Portfolio.com: Spottings

TED Flash: It's a Wrap

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:43:42 GMT

"If I died tomorrow, I would feel fulfilled." That's what one TEDster said to me during the beach barbecue after the close of the conference yesterday afternoon.

It was an especially bittersweet goodbye this year, because longtime attendees were also bidding adieu to their memories of Monterey, which has been hosting the conference since its start in 1984. Next year, TED 2009 will move into bigger facilities down the coast in Long Beach.

For people who haven't been to TED, it must seem odd to imagine that a four-day conference can have such an effect on nearly everyone who attends it. I was a TED virgin (as they are affectionately called) before last week, and now I'm feeling the residual impact.

TED speakers are a diverse bunch--anthropologists, scientists, scholars, comedians, artists, and perhaps one too many physicists for my taste. They each bring to the stage their knowledge of a different corner of our universe. And, hopefully with a bit of humor and without a written script, they illuminate the audience on that small slice of the world in about 18 minutes time.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

I consistently found myself surprised by what piqued my interest most. I'm ready to buy my first classical music CD after the boundlessly energetic Benjamin Zander brought the audience to tears with a Chopin piece before bringing it to its feet while belting out the Ode to Joy. Only at TED will you find Al Gore, Cameron Diaz, and Jeff Bezos singing Beethoven together. And in German, no less! Zander is the longtime conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, and I would argue that the world needs more of him.

I'm ready to follow Paul Collier on his quest to lift the billion people at the bottom of the world's economic ladder out of poverty. The economist and author of the Bottom Billion made one of the most compelling talks in my opinion simply because he offered tangible solutions to the problem at hand.

Collier makes the case that trade policy and democratic elections are not enough to make the difference between success and failure in a struggling nation. The proper checks and balances must be in place. He argues for an international set of standards to help countries harness the revenues from the natural resources they have to offer. In order for a country to help itself, it needs a "critical mass of informed citizens."

Perhaps no one knows this better than former vice president Al Gore. His Inconvenient Truth tour helped him understand that education is only the first step at solving a problem of the magnitude of global warming.

His award winning movie inspired plenty of people to replace their light bulbs, clean the coils behind their refrigerators, and decline the plastic bag at the mini mart. That's admirable, Gore now says, but it's not enough.

"We need to change laws, not just light bulbs," the former vice president bellowed. He seemed even more passionate with this power point presentation than he did with his first.

If the environment is so important to Americans, Gore wonders, why is it not more important to our legislators? It's time to bring the dialogue to the forefront.

When asked what he thinks of the leading presidential candidates, he hedged a bit. It's clear that McCain, Clinton, and Obama each represent an improvement on environmental policy over the current administration, he said, before switching back to his message (something a politician never forgets, I guess).

Passionate and eloquently spoken, Gore seemed almost like the preacher at the pulpit before his congregation.

Hopefully that congregation will grow. While TED is an exclusive event that only the elite attend, the organization will make all of the talks from this past week available online within the next few months.

After attending my first TED, I'm not sure I can agree with my lunch companion yesterday. If I died tomorrow, I might just feel like I hadn't done enough. But at least I would die with Tchaikovsky in my ears.

By Megan Barnett

TED Flash: In the Future, World Peace and Walter Isaacson's Collaborative Book

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:27:31 GMT

I'm realizing that it's quite common here at TED to go from 'glass half full' to 'waiter, my glass is empty!' in just a matter of minutes. As you might imagine, this afternoon's panel on 'What Will Tomorrow Bring?' was no exception.

Peter Schwartz is possibly the most optimistic person to ever take the mike at a TED event, which is largely filled with hopeful, if not completely optimistic, people. It's a good thing, then, that his job is as a professional futurist.

I won't begin to guess how one becomes a futurist, but what he had to say will help me sleep like a baby tonight. There are four big questions that we want answered about what the world holds for us in the next 50 years:

Will there big a big world war?
Will the global economic growth continue?
Will the fruits of that growth be evenly spread?
Can we achieve that growth in an ecologically sustainable manner?

According to Schwartz, the answer to each of these questions is a resounding YES. So, stop worrying.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

But next up was Gregory Petsko, a biochemistry professor at Brandeis University, who had just three minutes to convince us that by 2050 the world will experience an epidemic of neurological diseases as the population ages. Took the air right out of my bubble, anyway.

