insect to crawl out , getting covered in pollen that it takes somewhere else .
Orchids : there are 20,000 , at least , species of orchids -- amazingly , amazingly diverse .
And they get up to all sorts of tricks .
They have to try and attract pollinators to do their bidding .
This orchid , known as Darwin 's orchid , because it 's one that he studied and made a wonderful prediction when he saw it -- you can see that there 's a very long nectar tube that descends down from the orchid .
And basically what the insect has to do -- we 're in the middle of the flower -- it has to stick its little proboscis right into the middle of that and all the way down that nectar tube to get to the nectar .
And Darwin said , looking at this flower , " I guess something has coevolved with this . "
And sure enough , there 's the insect .
And I mean , normally it kind of rolls it away , but in its erect form , that 's what it looks like .
Now you can imagine that if nectar is such a valuable thing and expensive for the plant to produce and it attracts lots of pollinators , then , just as in human sex , people might start to deceive .
They might say , " I 've got a bit of nectar . Do you want to come and get it ? "
Now this is a plant .
This is a plant here that insects in South Africa just love , and they 've evolved with a long proboscis to get the nectar at the bottom .
And this is the mimic .
So this is a plant that is mimicking the first plant .
And here is the long-probosced fly that has not gotten any nectar from the mimic , because the mimic doesn 't give it any nectar . It thought it would get some .
So not only has the fly not got the nectar from the mimic plant , it 's also -- if you look very closely just at the head end , you can see that it 's got a bit of pollen that it would be transmitting to another plant , if only some botanist hadn 't come along and stuck it to a blue piece of card .
Now deceit carries on through the plant kingdom .
This flower with its black dots : they might look like black dots to us , but if I tell you , to a male insect of the right species , that looks like two females who are really , really hot to trot .
And when the insect gets there and lands on it , dousing itself in pollen , of course , that it 's going to take to another plant , if you look at the every-home-should-have-one scanning electron microscope picture , you can see that there are actually some patterning there , which is three-dimensional .
So it probably even feels good for the insect , as well as looking good .
And these electron microscope pictures -- here 's one of an orchid mimicking an insect -- you can see that different parts of the structure have different colors and different textures to our eye , have very , very different textures to what an insect might perceive .
And this one is evolved to mimic a glossy metallic surface you see on some beetles .
And under the scanning electron microscope , you can see the surface there -- really quite different from the other surfaces we looked at .
Sometimes the whole plant mimics an insect , even to us .
I mean , I think that looks like some sort of flying animal or beast .
It 's a wonderful , amazing thing .
This one 's clever . It 's called obsidian .
I think of it as insidium sometimes .
To the right species of bee , this looks like another very aggressive bee , and it goes and bonks it on the head lots and lots of times to try and drive it away , and , of course , covers itself with pollen .
The other thing it does is that this plant mimics another orchid that has a wonderful store of food for insects .
And this one doesn 't have anything for them .
So it 's deceiving on two levels -- fabulous .
Here we see ylang ylang , the component of many perfumes .
I actually smelt someone with some on earlier .
And the flowers don 't really have to be that gaudy .
They 're sending out a fantastic array of scent to any insect that 'll have it .
This one doesn 't smell so good .
This is a flower that really , really smells pretty nasty and is designed , again , evolved , to look like carrion .
So flies love this .
They fly in and they pollinate .
This , which is helicodiceros , is also known as dead horse arum .
I don 't know what a dead horse actually smells like , but this one probably smells pretty much like it .
It 's really horrible .
And blowflies just can 't help themselves .
They fly into this thing , and they fly all the way down it .
They lay their eggs in it , thinking it 's a nice bit of carrion , and not realizing that there 's no food for the eggs , that the eggs are going to die , but the plant , meanwhile , has benefited , because the bristles release and the flies disappear to pollinate the next flower -- fantastic .
Here 's arum , arum maculatum , " lords and ladies , " or " cuckoo-pint " in this country .
I photographed this thing last week in Dorset .
This thing heats up by about 15 degrees above ambient temperature -- amazing .
And if you look down into it , there 's this sort of dam past the spadix , flies get attracted by the heat -- which is boiling off volatile chemicals , little midges -- and they get trapped underneath in this container .
They drink this fabulous nectar and then they 're all a bit sticky .
At night they get covered in pollen , which showers down over them , and then the bristles that we saw above , they sort of wilt and allow all these midges out , covered in pollen -- fabulous thing .
Now if you think that 's fabulous , this is one of my great favorites .
This is the philodendron selloum .
For anyone here from Brazil , you 'll know about this plant .
This is the most amazing thing .
That sort of phallic bit there is about a foot long .
And it does something that no other plant that I know of does , and that is that when it flowers -- that 's the spadix in the middle there -- for a period of about two days , it metabolizes in a way which is rather similar to mammals .
So instead of having starch , which is the food of plants , it takes something rather similar to brown fat and burns it at such a rate that it 's burning fat , metabolizing , about the rate of a small cat .
And that 's twice the energy output , weight for weight , than a hummingbird -- absolutely astonishing .
This thing does something else which is unusual .
Not only will it raise itself to 115 Fahrenheit , 43 or 44 degrees Centigrade , for two days , but it keeps constant temperature .
There 's a thermoregulation mechanism in there that keeps constant temperature .
" Now why does it do this , " I hear you ask .
Now wouldn 't you know it , there 's some beetles that just love to make love at that temperature .
And they get inside , and they get it all on .
And the plant showers them with pollen , and off they go and pollinate .
And what a wonderful thing it is .
Now most pollinators that we think about are insects , but actually in the tropics , many birds and butterflies pollinate .
And many of the tropical flowers are red , and that 's because butterflies and birds see similarly to us , we think , and can see the color red very well .
But if you look at the spectrum , birds and us , we see red , green and blue and see that spectrum .
Insects see green , blue and ultraviolet , and they see various shades of ultraviolet .
So there 's something that goes on off the end there .
" And wouldn 't it be great if we could somehow see what that is , " I hear you ask .
Well yes we can .
So what is an insect seeing ?
Last week I took these pictures of rock rose , helianthemum , in Dorset .
These are little yellow flowers like we all see , little yellow flowers all over the place .
And this is what it looks like with visible light .
This is what it looks like if you take out the red .
Most bees don 't perceive red .
And then I put some ultraviolet filters on my camera and took a very , very long exposure with the particular frequencies of ultraviolet light and this is what I got .
And that 's a real fantastic bull 's eye .
Now we don 't know exactly what a bee sees , any more than you know what I 'm seeing when I call this red .
We can 't know what 's going on in -- let alone an insect 's -- another human being 's mind .
But the contrast will look something like that , so standing out a lot from the background .
Here 's another little flower -- different range of ultraviolet frequencies , different filters to match the pollinators .
And that 's the sort of thing that it would be seeing .
Just in case you think that all yellow flowers have this property -- no flower was damaged in the process of this shot ; it was just attached to the tripod , not killed -- then under ultraviolet light , look at that .
And that could be the basis of a sunscreen because sunscreens work by absorbing ultraviolet light .
So maybe the chemical in that would be useful .
Finally , there 's one of evening primrose that Bjorn Rorslett from Norway sent me -- fantastic hidden pattern .
And I love the idea of something hidden .
I think there 's something poetic here , that these pictures taken with ultraviolet filter , the main use of that filter is for astronomers to take pictures of Venus -- actually the clouds of Venus .
That 's the main use of that filter .
Venus , of course , is the god of love and fertility , which is the flower story .
And just as flowers spend a lot of effort trying to get pollinators to do their bidding , they 've also somehow managed to persuade us to plant great fields full of them and give them to each other at times of birth and death , and particularly at marriage , which , when you think of it , is the moment that encapsulates the transfer of genetic material from one organism to another .
Thank you very much .
Srdja Popovic : How to topple a dictator
2011 was a year of people-powered resistance , starting with Arab Spring and spreading across the world . How did it work ? Srdja Popovic lays out the plans , skills and tools each movement needs -- from nonviolent tactics to a sense of humor . & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
Good afternoon . I am proud to be here at TEDxKrakow .
I 'll try to speak a little bit today about a phenomenon which can and is actually changing the world , and whose name is people power .
I 'll start with the anecdote , or for those of you who are Monty Python lovers , a Monty Python type of sketch .
Here it is . It is December 15 , 2010 .
Somebody gives you a bet . You will look at a crystal ball and you will see the future . The future will be accurate .
But you need to share it with the world . Okay ?
Curiosity killed the cat . You take the bet .
You look at the crystal ball . One hour later , you are sitting in a building on the national TV in a talkshow , and you tell the story .
" Before the end of 2011 , Ben Ali and Mubarak and Gaddafi will be down and prosecuted .
Saleh of Yemen and Assad of Syria would be either challenged or already on their knees .
Osama bin Laden will be dead , and Ratko Mladic will be in the Hague . "
Now , the anchor watches you with a strange gaze on his face , and then on the top of it you add , " And thousands of the young people from Athens , Madrid and New York will demonstrate for social justice , claiming that they are inspired with Arabs . "
Next thing you know , two guys in white appear .
They give you the strange t-shirt , take you to the nearest mental institution .
So I would like to speak a little bit about the phenomenon which is behind what already seems to be the very bad year for bad guys , and this phenomenon is called people power .
Well , people power has been there for a while .
It helped Gandhi kick the Brits from India .
It helped Martin Luther King win a historic racial struggle .
It helped local Lech Walesa to kick out one million Soviet troops from Poland and beginning the end of the Soviet Union as we know it .
So what 's new in it ? What seems to be very new , which is the idea I would like to share with you today , that there is a set of rules and skills which can be learned and taught in order to perform successful nonviolent struggle .
If this is true , we can help these movements .
Well , first one , analytic skills .
I 'll try where it all started in the Middle East , and for so many years we were living with completely the wrong perception of the Middle East .
It was looking like the frozen region , literally a refrigerator , and there are only two types of meals there : steak , which stands for a Mubarak , Ben Ali-type of military police dictatorship , or a potato , which stands for Tehran types of theocracies .
And everybody was amazed when the refrigerator opened and millions of young , mainly secular people step out to do the change . Guess what ? They didn 't watch the demographics .
What is the average age of Egyptians ? 24 .
How long was Mubarak in power ? 31 .
So this system : just obsolete . They expired , and young people of the Arab World have awakened one morning and understood that power lies in their hands .
The rest is the year in front of us . And guess what ?
The same Generation Epsilon with their rules , with their tools , with their games and with their language , which sounds a little bit strange to me . I am 38 now .
And can you look at the age of the people on the streets of Europe ?
It seems that Generation Epsilon is coming .
Now let me set another example .
I 'm meeting different people throughout the world , and they are , you know , academics and professors and doctors , and they will always talk conditions .
They will say , " People power will work only if the regime is not too oppressive . "
They will say , " People power will work if the annual income of the country is between X and Z. "
They will say , " People power will work only if there is a foreign pressure . "
They will say , " People power will work only if there is no oil . "
And , I mean , there is a set of conditions .
Well , the news here is that your skills [ that you ] bring in the conflict seem to be more important than the conditions , namely skills of unity , planning , and maintaining nonviolent discipline .
Let me give you the example .
I am coming from a country called Serbia .
It took us 10 years to unite 18 opposition party leaders , with their big egos , behind one single candidate against Balkan dictator Slobodan Milosevic .
Guess what ? That was the day of his defeat .
You look at the Egyptians , they fire on Tahrir Square , they get rid of their individual symbols .
They appear on the street only with the flag of Egypt .
I will give you a counter-example .
You see nine presidential candidates running against Lukashenko .
You will know the outcome .
So unity is a big thing , and this can be achieved .
Same with planning . Somebody has lied to you about the successful and spontaneous nonviolent revolution ?
That thing doesn 't exist in the world .
Whenever you see young people in front of the road trying to fraternize with the police or military , somebody was thinking about it before .
Now , at the end , nonviolent discipline , and this is probably the game-changer .
If you maintain nonviolent discipline , you will exclusively win .
You have 100,000 people in a nonviolent march , and one idiot or agent provocateur is throwing stones , guess what takes all the cameras ? That one guy .
One single act of violence can literally destroy your movement .
Now let me move to another place .
It 's selection of strategies and tactics .
There are certain rules in nonviolent struggle you may follow .
First , you start small .
Second , you pick the battles you can win .
It 's only 200 of us in this room .
We won 't call for the March of Millions .
But what if we organize spraying graffiti throughout the night all over Krakow city ? The city will know .
So we pick the tactics which accommodates to the event , especially this thing we call the small tactics of dispersion .
They 're very useful in a violent oppression .
We are actually witnessing the picture of one of the best tactics ever used .
It was on Tahrir Square , where the international community was constantly frightened that the Islamists will overtake the revolution . Well , they 've organized Christians protecting Muslims , who are there praying , Coptic wedding cheered by thousands of Muslims .
The world has just changed the picture , but somebody was thinking about this previously .
So there are so many things you can do instead of getting into one place , shouting and showing off in front of the security forces .
Now there is also another very important dynamic , and this is a dynamic normally analytics don 't see .
This is dynamics between fear and apathy on one side and enthusiasm and humor on another side .
So it works like in a video game .
You have a fear high , you have status quo .
You have enthusiasm higher , you see fear starting to melt .
Day two , you see people running towards police instead of from the police .
In Egypt , you can tell that something is happening there .
And then it 's about humor . Humor is such a powerful game-changer , and of course it was very big in Poland .
And you know , we were just a small group of crazy students in Serbia when we made this big skit .
We put the big petrol barrel with a portrait picture of Mr. President on it in the middle of the Main Street . There was a hole on the top so you could literally come , put a coin in , get a baseball bat , and pow , hit his face .
Sounds loud . And within the minutes , we were sitting in a nearby cafe having coffee , and there was a queue of people waiting to do this lovely thing .
Well , that 's just the beginning of the show .
The real show starts when the police appears .
What will they do ? Arrest us ? We are nowhere to be seen .
We are three blocks away observing it from our espresso bar .
Arrest the shoppers with kids ? Doesn 't make sense .
Of course , you could bet they have done the most stupid thing : They arrested the barrel . And now the picture of the smashed face on the barrel with the policeman dragging them to the police car , that was the best day for the photographers from newspapers that they ever will have .
So , I mean , these are the things you can do , and you can always use the humor .
There is also one big thing about the humor : It really hurts , because these guys really are taking themselves too seriously .
When you start to mock them , it hurts .
Now , everybody is talking about His Majesty , the Internet , and it is also a very useful skill , but don 't rush to label things like Facebook Revolution , Twitter Revolution .
Don 't mix tools with the substance .
It is true that the Internet and new media are very useful in making things faster and cheaper .
They make it also a bit safer for the participants because they give the part of anonymity .
We are watching the great example of something else the Internet can do .
It can put the price tag of state-sponsored violence over nonviolent protesters .
This is a famous group , We are all Khaled Said , made by Wael Ghonim in Egypt and his friend .
This is the mutilated face of the guy who was beaten by the police .
This is how he became the public , and this is what probably became the straw which broke the camel 's back .
But here is also the bad news .
The nonviolent struggle is won in the real world , in the streets . You will never change your society towards democracy or economics if you sit down and click .
There are risks to be taken and there are living people who are winning the struggle .
Well , million dollar question : What will happen in the Arab World ?
And though young people from the Arab World were pretty successful in bringing down three dictators , shaking the region , kind of persuading clever kings from Jordan and Morocco doing substantial reforms , it is yet to be seen what will be the outcome , whether the Egyptians and Tunisians will make it through the transition or this will end in bloody ethnic and religious conflict , whether the Syrians will maintain nonviolent discipline , faced with the brutal daily violence which kills thousands already , or they will slip into violent struggle and make ugly civil war .
Will these revolutions be whole like through the transitions to democracy or be overtaken by military or extremists of all kinds ? We cannot tell .
Same works for the Western sector , where you can see all of these excited young people protesting around the world , occupying this , occupying that .
Are they going to become the world wave ?
Are they going to find their skills , their enthusiasm , and their strategy to find what they really want and push for the reform , or will they just stay complaining about the endless list of the things they hate ?
This is the difference between two towns .
Now , what [ do ] the statistics have ?
My friend 's book , Maria Stephan 's book , talks a lot about violent and nonviolent struggle , and there are some shocking data .
If you look at the last 35 years and different social transitions from dictatorship to democracy , you will see that out of 67 different cases , in 50 of these cases it was nonviolent struggle which was the key power .
This is one more reason to look at this phenomenon .
This is one more reason to look at the Generation Epsilon , enough for me to give them credit and hope that they will find their skills and their courage to use the nonviolent struggle and thus fix at least a part of the mess our generation is making in this world .
Thank you .
Gordon Brown : Wiring a web for global good
We 're at a unique moment in history , says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown : we can use today 's interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic -- and work together to confront the challenges of poverty , security , climate change and the economy .
Can I say how delighted I am to be away from the calm of Westminster and Whitehall ?
This is Kim , a nine-year-old Vietnam girl , her back ruined by napalm , and she awakened the conscience of the nation of America to begin to end the Vietnam War .
This is Birhan , who was the Ethiopian girl who launched Live Aid in the 1980s , 15 minutes away from death when she was rescued , and that picture of her being rescued is one that went round the world .
This is Tiananmen Square .
A man before a tank became a picture that became a symbol for the whole world of resistance .
This next is the Sudanese girl , a few moments from death , a vulture hovering in the background , a picture that went round the world and shocked people into action on poverty .
This is Neda , the Iranian girl who was shot while at a demonstration with her father in Iran only a few weeks ago , and she is now the focus , rightly so , of the YouTube generation .
And what do all these pictures and events have in common ?
What they have in common is what we see unlocks what we cannot see .
What we see unlocks the invisible ties and bonds of sympathy that bring us together to become a human community .
What these pictures demonstrate is that we do feel the pain of others , however distantly .
What I think these pictures demonstrate is that we do believe in something bigger than ourselves .
What these pictures demonstrate is that there is a moral sense across all religions , across all faiths , across all continents -- a moral sense that not only do we share the pain of others , and believe in something bigger than ourselves but we have a duty to act when we see things that are wrong that need righted , see injuries that need to be corrected , see problems that need to be rectified .
There is a story about Olof Palme , the Swedish Prime Minister , going to see Ronald Reagan in America in the 1980s .
Before he arrived Ronald Reagan said -- and he was the Swedish Social Democratic Prime Minister -- " Isn 't this man a communist ? "
The reply was , " No , Mr President , he 's an anti-communist . "
And Ronald Reagan said , " I don 't care what kind of communist he is ! "
Ronald Reagan asked Olof Palme , the Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden , " Well , what do you believe in ? Do you want to abolish the rich ? "
He said , " No , I want to abolish the poor . "
Our responsibility is to let everyone have the chance to realize their potential to the full .
I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith , and people of no faith .
But I think what 's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world .
We now have the capacity to find common ground with people who we will never meet , but who we will meet through the Internet and through all the modern means of communication ; that we now have the capacity to organize and take collective action together to deal with the problem or an injustice that we want to deal with ; and I believe that this makes this a unique age in human history , and it is the start of what I would call the creation of a truly global society .
Go back 200 years when the slave trade was under pressure from William Wilberforce and all the protesters .
They protested across Britain .
They won public opinion over a long period of time .
But it took 24 years for the campaign to be successful .
What could they have done with the pictures that they could have shown if they were able to use the modern means of communication to win people 's hearts and minds ?
Or if you take Eglantyne Jebb , the woman who created Save the Children 90 years ago .
She was so appalled by what was happening in Austria as a result of the First World War and what was happening to children who were part of the defeated families of Austria , that in Britain she wanted to take action , but she had to go house to house , leaflet to leaflet , to get people to attend a rally in the Royal Albert Hall that eventually gave birth to Save the Children , an international organization that is now fully recognized as one of the great institutions in our land and in the world .
But what more could she have done if she 'd had the modern means of communications available to her to create a sense that the injustice that people saw had to be acted upon immediately ?
Now look at what 's happened in the last 10 years .
In Philippines in 2001 , President Estrada -- a million people texted each other about the corruption of that regime , eventually brought it down and it was , of course , called the " coup de text . "
Then you have in Zimbabwe the first election under Robert Mugabe a year ago .
Because people were able to take mobile phone photographs of what was happening at the polling stations , it was impossible for that Premier to fix that election in the way that he wanted to do .
Or take Burma and the monks that were blogging out , a country that nobody knew anything about that was happening , until these blogs told the world that there was a repression , meaning that lives were being lost and people were being persecuted and Aung San Suu Kyi , who is one of the great prisoners of conscience of the world , had to be listened to .
Then take Iran itself , and what people are doing today : following what happened to Neda , people who are preventing the security services of Iran finding those people who are blogging out of Iran , any by everybody who is blogging , changing their address to Tehran , Iran , and making it difficult for the security services .
Take , therefore , what modern technology is capable of : the power of our moral sense allied to the power of communications and our ability to organize internationally .
That , in my view , gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world .
Foreign policy can never be the same again . It cannot be run by elites ; it 's got to be run by listening to the public opinions of peoples who are blogging , who are communicating with each other around the world .
200 years ago the problem we had to solve was slavery .
150 years ago I suppose the main problem in a country like ours was how young people , children , had the right to education .
100 years ago in most countries in Europe , the pressure was for the right to vote .
50 years ago the pressure was for the right to social security and welfare .
In the last 50-60 years we have seen fascism , anti-Semitism , racism , apartheid , discrimination on the basis of sex and gender and sexuality ; all these have come under pressure because of the campaigns that have been run by people to change the world .
I was with Nelson Mandela a year ago , when he was in London .
I was at a concert that he was attending to mark his birthday and for the creation of new resources for his foundation .
I was sitting next to Nelson Mandela -- I was very privileged to do so -- when Amy Winehouse came onto the stage .
And Nelson Mandela was quite surprised at the appearance of the singer and I was explaining to him at the time who she was .
Amy Winehouse said , " Nelson Mandela and I have a lot in common .
My husband too has spent a long time in prison . "
Nelson Mandela then went down to the stage and he summarized the challenge for us all .
He said in his lifetime he had climbed a great mountain , the mountain of challenging and then defeating racial oppression and defeating apartheid .
He said that there was a greater challenge ahead , the challenge of poverty , of climate change -- global challenges that needed global solutions and needed the creation of a truly global society .
We are the first generation which is in a position to do this .
Combine the power of a global ethic with the power of our ability to communicate and organize globally , with the challenges that we now face , most of which are global in their nature .
Climate change cannot be solved in one country , but has got to be solved by the world working together .
A financial crisis , just as we have seen , could not be solved by America alone or Europe alone ; it needed the world to work together .
Take the problems of security and terrorism and , equally , the problem of human rights and development : they cannot be solved by Africa alone ; they cannot be solved by America or Europe alone .
We cannot solve these problems unless we work together .
So the great project of our generation , it seems to me , is to build for the first time , out of a global ethic and our global ability to communicate and organize together , a truly global society , built on that ethic but with institutions that can serve that global society and make for a different future .
We have now , and are the first generation with , the power to do this .
Take climate change . Is it not absolutely scandalous that we have a situation where we know that there is a climate change problem , where we know also that that will mean we have to give more resources to the poorest countries to deal with that , when we want to create a global carbon market , but there is no global institution that people have been able to agree upon to deal with this problem ?
One of the things that has got to come out of Copenhagen in the next few months is an agreement that there will be a global environmental institution that is able to deal with the problems of persuading the whole of the world to move along a climate-change agenda .
One of the reasons why an institution is not in itself enough is that we have got to persuade people around the world to change their behavior as well , so you need that global ethic of fairness and responsibility across the generations .
Take the financial crisis .
If people in poorer countries can be hit by a crisis that starts in New York or starts in the sub-prime market of the United States of America .
If people can find that that sub-prime product has been transferred across nations many , many times until it ends up in banks in Iceland or the rest in Britain , and people 's ordinary savings are affected by it , then you cannot rely on a system of national supervision .
You need in the long run for stability , for economic growth , for jobs , as well as for financial stability , global economic institutions that make sure that growth to be sustained has to be shared , and are built on the principle that the prosperity of this world is indivisible .
So another challenge for our generation is to create global institutions that reflect our ideas of fairness and responsibility , not the ideas that were the basis of the last stage of financial development over these recent years .
Then take development and take the partnership we need between our countries and the rest of the world , the poorest part of the world .
We do not have the basis of a proper partnership for the future , and yet , out of people 's desire for a global ethic and a global society that can be done .
I have just been talking to the President of Sierra Leone .
This is a country of six and a half million people , but it has only 80 doctors ; it has 200 nurses ; it has 120 midwives .
You cannot begin to build a healthcare system for six million people with such limited resources .
Or take the girl I met when I was in Tanzania , a girl called Miriam .
She was 11 years old ; her parents had both died from AIDS , her mother and then her father .
She was an AIDS orphan being handed across different extended families to be cared for .
She herself was suffering from HIV ; she was suffering from tuberculosis .
I met her in a field , she was ragged , she had no shoes .
When you looked in her eyes , any girl at the age of eleven is looking forward to the future , but there was an unreachable sadness in that girl 's eyes and if I could have translated that to the rest of the world for that moment , I believe that all the work that it had done for the global HIV / AIDS fund would be rewarded by people being prepared to make donations .
We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture , so that Africa is not a net importer of food , but an exporter of food .
Take the problems of human rights and the problems of security in so many countries around the world .
Burma is in chains , Zimbabwe is a human tragedy , in Sudan thousands of people have died unnecessarily for wars that we could prevent .
In the Rwanda Children 's Museum , there is a photograph of a 10-year-old boy and the Children 's Museum is commemorating the lives that were lost in the Rwandan genocide where a million people died .
There is a photograph of a boy called David .
Beside that photograph there is the information about his life .
It said " David , age 10 . "
David : ambition to be a doctor .
Favorite sport : football . What did he enjoy most ?
Making people laugh .
How did he die ?
Tortured to death .
Last words said to his mother who was also tortured to death : " Don 't worry . The United Nations are coming . "
And we never did .
And that young boy believed our promises that we would help people in difficulty in Rwanda , and we never did .
So we have got to create in this world also institutions for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid , but also for reconstruction and security for some of the conflict-ridden states of the world .
So my argument today is basically this .
We have the means by which we could create a truly global society .
The institutions of this global society can be created by our endeavors .
That global ethic can infuse the fairness and responsibility that is necessary for these institutions to work , but we should not lose the chance in this generation , in this decade in particular , with President Obama in America , with other people working with us around the world , to create global institutions for the environment , and for finance , and for security and for development , that make sense of our responsibility to other peoples , our desire to bind the world together , and our need to tackle problems that everybody knows exist .
It is said that in Ancient Rome that when Cicero spoke to his audiences , people used to turn to each other and say about Cicero , " Great speech . "
But it is said that in Ancient Greece when Demosthenes spoke to his audiences , people turned to each other and didn 't say " Great speech . "
They said , " Let 's march . "
We should be marching towards a global society .
Thank you .
Oliver Sacks : What hallucination reveals about our minds
Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnet syndrome -- when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations . He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon .
We see with the eyes , but we see with the brain as well .
And seeing with the brain is often called imagination .
And we are familiar with the landscapes of our own imagination , our inscapes . We 've lived with them all our lives .
But there are also hallucinations as well , and hallucinations are completely different .
They don 't seem to be of our creation .
They don 't seem to be under our control .
They seem to come from the outside , and to mimic perception .
So I am going to be talking about hallucinations , and a particular sort of visual hallucination which I see among my patients .
A few months ago , I got a phone call from a nursing home where I work .
They told me that one of their residents , an old lady in her 90s , was seeing things , and they wondered if she 'd gone bonkers or , because she was an old lady , whether she 'd had a stroke , or whether she had Alzheimer 's .
And so they asked me if I would come and see Rosalie , the old lady .
I went in to see her .
It was evident straight away that she was perfectly sane and lucid and of good intelligence , but she 'd been very startled and very bewildered , because she 'd been seeing things .
And she told me -- the nurses hadn 't mentioned this -- that she was blind , that she had been completely blind from macular degeneration for five years .
But now , for the last few days , she 'd been seeing things .
So I said , " What sort of things ? "
And she said , " People in Eastern dress , in drapes , walking up and down stairs .
A man who turns towards me and smiles .
But he has huge teeth on one side of his mouth .
Animals too .
I see a white building . It 's snowing , a soft snow .
I see this horse with a harness , dragging the snow away .
Then , one night , the scene changes .
I see cats and dogs walking towards me .
They come to a certain point and then stop .
Then it changes again .
I see a lot of children . They are walking up and down stairs .
They wear bright colors , rose and blue , like Eastern dress . "
Sometimes , she said , before the people come on , she may hallucinate pink and blue squares on the floor , which seem to go up to the ceiling .
I said , " Is this like a dream ? "
And she said , " No , it 's not like a dream . It 's like a movie . "
She said , " It 's got color . It 's got motion .
But it 's completely silent , like a silent movie . "
And she said that it 's a rather boring movie .
She said , " All these people with Eastern dress , walking up and down , very repetitive , very limited . "
And she has a sense of humor .
She knew it was a hallucination .
But she was frightened . She 'd lived 95 years and she 'd never had a hallucination before .
She said that the hallucinations were unrelated to anything she was thinking or feeling or doing , that they seemed to come on by themselves , or disappear .
She had no control over them .
She said she didn 't recognize any of the people or places in the hallucinations .
And none of the people or the animals , well , they all seemed oblivious of her .
And she didn 't know what was going on .
She wondered if she was going mad or losing her mind .
Well , I examined her carefully .
She was a bright old lady , perfectly sane . She had no medical problems .
She wasn 't on any medications which could produce hallucinations .
But she was blind .
And I then said to her , " I think I know what you have . "
I said , " There is a special form of visual hallucination which may go with deteriorating vision or blindness .
This was originally described , " I said , " right back in the 18th century , by a man called Charles Bonnet .
And you have Charles Bonnet syndrome .
There is nothing wrong with your brain . There is nothing wrong with your mind .
You have Charles Bonnet syndrome . "
And she was very relieved at this , that there was nothing seriously the matter , and also rather curious .
She said , " Who is this Charles Bonnet ? "
She said , " Did he have them himself ? "
And she said , " Tell all the nurses that I have Charles Bonnet syndrome . "
" I 'm not crazy . I 'm not demented . I have Charles Bonnet syndrome . "
Well , so I did tell the nurses .
Now this , for me , is a common situation .
I work in old-age homes , largely .
I see a lot of elderly people who are hearing impaired or visually impaired .
About 10 percent of the hearing impaired people get musical hallucinations .
And about 10 percent of the visually impaired people get visual hallucinations .
You don 't have to be completely blind , only sufficiently impaired .
Now with the original description in the 18th century , Charles Bonnet did not have them .
His grandfather had these hallucinations .
His grandfather was a magistrate , an elderly man .
He 'd had cataract surgery .
His vision was pretty poor .
And in 1759 , he described to his grandson various things he was seeing .
The first thing he said was he saw a handkerchief in midair .
It was a large blue handkerchief with four orange circles .
And he knew it was a hallucination .
You don 't have handkerchiefs in midair .
And then he saw a big wheel in midair .
But sometimes he wasn 't sure whether he was hallucinating or not , because the hallucinations would fit in the context of the visions .
So on one occasion , when his granddaughters were visiting them , he said , " And who are these handsome young men with you ? "
And they said , " Alas , Grandpapa , there are no handsome young men . "
And then the handsome young men disappeared .
It 's typical of these hallucinations that they may come in a flash and disappear in a flash .
They don 't usually fade in and out .
They are rather sudden , and they change suddenly .
Charles Lullin , the grandfather , saw hundreds of different figures , different landscapes of all sorts .
On one occasion , he saw a man in a bathrobe smoking a pipe , and realized it was himself .
That was the only figure he recognized .
On one occasion when he was walking in the streets of Paris , he saw -- this was real -- a scaffolding .
But when he got back home , he saw a miniature of the scaffolding six inches high , on his study table .
This repetition of perception is sometimes called palinopsia .
With him and with Rosalie , what seems to be going on -- and Rosalie said , " What 's going on ? " -- and I said that as you lose vision , as the visual parts of the brain are no longer getting any input , they become hyperactive and excitable , and they start to fire spontaneously .
And you start to see things .
The things you see can be very complicated indeed .
With another patient of mine , who , also had some vision , the vision she had could be disturbing .
On one occasion , she said she saw a man in a striped shirt in a restaurant .
And he turned around . And then he divided into six figures in striped shirts , who started walking towards her .
And then the six figures came together again , like a concertina .
Once , when she was driving , or rather , her husband was driving , the road divided into four and she felt herself going simultaneously up four roads .
She had very mobile hallucinations as well .
A lot of them had to do with a car .
Sometimes she would see a teenage boy sitting on the hood of the car .
He was very tenacious and he moved rather gracefully when the car turned .
And then when they came to a stop , the boy would do a sudden vertical takeoff , 100 foot in the air , and then disappear .
Another patient of mine had a different sort of hallucination .
This was a woman who didn 't have trouble with her eyes , but the visual parts of her brain , a little tumor in the occipital cortex .
And , above all , she would see cartoons .
These cartoons would be transparent and would cover half the visual field , like a screen .
And especially she saw cartoons of Kermit the Frog .
Now , I don 't watch Sesame Street , but she made a point of saying , " Why Kermit ? " She said , " Kermit the Frog means nothing to me .
You know , I was wondering about Freudian determinants .
Why Kermit ?
Kermit the Frog means nothing to me . "
She didn 't mind the cartoons too much .
But what did disturb her was she got very persistent images or hallucinations of faces and as with Rosalie , the faces were often deformed , with very large teeth or very large eyes .
And these frightened her .
Well , what is going on with these people ?
As a physician , I have to try and define what 's going on , and to reassure people , especially to reassure them that they 're not going insane .
Something like 10 percent , as I said , of visually impaired people get these .
But no more than one percent of the people acknowledge them , because they are afraid they will be seen as insane or something .
And if they do mention them to their own doctors they may be misdiagnosed .
In particular , the notion is that if you see things or hear things , you 're going mad , but the psychotic hallucinations are quite different .
Psychotic hallucinations , whether they are visual or vocal , they address you . They accuse you .
They seduce you . They humiliate you .
They jeer at you .
You interact with them .
There is none of this quality of being addressed with these Charles Bonnet hallucinations .
There is a film . You 're seeing a film which has nothing to do with you , or that 's how people think about it .
There is also a rare thing called temporal lobe epilepsy , and sometimes , if one has this , one may feel oneself transported back to a time and place in the past .
You 're at a particular road junction .
You smell chestnuts roasting .
You hear the traffic . All the senses are involved .
And you 're waiting for your girl .
And it 's that Tuesday evening back in 1982 .
And the temporal lobe hallucinations are all-sense hallucinations , full of feeling , full of familiarity , located in space and time , coherent , dramatic .
The Charles Bonnet ones are quite different .
So in the Charles Bonnet hallucinations , you have all sorts of levels , from the geometrical hallucinations -- the pink and blue squares the woman had -- up to quite elaborate hallucinations with figures and especially faces .
Faces , and sometimes deformed faces , are the single commonest thing in these hallucinations .
And one of the second commonest is cartoons .
So , what is going on ?
Fascinatingly , in the last few years , it 's been possible to do functional brain imagery , to do fMRI on people as they are hallucinating .
And in fact , to find that different parts of the visual brain are activated as they are hallucinating .
