Brown Bag at the Movies – Future Candidates
This is the repository of videos I found interesting but didn’t have time to show.
FUTURE CANDIDATES /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
03-01-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT: Rapid prototyping and parts manufacturing. The future???
MakerBot (35:00)
ABSTRACT
Presented by Adam Mayer.
This talk is about MakerBot, a new low-cost, open-source CNC fabrication robot produced by MakerBot Industries. MakerBot is an evolution of the RepRap project. Adam Mayer, one of the three founders of MakerBot Industries, will be on hand to present and demonstrate MakerBot and answer questions.
Adam Mayer is one of the three founders of MakerBot Industries, and one of the core members of NYC Resistor, a hacker collective in downtown Brooklyn.
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CEP COMMENT: “The speed-up of a program using multiple processors in parallel computing is limited by the sequential fraction of the program.”
Amdahl’s Law in the Multicore Era
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfgWmQpzD74&feature=relmfu>
52:53
ABSTRACT
Over the last several decades computer architects have been phenomenally successful turning the transistor bounty provided by Moore’s Law into chips with ever increasing single-threaded performance. During many of these successful years, however, many researchers paid scant attention to multiprocessor work. Now as vendors turn to multicore chips, researchers are reacting with more papers on multi-threaded systems. While this is good, we are concerned that further work on single-thread performance will be squashed.
To help understand future high-level trade-offs, we develop a corollary to Amdahl’s Law for multicore chips [Hill & Marty, IEEE Computer 2008]. It models fixed chip resources for alternative designs that use symmetric cores, asymmetric cores, or dynamic techniques that allow cores to work together on sequential execution. Our results encourage multicore designers to view performance of the entire chip rather than focus on core efficiencies. Moreover, we observe that obtaining optimal multicore performance requires further research BOTH in extracting more parallelism and making sequential cores faster.
This talk is based on an HPCA 2008 keynote address.
Speaker: Mark D. Hill
Mark D. Hill (<http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill>) is professor in both the computer sciences department and the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he also co-leads the Wisconsin Multifacet (<http://www.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/>) project with David Wood. His research interests include parallel computer system design, memory system design, computer simulation, and recently transactional memory. He earned a PhD from University of California, Berkeley. He is an ACM Fellow and a Fellow of the IEEE.
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CEP COMMENT: Environment shapes actions.
Learning from StackOverflow.com
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ&feature=relmfu>
51:58
ABSTRACT
Presented by Joel Spolsky <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/AboutMe.html>
Until recently, searching for help on highly technical programming problems has been a mess. A lot of what the search engines found was old discussions in forums, where you have a lot of wrong answers and out-of-date answers that you have to sift through yourself. You also found a lot of answers at sites that were hidden behind a pay wall, which uncloaked themselves for Google and then demanded membership fees to see the answers.
StackOverflow.com is a programmer’s Q&A site that launched last September to address these problems. It incorporates more modern ideas about community such as voting and public editing, and even a few ideas from game design, to create a much more successful way to get help with programming problems. In a few short months, it has grown to 14 million page views a month and reaches 3 million unique programmers every month. The lessons we’ve learned in creating a successful Q&A site has many implications for search which I’ll share in this talk.
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CEP COMMENT: Zerox PARC alumni
No Time to Think
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGcvj3JiGA&feature=relmfu>
ABSTRACT
Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article, “As We May Think,” has been much celebrated as a central inspiration for the development of hypertext and the World Wide Web. Less attention, however, has been paid to Bush’s motivation for imagining a new generation of information technologies; it was his hope that more powerful tools, by automating the routine aspects of information processing, would leave researchers and other professionals more time for creative thought. But now, more than sixty years later, it seems clear that the opposite has happened, that the use of the new technologies has contributed to an accelerated mode of working and living that leaves us less to think, not more. In this talk I will explore how this state of affairs has come about and what we can do about it.
Speaker: David M. Levy
David Levy earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1979 and a Diploma in Calligraphy and Bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute (London) in 1983. For more than fifteen years he was a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where his work, described in “Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age” (Arcade, 2001), centered on exploring the transition from paper and print to digital. During the year 2005-2006, he was the holder of the Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology at the Library of Congress. A professor at the UW Information School since 2000-2001, he has been investigating how to restore contemplative balance to a world marked by information overload, fragmented attention, extreme busyness, and the acceleration of everyday life.
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CEP COMMENT: Interesting discussion of memory and high performance computing, linux driver performance optimization
Engineering a Fast PCIe-Attached Storage Array for Next-Generation Non-Volatile Memories
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA_947C01Og>
50:25
ABSTRACT
Fast non-volatile memories with performance comparable to DRAM (whether it is PCM, the Memristor, scalable MRAM, or something else) will be upon us in a few short years. These technologies are around 10,000 times faster than spinning disks and 1000 times faster than flash in terms of latency, and they offer enormous gains in bandwidth as well. Fully leveraging these technologies will require far-reaching changes in the way that programmers use and reason about persistent data and how systems manage persistent storage. I will describe a prototype high-performance storage system called Moneta that we have developed in the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory at UCSD. Moneta provides a window into the future storage systems by using DRAM to emulate advanced non-volatile memories. In building Moneta, we have found that existing system and application software designed for a world of slow disks is a poor fit for fast devices like Moneta. In response, we have co-designed the Moneta hardware interface and the Moneta driver to increase bandwidth by over 10x for small requests, reduce latency to just 12us for 4KB accesses, and allow Moneta to sustain 1.1 Million IOPS. We compare Moneta to a range of storage devices based on disks, flash, and advanced non-volatile memories, and find that leveraging the speed of fast non-volatile memories will require significant changes in file systems and applications.
Bio: Steven Swanson is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and the director of the Non-volatile Systems Laboratory. His research interests include the systems, architecture, security, and reliability issues surrounding non-volatile, solid-state memories. He also co-leads projects to develop low-power co-processors for irregular, mobile applications (e.g., Android Apps) and to devise software techniques for using multiple processors to speed up single-threaded computations. In previous lives he has also worked on scalable dataflow architectures, ubiquitous computing, and simultaneous multithreading. He received his PhD from the University of Washington in 2006.
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CEP COMMENT: SCTP rocks!
Seattle Conference on Scalability: SCTPs Reliability and Fault Tolerance
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tN7xhw1zE8>
44:36
ABSTRACT
Low cost clusters are usually built from commodity parts and use standard transport protocols like TCP/IP. Once systems become large enough, reliability and fault tolerance become an important issue and TCP/IP often requires additional mechanisms to ensure reliability of the application. The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a newly standardized transport protocol that provides additional mechanisms for reliability beyond that of TCP.
SCTP is not like TCP in that its: multi-homing; message-based; multi-streaming; selective ACK built-in; stronger checksum; sockets api choices.
SCTP is like TCP in that its: connection-oriented between two endpoints using unicast addresses; TCP-like congestion control; reliable, in-order delivery; flow controlled; available on most major operating systems.
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CEP COMMENT: Good. A lot about web site hacking.
How Cybercriminals Steal Money
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC6Q1uCnbMo&feature=relmfu>
55:27
ABSTRACT
Attend this session and learn how you can prevent today’s most significant data security vulnerabilities—the kind that leave businesses open to fraud that ranges from capturing tens of millions of credit card numbers to stealing money from bank accounts to constructing next-generation botnets. We’ll review how cross-site request forgery, cross-site script inclusion and SQL injection attacks work and discuss their impact on Web 2.0, AJAX, mashup and social networking applications. We’ll present industry-wide statistics on security vulnerabilities, cover emerging security trends and discuss the current state of security education. Then we’ll tell you how to defend against security attacks and how to modify your software development process to achieve security, and we’ll recommend certification programs, books and organizations that can help you secure your applications.
Speaker: Neil Daswani <http://www.neildaswani.com/>
Neil Daswani has served in a variety of research , development, teaching, and managerial roles at Google, Stanford University , DoCoMo USA Labs, Yodlee, and Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies). While at Stanford, Neil cofounded the Stanford Center Professional Development (SCPD) Security Certification Program (http://proed.stanford.edu/?security). His areas of expertise include security, wireless data technology, and peer-to-peer systems. He has published extensively in these areas, frequently gives talks at industry and academic conferences, and has been granted several U.S. patents. He received a Ph.D. and a master’s in computer science from Stanford University, and earned a bachelor’s in computer science with honors with distinction from Columbia University. Neil is also the lead author of “Foundations of Security: What Every Programmer Needs To Know” (published by Apress; ISBN 1590597842; <http://tinyurl.com/33xs6g> )
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CEP COMMENT: Really a distributed control problem. Interesting.
How to Steal a Botnet and What Can Happen When You Do
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GdqoQJa6r4&feature=relmfu>
1:14:00
ABSTRACT
Presented by Richard A. Kemmerer. <http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~kemm/>
Botnets, which are networks of malware-infected machines that are controlled by an adversary, are the root cause of a large number of security threats on the Internet. A particularly sophisticated and insidious type of bot is Torpig <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpig>, which is a malware program that is designed to harvest sensitive information (such as bank account and credit card data) from its victims. In this talk, we report on our efforts to take control of the Torpig botnet for ten days. Over this period, we observed more than 180 thousand infections and recorded more than 70 GB of data that the bots collected.
While botnets have been hijacked before, the Torpig botnet exhibits certain properties that make the analysis of the data particularly interesting. First, it is possible (with reasonable accuracy) to identify unique bot infections and relate that number to the more than 1.2 million IP addresses that contacted our command and control server during the ten day period. This shows that botnet estimates that are based on IP addresses are likely to report inflated numbers. Second, the Torpig botnet is large, targets a variety of applications, and gathers a rich and diverse set of information from the infected victims. This allowed us to perform interesting data analysis that goes well beyond simply counting the number of stolen credit cards. In this talk we will discuss the analysis that we performed on the data collected and the lessons learned from the analysis, as well as from the process of obtaining (and losing) the botnet.