Perhaps these two should square off in some sort of optimism debate.

Finally, Walter Isaacson, the former Time magazine editor who is now a biographer and the chief executive of the Aspen Institute, gave a talk on the future of the narrative.

The web hasn't changed much about our content, he suggested. We've just been putting old wine in new bottles. Even blogs like HuffPost and sites like YouTube are still just providing a new way to deliver the old stuff (written stories, video).

Which is why he's decided his next book will be "one of the first books for the electronic age." Taking a page from the wiki model, it will be published online in some format, and will be available for anyone to edit, enhance, or destroy as they wish. They can share with friends and republish it as they wish. It will be fully collaborative and interactive. This new type of book will be "always evolving and improving."

It's a fun concept, but it's unlikely that any publishing house will be jumping to sign Isaacson for his new venture. "I'm not sure what the business model will be," he admitted.

By Megan Barnett

TED Flash: Lessons in Creativity

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:21:07 GMT

How do we create? As a writer, you'd think I'd have a better idea about that than I do. And I'm only more humbled by the creative process after this morning's panel on the subject.

Each presenter taught me something I didn't know, which isn't unusual here at TED. But, as I've felt after watching many other thoughtful and enlightening presentations during the past two days, I'm not quite sure what I'll do with that knowledge.

John Knoll, a visual effects "wizard," as he's called in the agenda, taught me that I will probably never watch a major motion picture in the same way again. Who knew that the ships in Pirates of the Caribbean weren't actually out at sea for most of the scenes in the film? In fact, most of them weren't actual ships at all.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

I knew, I suppose, on some level that I kept comfortably buried inside me while watching the films. But after seeing the amazing computer work that went into making the film, that's something I may never be able to suppress again.

Robert Lang taught me that origami can be fun, moving, and put to practical use. After learning the process that goes into creating a tiny roach or a large, scaly snake with simple folds, I'll never again be able to look at a single piece of paper without seeing its potential.

Yves Behar made me wish I knew more designers. I mean, let's face it. They are just cool people. Who wouldn't want one at their next dinner party?

Among his designs are the $100 XO laptop, a funky water bottle for Y Water, a new Bluetooth headset, the NYC condom, and the LED leaf lamp for Herman Miller. I might be able to learn origami or the computer program for visual effects, but I'm quite certain I could never design a laptop. Or a condom, for that matter.

I learned that the novelist Amy Tan is hilarious. TED prohibits speakers from selling their products or services during their speeches, but Tan's eloquent and entertaining talk made me want to add her collection to my bookshelf.

Finally, and perhaps most spectacularly, the head of MIT Media Lab's Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group managed to evoke more emotion from the audience than it's experienced since Jill Bolte Taylor's talk about her stroke two days ago. Todd Machover created a software program that lets anyone compose his own music. It's fun to see kids use it, but Machover knew how to really inspire this crowd.

Machover uses the technology with patients suffering from mental disorders, and he brought to the stage with him Dan Ellsey, a 34-year old cerebral palsy patient, to demonstrate just how much potential can be unlocked with the right instruments. Ellsey performed an original song entitled "My Eagle Song" for the audience, which responded with a standing ovation as they wiped away their tears.

Ellsey is a true creative talent. It's something that, without the efforts of Machover, the world may never have known.

Humbling, indeed.

by Megan Barnett

TED Flash: Three Wishes

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:12:35 GMT

In 2005, TED began a new tradition: three people would be selected each year to receive $100,000 and a wish. The TED community would help the prizewinner make that wish become a reality.

Now, make no mistake about it. These are not the kind of people that would wish for a better body, a vacation for two to Tuscany, or a free car. Everyone here in Monterey would like to think there isn't a soul like that in the house.

Bono was one of the first recipients of the TED prize: he launched the One campaign. Bill Clinton won one last year: he wished for a healthcare system in Rwanda.

But, because Bono and Clinton have the means to build their own awareness campaigns around their wishes without the help of TED, perhaps it's the wishes of the unsung heroes that matter most. And that's the case with this year's prizewinners.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

The writer Dave Eggers (profiled here) is a well-known name among the New York and San Francisco literati, but outside of that world he's virtually unknown. But his efforts building a network of after-school tutoring facilities for underprivileged kids to focus on reading and writing is an accomplishment TED rightly decided to honor this year.