When people have these simple geometrical hallucinations , the primary visual cortex is activated .
This is the part of the brain which perceives edges and patterns .
You don 't form images with your primary visual cortex .
When images are formed , a higher part of the visual cortex is involved in the temporal lobe .
And in particular , one area of the temporal lobe is called the fusiform gyrus .
And it 's known that if people have damage in the fusiform gyrus , they maybe lose the ability to recognize faces .
But if there is an abnormal activity in the fusiform gyrus , they may hallucinate faces , and this is exactly what you find in some of these people .
There is an area in the anterior part of this gyrus where teeth and eyes are represented , and that part of the gyrus is activated when people get the deformed hallucinations .
There is another part of the brain which is especially activated when one sees cartoons .
It 's activated when one recognizes cartoons , when one draws cartoons , and when one hallucinates them .
It 's very interesting that that should be specific .
There are other parts of the brain which are specifically involved with the recognition and hallucination of buildings and landscapes .
Around 1970 , it was found that there were not only parts of the brain , but particular cells .
" Face cells " were discovered around 1970 .
And now we know that there are hundreds of other sorts of cells , which can be very , very specific .
So you may not only have " car " cells , you may have " Aston Martin " cells .
I saw an Aston Martin this morning .
I had to bring it in .
And now it 's in there somewhere .
Now , at this level , in what 's called the inferotemporal cortex , there are only visual images , or figments or fragments .
It 's only at higher levels that the other senses join in and there are connections with memory and emotion .
And in the Charles Bonnet syndrome , you don 't go to those higher levels .
You 're in these levels of inferior visual cortex where you have thousands and tens of thousands and millions of images , or figments , or fragmentary figments , all neurally encoded in particular cells or small clusters of cells .
Normally these are all part of the integrated stream of perception , or imagination , and one is not conscious of them .
It is only if one is visually impaired or blind that the process is interrupted .
And instead of getting normal perception , you 're getting an anarchic , convulsive stimulation , or release , of all of these visual cells in the inferotemporal cortex .
So , suddenly you see a face . Suddenly you see a car .
Suddenly this , and suddenly that .
The mind does its best to organize and to give some sort of coherence to this , but not terribly successfully .
When these were first described , it was thought that they could be interpreted like dreams .
But in fact people say , " I don 't recognize the people . I can 't form any associations . "
" Kermit means nothing to me . "
You don 't get anywhere thinking of them as dreams .
Well , I 've more or less said what I wanted .
I think I just want to recapitulate and say this is common .
Think of the number of blind people .
There must be hundreds of thousands of blind people who have these hallucinations , but are too scared to mention them .
So this sort of thing needs to be brought into notice , for patients , for doctors , for the public .
Finally , I think they are infinitely interesting and valuable , for giving one some insight as to how the brain works .
Charles Bonnet said , 250 years ago -- he wondered how , thinking these hallucinations , how , as he put it , the theater of the mind could be generated by the machinery of the brain .
Now , 250 years later , I think we 're beginning to glimpse how this is done .
Thanks very much .
That was superb . Thank you so much .
You speak about these things with so much insight and empathy for your patients .
Have you yourself experienced any of the syndromes you write about ?
Oliver Sacks : I was afraid you 'd ask that .
Well , yeah , a lot of them .
And actually I 'm a little visually impaired myself .
I 'm blind in one eye , and not terribly good in the other .
And I see the geometrical hallucinations .
But they stop there .
And they don 't disturb you ?
Because you understand what 's doing it , it doesn 't make you worried ?
OS : Well they don 't disturb me any more than my tinnitus , which I ignore .
They occasionally interest me , and I have many pictures of them in my notebooks .
I 've gone and had an fMRI myself , to see how my visual cortex is taking over .
And when I see all these hexagons and complex things , which I also have , in visual migraine , I wonder whether everyone sees things like this , and whether things like cave art or ornamental art may have been derived from them a bit .
That was an utterly , utterly fascinating talk .
Thank you so much for sharing .
OS : Thank you . Thank you .
Bart Weetjens : How I taught rats to sniff out land mines
No one knows exactly how many landmines still litter the world , but it 's safe to safe : millions , waiting to kill and maim unsuspecting civilians . Clearing them is slow , expensive and dangerous . The founder of Apopo . Bart Weetjens , talks about his extraordinary project : training rats to sniff out land mines . He shows clips of his " hero rats " in action , and previews his work 's next phase : teaching them to turn up tuberculosis in the lab .
I 'm here today to share with you an extraordinary journey -- extraordinarily rewarding journey , actually -- which brought me into training rats to save human lives by detecting landmines and tuberculosis .
As a child , I had two passions .
One was a passion for rodents .
I had all kinds of rats , mice , hamsters , gerbils , squirrels .
You name it , I bred it , and I sold them to pet shops .
I also had a passion for Africa .
Growing up in a multicultural environment , we had African students in the house , and I learned about their stories , so different backgrounds , dependency on imported know-how , goods , services , exuberant cultural diversity .
Africa was truly fascinating for me .
I became an industrial engineer , engineer in product development , and I focused on appropriate detection technologies , actually the first appropriate technologies for developing countries .
I started working in the industry , but I wasn 't really happy to contribute to a material consumer society in a linear , extracting and manufacturing mode .
I quit my job to focus on the real world problem : landmines .
We 're talking ' 95 now .
Princess Diana is announcing on TV that landmines form a structural barrier to any development , which is really true .
As long as these devices are there , or there is suspicion of landmines , you can 't really enter into the land .
Actually , there was an appeal worldwide for new detectors sustainable in the environments where they 're needed to produce , which is mainly in the developing world .
We chose rats .
Why would you choose rats ?
Because , aren 't they vermin ?
Well , actually rats are , in contrary to what most people think about them , rats are highly sociable creatures .
And actually , our product -- what you see here .
There 's a target somewhere here .
You see an operator , a trained African with his rats in front who actually are left and right .
There , the animal finds a mine .
It scratches on the soil .
And the animal comes back for a food reward .
Very , very simple .
Very sustainable in this environment .
Here , the animal gets its food reward .
And that 's how it works .
Very , very simple .
Now why would you use rats ?
Rats have been used since the ' 50s last century , in all kinds of experiments .
Rats have more genetic material allocated to olfaction than any other mammal species .
They 're extremely sensitive to smell .
Moreover , they have the mechanisms to map all these smells and to communicate about it .
Now how do we communicate with rats ?
Well don 't talk rat , but we have a clicker , a standard method for animal training , which you see there .
A clicker , which makes a particular sound with which you can reinforce particular behaviors .
First of all , we associate the click sound with a food reward , which is smashed banana and peanuts together in a syringe .
Once the animal knows click , food , click , food , click , food -- so click is food -- we bring it in a cage with a hole , and actually the animal learns to stick the nose in the hole under which a target scent is placed , and to do that for five seconds -- five seconds , which is long for a rat .
Once the animal knows this , we make the task a bit more difficult .
It learns how to find the target smell in a cage with several holes , up to 10 holes .
Then the animal learns to walk on a leash in the open and find targets .
In the next step , animals learn to find real mines in real minefields .
They are tested and accredited according to International Mine Action Standards , just like dogs have to pass a test .
This consists of 400 square meters .
There 's a number of mines placed blindly , and the team of trainer and their rat have to find all the targets .
If the animal does that , it gets a license as an accredited animal to be operational in the field -- just like dogs , by the way .
Maybe one slight difference : we can train rats at a fifth of the price of training the mining dog .
This is our team in Mozambique : one Tanzanian trainer , who transfers the skills to these three Mozambican fellows .
And you should see the pride in the eyes of these people .
They have a skill , which makes them much less dependent on foreign aid .
Moreover , this small team together with , of course , you need the heavy vehicles and the manual de-miners to follow-up .
But with this small investment in a rat capacity , we have demonstrated in Mozambique that we can reduce the cost-price per square meter up to 60 percent of what is currently normal -- two dollars per square meter , we do it at $ 1.18 , and we can still bring that price down .
Question of scale .
If you can bring in more rats , we can actually make the output even bigger .
We have a demonstration site in Mozambique .
Eleven African governments have seen that they can become less dependent by using this technology .
They have signed the pact for peace and treaty in the Great Lakes region , and they endorse hero rats to clear their common borders of landmines .
But let me bring you to a very different problem .
And there 's about 6,000 people last year that walked on a landmine , but worldwide last year , almost 1.9 million died from tuberculosis as a first cause of infection .
Especially in Africa where T.B. and HIV are strongly linked , there is a huge common problem .
Microscopy , the standard WHO procedure , reaches from 40 to 60 percent reliability .
In Tanzania -- the numbers don 't lie -- 45 percent of people -- T.B. patients -- get diagnosed with T.B. before they die .
It means that , if you have T.B. , you have more chance that you won 't be detected , but will just die from T.B. secondary infections and so on .
And if , however , you are detected very early , diagnosed early , treatment can start , and even in HIV-positives , it makes sense .
You can actually cure T.B. , even in HIV-positives .
So in our common language , Dutch , the name for T.B.
is " tering , " which , etymologically , refers to the smell of tar .
Already the old Chinese and the Greek , Hippocrates , have actually published , documented , that T.B. can be diagnosed based on the volatiles exuding from patients .
So what we did is we collected some samples -- just as a way of testing -- from hospitals , trained rats on them and see if this works , and wonder , well , we can reach 89 percent sensitivity , 86 percent specificity using multiple rats in a row .
This is how it works , and really , this is a generic technology .
We 're talking now explosives , tuberculosis , but can you imagine , you can actually put anything under there .
So how does it work ?
You have a cassette with 10 samples .
You put these 10 samples at once in the cage .
An animal only needs two hundredths of a second to discriminate the scent , so it goes extremely fast .
Here it 's already at the third sample .
This is a positive sample .
It gets a click sound and comes for the food reward .
And by doing so , very fast , we can have like a second-line opinion to see which patients are positive , which are negative .
Just as an indication , whereas a microscopist can process 40 samples in a day , a rat can process the same amount of samples in seven minutes only .
A cage like this -- A cage like this -- provided that you have rats , and we have now currently 25 tuberculosis rats -- a cage like this , operating throughout the day , can process 1,680 samples .
Can you imagine the potential offspring applications -- environmental detection of pollutants in soils , customs applications , detection of illicit goods in containers and so on .
But let 's stick first to tuberculosis .
I just want to briefly highlight , the blue rods are the scores of microscopy only at the five clinics in Dar es Salaam on a population of 500,000 people , where 15,000 reported to get a test done .
Microscopy for 1,800 patients .
And by just presenting the samples once more to the rats and looping those results back , we were able to increase case detection rates by over 30 percent .
Throughout last year , we 've been -- depending on which intervals you take -- we 've been consistently increasing case detection rates in five hospitals in Dar es Salaam between 30 and 40 percent .
So this is really considerable .
Knowing that a missed patient by microscopy infects up to 15 people , healthy people , per year , you can be sure that we have saved lots of lives .
At least our hero rats have saved lots of lives .
The way forward for us is now to standardize this technology .
And there are simple things like , for instance , we have a small laser in the sniffer hole where the animal has to stick for five seconds .
So , to standardize this .
Also , to standardize the pellets , the food rewards , and to semi-automate this in order to replicate this on a much larger scale and affect the lives of many more people .
To conclude , there are also other applications at the horizon .
Here is a first prototype of our camera rat , which is a rat with a rat backpack with a camera that can go under rubble to detect for victims after earthquake and so on .
This is in a prototype stage .
We don 't have a working system here yet .
To conclude , I would actually like to say , you may think this is about rats , these projects , but in the end it is about people .
It is about empowering vulnerable communities to tackle difficult , expensive and dangerous humanitarian detection tasks , and doing that with a local resource , plenty available .
So something completely different is to keep on challenging your perception about the resources surrounding you , whether they are environmental , technological , animal , or human .
And to respectfully harmonize with them in order to foster a sustainable work .
Thank you very much .
Amy Tan : Where does creativity hide ?
Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process , looking for hints of how hers evolved .
The Value of Nothing : Out of Nothing Comes Something .
That was an essay I wrote when I was 11 years old and I got a B + .
What I 'm going to talk about : nothing out of something , and how we create .
And I 'm gonna try and do that within the 18-minute time span that we were told to stay within , and to follow the TED commandments : that is , actually , something that creates a near-death experience , but near-death is good for creativity .
OK .
So , I also want to explain , because Dave Eggers said he was going to heckle me if I said anything that was a lie , or not true to universal creativity .
And I 've done it this way for half the audience , who is scientific .
When I say we , I don 't mean you , necessarily ; I mean me , and my right brain , my left brain and the one that 's in between that is the censor and tells me what I 'm saying is wrong .
And I 'm going do that also by looking at what I think is part of my creative process , which includes a number of things that happened , actually -- the nothing started even earlier than the moment in which I 'm creating something new .
And that includes nature , and nurture , and what I refer to as nightmares .
Now in the nature area , we look at whether or not we are innately equipped with something , perhaps in our brains , some abnormal chromosome that causes this muse-like effect .
And some people would say that we 're born with it in some other means .
And others , like my mother , would say that I get my material from past lives .
Some people would also say that creativity may be a function of some other neurological quirk -- van Gogh syndrome -- that you have a little bit of , you know , psychosis , or depression .
I do have to say , somebody -- I read recently that van Gogh wasn 't really necessarily psychotic , that he might have had temporal lobe seizures , and that might have caused his spurt of creativity , and I don 't -- I suppose it does something in some part of your brain .
And I will mention that I actually developed temporal lobe seizures a number of years ago , but it was during the time I was writing my last book , and some people say that book is quite different .
I think that part of it also begins with a sense of identity crisis : you know , who am I , why am I this particular person , why am I not black like everybody else ?
And sometimes you 're equipped with skills , but they may not be the kind of skills that enable creativity .
I used to draw . I thought I would be an artist .
And I had a miniature poodle .
And it wasn 't bad , but it wasn 't really creative .
Because all I could really do was represent in a very one-on-one way .
And I have a sense that I probably copied this from a book .
And then , I also wasn 't really shining in a certain area that I wanted to be , and you know , you look at those scores , and it wasn 't bad , but it was not certainly predictive that I would one day make my living out of the artful arrangement of words .
Also , one of the principles of creativity is to have a little childhood trauma .
And I had the usual kind that I think a lot of people had , and that is that , you know , I had expectations placed on me .
That figure right there , by the way , figure right there was a toy given to me when I was but nine years old , and it was to help me become a doctor from a very early age .
I have some ones that were long lasting : from the age of five to 15 , this was supposed to be my side occupation , and it led to a sense of failure .
But actually , there was something quite real in my life that happened when I was about 14 .
And it was discovered that my brother , in 1967 , and then my father , six months later , had brain tumors .
And my mother believed that something had gone wrong , and she was gonna find out what it was , and she was gonna fix it .
My father was a Baptist minister , and he believed in miracles , and that God 's will would take care of that .
But , of course , they ended up dying , six months apart .
And after that , my mother believed that it was fate , or curses -- she went looking through all the reasons in the universe why this would have happened .
Everything except randomness . She did not believe in randomness .
There was a reason for everything .
And one of the reasons , she thought , was that her mother , who had died when she was very young , was angry at her .
And so , I had this notion of death all around me , because my mother also believed that I would be next , and she would be next .
And when you are faced with the prospect of death very soon , you begin to think very much about everything .
You become very creative , in a survival sense .
And this , then , led to my big questions .
And they 're the same ones that I have today .
And they are : why do things happen , and how do things happen ?
And the one my mother asked : how do I make things happen ?
It 's a wonderful way to look at these questions , when you write a story .
Because , after all , in that framework , between page one and 300 , you have to answer this question of why things happen , how things happen , in what order they happen . What are the influences ?
How do I , as the narrator , as the writer , also influence that ?
And it 's also one that , I think , many of our scientists have been asking .
It 's a kind of cosmology , and I have to develop a cosmology of my own universe , as the creator of that universe .
And you see , there 's a lot of back and forth in trying to make that happen , trying to figure it out -- years and years , oftentimes .
So , when I look at creativity , I also think that it is this sense or this inability to repress , my looking at associations in practically anything in life .
And I got a lot of them during what 's been going on throughout this conference , almost everything that 's been going on .
And so I 'm going to use , as the metaphor , this association : quantum mechanics , which I really don 't understand , but I 'm still gonna use it as the process for explaining how it is the metaphor .
So , in quantum mechanics , of course , you have dark energy and dark matter .
And it 's the same thing in looking at these questions of how things happen .
There 's a lot of unknown , and you often don 't know what it is except by its absence .
But when you make those associations , you want them to come together in a kind of synergy in the story , and what you 're finding is what matters . The meaning .
And that 's what I look for in my work , a personal meaning .
There is also the uncertainty principle , which is part of quantum mechanics , as I understand it .
And this happens constantly in the writing .
And there 's the terrible and dreaded observer effect , in which you 're looking for something , and you know , things are happening simultaneously , and you 're looking at it in a different way , and you 're trying to really look for the about-ness , or what is this story about . And if you try too hard , then you will only write the about .
You won 't discover anything .
And what you were supposed to find , what you hoped to find in some serendipitous way , is no longer there .
Now , I don 't want to ignore the other side of what happens in our universe , like many of our scientists have .
And so , I am going to just throw in string theory here , and just say that creative people are multidimensional , and there are 11 levels , I think , of anxiety .
And they all operate at the same time .
There is also a big question of ambiguity .
And I would link that to something called the cosmological constant .
And you don 't know what is operating , but something is operating there .
And ambiguity , to me , is very uncomfortable in my life , and I have it . Moral ambiguity .
It is constantly there . And , just as an example , this is one that recently came to me .
It was something I read in an editorial by a woman who was talking about the war in Iraq . And she said , " Save a man from drowning , you are responsible to him for life . "
A very famous Chinese saying , she said .
And that means because we went into Iraq , we should stay there until things were solved . You know , maybe even 100 years .
So , there was another one that I came across , and it 's " saving fish from drowning . "
And it 's what Buddhist fishermen say , because they 're not supposed to kill anything .
And they also have to make a living , and people need to be fed .
So their way of rationalizing that is they are saving the fish from drowning , and unfortunately , in the process the fish die .
Now , what 's encapsulated in both these drowning metaphors -- actually , one of them is my mother 's interpretation , and it is a famous Chinese saying , because she said it to me : " save a man from drowning , you are responsible to him for life . "
And it was a warning -- don 't get involved in other people 's business , or you 're going to get stuck .
OK . I think if somebody really was drowning , she 'd save them .
But , both of these sayings -- saving a fish from drowning , or saving a man from drowning -- to me they had to do with intentions .
And all of us in life , when we see a situation , we have a response .
And then we have intentions .
There 's an ambiguity of what that should be that we should do , and then we do something .
And the results of that may not match what our intentions had been .
Maybe things go wrong . And so , after that , what are our responsibilities ?
What are we supposed to do ?
Do we stay in for life , or do we do something else and justify and say , well , my intentions were good , and therefore I cannot be held responsible for all of it ?
That is the ambiguity in my life that really disturbed me , and led me to write a book called " Saving Fish From Drowning . "
I saw examples of that . Once I identified this question , it was all over the place .
I got these hints everywhere .
And then , in a way , I knew that they had always been there .
And then writing , that 's what happens . I get these hints , these clues , and I realize that they 've been obvious , and yet they have not been .
And what I need , in effect , is a focus .
And when I have the question , it is a focus .
And all these things that seem to be flotsam and jetsam in life actually go through that question , and what happens is those particular things become relevant .
And it seems like it 's happening all the time .
You think there 's a sort of coincidence going on , a serendipity , in which you 're getting all this help from the universe .
And it may also be explained that now you have a focus .
And you are noticing it more often .
But you apply this .
You begin to look at things having to do with your tensions .
Your brother , who 's fallen in trouble , do you take care of him ?
Why or why not ?
It may be something that is perhaps more serious -- as I said , human rights in Burma .
I was thinking that I shouldn 't go because somebody said , if I did , it would show that I approved of the military regime there .
And then , after a while , I had to ask myself , " Why do we take on knowledge , why do we take on assumptions that other people have given us ? "
And it was the same thing that I felt when I was growing up , and was hearing these rules of moral conduct from my father , who was a Baptist minister .
So I decided that I would go to Burma for my own intentions , and still didn 't know that if I went there , what the result of that would be , if I wrote a book -- and I just would have to face that later , when the time came .
We are all concerned with things that we see in the world that we are aware of .
We come to this point and say , what do I as an individual do ?
Not all of us can go to Africa , or work at hospitals , so what do we do , if we have this moral response , this feeling ?
Also , I think one of the biggest things we are all looking at , and we talked about today , is genocide .
This leads to this question .
When I look at all these things that are morally ambiguous and uncomfortable , and I consider what my intentions should be , I realize it goes back to this identity question that I had when I was a child -- and why am I here , and what is the meaning of my life , and what is my place in the universe ?
It seems so obvious , and yet it is not .
We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense , and yet it is also absolutely necessary .
In writing a story , it is the place where I begin .
Sometimes I get help from the universe , it seems .
My mother would say it was the ghost of my grandmother from the very first book , because it seemed I knew things I was not supposed to know .
Instead of writing that the grandmother died accidentally , from an overdose of opium , while having too much of a good time , I actually put down in the story that the woman killed herself , and that actually was the way it happened .
And my mother decided that that information must have come from my grandmother .
There are also things , quite uncanny , which bring me information that will help me in the writing of the book .
In this case , I was writing a story that included some kind of detail , period of history , a certain location .
And I needed to find something historically that would match that .
And I took down this book , and I -- first page that I flipped it to was exactly the setting , and the time period , and the kind of character I needed -- was the Taiping rebellion , happening in the area near Guilin , outside of that , and a character who thought he was the son of God .
You wonder , are these things random chance ?
Well , what is random ? What is chance ? What is luck ?
What are things that you get from the universe that you can 't really explain ?
And that goes into the story , too .
These are the things I constantly think about from day to day .
Especially when good things happen , and , in particular , when bad things happen .
But I do think there 's a kind of serendipity , and I do want to know what those elements are , so I can thank them , and also try to find them in my life .
Because , again , I think that when I am aware of them , more of them happen .
Another chance encounter is when I went to a place -- I just was with some friends , and we drove randomly to a different place , and we ended up in this non-tourist location , a beautiful village , pristine .
And we walked three valleys beyond , and the third valley , there was something quite mysterious and ominous , a discomfort I felt . And then I knew that had to be [ the ] setting of my book .
And in writing one of the scenes , it happened in that third valley .
For some reason I wrote about cairns -- stacks of rocks -- that a man was building .
And I didn 't know exactly why I had it , but it was so vivid .
I got stuck , and a friend , when she asked if I would go for a walk with her dogs , that I said , sure . And about 45 minutes later , walking along the beach , I came across this .
And it was a man , a Chinese man , and he was stacking these things , not with glue , not with anything .
And I asked him , " How is it possible to do this ? "
And he said , " Well , I guess with everything in life , there 's a place of balance . "
And this was exactly the meaning of my story at that point .
I had so many examples -- I have so many instances like this , when I 'm writing a story , and I cannot explain it .
Is it because I had the filter that I have such a strong coincidence in writing about these things ?
Or is it a kind of serendipity that we cannot explain , like the cosmological constant ?
A big thing that I also think about is accidents .
And as I said , my mother did not believe in randomness .
What is the nature of accidents ?
And how are we going to assign what the responsibility and the causes are , outside of a court of law ?
I was able to see that in a firsthand way , when I went to beautiful Dong village , in Guizhou , the poorest province of China .
And I saw this beautiful place . I knew I wanted to come back .
And I had a chance to do that , when National Geographic asked me And I said yes , about this village of singing people , singing minority .
And they agreed , and between the time I saw this place and the next time I went , there was a terrible accident . A man , an old man , fell asleep , and his quilt dropped in a pan of fire that kept him warm .
60 homes were destroyed , and 40 were damaged .
Responsibility was assigned to the family .
The man 's sons were banished to live three kilometers away , in a cowshed .
And , of course , as Westerners , we say , " Well , it was an accident . That 's not fair .
It 's the son , not the father . "
When I go on a story , I have to let go of those kinds of beliefs .
It takes a while , but I have to let go of them and just go there , and be there .
And so I was there on three occasions , different seasons .
And I began to sense something different about the history , and what had happened before , and the nature of life in a very poor village , and what you find as your joys , and your rituals , your traditions , your links with other families . And I saw how this had a kind of justice , in its responsibility .
I was able to find out also about the ceremony that they were using , a ceremony they hadn 't used in about 29 years . And it was to send some men -- a Feng Shui master sent men down to the underworld on ghost horses .
Now you , as Westerners , and I , as Westerners , would say well , that 's superstition . But after being there for a while , and seeing the amazing things that happened , you begin to wonder whose beliefs are those that are in operation in the world , determining how things happen .
So I remained with them , and the more I wrote that story , the more I got into those beliefs , and I think that 's important for me -- to take on the beliefs , because that is where the story is real , and that is where I 'm gonna find the answers to how I feel about certain questions that I have in life .
Years go by , of course , and the writing , it doesn 't happen instantly , as I 'm trying to convey it to you here at TED .
The book comes and it goes . When it arrives , it is no longer my book .
It is in the hands of readers , and they interpret it differently .
But I go back to this question of , how do I create something out of nothing ?
And how do I create my own life ?
And I think it is by questioning , and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths .
I believe in specifics , the specifics of story , and the past , the specifics of that past , and what is happening in the story at that point .
I also believe that in thinking about things -- my thinking about luck , and fate , and coincidences and accidents , God 's will , and the synchrony of mysterious forces -- I will come to some notion of what that is , how we create .
I have to think of my role . Where I am in the universe , and did somebody intend for me to be that way , or is it just something I came up with ?
And I also can find that by imagining fully , and becoming what is imagined -- and yet is in that real world , the fictional world .
And that is how I find particles of truth , not the absolute truth , or the whole truth .
And they have to be in all possibilities , including those I never considered before .
So , there are never complete answers .
Or rather , if there is an answer , it is to remind myself that there is uncertainty in everything , and that is good , because then I will discover something new .
And if there is a partial answer , a more complete answer from me , it is to simply imagine .
And to imagine is to put myself in that story , until there was only -- there is a transparency between me and the story that I am creating .
And that 's how I 've discovered that if I feel what is in the story -- in one story -- then I come the closest , I think , to knowing what compassion is , to feeling that compassion .
Because for everything , in that question of how things happen , it has to do with the feeling .
I have to become the story in order to understand a lot of that .
We 've come to the end of the talk , and I will reveal what is in the bag , and it is the muse , and it is the things that transform in our lives , that are wonderful and stay with us .
There she is .
Thank you very much !
Andrew Fitzgerald : Adventures in Twitter fiction
In the 1930s , broadcast radio introduced an entirely new form of storytelling ; today , micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are changing the scene again . Andrew Fitzgerald takes a look at the short but fascinating history of new forms of creative experimentation in fiction and storytelling .
So in my free time outside of Twitter I experiment a little bit with telling stories online , experimenting with what we can do with new digital tools .
And in my job at Twitter , I actually spent a little bit of time working with authors and storytellers as well , helping to expand out the bounds of what people are experimenting with .
And I want to talk through some examples today of things that people have done that I think are really fascinating using flexible identity and anonymity on the web and blurring the lines between fact and fiction .
But I want to start and go back to the 1930s .
Long before a little thing called Twitter , radio brought us broadcasts and connected millions of people to single points of broadcast .
And from those single points emanated stories .
Some of them were familiar stories .
Some of them were new stories .
And for a while they were familiar formats , but then radio began to evolve its own unique formats specific to that medium .
Think about episodes that happened live on radio .
Combining the live play and the serialization of written fiction , you get this new format .
And the reason why I bring up radio is that I think radio is a great example of how a new medium defines new formats which then define new stories .
And of course , today , we have an entirely new medium to play with , which is this online world .
This is the map of verified users on Twitter and the connections between them .
There are thousands upon thousands of them .
Every single one of these points is its own broadcaster .
We 've gone to this world of many to many , where access to the tools is the only barrier to broadcasting .
And I think that we should start to see wildly new formats emerge as people learn how to tell stories in this new medium .
I actually believe that we are in a wide open frontier for creative experimentation , if you will , that we 've explored and begun to settle this wild land of the Internet and are now just getting ready to start to build structures on it , and those structures are the new formats of storytelling that the Internet will allow us to create .
I believe this starts with an evolution of existing methods .
The short story , for example , people are saying that the short story is experiencing a renaissance of sorts thanks to e-readers , digital marketplaces .
One writer , Hugh Howey , experimented with short stories on Amazon by releasing one very short story called " Wool . "
And he actually says that he didn 't intend for " Wool " to become a series , but that the audience loved the first story so much they demanded more , and so he gave them more .
He gave them " Wool 2 , " which was a little bit longer than the first one , " Wool 3 , " which was even longer , culminating in " Wool 5 , " which was a 60,000-word novel .
I think Howey was able to do all of this because he had the quick feedback system of e-books .
He was able to write and publish in relatively short order .
There was no mediator between him and the audience .
It was just him directly connected with his audience and building on the feedback and enthusiasm that they were giving him .
So this whole project was an experiment .
It started with the one short story , and I think the experimentation actually became a part of Howey 's format .
And that 's something that this medium enabled , was experimentation being a part of the format itself .
This is a short story by the author Jennifer Egan called " Black Box . "
It was originally written specifically with Twitter in mind .
Egan convinced The New Yorker to start a New Yorker fiction account from which they could tweet all of these lines that she created .
Now Twitter , of course , has a 140-character limit .
Egan mocked that up just writing manually in this storyboard sketchbook , used the physical space constraints of those storyboard squares to write each individual tweet , and those tweets ended up becoming over 600 of them that were serialized by The New Yorker .
Every night , at 8 p.m. , you could tune in to a short story from The New Yorker 's fiction account .
I think that 's pretty exciting : tune-in literary fiction .
The experience of Egan 's story , of course , like anything on Twitter , there were multiple ways to experience it .
You could scroll back through it , but interestingly , if you were watching it live , there was this suspense that built because the actual tweets , you had no control over when you would read them .
They were coming at a pretty regular clip , but as the story was building , normally , as a reader , you control how fast you move through a text , but in this case , The New Yorker did , and they were sending you bit by bit by bit , and you had this suspense of waiting for the next line .
Another great example of fiction and the short story on Twitter , Elliott Holt is an author who wrote a story called " Evidence . "
It began with this tweet : " On November 28 at 10 : 13 p.m. , a woman identified as Miranda Brown , 44 , of Brooklyn , fell to her death from the roof of a Manhattan hotel . "
It begins in Elliott 's voice , but then Elliott 's voice recedes , and we hear the voices of Elsa , Margot and Simon , characters that Elliott created on Twitter specifically to tell this story , a story from multiple perspectives leading up to this moment at 10 : 13 p.m.
when this woman falls to her death .
These three characters brought an authentic vision from multiple perspectives .
One reviewer called Elliott 's story " Twitter fiction done right , " because she did .
She captured that voice and she had multiple characters and it happened in real time .
Interestingly , though , it wasn 't just Twitter as a distribution mechanism .
It was also Twitter as a production mechanism .
Elliott told me later she wrote the whole thing with her thumbs .
She laid on the couch and just went back and forth between different characters tweeting out each line , line by line .
I think that this kind of spontaneous creation of what was coming out of the characters ' voices really lent an authenticity to the characters themselves , but also to this format that she had created of multiple perspectives in a single story on Twitter .
As you begin to play with flexible identity online , it gets even more interesting as you start to interact with the real world .
Things like Invisible Obama or the famous " binders full of women " that came up during the 2012 election cycle , or even the fan fiction universe of " West Wing " Twitter in which you have all of these accounts for every single one of the characters in " The West Wing , " including the bird that taps at Josh Lyman 's window in one single episode .
All of these are rapid iterations on a theme .
They are creative people experimenting with the bounds of what is possible in this medium .
You look at something like " West Wing " Twitter , in which you have these fictional characters that engage with the real world .
They comment on politics , they cry out against the evils of Congress .
Keep in mind , they 're all Democrats .
And they engage with the real world .
They respond to it .
So once you take flexible identity , anonymity , engagement with the real world , and you move beyond simple homage or parody and you put these tools to work in telling a story , that 's when things get really interesting .
So during the Chicago mayoral election there was a parody account .
It was Mayor Emanuel .
It gave you everything you wanted from Rahm Emanuel , particularly in the expletive department .
This foul-mouthed account followed the daily activities of the race , providing commentary as it went .
It followed all of the natural tropes of a good , solid Twitter parody account , but then started to get weird .
And as it progressed , it moved from this commentary to a multi-week , real-time science fiction epic in which your protagonist , Rahm Emanuel , engages in multi-dimensional travel on election day , which is -- it didn 't actually happen .
I double checked the newspapers .
And then , very interestingly , it came to an end .
This is something that doesn 't usually happen with a Twitter parody account .
It ended , a true narrative conclusion .
And so the author , Dan Sinker , who was a journalist , who was completely anonymous this whole time , I think Dan -- it made a lot of sense for him to turn this into a book , because it was a narrative format in the end , and I think that turning it into a book is representative of this idea that he had created something new that needed to be translated into previous formats .
One of my favorite examples of something that 's happening on Twitter right now , actually , is the very absurdist Crimer Show .
Crimer Show tells the story of a supercriminal and a hapless detective that face off in this exceptionally strange lingo , with all of the tropes of a television show .
Crimer Show 's creator has said that it is a parody of a popular type of show in the U.K. , but , man , is it weird .
And there are all these times where Crimer , the supercriminal , does all of these TV things .
He 's always taking off his sunglasses or turning to the camera , but these things just happen in text .
I think borrowing all of these tropes from television and additionally presenting each Crimer Show as an episode , spelled E-P-P-A-S-O-D , " eppasod , " presenting them as episodes really , it creates something new .
There is a new " eppasod " of Crimer Show on Twitter pretty much every day , and they 're archived that way .
And I think this is an interesting experiment in format .
Something totally new has been created here out of parodying something on television .
I think in nonfiction real-time storytelling , there are a lot of really excellent examples as well .
RealTimeWWII is an account that documents what was happening on this day 60 years ago in exceptional detail , as if you were reading the news reports from that day .
And the author Teju Cole has done a lot of experimentation with putting a literary twist on events of the news .
In this particular case , he 's talking about drone strikes .
I think that in both of these examples , you 're beginning to see ways in which people are telling stories with nonfiction content that can be built into new types of fictional storytelling .
So with real-time storytelling , blurring the lines between fact and fiction , the real world and the digital world , flexible identity , anonymity , these are all tools that we have accessible to us , and I think that they 're just the building blocks .
They are the bits that we use to create the structures , the frames , that then become our settlements on this wide open frontier for creative experimentation .
Thank you .
Rachelle Garniez : " La Vie en Rose "
Featuring the vocals and mischievous bell-playing of accordionist and singer Rachelle Garniez , the TED House Band -- led by Thomas Dolby on keyboard -- delivers this delightful rendition of the Edith Piaf standard " La Vie en Rose . "
Thomas Dolby : For pure pleasure please welcome the lovely , the delectable , and the bilingual Rachelle Garniez .
