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Regina Saphier TED Global 2011 Day 1

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I started my TED Global 2011: “The Stuff of Life” webcast day number one with a nice, self made breakfast, with my regular 15 minutes of sunbathing for vitamin D (D hormone) production at 11:00 am (NO sunscreen!) and with some flash non-fiction writing:

I have a spider in residence. It is living between two red shelves and rebuilds its external web weekly after I clean the apartment. It neatly places the dead leftovers in front of the two shelves, right outside the little gap where the spider lives, so that I can easily clean up the insect skeletons. We have a good cooperative relationship. It is a medium sized fat spider, very accurate indeed and has been my spider in residence for many months. We never bother one another. It lives in the niche of my home economy, since I never eat small insects.

I believe the above paragraph reflects a TEDster like attitude about living together with people, nature and our own self. Welcome to my regular TED live conference blog. I am going to be posting notes all day, until Friday as usual. I always edit my notes after sessions so there might be a slight delay in posting. Times in the program are all Edinburgh time (British Summer Time). TED Global takes place in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland this year, instead of Oxford, England where facilities were not ideal for the event. Lets see what TED Global has in store for us this year.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011 11:00 – 12:45
Session 1: Beginnings

Lee Cronin
Chemist

Lee is trying to create inorganic and non carbon based life. He might just succeed within two years.

Annie Murphy Paul
Science author

Annie explains the reason why I love cucumber salad with sour cream. Its because my mother had no choice but eat that while on holiday during her pregnancy in Poland. In Hungary we do not normally eat cucumbers with sour cream, but we all take it for granted in the family that her temporary diet change influenced my preference for this kind of salad. 🙂 Fetuses learn and prepare for their culture and environment specific lives while in the womb and their entire lives are influenced during the 9 months.

Researchers found the biological marker for PTSD susceptibility in babies of 1700 WTC pregnant women after 911. They passed on PTSD vulnerability to their kids.

Chris remarks that women who attend TED while pregnant give the best possible start for their to be born kids. He also says something like this: no extra charge for fetal attendance at TED. People laugh. 🙂

Rebecca MacKinnon
Media activist

Rebecca speaks of the complex question of balancing citizen voices, internet usage and government activity. How should we constrain the power on the internet. Or how can we hold power (people) accountable on the internet.

Danielle de Niese
Soprano

Unfortunately Danielle’s performance is not enjoyable via the web cast. Not even via high speed… my laptop is too old.

Richard Wilkinson
Public health researcher

Richard says: If you Americans want to live the American dream, move to Denmark. Social evaluation threat raises cortisol permanently (a stress hormone) in people living in highly unequal societies. (Note: This stress hormone influences DNA expression and normal functioning of the body!) In other words it is judgment that ruins people’s health in unequal societies. Chronic stress from social sources is highly damaging. Make bosses accountable for employees. (And may I say: make parents accountable for their children, because constant emotional stress causes life long mental and physical illnesses when kids grow up…) Pay attention to the psychosocial health of societies. It is highly relevant in Hungary, a very ill and unequal society in huge economic trouble.

Phillip Blond
Political theorist

Philip says: we need to revive the culture of good groups that produce good people. In other words, lets move beyond extreme individualism and extreme collectivism. Move beyond leftism and rightism. Relationships are the basis of a healthy and normal existence. He says it is access inequality that causes the biggest problems. So money that goes to large corporations today should go to smaller local groups. He is talking about the UK…

It is time for me to make lunch.

2:15 – 4:00
Session 2: Everyday Rebellions

Hasan Elahi
Privacy artist

Hasan has a wonderful sense of humor to digest the century he is living in. He has been interrogated after 911, so he decided to post key info on a website about what he is eating, purchasing, when he is traveling, which airport he is at. He says: I am more able to watch myself that anyone else. And he also says, he is no longer special, because now everyone else is doing this with smart phones (if you have one… I don’t).

Maajid Nawaz
Anti-extremism activist

Maajid says evil, not only good, went global on the internet. He was a member of an extremist organization, so he should know. He says extremists are unfortunately more successful social media users than democratic groups. Extremists build on the grass roots opportunities, from the bottom up. So, advocate for democracy on the same grass roots level. Use counter-narratives in the relevant societies.

Justin Hall-Tipping
Science entrepreneur

Justin tells us about flexible and transparent carbon on the nano scale and how he will help us make clean and free self generated energy with nano carbon window shields and how this project will lead to the ability to beam energy with no grid (energy can be saved by making electrons inactive until the energy is needed), and in turn how it will solve the world’s lack of drinkable water by desalination…

Yves Rossy
Jetman

Jetman is a phenomenon, you have to see him flying.

Asaf Avidan
Singer/songwriter

Amazing voice on the TED Global 2011 stage! 🙂 You should listen to Asaf singing.

Julia Bacha
Filmmaker

Julia is spreading the news about under reported non violent resistance in Budrus in the West Bank and in other places. It works if you give them attention in the media.

5:00 – 6:45
Session 3: Coded Patterns

Geoffrey West
Theorist

Cities, according to Geoffrey, are networks of creative human interaction. Double the size of a city and you get a 15% increase of all specific indicators, like wealth, universities, income, crime, police, and so on. Cycles of innovation are necessary to avoid collapse of cities.

Shohei Shigematsu
Architect

Shohei says, sometimes think in the box.

Kevin Slavin
Algoworld expert

Kevin somehow mesmerized me as I was listening to him (I liked him even before I listened to him, by just looking at his face in the program guide… it is some subconscious thing), so I have to say, I do not know what exactly he was saying, but it was about a superb future for algorithms and the loser presence of slow algorithms. 🙂 Oh, and he mentioned a Hungarian scientist with whom he traveled and had a conversation about the many physicists in finance…

Allan Jones
Brain scientist

Allan is telling the story of human brain mapping.

Balazs Havasi
Pianist, composer

Balázs is Hungarian. And actually it is all I know about him. I have seen him at TEDx Danubia this year, but he did not make a huge impression on me. He is now doing the same “classical encounters rock” scenario… People at TED Global like it, so it is good PR for Hungary.

This is an interesting TED Global 2011 + TEDx Danubia related TED blog link, informing us about Csaba Manyai, TEDx Danubia host talking about Urania Scientific Theatre (where the Hungarian event normally takes place) at TED University: http://blog.ted.com/2011/07/11/the-urania-scientific-theater-or-ted1899/