Eggers unveiled his wish tonight: to inspire more people to volunteer with students at public schools. He wishes to receive no fewer than 1,000 stories from people in the next year about their experience engaging directly with a local public school. People can pledge their involvement at www.onceuponaschool.org.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic here, but I think collecting 1,000 stories is perhaps setting the bar low. Check back with me this time next year to find out.

What's most amazing about TED's selection of prizewinners is the diversity of their interests.

Neil Turok (profiled here) is a theoretical physicist with a passion for helping Africa advance in this world. So it's apt that he managed to combine the two to create what will be his legacy.

In 2003, he opened the doors at the African Institute Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town, South Africa with the goal of giving mathematically-minded Africans an option for higher learning without having to leave the continent.

It's been a success so far, and his wish will only build on that. Turok first announced his dream: that the next Einstein will be African. Then he announced his plan: to open 15 AIMS schools across Africa during the next five years.

The third TED prizewinner, Karen Armstrong (profiled here), is also undertaking an education effort, albeit a different kind. A former nun and a provocative author on religion, Armstrong passionately cares about restoring faith in this conflict-ridden world.

In her mind, religion, namely the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, should not be blamed for the history of world wars, as it often is. Especially today, she says, conflict is political, and religion gets caught up in it.

Speaking to people of all faiths around the world, Armstrong has come to realize that "we are living in a world where religion has been hijacked." Many young people especially want to know what they can do to restore their religious faith and its relevance in this world.

Her wish is to create a "Charter for Compassion," which would be signed by 1,000 religious leaders around the globe. It would include guidelines about how to interpret the various scriptures that are currently being abused, and it would help to "create a movement of people of want to join up and reclaim their faith."

Inspired? Stop wishing you'll win the lottery you aren't even playing and learn how to participate at TEDprize.org.

by Megan Barnett

TED Flash: Fuel in a Petri Dish

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:07:34 GMT

Hearing about Craig Venter's ambitions evokes certain emotions: hope, fear, or some combination of both.

Venter, the biologist who is best known for mapping the human genome, spoke this morning about his newest project, the synthetic genome. He sat down later with Conde Nast Portfolio deputy editor Blaise Zerega to help a small audience better understand his work and its implications.

At its most basic level, the goal of Venter's research is to create a designer chromosome that could then be combined with certain genes to become a new, living, custom-made microorganism. This microorganism could potentially be used as an alternative energy source, or as a vaccine to specific diseases. In an ideal world, it would solve problems in both the environmental and pharmaceutical industries.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

By combining synthetic cells with the gene sets of organisms in the ocean that naturally produce carbon chemicals, an energy company could create an alternative to oil. "We have a very modest goal, which is to replace the entire petrochemical industry," Venter said, only half-jokingly.

Venter, through his company called Synthetic Genomics, is already having an active dialogue with the oil industry about these efforts. He hopes to start the first field test using the carbon in a coalmine with these synthetic cells later this year or early next.

Like a lot of Venter's research over time, the synthetic genome does not come without its share of controversy. The fear, of course, is how this technology--creating life from synthetic materials--could be misused. Could it be used for biological warfare, making it easier for groups to weaponize deadly viruses?

Venter concedes that these are rational fears, but he passionately discounts them. Overcoming them is a matter of understanding the science and controls in place to keep these organisms from entering the environment.

"All technology has dual purposes," he said. "Any technology can be used for good or evil purposes." He points out that biologists have been using deadly viruses inside of laboratories for decades, but controls keep them from escaping and surviving out in the world.

Moreover, he says, none of this is new. People have become comfortable with the cross breeding of plants and animals, so why be so fearful when the breeding and selection is based on knowledge?

If we can overcome our fears, and the synthetic genomics technology actually works to create an alternative fuel or a cancer vaccine, the question is how will it be applied?

Venter says he doesn't plan to partner with any individual company, and instead will merely make the methodology public. "I'm not sure anyone needs to make money on it," he said.

Of course, convincing the energy and pharmaceutical industries to adopt this disruptive technology might be nearly as daunting a project. At Davos earlier this year, Venter was discouraged and disappointed by the pessimism he encountered from the business community. Few C.E.O.s believe that anything substantial will change in energy production in the next 40 years.

Perhaps they find the whole concept so unsettling and implausible it simply isn't digestible.