Rachelle Garniez : Quand il me prend dans ses bras Il me parle tout bas , Je vois la vie en rose . Il me dit des mots d 'amour , Des mots de tous les jours , Et ca me fait quelque chose . Il est entre dans mon coeur Une part de bonheur Dont je connais la cause . C 'est lui pour moi . Moi pour lui Dans la vie , Il me l 'a dit , l 'a jure [ pour ] la vie . Et des que je l 'apercois Alors je sens en moi Mon coeur qui bat
Catherine Bracy : Why good hackers make good citizens
Hacking is about more than mischief-making or political subversion . As Catherine Bracy describes in this spirited talk , it can be just as much a force for good as it is for evil . She spins through some inspiring civically-minded projects in Honolulu , Oakland and Mexico City — and makes a compelling case that we all have what it takes to get involved .
I 'm going to talk about hackers .
And the image that comes to your mind when I say that word is probably not of Benjamin Franklin , but I 'm going to explain to you why it should be .
The image that comes to your mind is probably more likely of a pasty kid sitting in a basement doing something mischievous , or of a shady criminal who is trying to steal your identity , or of an international rogue with a political agenda .
And mainstream culture has kind of fed this idea that hackers are people that we should be afraid of .
But like most things in technology and the technology world , hacking has equal power for good as it has for evil .
For every hacker that 's trying to steal your identity there 's one that 's building a tool that will help you find your loved ones after a disaster or to monitor environmental quality after an oil spill .
Hacking is really just any amateur innovation on an existing system , and it is a deeply democratic activity .
It 's about critical thinking .
It 's about questioning existing ways of doing things .
It 's the idea that if you see a problem , you work to fix it , and not just complain about it .
And in many ways , hacking is what built America .
Betsy Ross was a hacker .
The Underground Railroad was a brilliant hack .
And from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs , hacking has always been at the foundation of American democracy .
So if there 's one thing I want to leave you here with today , it 's that the next time you think about who a hacker is , you think not of this guy but of this guy , Benjamin Franklin , who was one of the greatest hackers of all time .
He was one of America 's most prolific inventors , though he famously never filed a patent , because he thought that all human knowledge should be freely available .
He brought us bifocals and the lightning rod , and of course there was his collaboration on the invention of American democracy .
And in Code For America , we really try to embody the spirit of Ben Franklin .
He was a tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of citizenship was always predicated on action .
He believed that government could be built by the people , and we call those people civic hackers .
So it 's no wonder that the values that underly a healthy democracy , like collaboration and empowerment and participation and enterprise , are the same values that underly the Internet .
And so it 's no surprise that many hackers are turning their attention to the problem of government .
But before I give you a few examples of what civic hacking looks like , I want to make clear that you don 't have to be a programmer to be a civic hacker .
You just have to believe that you can bring a 21st-century tool set to bear on the problems that government faces .
And we hear all the time from our community of civic hackers at Code for America that they didn 't understand how much nontechnical work actually went into civic hacking projects .
So keep that in mind .
All of you are potential civic hackers .
So what does civic hacking look like ?
Our team last year in Honolulu , which in this case was three full-time fellows who were doing a year of public service , were asked by the city to rebuild the website .
And it 's a massive thing of tens of thousands of pages which just wasn 't going to be possible in the few months that they had .
So instead , they decided to build a parallel site that better conformed to how citizens actually want to interact with information on a city website .
They 're looking for answers to questions , and they want to take action when they 're done , which is really hard to do from a site that looks like this .
So our team built Honolulu Answers , which is a super-simple search interface where you enter a search term or a question and get back plain language answers that drive a user towards action .
Now the site itself was easy enough to build , but the team was faced with the challenge of how they populate all of the content .
It would have taken the three of them a very long time , especially given that none of them are actually from Honolulu .
And so they did something that 's really radical , when you think about how government is used to working .
They asked citizens to write the content .
So you 've heard of a hack-a-thon .
They held a write-a-thon , where on one Saturday afternoon -- — Wild pigs are a huge problem in Honolulu , apparently .
In one Saturday afternoon , they were able to populate most of the content for most of the frequently asked questions , but more importantly than that , they created a new way for citizens to participate in their government .
Now , I think this is a really cool story in and of itself , but it gets more awesome .
On the National Day of Civic Hacking this past June in Oakland , where I live , the Code For America team in Oakland took the open source code base of Honolulu Answers and turned it into Oakland Answers , and again we held a write-a-thon where we took the most frequently asked questions and had citizens write the answers to them , and I got into the act .
I authored this answer , and a few others .
And I 'm trying to this day to articulate the sense of empowerment and responsibility that I feel for the place that I live based simply on this small act of participation .
And by stitching together my small act with the thousands of other small acts of participation that we 're enabling through civic hacking , we think we can reenergize citizenship and restore trust in government .
At this point , you may be wondering what city officials think of all this .
They actually love it .
As most of you guys know , cities are being asked every day to do more with less , and they 're always looking for innovative solutions to entrenched problems .
So when you give citizens a way to participate beyond attending a town hall meeting , cities can actually capture the capacity in their communities to do the business of government .
Now I don 't want to leave the impression that civic hacking is just an American phenomenon .
It 's happening across the globe , and one of my favorite examples is from Mexico City , where earlier this year , the Mexico House of Representatives entered into a contract with a software development firm to build an app that legislators would use to track bills .
So this was just for the handful of legislators in the House .
And the contract was a two-year contract for 9.3 million dollars .
Now a lot of people were really angry about this , especially geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollars was an absolutely outrageous amount of money for what was a very simple app .
But instead of taking to the streets , they issued a challenge .
They asked programmers in Mexico to build something better and cheaper , and they offered a prize of 9,300 dollars -- 10,000 times cheaper than the government contract , and they gave the entrants 10 days .
And in those 10 days , they submitted 173 apps , five of which were presented to Congress and are still in the app store today .
And because of this action , that contract was vacated , and now this has sparked a movement in Mexico City which is home to one of our partners , Code for Mexico City .
And so what you see in all three of these places , in Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico City , are the elements that are at the core of civic hacking .
It 's citizens who saw things that could be working better and they decided to fix them , and through that work , they 're creating a 21st-century ecosystem of participation .
They 're creating a whole new set of ways for citizens to be involved , besides voting or signing a petition or protesting .
They can actually build government .
So back to our friend Ben Franklin , who , one of his lesser-known accomplishments was that in 1736 he founded the first volunteer firefighting company in Philadelphia , called a brigade .
And it 's because he and his friends noticed that the city was having trouble keeping up with all the fires that were happening in the city , so in true civic hacker fashion , they built a solution .
And we have our own brigades at Code for America working on the projects that I 've just described , and we want to ask you to follow in Ben Franklin 's footsteps and come join us .
We have 31 brigades in the U.S.
We are pleased to announce today that we 're opening up the brigade to international cities for the first time , starting with cities in Poland and Japan and Ireland .
You can find out if there 's a brigade where you live at brigade.codeforamerica.org , and if there 's not a brigade where you live , we will help you .
We 've created a tool kit which also lives at brigade.codeforamerica.org , and we will support you along the way .
Our goal is to create a global network of civic hackers who are innovating on the existing system in order to build tools that will solve entrenched problems , that will support local government , and that will empower citizens .
So please come hack with us .
Thank you .
Ananda Shankar Jayant : Fighting cancer with dance
Renowned classical Indian dancer Ananda Shankar Jayant was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 . She tells her personal story of not only facing the disease but dancing through it , and gives a performance revealing the metaphor of strength that helped her do it .
[ Sanskrit ] This is an ode to the mother goddess , that most of us in India learn when we are children .
I learned it when I was four at my mother 's knee .
That year she introduced me to dance , and thus began my tryst with classical dance .
Since then -- it 's been four decades now -- I 've trained with the best in the field , performed across the globe , taught young and old alike , created , collaborated , choreographed , and wove a rich tapestry of artistry , achievement and awards .
The crowning glory was in 2007 , when I received this country 's fourth highest civilian award , the Padma Shri , for my contribution to art .
But nothing , nothing prepared me for what I was to hear on the first of July 2008 .
I heard the word " carcinoma . "
Yes , breast cancer .
As I sat dumbstruck in my doctor 's office , I heard other words : " cancer , " " stage , " " grade . "
Until then , Cancer was the zodiac sign of my friend , stage was what I performed on , and grades were what I got in school .
That day , I realized I had an unwelcome , uninvited , new life partner .
As a dancer , I know the nine rasas or the navarasas : anger , valor , disgust , humor and fear .
I thought I knew what fear was .
That day , I learned what fear was .
Overcome with the enormity of it all and the complete feeling of loss of control , I shed copious tears and asked my dear husband , Jayant .
I said , " Is this it ? Is this the end of the road ?
Is this the end of my dance ? "
And he , the positive soul that he is , said , " No , this is just a hiatus , a hiatus during the treatment , and you 'll get back to doing what you do best . "
I realized then that I , who thought I had complete control of my life , had control of only three things : My thought , my mind -- the images that these thoughts created -- and the action that derived from it .
So here I was wallowing in a vortex of emotions and depression and what have you , with the enormity of the situation , wanting to go to a place of healing , health and happiness .
I wanted to go from where I was to where I wanted to be , for which I needed something .
I needed something that would pull me out of all this .
So I dried my tears , and I declared to the world at large ...
I said , " Cancer 's only one page in my life , and I will not allow this page to impact the rest of my life . "
I also declared to the world at large that I would ride it out , and I would not allow cancer to ride me .
But to go from where I was to where I wanted to be , I needed something .
I needed an anchor , an image , a peg to peg this process on , so that I could go from there .
And I found that in my dance , my dance , my strength , my energy , my passion , my very life breath .
But it wasn 't easy .
Believe me , it definitely wasn 't easy .
How do you keep cheer when you go from beautiful to bald in three days ?
How do you not despair when , with the body ravaged by chemotherapy , climbing a mere flight of stairs was sheer torture , that to someone like me who could dance for three hours ?
How do you not get overwhelmed by the despair and the misery of it all ?
All I wanted to do was curl up and weep .
But I kept telling myself fear and tears are options I did not have .
So I would drag myself into my dance studio -- body , mind and spirit -- every day into my dance studio , and learn everything I learned when I was four , all over again , reworked , relearned , regrouped .
It was excruciatingly painful , but I did it .
Difficult .
I focused on my mudras , on the imagery of my dance , on the poetry and the metaphor and the philosophy of the dance itself .
And slowly , I moved out of that miserable state of mind .
But I needed something else .
I needed something to go that extra mile , and I found it in that metaphor which I had learned from my mother when I was four .
The metaphor of Mahishasura Mardhini , of Durga .
Durga , the mother goddess , the fearless one , created by the pantheon of Hindu gods .
Durga , resplendent , bedecked , beautiful , her 18 arms ready for warfare , as she rode astride her lion into the battlefield to destroy Mahishasur .
Durga , the epitome of creative feminine energy , or shakti .
Durga , the fearless one .
I made that image of Durga and her every attribute , her every nuance , my very own .
Powered by the symbology of a myth and the passion of my training , I brought laser-sharp focus into my dance , laser-sharp focus to such an extent that I danced a few weeks after surgery .
I danced through chemo and radiation cycles , much to the dismay of my oncologist .
I danced between chemo and radiation cycles and badgered him to fit it to my performing dance schedule .
What I had done is I had tuned out of cancer and tuned into my dance .
Yes , cancer has just been one page in my life .
My story is a story of overcoming setbacks , obstacles and challenges that life throws at you .
My story is the power of thought .
My story is the power of choice .
It 's the power of focus .
It 's the power of bringing ourselves to the attention of something that so animates you , so moves you , that something even like cancer becomes insignificant .
My story is the power of a metaphor .
It 's the power of an image .
Mine was that of Durga , Durga the fearless one .
She was also called Simhanandini , the one who rode the lion .
As I ride out , as I ride my own inner strength , my own inner resilience , armed as I am with what medication can provide and continue treatment , as I ride out into the battlefield of cancer , asking my rogue cells to behave , I want to be known not as a cancer survivor , but as a cancer conqueror .
I present to you an excerpt of that work " Simhanandini . "
Thomas Dolby : " Love Is a Loaded Pistol "
To write his first studio album in decades , " A Map of the Floating City , " Thomas Dolby has been working in the inspirational setting of a restored lifeboat . At TED2010 he premieres a gorgeous , evocative song from that album -- about one night with a legend . He 's backed by members of the modern string quartet Ethel .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 "
Jeremy Gilley : One day of peace
Here 's a crazy idea : Persuade the world to try living in peace for just one day , every September 21 . In this energetic , honest talk , Jeremy Gilley tells the story of how this crazy idea became real -- real enough to help millions of kids in war-torn regions .
I was basically concerned about what was going on in the world .
I couldn 't understand the starvation , the destruction , the killing of innocent people .
Making sense of those things is a very difficult thing to do .
And when I was 12 , I became an actor .
I was bottom of the class . I haven 't got any qualifications .
I was told I was dyslexic .
In fact , I have got qualifications .
I got a D in pottery , which was the one thing that I did get -- which was useful , obviously .
And so concern is where all of this comes from .
And then , being an actor , I was doing these different kinds of things , and I felt the content of the work that I was involved in really wasn 't cutting it , that there surely had to be more .
And at that point , I read a book by Frank Barnaby , this wonderful nuclear physicist , and he said that media had a responsibility , that all sectors of society had a responsibility to try and progress things and move things forward .
And that fascinated me , because I 'd been messing around with a camera most of my life .
And then I thought , well maybe I could do something .
Maybe I could become a filmmaker .
Maybe I can use the form of film constructively to in some way make a difference .
Maybe there 's a little change I can get involved in .
So I started thinking about peace , and I was obviously , as I said to you , very much moved by these images , trying to make sense of that .
Could I go and speak to older and wiser people who would tell me how they made sense of the things that are going on ?
Because it 's obviously incredibly frightening .
But I realized that , having been messing around with structure as an actor , that a series of sound bites in itself wasn 't enough , that there needed to be a mountain to climb , there needed to be a journey that I had to take .
And if I took that journey , no matter whether it failed or succeeded , it would be completely irrelevant .
The point was that I would have something to hook the questions of -- is humankind fundamentally evil ?
Is the destruction of the world inevitable ? Should I have children ?
Is that a responsible thing to do ? Etc . , etc .
So I was thinking about peace , and then I was thinking , well where 's the starting point for peace ?
And that was when I had the idea .
There was no starting point for peace .
There was no day of global unity .
There was no day of intercultural cooperation .
There was no day when humanity came together , separate in all of those things and just shared it together -- that we 're in this together , and that if we united and we interculturally cooperated , then that might be the key to humanity 's survival .
That might shift the level of consciousness around the fundamental issues that humanity faces -- if we did it just for a day .
So obviously we didn 't have any money .
I was living at my mom 's place .
And we started writing letters to everybody .
You very quickly work out what is it that you 've got to do to fathom that out .
How do you create a day voted by every single head of state in the world to create the first ever Ceasefire Nonviolence Day , the 21st of September ?
And I wanted it to be the 21st of September because it was my granddad 's favorite number .
He was a prisoner of war .
He saw the bomb go off at Nagasaki .
It poisoned his blood . He died when I was 11 .
So he was like my hero .
And the reason why 21 was the number is 700 men left , 23 came back , two died on the boat and 21 hit the ground .
And that 's why we wanted it to be the 21st of September as the date of peace .
So we began this journey , and we launched it in 1999 .
And we wrote to heads of state , their ambassadors , Nobel Peace laureates , NGOs , faiths , various organizations -- literally wrote to everybody .
And very quickly , some letters started coming back .
And we started to build this case .
And I remember the first letter .
One of the first letters was from the Dalai Lama .
And of course we didn 't have the money ; we were playing guitars and getting the money for the stamps that we were sending out all of [ this mail ] .
A letter came through from the Dalai Lama saying , " This is an amazing thing . Come and see me .
I 'd love to talk to you about the first ever day of peace . "
And we didn 't have money for the flight .
And I rang Sir Bob Ayling , who was CEO of BA at the time , and said , " Mate , we 've got this invitation .
Could you give me a flight ? Because we 're going to go see him . "
And of course , we went and saw him and it was amazing .
And then Dr. Oscar Arias came forward .
And actually , let me go back to that slide , because when we launched it in 1999 -- this idea to create the first ever day of ceasefire and non-violence -- we invited thousands of people .
Well not thousands -- hundreds of people , lots of people -- all the press , because we were going to try and create the first ever World Peace Day , a peace day .
And we invited everybody , and no press showed up .
There were 114 people there -- they were mostly my friends and family .
And that was kind of like the launch of this thing .
But it didn 't matter because we were documenting , and that was the thing .
For me , it was really about the process .
It wasn 't about the end result .
And that 's the beautiful thing about the camera .
They used to say the pen is mightier than the sword . I think the camera is .
And just staying in the moment with it was a beautiful thing and really empowering actually .
So anyway , we began the journey .
And here you see people like Mary Robinson , I went to see in Geneva .
I 'm cutting my hair , it 's getting short and long , because every time I saw Kofi Annan , I was so worried that he thought I was a hippie that I cut it , and that was kind of what was going on .
Yeah , I 'm not worried about it now .
So Mary Robinson , she said to me , " Listen , this is an idea whose time has come . This must be created . "
Kofi Annan said , " This will be beneficial to my troops on the ground . "
The OAU at the time , led by Salim Ahmed Salim , said , " I must get the African countries involved . "
Dr. Oscar Arias , Nobel Peace laureate , president now of Costa Rica , said , " I 'll do everything that I can . "
So I went and saw Amr Moussa at the League of Arab States .
I met Mandela at the Arusha peace talks , and so on and so on and so on -- while I was building the case to prove whether this idea would make sense .
And then we were listening to the people . We were documenting everywhere .
76 countries in the last 12 years , I 've visited .
And I 've always spoken to women and children wherever I 've gone .
I 've recorded 44,000 young people .
I 've recorded about 900 hours of their thoughts .
I 'm really clear about how young people feel when you talk to them about this idea of having a starting point for their actions for a more peaceful world through their poetry , their art , their literature , their music , their sport , whatever it might be .
And we were listening to everybody .
And it was an incredibly thing , working with the U.N.
and working with NGOs and building this case .
I felt that I was presenting a case on behalf of the global community to try and create this day .
And the stronger the case and the more detailed it was , the better chance we had of creating this day .
And it was this stuff , this , where I actually was in the beginning kind of thinking no matter what happened , it didn 't actually matter .
It didn 't matter if it didn 't create a day of peace .
The fact is that , if I tried and it didn 't work , then I could make a statement about how unwilling the global community is to unite -- until , it was in Somalia , picking up that young girl .
And this young child who 'd taken about an inch and a half out of her leg with no antiseptic , and that young boy who was a child soldier , who told me he 'd killed people -- he was about 12 -- these things made me realize that this was not a film that I could just stop .
And that actually , at that moment something happened to me , which obviously made me go , " I 'm going to document .
If this is the only film that I ever make , I 'm going to document until this becomes a reality . "
Because we 've got to stop , we 've got to do something where we unite -- separate from all the politics and religion that , as a young person , is confusing me .
I don 't know how to get involved in that process .
And then on the seventh of September , I was invited to New York .
The Costa Rican government and the British government had put forward to the United Nations General Assembly , with 54 co-sponsors , the idea of the first ever Ceasefire Nonviolence Day , the 21st of September , as a fixed calendar date , and it was unanimously adopted by every head of state in the world .
Yeah , but there were hundreds of individuals , obviously , who made that a reality .
And thank you to all of them .
That was an incredible moment .
I was at the top of the General Assembly just looking down into it and seeing it happen .
And as I mentioned , when it started , we were at the Globe , and there was no press .
And now I was thinking , " Well , the press it really going to hear this story . "
And suddenly , we started to institutionalize this day .
Kofi Annan invited me on the morning of September the 11th to do a press conference .
And it was 8 : 00 AM when I stood there .
And I was waiting for him to come down , and I knew that he was on his way .
And obviously he never came down . The statement was never made .
The world was never told there was a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence .
And it was obviously a tragic moment for the thousands of people who lost their lives , there and then subsequently all over the world .
It never happened .
And I remember thinking , " This is exactly why , actually , we have to work even harder .
And we have to make this day work .
It 's been created ; nobody knows .
But we have to continue this journey , and we have to tell people , and we have to prove it can work . "
And I left New York freaked , but actually empowered .
And I felt inspired by the possibilities that if it did , then maybe we wouldn 't see things like that .
I remember putting that film out and going to cynics .
I was showing the film , and I remember being in Israel and getting it absolutely slaughtered by some guys having watched the film -- that it 's just a day of peace , it doesn 't mean anything .
It 's not going to work ; you 're not going to stop the fighting in Afghanistan ; the Taliban won 't listen , etc . , etc .
It 's just symbolism .
And that was even worse than actually what had just happened in many ways , because it couldn 't not work .
I 'd spoken in Somalia , Burundi , Gaza , the West Bank , India , Sri Lanka , Congo , wherever it was , and they 'd all tell me , " If you can create a window of opportunity , we can move aid , we can vaccinate children .
Children can lead their projects .
They can unite . They can come together . If people would stop , lives will be saved . "
That 's what I 'd heard .
And I 'd heard that from the people who really understood what conflict was about .
And so I went back to the United Nations .
I decided that I 'd continue filming and make another movie .
And I went back to the U.N. for another couple of years .
We started moving around the corridors of the U.N. system , governments and NGOs , trying desperately to find somebody to come forward and have a go at it , see if we could make it possible .
And after lots and lots of meetings obviously , I 'm delighted that this man , Ahmad Fawzi , one of my heroes and mentors really , he managed to get UNICEF involved .
And UNICEF , God bless them , they said , " Okay , we 'll have a go . "
And then UNAMA became involved in Afghanistan .
It was historical . Could it work in Afghanistan with UNAMA and WHO and civil society , etc . , etc . , etc . ?
And I was getting it all on film and I was recording it , and I was thinking , " This is it . This is the possibility of it maybe working .
But even if it doesn 't , at least the door is open and there 's a chance . "
And so I went back to London , and I went and saw this chap , Jude Law .
And I saw him because he was an actor , I was an actor , I had a connection to him , because we needed to get to the press , we needed this attraction , we needed the media to be involved .
Because if we start pumping it up a bit maybe more people would listen and there 'd be more -- when we got into certain areas , maybe there would be more people interested .
And maybe we 'd be helped financially a little bit more , which had been desperately difficult .
I won 't go into that .
So Jude said , " Okay , I 'll do some statements for you . "
While I was filming these statements , he said to me , " Where are you going next ? "
I said , " I 'm going to go to Afghanistan . " He said , " Really ? "
And I could sort of see a little look in his eye of interest .
So I said to him , " Do you want to come with me ?
It 'd be really interesting if you came .
It would help and bring attention .
And that attention would help leverage the situation , as well as all of the other sides of it . "
I think there 's a number of pillars to success .
One is you 've got to have a great idea .
The other is you 've got to have a constituency , you 've got to have finance , and you 've got to be able to raise awareness .
And actually I could never raise awareness by myself , no matter what I 'd achieved .
So these guys were absolutely crucial .
So he said yes , and we found ourselves in Afghanistan .
It was a really incredible thing that when we landed there , I was talking to various people , and they were saying to me , " You 've got to get everybody involved here .
You can 't just expect it to work . You have to get out and work . "
And we did , and we traveled around , and we spoke to elders , we spoke to doctors , we spoke to nurses , we held press conferences , we went out with soldiers , we sat down with ISAF , we sat down with NATO , we sat down with the U.K. government .
I mean , we basically sat down with everybody -- in and out of schools with ministers of education , holding these press conferences , which of course , now were loaded with press , everybody was there .
There was an interest in what was going on .
This amazing woman , Fatima Gailani , was absolutely instrumental in what went on as she was the spokesperson for the resistance against the Russians .
And her Afghan network was just absolutely everywhere .
And she was really crucial in getting the message in .
And then we went home . We 'd sort of done it .
We had to wait now and see what happened .
And I got home , and I remember one of the team bringing in a letter to me from the Taliban .
And that letter basically said , " We 'll observe this day .
We will observe this day .
We see it as a window of opportunity .
And we will not engage . We 're not going to engage . "
And that meant that humanitarian workers wouldn 't be kidnapped or killed .
And then suddenly , I obviously knew at this point , there was a chance .
And days later , 1.6 million children were vaccinated against polio as a consequence of everybody stopping .
And like the General Assembly , obviously the most wonderful , wonderful moment .
And so then we wrapped the film up and we put it together because we had to go back .
We put it into Dari and Pashto . We put it in the local dialects .
We went back to Afghanistan , because the next year was coming , and we wanted to support .
But more importantly , we wanted to go back , because these people in Afghanistan were the heroes .
They were the people who believed in peace and the possibilities of it , etc . , etc . -- and they made it real .
And we wanted to go back and show them the film and say , " Look , you guys made this possible . And thank you very much . "
And we gave the film over .
Obviously it was shown , and it was amazing .
And then that year , that year , 2008 , this ISAF statement from Kabul , Afghanistan , September 17th : " General Stanley McChrystal , commander of international security assistance forces in Afghanistan , announced today ISAF will not conduct offensive military operations on the 21st of September . "
They were saying they would stop .
And then there was this other statement that came out from the U.N. Department of Security and Safety saying that , in Afghanistan , because of this work , the violence was down by 70 percent .
70 percent reduction in violence on this day at least .
And that completely blew my mind almost more than anything .
And I remember being stuck in New York , this time because of the volcano , which was obviously much less harmful .
And I was there thinking about what was going on .
And I kept thinking about this 70 percent .
70 percent reduction in violence -- in what everyone said was completely impossible and you couldn 't do .
And that made me think that , if we can get 70 percent in Afghanistan , then surely we can get 70 percent reduction everywhere .
We have to go for a global truce .
We have to utilize this day of ceasefire and nonviolence and go for a global truce , go for the largest recorded cessation of hostilities , both domestically and internationally , ever recorded .
That 's exactly what we must do .
And on the 21st of September this year , we 're going to launch that campaign at the O2 Arena to go for that process , to try and create the largest recorded cessation of hostilities .
And we will utilize all kinds of things -- have a dance and social media and visiting on Facebook and visit the website , sign the petition .
And it 's in the six official languages of the United Nations .
And we 'll globally link with government , inter-government , non-government , education , unions , sports .
And you can see the education box there .
We 've got resources at the moment in 174 countries trying to get young people to be the driving force behind the vision of that global truce .
And obviously the life-saving is increased , the concepts help .
Linking up with the Olympics -- I went and saw Seb Coe . I said , " London 2012 is about truce .
Ultimately , that 's what it 's about . "
Why don 't we all team up ? Why don 't we bring truce to life ?
Why don 't you support the process of the largest ever global truce ?
We 'll make a new film about this process .
We 'll utilize sport and football .
On the Day of Peace , there 's thousands of football matches all played , from the favelas of Brazil to wherever it might be .
So , utilizing all of these ways to inspire individual action .
And ultimately , we have to try that .
We have to work together .
And when I stand here in front of all of you , and the people who will watch these things , I 'm excited , on behalf of everybody I 've met , that there is a possibility that our world could unite , that we could come together as one , that we could lift the level of consciousness around the fundamental issues , brought about by individuals .
I was with Brahimi , Ambassador Brahimi .
I think he 's one of the most incredible men in relation to international politics -- in Afghanistan , in Iraq .
He 's an amazing man .
And I sat with him a few weeks ago .
And I said to him , " Mr. Brahimi , is this nuts , going for a global truce ?
Is this possible ? Is it really possible that we could do this ? "
He said , " It 's absolutely possible . "
I said , " What would you do ?
Would you go to governments and lobby and use the system ? "
He said , " No , I 'd talk to the individuals . "
It 's all about the individuals .
It 's all about you and me .
It 's all about partnerships .
It 's about your constituencies ; it 's about your businesses .
Because together , by working together , I seriously think we can start to change things .
And there 's a wonderful man sitting in this audience , and I don 't know where he is , who said to me a few days ago -- because I did a little rehearsal -- and he said , " I 've been thinking about this day and imagining it as a square with 365 squares , and one of them is white . "
And it then made me think about a glass of water , which is clear .
If you put one drop , one drop of something , in that water , it 'll change it forever .
By working together , we can create peace one day .
Thank you TED . Thank you .
Thank you .
Thanks a lot .
Thank you very much . Thank you .
Norman Spack : How I help transgender teens become who they want to be
Puberty is an awkward time for just about everybody , but for transgender teens it can be a nightmare , as they grow overnight into bodies they aren 't comfortable with . In a heartfelt talk , endocrinologist Norman Spack tells a personal story of how he became one of the few doctors in the US to treat minors with hormone replacement therapy . By staving off the effects of puberty , Spack gives trans teens the time they need .
I want you all to think about the third word that was ever said about you , or if you were delivering , about the person you were delivering .
And you can all mouth it if you want or say it out loud .
It was , the first two were , " It 's a ... "
Well , it shows you that I also deal with issues where there 's not certainty of whether it 's a girl or a boy , so the mixed answer was very appropriate .
Of course , now the answer often comes not at birth but at the ultrasound , unless the prospective parents choose to be surprised like we all were .
But I want you to think about what it is that leads to that statement on the third word , because the third word is a description of your sex , and by that I mean , made by a description of your genitals .
Now , as a pediatric endocrinologist , I used to be very , very involved , and still somewhat am , in cases in which there are mismatches in the externals or between the externals and the internals , and we literally have to figure out what is the description of your sex .
But there is nothing that is definable at the time of birth that would define you , and when I talk about definition , I 'm talking about your sexual orientation .
We don 't say , " It 's a gay boy . "
" A lesbian girl . "
Those situations don 't really define themselves more until the second decade of life .
Nor do they define your gender , which , as different from your anatomic sex , describes your self-concept .
Do you see yourself as a male or female or somewhere in the spectrum in between ?
That sometimes shows up in the first decade of life , but it can be very confusing for parents because it is quite normative for children to act in a cross-gender play and way , and that in fact there are studies that show that even 80 percent of children who act in that fashion will not persist in wanting to be the opposite gender at the time when puberty begins .
But at the time that puberty begins , that means between about age 10 to 12 in girls , 12 to 14 in boys , with breast budding or two to three times increase in the gonads in the case of genetic males , by that particular point , the child who says they are in the absolute wrong body is almost certain to be transgender and is extremely unlikely to change those feelings , no matter how anybody tries reparative therapy or any other noxious things .
Now this is relatively rare , so I had relatively little personal experience with this , and my experience was more typical only because I had an adolescent practice .
And I saw someone age 24 , went through Harvard , genetically female , went through Harvard with three male roommates who knew the whole story , a registrar who always listed his name on course lists as a male name , and came to me after graduating saying , " Help me .
I know you know a lot of endocrinology . "
And indeed I 've treated a lot of people who were born without gonads .
This wasn 't rocket science .
But I made a deal with him : I 'll treat you if you teach me .
And so he did .
And what an education I got from taking care of all the members of his support group .
And then I got really confused , because I thought it was relatively easy at that age to just give people the hormones of the gender in which they were affirming , but then my patient married , and he married a woman who had been born as a male , had married as a male , had two children , then went through a transition into female , and now this delightful female was attached to my male patient , in fact got legally married because they showed up as a man and a woman , and who knew ?
Right ?
And while I was confused about , does this make so-and-so gay ?
Does this make so-and-so straight ?
I was getting sexual orientation confused with gender identity .
And my patient said to me , " Look , look , look .
If you just think of the following , you 'll get it right : Sexual orientation is who you go to bed with ; gender identity is who you go to bed as . "
And I subsequently learned from the many adults -- I took care of about 200 adults — I learned from them that if I didn 't look , peek as to who their partner was in the waiting room , I would never be able to guess better than chance whether they were gay , straight , bi , or asexual in their affirmed gender .
In other words , one thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other .
And the data show it .
Now , as I took care of the 200 adults , I found it extremely painful .
These people were -- many of them had to give up so much of their lives .
Sometimes their parents would reject them , siblings , their own children , and then their divorcing spouse would forbid them from seeing their children .
It was so awful , but why did they do it at 40 and 50 ?
Because they felt they had to affirm themselves before they would kill themselves .
And indeed , the rate of suicide among untreated transgendered people is among the highest in the world .
So what to do ?
I was intrigued in going to a conference in Holland , where they are experts in this , and saw the most remarkable thing .
They were treating young adolescents after giving them the most intense psychometric testing of gender , and they were treating them by blocking the puberty that they didn 't want .
Because basically , kids look about the same , each sex , until they go through puberty , at which point , if you feel you 're in the wrong sex , you feel like Pinocchio becoming a donkey .
The fantasy that you had that your body will change to be who you want it to be with puberty actually is nullified by the puberty you get .
And they fall apart .
So that 's why putting the puberty on hold — Why on hold ? You can 't just give them the opposite hormones that young .
They 'll end up stunted in growth , and you think you can have a meaningful conversation about the fertility effects of such treatment with a 10-year-old girl , a 12-year-old boy ?
So this buys time in the diagnostic process for four or five years so that they can work it out , they can have more and more testing , they can live without feeling their bodies are running away from them .
And then , in a program they call 12-16-18 , around age 12 is when they give the blocking hormones , and then at age 16 with retesting , they requalify .
Now remember , the blocking hormones are reversible , but when you give the hormones of the opposite sex , you now start spouting breasts and facial hair and voice , depending on what you 're using , and those effects are permanent or require surgery to remove or electrolysis , and you can never really affect the voice .
So this is serious , and this is 15- , 16-year-old stuff .
And then at 18 , they 're eligible for surgery , and while there 's no good surgery for females to males genitally , the male-to-female surgery has fooled gynecologists .
That 's how good it can be .
So I looked at how the patients were doing , and I looked at patients who just looked like everybody else , except they were pubertally delayed .
But once they gave them the hormones consistent with the gender they affirm , they look beautiful .
They look normal . They had normal heights .
in a crowd .
So at that point , I decided I 'm going to do this .
This is really where the pediatric endocrine realm comes in , in kids age 10-12 , 10-14 , that 's pediatric endocrinology .
So I brought some kids in , and this now became the standard of care , and Children 's Hospital was behind it .
By my showing them the kids before and after , people who never got treated and people who wished to be treated , and pictures of the Dutch , they came to me and said , " You 've got to do something for these kids . "
Well , where were these kids before ?
They were out there suffering , is where they were .
So we started a program in 2007 .
It became the first program of its kind -- but it 's really of the Dutch kind -- in North America .
And since then , we have 160 patients .
Did they come from Afghanistan ? No .
They came , 75 percent of them came from within 150 miles of Boston .
And some came from England .
Jackie had been abused in the Midlands , in England .
She 's 12 years old there , she was living as a girl but she was being beaten up .
It was a horror show .
They had to homeschool her .
And the reason the British were coming was because they would not treat anybody with anything under age 16 , which means they were consigning them to an adult body , no matter what happened , even if they tested them well .
Jackie , on top of it , was , by virtue of skeletal markings , destined to be six feet five .
And yet , she had just begun a male puberty .
Well , I did something a little bit innovative , because I do know hormones , and that estrogen is much more potent in closing epiphyses , the growth plates , and stopping growth , than testosterone is .
So we blocked her testosterone with a blocking hormone , but we added estrogen , not at 16 , but at 13 .
And so here she is at 16 , on the left .
And on her 16th birthday , she went to Thailand , where they would do a genital plastic surgery .
They will do it at 18 now .
And she ended up 5 ' 11 " but more than that , she has normal breast size , because by blocking testosterone , every one of our patients has normal breast size if they get to us at the appropriate age , not too late .
