Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2011 Day 2

TED photo stream slide show (opens in new window) Day 2

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

8:30 AM – 10:15 AM Session 4: Deep Mystery

At the beginning I spent over 60 minutes trying to figure out why TED live stream chat has not been working at all since yesterday… not at all while watching yesterday’s sessions, and working a bit today, but I could not post. After nothing helped in Mozilla, I went to Chrome… We exchange e-mails with the always helpful TED associates representative: Anjali. After about 12 e-mails she forwards my complaint to the TED tech team… after I ask: “Is it possible that the new TED profile integrated chat has a selective problem that they don’t know about yet?” We try many things, nothing helps… I never had such problems in the past, or if there was a problem, it was always on the TED tech side… (and as it turned out at the next conference, it was…)

What is consciousness? He explains his theory that human self is created by a cooperation between the cortex, the brain stem, and the body map (the body is represented by an acquired map in the brain). We create our brain maps of our bodies as we develop and use that inner map as a reference for all other maps. We learn that there are three levels of self: proto, core and autobiographical self. Animals usually have the first two, but you and even your dog, you both have the latter. The more developed the cortex, the richer the experience of the self and the more conscious and creative the creature, but according to him the cortex is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon of the self and consciousness. If you hurt one part of your brain stem, the result is coma and your self is gone (at least you do not recognize or detect your brain images, etc.). If you damage another part of the brain stem, your self is imprisoned into your paralyzed body. So, for normal functioning of the self, your body, brain stem and cortex must have a fluid feedback system. He also shows us how he first discovered his own retina cyst visually (looking at a matrix with only one eye at a time) and how it was later proven by special retina imaging.

I am unable to concentrate on Damon Horowitz while I am still fighting with the TED chat technology glitch… no idea why it is not working…  Update from march 10.: Guided by instinct that I missed something important, I went back to the TED 2011 Sessions Archive and had a second look at how Damon performed. Yes, in fact he performed. He was brilliant! When I filled out the TED Associate  questionnaire yesterday, I did not yet review his part in the archive… my god, the truth is, he was off the charts as a speaker! He not only spoke about philosophy, but also about a teen in prison who did something really really wrong… and Damon showed us how they started to argue about what is wrong… what it means to be wrong. Damon, I am sorry about not giving you the “off the charts” mark. You deserved the very best! (Damon has a BA in Computer Science from Columbia, an MS from MIT Media Lab, and a PhD from Stanford, according to the vark website. He and his colleagues are behind Aardvark. Here is another talk by him, this time at TEDxSoMa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YdE-D_lSgI)

I have seen live the NASA stream when Felisa announced her discovery of possible arsenic based life on Earth. She is telling the same story at TED.

Aaron is a young man who is both high on the left and the right hemisphere’s aptitude scale. He has a hunch that all things should be behaving according to quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, he misses the fact that we are not as high on quantum mechanics as he is…

We relax our brains…

The largest home video collection… I start crying when Deb shows the voice sequence from “gaga” to water… as his little boy learned to say the word: water. Amazing: a long word learning process distilled and played within a few seconds! So moving! He is also showing us his home word-scape. The word “water” is mostly living in the kitchen, while “bye” lives close to the door… Amazing visuals! Later he is applying all this to the media. We see the topology of communications.

And my live stream chat word-scape is flat… still not working…

11:00 AM – 12:45 PM Session 5: Worlds Imagined

We are introduced to the visual magic of theater and film.

Rob Parto shows a short video of what World of Warcraft is. I think it is sad… with no real-world meaning… people escaping into this artificial world while contributing nothing… I want that time and energy to go into real world problem solving.