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03-15-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT:
18 minutes with an agile mind: Clifford Stoll on TED.com
<http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html>
18:28
ABSTRACT
Clifford Stoll could talk about the atmosphere of Jupiter. Or hunting KGB hackers. Or Klein bottles, computers in classrooms, the future. But he’s not going to. Which is fine, because it would be criminal to confine a man with interests as multifarious as Stoll’s to give a talk on any one topic. Instead, he simply captivates his audience with a wildly energetic sprinkling of anecdotes, observations, asides — and even a science experiment. After all, by his own definition, he’s a scientist: “Once I do something, I want to do something else.” (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey)
When Clifford Stoll speaks, you can’t help but listen. Full of restless energy, he jumps from one topic to the next, darting back and forth across the stage. You may not be sure where he’s going, but the ride is always part of the adventure.
An astronomer (though his astronomy career took a turn when he noticed a bookkeeping error that ultimately led him to track down a notorious hacker), researcher and internationally recognized computer security expert — who happens to be a vocal critic of technology — Stoll makes a sharp, witty case for keeping computers out of the classroom. Currently teaching college-level physics to eighth graders at a local school, he stays busy in his spare time building Klein bottles.
“Clifford Stoll is making a cottage industry out of being gadfly to a technology-obsessed world” — New York Times
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CEP COMMENT:
Daemon: Bot-Mediated Reality
<http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality>
1:19:48
ABSTRACT
[Daniel Suarez, originally published as Leinad Zaurus, delivered a talk on the themes developed in his (originally self published) book Daemon . The book is now scheduled to be released in hard cover in January 02009 by Dutton.]
Forget about HAL-like robots enslaving humankind a few decades from now, the takeover is already underway. The agents of this unwelcome revolution aren’t strong AIs, but “bots”– autonomous programs that have insinuated themselves into the internet and thus into every corner of our lives. Apply for a mortgage lately? A bot determined your FICA score and thus whether you got the loan. Call 411? A bot gave you the number and connected the call. Highway-bots collect your tolls, read your license plate and report you if you have an outstanding violation.
Bots are proliferating because they are so very useful. Businesses rely on them to automate essential processes, and of course bots running on zombie computers are responsible for the tsunami of spam and malware plaguing Internet users worldwide. At current growth rates, bots will be the majority users of the Net by 2010.
We are visible to bots even when we are not at our computers. Next time you are on a downtown street, contemplate the bot-controlled video cameras watching you, or the bots tracking your cellphone and sniffing at your Bluetooth-enabled gizmos. We walk through a gauntlet of bot-controlled sensors every time we step into a public space and the sensors are proliferating.
Bots are at best narrow AI, nothing that would make a cleric remotely nervous. But they would scare the hell out of epidemiologists who understand that parasites don’t need to be smart to be dangerous. Meanwhile, the Internet and the complex of processing, storage and sensors linked to it is growing exponentially, creating a vast new ecology for bots to roam in. Bots aren’t evolving on their own — yet.
Left unchecked, bots will trap the human race because the automation they enable will make it possible for a few people to run humanity while the rest of us are unable to make decisions of any consequence. Bots are thus vectors for despotism, with the potential to create a world where only a small group of people understand how society works. In the worst case, the controls over bots disappear — for example, the only person who knows the password to a corporate bot dies– and the bots become autonomous.
We are in a Darwinian struggle with narrow AI, and so far at least the bots are winning. But there is a solution: build a new Internet hard-coded with democratic values. Start with an encrypted Darknet into which only verifiably human users can enter. Create augmented reality tools to identify bots in the physical world. Enlist the aid of a few tame bots to help forge a symbiotic relationship with narrow AI. Stir in some luck, and perhaps we can avoid the fate of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice who rashly enchants a broom to do his tedious chores and ends up terrorized by his imperfect creations. We had better succeed, for unlike the fable, there is no Master Sorcerer ready to return to break the spell and save us from our folly.
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CEP COMMENT:
Real Software Engineering – Glenn Vanderburg
<http://vimeo.com/16287115>
51:21
ABSTRACT
Software engineering as it’s taught in universities simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t produce software systems of high quality, and it doesn’t produce them for low cost. Sometimes, even when practiced rigorously, it doesn’t produce systems at all.
That’s odd, because in every other field, the term “engineering” is reserved for methods that work.
What then, does real software engineering look like? How can we consistently deliver high-quality systems to our customers and employers in a timely fashion and for a reasonable cost? In this talk, we’ll discuss where software engineering went wrong, and build the case that disciplined Agile methods, far from being “anti-engineering” (as they are often described), actually represent the best of engineering principles applied to the task of software development.
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CEP COMMENT:
A New Way to look at Networking
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z685OF-PS8>
1:21:15
ABSTRACT
Today’s research community congratulates itself for the success of the internet and passionately argues whether circuits or datagrams are the One True Way. Meanwhile the list of unsolved problems grows. Security, mobility, ubiquitous computing, wireless, autonomous sensors, content distribution, digital divide, third world infrastructure, etc., are all poorly served by what’s available from either the research community or the marketplace. I’ll use various strained analogies and contrived examples to argue that network research is moribund because the only thing it knows how to do is fill in the details of a conversation between two applications. Today as in the 60s problems go unsolved due to our tunnel vision and not because of their intrinsic difficulty. And now, like then, simply changing our point of view may make many hard things easy.
Speaker: Van Jacobson is a Research Fellow at PARC. Prior to that he was Chief Scientist and co-founder of Packet Design. Prior to that he was Chief Scientist at Cisco. Prior to that he was head of the Network Research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He’s been studying networking since 1969. He still hopes that someday something will start to make sense. <http://www.parc.com/about/people/88/van-jacobson.html>
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03-29-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT: Data mining for prognostics, incident prevention, and optimizing performance/efficiency. Video quality good interspersed with NASA brand-awareness commercials.
Data Mining: Digging for Clues to Aviation Safety
<http://www.youtube.com/NASATelevision#p/a/u/0/Xi3rc9n_-kY>
59:54
ABSTRACT
From <http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/leading_edge_data_mining.htm>:
Hundreds of streams of different kinds of data flow from aircraft during each flight. NASA is mining that data for clues to improve safety. When an airplane flies, hundreds of data streams fly from it every second—pilot reports, incident reports, control positions, instrument positions, warning modes. But there’s so much data, it’s been nearly impossible for airlines to do anything other than look back for the cause of something that’s already happened. Enter the data mining detectives from NASA. Data mining is the art of digging through mountains of data when you don’t know what you’re looking for or what might find. Popular search engines like Google™ do this every second. NASA is mining terabytes of aviation data to find issues before they become incidents. Southwest Airlines is already using data mining “gold” to update their flight operations. Watch The Leading Edge and learn how data mining benefits us all.
Learn about the many and extraordinary applications for data mining from guests:
- Ashok Srivastava, project manager, Aviation Safety Program, NASA Ames Research Center
- Jeff Hamlett, flight safety director, Southwest Airlines
More on data mining <https://c3.ndc.nasa.gov/dashlink/>.
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04-12-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT:
Smart Grid, Utilities, and Internet Protocols
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB4-mBQPd7k>
1:18:28
ABSTRACT
Presented by Erich W. Gunther.
The smart grid is a big topic these days, but before there was a smart grid newspaper headline, the utilities have been experimenting with TCP/IP in the backend networks for a while now. Erich Gunther of enernex (http://www.enernex.com) will present a reference model and concept of network operations for the power industry including how Internet Protocols fit in that space. Along the way he will touch on what has worked, what hasn’t and some of the security issues along the way.
Erich W. Gunther is the co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer for EnerNex Corporation – an electric power research, engineering, and consulting firm – located in Knoxville Tennessee. With 30 years of experience in the electric power industry, Erich is no stranger to smart grid – he has been involved in defining what smart grid is before the term itself was coined.
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CEP COMMENT: If you haven’t read the book, this is the next best thing.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: A Crazier Future
<http://fora.tv/2008/02/04/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb_A_Crazier_Future>
1:28:03
ABSTRACT
Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.
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CEP COMMENT: Watch this after watching the previous vid.
David Cameron in Conversation with Nassim Taleb
<http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/David_Cameron_in_Conversation_with_Nassim_Taleb>
29:14
ABSTRACT
Nassim Taleb is the best-selling author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. So called ‘Black Swan Events’ are climactic, random and hard-to-predict events that have been entirely unexpected, and often hitherto perceived to be impossible.
At this breakfast event chaired by Danny Finkelstein, Comment Editor of the Times, Nassim Taleb explains the relevance of his ideas to the economic crisis, and argue for measures to create a more Black Swan-robust society. David Cameron responds and takes part in a discussion with the audience.
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CEP COMMENT: One answer to how teenagers view time.
The Secret Powers of Time
<http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/05/24/rsa-animate-secret-powers-time/>
10:09
ABSTRACT
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
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CEP COMMENT: What really drives us…
Drive
<http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/04/08/rsa-animate-drive/>
10:48
ABSTRACT
Daniel Pink provides concrete examples of how intrinsic motivation functions both at home and in the workplace.
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CEP COMMENT:
Smile or Die
<http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/03/17/rsa-animate-smile-die/>
10:22
ABSTRACT
Acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking.
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CEP COMMENT:
Language as a Window into Human Nature
<http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/02/14/rsa-animate-language-window-human-nature/>
10:53
ABSTRACT
In this RSA Animate, Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings.
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CEP COMMENT:
The Next Generation of Neural Networks
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M&feature=relmfu>
59:24
ABSTRACT
In the 1980’s, new learning algorithms for neural networks promised to solve difficult classification tasks, like speech or object recognition, by learning many layers of non-linear features. The results were disappointing for two reasons: There was never enough labeled data to learn millions of complicated features and the learning was much too slow in deep neural networks with many layers of features. These problems can now be overcome by learning one layer of features at a time and by changing the goal of learning. Instead of trying to predict the labels, the learning algorithm tries to create a generative model that produces data which looks just like the unlabeled training data. These new neural networks outperform other machine learning methods when labeled data is scarce but unlabeled data is plentiful. An application to very fast document retrieval will be described.
