TED round 3
More interesting talks:
Neuroscience:
Kwabena Boahen on a computer that works like the brain – Detailed comparison between transistors and neural ion channels, with application to brain enhancement.
Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us – Hell yes. More awareness like this please!
Sociology:
Mike Rowe celebrates dirty jobs – Basically a rant about American laziness, but the story is interesting. There is some truth to his conclusion but I think he’s over-romanticizing.
Ian Dunbar on dog-friendly dog training – Magical truth-saying! I’m glad to see some progress in the science of dog training.
Deb Roy: The birth of a word – Some really interesting data visualizations here, and he makes me envy (somewhat) kids growing up today in the world of ubiquitous digital photography. While it means having evidence to suppress, it also means having great memory aids.
Christopher “moot” Poole: The case for anonymity online – I don’t think he really makes much of a case for anything – indeed he talks about some things that could be called invasion of privacy. But it is interesting to hear the back-story of a little-understood web phenomenon.
Malcolm McLaren: Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture – Long but good. At first it’s not clear where he’s going, but it comes together when he gets to his art school story. He’s on about one of the things that really bothers me about western pop culture.
Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now – I love her visualization of the mass of the data we carry around with us.
Environmentalism:
James Balog: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss – Standard-issue environmental message aside, the time-lapse movies of glaciers moving are worth watching.
Michael Pollan gives a plant’s-eye view – A nice counterpoint to the typical view of man exploiting nature.
Technology:
David Pogue on cool phone tricks – Grab bag of useful clues about cell phone services.
Physics:
Aaron O’Connell: Making sense of a visible quantum object – Science!
Nanotechnology:
Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries – Progress!
Law:
Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system – “You can’t run a society by the lowest common denominator.” HELL YEAH!
Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity – Basically about remix culture versus IP law.
Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom – A great rant about how mindless rule-following and poorly constructed incentives have led to some of the social and legal insanity we suffer today.
Miscellaneous:
Benjamin Wallace on the price of happiness – Gets to my problem with a lot of “gourmet” culture, namely mistaking attributes like rare, special and expensive for the attribute “good”.
