Thursday Ted: VIII Creativity, Copyright, and the Law

This week's TED is by Larry Lessig, someone I have been a fan of for about a year now. He is a Stanford professor specializing in the study of copyright, and in a social dialogue that is so often little more than ad hominem attacks and crude generalizations, his is always a voice of reason.



On a personal note, I apologize for the lack of posting. I've been mega-busy with work, and have been at some stage of a cold for 8 weeks running now. Hopefully more posting soon, but no guarantees.

Thursday TED: VII Understanding the Brain

This is a great presentation from renowned neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran, in which he talks about how unusual brain injuries and brain structures can reveal how normal brains work. In particular, he talks about phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear colour or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and family have been replaced with imposters. Great stuff.




I just love how he pronounces his Rs.

Thursday TED: VI Bonobos

Ok, so it's Friday, and I'm a day late. This week's TED is a good one, and a fun one.

It is often said that the chimpanzee is our closest animal relative. This is partly true - the Bonobo chimp is actually much closer to us than the common chimp. This video takes a look at what Bonobos are capable of learning (on their own - not through training). It's pretty impressive stuff, raises some important questions about the source of intelligence, and will make you smile many a time (if you can get over the cheesy narration.)


Here is more info for anyone curious to know more about Bonobo's scientifically fascinating sexual behaviour. For the repressed moralists who commonly say, "Behaviour X is just not natural!" -- I assure you, the Bonobos engage in behaviour X, and they are in fact a natural species. The list of common Bonobo sexual practices is... creative... to say the least. I must admit, this is the first time I've come across the phrase "penis fencing" as common parlance in a scientific sub-discipline.

Thursday TED: V (Theory of Brain and Artificial Intelligence)

This week's TED talk is by Jeff Hawkins, a big mover behind the handheld computing industry, and a neuroscientist to boot. He asks why is it that after studying the brain for so many decades we still don't have a theory of how it really works? Hawkins says the time is ripe for a paradigm shift in understanding the brain, and once that occurs, artificial intelligence will not be much further down the road.

Thursday TED: IV (Education, Intelligence, and Creativity)

The note above has been floating around the Internet for about a year now, and although it is probably a hoax, it is most notable because it is so believable. I've witnessed similar instances in high school many times. I've heard it said there are three types of police officers: those who do it because it pays the bills, those who do it to make the world a better place, and those who like the power a little too much. I believe it is the same with teachers. The embittered teachers are only a symptom though; the sad fact is our education system is very broken.

This week's TED is by Sir Ken Robinson about our education system, in particular as to how we conceive of intelligence and creativity. Let's watch:



Ken is right. Our current system is set up so that the ideal student will be trained to be a mini professor. By luck, I am the kind of person our current education system was designed for (and by), and I have personally benefited greatly from this. It's my opinion that professors are pretty neat-o, but professors are still only parts, and parts are only useful when well-integrated into a greater whole. Our current understanding of intelligence - in terms of how our societal institutions define, measure, and encourage it - is staggering in its limitation and its folly.

For more thoughts on the nature of intelligence, and how it is (ill)defined, this short essay by Isaac Asimov is a good starting place.

On a related note, Joshua has recently blogged about this article in Time, entitled Are We Failing Our Geniuses?, which takes a look at those who are currently considered our most gifted - and how they make up 20% of current high school drop outs. Truly, our public education is a shrine to literate mediocrity.

Update: Joshua has a reply to this post.

Thursday TED: III (Happiness)

This week we'll be taking a look at a presentation by Harvard social Psychologist Dan Gilbert about happiness, specifically something he calls synthetic happiness. I don't know that I would agree with every single one of Gilbert's points, but he does nail many issues squarely on the head: namely, we do a very bad job at knowing what will make us happy. This is, in my opinion, one the more thought-provoking TED presentation... but then, it's probably no surprise that I'm biased towards social psychology.

Thursday TED: II

I have been so impressed with the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) presentations, I've decided to share one of the best ones every week. The premise of TED is that each presentation is by an outstanding individual whose ideas are considered profound enough that they are likely to change how the entire world thinks and behaves. Last week we took a look at the amazing Trendalyzer software by statistician-humanitarian Hans Rosling. Check it out if you missed it - it's powerful stuff.

This week we'll take a look at a new software program called Photosynth. This is not just a killer app, it is a whole new paradigm of how we think of computer graphics. You just have to watch it - trust me, your jaw will drop. I recommend you click the button on the lower right side of the video player to maximize the video.







The best part is that before too long Photosynth will be freely available on the web. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Microsoft may be doing something right for a change.

Free Our Information

The Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference, is quite simply, fantastic. Every year they have a conference where they have talks and presentations about the coolest ideas coming up, all with the potential to alter how we perceive and interact with the rest of the world. Fortunately, they are all available online. I've only seen a few, but so far they have all been mind-blowing.

The presentation below is by Hans Rosling, and it's about statistics. And it's freakin' sweet! Not in a math-nerd way, but in an everyman way. It's 20 minutes long, and worth every minute.





The most important part of the presentation is the last five minutes. We simply must have a new paradigm of knowledge - of perceiving it and disseminating it. Rosling's presentation is one of the best illustrations I have seen of this. Governments and organizations collect massive amounts of data, and then make it inaccessible. I believe the big revolution of this century will be the liberation of data - the democratization of information. This includes statistics, but more importantly science, entertainment, culture - human knowledge in its entirety. Presently, the producers and masters of human knowledge serve as gatekeepers whose primary role is to create systems which limit access to knowledge. You have to pay dearly to buy books or go to a university. Access to an academic journal often costs $20 per article and are written as to be inaccessible to anyone who has not spent years learning unnecessary jargon. This is no way to promote and disseminate knowledge - it merely keeps knowledge within the elite who are already knowledgeable. Largely, this democratization will occur because of the Internet, but it is much larger than that as well. I believe the impact of liberated data will eventually be on the level of the creation of the printing press, or universal suffrage. It will take time (many decades), and there will be no dramatic news coverage, but the weight of the impact on society will be enormous.

You can download the Trendalyzer software used in the presentation for free.