And on the far right , there she is .
She went public , semifinalist in the Miss England competition .
The judges debated as to , can they do this ?
Can they make her — And one of them quipped , I 'm told , " But she has more natural self than half the other contestants . "
And some of them have been rearranged a little bit , but it 's all her DNA .
And she 's become a remarkable spokeswoman .
And she was offered contracts as a model , at which point she teased me , where she said , " You know , I might have had a better chance as a model if you 'd made me six feet one . "
Go figure .
So this picture , I think , says it all .
It really says it all .
These are Nicole and brother Jonas , identical twin boys , and proven to be identical , in which Nicole had affirmed herself as a girl as early as age three .
At age seven , they changed her name , and came to me at the very beginnings of a male puberty .
Now you can imagine looking at Jonas at only 14 that male puberty is early in this family , because he looks more like a 16-year-old , but it makes the point all the more why you have to be conscious of where the patient is .
Nicole has done pubertal blockade in here , and Jonas is just going -- biologic control .
This is what Nicole would look like if we weren 't doing what we were doing .
He 's got a prominent Adam 's apple .
He 's got angular bones to the face , a mustache , and you can see there 's a height difference because he 's gone through a growth spurt that she won 't get .
Now Nicole is on estrogen .
She has a bit of a form to her .
This family went to the White House last spring because of their work in overturning an anti-discrimination , there was a bill that would block the right of transgender people in Maine to use public bathrooms , and it looked like the bill was going to pass , and that would have been a problem , but Nicole went personally to every legislator in Maine and said , " I can do this .
If they see me , they 'll understand why I 'm no threat in the lady 's room , but I can be threatened in the men 's room . "
And then they finally got it .
So where do we go from here ?
Well , we still have a ways to go in terms of anti-discrimination .
There are only 17 states that have an anti-discrimination law against discrimination in housing , employment , public accommodation , only 17 states , and five of them are in New England .
We need less expensive drugs .
They cost a fortune .
And we need to get this condition out of the DSM .
It is as much a psychiatric disease as being gay and lesbian , and that went out the window in 1973 , and the whole world changed .
And this isn 't going to break anybody 's budget .
This is not that common .
But the risks of not doing anything for them not only puts all of them at risk of losing their lives to suicide , but it also says something about whether we are a truly inclusive society .
Thank you .
Melinda Gates : What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola
In her talk , Melinda Gates makes a provocative case for nonprofits taking a cue from corporations such as Coca-Cola , whose plugged-in , global network of marketers and distributors ensures that every remote village wants -- and can get -- a Coke . Why shouldn 't this work for condoms , sanitation , vaccinations too ? & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
One of my favorite parts of my job at the Gates Foundation is that I get to travel to the developing world , and I do that quite regularly .
And when I meet the mothers in so many of these remote places , I 'm really struck by the things that we have in common .
They want what we want for our children and that is for their children to grow up successful , to be healthy , and to have a successful life .
But I also see lots of poverty , and it 's quite jarring , both in the scale and the scope of it .
My first trip in India , I was in a person 's home where they had dirt floors , no running water , no electricity , and that 's really what I see all over the world .
So in short , I 'm startled by all the things that they don 't have .
But I am surprised by one thing that they do have : Coca-Cola .
Coke is everywhere .
In fact , when I travel to the developing world , Coke feels ubiquitous .
And so when I come back from these trips , and I 'm thinking about development , and I 'm flying home and I 'm thinking , " We 're trying to deliver condoms to people or vaccinations , " you know , Coke 's success kind of stops and makes you wonder : how is it that they can get Coke to these far-flung places ?
If they can do that , why can 't governments and NGOs do the same thing ?
And I 'm not the first person to ask this question .
But I think , as a community , we still have a lot to learn .
It 's staggering , if you think about Coca-Cola .
They sell 1.5 billion servings every single day .
That 's like every man , woman and child on the planet having a serving of Coke every week .
So why does this matter ?
Well , if we 're going to speed up the progress and go even faster on the set of Millennium Development Goals that we 're set as a world , we need to learn from the innovators , and those innovators come from every single sector .
I feel that , if we can understand what makes something like Coca-Cola ubiquitous , we can apply those lessons then for the public good .
Coke 's success is relevant , because if we can analyze it , learn from it , then we can save lives .
So that 's why I took a bit of time to study Coke .
And I think there are really three things we can take away from Coca-Cola .
They take real-time data and immediately feed it back into the product .
They tap into local entrepreneurial talent , and they do incredible marketing .
So let 's start with the data .
Now Coke has a very clear bottom line -- they report to a set of shareholders , they have to turn a profit .
So they take the data , and they use it to measure progress .
They have this very continuous feedback loop .
They learn something , they put it back into the product , they put it back into the market .
They have a whole team called " Knowledge and Insight . "
It 's a lot like other consumer companies .
So if you 're running Namibia for Coca-Cola , and you have a 107 constituencies , you know where every can versus bottle of Sprite , Fanta or Coke was sold , whether it was a corner store , a supermarket or a pushcart .
So if sales start to drop , then the person can identify the problem and address the issue .
Let 's contrast that for a minute to development .
In development , the evaluation comes at the very end of the project .
I 've sat in a lot of those meetings , and by then , it is way too late to use the data .
I had somebody from an NGO once describe it to me as bowling in the dark .
They said , " You roll the ball , you hear some pins go down .
It 's dark , you can 't see which one goes down until the lights come on , and then you an see your impact . "
Real-time data turns on the lights .
So what 's the second thing that Coke 's good at ?
They 're good at tapping into that local entrepreneurial talent .
Coke 's been in Africa since 1928 , but most of the time they couldn 't reach the distant markets , because they had a system that was a lot like in the developed world , which was a large truck rolling down the street .
And in Africa , the remote places , it 's hard to find a good road .
But Coke noticed something -- they noticed that local people were taking the product , buying it in bulk and then reselling it in these hard-to-reach places .
And so they took a bit of time to learn about that .
And they decided in 1990 that they wanted to start training the local entrepreneurs , giving them small loans .
They set them up as what they called micro-distribution centers , and those local entrepreneurs then hire sales people , who go out with bicycles and pushcarts and wheelbarrows to sell the product .
There are now some 3,000 of these centers employing about 15,000 people in Africa .
In Tanzania and Uganda , they represent 90 percent of Coke 's sales .
Let 's look at the development side .
What is it that governments and NGOs can learn from Coke ?
Governments and NGOs need to tap into that local entrepreneurial talent as well , because the locals know how to reach the very hard-to-serve places , their neighbors , and they know what motivates them to make change .
I think a great example of this is Ethiopia 's new health extension program .
The government noticed in Ethiopia that many of the people were so far away from a health clinic , they were over a day 's travel away from a health clinic .
So if you 're in an emergency situation -- or if you 're a mom about to deliver a baby -- forget it , to get to the health care center .
They decided that wasn 't good enough , so they went to India and studied the Indian state of Kerala that also had a system like this , and they adapted it for Ethiopia .
And in 2003 , the government of Ethiopia started this new system in their own country .
They trained 35,000 health extension workers to deliver care directly to the people .
In just five years , their ratio went from one worker for every 30,000 people to one worker for every 2,500 people .
Now , think about how this can change people 's lives .
Health extension workers can help with so many things , whether it 's family planning , prenatal care , immunizations for the children , or advising the woman to get to the facility on time for an on-time delivery .
That is having real impact in a country like Ethiopia , and it 's why you see their child mortality numbers coming down 25 percent from 2000 to 2008 .
In Ethiopia , there are hundreds of thousands of children living because of this health extension worker program .
So what 's the next step for Ethiopia ?
Well , they 're already starting talk about this .
They 're starting to talk about , " How do you have the health community workers generate their own ideas ?
How do you incent them based on the impact that they 're getting out in those remote villages ? "
That 's how you tap into local entrepreneurial talent and you unlock people 's potential .
The third component of Coke 's success is marketing .
Ultimately , Coke 's success depends on one crucial fact and that is that people want a Coca-Cola .
Now the reason these micro-entrepreneurs can sell or make a profit is they have to sell every single bottle in their pushcart or their wheelbarrow .
So , they rely on Coca-Cola in terms of its marketing , and what 's the secret to their marketing ?
Well , it 's aspirational .
It is associated that product with a kind of life that people want to live .
So even though it 's a global company , they take a very local approach .
Coke 's global campaign slogan is " Open Happiness . "
But they localize it .
And they don 't just guess what makes people happy ; they go to places like Latin America and they realize that happiness there is associated with family life .
And in South Africa , they associate happiness with seriti or community respect .
Now , that played itself out in the World Cup campaign .
Let 's listen to this song that Coke created for it , " Wavin ' Flag " by a Somali hip hop artist .
K 'Naan : Oh oh oh oh oh o-oh Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh o-oh Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh o-oh Give you freedom , give you fire Give you reason , take you higher See the champions take the field now You define us , make us feel proud In the streets our heads are lifted As we lose our inhibition Celebration , it 's around us Every nation , all around us Melinda French Gates : It feels pretty good , right ?
Well , they didn 't stop there -- they localized it into 18 different languages .
And it went number one on the pop chart in 17 countries .
It reminds me of a song that I remember from my childhood , " I 'd Like to Teach the World to Sing , " that also went number one on the pop charts .
Both songs have something in common : that same appeal of celebration and unity .
So how does health and development market ?
Well , it 's based on avoidance , not aspirations .
I 'm sure you 've heard some of these messages .
" Use a condom , don 't get AIDS . "
" Wash you hands , you might not get diarrhea . "
It doesn 't sound anything like " Wavin ' Flag " to me .
And I think we make a fundamental mistake -- we make an assumption , that we think that , if people need something , we don 't have to make them want that .
And I think that 's a mistake .
And there 's some indications around the world that this is starting to change .
One example is sanitation .
We know that a million and a half children die a year from diarrhea and a lot of it is because of open defecation .
But there 's a solution : you build a toilet .
But what we 're finding around the world , over and over again , is , if you build a toilet and you leave it there , it doesn 't get used .
People reuse it for a slab for their home .
They sometimes store grain in it .
I 've even seen it used for a chicken coop .
But what does marketing really entail that would make a sanitation solution get a result in diarrhea ?
Well , you work with the community .
You start to talk to them about why open defecation is something that shouldn 't be done in the village , and they agree to that .
But then you take the toilet and you position it as a modern , trendy convenience .
One state in Northern India has gone so far as to link toilets to courtship .
And it works -- look at these headlines .
I 'm not kidding .
Women are refusing to marry men without toilets .
No loo , no " I do . "
Now , it 's not just a funny headline -- it 's innovative . It 's an innovative marketing campaign .
But more importantly , it saves lives .
Take a look at this -- this is a room full of young men and my husband , Bill .
And can you guess what the young men are waiting for ?
They 're waiting to be circumcised .
Can you you believe that ?
We know that circumcision reduces HIV infection by 60 percent in men .
And when we first heard this result inside the Foundation , I have to admit , Bill and I were scratching our heads a little bit and we were saying , " But who 's going to volunteer for this procedure ? "
But it turns out the men do , because they 're hearing from their girlfriends that they prefer it , and the men also believe it improves their sex life .
So if we can start to understand what people really want in health and development , we can change communities and we can change whole nations .
Well , why is all of this so important ?
So let 's talk about what happens when this all comes together , when you tie the three things together .
And polio , I think , is one of the most powerful examples .
We 've seen a 99 percent reduction in polio in 20 years .
So if you look back to 1988 , there are about 350,000 cases of polio on the planet that year .
In 2009 , we 're down to 1,600 cases .
Well how did that happen ?
Let 's look at a country like India .
They have over a billion people in this country , but they have 35,000 local doctors who report paralysis , and clinicians , a huge reporting system in chemists .
They have two and a half million vaccinators .
But let me make the story a little bit more concrete for you .
Let me tell you the story of Shriram , an 18 month boy in Bihar , a northern state in India .
This year on August 8th , he felt paralysis and on the 13th , his parents took him to the doctor .
On August 14th and 15th , they took a stool sample , and by the 25th of August , it was confirmed he had Type 1 polio .
By August 30th , a genetic test was done , and we knew what strain of polio Shriram had .
Now it could have come from one of two places .
It could have come from Nepal , just to the north , across the border , or from Jharkhand , a state just to the south .
Luckily , the genetic testing proved that , in fact , this strand came north , because , had it come from the south , it would have had a much wider impact in terms of transmission .
So many more people would have been affected .
So what 's the endgame ?
Well on September 4th , there was a huge mop-up campaign , which is what you do in polio .
They went out and where Shriram lives , they vaccinated two million people .
So in less than a month , we went from one case of paralysis to a targeted vaccination program .
And I 'm happy to say only one other person in that area got polio .
That 's how you keep a huge outbreak from spreading , and it shows what can happen when local people have the data in their hands ; they can save lives .
Now one of the challenges in polio , still , is marketing , but it might not be what you think .
It 's not the marketing on the ground .
It 's not telling the parents , " If you see paralysis , take your child to the doctor or get your child vaccinated . "
We have a problem with marketing in the donor community .
The G8 nations have been incredibly generous on polio over the last 20 years , but we 're starting to have something called polio fatigue and that is that the donor nations aren 't willing to fund polio any longer .
So by next summer , we 're sighted to run out of money on polio .
So we are 99 percent of the way there on this goal and we 're about to run short of money .
And I think that if the marketing were more aspirational , if we could focus as a community on how far we 've come and how amazing it would be to eradicate this disease , we could put polio fatigue and polio behind us .
And if we could do that , we could stop vaccinating everybody , worldwide , in all of our countries for polio .
And it would only be the second disease ever wiped off the face of the planet .
And we are so close .
And this victory is so possible .
So if Coke 's marketers came to me and asked me to define happiness , I 'd say my vision of happiness is a mother holding healthy baby in her arms .
To me , that is deep happiness .
And so if we can learn lessons from the innovators in every sector , then in the future we make together , that happiness can be just as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola .
Thank you .
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin : Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere , a new way to see , hear and interpret scientific data . Dive into the brain , feel electron spin , hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries .
The AlloSphere : it 's a three-story metal sphere in an echo-free chamber .
Think of the AlloSphere as a large , dynamically varying digital microscope that 's connected to a supercomputer .
20 researchers can stand on a bridge suspended inside of the sphere , and be completely immersed in their data .
Imagine if a team of physicists could stand inside of an atom and watch and hear electrons spin .
Imagine if a group of sculptors could be inside of a lattice of atoms and sculpt with their material .
Imagine if a team of surgeons could fly into the brain , as though it was a world , and see tissues as landscapes , and hear blood density levels as music .
This is some of the research that you 're going to see that we 're undertaking at the AlloSphere .
But first a little bit about this group of artists , scientists , and engineers that are working together .
I 'm a composer , orchestrally-trained , and the inventor of the AlloSphere .
With my visual artist colleagues , we map complex mathematical algorithms that unfold in time and space , visually and sonically .
Our scientist colleagues are finding new patterns in the information .
And our engineering colleagues are making one of the largest dynamically varying computers in the world for this kind of data exploration .
I 'm going to fly you into five research projects in the AlloSphere that are going to take you from biological macroscopic data all the way down to electron spin .
This first project is called the AlloBrain .
And it 's our attempt to quantify beauty by finding which regions of the brain are interactive while witnessing something beautiful .
You 're flying through the cortex of my colleague 's brain .
Our narrative here is real fMRI data that 's mapped visually and sonically .
The brain now a world that we can fly through and interact with .
You see 12 intelligent computer agents , the little rectangles that are flying in the brain with you .
They 're mining blood density levels .
And they 're reporting them back to you sonically .
Higher density levels mean more activity in that point of the brain .
They 're actually singing these densities to you with higher pitches mapped to higher densities .
We 're now going to move from real biological data to biogenerative algorithms that create artificial nature in our next artistic and scientific installation .
In this artistic and scientific installation , biogenerative algorithms are helping us to understand self-generation and growth : very important for simulation in the nanoscaled sciences .
For artists , we 're making new worlds that we can uncover and explore .
These generative algorithms grow over time , and they interact and communicate as a swarm of insects .
Our researchers are interacting with this data by injecting bacterial code , which are computer programs , that allow these creatures to grow over time .
We 're going to move now from the biological and the macroscopic world , down into the atomic world , as we fly into a lattice of atoms .
This is real AFM -- Atomic Force Microscope -- data from my colleagues in the Solid State Lighting and Energy Center .
They 've discovered a new bond , a new material for transparent solar cells .
We 're flying through 2,000 lattice of atoms -- oxygen , hydrogen and zinc .
You view the bond in the triangle .
It 's four blue zinc atoms bonding with one white hydrogen atom .
You see the electron flow with the streamlines we as artists have generated for the scientists .
This is allowing them to find the bonding nodes in any lattice of atoms .
We think it makes a beautiful structural art .
The sound that you 're hearing are the actual emission spectrums of these atoms .
We 've mapped them into the audio domain , so they 're singing to you .
Oxygen , hydrogen and zinc have their own signature .
We 're going to actually move even further down as we go from this lattice of atoms to one single hydrogen atom .
We 're working with our physicist colleagues that have given us the mathematical calculations of the n-dimensional Schrödinger equation in time .
What you 're seeing here right now is a superposition of an electron in the lower three orbitals of a hydrogen atom .
You 're actually hearing and seeing the electron flow with the lines .
The white dots are the probability wave that will show you where the electron is in any given point of time and space in this particular three-orbital configuration .
In a minute we 're going to move to a two-orbital configuration , and you 're going to notice a pulsing .
And you 're going to hear an undulation between the sound .
This is actually a light emitter .
As the sound starts to pulse and contract , our physicists can tell when a photon is going to be emitted .
They 're starting to find new mathematical structures in these calculations .
And they 're understanding more about quantum mathematics .
We 're going to move even further down , and go to one single electron spin .
This will be the final project that I show you .
Our colleagues in the Center for Quantum Computation and Spintronics are actually measuring with their lasers decoherence in a single electron spin .
We 've taken this information and we 've made a mathematical model out of it .
You 're actually seeing and hearing quantum information flow .
This is very important for the next step in simulating quantum computers and information technology .
So these brief examples that I 've shown you give you an idea of the kind of work that we 're doing at the University of California , Santa Barbara , to bring together , arts , science and engineering into a new age of math , science and art .
We hope that all of you will come to see the AlloSphere .
Inspire us to think of new ways that we can use this unique instrument that we 've created at Santa Barbara .
Thank you very much .
Ben Saunders : Why bother leaving the house ?
Explorer Ben Saunders wants you to go outside ! Not because it 's always pleasant and happy , but because that 's where the meat of life is , " the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days . " Saunders ' next outdoor excursion ? To try to be the first in the world to walk from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again .
I essentially drag sledges for a living , so it doesn 't take an awful lot to flummox me intellectually , but I 'm going to read this question from an interview earlier this year : " Philosophically , does the constant supply of information steal our ability to imagine or replace our dreams of achieving ?
After all , if it is being done somewhere by someone , and we can participate virtually , then why bother leaving the house ? "
I 'm usually introduced as a polar explorer .
I 'm not sure that 's the most progressive or 21st-century of job titles , but I 've spent more than two percent now of my entire life living in a tent inside the Arctic Circle , so I get out of the house a fair bit .
And in my nature , I guess , I am a doer of things more than I am a spectator or a contemplator of things , and it 's that dichotomy , the gulf between ideas and action that I 'm going to try and explore briefly .
The pithiest answer to the question " why ? "
that 's been dogging me for the last 12 years was credited certainly to this chap , the rakish-looking gentleman standing at the back , second from the left , George Lee Mallory . Many of you will know his name .
In 1924 he was last seen disappearing into the clouds near the summit of Mt . Everest .
He may or may not have been the first person to climb Everest , more than 30 years before Edmund Hillary .
No one knows if he got to the top . It 's still a mystery .
But he was credited with coining the phrase , " Because it 's there . "
Now I 'm not actually sure that he did say that .
There 's very little evidence to suggest it , but what he did say is actually far nicer , and again , I 've printed this . I 'm going to read it out .
" The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this : What is the use of climbing Mt . Everest ?
And my answer must at once be , it is no use .
There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever .
Oh , we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes , and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation , but otherwise nothing will come of it .
We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver , and not a gem , nor any coal or iron .
We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food . So it is no use .
If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it , that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward , then you won 't see why we go .
What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy , and joy , after all , is the end of life .
We don 't live to eat and make money .
We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life .
That is what life means , and that is what life is for . "
Mallory 's argument that leaving the house , embarking on these grand adventures is joyful and fun , however , doesn 't tally that neatly with my own experience .
The furthest I 've ever got away from my front door was in the spring of 2004 . I still don 't know exactly what came over me , but my plan was to make a solo and unsupported crossing of the Arctic Ocean .
I planned essentially to walk from the north coast of Russia to the North Pole , and then to carry on to the north coast of Canada .
No one had ever done this . I was 26 at the time .
A lot of experts were saying it was impossible , and my mum certainly wasn 't very keen on the idea .
The journey from a small weather station on the north coast of Siberia up to my final starting point , the edge of the pack ice , the coast of the Arctic Ocean , took about five hours , and if anyone watched fearless Felix Baumgartner going up , rather than just coming down , you 'll appreciate the sense of apprehension , as I sat in a helicopter thundering north , and the sense , I think if anything , of impending doom .
I sat there wondering what on Earth I had gotten myself into .
There was a bit of fun , a bit of joy .
I was 26 . I remember sitting there looking down at my sledge . I had my skis ready to go , I had a satellite phone , a pump-action shotgun in case I was attacked by a polar bear .
I remember looking out of the window and seeing the second helicopter .
We were both thundering through this incredible Siberian dawn , and part of me felt a bit like a cross between Jason Bourne and Wilfred Thesiger . Part of me felt quite proud of myself , but mostly I was just utterly terrified .
And that journey lasted 10 weeks , 72 days .
I didn 't see anyone else . We took this photo next to the helicopter .
Beyond that , I didn 't see anyone for 10 weeks .
The North Pole is slap bang in the middle of the sea , so I 'm traveling over the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean .
NASA described conditions that year as the worst since records began .
I was dragging 180 kilos of food and fuel and supplies , about 400 pounds . The average temperature for the 10 weeks was minus 35 . Minus 50 was the coldest .
So again , there wasn 't an awful lot of joy or fun to be had .
One of the magical things about this journey , however , is that because I 'm walking over the sea , over this floating , drifting , shifting crust of ice that 's floating on top of the Arctic Ocean is it 's an environment that 's in a constant state of flux .
The ice is always moving , breaking up , drifting around , refreezing , so the scenery that I saw for nearly 3 months was unique to me . No one else will ever , could ever , possibly see the views , the vistas , that I saw for 10 weeks .
And that , I guess , is probably the finest argument for leaving the house .
I can try to tell you what it was like , but you 'll never know what it was like , and the more I try to explain that I felt lonely , I was the only human being in 5.4 million square-miles , it was cold , nearly minus 75 with windchill on a bad day , the more words fall short , and I 'm unable to do it justice .
And it seems to me , therefore , that the doing , you know , to try to experience , to engage , to endeavor , rather than to watch and to wonder , that 's where the real meat of life is to be found , the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days .
And I would add a cautionary note here , however .
In my experience , there is something addictive about tasting life at the very edge of what 's humanly possible .
Now I don 't just mean in the field of daft macho Edwardian style derring-do , but also in the fields of pancreatic cancer , there is something addictive about this , and in my case , I think polar expeditions are perhaps not that far removed from having a crack habit .
I can 't explain quite how good it is until you 've tried it , but it has the capacity to burn up all the money I can get my hands on , to ruin every relationship I 've ever had , so be careful what you wish for .
Mallory postulated that there is something in man that responds to the challenge of the mountain , and I wonder if that 's the case whether there 's something in the challenge itself , in the endeavor , and particularly in the big , unfinished , chunky challenges that face humanity that call out to us , and in my experience that 's certainly the case .
There is one unfinished challenge that 's been calling out to me for most of my adult life .
Many of you will know the story .
This is a photo of Captain Scott and his team .
Scott set out just over a hundred years ago to try to become the first person to reach the South Pole .
No one knew what was there . It was utterly unmapped at the time . We knew more about the surface of the moon than we did about the heart of Antarctica .
Scott , as many of you will know , was beaten to it by Roald Amundsen and his Norwegian team , who used dogs and dogsleds . Scott 's team were on foot , all five of them wearing harnesses and dragging around sledges , and they arrived at the pole to find the Norwegian flag already there , I 'd imagine pretty bitter and demoralized .
All five of them turned and started walking back to the coast and all five died on that return journey .
There is a sort of misconception nowadays that it 's all been done in the fields of exploration and adventure .
When I talk about Antarctica , people often say , " Hasn 't , you know , that 's interesting , hasn 't that Blue Peter presenter just done it on a bike ? "
Or , " That 's nice . You know , my grandmother 's going on a cruise to Antarctica next year . You know .
Is there a chance you 'll see her there ? "
But Scott 's journey remains unfinished .
No one has ever walked from the very coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again .
It is , arguably , the most audacious endeavor of that Edwardian golden age of exploration , and it seemed to me high time , given everything we have figured out in the century since from scurvy to solar panels , that it was high time someone had a go at finishing the job .
So that 's precisely what I 'm setting out to do .
This time next year , in October , I 'm leading a team of three .
It will take us about four months to make this return journey .
That 's the scale . The red line is obviously halfway to the pole .
We have to turn around and come back again .
I 'm well aware of the irony of telling you that we will be blogging and tweeting . You 'll be able to live vicariously and virtually through this journey in a way that no one has ever before .
And it 'll also be a four-month chance for me to finally come up with a pithy answer to the question , " Why ? "
And our lives today are safer and more comfortable than they have ever been . There certainly isn 't much call for explorers nowadays . My career advisor at school never mentioned it as an option .
If I wanted to know , for example , how many stars were in the Milky Way , how old those giant heads on Easter Island were , most of you could find that out right now without even standing up .
And yet , if I 've learned anything in nearly 12 years now of dragging heavy things around cold places , it is that true , real inspiration and growth only comes from adversity and from challenge , from stepping away from what 's comfortable and familiar and stepping out into the unknown .
In life , we all have tempests to ride and poles to walk to , and I think metaphorically speaking , at least , we could all benefit from getting outside the house a little more often , if only we could summon up the courage .
I certainly would implore you to open the door just a little bit and take a look at what 's outside .
Thank you very much .
Tal Golesworthy : How I repaired my own heart
Tal Golesworthy is a boiler engineer -- he knows piping and plumbing . When he needed surgery to repair a life-threatening problem with his aorta , he mixed his engineering skills with his doctors ' medical knowledge to design a better repair job .
I 'm a process engineer .
I know all about boilers and incinerators and fabric filters and cyclones and things like that , but I also have Marfan syndrome .
This is an inherited disorder .
And in 1992 I participated in a genetic study and found to my horror , as you can see from the slide , that my ascending aorta was not in the normal range , the green line at the bottom .
Everyone in here will be between 3.2 and 3.6 cm .
I was already up at 4.4 .
And as you can see , my aorta dilated progressively , and I got closer and closer to the point where surgery was going to be necessary .
The surgery on offer was pretty gruesome -- anesthetize you , open your chest , put you on an artificial heart and lung machine , drop your body temperature to about 18 centigrade , stop your heart , cut the aorta out , replace it with a plastic valve and a plastic aorta , and , most importantly , commit you to a lifetime of anticoagulation therapy , normally warfarin .
The thought of the surgery was not attractive .
The thought of the warfarin was really quite frightening .
So I said to myself , I 'm an engineer , I 'm in R and D , this is just a plumbing problem .
I can do this . I can change this .
So I set out to change the entire treatment for aortic dilation .
The project aim is really quite simple .
The only real problem with the ascending aorta in people with Marfan syndrome is it lacks some tensile strength .
So the possibility exists to simply externally wrap the pipe .
And it would remain stable and operate quite happily .
If your high-pressure hose pipe , or your high-pressure hydraulic line , bulges a little , you just wrap some tape around the outside of it .
It really is that simple in concept , though not in execution .
The great advantage of an external support for me was that I could retain all of my own bits , all of my own endothelium and valves , and not need any anticoagulation therapy .
So where do we start ?
Well this is a sagittal slice through me .
You could see in the middle that device , that little structure , squeezing out .
Now that 's a left ventricle pushing blood up through the aortic valve -- you can see two of the leaflets of the aortic valve working there -- up into the ascending aorta .
And it 's that part , the ascending aorta , which dilates and ultimately bursts , which , of course , is fatal .
We started by organizing image acquisition from magnetic resonance imaging machines and CT imaging machines from which to make a model of the patient 's aorta .
This is a model of my aorta .
I 've got a real one in my pocket , if anyone would like to look at it and play with it .
You can see , it 's quite a complex structure .
It has a funny trilobal shape at the bottom , which contains the aortic valve .
It then comes back into a round form and then tapers and curves off .
So it 's quite a difficult structure to produce .
This , like I say , is a CAD model of me , and this is one of the later CAD models .
We went through an iterative process of producing better and better models .
When we produced that model we turn it into a solid plastic model , as you can see , using a rapid prototyping technique , another engineering technique .
We then use that former to manufacture a perfectly bespoke porous textile mesh , which takes the shape of the former and perfectly fits the aorta .
So this is absolutely personalized medicine at its best really .
Every patient we do has an absolutely bespoke implant .
Once you 've made it , the installation 's quite easy .
John Pepper , bless his heart , professor of cardiothoracic surgery -- never done it before in his life -- he put the first one in , didn 't like it , took it out , put the second one in .
Happy , away I went .
Four and a half hours on the table and everything was done .
So the surgical implantation actually was the easiest part .
If you compare our new treatment to the existing alternative , the so-called composite aortic root graft , there are one of two startling comparisons , which I 'm sure will be clear to all of you .
Two hours to install one of our devices compared to six hours for the existing treatment .
The existing treatment requires , as I 've said , the heart and lung bypass machine and it requires a total body cooling .
We don 't need any of that ; we work on a beating heart .
He opens you up , he accesses the aorta while your heart is beating , all at the right temperature .
No breaking into your circulatory system .
So it really is great .
But for me , absolutely the best point is there is no anticoagulation therapy required .
I don 't take any drugs at all other than recreational ones that I would choose to take .
And in fact , if you speak to people who are on long-term warfarin , it is a serious compromise to your quality of life .
And even worse , it inevitably foreshortens your life .
Likewise , if you have the artificial valve option , you 're committed to antibiotic therapy whenever you have any intrusive medical treatment at all .
Even trips to the dentist require that you take antibiotics , in case you get an internal infection on the valve .
Again , I don 't have any of that , so I 'm entirely free .
My aorta is fixed , I haven 't got to worry about it , which is a rebirth for me .
Back to the theme of the presentation : In multidisciplinary research , how on earth does a process engineer used to working with boilers end up producing a medical device which transforms his own life ?
Well the answer to that is a multidisciplinary team .
This is a list of the core team .
And as you can see , there are not only two principal technical disciplines there , medicine and engineering , but also there are various specialists from within those two disciplines .
John Pepper there was the cardiac surgeon who did the actual work on me , but everyone else there had to contribute one way or another .
Raad Mohiaddin , medical radiologist : We had to get good quality images from which to make the CAD model .
Warren Thornton , who still does all our CAD models for us , had to write a bespoke piece of CAD code to produce this model from this really rather difficult input data set .
There are some barriers to this though . There are some problems with it .
Jargon is a big one .
I would think no one in this room understands those four first jargon points there .
The engineers amongst you will recognize rapid prototyping and CAD .
The medics amongst you , if there are any , will recognize the first two .
But there will be nobody else in this room that understands all of those four words .
Taking the jargon out was very important to ensure that everyone in the team understood exactly what was meant when a particular phrase was used .
Our disciplinary conventions were funny as well .
We took a lot of horizontal slice images through me , produced those slices and then used those to build a CAD model .
And the very first CAD model we made , the surgeons were playing with the plastic model , couldn 't quite figure it out .
And then we realized that it was actually a mirror image of the real aorta .
And it was a mirror image because in the real world we always look down on plans , plans of houses or streets or maps .
In the medical world they look up at plans .
So the horizontal images were all an inversion .
So one needs to be careful with disciplinary conventions .
Everyone needs to understand what is assumed and what is not assumed .
Institutional barriers were another serious headache in the project .
The Brompton Hospital was taken over by Imperial College 's School of Medicine , and there are some seriously bad relationship problems between the two organizations .
I was working with Imperial and the Brompton , and this generated some serious problems with the project , really problems that shouldn 't exist .
Research and ethics committee : If you want to do anything new in surgery , you have to get a license from your local research and ethics .
I 'm sure it 's the same in Poland .
There will be some form of equivalent , which licenses new types of surgery .
We didn 't only have the bureaucratic problems associated with that , was also had professional jealousies .
There were people on the research and ethics committee who really didn 't want to see John Pepper succeed again , because he 's so successful .
And they made extra problems for us .
Bureaucratic problems : Ultimately when you have a new treatment you have to have a guidance note going out for all of the hospitals in the country .
In the U.K. we have the National Institute for Clinical Excellence , NICE .
You 'll have an equivalent in Poland , no doubt .
We had to get past the NICE problem .
We now have a great clinical guidance out on the Net .
So any of the hospitals interested can come along , read the NICE report get in touch with us and then get doing it themselves .
Funding barriers : Another big area to be concerned with .
A big problem with understanding one of those perspectives : When we first approached one of the big U.K. charitable organizations that funds this kind of stuff , what they were looking at was essentially an engineering proposal .
They didn 't understand it ; they were doctors , they were next to God .
It must be rubbish . They binned it .
So in the end I went to private investors and I just gave up on it .
But most R and D is going to be institutionally funded , by the Polish Academy of Sciences or the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council or whatever , and you need to get past those people .
Jargon is a huge problem when you 're trying to work across disciplines , because in an engineering world , we all understand CAD and R.P. -- not in the medical world .
I suppose ultimately the funding bureaucrats have really got to get their act together .
They 've really got to start talking to each other , and they 've got to exercise a bit of imagination , if that 's not too much to ask -- which it probably is .
I 've coined a phrase " obstructive conservatism . "
So many people in the medical world don 't want to change , particularly not when some jumped-up engineer has come along with the answer .
They don 't want to change .
They simply want to do whatever they 've done before .
And in fact , there are many surgeons in the U.K.
still waiting for one of our patients so that they can say , " Ah , I told you that was no good . "
We 've actually got 30 patients .
I 'm at seven and a half years .
We 've got 90 post-op patient years between us , and we haven 't had a single problem .
And still , there are people in the U.K. saying , " Yeah , that external aortic root , yeah , it 'll never work , you know . "
It really is a problem . It really is a problem .
I 'm sure everyone in this room has come across arrogance amongst medics , doctors , surgeons at some point .
The middle point is simply the way that the doctors protect themselves .
" Yeah , well of course , I 'm looking after my patient . "
I think it 's not good , but there you are , that 's my view .
Egos , of course , again , a huge problem If you 're working in a multidisciplinary team , you 've got to give your guys the benefit of the doubt .
You 've got to express support for them .
Tom Treasure , professor of cardiothoracic surgery : incredible guy .
Dead easy to give him respect .
Him giving me respect ? Slightly different .
That 's all the bad news .
The good news is the benefits are stonkingly huge .
Translate that one . I bet they can 't .
