Cyrus Cylinder | The Virtual Human's TED Conference Blog

Regina Saphier TED Global 2011 Day 4

Friday, July 15, 2011 8:30 – 10:15
Session 11: Things We Make

terrafugia.com

Neil MacGregor
Director of The British Museum

We are introduced to an ancient piece of PR on clay from Babylon. And important object for Iran and also for Jews: the Cyrus Cylinder of Babylon.

A short talk follows by a TED Fellow, Genevieve von Petzinger about the geometrical shapes on cave walls and objects of the ice age.

Ben Kacyra
Digital preservationist

We see amazing 3D laser scanned virtual representations of our collective memory, buildings, statues and complete sites. CyArk 500 Challenge: to digitally preserve 500 world heritage sites in 5 years.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Artist, designer

Daisy talks about invented cultural life forms, that are part of the set: synthetica. Growing objects, instead of manufacturing them. Or make bacteria to produce different colors. It would be possible to harvest natural colors, and could also be used in laboratory diagnostics.

Robert Gupta
Violinist

Touching violin tunes streaming from Edinburgh to Budapest. 🙂

Michael Biddle
Plastics recycler

While it is easy to recycle metal, it used to be hard to do the same with plastic. But Michael not only developed a way to selectively extract plastic precisely, but he also revolutionized the plastic industry: recycled plastic requires 10% of the energy to create recycled objects (no oil required), compared to using virgin plastic, made of oil.

In my opinion we should not be using plastic at all, instead we should use non-toxic, and completely degradable materials. And we have seen such materials in the making at TED in the past…

Anna Mracek Dietrich
Inventor

Terrafugia: a flying car. Brilliant. I want one. 🙂

Joe, the sand artist comes back.. still not very impressive to me. Ferenc Cakó is much more creative, poetic and fluid…

Malcolm Gladwell
Writer

It was about war, and when this word comes up, I stop listening. Sorry. But the key message was: the more efficient the US got at bombing countries, the angrier the sufferers got and the more people were killed by terrorists attacks.

11:00 – 12:45
Session 12: Next Up

Harald Haas
Communications technology innovator

Well, the future is light transmitted data.

Markus Fischer
Designer

Breaking the code of bird flight. An artificial bird is flying over the heads of TEDsters in Edinburgh.

David Adjaye
Architect

David gave a really clear picture of regional differences in African architecture and I think it was a very good TED talk. It introduced me to something I did not yet know. I love architecture. And I have too little knowledge of today’s Africa.

Rory Stewart
Politician

Rory is the new kind of British politician and he loves to walk! 🙂 I am not terribly interested in politics. Sorry. By the way, excellent speaker. We need intelligent risk takers with humility who know the terrain and culture wherever you want to send aid, money and groups, locals or people with real local knowledge who help to rebuild and develop. Rory has first hand local experience with this, because he walked among real everyday people, in several regions of the world. Remarkably intelligent politician. Gives you hope!

Jo Hamilton
Musician

She plays the Air Piano (not to be confused with a theremin).

Jeremy Gilley
Peace activist

Completely adrenalin driven Jeremy talking fast and long about his brilliant idea: The Annual Peace Day, 21 September. Remarkable story. Amazing what we, dyslexics are capable of. 😉

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