Venter seems to understand this on some level. Indeed, when TED's Chris Anderson asked Venter how it feels to be playing God, the scientist didn't skip a beat. "We aren't playing."

by Megan Barnett

TED Flash: Life Is Being a Red Sox Fan

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:12:13 GMT

What is life? I'm still not exactly sure after this morning's panel on the subject, but I'm confident that some of the best minds today are trying mightily to figure that out.

TED's Chris Anderson gave Craig Venter more than his 18-minutes of fame on the stage this morning, due to the gravity of his message. Venter, who sequenced the human genome more than a decade ago, is hoping to make his legacy even bigger. His quest this time is to create the first synthetic lifeforms, and the implications of this project could be potentially greater than anything we've ever seen.

(More on Venter later, after an exclusive Q&A with Venter at a Portfolio sponsored lunch.)

The next two speakers were also related to science, and what it may help us know in the future: specifically, DNA origami and memes. (Do with that what you will!)

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

While we wait for science to someday give us the answer to this perplexing question about life, we thankfully have the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to tell us what it means today.

At first, I was confused by her inclusion in this panel, but by the end of her talk I knew she had it all figured out. Life is about work, love, and play, in equal doses. She used her research on Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson to portray how neglecting just one of the three ingredients in the recipe of life can leave you less whole.

Goodwin is an entertaining storyteller, and she learned from the best: Johnson himself. She came to work for him after dancing with him at an event for White House fellows (she was one of three women there, and the famously charming Johnson took note). He whispered in her ear that he wanted her to come work for him.

Two days later, Goodwin had an anti-Vietnam article published in The New Republic that discussed how to remove Johnson from office. Johnson stuck with his gut on Goodwin, saying if he could win her over after a year he could win just about anyone.

Goodwin developed a bit of a crush on Johnson herself, and she was captivated by his storytelling abilities. It turns out that most of them were tall tales, but that only made them all that much better.

She ended with a touching story of the role of "play" in her own life: her passion for baseball. A childhood fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, she's now a Red Sox fan.

While plenty of TEDsters in the audience were able to relate to that, no one was quite sure if being a Red Sox fan constitutes work, love, or play.

By Megan Barnett

TED Flash: Robin Williams to the Rescue

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:49:11 GMT

Thank god celebrities attend TED.

That's what plenty of TED attendees muttered to themselves last night when a special BBC America taping with a panel on new media went technologically awry just moments after starting.

After a few awkward moments of witty banter among the panelists, who included Sergey Brin of Google, the journalist Carl Bernstein, Queen Noor of Jordan, psychologist Dan Gilbert, and African journalist Andrew Mwenda, a heckler spoke up from the back of the room.

The crowd hushed down as soon as it realized who was doing the heckling: attendee Robin Williams. It being Robin Williams, it didn't take much cheering from the crowd to get him on stage. He then spent the next 15 minutes doing improv standup comedy to an eager crowd and an embarrassed BBC America staff.

"A new internet service in Israel is called Netanyahu." "Sergey Brin: started in garage and now he owns everything." "So, how much money have we raised so far?" And on and on, in the way only Robin Williams can do.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

BBC finally got its technological ducks in a row (Williams: "This is supposed to be a presentation on new media?"), and the panel went on.

If only it had ended on that high note. The hour-long panel (was it really just an hour?) on a potentially provocative subject proved to be largely a disappointment. Each panelist seemed to want to talk about something different, and the moderator couldn't quite hold it together.

In a complete reversal at one point during the Q&A, one of the panelists, Mwenda, asked one of the audience members a question. He wanted to know if Forrest Whitaker had a different impression of Uganda from the media before he went to the country to research his role for his Oscar winning performance in The Last King of Scotland.

Whitaker's answer was eloquent and thoughtful. But it still had nothing to do with new media.

By Megan Barnett

TED Flash: Laughter and Tears

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:15:34 GMT

Two sessions into my first TED conference, and I'm starting to figure out what it's all about. And I'm also beginning to understand just how difficult it is to translate what happens on stage at TED into words for an audience that isn't there to experience it.

For instance, how do you convey a speech by a brain scientist who tells the profound story of how she was able to experience her own stroke? Jill Bolte Taylor devoted her life to studying mental illnesses until her own brain hemorrhaged when she was 37. It took her eight years to fully recover, and now she dedicates her life to helping other stroke victims recover.

