TED Talks

TED 2013 finished recently and they rolled out a new feature on their site where they prominently feature a new talk everyday. Thus far almost every one has been really good.

This is also a great example of how a tiny change to a website / product can make me many times more likely to use it.

These are the best talks I've seen recently:

I Think I Graduated from Architecture School?

I haven't written on here in a long time. I didn't realize it until lately but my thesis project more or less just replaced this blog for the time being.

These are truly gems of TED talks:

Amory Lovins: A 50-year plan for energy



Perspective Is Everything

The Internet is Dead, Long Live the Internet

If you're at all interested in the evolution of internet technology and human computer interaction then you should watch this TED talk. The beauty of this particular talk is that the speaker, Roger McNamee, gives names and assigns trends to a lot of the phenomena that I think a lot of us have felt in our interaction with the web - but haven't, up until now, had a name for.

This Weeks Videos

This Carl Sagan video is a must see. I've blogged about him before as he is easily one of the most insightful humans to have every existed.



An interview with Al Jean, the executive producer of the Simpsons, explains to the NYT the now infamous Banksy opening.



One of the better TED talks I've seen in a while. It's about mycelium - mushrooms.

Architectural TED Talks

Here's an interesting portfolio site that's trying to dematerialize portfolios called first-stop.org. There's some really great graphic work on there too.

I visited this guys firm over the summer in Copenhagen. It was pretty magical. He and some friends kind of founded the firm by accident. Him and some friends entered several design competitions in their "free time" while working at another office. They won all of them and had to basically quit their jobs and hire-up.

On Crowd Accelerated Innovation

Chris Anderson, the guy who founded TED - not the WIRED writer, has an interesting article on what he deems "crowd accelerated innovation." I won't hash out all the details but the basic idea is that people in certain areas (dance and architecture are two I remember) are able to innovate faster vis a vie the internet and specifically videos. The idea came to him when he realized that by publishing TED talks online the quality of future talks was improved. People invited to speak at TED poured over the archive and practiced their speeches and it showed.

This idea appeals to me because one, I have first hand experience with this which I will get into in a moment and two, it dispels the myth of the lone genius which is rarely if ever the case. Einstein had his first wife Mileva who was perhaps smarter than himself, Edison ran innovation like a factory, Kalashnikov (of AK47 fame) was the head of a design team which was played down by the Soviets to trump up the hero card, etc. Tesla may be an exception but come on, it's Tesla. He was barely human.

As usual I digress to a paintball story. Back in the day - that is, roughly the late 90's paintball tournaments were played in the woods. This made for some pretty bad spectating. You could rarely get a good glimpse of what made good teams good. The sport evolved and by the time I started playing national tournaments (NPPL, when there was one league) in roughly 2000 woods fields were a thing of the past. What this allowed more than anything was for amateurs to see how the pros played. It used to be the case that all teams at a tournament would play teams of other classifications - of which there were three - Pro, Amateur A, and Amateur B. In 80-90% of the match-ups the team in the higher division would win handily. But as time progressed and classifications went from 3 divisions to 4 (Pro, D1, D2, D3) and 5 (+semi pro) this wasn't the case at all. The gap in skill decreased. Of course some of this could be attributed to various factors - lower cost of paint, widening of classifications, smaller teams (from 10 man to 7) which means more chance, but by far and away I believe it was because everyone could see what the pros were doing. You could literally stand next to the net at a national tournament without paying admission for the cost of gas to get there. A paintball education became cheap.

You could see where they ran off the break, where they shot, how they shot, how they moved, how they talked, and the young kids started to mimic them. It really cannot be overstated how much it changed paintball. In 2002 if a pro team lost to an amateur team it was the talk of the tournament, but by 2006 it was entirely common for a good amateur team to beat a top ranked pro team - we did it repeatedly.

Just Some Reading

Joshua Prince-Ramus, an architect, gives a talk at TED. He starts by talking about the control that architects have forfeited over the last 50 or so years because they have been unwilling to deal with the liability that goes with being involved in the construction process. To paraphrase his great insight, "where there is liability there is power."



$25 balloon goes 70K feet up. I really like these DIY projects that take cool photos. One of the more interesting ones was that kid and his dad who built radio controlled units that attached to a kite so they could take photos from above.

This is R128, that same home I keep talking about by Werner Sobeck (who teaches at IIT). It seems that if someone builds something which in many ways induces negative externalities on society unwittingly, perhaps it should be required that buildings produce a certain amount of their own energy themselves and can be recycled. It just seems logical that you should be responsible for that which you bring about. I'm aware that legislating such things would be difficult and there would be loop-holes, corruption, and the like and it would also mean that many people could not afford homes. But really, aren't we fooling ourselves when we build these little shanties with poor insulation, ventilation, longevity, and light penetration? It's essentially like a credit card; available to anyone, good times now in exchange for a high maintenance rate for its duration, and in the end you are worse off for it.

Interesting Wikipedia entry: Avicenna, kind of like a Persian version of Da Vinci.