Speaker: Geoffrey Hinton
Geoffrey Hinton received his BA in experimental psychology from Cambridge in 1970 and his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh in 1978. He did postdoctoral work at Sussex University and the University of California San Diego and spent five years as a faculty member in the Computer Science department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He then became a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and moved to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He spent three years from 1998 until 2001 setting up the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London and then returned to the University of Toronto where he is a University Professor. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning. He is the director of the program on “Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception” which is funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
Geoffrey Hinton is a fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He is an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a former president of the Cognitive Science Society. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2001. He was awarded the first David E. Rumelhart prize (2001), the IJCAI award for research excellence (2005), the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer award (1998) and the ITAC/NSERC award for contributions to information technology (1992).
A simple introduction to Geoffrey Hinton’s research can be found in his articles in Scientific American in September 1992 and October 1993. He investigates ways of using neural networks for learning, memory, perception and symbol processing and has over 200 publications in these areas. He was one of the researchers who introduced the back-propagation algorithm that has been widely used for practical applications. His other contributions to neural network research include Boltzmann machines, distributed representations, time-delay neural nets, mixtures of experts, Helmholtz machines and products of experts. His current main interest is in unsupervised learning procedures for neural networks with rich sensory input.
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04-26-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT: They show some of the tools they developed to visualize search usage, which is an interesting way to present the data.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page on Google
<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sergey_brin_and_larry_page_on_google.html>
20:36
ABSTRACT
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offer a peek inside the Google machine, sharing tidbits about international search patterns, the philanthropic Google Foundation, and the company’s dedication to innovation and employee happiness.
About Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Sergey Brin and Larry Page co-founded Google in 1998, and redefined the way people use the web. Now two of the world’s richest people, they still play an active role in the company, encouraging fresh…
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CEP COMMENT:
Adam Savage Presents Problem Solving: How I Do It
<http://fora.tv/2010/05/22/Adam_Savage_Presents_Problem_Solving_How_I_Do_It>
54:13
ABSTRACT
Hear Adam Savage [MythBusters] discuss problem solving at Maker Faire Bay Area 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Savage>
<http://www.adamsavage.com/>
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CEP COMMENT:
Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web
<http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html>
19:29
ABSTRACT
At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
About Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly has been publisher of the Whole Earth Review, exec editor at WIRED, founder of visionary nonprofits, and writer on biology and business and “cool tools.” He’s admired for his new…
<http://www.kk.org/>
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CEP COMMENT:
What I Saw in North Korea and Why it Matters
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIdRSl7Dc88>
1:21:49
ABSTRACT
North Korea Nuclear Proliferation, Negotiation and the human aspects of an estranged country.
My seventh trip to North Korea in seven years produced another surprise — North Korea decided to build its own light-water reactor and uranium enrichment facility. During my first visit I was shown plutonium produced in its Yongbyon nuclear complex to convince me they have the bomb. For more than 30 years, Pyongyang has moved along parallel paths of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, opting to chose bombs over electricity. I will discuss how North Korea got the bomb, why it got it, and the prospects of whether or not it will give up the bomb. Finally, I will try to show with photos and stories of how North Korea is not such a hermit kingdom after all.
Siegfried S. Hecker is co-director of the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor (Research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. He is also director emeritus at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he served as director from 1986-1997 and senior fellow until July 2005. He received his B.S., M.S., and PhD degrees in metallurgy from Case Western Reserve University. His current professional interests include plutonium research, cooperative nuclear threat reduction with the Russian nuclear complex, and global nonproliferation and counter terrorism. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is a fellow of numerous professional societies and recently received the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award.
<http://cisac.stanford.edu/people/siegfriedshecker/>
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CEP COMMENT:
Ring-Paxos: A High-Throughput Atomic Broadcast Protocol
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxWUeJlh54k>
45:38
ABSTRACT
Presented by Prof. Fernando Pedone, University of Lugano. <http://www.inf.usi.ch/faculty/pedone/>
Atomic broadcast <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_broadcast> is an important communication primitive often used to implement state-machine replication. Despite the large number of atomic broadcast algorithms proposed in the literature, few works have discussed how to turn these algorithms into efficient executable protocols. Our main contribution, Ring Paxos, is a protocol derived from Paxos. Ring Paxos inherits the reliability of Paxos and can be implemented very efficiently. We report a detailed performance analysis of Ring Paxos and compare it to other atomic broadcast protocols. Ring Paxos can deliver nearly 1 Gbps of data to tens of servers in a local-area network. Ring Paxos is available as open source.
<http://www.inf.usi.ch/faculty/pedone/Paper/2010/2010DSN.pdf>
<http://libpaxos.sourceforge.net/paxos_projects.php>
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CEP COMMENT:
Graphs with Chris Dixon
<http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks?blend=1&ob=5#p/u/27/b5GS8aInU5s>
1:12:23
ABSTRACT
Presented by Chris Dixon
It has become customary to use “graph” to refer to the underlying data structures at social networks like Facebook. (Computer scientists call the study of graphs “network theory,” but on the web the word “network” is used to refer to the websites themselves). A graph consists of a set of nodes connected by edges. The original internet graph is the web itself, where webpages are nodes and links are edges. In social graphs, the nodes are people and the edges friendship. Edges are what mathematicians call relations.
Graphs can be implicitly or explicitly created by users. Facebook and Twitter’s graphs were explicitly created by users. At Hunch we’ve created what we call the taste graph. We created this implicitly from questions answered by users and other data sources. Our thesis is that for many activities — for example deciding what movie to see or blouse to buy — it’s more useful to have the neighbors on your graph be people with similar tastes versus people who are your friends. I’ll talk about the rising importance of these types of graphs, and dig deeper into some examples.
Chris Dixon is the co-founder of Hunch and the Founder Collective and a personal investor in a number of early-stage technology companies. He lives and works in New York city.
<http://hunch.com/>
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CEP COMMENT:
Minimally Invasive Education through Social Play
<http://fora.tv/2007/09/27/Minimally_Invasive_Education_through_Social_Play>
33:17
ABSTRACT
Case Study: Minimally Invasive Education through Social Play with Dr. Sugata Mitra.
Creativity and play are closely connected, and play can be a form to arrive at collaborative creativity.
In this session, Dr Sugata Mitra, known from the ‘Hole in the Wall’ project, will share with us how Indian children have explored new technology and found compelling ways to use it – PICNIC
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CEP COMMENT:
Mastering Attention to Transform Experience
<http://fora.tv/2009/04/30/Mastering_Attention_to_Transform_Experience>
1:12:26
ABSTRACT
Can we train our focus? What’s different about the way creative people pay attention?
Winifred Gallagher, an acclaimed behavioral science writer, makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it.
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CEP COMMENT:
The impact one cell phone can make on a village…
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/iqbal_quadir_says_mobiles_fight_poverty.html>
15:55
ABSTRACT
Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in poor Bangladesh, and later as a banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi — and to become a champion of bottom-up development.
About Iqbal Quadir
Iqbal Quadir is an advocate of business as a humanitarian tool. With GrameenPhone <http://www.grameenphone.com/>, he brought the first commercial telecom services to poor areas of Bangladesh. His latest project will help rural…
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CEP COMMENT:
Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles”
<http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html>
9:05
ABSTRACT
As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.
About Eli Pariser
Pioneering online organizer Eli Pariser is the author of “The Filter Bubble,” about how personalized search might be narrowing our worldview.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Pariser>
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CEP COMMENT: Innovation in Mexico. Claims to have invented uP-based power system automation/measurement/control in 1976, and a slew of innovations after that…
Diversity, Innovation, Business Dev & Emerging Markets
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucVkSVi4Ok>
50:57
ABSTRACT
Presented by Jorge Zavala.
A walk through the life of Jorge Zavala as an engineer, serial entrepreneur and business developer, and the challenges he faced doing business in Latin America to the creation of global companies in Silicon Valley.
Jorge will share his experiences opening the first TechBA office: a Mexican program to help startups to jumpstart in a highly innovated and competitive environment. He will also explain about various opportunities to help and advise foreign companies.
So far, TechBA has introduced more than 450 companies to new markets in the USA, Canada and Europe.
Jorge Zavala is the CEO of TechBA, The Mexico-Silicon Valley Technology Business Accelerator.
Jorge has been very active in promoting entrepreneurship, venture capital and business development strategies in Mexico as a tool to position emerging companies in global markets. He is a member of the Mexican Diaspora with an active participation in Brain Circulation forums related to best practices for learning and knowledge sharing.
He holds an Engineering degree from La Salle University and a Masters in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo.
About Perspectivas Speaker Series: Perspectivas is a speaker series aimed to empower and inspire individuals by providing ‘mentoring at scale’. Latino scientists and professionals share their perspectives on careers, work-life balance, and how they’ve achieved personal success.
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgezavala>
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CEP COMMENT: Open the lab doors and they will come…
NYC Resistor: Making Awesome Things Happen
<http://motherboard.tv/2011/4/23/motherboard-tv-nyc-resistor-making-awesome-things-happen>
11:04
ABSTRACT
Founded by a handful of friends who wanted a place to tinker with electronics and meet like-minded hackers for good, NYC Resistor <http://www.nycresistor.com/>. has blossomed into one of the country’s most influential hackerspaces. On any given Thursday night, their cozy, cluttered loft workshop is crawling with a diverse crowd of hardcore tinkerers and curious newcomers. Throwing some caution and many user warranties to the wind, they’re there to build, refine, break and share everything from toy robots to intricate paper sculpture to open source musical instruments.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace> <http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackerspaces>
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CEP COMMENT: What can one say? Its Edison…
Happy Birthday Thomas Edison: Let Us Celebrate With Two Brief Talking Moving Pictures
<http://motherboard.tv/2011/2/11/happy-birthday-thomas-edison-let-us-celebrate-with-two-brief-talking-moving-pictures>
8:05
ABSTRACT
To celebrate the 164th birthday of America’s most famous inventor beyond just clicking on the Google doodle, turn off your incandescent lightbulbs, switch off your phonographs, and put away your picturescope, and then watch these two neat little video biographies from the Internet, both of which feature soothing British narrators.