Her story was so moving and captivating, she brought the audience to its feet. She herself was so caught up in the telling of it that she needed a moment at the end to collect herself, as if she had just delivered a powerful Broadway performance.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

How do you turn into words the Georges Seurat-like photography by Chris Jordan that converts our excessive consumption into art? Every day, airlines go through 4 million plastic cups, and Jordan shows us what that looks like on canvas. His point is effective: saying 4 million plastic cups is one thing; seeing them is quite another.

How can I possibly replicate John Hodgman's hilarious 15-minute tall tale about his own personal close encounters with aliens? Well, you can probably imagine that one on your own.

Hodgman told me later that he was asked to cut his 18-minute talk (the standard length here at TED) to 15 minutes, so they could fit in Microsoft's not-so surprising announcement of its WorldWide Telescope earlier.

Being the PC that he is, he was gracious enough to comply.

by Megan Barnett

TED Flash: WorldWide Telescope Confirmed

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:33:06 GMT

After weeks of speculation sparked by Robert Scoble's tears, Microsoft today unveiled the WorldWide Telescope, a downloadable software that brings the universe to the desktop with unprecedented clarity.

And let me just say this: I'm quite certain that if I saw this thing as a 6-year old, I'd probably be donning a white coat at NASA today instead of reporting on hedge funds and investment banks. When we have a glut of astronomers and space explorers in twenty years, we'll have Microsoft to thank.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

According to Microsoft researcher Curtis Wong, the software will be available this spring at www.worldwidetelescope.org.

The astrophysicist Roy Gould introduced the software, and his enthusiasm over it was palpable. It will have as profound an effect on the way we view the universe as Galileo had four centuries ago, he said. "We can now start to have a dialogue with the universe," he said.

Microsoft has pulled data from the "best images from the greatest telescopes" around the globe. It's woven them together seamlessly, to create a "holistic" view of the universe.

Stargazers will be able to explore the universe on their own, zooming in for more information on galaxies and black holes. They can take a tour by a professional astronomer, or they can create their own tours and share them with their friends.

by Megan Barnett

TED Flash: What I Learned at TED University

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:32:18 GMT

Before the official kickoff of this year's TED conference this afternoon, attendees had the option of attending a number of 12-minute talks by selected "professors." The dozens of topics ranged from toy design, to how to be a successful heretic, to eight ways to get into space, to the science of fantasy football, to three magic tricks anyone can do.

Plenty of legitimate universities might disagree, but twelve minutes, it turns out, is about the perfect amount of time for class.

Full TED Conference 2008 coverage

I opted for some of the less instructional courses, but emerged no less educated. The talk by Mark Collis, creative director of the ad agency Leo Burnett, was titled "I'm an advertising guy and I feel sick." I thought it might be about how the advertising market is in a slump, but instead it was about how he struggles with the "moral and social conflict around what I do as a professional." His answer, it seems, is to focus professionally on marketing that matters. He showed a four-minute film put together for the World Wildlife Fund on Australia's global warming awareness campaign that featured a one-hour blackout in Sydney.

It was enlightening, but, being a magazine employee, I still want to know how the advertising market is going to rebound.

Feeling optimistic and cheery, I went on to David Burk's talk titled "Culture of Death: The Torajans of Sulawesi." It featured a slideshow of poignant photographs he took while visiting a village in Indonesia twenty years ago where the culture is literally around death instead of life. Decaying bodies stack up on back porches while families work to acquire four buffalo (that's what it takes to get into heaven). They often times wait four years to lay the dead to rest. They celebrate by sacrificing the buffalo and eating their innards.

What I learned from this course is that maybe I shouldn't feel so bad about killing that mouse in my apartment last week.

And finally, Cindy Gallop enlightened me on the wave of the future in her talk titled "The Toyboy Manifesto: Why the older woman + younger man is the relationship of the future" (because, quite frankly, it sounded like more fun than "How to beat the stock market"). In the flip side of the overall conference demographics, Gallop's session was filled with more women than men, which perhaps means there aren't enough younger men at the conference. If they're here, I'm quite certain the 48-year old Gallop, decked in black patent pleather pants (don't call her a cougar), will find them.

So this is what TED is all about!

by Megan Barnett