chesters at TED: day three
Third
full day of massively inspirational and scarily clever people
assaulting our minds with very very interesting shit. Again, far too
much to detail but some stuff does stick out
Started the
day with a massively fascinating deconstruction of the origins of the
character of the Wizard of Oz from Evan Schwartz.
Turns out
that the Wizard was a hybrid of the four corners of the American
character: Greed (Rockefeller), Imagination (Edison), Deception (PT
Barnum) and Potential (Kananda). Truly brilliant. No idea how he
crammed this into three minutes
Then the
author of “Between the Earth and the Sky”, Nalini Nadkarni gave us an
amazing journey through what trees are, what they represent and the
incredible eco-system that is the upper canopy. Lots of supercool
stuff, but Treetop Barbie will be what sticks in my mind! And the
amazing project stuff she and her team are doing – especially Sound
Science & Green Prison Reform Project. More at the International Canopy Network.
Bonnie
Bassler then made my head spin with her incredible work understanding
and analysing what she calls the “harmless beautiful bacterium”. She
and her team have worked out the universal language of bacteria, how
they communicate within their own and outside their own species and
also managed to understand their collective intelligence and behaviour
patterns. Er, wow. And wow. They talk to each other (seriously), they
have their own languages, they understand the me & the we, and they
build communities. Fore more, see here.
Then the
Indiana Jones of Viruses™, Nathan Wolfe managed to make test-tubes
cool. He also introduced us all to a new concept – Surface
Parochialism – the fallacy humans have that they should just look for life on
other planets rather than within other planets! And also why not look
for Alien life within our rocks and within our planet rather than look
for it extra-terrestrial? A scarily clever man
Oh, er, what
else. Evan Willams (CEO of Twitter) came on stage to chat through some
of the cooler parts of where they are going next. And was promptly
deluged by about 3 billion tweets.
“When you give people easier ways to communicate with each other then great things will happen”. Well said Evan.
Then some
pretty fascinating and thought-provoking stuff from the guy who is
trying to get everyone into Vertical Farming – Dickson Despommier.
Worth a look.
David Merrill
from MIT then showed us the coolest, greatest, most impressive, most
sexy and definitely most marketable concept in computing I have seen in
10 years.
The “Siftable” Check. It. Out
This guy was pretty awesome. Scary and mental, but awesome. He jumps off things. A lot.
The truly brilliant Mary Roach took us through the ten things you didn’t know about the orgasm.
Some for me were:
- the dead can have them
- you don’t need genitals to have them
- they can cure hiccups
- you had them in the womb
And everyone
at some point in their lives should get her to narrate you through the
video she has of a Danish farmer sexually stimulating the clitoris of a
pig. I mean it. Who said TED was just about clever people being clever?
You can also get videos of people whacking off pork.
The day ended
with one of the most remarkable human beings I’ve ever seen – Lena
Maria Klingvall A multi-awarded swimmer, international singing star,
calligrapher, aspiring truck driver & painter. All so far so not
very impressive until you find out she was born with no arms, and only
one formed leg. She was amazing. And treated us to some pretty
incredible and inspirational stuff.
She grew up with the following motto:
“Whatever I want to do I can do, whatever I want to be I can be, wherever I want to go I can go”
The day was topped off with a few tracks from Herbie Hancock.
Tired. Emotional. Drained. Inspired. Scared. Hopeful. and that was also off the back of two hours sleep.