When you have a group of people who have had a different professional training , a different professional experience , they not only have a different knowledge base , but they have a different perspective on everything .
And if you can bring those guys together and you can get them talking and understanding each other , the results can be spectacular .
You can find novel solutions , really novel solutions , that have never been looked at before very , very quickly and easily .
You can shortcut huge amounts of work simply by using the extended knowledge base you have .
And as a result , it 's an entirely different use of the technology and the knowledge around you .
The result of all this is that you can get incredibly quick progress on incredibly small budgets .
I 'm so embarrassed at how cheap it was to get from my idea to me being implanted that I 'm not prepared to tell you what it cost .
Because I suspect there are absolutely standard surgical treatments probably in the USA which cost more for a one-off patient than the cost of us getting from my dream to my reality .
That 's all I want to say , and I 've got three minutes left .
So Heather 's going to like me .
If you have any questions , please come up and talk to me later on .
It would be a pleasure to speak with you . Many thanks .
Mark Bittman : What 's wrong with what we eat
In this fiery and funny talk , New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what 's wrong with the way we eat now , and why it 's putting the entire planet at risk .
I write about food . I write about cooking .
I take it quite seriously , but I 'm here to talk about something that 's become very important to me in the last year or two .
It is about food , but it 's not about cooking , per se .
I 'm going to start with this picture of a beautiful cow .
I 'm not a vegetarian -- this is the old Nixon line , right ?
But I still think that this -- -- may be this year 's version of this .
Now , that is only a little bit hyperbolic .
And why do I say it ?
Because only once before has the fate of individual people and the fate of all of humanity been so intertwined .
There was the bomb , and there 's now .
And where we go from here is going to determine not only the quality and the length of our individual lives , but whether , if we could see the Earth a century from now , we 'd recognize it .
It 's a holocaust of a different kind , and hiding under our desks isn 't going to help .
Start with the notion that global warming is not only real , but dangerous .
Since every scientist in the world now believes this , and even President Bush has seen the light , or pretends to , we can take this is a given .
Then hear this , please .
After energy production , livestock is the second-highest contributor to atmosphere-altering gases .
Nearly one-fifth of all greenhouse gas is generated by livestock production -- more than transportation .
Now , you can make all the jokes you want about cow farts , but methane is 20 times more poisonous than CO2 , and it 's not just methane .
Livestock is also one of the biggest culprits in land degradation , air and water pollution , water shortages and loss of biodiversity .
There 's more .
Like half the antibiotics in this country are not administered to people , but to animals .
But lists like this become kind of numbing , so let me just say this : if you 're a progressive , if you 're driving a Prius , or you 're shopping green , or you 're looking for organic , you should probably be a semi-vegetarian .
Now , I 'm no more anti-cattle than I am anti-atom , but it 's all in the way we use these things .
There 's another piece of the puzzle , which Ann Cooper talked about beautifully yesterday , and one you already know .
There 's no question , none , that so-called lifestyle diseases -- diabetes , heart disease , stroke , some cancers -- are diseases that are far more prevalent here than anywhere in the rest of the world .
And that 's the direct result of eating a Western diet .
Our demand for meat , dairy and refined carbohydrates -- the world consumes one billion cans or bottles of Coke a day -- our demand for these things , not our need , our want , drives us to consume way more calories than are good for us .
And those calories are in foods that cause , not prevent , disease .
Now global warming was unforeseen .
We didn 't know that pollution did more than cause bad visibility .
Maybe a few lung diseases here and there , but , you know , that 's not such a big deal .
The current health crisis , however , is a little more the work of the evil empire .
We were told , we were assured , that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate , the healthier we 'd be .
No . Overconsumption of animals , and of course , junk food , is the problem , along with our paltry consumption of plants .
Now , there 's no time to get into the benefits of eating plants here , but the evidence is that plants -- and I want to make this clear -- it 's not the ingredients in plants , it 's the plants .
It 's not the beta-carotene , it 's the carrot .
The evidence is very clear that plants promote health .
This evidence is overwhelming at this point .
You eat more plants , you eat less other stuff , you live longer .
Not bad .
But back to animals and junk food .
What do they have in common ?
One : we don 't need either of them for health .
We don 't need animal products , and we certainly don 't need white bread or Coke .
Two : both have been marketed heavily , creating unnatural demand .
We 're not born craving Whoppers or Skittles .
Three : their production has been supported by government agencies at the expense of a more health- and Earth-friendly diet .
Now , let 's imagine a parallel .
Let 's pretend that our government supported an oil-based economy , while discouraging more sustainable forms of energy , knowing all the while that the result would be pollution , war and rising costs .
Incredible , isn 't it ?
Yet they do that .
And they do this here . It 's the same deal .
The sad thing is , when it comes to diet , is that even when well-intentioned Feds try to do right by us , they fail .
Either they 're outvoted by puppets of agribusiness , or they are puppets of agribusiness .
So , when the USDA finally acknowledged that it was plants , rather than animals , that made people healthy , they encouraged us , via their overly simplistic food pyramid , to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day , along with more carbs .
What they didn 't tell us is that some carbs are better than others , and that plants and whole grains should be supplanting eating junk food .
But industry lobbyists would never let that happen .
And guess what ?
Half the people who developed the food pyramid have ties to agribusiness .
So , instead of substituting plants for animals , our swollen appetites simply became larger , and the most dangerous aspects of them remained unchanged .
So-called low-fat diets , so-called low-carb diets -- these are not solutions .
But with lots of intelligent people focusing on whether food is organic or local , or whether we 're being nice to animals , the most important issues just aren 't being addressed .
Now , don 't get me wrong .
I like animals , and I don 't think it 's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches .
But there 's no way to treat animals well , when you 're killing 10 billion of them a year .
That 's our number . 10 billion .
If you strung all of them -- chickens , cows , pigs and lambs -- to the moon , they 'd go there and back five times , there and back .
Now , my math 's a little shaky , but this is pretty good , and it depends whether a pig is four feet long or five feet long , but you get the idea .
That 's just the United States .
And with our hyper-consumption of those animals producing greenhouse gases and heart disease , kindness might just be a bit of a red herring .
Let 's get the numbers of the animals we 're killing for eating down , and then we 'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left .
Another red herring might be exemplified by the word " locavore , " which was just named word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary .
Seriously .
And locavore , for those of you who don 't know , is someone who eats only locally grown food -- which is fine if you live in California , but for the rest of us it 's a bit of a sad joke .
Between the official story -- the food pyramid -- and the hip locavore vision , you have two versions of how to improve our eating .
They both get it wrong , though .
The first at least is populist , and the second is elitist .
How we got to this place is the history of food in the United States .
And I 'm going to go through that , at least the last hundred years or so , very quickly right now .
A hundred years ago , guess what ?
Everyone was a locavore : even New York had pig farms nearby , and shipping food all over the place was a ridiculous notion .
Every family had a cook , usually a mom .
And those moms bought and prepared food .
It was like your romantic vision of Europe .
Margarine didn 't exist .
In fact , when margarine was invented , several states passed laws declaring that it had to be dyed pink , so we 'd all know that it was a fake .
There was no snack food , and until the ' 20s , until Clarence Birdseye came along , there was no frozen food .
There were no restaurant chains .
There were neighborhood restaurants run by local people , but none of them would think to open another one .
Eating ethnic was unheard of unless you were ethnic .
And fancy food was entirely French .
As an aside , those of you who remember Dan Aykroyd in the 1970s doing Julia Child imitations can see where he got the idea of stabbing himself from this fabulous slide .
Back in those days , before even Julia , back in those days , there was no philosophy of food .
You just ate .
You didn 't claim to be anything .
There was no marketing . There were no national brands .
Vitamins had not been invented .
There were no health claims , at least not federally sanctioned ones .
Fats , carbs , proteins -- they weren 't bad or good , they were food .
You ate food .
Hardly anything contained more than one ingredient , because it was an ingredient .
The cornflake hadn 't been invented .
The Pop-Tart , the Pringle , Cheez Whiz , none of that stuff .
Goldfish swam .
It 's hard to imagine . People grew food , and they ate food .
And again , everyone ate local .
In New York , an orange was a common Christmas present , because it came all the way from Florida .
From the ' 30s on , road systems expanded , trucks took the place of railroads , fresh food began to travel more .
Oranges became common in New York .
The South and West became agricultural hubs , and in other parts of the country , suburbs took over farmland .
The effects of this are well known . They are everywhere .
And the death of family farms is part of this puzzle , as is almost everything from the demise of the real community to the challenge of finding a good tomato , even in summer .
Eventually , California produced too much food to ship fresh , so it became critical to market canned and frozen foods .
Thus arrived convenience .
It was sold to proto-feminist housewives as a way to cut down on housework .
Now , I know everybody over the age of , like 45 -- their mouths are watering at this point .
If we had a slide of Salisbury steak , even more so , right ?
But this may have cut down on housework , but it cut down on the variety of food we ate as well .
Many of us grew up never eating a fresh vegetable except the occasional raw carrot or maybe an odd lettuce salad .
I , for one -- and I 'm not kidding -- didn 't eat real spinach or broccoli till I was 19 .
Who needed it though ? Meat was everywhere .
What could be easier , more filling or healthier for your family than broiling a steak ?
But by then cattle were already raised unnaturally .
Rather than spending their lives eating grass , for which their stomachs were designed , they were forced to eat soy and corn .
They have trouble digesting those grains , of course , but that wasn 't a problem for producers .
New drugs kept them healthy .
Well , they kept them alive .
Healthy was another story .
Thanks to farm subsidies , the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress , soy , corn and cattle became king .
And chicken soon joined them on the throne .
It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began , the thing we 're only realizing just now .
Listen to this , between 1950 and 2000 , the world 's population doubled .
Meat consumption increased five-fold .
Now , someone had to eat all that stuff , so we got fast food .
And this took care of the situation resoundingly .
Home cooking remained the norm , but its quality was down the tubes .
There were fewer meals with home-cooked breads , desserts and soups , because all of them could be bought at any store .
Not that they were any good , but they were there .
Most moms cooked like mine : a piece of broiled meat , a quickly made salad with bottled dressing , canned soup , canned fruit salad .
Maybe baked or mashed potatoes , or perhaps the stupidest food ever , Minute Rice .
For dessert , store-bought ice cream or cookies .
My mom is not here , so I can say this now .
This kind of cooking drove me to learn how to cook for myself .
It wasn 't all bad .
By the ' 70s , forward-thinking people began to recognize the value of local ingredients .
We tended gardens , we became interested in organic food , we knew or we were vegetarians .
We weren 't all hippies , either .
Some of us were eating in good restaurants and learning how to cook well .
Meanwhile , food production had become industrial . Industrial .
Perhaps because it was being produced rationally , as if it were plastic , food gained magical or poisonous powers , or both .
Many people became fat-phobic .
Others worshiped broccoli , as if it were God-like .
But mostly they didn 't eat broccoli .
Instead they were sold on yogurt , yogurt being almost as good as broccoli .
Except , in reality , the way the industry sold yogurt was to convert it to something much more akin to ice cream .
Similarly , let 's look at a granola bar .
You think that that might be healthy food , but in fact , if you look at the ingredient list , it 's closer in form to a Snickers than it is to oatmeal .
Sadly , it was at this time that the family dinner was put in a coma , if not actually killed -- the beginning of the heyday of value-added food , which contained as many soy and corn products as could be crammed into it .
Think of the frozen chicken nugget .
The chicken is fed corn , and then its meat is ground up , and mixed with more corn products to add bulk and binder , and then it 's fried in corn oil .
All you do is nuke it . What could be better ?
And zapped horribly , pathetically .
By the ' 70s , home cooking was in such a sad state that the high fat and spice contents of foods like McNuggets and Hot Pockets -- and we all have our favorites , actually -- made this stuff more appealing than the bland things that people were serving at home .
At the same time , masses of women were entering the workforce , and cooking simply wasn 't important enough for men to share the burden .
So now , you 've got your pizza nights , you 've got your microwave nights , you 've got your grazing nights , you 've got your fend-for-yourself nights and so on .
Leading the way -- what 's leading the way ?
Meat , junk food , cheese : the very stuff that will kill you .
So , now we clamor for organic food .
That 's good .
And as evidence that things can actually change , you can now find organic food in supermarkets , and even in fast-food outlets .
But organic food isn 't the answer either , at least not the way it 's currently defined .
Let me pose you a question .
Can farm-raised salmon be organic , when its feed has nothing to do with its natural diet , even if the feed itself is supposedly organic , and the fish themselves are packed tightly in pens , swimming in their own filth ?
And if that salmon 's from Chile , and it 's killed down there and then flown 5,000 miles , whatever , dumping how much carbon into the atmosphere ?
I don 't know .
Packed in Styrofoam , of course , before landing somewhere in the United States , and then being trucked a few hundred more miles .
This may be organic in letter , but it 's surely not organic in spirit .
Now here is where we all meet .
The locavores , the organivores , the vegetarians , the vegans , the gourmets and those of us who are just plain interested in good food .
Even though we 've come to this from different points , we all have to act on our knowledge to change the way that everyone thinks about food .
We need to start acting .
And this is not only an issue of social justice , as Ann Cooper said -- and , of course , she 's completely right -- but it 's also one of global survival .
Which bring me full circle and points directly to the core issue , the overproduction and overconsumption of meat and junk food .
As I said , 18 percent of greenhouse gases are attributed to livestock production .
How much livestock do you need to produce this ?
70 percent of the agricultural land on Earth , 30 percent of the Earth 's land surface is directly or indirectly devoted to raising the animals we 'll eat .
And this amount is predicted to double in the next 40 years or so .
And if the numbers coming in from China are anything like what they look like now , it 's not going to be 40 years .
There is no good reason for eating as much meat as we do .
And I say this as a man who has eaten a fair share of corned beef in his life .
The most common argument is that we need nutrients -- even though we eat , on average , twice as much protein as even the industry-obsessed USDA recommends .
But listen : experts who are serious about disease reduction recommend that adults eat just over half a pound of meat per week .
What do you think we eat per day ? Half a pound .
But don 't we need meat to be big and strong ?
Isn 't meat eating essential to health ?
Won 't a diet heavy in fruit and vegetables turn us into godless , sissy , liberals ?
Some of us might think that would be a good thing .
But , no , even if we were all steroid-filled football players , the answer is no .
In fact , there 's no diet on Earth that meets basic nutritional needs that won 't promote growth , and many will make you much healthier than ours does .
We don 't eat animal products for sufficient nutrition , we eat them to have an odd form of malnutrition , and it 's killing us .
To suggest that in the interests of personal and human health Americans eat 50 percent less meat -- it 's not enough of a cut , but it 's a start .
It would seem absurd , but that 's exactly what should happen , and what progressive people , forward-thinking people should be doing and advocating , along with the corresponding increase in the consumption of plants .
I 've been writing about food more or less omnivorously -- one might say indiscriminately -- for about 30 years .
During that time , I 've eaten and recommended eating just about everything .
I 'll never stop eating animals , I 'm sure , but I do think that for the benefit of everyone , the time has come to stop raising them industrially and stop eating them thoughtlessly .
Ann Cooper 's right .
The USDA is not our ally here .
We have to take matters into our own hands , not only by advocating for a better diet for everyone -- and that 's the hard part -- but by improving our own .
And that happens to be quite easy .
Less meat , less junk , more plants .
It 's a simple formula : eat food .
Eat real food .
We can continue to enjoy our food , and we continue to eat well , and we can eat even better .
We can continue the search for the ingredients we love , and we can continue to spin yarns about our favorite meals .
We 'll reduce not only calories , but our carbon footprint .
We can make food more important , not less , and save ourselves by doing so .
We have to choose that path .
Thank you .
David Hanson : Robots that " show emotion "
David Hanson 's robot faces look and act like yours : They recognize and respond to emotion , and make expressions of their own . Here , an " emotional " live demo of the Einstein robot offers a peek at a future where robots truly mimic humans .
I 'm Dr. David Hanson , and I build robots with character .
And by that , I mean that I develop robots that are characters , but also robots that will eventually come to empathize with you .
So we 're starting with a variety of technologies that have converged into these conversational character robots that can see faces , make eye contact with you , make a full range of facial expressions , understand speech and begin to model how you 're feeling and who you are , and build a relationship with you .
I developed a series of technologies that allowed the robots to make more realistic facial expressions than previously achieved , on lower power , So , it 's a full range of facial expressions simulating all the major muscles in the human face , running on very small batteries , extremely lightweight .
The materials that allowed the battery-operated facial expressions is a material that we call Frubber , and it actually has three major innovations in the material that allow this to happen .
One is hierarchical pores , and the other is a macro-molecular nanoscale porosity in the material .
There he 's starting to walk .
This is at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology .
I built the head . They built the body .
So the goal here is to achieve sentience in machines , and not just sentience , but empathy .
We 're working with the Machine Perception Laboratory at the U.C. San Diego .
They have this really remarkable facial expression technology that recognizes facial expressions , what facial expressions you 're making .
It also recognizes where you 're looking , your head orientation .
We 're emulating all the major facial expressions , and then controlling it with the software that we call the Character Engine .
And here is a little bit of the technology that 's involved in that .
In fact , right now -- plug it from here , and then plug it in here , and now let 's see if it gets my facial expressions .
Okay . So I 'm smiling .
Now I 'm frowning .
And this is really heavily backlit .
Okay , here we go .
Oh , it 's so sad .
Okay , so you smile , frowning .
So his perception of your emotional states is very important for machines to effectively become empathetic .
Machines are becoming devastatingly capable of things like killing . Right ?
Those machines have no place for empathy .
And there is billions of dollars being spent on that .
Character robotics could plant the seed for robots that actually have empathy .
So , if they achieve human level intelligence or , quite possibly , greater than human levels of intelligence , this could be the seeds of hope for our future .
So , we 've made 20 robots in the last eight years , during the course of getting my Ph.D.
And then I started Hanson Robotics , which has been developing these things for mass manufacturing .
This is one of our robots that we showed at Wired NextFest a couple of years ago .
And it sees multiple people in a scene , remembers where individual people are , and looks from person to person , remembering people .
So , we 're involving two things .
One , the perception of people , and two , the natural interface , the natural form of the interface , so that it 's more intuitive for you to interact with the robot .
You start to believe that it 's alive and aware .
So one of my favorite projects was bringing all this stuff together in an artistic display of an android portrait of science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick , who wrote great works like , " Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ? "
which was the basis of the movie " Bladerunner . "
In these stories , robots often think that they 're human , and they sort of come to life .
So we put his writings , letters , his interviews , correspondences , into a huge database of thousands of pages , and then used some natural language processing to allow you to actually have a conversation with him .
And it was kind of spooky , because he would say these things that just sounded like they really understood you .
And this is one of the most exciting projects that we 're developing , for friendly artificial intelligence , friendly machine intelligence .
And we 're getting this mass-manufactured .
We specked it out to actually be doable with a very , very low-cost bill of materials , so that it can become a childhood companion for kids .
Interfacing with the Internet , it gets smarter over the years .
As artificial intelligence evolves , so does his intelligence .
Thank you so much . That 's incredible .
Gever Tulley : Life lessons through tinkering
Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School . When given tools , materials and guidance , these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats , bridges and even a roller coaster !
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 .
And the kids soon learn that all projects go awry -- 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 .
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 .
Three , two , one , go !
Gever Tulley : A rollercoaster built by seven-year-olds .
Yay !
GT : Thank you . It 's been a great pleasure .
Marco Tempest : Augmented reality , techno-magic
Using sleight-of-hand techniques and charming storytelling , illusionist Marco Tempest brings a jaunty stick figure to life onstage at TEDGlobal .
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 & amp ; 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 .
Terribly sorry . I forgot the floor .
Wake up .
Hey .
Come on .
Please .
Come on .
Ah , sorry about that .
Forgot this .
Give it another try .
Okay .
He figured out the system .
Uh oh .
All right . Let 's try this .
Come on .
Hey .
You heard her , go ahead .
Bye-bye .
Jackson Browne : A song inspired by the ocean
Jackson Browne plays a song he started writing last April aboard Mission Blue Voyage , the Sylvia Earle-inspired trip to brainstorm ways to save the ocean . " If I could be anywhere , " he sings , " anywhere right now , I would be here . " & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
Thank you .
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 . Thank you .

Majora Carter : Greening the ghetto
In an emotionally charged talk , MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx -- and shows how minority neighborhoods suffer most from flawed urban policy .
If you 're here today -- and I 'm very happy that you are -- you 've all heard about how sustainable development will save us from ourselves . However , when we 're not at TED , we are often told that a real sustainability policy agenda is just not feasible , especially in large , urban areas like New York City .
And that 's because most people with decision-making powers , in both the public and the private sector , really don 't feel as though they 're in danger .
The reason why I 'm here today , in part , is because of a dog : an abandoned puppy I found back in the rain , back in 1998 .
She turned out to be a much bigger dog than I 'd anticipated .
When she came into my life , we were fighting against a huge waste facility planned for the East River waterfront , despite the fact that our small part of New York City already handled more than 40 percent of the entire city 's commercial waste : a sewage treatment pelletizing plant , a sewage sludge plant , four power plants , the world 's largest food distribution center , as well as other industries that bring more than 60,000 diesel truck trips to the area each week .
The area also has one of the lowest ratios of parks to people in the city .
So when I was contacted by the Parks Department about a $ 10,000 seed grant initiative seed grant initiative to help develop waterfront projects , I thought they were really well-meaning , but a bit naive .
I 'd lived in this area all my life , and you could not get to the river because of all the lovely facilities that I 'd mentioned earlier .
Then , while jogging with my dog one morning , she pulled me into what I thought was just another illegal dump .
There were weeds and piles of garbage and other stuff that I won 't mention here , but she kept dragging me -- and lo and behold , at the end of that lot was the river .
I knew that this forgotten little street-end , abandoned like the dog that brought me there , was worth saving .
And I knew it would grow to become the proud beginnings of the community-led revitalization of the new South Bronx .
And just like my new dog , it was an idea that got bigger than I 'd imagined .
We garnered much support along the way .
And the Hunts Point Riverside Park became the first waterfront park that the South Bronx had had in more than 60 years .
We leveraged that $ 10,000 seed grant more than 300 times into a $ 3 million park .
And , in the fall , I 'm actually going to -- I exchange marriage vows with my beloved . Thank you very much .
That 's him pressing my buttons back there , which he does all the time .
But those of us living in environmental justice communities are the canary in the coalmine . We feel the problems right now , and have for some time .
Environmental justice , for those of you who may not be familiar with the term , goes something like this : no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other .
Unfortunately , race and class are extremely reliable indicators as to where one might find the good stuff , like parks and trees , and where one might find the bad stuff , like power plants and waste facilities .
As a black person in America , I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health .
I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility -- which I do .
These land-use decisions created the hostile conditions that lead to problems like obesity , diabetes and asthma .
Why would someone leave their home to go for a brisk walk in a toxic neighborhood ?
Our 27 percent obesity rate is high , even for this country , and diabetes comes with it .
One out of four South Bronx children has asthma .
Our asthma hospitalization rate is seven times higher than the national average .
These impacts are coming everyone 's way .
And we all pay dearly for solid waste costs , health problems associated with pollution and more odiously , the cost of imprisoning our young black and Latino men , who possess untold amounts of untapped potential .
50 percent of our residents live at or below the poverty line .
25 percent of us are unemployed . Low-income citizens often use emergency room visits as primary care .
This comes at a high cost to taxpayers and produces no proportional benefits .
Poor people are not only still poor ; they are still unhealthy .
Fortunately , there are many people like me who are striving for solutions that won 't compromise the lives of low-income communities of color in the short term , and won 't destroy us all in the long term .
None of us want that , and we all have that in common . So what else do we have in common ?
Well , first of all , we 're all incredibly good-looking -- -- graduated high school , college , post-graduate degrees , traveled to interesting places , didn 't have kids in your early teens , financially stable , never been imprisoned . OK .
Good .
But , besides being a black woman , I am different from most of you in some other ways .
I watched nearly half of the buildings in my neighborhood burn down .
My big brother Lenny fought in Vietnam , only to be gunned down a few blocks from our home .
Jesus . I grew up with a crack house across the street .
Yeah , I 'm a poor black child from the ghetto .
These things make me different from you .
But the things we have in common set me apart from most of the people in my community , and I am in between these two worlds , with enough of my heart to fight for justice in the other .
So how did things get so different for us ?
In the late ' 40s , my dad -- a Pullman porter , son of a slave -- bought a house in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx , and a few years later he married my mom .
At the time , the community was a mostly white , working-class neighborhood .
My dad was not alone .
And as others like him pursued their own version of the American dream , white flight became common in the South Bronx and in many cities around the country .
Red-lining was used by banks , wherein certain sections of the city , including ours , were deemed off-limits to any sort of investment .
Many landlords believed it was more profitable to torch their buildings and collect insurance money rather than to sell under those conditions -- dead or injured former tenants notwithstanding .
Hunts Point was formerly a walk-to-work community , but now residents had neither work nor home to walk to .
A national highway construction boom was added to our problems .
In New York State , Robert Moses spearheaded an aggressive highway expansion campaign .
One of its primary goals was to make it easier for residents of wealthy communities in Westchester County to go to Manhattan .
The South Bronx , which lies in between , did not stand a chance .
Residents were often given less than a month 's notice before their buildings were razed .
600,000 people were displaced .
The common perception was that only pimps and pushers and prostitutes were from the South Bronx .
And if you are told from your earliest days that nothing good is going to come from your community , that is bad and ugly , how could it not reflect on you ?
So now , my family 's property was worthless , save for that it was our home and all we had .
And luckily for me , that home and the love inside of it , along with help from teachers , mentors and friends along the way , was enough .
Now , why is this story important ?
Because from a planning perspective , economic degradation begets environmental degradation , which begets social degradation .
The disinvestment that began in the 1960s set the stage for all the environmental injustices that were to come .
Antiquated zoning and land-use regulations are still used to this day to continue putting polluting facilities in my neighborhood .
Are these factors taken into consideration when land-use policy is decided ?
What costs are associated with these decisions ? And who pays ?
Who profits ? Does anything justify what the local community goes through ?
This was " planning " -- in quotes -- that did not have our best interests in mind .
Once we realized that , we decided it was time to do our own planning .
That small park I told you about earlier was the first stage of building a greenway movement in the South Bronx .
I wrote a one-and-a-quarter-million dollar federal transportation grant to design the plan for a waterfront esplanade with dedicated on-street bike paths .
Physical improvements help inform public policy regarding traffic safety , the placement of the waste and other facilities , which , if done properly , don 't compromise a community 's quality of life .
They provide opportunities to be more physically active , as well as local economic development .
Think bike shops , juice stands .
We secured 20 million dollars to build first-phase projects .
This is Lafayette Avenue -- and as redesigned by Matthews-Nielsen landscape architects .
And once this path is constructed , it 'll connect the South Bronx with more than 400 acres of Randall 's Island Park .
Right now we 're separated by about 25 feet of water , but this link will change that .
As we nurture the natural environment , its abundance will give us back even more .
We run a project called the Bronx Ecological Stewardship Training , which provides job training in the fields of ecological restorations , so that folks from our community have the skills to compete for these well-paying jobs .
Little by little , we 're seeding the area with green collar jobs -- then the people that have both a financial and personal stake in their environment .
The Sheridan Expressway is an underutilized relic of the Robert Moses era , built with no regard for the neighborhoods that were divided by it .
Even during rush hour , it goes virtually unused .
The community created an alternative transportation plan that allows for the removal of the highway .
We have the opportunity now to bring together all the stakeholders to re-envision how this 28 acres can be better utilized for parkland , affordable housing and local economic development .
We also built the city 's -- New York City 's first green and cool roof demonstration project on top of our offices .
Cool roofs are highly reflective surfaces that don 't absorb solar heat and pass it on to the building or atmosphere .
Green roofs are soil and living plants .
Both can be used instead of petroleum-based roofing materials that absorb heat , contribute to urban " heat island " effect and degrade under the sun , which we in turn breathe . Green roofs also retain up to 75 percent of rainfall , so they reduce a city 's need to fund costly end-of-pipe solutions -- which , incidentally , are often located in environmental justice communities like mine .
And they provide habitats for our little friends !
So -- -- so cool !
Anyway , the demonstration project is a springboard for our own green roof installation business , bringing jobs and sustainable economic activity to the South Bronx .
I like that , too .
Anyway , I know Chris told us not to do pitches up here , but since I have all of your attention : we need investors . End of pitch .
It 's better to ask for forgiveness than permission .
Anyway -- OK . Katrina . Prior to Katrina , the South Bronx and New Orleans ' Ninth Ward had a lot in common . Both were largely populated by poor people of color , both hotbeds of cultural innovation : think hip-hop and jazz .
Both are waterfront communities that host both industries and residents in close proximity of one another .
In the post-Katrina era , we have still more in common .
We 're at best ignored and maligned and abused , at worst , by negligent regulatory agencies , pernicious zoning and lax governmental accountability .
Neither the destruction of the Ninth Ward nor the South Bronx was inevitable .
But we have emerged with valuable lessons about how to dig ourselves out .
We are more than simply national symbols of urban blight .
Or problems to be solved by empty campaign promises of presidents come and gone .
Now will we let the Gulf Coast languish for a decade or two like the South Bronx did ?
Or will we take proactive steps and learn from the homegrown resource of grassroots activists that have been born of desperation in communities like mine ?
Now listen , I do not expect individuals , corporations or government to make the world a better place because it is right or moral .
This presentation today only represents some of what I 've been through , like a tiny little bit . You 've no clue .
But I 'll tell you later if you want to know .
But -- I know it 's the bottom line , or one 's perception of it , that motivates people in the end .
I 'm interested in what I like to call the " triple bottom line " that sustainable development can produce .
Developments that have the potential to create positive returns for all concerned : the developers , government and the community where these projects go up .
At present , that 's not happening in New York City .
And we are operating with a comprehensive urban planning deficit .
A parade of government subsidies is going to proposed big-box and stadium developments in the South Bronx , but there is scant coordination between city agencies on how to deal with the cumulative effects of increased traffic , pollution , solid waste and the impacts on open space . And their approaches to local economic and job development are so lame it 's not even funny .
Because on top of that , the world 's richest sports team is replacing the House That Ruth Built by destroying two well-loved community parks .
Now , we 'll have even less than that stat I told you about earlier .
And although less than 25 percent of South Bronx residents own cars , these projects include thousands of new parking spaces , yet zip in terms of mass public transit .
Now , what 's missing from the larger debate is a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis between not fixing an unhealthy , environmentally challenged community , versus incorporating structural , sustainable changes .
My agency is working closely with Columbia University and others to shine a light on these issues .
Now let 's get this straight . I am not anti-development .
Ours is a city , not a wilderness preserve . And I 've embraced my inner capitalist .
You probably all have it , and if you haven 't , you need to .
So I don 't have a problem with developers making money .
There 's enough precedent out there to show that a sustainable , community-friendly development can still make a fortune .
Fellow TEDsters Bill McDonough and Amory Lovins -- both heroes of mine by the way -- have shown that you can actually do that .
I do have a problem with developments that hyper-exploit politically vulnerable communities for profit .
That it continues is a shame upon us all , because we are all responsible for the future that we create .
But one of the things I do to remind myself of greater possibilities is to learn from visionaries in other cities .
This is my version of globalization .
Let 's take Bogota . Poor , Latino , surrounded by runaway gun violence and drug trafficking : a reputation not unlike that of the South Bronx .
However , this city was blessed in the late 1990s with a highly influential mayor named Enrique Penalosa .
He looked at the demographics .
Few Bogatanos own cars , yet a huge portion of the city 's resources was dedicated to serving them .
If you 're a mayor , you can do something about that .
His administration narrowed key municipal thoroughfares from five lanes to three , outlawed parking on those streets , expanded pedestrian walkways and bike lanes , created public plazas , created one of the most efficient bus mass-transit systems in the entire world .
For his brilliant efforts , he was nearly impeached .
But as people began to see that they were being put first on issues reflecting their day-to-day lives , incredible things happened .
People stopped littering ; crime rates dropped -- because the streets were alive with people .
His administration attacked several typical urban problems at one time , and on a third-world budget at that .
We have no excuse in this country . I 'm sorry .
But the bottom line is : their people-first agenda was not meant to penalize those who could actually afford cars , but rather to provide opportunities for all Bogatanos to participate in the city 's resurgence . That development should not come at the expense of the majority of the population is still considered a radical idea here in the US .
But Bogota 's example has the power to change that .
You , however , are blessed with the gift of influence .
That 's why you 're here and why you value the information we exchange .
Use your influence in support of comprehensive sustainable change everywhere .
Don 't just talk about it at TED . This is a nationwide policy agenda I 'm trying to build , and as you all know , politics are personal .
Help me make green the new black . Help me make sustainability sexy .
Make it a part of your dinner and cocktail conversations .
Help me fight for environmental and economic justice .
Support investments with a triple-bottom-line return .
Help me democratize sustainability by bringing everyone to the table and insisting that comprehensive planning can be addressed everywhere .
Oh good , glad I have a little more time !
Listen -- when I spoke to Mr. Gore the other day after breakfast , I asked him how environmental justice activists were going to be included in his new marketing strategy .
His response was a grant program .
I don 't think he understood that I wasn 't asking for funding .
I was making him an offer .
What troubled me was that this top-down approach is still around .
Now , don 't get me wrong , we need money .
But grassroots groups are needed at the table during the decision-making process .
Of the 90 percent of the energy that Mr. Gore reminded us that we waste every day , don 't add wasting our energy , intelligence and hard-earned experience to that count .
I have come from so far to meet you like this .
Please don 't waste me . By working together , we can become one of those small , rapidly growing groups of individuals who actually have the audacity and courage to believe that we actually can change the world .
We might have come to this conference from very , very different stations in life , but believe me , we all share one incredibly powerful thing : we have nothing to lose and everything to gain .
Ciao bellos !
Kary Mullis : A next-gen cure for killer infections
Drug-resistant bacteria kills , even in top hospitals . But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise . Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis , who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed , unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise .
So it was about four years ago , five years ago , I was sitting on a stage in Philadelphia , I think it was , with a bag similar to this .
And I was pulling a molecule out of this bag .
And I was saying , you don 't know this molecule really well , but your body knows it extremely well .
And I was thinking that your body hated it , at the time , because we are very immune to this . This is called alpha-gal epitope .
And the fact that pig heart valves have lots of these on them is the reason that you can 't transplant a pig heart valve into a person easily .
Actually our body doesn 't hate these .
Our body loves these . It eats them .
I mean , the cells in our immune system are always hungry .
And if an antibody is stuck to one of these things on the cell , it means " that 's food . "
Now , I was thinking about that and I said , you know , we 've got this immune response to this ridiculous molecule that we don 't make , and we see it a lot in other animals and stuff .
But I said we can 't get rid of it , because all the people who tried to transplant heart valves found out you can 't get rid of that immunity .
And I said , why don 't you use that ?
What if I could stick this molecule , slap it onto a bacteria that was pathogenic to me , that had just invaded my lungs ?
I mean I could immediately tap into an immune response that was already there , where it was not going to take five or six days to develop it -- it was going to immediately attack whatever this thing was on .
It was kind of like the same thing that happens when you , like when you 're getting stopped for a traffic ticket in L.A. , and the cop drops a bag of marijuana in the back of your car , and then charges you for possession of marijuana .
It 's like this very fast , very efficient way to get people off the street .