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CEP COMMENT:
“The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil”: He’s Seen the Future, and the Machine Is Us
<http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/6/14/the-singularity-of-ray-kurzweil-he-s-seen-the-future-and-the-machine-is-us-video>
23:49
ABSTRACT
Last year, Motherboard visited the man who gave the world text-to-speech technology and the musical synthesizer to talk about his vision of the post-Singularity future – a world in which humans will remake their own biology by filling their bodies with nanoscale machines that can repair cells and meld their minds with super-intelligent computers. The eventual goal is to become immortal, and perhaps resurrect the dead…
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil>
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CEP COMMENT: Technology to the People! Way cool. One observation was how readily people will accept new technology in the auto.
Looking at Transportation in New Ways
<http://www.hotchips.org/archives/hc22video/keynote2.html> Need to use IE or Chrome to view.
<http://www.hotchips.org/conference-archives/hot-chips-22> Start here if the above link doesn’t work and scroll to Keynote 2.
1:01:42
ABSTRACT
Volkswagen’s silicon valley research center and the future of transportation.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_Electronics_Research_Laboratory>
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CEP COMMENT:
Saul Griffith: Howtoons
<http://fora.tv/2010/05/23/Saul_Griffith_Howtoons>
26:25
ABSTRACT
What happens when you take an inventor (Saul Griffith), a comic book artist (Nick Dragotta), and a toy designer (Ingrid Dragotta)? You get Howtoons. <http://www.howtoons.com/>
Their mission is to provide engaging content that teaches kids how to build things, combining instructions with storytelling.
Bio
Dr. Saul Griffith has multiple degrees in materials science and mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in Programmable Assembly and Self Replicating machines at MIT.
<http://www.saulgriffith.com/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Griffith>
He is the co-founder of numerous companies including: Low Cost Eyeglasses, Squid Labs, Potenco, <http://www.instructables.com/>, “HowToons” and Makani Power. Griffith has been awarded numerous awards for invention including the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Collegiate Inventor’s award, and the Lemelson-MIT Student prize. A large focus of Griffith’s research efforts are in minimum and constrained energy surfaces for novel manufacturing techniques and other applications. Griffith holds multiple patents and patents pending in textiles, optics, nanotechnology, and energy production.
Griffith co-authors children’s comic books called “HowToons” about building your own science and engineering gadgets with Nick Dragotta and Joost Bonsen. Griffith is a technical advisor to Make magazine and Popular Mechanics. Griffith is a columnist and contributor to Make and Craft magazines.
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CEP COMMENT:
Matt Walker: Secrets of the Sleeping Brain
<http://fora.tv/2009/08/11/Matt_Walker_Secrets_of_the_Sleeping_Brain#fullprogram>
1:41:06
ABSTRACT
Why do we sleep? Although science has yet to explain the reason we spend one-third of our lives in this bizarre state, an exciting theory suggests that sleep can solidify newly learned memories by rewiring the architecture of brain. <http://walkerlab.berkeley.edu/index.html>
Emerging neuroscience evidence also indicates that sleep can intelligently associate and integrate new memories together, performing a kind of “sleep-dependent alchemy.” This phenomenon may fuel creative human insights, often reflected in dream content.
In addition to memory benefits, recent findings also suggest that sleep can “refresh” emotional brain reactivity, smoothing away the rough edges from our prior waking concerns, thereby allowing rational next-day decisions.
Thinking about skimping on your Zs? You’d better tune in to hear what UC Berkeley’s Matt Walker has to say about it first!
Bio
Matt Walker is a Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of California Berkeley.
<http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/mwalker.html>
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CEP COMMENT:
Crowdsourcing Innovation in the Public Sector
<http://fora.tv/2011/01/20/Brandon_Kesller_Crowdsourcing_Innovation_in_the_Public_Sector>
15:29
ABSTRACT
Module 2: Technology & Platforms
Crowdsourcing Innovation in the Public Sector with Brandon Kessler, founder of ChallengePost <http://www.challengepost.com>.
Social media shifts marketing from controlled, one-way communications into collaborative, intimate dialogues with — and among — constituents. The strategies, tools, rules of engagement, and metrics present marketing and digital professionals with a series of challenges that are best distilled into one question: “What do I do now?”
Bio
Brandon Kessler is the founder and CEO of ChallengePost, a New York City-based start-up that is a marketplace for challenges. A Challenge takes place when an unsolved problem is released to the public by an organization or individual, with a prize reserved for the solver.
Current clients include the City of New York, First Lady Michelle Obama and the USDA, Thomson Reuters, Samsung, and more. ChallengePost recently created and launched Challenge.gov, the Governmentwide Challenge Platform for the US federal government.
Prior to that, Kessler founded independent record label Messenger Records, which was repeatedly singled out for its early embrace of the internet, and its creative use of grassroots promotions. Before Messenger Records and while in college, he founded a college radio promotion company and a street marketing promotions company. Kessler holds undergraduate and MBA degrees from Columbia University.
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CEP COMMENT:
Frans Johansson: The Medici Effect
<http://fora.tv/2010/11/05/Frans_Johansson_The_Medici_Effect>
12:37
ABSTRACT
From Johansson book <http://www.themedicieffect.com/downloads/MediciEffect.pdf>:
The idea behind this book is simple: When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. The name I have given this phenomenon, the Medici Effect, comes from a remarkable burst of creativity in fifteenth-century Italy.
The Medicis were a banking family in Florence who funded creators from a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this family and a few others like it, sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects converged upon the city of Florence.
There they found each other, learned from one another, and broke down barriers between disciplines and cultures. Together they forged a new world based on new ideas—what became known as the Renaissance. As a result, the city became the epicenter of a creative explosion, one of the most innovative eras in history. The effects of the Medici family can be felt even to this day.
We, too, can create the Medici Effect. We can ignite this explosion of extraordinary ideas and take advantage of it as individuals, as teams, and as organizations. We can do it by bringing together different disciplines and cultures and searching for the places where they connect.
Bio
Frans Johansson is an author, speaker and entrepreneur <http://www.themedicieffect.com/>. The Medici Effect was named one of the best innovation books of the year by several organizations and was selected as one of the top 10 best business books by Amazon.com. It has been translated into 17 languages.
<http://www.amazon.com/Medici-Effect-Breakthrough-Insights-Intersection/dp/1591391865>
The book looks at how individuals, teams and organizations can create an explosion of remarkable ideas at the intersection of different fields, cultures and industries. Johansson has been living in the Intersection most of his life; he was a founder of both a Boston-based software company and a medical device company operating out of Baltimore, Maryland and Stockholm, Sweden. He has written articles on healthcare, information technology and the science of sport fishing. He has been featured on CNN’s AC360, ABC’s Early Morning Show, and CNBC’s The Business of Innovation series along with Jack Welch and Muhammad Yunus.
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CEP COMMENT:
Crowdsourcing Work
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXiqUEM0M1s>
1:12:05 starts around 7:00
ABSTRACT
Lukas Biewald of Delores Labs <http://crowdflower.com/>, discusses crowdsourcing applications like Mechanical Turk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk> that utilize online workers to do menial tasks for short periods of time.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crowdsourcing_projects>
Bio
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lukas_Biewald>
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CEP COMMENT:
Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization
<http://fora.tv/2010/04/01/Six_Easy_Steps_to_Avert_the_Collapse_of_Civilization>
1:42:54
ABSTRACT
Neuroscientist and fiction writer David Eagleman presents “Six Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization.” <http://www.amazon.com/David-Eagleman-Steps-Collapse-Civilization/dp/B003IPD95M>
Civilizations always think they’re immortal, Eagleman says, but they nearly always perish, leaving “nothing but ruins and scattered genetics.” It takes luck and new technology to survive. We may be particularly lucky to have Internet technology to help manage the six requirements of a durable civilization:
1. “Try not to cough on one another.” More humans have died from epidemics than from all famines and wars. Disease precipitated the fall of Greece, Rome, and the civilizations of the Americas. People used to bunch up around the infected, which pushed local disease into universal plague. Now we can head that off with Net telepresence, telemedicine, and medical alert networks. All businesses should develop a work-from-home capability for their workforce.
2. “Don’t lose things.” As proved by the destruction of the Alexandria Library and of the literature of Mayans and Minoans, “knowledge is hard won but easily lost.” Plumbing disappeared for a thousand years when Rome fell. Inoculation was invented in China and India 700 years before Europeans rediscovered it. These days Michelangelo’s David has been safely digitized in detail. Eagleman has direct access to all the literature he needs via PubMed, JSTOR, and Google Books. “Distribute, don’t reinvent.”
3. “Tell each other faster.” Don’t let natural disasters cascade. The Minoans perished for lack of the kind of tsunami alert system we now have. Countless Haitians in the recent earthquake were saved by <http://ushahidi.com/>, which aggregated cellphone field reports in real time.
4. “Mitigate tyranny.” The USSR’s collapse was made inevitable by state-controlled media and state-mandated mistakes such as Lysenkoism, which forced a wrong theory of wheat farming on 13 time zones, and starved millions. Now crowd-sourced cellphone users can sleuth out vote tampering. We should reward companies that stand up against censorship, as Google has done in China.