GOOD's Slow Issue

GOOD Magazine - The Slow Issue

Q&A with Aubrey de Grey.

GOOD discusses building things that last with Saul Griffith. He's spoken at TED a few times; short and long.

Architecture that forces you to be more active. This is something that I think about fairly often. Our society is so ridiculously good at removing all physical activity from our daily lives; we don't have to scrub our clothes, climbing stairs is done by escalators and elevators, our walk or bike to work is easily done by train and car, etcetera. It's so hard to find physical activity that we design special buildings where we go to run in place and lift heavy objects for no real purpose. It's kind of hilarious and sad at the same time.

Interesting take on investing locally from GOOD. They promote investing locally in socially responsible businesses and being involved with local agriculture which according to them generally comes with a steadier 4-5% interest rate. Hm. Study after study has shown locavorism (eating locally) to be worse off for the environment. Not that I'm entirely against it, just that I think people go a bit too far in requiring all their food be sourced locally. The reality is that our food delivery system is just incredibly efficient and the energy involved in transporting food makes up a really small percentage of the total energy needed to create that food. I do support investing in a socially responsible way, but that's a tricky one. It could probably be reasonably argued that the higher interest rate that most people expect (7-9% as opposed to 4-5%) is just a negative externality being shoved off on someone/thing else that you are then capturing. So really isn't the solution to change laws regarding negative externalities? Basically you're getting left in the dust by those that are willing to play the grey area. And of course it's not that simple, but usually doing the right thing pays off. Who gets the benefits is the question and my argument is that it should go to those doing the right thing.

TED Talks and Income Inequality

Note: It's always kind of nice to know that you can change your ideas based on better evidence. The combination of the first TED talk here and the accompanying two articles have altered the way I view perceived value and income inequality.

Ad man Rory Sutherland. Definitely a must see (after all this text).

The point of his that I found most interesting was the idea of perceived value. This is generally something I tend to bemoan the existence of. Perceived value is the idea that a good, say a purse, can be bought for $10 or over $1000 if it has the right label on it. I've written about it before but I'm bad at labeling my posts. Regardless, Mr. Sutherland proposes the rather simple, if not ingenious, idea that we essentially have two choices in this area. We can either have lots of stuff and be rich or have very little and be poor (if nothing is getting produced no one has a job). The alternative is that we can own less but the goods we do own have an element of added perceived value. Think Europe.

The really interesting part is that this has already been noted by economists. We all know that income inequality has been growing in the US, but some economists have said it's really just an artifact of the way we measure the data. As Stephen Levitt puts it:

"Their argument could hardly be simpler. How rich you are depends on two things: how much money you have, and how much the stuff you want to buy costs. If your income doubles, but the prices of the things you consume also double, then you are no better off."

The study basically says that being rich got more expensive while being poor got cheaper (Walmart). This fact according to these economists can explain away between two thirds and all of the "growing" income gap. I feel dirty just saying that. Then on the Becker-Posner blog they collectively agree that rising income inequality is good because it means that people are securing more skilled jobs vie se vie rising higher education costs. It's a good read but a bit dry.



Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen makes... creatures.

Science, Religion, and Human Trafficking

All in one semi-easy to read, hastily thrown together, and poorly edited post!

Let me begin as usual by lamenting about my inability to post due to grad school. Although, I finally figured out architects and why I don't fit in at school. Wait for it... people become architects because they like design. They are fascinated with the beauty of things more so than the average person. They become architects because buildings are the biggest things you can design. Essentially, they are artists with egos. This is why me and my ideas will never fit in here, but that's fine because:

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If they're original, you'll have to ram it down their throats." - Howard Aiken (he built one of IBM's first computers)

Bare with me here for a moment:

Recently there's been a mostly academic battle over global warming vis a vie some of my favorite economists and bloggers. Notably the authors of Freakonomics Levitt and Dubner and another favorite blogger, Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman.

It starts with this flame piece by Joe Romm, a respected environmental blogger, about the new book Superfreakonomics which prompts Paul Krugman to weigh in. Levitt and Dubner (authors of the book) realize what's going on and then reply which then sets off another two posts (1,2) by Krugman and the grand finale (great read) by Nathan Myhrvold; a man of which Bill Gates said “I don’t know anyone I would say is smarter than Nathan."

How do we understand such smart people essentially flinging poo at one another from their ivory towers?

I first saw Johnathan Haidt in a TED talk a few months ago. It was one of the best talks I've ever seen. Well now he's back with a Q&A on health care as it relates to his previous talk. Those are both must see/reads. Here he gets at what I want to talk about:

"I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement. Rather, my message to secular liberals is, Don't dismiss these entirely. Be wary of them, sure; they can motivate violations of civil liberties and human rights. But we need them at times, and to a limited degree. Above all recognize that matters related to ingroup (such as immigration, or the flag), authority (such as crime and punishment), and purity (such as sexuality) are the ones that take on a kind of religious importance for most Americans, because they are about binding groups together around sacred values. Liberals often trigger outrage by ignoring these concerns in their pursuit of social justice, or of efficient policy."