So you can take a bacteria that really doesn 't make these things at all , and if you could clamp these on it really well you have it taken off the street .
And for certain bacteria we don 't have really efficient ways to do that anymore .
Our antibiotics are running out .
And , I mean , the world apparently is running out too .
So probably it doesn 't matter 50 years from now -- streptococcus and stuff like that will be rampant -- because we won 't be here . But if we are -- we 're going to need something to do with the bacteria .
So I started working with this thing , with a bunch of collaborators .
And trying to attach this to things that were themselves attached to certain specific target zones , bacteria that we don 't like .
And I feel now like George Bush .
It 's like " mission accomplished . "
So I might be doing something dumb , just like he was doing at the time .
But basically what I was talking about there we 've now gotten to work .
And it 's killing bacteria . It 's eating them .
This thing can be stuck , like that little green triangle up there , sort of symbolizing this right now .
You can stick this to something called a DNA aptamer .
And that DNA aptamer will attach specifically to a target that you have selected for it .
So you can find a little feature on a bacterium that you don 't like , like Staphylococcus -- I don 't like it in particular , because it killed a professor friend of mine last year .
It doesn 't respond to antibiotics . So I don 't like it .
And I 'm making an aptamer that will have this attached to it .
That will know how to find Staph when it 's in your body , and will alert your immune system to go after it .
Here 's what happened . See that line on the very top with the little dots ?
That 's a bunch of mice that had been poisoned by our scientist friends down in Texas , at Brooks Air Base , with anthrax .
And they had also been treated with a drug that we made that would attack anthrax in particular , and direct your immune system to it .
You 'll notice they all lived , the ones on the top line -- that 's a 100 percent survival rate .
And they actually lived another 14 days , or 28 when we finally killed them , and took them apart and figured out what went wrong .
Why did they not die ?
And they didn 't die because they didn 't have anthrax anymore .
So we did it . Okay ?
Mission accomplished !
Hans Rosling : Global population growth , box by box
The world 's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth . This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED @ Cannes using colorful new data display technology .
I still remember the day in school when our teacher told us that the world population had become three billion people , and that was in 1960 .
I 'm going to talk now about how world population has changed from that year and into the future , but I will not use digital technology , as I 've done during my first five TEDTalks .
Instead , I have progressed , and I am , today , launching a brand new analog teaching technology that I picked up from IKE this box .
This box contains one billion people .
And our teacher told us that the industrialized world , 1960 , had one billion people .
In the developing world , she said , they had two billion people .
And they lived away then .
There was a big gap between the one billion in the industrialized world and the two billion in the developing world .
In the industrialized world , people were healthy , educated , rich , and they had small families .
And their aspiration was to buy a car .
And in 1960 , all Swedes were saving to try to buy a Volvo like this .
This was the economic level at which Sweden was .
But in contrast to this , in the developing world , far away , the aspiration of the average family there was to have food for the day .
They were saving to be able to buy a pair of shoes .
There was an enormous gap in the world when I grew up .
And this gap between the West and the rest has created a mindset of the world , which we still use linguistically when we talk about " the West " and " the Developing World . "
But the world has changed , and it 's overdue to upgrade that mindset and that taxonomy of the world , and to understand it .
And that 's what I 'm going to show you , because since 1960 what has happened in the world up to 2010 is that a staggering four billion people have been added to the world population .
Just look how many .
The world population has doubled since I went to school .
And of course , there 's been economic growth in the West .
A lot of companies have happened to grow the economy , so the Western population moved over to here .
And now their aspiration is not only to have a car .
Now they want to have a holiday on a very remote destination and they want to fly .
So this is where they are today .
And the most successful of the developing countries , they have moved on , you know , and they have become emerging economies , we call them .
They are now buying cars .
And what happened a month ago was that the Chinese company , Geely , they acquired the Volvo company , and then finally the Swedes understood that something big had happened in the world .
So there they are .
And the tragedy is that the two billion over here that is struggling for food and shoes , they are still almost as poor as they were 50 years ago .
The new thing is that we have the biggest pile of billions , the three billions here , which are also becoming emerging economies , because they are quite healthy , relatively well-educated , and they already also have two to three children per woman , as those [ richer also ] have .
And their aspiration now is , of course , to buy a bicycle , and then later on they would like to have a motorbike also .
But this is the world we have today , no longer any gap .
But the distance from the poorest here , the very poorest , to the very richest over here is wider than ever .
But there is a continuous world from walking , biking , driving , flying -- there are people on all levels , and most people tend to be somewhere in the middle .
This is the new world we have today in 2010 .
And what will happen in the future ?
Well , I 'm going to project into 2050 .
I was in Shanghai recently , and I listened to what 's happening in China , and it 's pretty sure that they will catch up , just as Japan did .
All the projections [ say that ] this one [ billion ] will [ only ] grow with one to two or three percent .
[ But this second ] grows with seven , eight percent , and then they will end up here .
They will start flying .
And these lower or middle income countries , the emerging income countries , they will also forge forwards economically .
And if , but only if , we invest in the right green technology -- so that we can avoid severe climate change , and energy can still be relatively cheap -- then they will move all the way up here .
And they will start to buy electric cars .
This is what we will find there .
So what about the poorest two billion ?
What about the poorest two billion here ?
Will they move on ?
Well , here population [ growth ] comes in because there [ among emerging economies ] we already have two to three children per woman , family planning is widely used , and population growth is coming to an end .
Here [ among the poorest ] , population is growing .
So these [ poorest ] two billion will , in the next decades , increase to three billion , and they will thereafter increase to four billion .
There is nothing -- but a nuclear war of a kind we 've never seen -- that can stop this [ growth ] from happening .
Because we already have this [ growth ] in process .
But if , and only if , [ the poorest ] get out of poverty , they get education , they get improved child survival , they can buy a bicycle and a cell phone and come [ to live ] here , then population growth will stop in 2050 .
We cannot have people on this level looking for food and shoes because then we get continued population growth .
And let me show you why by converting back to the old-time digital technology .
Here I have on the screen my country bubbles .
Every bubble is a country . The size is population .
The colors show the continent .
The yellow on there is the Americas ; dark blue is Africa ; brown is Europe ; green is the Middle East and this light blue is South Asia .
That 's India and this is China . Size is population .
Here I have children per woman : two children , four children , six children , eight children -- big families , small families .
The year is 1960 .
And down here , child survival , the percentage of children surviving childhood up to starting school : 60 percent , 70 percent , 80 percent , 90 , and almost 100 percent , as we have today in the wealthiest and healthiest countries .
But look , this is the world my teacher talked about in 1960 : one billion Western world here -- high child-survival , small families -- and all the rest , the rainbow of developing countries , with very large families and poor child survival .
What has happened ? I start the world . Here we go .
Can you see , as the years pass by , child survival is increasing ?
They get soap , hygiene , education , vaccination , penicillin and then family planning . Family size is decreasing .
[ When ] they get up to 90-percent child survival , then families decrease , and most of the Arab countries in the Middle East is falling down there [ to small families ] .
Look , Bangladesh catching up with India .
The whole emerging world joins the Western world with good child survival and small family size , but we still have the poorest billion .
Can you see the poorest billion , those [ two ] boxes I had over here ?
They are still up here .
And they still have a child survival of only 70 to 80 percent , meaning that if you have six children born , there will be at least four who survive to the next generation .
And the population will double in one generation .
So the only way of really getting world population [ growth ] to stop is to continue to improve child survival to 90 percent .
That 's why investments by Gates Foundation , UNICEF and aid organizations , together with national government in the poorest countries , are so good ; because they are actually helping us to reach a sustainable population size of the world .
We can stop at nine billion if we do the right things .
Child survival is the new green .
It 's only by child survival that we will stop population growth .
And will it happen ?
Well , I 'm not an optimist , neither am I a pessimist .
I 'm a very serious " possibilist . "
It 's a new category where we take emotion apart , and we just work analytically with the world .
It can be done .
We can have a much more just world .
With green technology and with investments to alleviate poverty , and global governance , the world can become like this .
And look at the position of the old West .
Remember when this blue box was all alone , leading the world , living its own life .
This will not happen [ again ] .
The role of the old West in the new world is to become the foundation of the modern world -- nothing more , nothing less .
But it 's a very important role .
Do it well and get used to it .
Thank you very much .
Joe Sabia : The technology of storytelling
iPad storyteller Joe Sabia introduces us to Lothar Meggendorfer , who created a bold technology for storytelling : the pop-up book . Sabia shows how new technology has always helped us tell our own stories , from the walls of caves to his own onstage iPad .
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 .
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 .
For this delight and for this wonder , people rejoiced .
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 .
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 .
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 .
Jeff Smith : Lessons in business ... from prison
Jeff Smith spent a year in prison . But what he discovered inside wasn 't what he expected -- he saw in his fellow inmates boundless ingenuity and business savvy . He asks : Why don 't we tap this entrepreneurial potential to help ex-prisoners contribute to society once they 're back outside ?
B.J. was one of many fellow inmates who had big plans for the future .
He had a vision . When he got out , he was going to leave the dope game for good and fly straight , and he was actually working on merging his two passions into one vision .
He 'd spent 10,000 dollars to buy a website that exclusively featured women having sex on top of or inside of luxury sports cars .
It was my first week in federal prison , and I was learning quickly that it wasn 't what you see on TV .
In fact , it was teeming with smart , ambitious men whose business instincts were in many cases as sharp as those of the CEOs who had wined and dined me six months earlier when I was a rising star in the Missouri Senate .
Now , 95 percent of the guys that I was locked up with had been drug dealers on the outside , but when they talked about what they did , they talked about it in a different jargon , but the business concepts that they talked about weren 't unlike those that you 'd learn in a first year MBA class at Wharton : promotional incentives , you never charge a first-time user , focus-grouping new product launches , territorial expansion .
But they didn 't spend a lot of time reliving the glory days .
For the most part , everyone was just trying to survive .
It 's a lot harder than you might think .
Contrary to what most people think , people don 't pay , taxpayers don 't pay , for your life when you 're in prison . You 've got to pay for your own life .
You 've got to pay for your soap , your deodorant , toothbrush , toothpaste , all of it .
And it 's hard for a couple of reasons .
First , everything 's marked up 30 to 50 percent from what you 'd pay on the street , and second , you don 't make a lot of money .
I unloaded trucks . That was my full-time job , unloading trucks at a food warehouse , for $ 5.25 , not an hour , but per month .
So how do you survive ?
Well , you learn to hustle , all kinds of hustles .
There 's legal hustles .
You pay everything in stamps . Those are the currency .
You charge another inmate to clean his cell .
There 's sort of illegal hustles , like you run a barbershop out of your cell .
There 's pretty illegal hustles : You run a tattoo parlor out of your own cell .
And there 's very illegal hustles , which you smuggle in , you get smuggled in , drugs , pornography , cell phones , and just as in the outer world , there 's a risk-reward tradeoff , so the riskier the enterprise , the more profitable it can potentially be .
You want a cigarette in prison ? Three to five dollars .
You want an old-fashioned cell phone that you flip open and is about as big as your head ? Three hundred bucks .
You want a dirty magazine ?
Well , it can be as much as 1,000 dollars .
So as you can probably tell , one of the defining aspects of prison life is ingenuity .
Whether it was concocting delicious meals from stolen scraps from the warehouse , sculpting people 's hair with toenail clippers , or constructing weights from boulders in laundry bags tied on to tree limbs , prisoners learn how to make do with less , and many of them want to take this ingenuity that they 've learned to the outside and start restaurants , barber shops , personal training businesses .
But there 's no training , nothing to prepare them for that , no rehabilitation at all in prison , no one to help them write a business plan , figure out a way to translate the business concepts they intuitively grasp into legal enterprises , no access to the Internet , even .
And then , when they come out , most states don 't even have a law prohibiting employers from discriminating against people with a background .
So none of us should be surprised that two out of three ex-offenders re-offend within five years .
Look , I lied to the Feds . I lost a year of my life from it .
But when I came out , I vowed that I was going to do whatever I could to make sure that guys like the ones I was locked up with didn 't have to waste any more of their life than they already had .
So I hope that you 'll think about helping in some way .
The best thing we can do is figure out ways to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit and the tremendous untapped potential in our prisons , because if we don 't , they 're not going to learn any new skills that 's going to help them , and they 'll be right back .
All they 'll learn on the inside is new hustles .
Thank you .
Alex Laskey : How behavioral science can lower your energy bill
What 's a proven way to lower your energy costs ? Would you believe : learning what your neighbor pays . Alex Laskey shows how a quirk of human behavior can make us all better , wiser energy users , with lower bills to prove it .
How many of you have checked your email today ?
Come on , raise your hands .
How many of you are checking it right now ?
And how about finances ? Anybody check that today ?
Credit card , investment account ?
How about this week ?
Now , how about your household energy use ?
Anybody check that today ?
This week ? Last week ?
A few energy geeks spread out across the room .
It 's good to see you guys .
But the rest of us -- this is a room filled with people who are passionate about the future of this planet , and even we aren 't paying attention to the energy use that 's driving climate change .
The woman in the photo with me is Harriet .
We met her on our first family vacation .
Harriet 's paying attention to her energy use , and she is decidedly not an energy geek .
This is the story of how Harriet came to pay attention .
This is coal , the most common source of electricity on the planet , and there 's enough energy in this coal to light this bulb for more than a year .
But unfortunately , between here and here , most of that energy is lost to things like transmission leakage and heat .
In fact , only 10 percent ends up as light .
So this coal will last a little bit more than a month .
If you wanted to light this bulb for a year , you 'd need this much coal .
The bad news here is that , for every unit of energy we use , we waste nine .
That means there 's good news , because for every unit of energy we save , we save the other nine .
So the question is , how can we get the people in this room and across the globe to start paying attention to the energy we 're using , and start wasting less of it ?
The answer comes from a behavioral science experiment that was run one hot summer , 10 years ago , and only 90 miles from here , in San Marcos , California .
Graduate students put signs on every door in a neighborhood , asking people to turn off their air conditioning and turn on their fans .
One quarter of the homes received a message that said , did you know you could save 54 dollars a month this summer ?
Turn off your air conditioning , turn on your fans .
Another group got an environmental message .
And still a third group got a message about being good citizens , preventing blackouts .
Most people guessed that money-saving message would work best of all .
In fact , none of these messages worked .
They had zero impact on energy consumption .
It was as if the grad students hadn 't shown up at all .
But there was a fourth message , and this message simply said , " When surveyed , 77 percent of your neighbors said that they turned off their air conditioning and turned on their fans .
Please join them . Turn off your air conditioning and turn on your fans . "
And wouldn 't you know it , they did .
The people who received this message showed a marked decrease in energy consumption simply by being told what their neighbors were doing .
So what does this tell us ?
Well , if something is inconvenient , even if we believe in it , moral suasion , financial incentives , don 't do much to move us -- but social pressure , that 's powerful stuff .
And harnessed correctly , it can be a powerful force for good .
In fact , it already is .
Inspired by this insight , my friend Dan Yates and I started a company called Opower .
We built software and partnered with utility companies who wanted to help their customers save energy .
We deliver personalized home energy reports that show people how their consumption compares to their neighbors in similar-sized homes .
Just like those effective door hangers , we have people comparing themselves to their neighbors , and then we give everyone targeted recommendations to help them save .
We started with paper , we moved to a mobile application , web , and now even a controllable thermostat , and for the last five years we 've been running the largest behavioral science experiment in the world .
And it 's working .
Ordinary homeowners and renters have saved more than 250 million dollars on their energy bills , and we 're just getting started .
This year alone , in partnership with more than 80 utilities in six countries , we 're going to generate another two terawatt hours of electricity savings .
Now , the energy geeks in the room know two terawatt hours , but for the rest of us , two terawatt hours is more than enough energy to power every home in St. Louis and Salt Lake City combined for more than a year .
Two terawatt hours , it 's roughly half what the U.S. solar industry produced last year .
And two terawatt hours ? In terms of coal , we 'd need to burn 34 of these wheelbarrows every minute around the clock every day for an entire year to get two terawatt hours of electricity .
And we 're not burning anything .
We 're just motivating people to pay attention and change their behavior .
But we 're just one company , and this is just scratching the surface .
Twenty percent of the electricity in homes is wasted , and when I say wasted , I don 't mean that people have inefficient lightbulbs . They may .
I mean we leave the lights on in empty rooms , and we leave the air conditioning on when nobody 's home .
That 's 40 billion dollars a year wasted on electricity that does not contribute to our well-being but does contribute to climate change .
That 's 40 billion -- with a B -- every year in the U.S. alone .
That 's half our coal usage right there .
Now thankfully , some of the world 's best material scientists are looking to replace coal with sustainable resources like these , and this is both fantastic and essential .
But the most overlooked resource to get us to a sustainable energy future , it isn 't on this slide .
It 's in this room . It 's you , and it 's me .
And we can harness this resource with no new material science simply by applying behavioral science .
We can do it today , we know it works , and it will save us money right away .
So what are we waiting for ?
Well , in most places , utility regulation hasn 't changed much since Thomas Edison .
Utilities are still rewarded when their customers waste energy .
They ought to be rewarded for helping their customers save it .
But this story is much more than about household energy use .
Take a look at the Prius .
It 's efficient not only because Toyota invested in material science but because they invested in behavioral science .
The dashboard that shows drivers how much energy they 're saving in real time makes former speed demons drive more like cautious grandmothers .
Which brings us back to Harriet .
We met her on our first family vacation .
She came over to meet my young daughter , and she was tickled to learn that my daughter 's name is also Harriet .
She asked me what I did for a living , and I told her , I work with utilities to help people save energy .
It was then that her eyes lit up .
She looked at me , and she said , " You 're exactly the person I need to talk to .
You see , two weeks ago , my husband and I got a letter in the mail from our utility .
It told us we were using twice as much energy as our neighbors . "
" And for the last two weeks , all we can think about , talk about , and even argue about , is what we should be doing to save energy .
We did everything that letter told us to do , and still I know there must be more .
Now I 'm here with a genuine expert .
Tell me . What should I do to save energy ? "
There are many experts who can help answer Harriet 's question .
My goal is to make sure we are all asking it .
Thank you .
Miwa Matreyek : Glorious visions in animation and performance
Using animation , projections and her own moving shadow , Miwa Matreyek performs a gorgeous , meditative piece about inner and outer discovery . Take a quiet 10 minutes and dive in . With music from Anna Oxygen , Mirah , Caroline Lufkin and Mileece .
You learned how to be a diver Put on a mask and believe Gather a dinner of shells for me Take the tank down so you can breathe Below Movements slow You are an island All the secrets until then Pried open I held them Until they were still Until they were still Until they were still Dream time , I will find you You are shady , you are new I 'm not so good at mornings I can see too clearly I prefer the nighttime Dark and blurry Falling night Hovering light Calling night Hovering light In the moontime I will give up my life And in the deep dreams You will find me [ Excerpts from " Myth and Infrastructure " ] Come back .
Miwa Matreyek !
Ami Klin : A new way to diagnose autism
Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder can improve the lives of everyone affected , but the complex network of causes make it incredibly difficult to predict . At TEDxPeachtree , Ami Klin describes a new early detection method that uses eye-tracking technologies to gauge babies ' social engagement skills and reliably measure their risk of developing autism . & lt ; em & gt ; & lt ; / em & gt ;
I always wanted to become a walking laboratory of social engagement , to resonate other people 's feelings , thoughts , intentions , motivations , in the act of being with them .
As a scientist , I always wanted to measure that resonance , that sense of the other that happens so quickly , in the blink of an eye .
We intuit other people 's feelings .
We know the meaning of their actions even before they happen .
We 're always in this stance of being the object of somebody else 's subjectivity .
We do that all the time . We just can 't shake it off .
It 's so important that the very tools that we use to understand ourselves , to understand the world around them , is shaped by that stance .
We are social to the core .
So my journey in autism really started when I lived in a residential unit for adults with autism .
Most of those individuals had spent most of their lives in long-stay hospitals . This is a long time ago .
And for them , autism was devastating .
They had profound intellectual disabilities .
They didn 't talk . But most of all , they were extraordinarily isolated from the world around them , from their environment and from the people .
In fact , at the time , if you walked into a school for individuals with autism , you 'd hear a lot of noise , plenty of commotion , actions , people doing things , but they 're always doing things by themselves .
So they may be looking at a light in the ceiling , or they may be isolated in the corner , or they might be engaged in these repetitive movements , in self-stimulatory movements that led them nowhere .
Extremely , extremely isolated .
Well , now we know that autism is this disruption , the disruption of this resonance that I am telling you .
These are survival skills .
These are survival skills that we inherited over many , many hundreds of thousands of years of evolution .
You see , babies are born in a state of utter fragility .
Without the caregiver , they wouldn 't survive , so it stands to reason that nature would endow them with these mechanisms of survival .
They orient to the caregiver .
From the first days and weeks of life , babies prefer to hear human sounds rather than just sounds in the environment .
They prefer to look at people rather than at things , and even as they 're looking at people , they look at people 's eyes , because the eye is the window to the other person 's experiences , so much so that they even prefer to look at people who are looking at them rather than people who are looking away .
Well , they orient to the caregiver .
The caregiver seeks the baby .
And it 's out of this mutually reinforcing choreography that a lot that is of importance to the emergence of mind , the social mind , the social brain , depends on .
We always think about autism as something that happens later on in life .
It doesn 't . It begins with the beginning of life .
As babies engage with caregivers , they soon realize that , well , there is something in between the ears that is very important -- it 's invisible , you can 't see -- but is really critical , and that thing is called attention .
And they learn soon enough , even before they can utter one word that they can take that attention and move somewhere in order to get things they want .
They also learn to follow other people 's gaze , because whatever people are looking at is what they are thinking about .
And soon enough , they start to learn about the meaning of things , because when somebody is looking at something or somebody is pointing at something , they 're not just getting a directional cue , they are getting the other person 's meaning of that thing , the attitude , and soon enough they start building this body of meanings , but meanings that were acquired within the realm of social interaction .
Those are meanings that are acquired as part of their shared experiences with others .
Well , this is a little 15-month-old little girl , and she has autism .
And I am coming so close to her that I am maybe two inches from her face , and she 's quite oblivious to me .
Imagine if I did that to you , and I came two inches from your face .
You 'd do probably two things , wouldn 't you ?
You would recoil . You would call the police .
You would do something , because it 's literally impossible to penetrate somebody 's physical space and not get a reaction .
We do so , remember , intuitively , effortlessly .
This is our body wisdom . It 's not something that is mediated by our language . Our body just knows that , and we 've known that for a long time .
And this is not something that happens to humans only .
It happens to some of our phylatic cousins , because if you 're a monkey , and you look at another monkey , and that monkey has a higher hierarchy position than you , and that is considered to be a signal or threat , well , you are not going to be alive for long .
So something that in other species are survival mechanisms , without them they wouldn 't basically live , we bring into the context of human beings , and this is what we need to simply act , act socially .
Now , she is oblivious to me , and I am so close to her , and you think , maybe she can see you , maybe she can hear you .
Well , a few minutes later , she goes to the corner of the room , and she finds a tiny little piece of candy , an M & amp ; M.
So I could not attract her attention , but something , a thing , did .
Now , most of us make a big dichotomy between the world of things and the world of people .
Now , for this girl , that division line is not so clear , and the world of people is not attracting her as much as we would like .
Now remember that we learn a great deal by sharing experiences .
Now , what she is doing right now is that her path of learning is diverging moment by moment as she is isolating herself further and further .
So we feel sometimes that the brain is deterministic , the brain determines who we are going to be .
But in fact the brain also becomes who we are , and at the same time that her behaviors are taking away from the realm of social interaction , this is what 's happening with her mind and this is what 's happening with her brain .
Well , autism is the most strongly genetic condition of all developmental disorders , and it 's a brain disorder .
It 's a disorder that begins much prior to the time that the child is born .
We now know that there is a very broad spectrum of autism .
There are those individuals who are profoundly intellectually disabled , but there are those that are gifted .
There are those individuals who don 't talk at all .
There are those individuals who talk too much .
There are those individuals that if you observe them in their school , you see them running the periphery fence of the school all day if you let them , to those individuals who cannot stop coming to you and trying to engage you repeatedly , relentlessly , but often in an awkward fashion , without that immediate resonance .
Well , this is much more prevalent than we thought at the time .
When I started in this field , we thought that there were four individuals with autism per 10,000 , a very rare condition .
Well , now we know it 's more like one in 100 .
There are millions of individuals with autism all around us .
The societal cost of this condition is huge .
In the U.S. alone , maybe 35 to 80 billion dollars , and you know what ? Most of those funds are associated with adolescents and particularly adults who are severely disabled , individuals who need wrap-around services , services that are very , very intensive , and those services can cost in excess of 60 to 80,000 dollars a year .
Those are individuals who did not benefit from early treatment , because now we know that autism creates itself as they diverge in that pathway of learning that I mentioned to you .
Were we to be able to identify this condition at an earlier point , and intervene and treat , I can tell you , and this has been probably something that has changed my life in the past 10 years , this notion that we can absolutely attenuate this condition .
Also , we have a window of opportunity , because the brain is malleable for just so long , and that window of opportunity happens in the first three years of life .
It 's not that that window closes . It doesn 't .
But it diminishes considerably .
And yet , the median age of diagnosis in this country is still about five years , and in disadvantaged populations , the populations that don 't have access to clinical services , rural populations , minorities , the age of diagnosis is later still , which is almost as if I were to tell you that we are condemning those communities to have individuals with autism whose condition is going to be more severe .
So I feel that we have a bio-ethical imperative .
The science is there , but no science is of relevance if it doesn 't have an impact on the community , and we just can 't afford that missed opportunity , because children with autism become adults with autism , and we feel that those things that we can do for these children , for those families , early on , will have lifetime consequences , for the child , for the family , and for the community at large .
So this is our view of autism .
There are over a hundred genes that are associated with autism . In fact , we believe that there are going to be something between 300 and 600 genes associated with autism , and genetic anomalies , much more than just genes .
And we actually have a bit of a question here , because if there are so many different causes of autism , how do you go from those liabilities to the actual syndrome ? Because people like myself , when we walk into a playroom , we recognize a child as having autism .
So how do you go from multiple causes to a syndrome that has some homogeneity ?
And the answer is , what lies in between , which is development .
And in fact , we are very interested in those first two years of life , because those liabilities don 't necessarily convert into autism .
Autism creates itself .
Were we to be able to intervene during those years of life , we might attenuate for some , and God knows , maybe even prevent for others .
So how do we do that ?
How do we enter that feeling of resonance , how do we enter another person 's being ?
I remember when I interacted with that 15-month-older , that the thing that came to mind was , " How do you come into her world ?
Is she thinking about me ? Is she thinking about others ? "
Well , it 's hard to do that , so we had to create the technologies . We had to basically step inside a body .
We had to see the world through her eyes .
And so in the past many years we 've been building these new technologies that are based on eye tracking .
We can see moment by moment what children are engaging with .
Well , this is my colleague Warren Jones , with whom we 've been building these methods , these studies , for the past 12 years , and you see there a happy five-month-older , it 's a five-month little boy who is going to watch things that are brought from his world , his mom , the caregiver , but also experiences that he would have were he to be in his daycare .
What we want is to embrace that world and bring it into our laboratory , but in order for us to do that , we had to create these very sophisticated measures , measures of how people , how little babies , how newborns , engage with the world , moment by moment , what is important , and what is not .
Well , we created those measures , and here , what you see is what we call a funnel of attention .
You 're watching a video .
Those frames are separated by about a second through the eyes of 35 typically developing two-year-olds , and we freeze one frame , and this is what the typical children are doing .
In this scan pass , in green here , are two-year-olds with autism .
So on that frame , the children who are typical are watching this , the emotion of expression of that little boy as he 's fighting a little bit with the little girl .
What are the children with autism doing ?
They are focusing on the revolving door , opening and shutting .
Well , I can tell you that this divergence that you 're seeing here doesn 't happen only in our five-minute experiment .
It happens moment by moment in their real lives , and their minds are being formed , and their brains are being specialized in something other than what is happening with their typical peers .
Well , we took a construct from our pediatrician friends , the concept of growth charts .
You know , when you take a child to the pediatrician , and so you have physical height , and weight .
Well we decided that we 're going to create growth charts of social engagement , and we sought children from the time that they are born , and what you see here on the x-axis is two , three , four , five , six months and nine , until about the age of 24 months , and this is the percent of their viewing time that they are focusing on people 's eyes , and this is their growth chart .
They start over here , they love people 's eyes , and it remains quite stable .
It sort of goes up a little bit in those initial months .
Now , let 's see what 's happening with babies who became autistic .
It 's something very different .
It starts way up here , but then it 's a free fall .
It 's very much like they brought into this world the reflex that orients them to people , but it has no traction .
It 's almost as if that stimulus , you , you 're not exerting influence on what happens as they navigate their daily lives .
Now , we thought that those data were so powerful in a way , that we wanted to see what happened in the first six months of life , because if you interact with a two- and a three-month-older , you 'd be surprised by how social those babies are .
And what we see in the first six months of life is that those two groups can be segregated very easily .
And using these kinds of measures , and many others , what we found out is that our science could , in fact , identify this condition early on .
We didn 't have to wait for the behaviors of autism to emerge in the second year of life .
If we measured things that are , evolutionarily , highly conserved , and developmentally very early emerging , things that are online from the first weeks of life , we could push the detection of autism all the way to those first months , and that 's what we are doing now .
Now , we can create the very best technologies and the very best methods to identify the children , but this would be for naught if we didn 't have an impact on what happens in their reality in the community .
Now we want those devices , of course , to be deployed by those who are in the trenches , our colleagues , the primary care physicians , who see every child , and we need to transform those technologies into something that is going to add value to their practice , because they have to see so many children .
And we want to do that universally so that we don 't miss any child , but this would be immoral if we also did not have an infrastructure for intervention , for treatment .
We need to be able to work with the families , to support the families , to manage those first years with them . We need to be able to really go from universal screening to universal access to treatment , because those treatments are going to change these children 's and those families ' lives .
Now , when we think about what we [ can ] do in those first years , I can tell you , having been in this field for so long , one feels really rejuvenated .
There is a sense that the science that one worked on can actually have an impact on realities , preventing , in fact , those experiences that I really started in my journey in this field .
I thought at the time that this was an intractable condition .
No longer . We can do a great deal of things .
And the idea is not to cure autism .
That 's not the idea .
What we want is to make sure that those individuals with autism can be free from the devastating consequences that come with it at times , the profound intellectual disabilities , the lack of language , the profound , profound isolation .
We feel that individuals with autism , in fact , have a very special perspective on the world , and we need diversity , and they can work extremely well in some areas of strength : predictable situations , situations that can be defined .
Because after all , they learn about the world almost like about it , rather than learning how to function in it .
But this is a strength , if you 're working , for example , in technology .
And there are those individuals who have incredible artistic abilities .
We want them to be free of that .
We want that the next generations of individuals with autism will be able not only to express their strengths but to fulfill their promise .
Well thank you for listening to me .
Alan Siegel : Let 's simplify legal jargon !
Tax forms , credit agreements , healthcare legislation : They 're crammed with gobbledygook , says Alan Siegel , and incomprehensibly long . He calls for a simple , sensible redesign -- and plain English -- to make legal paperwork intelligible to the rest of us .
So , basically we have public leaders , public officials who are out of control ; they are writing bills that are unintelligible , and out of these bills are going to come maybe 40,000 pages of regulations , total complexity , which has a dramatically negative impact on our life .
If you 're a veteran coming back from Iraq or Vietnam you face a blizzard of paperwork to get your benefits ; if you 're trying to get a small business loan , you face a blizzard of paperwork .
What are we going to do about it ? I define simplicity as a means to achieving clarity , transparency and empathy , building humanity into communications .
I 've been simplifying things for 30 years .
I come out of the advertising and design business .
My focus is understanding you people , and how you interact with the government to get your benefits , how you interact with corporations to decide whom you 're going to do business with , and how you view brands .
So , very quickly , when President Obama said , " I don 't see why we can 't have a one-page , plain English consumer credit agreement . "
So , I locked myself in a room , figured out the content , organized the document , and wrote it in plain English .
I 've had this checked by the two top consumer credit lawyers in the country .
This is a real thing .
Now , I went one step further and said , " Why do we have to stick with the stodgy lawyers and just have a paper document ? Let 's go online . "
And many people might need help in computation .
Working with the Harvard Business School , you 'll see this example when you talk about minimum payment : If you spent 62 dollars for a meal , the longer you take to pay out that loan , you see , over a period of time using the minimum payment it 's 99 dollars and 17 cents .
How about that ? Do you think your bank is going to show that to people ?
But it 's going to work . It 's more effective than just computational aids .
And what about terms like " over the limit " ?
Perhaps a stealth thing .
Define it in context . Tell people what it means .
When you put it in plain English , you almost force the institution to give the people a way , a default out of that , and not put themselves at risk .
Plain English is about changing the content .
And one of the things I 'm most proud of is this agreement for IBM .
It 's a grid , it 's a calendar .
At such and such a date , IBM has responsibilities , you have responsibilities .
Received very favorably by business .
And there is some good news to report today .
Each year , one in 10 taxpayers receives a notice from the IRS .
There are 200 million letters that go out .
Running through this typical letter that they had , I ran it through my simplicity lab , it 's pretty unintelligible .
All the parts of the document in red are not intelligible .
We looked at doing over 1,000 letters that cover 70 percent of their transactions in plain English .
They have been tested in the laboratory .
When I run it through my lab , this heat-mapping shows everything is intelligible .
And the IRS has introduced the program .
There are a couple of things going on right now that I want to bring to your attention .
There is a lot of discussion now about a consumer financial protection agency , how to mandate simplicity .
We see all this complexity .
It 's incumbent upon us , and this organization , I believe , to make clarity , transparency and empathy a national priority .
There is no way that we should allow government to communicate the way they communicate .
There is no way we should do business with companies that have agreements with stealth provisions and that are unintelligible .
So , how are we going to change the world ?
Make clarity , transparency and simplicity a national priority .
I thank you .
Rodney Brooks : Why we will rely on robots
Scaremongers play on the idea that robots will simply replace people on the job . In fact , they can become our essential collaborators , freeing us up to spend time on less mundane and mechanical challenges . Rodney Brooks points out how valuable this could be as the number of working-age adults drops and the number of retirees swells . He introduces us to Baxter , the robot with eyes that move and arms that react to touch , which could work alongside an aging population -- and learn to help them at home , too .
Well , Arthur C. Clarke , a famous science fiction writer from the 1950s , said that , " We overestimate technology in the short term , and we underestimate it in the long term . "
And I think that 's some of the fear that we see about jobs disappearing from artificial intelligence and robots .
That we 're overestimating the technology in the short term .
But I am worried whether we 're going to get the technology we need in the long term .
Because the demographics are really going to leave us with lots of jobs that need doing and that we , our society , is going to have to be built on the shoulders of steel of robots in the future .
So I 'm scared we won 't have enough robots .
But fear of losing jobs to technology has been around for a long time .
Back in 1957 , there was a Spencer Tracy , Katharine Hepburn movie .
So you know how it ended up , Spencer Tracy brought a computer , a mainframe computer of 1957 , in to help the librarians .
The librarians in the company would do things like answer for the executives , " What are the names of Santa 's reindeer ? "
And they would look that up .
And this mainframe computer was going to help them with that job .