5. “Get more brains involved in solving problems.” Undertapping human capital endangers the future. Open courseware from colleges is making higher education universally accessible. Crowd-sourced problem solving is being advanced by sites such as PatientsLikeMe, Foldit (protein folding), and Cstart (moon exploration). Perhaps the next step is “society sourcing.”
6. “Try not to run out of energy.” When energy expenditure outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. Email saves trees and trucking. Online shopping is a net energy gain, with UPS optimizing delivery routes and never turning left. We need to expand the ability to hold meetings and conferences online.
But if the Net is so crucial, what happens if the Net goes down? It may have to go down a few times before we learn how to defend it properly, before we catch on that civilization depends on it for survival.
Bio
Stwart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand>
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a fiction writer. During the day, he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law at Baylor College of Medicine. He is best known for his work on time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Eagleman> also watch <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQab6oHWgrY>
He is a fiction writer. His debut work of fiction, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, became an international bestseller and is published in 22 languages.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sum_(book)>
Alexander Rose. As the director of the Long Now Foundation, Alexander Rose has facilitated projects such as the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Rose shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the first prototype of which is in the Science Museum of London. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation>
Hired as the first employee of the foundation in February of 1997, Rose has been an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics Inc., a project manager for Shamrock Communications, and a founding partner of Inertia Labs. Rose attended the Art Center College of Design and graduated with a bachelor of arts honors degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Industrial Design in 1995.
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CEP COMMENT:
Bruce Pittman: Opening Up Space for You and Me
<http://fora.tv/2010/05/22/Bruce_Pittman_Opening_Up_Space_for_You_and_Me>
28:06
ABSTRACT
The International Space Station is almost complete and is open for business. There are a number of entrepreneurs that will soon be offering low cost access to both orbital and sub-orbital space. There are even private companies that are looking to land robots on the moon in the next two years.
This talk discusses all these near term opportunities and how ordinary people can participate in the the space program.
Bio
Bruce Pittman is the Director of Flight Projects and Chief System Engineer at the NASA Space Portal at the Ames Research Center where he supports both suborbital human-tended research, orbital applications and research and lunar commercialization. He has been involved in high technology product development, project management and system engineering for over 30 years.
Mr. Pittman has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from U. C. Davis and a MS in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University.
Mr. Pittman is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) a member of the AIAA Commercial Space Group and founder and first chairman of the System Engineering Technical Committee. He is also a member of the organizing committee for the Space Investment Summit series, a member of the Aerospace Technology Working Group (ATWG) and President of the Silicon Valley Space Club.
<http://spaceprizes.blogspot.com/2011/04/space-access-11-nasa-ames-space-portal.html>
Bruce Pittman
Director of Flight Project
Commercial Space Portal/ACES
MS 555-3, NASA Research Park, Moffett Field CA 94035
Tel: 650 604-4655
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CEP COMMENT:
Nathan Myhrvold: Intellectual Ventures research lab and the creative medical inventions
<http://www.tedmed.com/videos-info?name=Nathan_Myhrvold_at_TEDMED_2010&q=published&year=all&loader=false>
25:52
ABSTRACT
Former CTO of Microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold, gives us a peak into Intellectual Ventures research lab and the creative medical inventions they are working on.
BIO
Nathan Myhrvold, Ph.D. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold> founded Intellectual Ventures <http://www.intellectualventures.com/Home.aspx> after retiring from his position as chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation. At Intellectual Ventures, Myhrvold is focused on a variety of business interests relating to the funding, creation and commercialization of inventions. During his 14-year tenure at Microsoft, Dr. Myhrvold held various positions within the company and was responsible for founding Microsoft Research and numerous technology groups that resulted in many of Microsoft’s most successful products. He has extensive experience successfully linking research to product development and commercialization.
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CEP COMMENT:
Ed Boyden: A light switch for neurons
<http://www.ted.com/talks/ed_boyden.html>
18:24
ABSTRACT
Ed Boyden shows how, by inserting genes for light-sensitive proteins into brain cells, he can selectively activate or de-activate specific neurons with fiber-optic implants. With this unprecedented level of control, he’s managed to cure mice of analogs of PTSD and certain forms of blindness. On the horizon: neural prosthetics. Session host Juan Enriquez leads a brief post-talk Q&A.
BIO
Ed Boyden <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Boyden> Working with an extraordinary array of tools — from 3-D printers to lasers to flasks of algae — Ed Boyden is creating new brains. A pioneer in the field of optogenetics, he is the founder and principal investigator of the synthetic neurobiology group at MIT.
Using a combination of lasers and genetic engineering, he implants brains with optical fibers that allow him to activate special proteins in specific neurons and see their connections. In addition to helping create detailed maps of brain circuitry, the engineering of these cells has been used to cure blindness in mice, and could point the way to cures for Parkinsons or Alzheimers, or to ways of connecting to the brain via prosthetics.
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CEP COMMENT:
Jonathan Drori: Why we’re storing billions of seeds
<http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_drori_why_we_re_storing_billions_of_seeds.html>
6:38
ABSTRACT
In this brief talk from TED U 2009, Jonathan Drori encourages us to save biodiversity — one seed at a time. Reminding us that plants support human life, he shares the vision of the Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion seeds to date from dwindling yet essential plant species.
BIO
Jonathan Drori has dedicated his career to media and learning. As the Head of Commissioning for BBC Online, he led the effort to create bbc.co.uk, the online face of the BBC (an effort he recalls fondly). He came to the web from the TV side of the BBC, where as an editor and producer he headed up dozens of television series on science, education and the arts.
After almost two decades at the BBC, he’s now a director at Changing Media Ltd., a media and education consultancy, and is a visiting professor at University of Bristol, where he studies educational media and misperceptions in science. He continues to executive produce the occasional TV series, including 2004’s award-winning “The DNA Story” and 2009’s “Great Sperm Race.” He is on the boards of the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Woodland Trust.
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CEP COMMENT:
Walter Mossberg: medical consumer products and why they suck
<http://www.tedmed.com/videos-info?name=Walter_Mossberg_at_TEDMED_2010&q=published&year=all&loader=false>
12:16
ABSTRACT
Walt Mossberg, Technology Journalist for the Wall Street Journal, shares his thoughts about medical consumer products.
BIO
Walt Mossberg is the author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, which has appeared every Thursday since 1991.
He is also the co-creator and co-producer of the technology industry’s most prestigious annual conference, D: All Things Digital, and is the co-executive editor of the technology web site, allthingsd.com, which extends the experience of the D Conference to the Web. In both ventures, he partners with the prominent blogger and author, Kara Swisher.
In addition to Personal Technology, Mr. Mossberg also writes the Mossberg’s Mailbox column in the Journal, and edits the Mossberg Solution column, which is authored by his colleague Katherine Boehret.
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CEP COMMENT: Miniaturization of electronics for implants. There is an implant for that…
Stephen Oesterle
<http://www.tedmed.com/videos-info?name=Stephen_Oesterle_at_TEDMED_2010&q=published&year=all&loader=false>
15:53
ABSTRACT
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any smaller, Medtronic’s Stephen Oesterle show’s us something new in a ‘big’ way!
BIO
Stephen N. Oesterle, M.D., joined Medtronic in 2002 as Senior Vice President for Medicine and Technology. In this role, Steve provides executive leadership for Medtronic scientific research, formation of technological strategies and continued development of strong cooperative relationships with the world’s medical communities, technical universities, financial institutions and emerging medical device companies.
Previously, Steve served as Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard University Medical School and as Director of Invasive Cardiology Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. A teacher and innovator in the field of cardiac catheterization, he has also developed and directed interventional cardiology programs at Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles; at Georgetown University; and at Stanford University.
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CEP COMMENT:
Predator: A Visual Tracker that Learns from its Errors
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmG_FjG4Dy8&feature=relmfu>
46:44
ABSTRACT
I will be talking about an algorithm that I have developed during my PhD thesis and which recently become popular on the internet: <http://goo.gl/rC5Xj>. The algorithm is called Predator and it is a visual tracker that has the property to improve its own performance during run-time. This is achieved by designing a feedback which is in computer vision not common. I will cover the journey that lead to the development of Predator, comment on the implementation and suggest potential directions for future research.
About the Speaker
Zdenek Kalal is a stubborn and hardworking person that enjoys working on problems, the solution of which may have high impact. His education started in Czech Republic, where he absolved business high school and later entered Czech Technical University to study control theory. His master thesis, dealing with face detection, was awarded the Prize of the Dean. In 2007, he started his PhD at the University of Surrey, UK. He focused on self-improving real-time vision algorithms and published 5 research papers at international computer vision conferences. His research effort was recognized by the UK ICT Pioneer 2011 prize which resulted in a significant attention from hackers, artists, universities up to top companies. Zdenek has released the source code of his PhD thesis and maintains a supporting discussion group with nearly 600 members to date. He is currently a postdoc at EPFL in Switzerland where he works on augmented reality applications.
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CEP COMMENT:
Intelligentsia @ Google SMO: Direct Trade Coffee and Espresso Methodology
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpRhV25v33U>
1:35:14
ABSTRACT
An in-depth look into the world of coffee, featuring presentations by Intelligentsia Roasters. Learn more about the farms, the families, and the coffee, and what it takes to make “the perfect cup”. Speakers include Geoff Watts, Stephen Morrissey, and Kyle Glanville. Promises to be the most Caffeinated TechTalk ever!
Intelligentsia goes beyond fair trade; They work hand-in-hand with farmers year round, and purchase the selected coffee at prices 25% above fair trade, direct from the farmer. These beans are then sold as single-origin, or expertly blended into rich, complex and satisfying coffees.
Learn more about coffee, and how to better enjoy it.
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CEP COMMENT:
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon_Lessons from the WILD Room, an Interactive Multi-Surface Environment
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_cQSJ0wiI>
1:23:14
ABSTRACT
Creating the next generation of interactive systems requires experimental platforms that let us explore novel forms of interaction in real settings.