He shows how clueless companies are, while people know their own brands. So lets see what the brand experts say about Morgan’s personality brand: playful-mindful… He says: embrace fear, embrace risk… his film about product placement: “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” finally gets sponsored by product placement…

Bill always felt different in his own adult environment… in his family, his industry and company that is… he knew that the environment must be considered by the car industry. He says, its wonderful and now natural that we have more and more environmentally friendly cars, but a traffic jam at a level of 9 billion people is not something we want to see… we just have to change the way we think about mobility. We need a smart car network for better mobility. Ready for prime time pretty soon… One day your car is going to reserve a parking spot via a smart data system. We need a global and interconnected network. It is a very complex issue, so we all need to get going today, to design this flexible future.

They demo bubbli: http://bubbli.co/intro/

I will never ever think of PepsiCo as an ethical company, no matter how hard Indra is trying to convince us… with her cheerleaders playing nice with the mentally challenged… oh, so American… even if she got to the US at age 23… this is just another CSR (PR) project by a monster company selling sugary drinks to people… come on TED! You should know better!

Did I see PepsiCo in the Sapling portfolio? Hm… Well, no, I did not (at least not in their “2008 Return of Private Foundation, or Section 4947 ( a)(1) Nonexempt Charitable Trust Treated as a Private Foundation” document). But I did my research and I recommend this Foundation Center link, if you want to know more about the Sapling foundation, the owner of the TED project. Their market value was over 33 million dollars in 2008: http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/943/943235545/943235545_200812_990PF.pdf

2:15 PM – 4:00 PM Session 6: Knowledge Revolution

He appears as the guest curator of this session.

David wants to build a free history teaching platform. He talks about Big History Project. He is the kind of teacher you like to listen to.

TEDnews: “1 in 5 Africans are Nigerian. 150 million people. 17 million in poverty.” “When Nigeria got debt relief in 2005, we asked: What could we do to make sure that money reached the poor?” Amina tells her development story of fighting corruption in the midst of national poverty and making sure development funds are spent well.

Bruce is talking about poliomyelitis. He is really trying to completely eradicate it globally. Yes, it is still a problem in some places in the world. But Bruce looks like someone who won’t stop until it is done!

I have seen the site of this young man a few weeks ago while browsing the net. And I could see that he is changing the future of education. And his talk was brilliant, encouraging and I am so sorry that I am not a school kid of today’s interconnected world. You can go ahead and become a mentor and use Salman’s technology and content to educate anyone, anywhere! Go and try it!

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan’s TED Long Beach 2011 talk is up already!

5:00 PM – 6:45 PM Session 7: Radical Collaboration

This session is open to anyone who wanted to see what a major TED conference is. :-) By the way, I am also getting free TED Long Beach, TED Global Oxford, and TED Women Washington live streams in return for my TED volunteer activity as a translator and reviewer. I am a TED Associate. TED blogging is an extra volunteer effort I do just for fun.

Wael Ghonim speaks from TEDxCairo about the revolution 2.0 in Egypt he helped start with a memorial facebook page to a victim of the regime. A truly intelligent young man!

WOW! Luminescent deep sea creatures! Wonderful talk. A must see!

Jamie Oliver’s 2010 TED wish update in 2011: the Food Revolution got huge exposure and support in the US! :-) Jamie walks up and down in stage telling his story of saving kids who were let down by adults in the US.

Jill Tarter’s SETI TED wish at risk! White Knight sought to make it possible.

  • JR
  • Street artist

He is using cities as canvases, pasting huge paper posters of all sorts of people, like Face to Face: Palestinian and Israeli faces on the border wall (on both sides, mixed). 4 years later those photos are still there. Another project: Women are heroes. When you look at Kibera now: they look back! Vinyl eyes on roofs protecting people from the rain! If an eye is gone, the person moved from underneeth… More and more people asking for vinyl roof cover photos. lol  French artist wishing: Turn the World Inside out In a Global Art Project. Tell him what you stand for in pictures. Offer a place to paste a huge picture. People in the audience listing their contributions one by one. :-)

March 2, 2011
Categories: In English, My TED Long Beach Live Blogs, TED, TED Long Beach 2011 . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: The Virtual Human . Comments: Comments Off on Regina Saphier TED Long Beach 2011 Day 2