Well of course a mainframe computer in 1957 wasn 't much use for that job .
The librarians were afraid their jobs were going to disappear .
But that 's not what happened in fact .
The number of jobs for librarians increased for a long time after 1957 .
It wasn 't until the Internet came into play , the web came into play and search engines came into play that the need for librarians went down .
And I think everyone from 1957 totally underestimated the level of technology we would all carry around in our hands and in our pockets today .
And we can just ask : " What are the names of Santa 's reindeer ? " and be told instantly -- or anything else we want to ask .
By the way , the wages for librarians went up faster than the wages for other jobs in the U.S. over that same time period , because librarians became partners of computers .
Computers became tools , and they got more tools that they could use and become more effective during that time .
Same thing happened in offices .
Back in the old days , people used spreadsheets .
Spreadsheets were spread sheets of paper , and they calculated by hand .
But here was an interesting thing that came along .
With the revolution around 1980 of P.C. ' s , the spreadsheet programs were tuned for office workers , not to replace office workers , but it respected office workers as being capable of being programmers .
So office workers became programmers of spreadsheets .
It increased their capabilities .
They no longer had to do the mundane computations , but they could do something much more .
Now today , we 're starting to see robots in our lives .
On the left there is the PackBot from iRobot .
When soldiers came across roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan , instead of putting on a bomb suit and going out and poking with a stick , as they used to do up until about 2002 , they now send the robot out .
So the robot takes over the dangerous jobs .
On the right are some TUGs from a company called Aethon in Pittsburgh .
These are in hundreds of hospitals across the U.S.
And they take the dirty sheets down to the laundry .
They take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen .
They bring the medicines up from the pharmacy .
And it frees up the nurses and the nurse 's aides from doing that mundane work of just mechanically pushing stuff around to spend more time with patients .
In fact , robots have become sort of ubiquitous in our lives in many ways .
But I think when it comes to factory robots , people are sort of afraid , because factory robots are dangerous to be around .
In order to program them , you have to understand six-dimensional vectors and quaternions .
And ordinary people can 't interact with them .
And I think it 's the sort of technology that 's gone wrong .
It 's displaced the worker from the technology .
And I think we really have to look at technologies that ordinary workers can interact with .
And so I want to tell you today about Baxter , which we 've been talking about .
And Baxter , I see , as a way -- a first wave of robot that ordinary people can interact with in an industrial setting .
So Baxter is up here .
This is Chris Harbert from Rethink Robotics .
We 've got a conveyor there .
And if the lighting isn 't too extreme -- Ah , ah ! There it is . It 's picked up the object off the conveyor .
It 's going to come bring it over here and put it down .
And then it 'll go back , reach for another object .
The interesting thing is Baxter has some basic common sense .
By the way , what 's going on with the eyes ?
The eyes are on the screen there .
The eyes look ahead where the robot 's going to move .
So a person that 's interacting with the robot understands where it 's going to reach and isn 't surprised by its motions .
Here Chris took the object out of its hand , and Baxter didn 't go and try to put it down ; it went back and realized it had to get another one .
It 's got a little bit of basic common sense , goes and picks the objects .
And Baxter 's safe to interact with .
You wouldn 't want to do this with a current industrial robot .
But with Baxter it doesn 't hurt .
It feels the force , understands that Chris is there and doesn 't push through him and hurt him .
But I think the most interesting thing about Baxter is the user interface .
And so Chris is going to come and grab the other arm now .
And when he grabs an arm , it goes into zero-force gravity-compensated mode and graphics come up on the screen .
You can see some icons on the left of the screen there for what was about its right arm .
He 's going to put something in its hand , he 's going to bring it over here , press a button and let go of that thing in the hand .
And the robot figures out , ah , he must mean I want to put stuff down .
It puts a little icon there .
He comes over here , and he gets the fingers to grasp together , and the robot infers , ah , you want an object for me to pick up .
That puts the green icon there .
He 's going to map out an area of where the robot should pick up the object from .
It just moves it around , and the robot figures out that was an area search .
He didn 't have to select that from a menu .
And now he 's going to go off and train the visual appearance of that object while we continue talking .
So as we continue here , I want to tell you about what this is like in factories .
These robots we 're shipping every day .
They go to factories around the country .
This is Mildred .
Mildred 's a factory worker in Connecticut .
She 's worked on the line for over 20 years .
One hour after she saw her first industrial robot , she had programmed it to do some tasks in the factory .
She decided she really liked robots .
And it was doing the simple repetitive tasks that she had had to do beforehand .
Now she 's got the robot doing it .
When we first went out to talk to people in factories about how we could get robots to interact with them better , one of the questions we asked them was , " Do you want your children to work in a factory ? "
The universal answer was " No , I want a better job than that for my children . "
And as a result of that , Mildred is very typical of today 's factory workers in the U.S.
They 're older , and they 're getting older and older .
There aren 't many young people coming into factory work .
And as their tasks become more onerous on them , we need to give them tools that they can collaborate with , so that they can be part of the solution , so that they can continue to work and we can continue to produce in the U.S.
And so our vision is that Mildred who 's the line worker becomes Mildred the robot trainer .
She lifts her game , like the office workers of the 1980s lifted their game of what they could do .
We 're not giving them tools that they have to go and study for years and years in order to use .
They 're tools that they can just learn how to operate in a few minutes .
There 's two great forces that are both volitional but inevitable .
That 's climate change and demographics .
Demographics is really going to change our world .
This is the percentage of adults who are working age .
And it 's gone down slightly over the last 40 years .
But over the next 40 years , it 's going to change dramatically , even in China .
The percentage of adults who are working age drops dramatically .
And turned up the other way , the people who are retirement age goes up very , very fast , as the baby boomers get to retirement age .
That means there will be more people with fewer social security dollars competing for services .
But more than that , as we get older we get more frail and we can 't do all the tasks we used to do .
If we look at the statistics on the ages of caregivers , before our eyes those caregivers are getting older and older .
That 's happening statistically right now .
And as the number of people who are older , above retirement age and getting older , as they increase , there will be less people to take care of them .
And I think we 're really going to have to have robots to help us .
And I don 't mean robots in terms of companions .
I mean robots doing the things that we normally do for ourselves but get harder as we get older .
Getting the groceries in from the car , up the stairs , into the kitchen .
Or even , as we get very much older , driving our cars to go visit people .
And I think robotics gives people a chance to have dignity as they get older by having control of the robotic solution .
So they don 't have to rely on people that are getting scarcer to help them .
And so I really think that we 're going to be spending more time with robots like Baxter and working with robots like Baxter in our daily lives . And that we will -- Here , Baxter , it 's good .
And that we will all come to rely on robots over the next 40 years as part of our everyday lives .
Thanks very much .
Marco Tempest : A magical tale
Marco Tempest spins a beautiful story of what magic is , how it entertains us and how it highlights our humanity -- all while working extraordinary illusions with his hands and an augmented reality machine .
Marco Tempest : What I 'd like to show you today is something in the way of an experiment .
Today 's its debut .
It 's a demonstration of augmented reality .
And the visuals you 're about to see are not prerecorded .
They are live and reacting to me in real time .
I like to think of it as a kind of technological magic .
So fingers crossed .
And keep your eyes on the big screen .
Augmented reality is the melding of the real world with computer-generated imagery .
It seems the perfect medium to investigate magic and ask , why , in a technological age , we continue to have this magical sense of wonder .
Magic is deception , but it is a deception we enjoy .
To enjoy being deceived , an audience must first suspend its disbelief .
It was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who first suggested this receptive state of mind .
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : I try to convey a semblance of truth in my writing to produce for these shadows of the imagination a willing suspension of disbelief that , for a moment , constitutes poetic faith .
MT : This faith in the fictional is essential for any kind of theatrical experience .
Without it , a script is just words .
Augmented reality is just the latest technology .
And sleight of hand is just an artful demonstration of dexterity .
We are all very good at suspending our disbelief .
We do it every day , while reading novels , watching television or going to the movies .
We willingly enter fictional worlds where we cheer our heroes and cry for friends we never had .
Without this ability there is no magic .
It was Jean Robert-Houdin , France 's greatest illusionist , who first recognized the role of the magician as a storyteller .
He said something that I 've posted on the wall of my studio .
Jean Robert-Houdin : A conjurer is not a juggler .
He is an actor playing the part of a magician .
MT : Which means magic is theater and every trick is a story .
The tricks of magic follow the archetypes of narrative fiction .
There are tales of creation and loss , death and resurrection , and obstacles that must be overcome .
Now many of them are intensely dramatic .
Magicians play with fire and steel , defy the fury of the buzzsaw , dare to catch a bullet or attempt a deadly escape .
But audiences don 't come to see the magician die , they come to see him live .
Because the best stories always have a happy ending .
The tricks of magic have one special element .
They are stories with a twist .
Now Edward de Bono argued that our brains are pattern matching machines .
He said that magicians deliberately exploit the way their audiences think .
Edward de Bono : Stage magic relies almost wholly on the momentum error .
The audience is led to make assumptions or elaborations that are perfectly reasonable , but do not , in fact , match what is being done in front of them .
MT : In that respect , magic tricks are like jokes .
Jokes lead us down a path to an expected destination .
But when the scenario we have imagined suddenly flips into something entirely unexpected , we laugh .
The same thing happens when people watch magic tricks .
The finale defies logic , gives new insight into the problem , and audiences express their amazement with laughter .
It 's fun to be fooled .
One of the key qualities of all stories is that they 're made to be shared .
We feel compelled to tell them .
When I do a trick at a party -- that person will immediately pull their friend over and ask me to do it again .
They want to share the experience .
That makes my job more difficult , because , if I want to surprise them , I need to tell a story that starts the same , but ends differently -- a trick with a twist on a twist .
It keeps me busy .
Now experts believe that stories go beyond our capacity for keeping us entertained .
We think in narrative structures .
We connect events and emotions and instinctively transform them into a sequence that can be easily understood .
It 's a uniquely human achievement .
We all want to share our stories , whether it is the trick we saw at the party , the bad day at the office or the beautiful sunset we saw on vacation .
Today , thanks to technology , we can share those stories as never before , by email , Facebook , blogs , tweets , on TED.com.
The tools of social networking , these are the digital campfires around which the audience gathers to hear our story .
We turn facts into similes and metaphors , and even fantasies .
We polish the rough edges of our lives so that they feel whole .
Our stories make us the people we are and , sometimes , the people we want to be .
They give us our identity and a sense of community .
And if the story is a good one , it might even make us smile .
Thank you .
Thank you .
Chip Kidd : Designing books is no laughing matter . OK , it is .
Chip Kidd doesn 't judge books by their cover , he creates covers that embody the book -- and he does it with a wicked sense of humor . In one of the funniest talks from TED2012 , he shows the art and deep thought of his cover designs . This talk is from The Design Studio session at TED2012 , guest-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell .
Hi .
I did that for two reasons .
First of all , I wanted to give you a good visual first impression .
But the main reason I did it is that that 's what happens to me when I 'm forced to wear a Lady Gaga skanky mic .
I 'm used to a stationary mic .
It 's the sensible shoe of public address .
But you clamp this thing on my head , and something happens .
I just become skanky .
So I 'm sorry about that .
And I 'm already off-message .
Ladies and gentlemen , I have devoted the past 25 years of my life to designing books .
( " Yes , BOOKS . You know , the bound volumes with ink on paper .
You cannot turn them off with a switch .
Tell your kids . " ) It all sort of started as a benign mistake , like penicillin .
What I really wanted was to be a graphic designer at one of the big design firms in New York City .
But upon arrival there , in the fall of 1986 , and doing a lot of interviews , I found that the only thing I was offered was to be Assistant to the Art Director at Alfred A. Knopf , a book publisher .
Now I was stupid , but not so stupid that I turned it down .
I had absolutely no idea what I was about to become part of , and I was incredibly lucky .
Soon , it had occurred to me what my job was .
My job was to ask this question : " What do the stories look like ? "
Because that is what Knopf is .
It is the story factory , one of the very best in the world .
We bring stories to the public .
The stories can be anything , and some of them are actually true .
But they all have one thing in common : They all need to look like something .
They all need a face .
Why ? To give you a first impression of what you are about to get into .
A book designer gives form to content , but also manages a very careful balance between the two .
Now , the first day of my graphic design training at Penn State University , the teacher , Lanny Sommese , came into the room and he drew a picture of an apple on the blackboard , and wrote the word " Apple " underneath , and he said , " OK . Lesson one . Listen up . "
And he covered up the picture and he said , " You either say this , " and then he covered up the word , " or you show this .
But you don 't do this . "
Because this is treating your audience like a moron .
And they deserve better .
And lo and behold , soon enough , I was able to put this theory to the test on two books that I was working on for Knopf .
The first was Katharine Hepburn 's memoirs , and the second was a biography of Marlene Dietrich .
Now the Hepburn book was written in a very conversational style , it was like she was sitting across a table telling it all to you .
The Dietrich book was an observation by her daughter ; it was a biography .
So the Hepburn story is words and the Dietrich story is pictures , and so we did this .
So there you are .
Pure content and pure form , side by side .
No fighting , ladies .
Now , what is the story here ?
Someone is re-engineering dinosaurs by extracting their DNA from prehistoric amber .
Genius !
Now , luckily for me , I live and work in New York City , where there are plenty of dinosaurs .
So , I went to the Museum of Natural History , and I checked out the bones , and I went to the gift shop , and I bought a book .
And I was particularly taken with this page of the book , and more specifically the lower right-hand corner .
Now I took this diagram , and I put it in a Photostat machine , and I took a piece of tracing paper , and I taped it over the Photostat with a piece of Scotch tape -- stop me if I 'm going too fast -- -- and then I took a Rapidograph pen -- explain it to the youngsters -- and I just started to reconstitute the dinosaur .
I had no idea what I was doing , I had no idea where I was going , but at some point , I stopped -- when to keep going would seem like I was going too far .
And what I ended up with was a graphic representation of us seeing this animal coming into being .
We 're in the middle of the process .
And then I just threw some typography on it .
Very basic stuff , slightly suggestive of public park signage .
Everybody in house loved it , and so off it goes to the author .
And even back then , Michael was on the cutting edge .
That was a relief to see that pour out of the machine .
I miss Michael .
And sure enough , somebody from MCA Universal calls our legal department to see if they can maybe look into buying the rights to the image , just in case they might want to use it .
Well , they used it .
And I was thrilled .
We all know it was an amazing movie , and it was so interesting to see it go out into the culture and become this phenomenon and to see all the different permutations of it .
But not too long ago , I came upon this on the Web .
No , that is not me .
But whoever it is , I can 't help but thinking they woke up one day like , " Oh my God , that wasn 't there last night . Ooooohh !
I was so wasted . "
But if you think about it , from my head to my hands to his leg .
That 's a responsibility .
And it 's a responsibility that I don 't take lightly .
The book designer 's responsibility is threefold : to the reader , to the publisher and , most of all , to the author .
I want you to look at the author 's book and say , " Wow ! I need to read that . "
David Sedaris is one of my favorite writers , and the title essay in this collection is about his trip to a nudist colony .
And the reason he went is because he had a fear of his body image , and he wanted to explore what was underlying that .
For me , it was simply an excuse to design a book that you could literally take the pants off of .
But when you do , you don 't get what you expect .
You get something that goes much deeper than that .
And David especially loved this design because at book signings , which he does a lot of , he could take a magic marker and do this .
Hello !
Augusten Burroughs wrote a memoir called [ " Dry " ] , and it 's about his time in rehab .
In his 20s , he was a hotshot ad executive , and as Mad Men has told us , a raging alcoholic .
He did not think so , however , but his coworkers did an intervention and they said , " You are going to rehab , or you will be fired and you will die . "
Now to me , this was always going to be a typographic solution , what I would call the opposite of Type 101 .
What does that mean ?
Usually on the first day of Introduction to Typography , you get the assignment of , select a word and make it look like what it says it is . So that 's Type 101 , right ?
Very simple stuff .
This is going to be the opposite of that .
I want this book to look like it 's lying to you , desperately and hopelessly , the way an alcoholic would .
The answer was the most low-tech thing you can imagine .
I set up the type , I printed it out on an Epson printer with water-soluble ink , taped it to the wall and threw a bucket of water at it . Presto !
Then when we went to press , the printer put a spot gloss on the ink and it really looked like it was running .
Not long after it came out , Augusten was waylaid in an airport and he was hiding out in the bookstore spying on who was buying his books .
And this woman came up to it , and she squinted , and she took it to the register , and she said to the man behind the counter , " This one 's ruined . "
And the guy behind the counter said , " I know , lady . They all came in that way . "
Now , that 's a good printing job .
A book cover is a distillation .
It is a haiku , if you will , of the story .
This particular story by Osama Tezuka is his epic life of the Buddha , and it 's eight volumes in all . But the best thing is when it 's on your shelf , you get a shelf life of the Buddha , moving from one age to the next .
All of these solutions derive their origins from the text of the book , but once the book designer has read the text , then he has to be an interpreter and a translator .
This story was a real puzzle .
This is what it 's about .
All right , so I got a collection of the paintings together and I looked at them and I deconstructed them and I put them back together .
And so , here 's the design , right ?
And so here 's the front and the spine , and it 's flat .
But the real story starts when you wrap it around a book and put it on the shelf .
Ahh ! We come upon them , the clandestine lovers . Let 's draw them out .
Huhh ! They 've been discovered by the sultan .
He will not be pleased .
Huhh ! And now the sultan is in danger .
And now , we have to open it up to find out what 's going to happen next .
Try experiencing that on a Kindle .
Don 't get me started .
Seriously .
Much is to be gained by eBooks : ease , convenience , portability .
But something is definitely lost : tradition , a sensual experience , the comfort of thingy-ness -- a little bit of humanity .
Do you know what John Updike used to do the first thing when he would get a copy of one of his new books from Alfred A. Knopf ?
He 'd smell it .
Then he 'd run his hand over the rag paper , and the pungent ink and the deckled edges of the pages .
All those years , all those books , he never got tired of it .
Now , I am all for the iPad , but trust me -- smelling it will get you nowhere .
Now the Apple guys are texting , " Develop odor emission plug-in . "
And the last story I 'm going to talk about is quite a story .
A woman named Aomame in 1984 Japan finds herself negotiating down a spiral staircase off an elevated highway . When she gets to the bottom , she can 't help but feel that , all of a sudden , she 's entered a new reality that 's just slightly different from the one that she left , but very similar , but different .
And so , we 're talking about parallel planes of existence , sort of like a book jacket and the book that it covers .
So how do we show this ?
We go back to Hepburn and Dietrich , but now we merge them .
So we 're talking about different planes , different pieces of paper .
So this is on a semi-transparent piece of velum .
It 's one part of the form and content .
When it 's on top of the paper board , which is the opposite , it forms this .
So even if you don 't know anything about this book , you are forced to consider a single person straddling two planes of existence .
And the object itself invited exploration interaction , consideration and touch .
This debuted at number two on the New York Times Best Seller list .
This is unheard of , both for us the publisher , and the author .
We 're talking a 900-page book that is as weird as it is compelling , and featuring a climactic scene in which a horde of tiny people emerge from the mouth of a sleeping girl and cause a German Shepherd to explode .
Not exactly Jackie Collins .
Fourteen weeks on the Best Seller list , eight printings , and still going strong .
So even though we love publishing as an art , we very much know it 's a business too , and that if we do our jobs right and get a little lucky , that great art can be great business .
So that 's my story . To be continued .
What does it look like ?
Yes . It can , it does and it will , but for this book designer , page-turner , dog-eared place-holder , notes in the margins-taker , ink-sniffer , the story looks like this .
Thank you .
Aicha el-Wafi + Phyllis Rodriguez : The mothers who found forgiveness , friendship
Phyllis Rodriguez and Aicha el-Wafi have a powerful friendship born of unthinkable loss . Rodriguez ' son was killed in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11 , 2001 ; el-Wafi 's son Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted of a role in those attacks and is serving a life sentence . In hoping to find peace , these two moms have come to understand and respect one another .
Phyllis Rodriguez : We are here today because of the fact that we have what most people consider an unusual friendship .
And it is .
And yet , it feels natural to us now .
I first learned that my son had been in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11th , 2001 .
We didn 't know if he had perished yet until 36 hours later .
At the time , we knew that it was political .
We were afraid of what our country was going to do in the name of our son -- my husband , Orlando , and I and our family .
And when I saw it -- and yet , through the shock , the terrible shock , and the terrible explosion in our lives , literally , we were not vengeful .
And a couple of weeks later when Zacarias Moussaoui was indicted on six counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism , and the U.S. government called for a death penalty for him , if convicted , my husband and I spoke out in opposition to that , publicly .
Through that and through human rights groups , we were brought together with several other victims ' families .
When I saw Aicha in the media , coming over when her son was indicted , and I thought , " What a brave woman .
Someday I want to meet that woman when I 'm stronger . "
I was still in deep grief ; I knew I didn 't have the strength .
I knew I would find her someday , or we would find each other .
Because , when people heard that my son was a victim , I got immediate sympathy .
But when people learned what her son was accused of , she didn 't get that sympathy .
But her suffering is equal to mine .
So we met in November 2002 , and Aicha will now tell you how that came about .
Aicha el-Wafi : Good afternoon , ladies and gentlemen .
I am the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui .
And I asked the Organization of Human Rights to put me in touch with the parents of the victims .
So they introduced me to five families .
And I saw Phyllis , and I watched her .
She was the only mother in the group .
The others were brothers , sisters .
And I saw in her eyes that she was a mother , just like me .
I suffered a lot as a mother .
I was married when I was 14 .
I lost a child when I was 15 , a second child when I was 16 .
So the story with Zacarias was too much really .
And I still suffer , because my son is like he 's buried alive .
I know she really cried for her son .
But she knows where he is .
My son , I don 't know where he is .
I don 't know if he 's alive . I don 't know if he 's tortured .
I don 't know what happened to him .
So that 's why I decided to tell my story , so that my suffering is something positive for other women .
For all the women , all the mothers that give life , you can give back , you can change .
It 's up to us women , because we are women , because we love our children .
We must be hand-in-hand and do something together .
It 's not against women , it 's for us , for us women , for our children .
I talk against violence , against terrorism .
I go to schools to talk to young , Muslim girls so they don 't accept to be married against their will very young .
So if I can save one of the young girls , and avoid that they get married and suffer as much as I did , well this is something good .
This is why I 'm here in front of you .
PR : I would like to say that I have learned so much from Aicha , starting with that day we had our very first meeting with other family members -- which was a very private meeting with security , because it was November 2002 , and , frankly , we were afraid of the super-patriotism of that time in the country -- those of us family members .
But we were all so nervous .
" Why does she want to meet us ? "
And then she was nervous .
" Why did we want to meet her ? "
What did we want from each other ?
Before we knew each others ' names , or anything , we had embraced and wept .
Then we sat in a circle with support , with help , from people experienced in this kind of reconciliation .
And Aicha started , and she said , " I don 't know if my son is guilty or innocent , but I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened to your families .
I know what it is to suffer , and I feel that if there is a crime , a person should be tried fairly and punished . "
But she reached out to us in that way , and it was , I 'd like to say , it was an ice-breaker .
And what happened then is we all told our stories , and we all connected as human beings .
By the end of the afternoon -- it was about three hours after lunch -- we 'd felt as if we 'd known each other forever .
Now what I learned from her , is a woman , not only who could be so generous under these present circumstances and what it was then , and what was being done to her son , but the life she 's had .
I never had met someone with such a hard life , from such a totally different culture and environment from my own .
And I feel that we have a special connection , which I value very much .
And I think it 's all about being afraid of the other , but making that step and then realizing , " Hey , this wasn 't so hard .
Who else can I meet that I don 't know , or that I 'm so different from ? "
So , Aicha , do you have a couple of words for conclusion ?
Because our time is up .
AW : I wanted to say that we have to try to know other people , the other .
You have to be generous , and your hearts must be generous , your mind must be generous .
You must be tolerant .
You have to fight against violence .
And I hope that someday we 'll all live together in peace and respecting each other .
This is what I wanted to say .

Graham Hill : Why I 'm a weekday vegetarian
We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture , it can be hard to make the change . Graham Hill has a powerful , pragmatic suggestion : Be a weekday veg .
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 .
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 .
Taryn Simon : Photographs of secret sites
Taryn Simon exhibits her startling take on photography -- to reveal worlds and people we would never see otherwise . She shares two projects : one documents otherworldly locations typically kept secret from the public , the other involves haunting portraits of men convicted for crimes they did not commit .
Okay , so 90 percent of my photographic process is , in fact , not photographic .
It involves a campaign of letter writing , research and phone calls to access my subjects , which can range from Hamas leaders in Gaza to a hibernating black bear in its cave in West Virginia .
And oddly , the most notable letter of rejection I ever received came from Walt Disney World , a seemingly innocuous site .
And it read -- I 'm just going to read a key sentence : " Especially during these violent times , I personally believe that the magical spell cast upon guests who visit our theme parks is particularly important to protect and helps to provide them with an important fantasy they can escape to . "
Photography threatens fantasy .
They didn 't want to let my camera in because it confronts constructed realities , myths and beliefs , and provides what appears to be evidence of a truth .
But there are multiple truths attached to every image , depending on the creator 's intention , the viewer and the context in which it is presented .
Over a five year period following September 11th , when the American media and government were seeking hidden and unknown sites beyond its borders , most notably weapons of mass destruction , I chose to look inward at that which was integral to America 's foundation , mythology and daily functioning .
I wanted to confront the boundaries of the citizen , self-imposed and real , and confront the divide between privileged and public access to knowledge .
It was a critical moment in American history and global history where one felt they didn 't have access to accurate information .
And I wanted to see the center with my own eyes , but what I came away with is a photograph .
And it 's just another place from which to observe , and the understanding that there are no absolute , all-knowing insiders .
And the outsider can never really reach the core .
I 'm going to run through some of the photographs in this series .
It 's titled , " An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar , " and it 's comprised of nearly 70 images .
In this context I 'll just show you a few .
This is a nuclear waste storage and encapsulation facility at Hanford site in Washington State , where there are over 1,900 stainless steel capsules containing nuclear waste submerged in water .
A human standing in front of an unprotected capsule would die instantly .
And I found one section amongst all of these that actually resembled the outline of the United States of America , which you can see here .
And a big part of the work that is sort of absent in this context is text .
So I create these two poles .
Every image is accompanied with a very detailed factual text .
And what I 'm most interested in is the invisible space between a text and its accompanying image , and how the image is transformed by the text and the text by the image .
So , at best , the image is meant to float away into abstraction and multiple truths and fantasy .
And then the text functions as this cruel anchor that kind of nails it to the ground .
But in this context I 'm just going to read an abridged version of those texts .
This is a cryopreservation unit , and it holds the bodies of the wife and mother of cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger , who hoped to be awoken one day to extended life in good health , with advancements in science and technology , all for the cost of 35 thousand dollars , for forever .
This is a 21-year-old Palestinian woman undergoing hymenoplasty .
Hymenoplasty is a surgical procedure which restores the virginal state , allowing her to adhere to certain cultural expectations regarding virginity and marriage .
So it essentially reconstructs a ruptured hymen , allowing her to bleed upon having sexual intercourse , to simulate the loss of virginity .
This is a jury simulation deliberation room , and you can see beyond that two-way mirror jury advisers standing in a room behind the mirror .
And they observe deliberations after mock trial proceedings so that they can better advise their clients how to adjust their trial strategy to have the outcome that they 're hoping for .
This process costs 60,000 dollars .
This is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection room , a contraband room , at John F. Kennedy International Airport .
On that table you can see 48 hours ' worth of seized goods from passengers entering in to the United States .
There is a pig 's head and African cane rats .
And part of my photographic work is I 'm not just documenting what 's there .
I do take certain liberties and intervene .
And in this I really wanted it to resemble an early still-life painting , so I spent some time with the smells and items .
This is the exhibited art on the walls of the CIA in Langley , Virginia , their original headquarters building .
And the CIA has had a long history with both covert and public cultural diplomacy efforts .
And it 's speculated that some of their interest in the arts was designed to counter Soviet communism and promote what it considered to be pro-American thoughts and aesthetics .
And one of the art forms that elicited the interest of the agency , and had thus come under question , is abstract expressionism .
This is the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility , and on a six acre plot there are approximately 75 cadavers at any given time that are being studied by forensic anthropologists and researchers who are interested in monitoring a rate of corpse decomposition .
And in this particular photograph the body of a young boy has been used to reenact a crime scene .
This is the only federally funded site where it is legal to cultivate cannabis for scientific research in the United States .
It 's a research crop marijuana grow room .
And part of the work that I hope for is that there is a sort of disorienting entropy where you can 't find any discernible formula in how these things -- they sort of awkwardly jump from government to science to religion to security -- and you can 't completely understand how information is being distributed .
These are transatlantic submarine communication cables that travel across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean , connecting North America to Europe .
They carry over 60 million simultaneous voice conversations , and in a lot of the government and technology sites there was just this very apparent vulnerability .
This one is almost humorous because it feels like I could just snip all of that conversation in one easy cut .
But stuff did feel like it could have been taken 30 or 40 years ago , like it was locked in the Cold War era and hadn 't necessarily progressed .
This is a Braille edition of Playboy magazine .
And this is ... a division of the Library of Congress produces a free national library service for the blind and visually impaired , and the publications they choose to publish are based on reader popularity .
And Playboy is always in the top few .
But you 'd be surprised , they don 't do the photographs . It 's just the text .
This is an avian quarantine facility where all imported birds coming into America are required to undergo a 30-day quarantine , where they are tested for diseases including Exotic Newcastle Disease and Avian Influenza .
This film shows the testing of a new explosive fill on a warhead .
And the Air Armament Center at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida is responsible for the deployment and testing of all air-delivered weaponry coming from the United States .
And the film was shot on 72 millimeter , government-issue film .
And that red dot is a marking on the government-issue film .
All living white tigers in North America are the result of selective inbreeding -- that would be mother to son , father to daughter , sister to brother -- to allow for the genetic conditions that create a salable white tiger .
Meaning white fur , ice blue eyes , a pink nose .
And the majority of these white tigers are not born in a salable state and are killed at birth .
It 's a very violent process that is little known .
And the white tiger is obviously celebrated in several forms of entertainment .
Kenny was born . He actually made it to adulthood .
He has since passed away , but was mentally retarded and suffers from severe bone abnormalities .
This , on a lighter note , is at George Lucas ' personal archive .
This is the Death Star .
And it 's shown here in its true orientation .
In the context of " Star Wars : Return of the Jedi , " its mirror image is presented .
They flip the negative .
And you can see the photoetched brass detailing , and the painted acrylic facade .
In the context of the film , this is a deep-space battle station of the Galactic Empire , capable of annihilating planets and civilizations , and in reality it measures about four feet by two feet .
This is at Fort Campbell in Kentucky .
It 's a Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain site .
Essentially they 've simulated a city for urban combat , and this is one of the structures that exists in that city .
It 's called the World Church of God .
It 's supposed to be a generic site of worship .
And after I took this photograph , they constructed a wall around the World Church of God to mimic the set-up of mosques in Afghanistan or Iraq .
And I worked with Mehta Vihar who creates virtual simulations for the army for tactical practice .
And we put that wall around the World Church of God , and also used the characters and vehicles and explosions that are offered in the video games for the army .
And I put them into my photograph .
This is live HIV virus at Harvard Medical School , who is working with the U.S. Government to develop sterilizing immunity .
And Alhurra is a U.S. Government- sponsored Arabic language television network that distributes news and information to over 22 countries in the Arab world .
It runs 24 hours a day , commercial free .
However , it 's illegal to broadcast Alhurra within the United States .
And in 2004 , they developed a channel called Alhurra Iraq , which specifically deals with events occurring in Iraq and is broadcast to Iraq .
Now I 'm going to move on to another project I did .
It 's titled " The Innocents . "
And for the men in these photographs , photography had been used to create a fantasy .
Contradicting its function as evidence of a truth , in these instances it furthered the fabrication of a lie .
I traveled across the United States photographing men and women who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit , violent crimes .
I investigate photography 's ability to blur truth and fiction , and its influence on memory , which can lead to severe , even lethal consequences .
For the men in these photographs , the primary cause of their wrongful conviction was mistaken identification .
A victim or eyewitness identifies a suspected perpetrator through law enforcement 's use of images .
But through exposure to composite sketches , Polaroids , mug shots and line-ups , eyewitness testimony can change .
I 'll give you an example from a case .
A woman was raped and presented with a series of photographs from which to identify her attacker .
She saw some similarities in one of the photographs , but couldn 't quite make a positive identification .
Days later , she is presented with another photo array of all new photographs , except that one photograph that she had some draw to from the earlier array is repeated in the second array .
And a positive identification is made because the photograph replaced the memory , if there ever was an actual memory .
Photography offered the criminal justice system a tool that transformed innocent citizens into criminals , and the criminal justice system failed to recognize the limitations of relying on photographic identifications .
Frederick Daye , who is photographed at his alibi location , where 13 witnesses placed him at the time of the crime .
He was convicted by an all-white jury of rape , kidnapping and vehicle theft .
And he served 10 years of a life sentence .
Now DNA exonerated Frederick and it also implicated another man who was serving time in prison .
But the victim refused to press charges because she claimed that law enforcement had permanently altered her memory through the use of Frederick 's photograph .
Charles Fain was convicted of kidnapping , rape and murder of a young girl walking to school .
He served 18 years of a death sentence .
I photographed him at the scene of the crime at the Snake River in Idaho .
And I photographed all of the wrongfully convicted at sites that came to particular significance in the history of their wrongful conviction .
The scene of arrest , the scene of misidentification , the alibi location .
And here , the scene of the crime , it 's this place to which he 's never been , but changed his life forever .
So photographing there , I was hoping to highlight the tenuous relationship between truth and fiction , in both his life and in photography .
Calvin Washington was convicted of capital murder .
He served 13 years of a life sentence in Waco , Texas .
Larry Mayes , I photographed at the scene of arrest , where he hid between two mattresses in Gary , Indiana , in this very room to hide from the police .
He ended up serving 18 and a half years of an 80 year sentence for rape and robbery .
The victim failed to identify Larry in two live lineups and then made a positive identification , days later , from a photo array .
Larry Youngblood served eight years of a 10 and half year sentence in Arizona for the abduction and repeated sodomizing of a 10 year old boy at a carnival .
He is photographed at his alibi location .
Ron Williamson . Ron was convicted of the rape and murder of a barmaid at a club , and served 11 years of a death sentence .
I photographed Ron at a baseball field because he had been drafted to the Oakland A 's to play professional baseball just before his conviction .
And the state 's key witness in Ron 's case was , in the end , the actual perpetrator .
Ronald Jones served eight years of a death sentence for rape and murder of a 28-year-old woman .
I photographed him at the scene of arrest in Chicago .
William Gregory was convicted of rape and burglary .
He served seven years of a 70 year sentence in Kentucky .
Timothy Durham , who I photographed at his alibi location where 11 witnesses placed him at the time of the crime , was convicted of 3.5 years of a 3220 year sentence , for several charges of rape and robbery .
He had been misidentified by an 11-year-old victim .
Troy Webb is photographed here at the scene of the crime in Virginia .
He was convicted of rape , kidnapping and robbery , and served seven years of a 47 year sentence .