The WILD room (http://www.lri.fr/~mbl/WILD) is a high-performance interactive visualization environment for exploring the notion of multi-surface interaction. WILD combines an ultra-high resolution wall display, a multitouch table, a motion tracking system and various mobile devices. Our target users are scientists who are confronted with massive amounts of data, including astrophysicists, biologists and neuroscientists. I will describe the design trade-offs and lessons learned during the development of this platform with respect to hardware, interaction, software engineering, and participatory design of applications.
BIO
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon is Professor of Computer Science at Université Paris-Sud (France) since 1992 and was director of LRI, the laboratory for computer science (280 members including 100 faculty and 125 Ph.D. students), from 2002 to 2009. Michel has worked in human-computer interaction for over 25 years and was elected to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2006. His research interests include fundamental aspects of interaction, engineering of interactive systems, computer-supported cooperative work and novel interaction techniques. His current research is conducted in the In Situ group, a joint lab between LRI and INRIA (http://insitu.lri.fr) and at Stanford University where he is spending a sabbatical year. Michel founded AFIHM, the francophone association for human-computer interaction, and has been a member of the ACM Council and the ACM Publications Board.
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CEP COMMENT:
A Crash Course in Modern Hardware
<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/click-crash-course-modern-hardware?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokua7PZKXonjHpfsXw6ekrX7Hr08Yy0EZ5VunJEUWy2YUETNQhcOuuEwcWGog8wRZNFvOMb5RF9%2BY%3D>
54:06
ABSTRACT
In this presentation from the JVM Languages Summit 2009, Cliff Click discusses the Von Neumann architecture, CISC vs RISC, the rise of multicore, Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP), pipelining, out-of-order dispatch, static vs dynamic ILP, performance impact of cache misses, memory performance, memory vs CPU caching, examples of memory/CPU cache interaction, and tips for improving performance.
Bio
With more than twenty-five years experience developing compilers, Cliff serves as Azul Systems’ Chief JVM Architect. Cliff joined Azul in 2002 from Sun Microsystems where he was the architect and lead developer of the HotSpot Server Compiler, a technology that has delivered dramatic improvements in Java performance since its inception.
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CEP COMMENT:
Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
<http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/video/index.php?video=Authors_at_Google_presents_Richard_Florida_2>
also <http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/video/index.php?video=Authors_at_Google_presents_Richard_Florida>
59:11
ABSTRACT
“Richard Florida took on Thomas Friedman and challenged his notion that the world is flat – suggesting instead that it is “spiky” by pointing out that the real economic activity happens within cities, not countries and that it DOES matter where you live even though technology has seemingly made it easier to do business anywhere.” — Sprout
“If you think working remotely means where you live–your place–doesn’t matter anymore, Florida correctly shows us–with his trademark data and analysis–why you’re dead wrong. The book is a superb treatise on the location paradox: the idea that as the world becomes more mobile, the more decisive location becomes…We learn why San Francisco is the best city for young singles; why Washington D.C. is the best place to raise kids; and why New York City is one of the top spots for retirees. Something to look forward to!” — Michelle Conlin, Business Week
BIO
Authors blog <http://www.creativeclass.com/>
Authors book site <http://www.creativeclass.com/whos_your_city/>
Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0027VSZLQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=refleonthetec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B0027VSZLQ>
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CEP COMMENT: I’ve been advocating aspects of this for a few years now <https://reflectionsonthetechnium.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/letter-to-entrepreneur-bill-gates-metabolomics/>
Daniel Kraft: Medicine’s future? There’s an app for that
<http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kraft_medicine_s_future.html>
18:22
ABSTRACT
At TEDxMaastricht, Daniel Kraft offers a fast-paced look at the next few years of innovations in medicine, powered by new tools, tests and apps that bring diagnostic information right to the patient’s bedside.
Daniel Kraft <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kraft> is a Stanford- and Harvard-trained physician-scientist with over 20 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and innovation. Dr. Kraft chairs the Medicine track for Singularity University and is Executive Director and curator for the FutureMed, a program which explores convergent, exponentially developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare.
Dr. Kraft recently founded IntelliMedicine <http://intellimedicine.com/>, focused on connected, data driven, and integrated personalized medicine. He is the inventor of the MarrowMiner, an FDA approved device for the minimally invasive harvest of bone marrow, and founded RegenMed Systems, a company developing technologies to enable adult stem cell based regenerative therapies.
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CEP COMMENT: Talkers for the first 35 minutes or so then Q&A, then about 45 minutes a panel discussion starts. I would have thought that something originating from the White House would have more production value.
Building the 21st Century Grid
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/06/13/building-21st-century-grid>
83:41
ABSTRACT
Administration officials outine efforts underway to build new transmission lines and applying digital technologies to the electric system to ensure a secure and reliable grid, foster innovation and create the jobs of the future.
A POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR THE 21st CENTURY GRID: Enabling Our Secure Energy Future
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/nstc-smart-grid-june2011.pdf>
Also see <http://collaborate.nist.gov/twiki-sggrid/bin/view/SmartGrid/IKBFramework>
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CEP COMMENT: You have been warned!
Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet
<http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks#p/u/3/qbIozKVz73g>
1:00:54
ABSTRACT
VOIP and teleconferencing often perform much more poorly on today’s Internet than the Internet of a decade ago, despite great gains in bandwidth. Lots of fiber, cheap memory, smart hardware, variability of wireless throughput, changes in web browser behavior, changes in TCP implementations, and a focus on bench marking Internet performance solely by bandwidth, and engineer’s natural reluctance to drop packets have conspired to encourage papering over problems by adding buffers; each of which may introduce latency when filled.
Buffering mistakes have been made in all technologies: operating systems, home routers both wired and wireless, broadband equipment, corporate networks, 3G networks and parts of the core Internet itself. The mistaken quest to never drop packets has destroyed interactivity under load, and often results in actual higher packet loss, as TCP’s congestion avoidance algorithms have been defeated by these buffers. The lessons of the “RED manifesto” of 1997 have been forgotten or never learned by a new generation of engineers.
Full solutions require careful queue management, and that management should be everywhere; we no longer have the luxury to think that this is a problem solely of Internet routers. I will describe some of the mitigations and solutions to this problem, and how you can at least make your home network and systems behave the way they should.
More info at <http://www.bufferbloat.net>, slides available at <http://mirrors.bufferbloat.net/Talks/BayBloat04262011/>
BIO
Speaker Info: Jim Gettys, Bell Labs
Jim Gettys is well-known as one of the original developers of the X Window System, and has long been active in open source and internet standards. His recent experiences with immersive telepresence applications exposed systemic implementation errors in many Internet buffer and queue designs. He describes the journey of discovery in this talk.
Blog at <http://gettys.wordpress.com/>
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CEP COMMENT: Windmills 30 miles or so off the coast of Maine. An engineering materials perspective.
Habib Dagher: Powering the Future
<http://fora.tv/2010/08/17/Habib_Dagher_Powering_the_Future>
1:10:15
ABSTRACT
Habib Dagher, the Bath Iron Works Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Maine, is the founding director of the AEWC Advanced Structures & Composites Center.
Established by the National Science Foundation in 1996, the interdisciplinary AEWC Center is a world leader in the development of cost-effective, high performance hybrid composite materials for construction applications. The center recently received $15 million in funding from the Department of Energy for the development of offshore wind energy off Maine’s coast.
BIO
Dr. Habib Dagher <http://www2.umaine.edu/aewc/content/view/25/34/> is Professor of Civil/Structural Engineering at the University of Maine, Bath Iron Works Professor of Structural Engineering, and founding Director of the AEWC Advanced Structures & Composites Center.
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CEP COMMENT:
Ants: The Invisible Majority with Dr. Brian Fisher
<http://fora.tv/2009/07/23/Ants_The_Invisible_Majority_with_Dr_Brian_Fisher>
41:19
ABSTRACT
Ants may be tiny, but they play a huge role in their ecosystems. In fact, biologists estimate that the collective weight of all the ants on Earth is equal to the weight of all humans.
In this talk, Dr. Brian Fisher describes the unique behaviors and incredible adaptations of our planet’s most charismatic small animals. See how ants farm, hunt and tend “herds of livestock”. Learn how primitive Dracula ants feed on their sisters’ blood.
Watch the fastest recorded movement of any animal — a feisty ant with lightening-quick jaws that Dr. Fisher filmed with one of the world’s most advanced high-speed cameras. You’ll also learn about Dr. Fisher’s conservation efforts in Madagascar and gain new respect for our smallest neighbors.
BIO
Brian L. Fisher, Chairman of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, is an ant systematist who specializes in the large-scale discovery, description and naming of African and Malagasy ants. In the past few years, he has discovered over 800 new species of ants in Madagascar alone, including the Madagascar Dracula Ant – a find that is helping scientists to understand the evolution of ants from wasps. Fisher also maps diversity patterns and uses them to instruct land management and conservation decisions. His inventory work in Africa and Madagascar demonstrates the feasibility and challenges of conducting global biodiversity inventories. He is currently developing technologies for collaborative taxonomy, which will accelerate the process of identification and description of new species with products accessible across a broad community of users (see <http://www.antweb.org>). He also has particular interest in the evolution of the early lineages of ants and is dedicated to instructing the next generation of ant systematists.
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CEP COMMENT: Interesting, would have been better if they’d have shown more of the presenters slides.
Civilization on Six Legs: Societies of Ants and Honeybees
<http://fora.tv/2010/10/06/Civilization_on_Six_Legs_Societies_of_Ants_and_Honeybees>
1:09:18
ABSTRACT
Can human beings really improve our group decision making by imitating the democracy of honeybees? Are ants truly considered the highest form of insect evolution? Join Litquake and the California Academy of Sciences as they present two leading experts for a fascinating and thrilling discussion of our planet’s smallest and most complex social organizations.
Moffett provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, while animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals that bees have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making.
