TED

Kevin Kelly At TED: What Technology Wants

by Socrates
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Kevin Kelly just published a new book called What Technology Wants. I have been planning to buy it ever since I heard he was writing another book but after Seth Godin called it The Book Of The Year and said that “if there’s justice it will win the Pulitzer prize,” I just couldn’t wait and ordered it online. In the meantime, I decided to watch and post some of the most interesting TED videos that Kelly did during the last several years. The 3 videos bellow were shot in 2 year intervals (from 2006 to 2010) and represent a chronological progression of Kevin’s quest to answer the titular question of his book. I recommend you watch them in order or, if you really don’t have the time, skip to the very last one. Kevin Kelly’s Profile on TED: Perhaps there [...]

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Richard Dawkins on TED: The Universe Is Queerer Than We Can Suppose

by Socrates
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In this TED video biologist Richard Dawkins makes a case for “thinking the improbable” by looking at how the human frame of reference limits our understanding of the universe. Richard Dawkins’ profile bio on TED: “As an evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins has broadened our understanding of the genetic origin of our species; as a popular author, he has helped lay readers understand complex scientific concepts. He’s best-known for the ideas laid out in his landmark book The Selfish Gene and fleshed out in The Extended Phenotype: the rather radical notion that Darwinian selection happens not at the level of the individual, but at the level of our DNA. The implication: We evolved for only one purpose — to serve our genes. Of perhaps equal importance is Dawkins’ concept of the meme, which he defines as a self-replicating unit of culture [...]

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John Lloyd at TED: All That Matters Is Invisible

by Socrates
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I thought I’d finish off this week’s blog posts with a little witty and relevant humor. Singularitarians are sometimes blamed for being too materialistic and/or too rational with a “know-it-all” take on the universe. I hope that this hilariously smart video may help us look back at the cosmos from the funny side, the side where, as John Lloyd says, “all that matters is invisible” and where the best tool for our inquiry is what the zen Buddhists call an “empty mind.” In this TED video, nature’s mysteries meet John Lloyd’s tack-sharp wit in a hilarious, 10-minute mix of quips and fun lessons. As comedian, writer and TV man John Lloyd plucks at the substance of a long list of things that we cannot see with our naked eyes such as energy, gravity, consciousness, artificial intelligence (and artificial stupidity), the [...]

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Juan Enriquez at TED: Homo Evolutis is the Ultimate Reboot

by Socrates
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This is an 18 minute mind-boggling, dead serious yet absolutely hilarious video of the presentation that Juan Enriquez did at TED in 2009. Juan talks about what he calls Homo Evolutis: “hominids that take direct and deliberate control of over the evolution of their species… and others.” Furthermore, Enriquez argues that the arrival of Homo Evolutis is the result of 3 on-going convergent trends that will likely bring about the ultimate reboot in the history of the universe. Those trends are: 1. the ability to engineer cells 2. the ability to engineer tissues 3. the ability to engineer robots Juan Enriquez’ bio profile at TED: ” A broad thinker who studies the intersection of science, business and society, Juan Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard [...]

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Gregory Stock: To Upgrade is Human

by Socrates
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It has often been argued that the more technology the further away from our “human nature.” Thus to enhance or upgrade our biology is often given as a clear example of denying what is “normal,” “natural” and “human.” In this 2003 TED talk biophysicist, best-selling author and biotech entrepreneur Gregory Stock looks forward to new and controversial technologies such as designer babies, human enhancement, genetic manipulation etc and argues that upgrading (our biology) is, in fact, a very human thing to do. Thus for him, the question is not if but when and how we are going to take a hold of our evolution and become the true architects of our future. Enjoy! So, do you agree that to upgrade is human?

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Stephen Wolfram: Computing Life, the Universe and Everything

by Socrates
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This is another cool TED video. Stephen Wolfram, the founder and creator of the Wolfram Alpha search engine, talks about computing the human condition, life, the universe and everything: As attested by the video below I was under the impression that all this has already been computed: But seriously, can we really “compute” (and answer) everything? Or is there more to it all than computation? Related articles by Zemanta Computing a theory of everything: Stephen Wolfram on TED.com (ted.com) Wolfram Alpha’s niche continues to elude (news.cnet.com) Wolfram Alpha Launches Mobile Site, Slashes iPhone App to $2 [Search Engines] (lifehacker.com) Wolfram Alpha Wants to Be a Google Maps for Data (gigaom.com)

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Dennis Hong at TED: My 7 Species of Robots

by Socrates
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Dennis Hong: “I still cannot forget the mind-blowing sensation when I first watched the movie Star Wars. I was fascinated by R2D2 and C-3PO. Since then, I decided to become a robot scientist and never changed my mind.” As his TED profile page says, Dennis Hong is the founder and director of RoMeLa — a Virginia Tech robotics lab that has pioneered several breakthroughs in robot design and engineering. As director of a groundbreaking robotics lab, Dennis Hong guides his team of students through projects on robot locomotion and mechanism design, creating award-winning humanoid robots like DARwIn (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence). His team is known as RoMeLa  (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) and operates at Virginia Tech. Hong has also pioneered various innovations in soft-body robots, using a “whole-skin locomotion” as inspired by amoebae. Marrying robotics with biochemistry, he has [...]

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Henry Markram at TED

by Socrates
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This is a video of Henry Markram, the director of the Blue Brain Project, at TED. The Blue Brain Project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations. Here is Dr. Markram’s profile on TED: In the microscopic, yet-uncharted circuitry of the cortex, Henry Markram is perhaps the most ambitious — and our most promising — frontiersman. Backed by the extraordinary power of the IBM Blue Gene supercomputing architecture, which can perform hundreds of trillions of calculations per second, he’s using complex models to precisely simulate the neocortical column (and its tens of millions of neural connections) in 3D. Though the aim of Blue Brain research is mainly biomedical, it has been edging up on some deep, contentious philosophical questions about the mind — “Can a robot [...]

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