In his TED talk one of the issues that Haidt speaks about is how liberal people will often view certain aspects of eating and exercise as an act of "purity." Think, Wholefoods, organic, spin class, yoga, and other stuff that's kind of nice minus the piles of bullshit you have to walk through to get to their real substance. Whereas more traditional people generally associate purity with sexuality, morals, etc. That is, to liberals (read: most college professors) certain issues generally outside of morality take on a moral meaning. Things like what you eat and global warming are increasingly no longer scientific discussions (although who really talks like that anyways). So when the authors of one book, who admit that global warming is a problem and are working on a reasonable solution, suggest that perhaps the current path we're taking to fight global warming is unrealistic, people - smart people, lose their damn minds because you've just touched something very dear to their psyche. Essentially, arguments take on a sense of religiousness.

Which brings me to the sex trade. I watched a movie tonight called Lilya 4-Ever (Hat tip: Vija via Todd). It was a good movie although I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It was sad to say the least, but it portrays the sex trade in a manner that is quite believable. In fact, I imagine that's more or less just how it happens.

Here's my issue. This is one of those subjects that elicits what I earlier termed the "PETA version of how a slaughter house operates." Is it true? Sure, sometimes, but how do most of these things really operate? In this case, I think the only people who know are those actually involved... and I'm not convinced that a lot of them are giving in depth accounts of their activities. Talk about lack of incentives on all sides.

My issue is this. I am in favor of legalizing a regulated form of prostitution. Do I know exactly how this will work or what the unintended consequences will be? Nope, my heads in the sky. It's my belief that it'd have a similar effect as would legalizing drugs. Drug dealers go out of business and people get a safer product at market prices. There are, of course, all sorts of downsides. I just think the upsides outweigh them in both of these cases. But if the positions in these newly regulated legalized brothels are filled by what are essentially slaves who are forced to have sex... yea. Not okay at all.

The argument I'm hearing over and over is that more or less anything to do with prostitutes, escorts, and strip clubs involves the sex trade. Most guys have been to a strip club. According to what I'm being told, many of those women are slaves. Really? When I think of human trafficking and the sex trade I think of a shady brothel or escort service run by scary men operating completely outside of any sort of law. Am I completely off base? I'm not saying this stuff doesn't exist. I know it does. My question is, to what extent is this true? I have no idea, but I'm just not convinced that other people know either. And again, if prostitution were legalized and regulated (so that no slaves could be "workers") wouldn't that serve to curb the sex trade?

There's so much to say here, and most of which I know little to nothing about. I just want some reliable data.

Monday Reading

Dave Homcy. Beautiful surf photography.

Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs, at TED explaining how he is often wrong.

Coolest riddle ever? An eccentric owner of an apartment building in Manhattan built clues and riddles into an apartment that is taking its newest owners years to solve.

Google's Android free open-source operating system is beginning to find it's way into a new generation of netbooks.

Band Aid-style calorie tracker. Quite possibly the greatest dieting invention ever or the worst thing to ever happen to anorexics.

(I guess I posted this a few days late.)

Nothing but TED Talks

I love TED talks. For those of you who don't know what TED is (technology, entertainment, and design) it's a gathering of the world's best and brightest each year in California. Speakers give talks on a range of fascinating subjects generally related to making the world a better place. I started watching a bunch of videos today and here are some of my favorites.

Paul Collier on "the bottom billion". 17 min.

Bonnie Bassler on how bacteria communicate and what that means for next generation antibiotics. 18 min.

This isn't a very good video, but the story is crazy. Fast forward to 50 seconds into this talk about an African boy who built a windmill when he was 14. "How did you [learn to build a windmill]?" "I went to library, and I read a book titled Using Energy and I get information about windmill and I try and I made it." - William Kamkwamba, on building a windmill out of trash as a 14 year old in Africa.

Joseph Lekuton tells a Kenyan parable. 5 min.

Johnathan Haidt on the psychology of liberals and conservatives. This is a must view. 19 min.

Aubrey de Grey on why we age and why we can and should live to be 1000. 23 min.

Jill Bolte is a neuroscientist at Harvard who experienced a stroke and lives to tell you about it. She gets a bit trippy but her insights are stunning. Being a scientist she's very left (rational) hemisphere dominate but this portion of her brain is shut down during her stroke. She then for the first time sees the world from here right hemisphere's perspective. 19 min.

If This Were a News Blog...

The first 80% of the show would all be about unemployment, the depression we're denying we're in, and in general what went wrong. If you have any desire to read stuff like that then check out this Q&A with Richard Posner on Freakonomics. It's semi-easy to understand and spot on.

I guess number two on the list would be global warming (which should really be retitled global climate change). Here's a TED talk about cleaning the air with an incredibly easy to implement solution involving house plants.

Then probably a story about hybrid cars even though they aren't very viable. This is from GOOD Magazine and outlines cars and technologies you can actually buy now or in the near future.

And then they'd finish it off with a homicide story even though murder rates have been falling since the dawn of man. This is a TED talk by Steven Pinker.