BIO
Mark Moffett
Contract photographer Mark Moffett <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_W._Moffett> has developed a career that combines science and photography, in spite of being a high school dropout. Although his family was not academic, encouraged by his parents he sought out biologists by the age of 12. Soon he became a field assistant on research projects across Latin America.
After entering and eventually earning his B.A. at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Moffett taught himself macrophotography to document his 1989 Harvard Ph.D. under Professor E.O. Wilson on marauder ants. His first published images were of these ants in National Geographic magazine.
Upon completing his doctorate Moffett spent two years as curator of ants at Harvard. Still based at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, his research presently concerns insect and spider social behavior and the structure and dynamics of forest ecosystems, particularly their canopies. Recently he has been investigating canopies of the supertall coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest, for which he led (with Professor Steve Sillet of Humboldt College) the first ever ascent and study of the world’s tallest tree, known as the National Geographic redwood.
In 1993 Harvard University Press published Moffett’s book, The High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy. Today his research and National Geographic photography are interspersed with writing and public lecturing about rain forests.
Thomas Seeley
Thomas D. Seeley <http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/seeley.shtml> is Professor and Chairman in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. He is a world authority on animal behavior, especially the social behavior of honey bees. At home more in the field than the laboratory, his scientific work features observational and experimental investigations of the inner workings of honey bee colonies living under natural conditions.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the recipient of numerous honors for his scientific work including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished U.S. Scientist Award, and a Gold Medal from Apimondia for his book The Wisdom of the Hive. Currently, he is working on a new book, Swarm Intelligence in Bees.
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CEP COMMENT:
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages
<http://fora.tv/2007/08/17/Glut_Mastering_Information_Though_the_Ages>
1:32:26
ABSTRACT
Glut: Mastering Information Though the Ages with Alex Wright speaking at a seminar hosted by The Long Now Foundation.
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801475090/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=refleonthetec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217153&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0801475090>
Alex Wright <http://www.alexwright.org/> is a writer and information architect who currently works for the New York Times. His first book, “Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages” is an impressive survey on how societies have dealt with information overload through time. As an information architect, Alex has led projects for The New York Times, IBM, Microsoft, Harvard University, our own Rosetta Project, the Internet Archive, Yahoo!, Macromedia and Sun Microsystems, among others
– The Long Now Foundation
BIO
Alex Wright is a writer and information architect who lives and works in New York City. He’s the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Alex has led information architecture initiatives for The New York Times, Harvard University, IBM, Microsoft, The Long Now Foundation, Internet Archive, and Yahoo!, among others. His work has won numerous industry awards, including a Webby nomination, Cool Site of the Year award, the PRSA Silver Anvil and an American Graphic Design Award. Alex’s writing has appeared in Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The Believer, Harvard Magazine, Utne Reader, Yankee, Think, Boxes and Arrows, New Architect, WebTechniques, Boston Business, Design Times and Library Journal, among others. A popular speaker and lecturer, Alex has presented at The Long Now Foundation, Gartner Group, UC-Berkeley, the Institute of Design-Chicago, Seybold, the ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit, CMP Web conferences, Association of Internet Professionals, Creating for the Web, and numerous IBM conferences. Alex holds a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brown University and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. He has also completed graduate coursework in journalism at Harvard, and in usability engineering at UC-Berkeley.
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CEP COMMENT:
Jeff Rubin: Oil and the End of Globalization
<http://fora.tv/2010/10/28/Jeff_Rubin_Oil_and_the_End_of_Globalization#fullprogram>
1:07:18
ABSTRACT
What do subprime mortgages, Atlantic salmon dinners, SUVs and globalization all have in common? They depend on cheap oil.
According to Jeff Rubin, we are poised on the brink of massive change. Dependent as it is on cheap oil, our global civilization is about to get the shock of its life.
Systems of trade, of finance, of shipping and manufacturing, of labor and international relations are all about to be rearranged. Get ready for a new world — one in which domestic manufacturing will be reinvigorated and the products and services we still enjoy will start coming from places much closer to home. There will be winners as well as losers when the age of globalization comes to an end. Distance will soon cost money, and so will burning carbon — both will bring long-lost jobs back home.
We may not see the kind of economic growth that globalization has brought, but local economies will be revitalized, as will our cities and neighbourhoods. Whether we like it or not, our world is about to get a whole lot smaller.
BIO
Jeff Rubin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Rubin> was Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets for almost twenty years. He was one of the first economists to accurately predict soaring oil prices back in 2000 and is now one of the world’s most sought-after energy experts. Rubin published Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization in 2009.
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400068509/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=refleonthetec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217153&creative=399349&creativeASIN=1400068509>
<http://www.jeffrubinssmallerworld.com/>
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CEP COMMENT: Pretty astounding, a international cartel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel> formed to limit the service life of light bulbs to 1,000 hours. Very reminiscent of the 19th century bicycle monopoly and the late 19th (early 20th) century automobile monopoly. <a href=”<http://velonews.competitor.com/2005/02/news/legally-speaking-with-bob-mionske-the-monopoly-machine-part-1_7550> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden>
Pyramids of Waste aka The Lightbulb Conspiracy (2010)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HnW6Mm5sUI>
52:50
ABSTRACT
From <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825163/> Storyline : Once upon a time….. products were made to last. Then, at the beginning of the 1920s, a group of businessmen were struck by the following insight: ‘A product that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business’ (1928). Thus Planned Obsolescence was born. Shortly after, the first worldwide cartel was set up expressly to reduce the life span of the incandescent light bulb, a symbol for innovation and bright new ideas, and the first official victim of Planned Obsolescence. During the 1950s, with the birth of the consumer society, the concept took on a whole new meaning, as explained by flamboyant designer Brooks Stevens: ‘Planned Obsolescence, the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary…’. The growth society flourished, everybody had everything, the waste was piling up (preferably far away in illegal dumps in the Third World) – until consumers started rebelling… Written by Cosima Dannoritzer
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CEP COMMENT: A look at energy from the beginning of recorded time.
Edwin Block : Internal Combustion
<http://fora.tv/2006/10/19/Edwin_Black>
1:04:28
ABSTRACT
Edwin Black talked about his book, Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0914153110/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=refleonthetec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217153&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0914153110>, published by St. Martin’s Press. He said that people have been trying to monopolize resources such as wood, water, and electricity since the beginning of human history. He described the first battery-powered cars, developed in the 1890s, which were undermined by interests who stood to profit from cars powered by the internal combustion engine. He said that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison undertook a secret program to bring back the electric car in 1912, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. He speculated about the feasibility of alternative energy sources such as corn and sugar cane ethanol, hydrogen, nuclear power, and solar power. After his presentation he responded to audience members’ questions.
BIO
Edwin Black <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Black> is the award-winning, New York Times and international bestselling investigative author of 56 bestselling editions in 14 languages in 61 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. His work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, and historical investigation. Editors have nominated Black nine times for the Pulitzer Prize, and in recent years he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards. For his work, Black has been interviewed on hundreds of network broadcasts from Oprah, the Today Show, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports and NBC Dateline in the US to the leading networks of Europe and Latin American. His works have been the subject of numerous documentaries, here and abroad. Black’s speaking tours include hundreds of events in dozens of cities each year, appearing at prestigious venues from the Library of Congress in Washington to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Los Angeles in America, and in Europe from London’s British War Museum and Amsterdam’s Institute for War Documentation to Munich’s Carl Orff Hall.
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CEP COMMENT: Disruptive innovation is the reason my employer is the industry leader it is today.
Disruptive Innovation – Clayton Christensen
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ7EG58J5eo> 9:51 Part 1
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5FxFfymI4g> 9:11 Part 2
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N-1NzS4OJk> 8:29 Part 3
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdUDWFlUjOs> 14:17 Part 4
ABSTRACT
Clayton Christensen – one of the authors of The Innovator’s Dilemma – giving a talk on what is disruptive innovation, and how small startup companies can end up beating incumbents.
Fortune Global Forum (New Delhi, India : 2007)
BIO
<http://www.claytonchristensen.com/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_M._Christensen>
<http://hbr.org/authors/christensen> 12:12
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology>
<http://www.12manage.com/methods_christensen_disruptive_innovation.htm7>
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CEP COMMENT: Kickstarter <http://www.kickstarter.com/>; MakerBot <http://wiki.makerbot.com/>; OnLive <http://www.onlive.com/>. The OnLive <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive> is a cloud based desktop with the applications running in the data center, but they use video game networking technology to minimize the keystroke latency. Very cool!
Flash Mobs
<http://fora.tv/2011/06/22/Flash_Mobs>
40:28
ABSTRACT
NExTWORK Conference 2011
Series of short presentations on new technologies.
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CEP COMMENT: The interview runs until 36:40 and then the Q&A starts.
James Gleick: Bits and Bytes
<http://fora.tv/2011/05/19/James_Gleick_Bits_and_Bytes>
52:35
ABSTRACT
What do we know and when did we know it? Former New York Times writer James Gleick (the man who popularized “the butterfly effect” in Chaos) has produced the definitive history of the age in which we live, The Information. He talks with Robyn Williams.
BIO
James Gleick <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gleick> was born in New York City in 1954. He graduated from Harvard College in 1976 and helped found Metropolis, an alternative weekly newspaper in Minneapolis. Then he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter for The New York Times.
His first book, Chaos, was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist and a national bestseller. He collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature’s Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. His next books include the best-selling biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton, both shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Faster and What Just Happened. They have been translated into twenty-five languages.
In 1989-90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. For some years he wrote the Fast Forward column in the New York Times Magazine.
With Uday Ivatury, he founded The Pipeline, a pioneering New York City-based Internet service in 1993, and was its chairman and chief executive officer until 1995. He was the first editor of the Best American Science Writing series. He is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.
Robyn Williams
Science journalist and broadcaster Robyn Williams presents Radio National’s Science Show, Ockham’s Razor and In Conversation.