Troy 's picture was in a photo array that the victim tentatively had some draw toward , but said he looked too old .
The police went and found a photograph of Troy Webb from four years earlier , which they entered into a photo array days later , and he was positively identified .
Now I 'm going to leave you with a self portrait .
And it reiterates that distortion is a constant , and our eyes are easily deceived .
That 's it . Thank you .
Ed Boyden : A light switch for neurons
Ed Boyden shows how , by inserting genes for light-sensitive proteins into brain cells , he can selectively activate or de-activate specific neurons with fiber-optic implants . With this unprecedented level of control , he 's managed to cure mice of analogs of PTSD and certain forms of blindness . On the horizon : neural prosthetics . Session host Juan Enriquez leads a brief post-talk Q & amp ; A.
Think about your day for a second .
You woke up , felt fresh air on your face as you walked out the door , encountered new colleagues and had great discussions , and felt in awe when you found something new .
But I bet there 's something you didn 't think about today -- something so close to home that you probably don 't think about it very often at all .
And that 's that all the sensations , feelings , decisions and actions are mediated by the computer in your head called the brain .
Now the brain may not look like much from the outside -- a couple pounds of pinkish-gray flesh , amorphous -- but the last hundred years of neuroscience have allowed us to zoom in on the brain , and to see the intricacy of what lies within .
And they 've told us that this brain is an incredibly complicated circuit made out of hundreds of billions of cells called neurons .
Now unlike a human-designed computer , where there 's a fairly small number of different parts -- we know how they work , because we humans designed them -- the brain is made out of thousands of different kinds of cells , maybe tens of thousands .
They come in different shapes ; they 're made out of different molecules .
And they project and connect to different brain regions , and they also change different ways in different disease states .
Let 's make it concrete .
There 's a class of cells , a fairly small cell , an inhibitory cell , that quiets its neighbors .
It 's one of the cells that seems to be atrophied in disorders like schizophrenia .
It 's called the basket cell .
And this cell is one of the thousands of kinds of cell that we are learning about .
New ones are being discovered everyday .
As just a second example : these pyramidal cells , large cells , they can span a significant fraction of the brain .
They 're excitatory .
And these are some of the cells that might be overactive in disorders such as epilepsy .
Every one of these cells is an incredible electrical device .
They receive input from thousands of upstream partners and compute their own electrical outputs , which then , if they pass a certain threshold , will go to thousands of downstream partners .
And this process , which takes just a millisecond or so , happens thousands of times a minute in every one of your 100 billion cells , as long as you live and think and feel .
So how are we going to figure out what this circuit does ?
Ideally , we could go through the circuit and turn these different kinds of cell on and off and see whether we could figure out which ones contribute to certain functions and which ones go wrong in certain pathologies .
If we could activate cells , we could see what powers they can unleash , what they can initiate and sustain .
If we could turn them off , then we could try and figure out what they 're necessary for .
And that 's a story I 'm going to tell you about today .
And honestly , where we 've gone through over the last 11 years , through an attempt to find ways of turning circuits and cells and parts and pathways of the brain on and off , both to understand the science and also to confront some of the issues that face us all as humans .
Now before I tell you about the technology , the bad news is that a significant fraction of us in this room , if we live long enough , will encounter , perhaps , a brain disorder .
Already , a billion people have had some kind of brain disorder that incapacitates them , and the numbers don 't do it justice though .
These disorders -- schizophrenia , Alzheimer 's , depression , addiction -- they not only steal our time to live , they change who we are .
They take our identity and change our emotions and change who we are as people .
Now in the 20th century , there was some hope that was generated through the development of pharmaceuticals for treating brain disorders , and while many drugs have been developed that can alleviate symptoms of brain disorders , practically none of them can be considered to be cured .
And part of that 's because we 're bathing the brain in the chemical .
This elaborate circuit made out of thousands of different kinds of cell is being bathed in a substance .
That 's also why , perhaps , most of the drugs , and not all , on the market can present some kind of serious side effect too .
Now some people have gotten some solace from electrical stimulators that are implanted in the brain .
And for Parkinson 's disease , Cochlear implants , these have indeed been able to bring some kind of remedy to people with certain kinds of disorder .
But electricity also will go in all directions -- the path of least resistance , which is where that phrase , in part , comes from .
And it also will affect normal circuits as well as the abnormal ones that you want to fix .
So again , we 're sent back to the idea of ultra-precise control .
Could we dial-in information precisely where we want it to go ?
So when I started in neuroscience 11 years ago , I had trained as an electrical engineer and a physicist , and the first thing I thought about was , if these neurons are electrical devices , all we need to do is to find some way of driving those electrical changes at a distance .
If we could turn on the electricity in one cell , but not its neighbors , that would give us the tool we need to activate and shut down these different cells , figure out what they do and how they contribute to the networks in which they 're embedded .
And also it would allow us to have the ultra-precise control we need in order to fix the circuit computations that have gone awry .
Now how are we going to do that ?
Well there are many molecules that exist in nature , which are able to convert light into electricity .
You can think of them as little proteins that are like solar cells .
If we can install these molecules in neurons somehow , then these neurons would become electrically drivable with light .
And their neighbors , which don 't have the molecule , would not .
There 's one other magic trick you need to make this all happen , and that 's the ability to get light into the brain .
And to do that -- the brain doesn 't feel pain -- you can put -- taking advantage of all the effort that 's gone into the Internet and communications and so on -- optical fibers connected to lasers that you can use to activate , in animal models for example , in pre-clinical studies , these neurons and to see what they do .
So how do we do this ?
Around 2004 , in collaboration with Gerhard Nagel and Karl Deisseroth , this vision came to fruition .
There 's a certain alga that swims in the wild , and it needs to navigate towards light in order to photosynthesize optimally .
And it senses light with a little eye-spot , which works not unlike how our eye works .
In its membrane , or its boundary , it contains little proteins that indeed can convert light into electricity .
So these molecules are called channelrhodopsins .
And each of these proteins acts just like that solar cell that I told you about .
When blue light hits it , it opens up a little hole and allows charged particles to enter the eye-spot , and that allows this eye-spot to have an electrical signal just like a solar cell charging up a battery .
So what we need to do is to take these molecules and somehow install them in neurons .
And because it 's a protein , it 's encoded for in the DNA of this organism .
So all we 've got to do is take that DNA , put it into a gene therapy vector , like a virus , and put it into neurons .
So it turned out that this was a very productive time in gene therapy , and lots of viruses were coming along .
So this turned out to be very simple to do .
And early in the morning one day in the summer of 2004 , we gave it a try , and it worked on the first try .
You take this DNA and you put it into a neuron .
The neuron uses its natural protein-making machinery to fabricate these little light-sensitive proteins and install them all over the cell , like putting solar panels on a roof , and the next thing you know , you have a neuron which can be activated with light .
So this is very powerful .
One of the tricks you have to do is to figure out how to deliver these genes to the cells that you want and not all the other neighbors .
And you can do that ; you can tweak the viruses so they hit just some cells and not others .
And there 's other genetic tricks you can play in order to get light-activated cells .
This field has now come to be known as optogenetics .
And just as one example of the kind of thing you can do , you can take a complex network , use one of these viruses to deliver the gene just to one kind of cell in this dense network .
And then when you shine light on the entire network , just that cell type will be activated .
So for example , lets sort of consider that basket cell I told you about earlier -- the one that 's atrophied in schizophrenia and the one that is inhibitory .
If we can deliver that gene to these cells -- and they 're not going to be altered by the expression of the gene , of course -- and then flash blue light over the entire brain network , just these cells are going to be driven .
And when the light turns off , these cells go back to normal , so they don 't seem to be averse against that .
Not only can you use this to study what these cells do , what their power is in computing in the brain , but you can also use this to try to figure out -- well maybe we could jazz up the activity of these cells , if indeed they 're atrophied .
Now I want to tell you a couple of short stories about how we 're using this , both at the scientific , clinical and pre-clinical levels .
One of the questions we 've confronted is , what are the signals in the brain that mediate the sensation of reward ?
Because if you could find those , those would be some of the signals that could drive learning .
The brain will do more of whatever got that reward .
And also these are signals that go awry in disorders such as addiction .
So if we could figure out what cells they are , we could maybe find new targets for which drugs could be designed or screened against , or maybe places where electrodes could be put in for people who have very severe disability .
So to do that , we came up with a very simple paradigm in collaboration with the Fiorella group , where one side of this little box , if the animal goes there , the animal gets a pulse of light in order to make different cells in the brain sensitive to light .
So if these cells can mediate reward , the animal should go there more and more .
And so that 's what happens .
This animal 's going to go to the right-hand side and poke his nose there , and he gets a flash of blue light every time he does that .
And he 'll do that hundreds and hundreds of times .
These are the dopamine neurons , which some of you may have heard about , in some of the pleasure centers in the brain .
Now we 've shown that a brief activation of these is enough , indeed , to drive learning .
Now we can generalize the idea .
Instead of one point in the brain , we can devise devices that span the brain , that can deliver light into three-dimensional patterns -- arrays of optical fibers , each coupled to its own independent miniature light source .
And then we can try to do things in vivo that have only been done to-date in a dish -- like high-throughput screening throughout the entire brain for the signals that can cause certain things to happen .
Or that could be good clinical targets for treating brain disorders .
And one story I want to tell you about is how can we find targets for treating post-traumatic stress disorder -- a form of uncontrolled anxiety and fear .
And one of the things that we did was to adopt a very classical model of fear .
This goes back to the Pavlovian days .
It 's called Pavlovian fear conditioning -- where a tone ends with a brief shock .
The shock isn 't painful , but it 's a little annoying .
And over time -- in this case , a mouse , which is a good animal model , commonly used in such experiments -- the animal learns to fear the tone .
The animal will react by freezing , sort of like a deer in the headlights .
Now the question is , what targets in the brain can we find that allow us to overcome this fear ?
So what we do is we play that tone again after it 's been associated with fear .
But we activate targets in the brain , different ones , using that optical fiber array I told you about in the previous slide , in order to try and figure out which targets can cause the brain to overcome that memory of fear .
And so this brief video shows you one of these targets that we 're working on now .
This is an area in the prefrontal cortex , a region where we can use cognition to try to overcome aversive emotional states .
And the animal 's going to hear a tone -- and a flash of light occurred there .
There 's no audio on this , but you can see the animal 's freezing .
This tone used to mean bad news .
And there 's a little clock in the lower left-hand corner , so you can see the animal is about two minutes into this .
And now this next clip is just eight minutes later .
And the same tone is going to play , and the light is going to flash again .
Okay , there it goes . Right now .
And now you can see , just 10 minutes into the experiment , that we 've equipped the brain by photoactivating this area to overcome the expression of this fear memory .
Now over the last couple of years , we 've gone back to the tree of life because we wanted to find ways to turn circuits in the brain off .
If we could do that , this could be extremely powerful .
If you can delete cells just for a few milliseconds or seconds , you can figure out what necessary role they play in the circuits in which they 're embedded .
And we 've now surveyed organisms from all over the tree of life -- every kingdom of life except for animals , we see slightly differently .
And we found all sorts of molecules , they 're called halorhodopsins or archaerhodopsins , that respond to green and yellow light .
And they do the opposite thing of the molecule I told you about before with the blue light activator channelrhodopsin .
Let 's give an example of where we think this is going to go .
Consider , for example , a condition like epilepsy , where the brain is overactive .
Now if drugs fail in epileptic treatment , one of the strategies is to remove part of the brain .
But that 's obviously irreversible , and there could be side effects .
What if we could just turn off that brain for a brief amount of time , until the seizure dies away , and cause the brain to be restored to its initial state -- sort of like a dynamical system that 's being coaxed down into a stable state .
So this animation just tries to explain this concept where we made these cells sensitive to being turned off with light , and we beam light in , and just for the time it takes to shut down a seizure , we 're hoping to be able to turn it off .
And so we don 't have data to show you on this front , but we 're very excited about this .
Now I want to close on one story , which we think is another possibility -- which is that maybe these molecules , if you can do ultra-precise control , can be used in the brain itself to make a new kind of prosthetic , an optical prosthetic .
I already told you that electrical stimulators are not uncommon .
Seventy-five thousand people have Parkinson 's deep-brain stimulators implanted .
Maybe 100,000 people have Cochlear implants , which allow them to hear .
There 's another thing , which is you 've got to get these genes into cells .
And new hope in gene therapy has been developed because viruses like the adeno-associated virus , which probably most of us around this room have , and it doesn 't have any symptoms , which have been used in hundreds of patients to deliver genes into the brain or the body .
And so far , there have not been serious adverse events associated with the virus .
There 's one last elephant in the room , the proteins themselves , which come from algae and bacteria and fungi , and all over the tree of life .
Most of us don 't have fungi or algae in our brains , so what is our brain going to do if we put that in ?
Are the cells going to tolerate it ? Will the immune system react ?
In its early days -- these have not been done on humans yet -- but we 're working on a variety of studies to try and examine this , and so far we haven 't seen overt reactions of any severity to these molecules or to the illumination of the brain with light .
So it 's early days , to be upfront , but we 're excited about it .
I wanted to close with one story , which we think could potentially be a clinical application .
Now there are many forms of blindness where the photoreceptors , our light sensors that are in the back of our eye , are gone .
And the retina , of course , is a complex structure .
Now let 's zoom in on it here , so we can see it in more detail .
The photoreceptor cells are shown here at the top , and then the signals that are detected by the photoreceptors are transformed by various computations until finally that layer of cells at the bottom , the ganglion cells , relay the information to the brain , where we see that as perception .
In many forms of blindness , like retinitis pigmentosa , or macular degeneration , the photoreceptor cells have atrophied or been destroyed .
Now how could you repair this ?
It 's not even clear that a drug could cause this to be restored , because there 's nothing for the drug to bind to .
On the other hand , light can still get into the eye .
The eye is still transparent and you can get light in .
So what if we could just take these channelrhodopsins and other molecules and install them on some of these other spare cells and convert them into little cameras .
And because there 's so many of these cells in the eye , potentially , they could be very high-resolution cameras .
So this is some work that we 're doing .
It 's being led by one of our collaborators , Alan Horsager at USC , and being sought to be commercialized by a start-up company Eos Neuroscience , which is funded by the NIH .
And what you see here is a mouse trying to solve a maze .
It 's a six-arm maze . And there 's a bit of water in the maze to motivate the mouse to move , or he 'll just sit there .
And the goal , of course , of this maze is to get out of the water and go to a little platform that 's under the lit top port .
Now mice are smart , so this mouse solves the maze eventually , but he does a brute-force search .
He 's swimming down every avenue until he finally gets to the platform .
So he 's not using vision to do it .
These different mice are different mutations that recapitulate different kinds of blindness that affect humans .
And so we 're being careful in trying to look at these different models so we come up with a generalized approach .
So how are we going to solve this ?
We 're going to do exactly what we outlined in the previous slide .
We 're going to take these blue light photosensors and install them on a layer of cells in the middle of the retina in the back of the eye and convert them into a camera -- just like installing solar cells all over those neurons to make them light sensitive .
Light is converted to electricity on them .
So this mouse was blind a couple weeks before this experiment and received one dose of this photosensitive molecule in a virus .
And now you can see , the animal can indeed avoid walls and go to this little platform and make cognitive use of its eyes again .
And to point out the power of this : these animals are able to get to that platform So this pre-clinical study , I think , bodes hope for the kinds of things we 're hoping to do in the future .
To close , I want to point out that we 're also exploring new business models for this new field of neurotechnology .
We 're developing these tools , but we share them freely with hundreds of groups all over the world , so people can study and try to treat different disorders .
And our hope is that , by figuring out brain circuits at a level of abstraction that lets us repair them and engineer them , we can take some of these intractable disorders that I told you about earlier , practically none of which are cured , and in the 21st century make them history .
Thank you .
Juan Enriquez : So some of the stuff is a little dense .
But the implications of being able to control seizures or epilepsy with light instead of drugs , and being able to target those specifically is a first step .
The second thing that I think I heard you say is you can now control the brain in two colors , like an on / off switch .
Ed Boyden : That 's right .
JE : Which makes every impulse going through the brain a binary code .
Right , yeah .
So with blue light , we can drive information , and it 's in the form of a one .
And by turning things off , it 's more or less a zero .
So our hope is to eventually build brain coprocessors that work with the brain so we can augment functions in people with disabilities .
JE : And in theory , that means that , as a mouse feels , smells , hears , touches , you can model it out as a string of ones and zeros .
Sure , yeah . We 're hoping to use this as a way of testing what neural codes can drive certain behaviors and certain thoughts and certain feelings , and use that to understand more about the brain .
JE : Does that mean that some day you could download memories and maybe upload them ?
Well that 's something we 're starting to work on very hard .
We 're now working on some work where we 're trying to tile the brain with recording elements too .
So we can record information and then drive information back in -- sort of computing what the brain needs in order to augment its information processing .
JE : Well , that might change a couple things . Thank you .
Ueli Gegenschatz : Extreme wingsuit flying
Wingsuit jumping is the leading edge of extreme sports -- an exhilarating feat of almost unbelievable daring , where skydivers soar through canyons at over 100MPH . Ueli Gegenschatz talks about how he does it , and shows jawdropping film .
I started with paragliding .
Paragliding is taking off from mountains with a paraglider , with the possibility to fly cross-country , distance , just with the use of thermals to soar .
Also different aerobatic maneuvers are possible with a paraglider .
From there I started with skydiving .
In this picture you can see there is a four-way skydive , four people flying together , and on the left hand side it 's the camera flier with the camera mounted to his helmet so he can film the whole jump , for the film itself and also for the judging .
From regular , relative skydiving I went on to freeflying .
Freeflying is more the three-dimensional skydiving .
You can see the skydiver with the red suit , he 's in a stand-up position .
The one with the yellow-green suit , he 's flying head-down .
And that 's me in the background , carving around the whole formation in freefall also , with the helmet cam to film this jump .
From freeflying I went on to skysurfing .
Skysurfing is skydiving with a board on the feet .
You can imagine with this big surface of a skysurfing board , there is a lot of force , a lot of power .
Of course I can use this power for example for nice spinning -- we call it " helicopter moves . "
From there I went on to wingsuit flying .
Wingsuit flying is a suit , that I can make fly , just only with my body .
If I put some tension on my body , tension on my suit , I can make it fly . And as you see the fall rate is much much slower because of the bigger surface .
With a proper body position I 'm able to really move forward to gain quite some distance .
This is a jump I did in Rio de Janeiro .
You can see the Copacabana on the left-hand side .
From there with all the skills and knowledge from paragliding and all the different disciplines in skydiving , I went on to BASE jumping .
BASE jumping is skydiving from fixed objects , like buildings , antennae , bridges and earth -- meaning mountains , cliffs .
of being in free fall , with all the visual references .
So my goal soon was to discover new places that nobody had jumped before .
So in summer 2000 I was the first to BASE jump the Eiger North Face in Switzerland .
Two years after this , I was the first to BASE jump from Matterhorn , a very famous mountain that probably everybody knows in here .
2005 I did a BASE jump from the Eiger , from the Monk and from the Jungfrau , three very famous mountains in Switzerland .
The special thing on these three jumps were , I hiked them all and climbed them all in only one day .
In 2008 I jumped the Eiffel Tower in Paris .
So with all this knowledge , I also wanted to get into stunts .
So with some friends we started to do different tricks , like for example this jump here , I jumped from a paraglider .
Or here -- everybody was freezing , pretty much , except me , because it was very cold in Austria where we did this filming .
Everybody sitting in a basket , and I was on top of the balloon , ready to slide down with my skysurf board .
Or this jump , from a moving truck on the highway .
Extreme sports on top level like this is only possible if you practice step by step , if you really work hard on your skills and on your knowledge .
Of course you need to be in physical , very good , condition , so I 'm training a lot .
You need to have the best possible equipment .
And probably the most important is you have to work on your mental skills , mental preparation .
And all this to come as close as possible to the human dream of being able to fly .
So for 2009 , I 'm training hard for my two new projects .
The first one , I want to set a world record in flying from a cliff with my wingsuit .
And I want to set a new record , with the longest distance ever flown .
For my second project , I have a sensational idea of a jump that never has been done before .
So now , on the following movie you will see that I 'm much better in flying a wingsuit than speaking in English .
Enjoy , and thank you very much .
I have some questions .
I think we all might have some questions .
Question one : so does that actually feel the way the flying dream does ?
Because it looks like it might .
Ueli Gegenschatz : Pretty much . I believe this is probably the closest possibility to come to the dream of being able to fly .
I know the answer to this , but how do you land ?
UE : Parachute . We have to open a parachute just seconds before , I would say , impact .
It 's not possible to land a wingsuit yet .
Yet . But people are trying . Are you among those -- you 're not going to commit -- are you among those trying to do it ?
UE : It 's a dream . It 's a dream . Yeah .
We 're still working on it and we 're developing the wingsuits to get better performance , to get more knowledge .
And I believe soon .
All right . Well we will watch this space . But I have two more questions .
What is the -- there was exhaust coming out of the back of the wingsuit . Was that a propelled wingsuit that you were wearing ?
UE : Nope . It 's just smoke .
Coming off of you ?
UE : Hopefully not .
That seems dangerous .
UE : No , smoke is for two reasons , you can see the speed , you can see the way where I was flying .
That 's reason number one . And reason number two : it 's much easier for the camera guy to film If I 'm using smoke .
Ah , I see . So the wingsuit is set up to deliberately release smoke so that you can be tracked . One more question .
What do you do to to cover your face ?
Because I just keep thinking of going that fast and having your whole face smushed backwards .
Are you in a helmet ? Are you in goggles ?
UE : The purest and the best feeling would be with only goggles .
And is that how you usually fly ?
UE : Usually I 'm wearing a helmet . In the mountains I 'm always wearing a helmet because of landings -- usually it 's difficult -- it 's not like regular skydiving where you have like the big landings .
So you have to be prepared .
Right . Now is there anything you don 't do ?
Do people come to you with projects and say , " We want you to do this ! "
and do you ever say , " No , no I 'm not going to . "
UE : Oh of course , of course . Some people have crazy ideas and -- ... a round of applause ...
UE : Thank you very much .
Amanda Palmer : The art of asking
Don 't make people pay for music , says Amanda Palmer : Let them . In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer , she examines the new relationship between artist and fan .
So I didn 't always make my living from music .
For about the five years after graduating from an upstanding liberal arts university , this was my day job .
I was a self-employed living statue called the 8-Foot Bride , and I love telling people l did this for a job , because everybody always wants to know , who are these freaks in real life ?
Hello .
I painted myself white one day , stood on a box , put a hat or a can at my feet , and when someone came by and dropped in money , I handed them a flower and some intense eye contact .
And if they didn 't take the flower , I threw in a gesture of sadness and longing as they walked away .
So I had the most profound encounters with people , especially lonely people who looked like they hadn 't talked to anyone in weeks , and we would get this beautiful moment of prolonged eye contact being allowed in a city street , and we would sort of fall in love a little bit .
And my eyes would say , " Thank you . I see you . "
And their eyes would say , " Nobody ever sees me . Thank you . "
And I would get harassed sometimes .
People would yell at me from their passing cars .
" Get a job ! "
And I 'd be , like , " This is my job . "
But it hurt , because it made me fear that I was somehow doing something un-joblike and unfair , shameful .
I had no idea how perfect a real education I was getting for the music business on this box .
And for the economists out there , you may be interested to know I actually made a pretty predictable income , which was shocking to me given I had no regular customers , but pretty much 60 bucks on a Tuesday , 90 bucks on a Friday .
It was consistent .
And meanwhile , I was touring locally and playing in nightclubs with my band , the Dresden Dolls .
This was me on piano , a genius drummer .
I wrote the songs , and eventually we started making enough money that I could quit being a statue , and as we started touring , I really didn 't want to lose this sense of direct connection with people , because I loved it .
So after all of our shows , we would sign autographs and hug fans and hang out and talk to people , and we made an art out of asking people to help us and join us , and I would track down local musicians and artists and they would set up outside of our shows , and they would pass the hat , and then they would come in and join us onstage , so we had this rotating smorgasbord of weird , random circus guests .
And then Twitter came along , and made things even more magic , because I could ask instantly for anything anywhere .
So I would need a piano to practice on , and an hour later I would be at a fan 's house . This is in London .
People would bring home-cooked food to us all over the world backstage and feed us and eat with us . This is in Seattle .
Fans who worked in museums and stores and any kind of public space would wave their hands if I would decide to do a last-minute , spontaneous , free gig .
This is a library in Auckland .
On Saturday I tweeted for this crate and hat , because I did not want to schlep them from the East Coast , and they showed up care of this dude , Chris from Newport Beach , who says hello .
I once tweeted , where in Melbourne can I buy a neti pot ?
And a nurse from a hospital drove one right at that moment to the cafe I was in , and I bought her a smoothie and we sat there talking about nursing and death .
And I love this kind of random closeness , which is lucky , because I do a lot of couchsurfing .
In mansions where everyone in my crew gets their own room but there 's no wireless , and in punk squats , everyone on the floor in one room with no toilets but with wireless , clearly making it the better option .
My crew once pulled our van up to a really poor Miami neighborhood and we found out that our couchsurfing host for the night was an 18-year-old girl , still living at home , and her family were all undocumented immigrants from Honduras .
And that night , her whole family took the couches and she slept together with her mom so that we could take their beds .
And I lay there thinking , these people have so little .
Is this fair ?
And in the morning , her mom taught us how to try to make tortillas and wanted to give me a Bible , and she took me aside and she said to me in her broken English , " Your music has helped my daughter so much .
Thank you for staying here . We 're all so grateful . "
And I thought , this is fair .
This is this .
A couple months later , I was in Manhattan , and I tweeted for a crash pad , and at midnight , I 'm ringing a doorbell on the Lower East Side , and it occurs to me I 've never actually done this alone .
I 've always been with my band or my crew .
Is this what stupid people do ?
Is this how stupid people die ?
And before I can change my mind , the door busts open .
She 's an artist . He 's a financial blogger for Reuters , and they 're pouring me a glass of red wine and offering me a bath , and I have had thousands of nights like that and like that .
So I couchsurf a lot . I also crowdsurf a lot .
I maintain couchsurfing and crowdsurfing are basically the same thing .
You 're falling into the audience and you 're trusting each other .
I once asked an opening band of mine if they wanted to go out into the crowd and pass the hat to get themselves some extra money , something that I did a lot .
And as usual , the band was psyched , but there was this one guy in the band who told me he just couldn 't bring himself to go out there .
It felt too much like begging to stand there with the hat .
And I recognized his fear of " Is this fair ? " and " Get a job . "
And meanwhile , my band is becoming bigger and bigger .
We signed with a major label .
And our music is a cross between punk and cabaret .
It 's not for everybody .
Well , maybe it 's for you .
We sign , and there 's all this hype leading up to our next record .
And it comes out and it sells about 25,000 copies in the first few weeks , and the label considers this a failure .
And I was like , " 25,000 , isn 't that a lot ? "
They were like , " No , the sales are going down . It 's a failure . "
And they walk off .
Right at this same time , I 'm signing and hugging after a gig , and a guy comes up to me and hands me a $ 10 bill , and he says , " I 'm sorry , I burned your CD from a friend . "
" But I read your blog , I know you hate your label .
I just want you to have this money . "
And this starts happening all the time .
I become the hat after my own gigs , but I have to physically stand there and take the help from people , and unlike the guy in the opening band , I 've actually had a lot of practice standing there .
Thank you .
And this is the moment I decide I 'm just going to give away my music for free online whenever possible , so it 's like Metallica over here , Napster , bad ; Amanda Palmer over here , and I 'm going to encourage torrenting , downloading , sharing , but I 'm going to ask for help , because I saw it work on the street .
So I fought my way off my label and for my next project with my new band , the Grand Theft Orchestra , I turned to crowdfunding , and I fell into those thousands of connections that I 'd made , and I asked my crowd to catch me .
And the goal was 100,000 dollars .
My fans backed me at nearly 1.2 million , which was the biggest music crowdfunding project to date .
And you can see how many people it is .
It 's about 25,000 people .
And the media asked , " Amanda , the music business is tanking and you encourage piracy .
How did you make all these people pay for music ? "
And the real answer is , I didn 't make them . I asked them .
And through the very act of asking people , I 'd connected with them , and when you connect with them , people want to help you .
It 's kind of counterintuitive for a lot of artists .
They don 't want to ask for things .
But it 's not easy . It 's not easy to ask .
And a lot of artists have a problem with this .
Asking makes you vulnerable .
And I got a lot of criticism online after my Kickstarter went big for continuing my crazy crowdsourcing practices , specifically for asking musicians who are fans if they wanted to join us on stage for a few songs in exchange for love and tickets and beer , and this was a doctored image that went up of me on a website .
And this hurt in a really familiar way .
And people saying , " You 're not allowed anymore to ask for that kind of help , " really reminded me of the people in their cars yelling , " Get a job . "
Because they weren 't with us on the sidewalk , and they couldn 't see the exchange that was happening between me and my crowd , an exchange that was very fair to us but alien to them .
So this is slightly not safe for work .
This is my Kickstarter backer party in Berlin .
At the end of the night , I stripped and let everyone draw on me .
Now let me tell you , if you want to experience the visceral feeling of trusting strangers , I recommend this , especially if those strangers are drunk German people .
This was a ninja master-level fan connection , because what I was really saying here was , I trust you this much .
Should I ? Show me .
For most of human history , musicians , artists , they 've been part of the community , connectors and openers , not untouchable stars .
Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance , but the Internet and the content that we 're freely able to share on it are taking us back .
It 's about a few people loving you up close and about those people being enough .
So a lot of people are confused by the idea of no hard sticker price .
They see it as an unpredictable risk , but the things I 've done , the Kickstarter , the street , the doorbell , I don 't see these things as risk .
I see them as trust .
Now , the online tools to make the exchange as easy and as instinctive as the street , they 're getting there .
But the perfect tools aren 't going to help us if we can 't face each other and give and receive fearlessly , but , more important , to ask without shame .
My music career has been spent trying to encounter people on the Internet the way I could on the box , so blogging and tweeting not just about my tour dates and my new video but about our work and our art and our fears and our hangovers , our mistakes , and we see each other .
And I think when we really see each other , we want to help each other .
I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question , which is , " How do we make people pay for music ? "
What if we started asking , " How do we let people pay for music ? "
Thank you .
Mikko Hypponen : How the NSA betrayed the world 's trust -- time to act
Recent events have highlighted , underlined and bolded the fact that the United States is performing blanket surveillance on any foreigner whose data passes through an American entity -- whether they are suspected of wrongdoing or not . This means that , essentially , every international user of the internet is being watched , says Mikko Hypponen . An important rant , wrapped with a plea : to find alternative solutions to using American companies for the world 's information needs .
The two most likely largest inventions of our generation are the Internet and the mobile phone .
They 've changed the world .
However , largely to our surprise , they also turned out to be the perfect tools for the surveillance state .
It turned out that the capability to collect data , information and connections about basically any of us and all of us is exactly what we 've been hearing throughout of the summer through revelations and leaks about Western intelligence agencies , mostly U.S. intelligence agencies , watching over the rest of the world .
We 've heard about these starting with the revelations from June 6 .
Edward Snowden started leaking information , top secret classified information , from the U.S. intelligence agencies , and we started learning about things like PRISM and XKeyscore and others .
And these are examples of the kinds of programs U.S. intelligence agencies are running right now , against the whole rest of the world .
And if you look back about the forecasts on surveillance by George Orwell , well it turns out that George Orwell was an optimist .
We are right now seeing a much larger scale of tracking of individual citizens than he could have ever imagined .
And this here is the infamous NSA data center in Utah .
Due to be opened very soon , it will be both a supercomputing center and a data storage center .
You could basically imagine it has a large hall filled with hard drives storing data they are collecting .
And it 's a pretty big building .
How big ? Well , I can give you the numbers -- 140,000 square meters -- but that doesn 't really tell you very much .
Maybe it 's better to imagine it as a comparison .
You think about the largest IKEA store you 've ever been in .
This is five times larger .
How many hard drives can you fit in an IKEA store ?
Right ? It 's pretty big .
We estimate that just the electricity bill for running this data center is going to be in the tens of millions of dollars a year .
And this kind of wholesale surveillance means that they can collect our data and keep it basically forever , keep it for extended periods of time , keep it for years , keep it for decades .
And this opens up completely new kinds of risks to us all .
And what this is is that it is wholesale blanket surveillance on everyone .
Well , not exactly everyone , because the U.S. intelligence only has a legal right to monitor foreigners .
They can monitor foreigners when foreigners ' data connections end up in the United States or pass through the United States .
And monitoring foreigners doesn 't sound too bad until you realize that I 'm a foreigner and you 're a foreigner .
In fact , 96 percent of the planet are foreigners .
Right ?
So it is wholesale blanket surveillance of all of us , all of us who use telecommunications and the Internet .
But don 't get me wrong : There are actually types of surveillance that are okay .
I love freedom , but even I agree that some surveillance is fine .
If the law enforcement is trying to find a murderer , or they 're trying to catch a drug lord or trying to prevent a school shooting , and they have leads and they have suspects , then it 's perfectly fine for them to tap the suspect 's phone , and to intercept his Internet communications .
I 'm not arguing that at all , but that 's not what programs like PRISM are about .
They are not about doing surveillance on people that they have reason to suspect of some wrongdoings .
They 're about doing surveillance on people they know are innocent .
So the four main arguments supporting surveillance like this , well , the first of all is that whenever you start discussing about these revelations , there will be naysayers trying to minimize the importance of these revelations , saying that we knew all this already , we knew it was happening , there 's nothing new here .
And that 's not true . Don 't let anybody tell you that we knew this already , because we did not know this already .
Our worst fears might have been something like this , but we didn 't know this was happening .
Now we know for a fact it 's happening .
We didn 't know about this . We didn 't know about PRISM .
We didn 't know about XKeyscore . We didn 't know about Cybertrans .
We didn 't know about DoubleArrow .
We did not know about Skywriter -- all these different programs run by U.S. intelligence agencies .
But now we do .
And we did not know that U.S. intelligence agencies go to extremes such as infiltrating standardization bodies to sabotage encryption algorithms on purpose .
And what that means is that you take something which is secure , an encryption algorithm which is so secure that if you use that algorithm to encrypt one file , nobody can decrypt that file .
Even if they take every single computer on the planet just to decrypt that one file , it 's going to take millions of years .
So that 's basically perfectly safe , uncrackable .
You take something which is that good and then you weaken it on purpose , making all of us less secure as an end result .
A real-world equivalent would be that intelligence agencies would force some secret pin code into every single house alarm so they could get into every single house because , you know , bad people might have house alarms , but it will also make all of us less secure as an end result .
Backdooring encryption algorithms just boggles the mind .
But of course , these intelligence agencies are doing their job .
This is what they have been told to do : do signals intelligence , monitor telecommunications , monitor Internet traffic .
That 's what they 're trying to do , and since most , a very big part of the Internet traffic today is encrypted , they 're trying to find ways around the encryption .
One way is to sabotage encryption algorithms , which is a great example about how U.S. intelligence agencies are running loose .
They are completely out of control , and they should be brought back under control .
So what do we actually know about the leaks ?
Everything is based on the files leaked by Mr. Snowden .
The very first PRISM slides from the beginning of June detail a collection program where the data is collected from service providers , and they actually go and name the service providers they have access to .
They even have a specific date on when the collection