Although he graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in England, Williams admits to spending as much time acting as studying. Early in his career he made guest appearances in The Goodies, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Dr. Who and stood in for Tom Jones for four months in his TV series.
He has conducted countless interviews with scientists on ABC TV on programs such as Quantum and Catalyst, narrated the Nature of Australia series and appeared in World Safari with David Attenborough.
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CEP COMMENT: He discusses six verbs as they apply to digital media: screening, interacting, sharing, flowing, accessing, generating…
Kevin Kelly: The Future of the Digital Media Landscape
<http://fora.tv/2011/06/22/Kevin_Kelly_The_Future_of_the_Digital_Media_Landscape>
24:39
ABSTRACT
Attention Flows: The Future of the Digital Media Landscape
Kevin Kelly, Author; WIRED
NExTWORK is a one-day, interdisciplinary conference that will feature world-renowned business leaders, technologists, and thinkers exploring the promise and peril of the network’s future, as well as the most pressing digital issues and opportunities today.
BIO
Kevin Kelly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kelly> <http://www.kk.org> has been a participant in, and reporter on, the information technology revolution for the past 20 years. His books include the best-selling work on the networked economy, New Rules for the New Economy, and the classic volume on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control. His most recent book, What Technology Wants, lays out a provocative view of technology as an autonomous force in the world. Kelly helped launch WIRED in 1993 and served as executive editor for six years, during which the magazine twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. He currently holds the title of Senior Maverick at WIRED and is the publisher and editor of the Cool Tools website. From 1984 to 1990, Kelly was the publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review. He also helped launch the WELL, a pioneering online service, in 1985 and co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, Harpers, Science, GQ, and Esquire.
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CEP COMMENT: In the Q&A starting at around 1:18:00 he shows how the world is flat from an entrepreneurial point of view and defines the concept of “high imagination enabling countries” and “low imagination enabling countries.”
Thomas Friedman on America and China
<http://fora.tv/2011/01/10/Thomas_Friedman_on_America_and_China#Thomas_Friedman_Says_Rise_of_China_a_New_Sputnik_for_US>
1:24:42
ABSTRACT
As the balance of energy, innovation, trade, wealth, power and influence continues to rapidly shift throughout the world, China and the US are finding themselves forced to confront a difficult process of constant adjustment. At the same time, much of what we have grown accustomed to when thinking about our own country and China over the past century is called into question.
We will not only find ourselves needing to recalibrate how we look at and treat each other, but how we look at our own political and economic systems. In short, more than at any time in our living memory, this reformatting of our relationship with China will require us to be better informed about what is going on in China, more politically astute about the strengths and weaknesses of each system and ever more diplomatically flexible about how we deal with each other.
The enormity of this challenge and the suddenness with which it has come upon us, is the subject of this “on-stage conversation” between New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and long-time China writer and Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, Orville Schell.
BIO
Thomas L. Friedman
Thomas L. Friedman <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman>, a columnist for The New York Times, is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Friedman was bureau chief for The New York Times in Beirut and Jerusalem before writing, From Beirut to Jerusalem, which won the National Book Award for non-fiction. His book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree won the 2000 Overseas Press Club award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy.
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, won the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. His latest book is Hot, Flat and Crowded. He has a B.A. in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America
Orville Schell
Orville Schell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Schell> was born in New York City in 1940, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and did graduate work at the University of California Berkeley, in Chinese History where he earned a Ph.D.
He has worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and traveled widely in China.
He is also a contributor to such magazines as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Granta, Wired, Newsweek, Mother Jones, the China Quarterly, and the New York Review of Books.
Schell has been the recipient of several writing fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center. He is also the winner of numerous awards, including the Harvard/Stanford Shorenstein Award for Asian Journalism, Overseas Press Club of America’s Award for the Best Article on a Foreign Subject, a Mencken Award for the Best Feature and a Page One Award for the Best Investigative Story.
The author of fourteen books, nine of them about China, and the contributor to numerous edited volumes, his most recent books are Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangrila from the Himalayas to Hollywood, The China Reader: The Reform Years, and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders.
He has also served as a television commentator for several network news programs, has worked both as correspondent and consultant for a number of PBS and Frontline documentaries and been the correspondent for an Emmy award-winning program for a “60 minutes” segment.
Schell serves on the boards of Human Rights Watch, the Sundance Documentary Fund jury, and the Social Science Research Council. He is also a member of the Pacific Council, the Council on Foreign Relations and a regular participant in the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Schell is the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
He was recently appointed Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Society> in New York City.
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CEP COMMENT: Autodesk has partnered with a membership-based machine shop (franchise) to try to leverage their way into the maker movement. Essentially this is Autodesk’s push back to the free/open-source CAD software that is being used to enable equipment like we see from MakerBot Industries.
Autodesk’s Carl Bass: The New Industrial Revolution
<http://fora.tv/2011/05/03/Autodesks_Carl_Bass_The_New_Industrial_Revolution>
29:06
ABSTRACT
Carl Bass, President & CEO, Autodesk in conversation with Chris Anderson
<http://techshop.ws/autodesk.html> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RXLBTzFA_A>
BIO
Carl Bass is president and chief executive officer of Autodesk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk>, the world’s leading maker of design software for the architecture, engineering, and entertainment industries. The company’s products range from its flagship AutoCAD program to digital modeling and prototyping tools for industry. Autodesk’s CG apps have been used on every movie that’s won the Academy Award for Visual Effects in the past 15 years, from Titanic to Avatar. Under Bass’ leadership the California-based firm has been repeatedly honored by Fast Company as one of the world’s most innovative companies.
After graduating from Cornell, Bass cofounded a computer graphics business called Flying Moose Systems, later renamed Ithaca Software. He moved west when Autodesk purchased the company in 1993. In the past decade, he’s held nearly every executive role at Autodesk. >From 2002 to 2004, he served as head of the Design Solutions Group, where he led the company’s crucial transition from 2-D to 3-D and model-based design.
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07-26-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT: Using sugar as the carbon source to purify silicon in electric arc furnaces… Hmmmm!
RSi (Renewable Silicon International) – solar grade silicon
<http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/The-Chemistry-of-RSis-ChemArc-P;Only-Engineering-TV-Videos> 5:14
<http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/RSis-ChemArc-Technology-Produce;Only-Engineering-TV-Videos> 8:49
<http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Tour-of-RSi-Solar-Grade-Silicon;Only-Engineering-TV-Videos> 7:42
ABSTRACT
A ground-breaking technology that delivers a low-cost, sustainable, green method for producing solar grade silicon that will aid in the pursuit of affordable of solar cells, greatly reducing the their energy payback and carbon footprint. The ChemArc process produces 6-7N pure silicon that will be 7N+ following the directional solidification process performed by the wafer manufacturer. Low-Cost Arc furnace technology is the least expensive method to produce silicon metal. From plant gate to tap hole, the ChemArc process will produce the lowest cost per kilogram solar grade silicon in the market. ChemArc silicon is made using less than 25 kWh/kg, allowing for a significant reduction in the energy payback of solar cells. Carbon dioxide is the only emission, and with sugar being the carbon source, the process is renewable and almost completely carbon neutral. <http://www.rsi-silicon.com/>
BIO
Steve Amendola, President & CEO of RSi (Renewable Silicon International)
Found at another site: Steve invented and patented GST’s battery technology and co-founded the company Grid Storage Technologies. Steve is also the inventor and founder of Reaction Sciences (RSI), a silicon processing technology that reduces silicon costs by more than 60% compared to the industry standard silicon processing methods (RSI has been funded by the Quercus Trust and has started manufacturing at its plant in Easton, PA.) Steve also founded the company Millennium Cell to develop the technology for fueling vehicles with hydrogen. Steve managed the company (which grew to 50 employees and later went public) before leaving to develop new technologies in 2002. Steve has been awarded more than a dozen U.S. patents, with approximately 20 additional patents pending and many corresponding foreign patents related to new fuels, turbines, hydrogen production and other energy technologies. Steve’s area of specialty is electrochemical power storage. He has a deep knowledge and decades of experience evaluating and developing related technologies. <http://www.gridstoragetechnologies.com/Fact_Sheet.html>
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CEP COMMENT: A must watch video!
Martin Rees: Life’s Future in the Cosmos
<http://fora.tv/2010/08/02/Martin_Rees_Lifes_Future_in_the_Cosmos#fullprogram>
1:39:46
ABSTRACT
President of the Royal Society, England’s Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees brings a lifetime of cosmological inquiry to a crucial question: What if human success on Earth determines life’s success in the universe? He thinks that civilization’s chances of getting out of this century intact are about 50-50. He is hopeful that extraterrestrial life already exists, but there’s no sign of it yet. But even if we are now alone, he notes that we may not even be the halfway stage of evolution. There is huge scope for post-human evolution, so that “it will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.” Appropriately, Rees’s Long Now talk was at the Chabot Space & Science Center in the hills above Oakland, in the planetarium.
BIO
Stewart Brand
Stwart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.
Lord Martin Rees <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Rees,_Baron_Rees_of_Ludlow> <http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~mjr/>
Martin Rees is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University.
After studying at the University of Cambridge, he held post-doctoral positions in the UK and the USA, before becoming a professor at Sussex University. In 1973, he became a fellow of King’s College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge (continuing in the latter post until 1991) and served for ten years as director of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. From 1992 to 2003 he was a Royal Society Research Professor. He was president of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010 and Member of Council of the Royal Institution of Great Britain until 2010. In 2011, he was awarded the Templeton Prize.
Alexander Rose
As the director of the Long Now Foundation, Alexander Rose has facilitated projects such as the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Rose shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the first prototype of which is in the Science Museum of London.
Hired as the first employee of the foundation in February of 1997, Rose has been an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics Inc., a project manager for Shamrock Communications, and a founding partner of Inertia Labs. Rose attended the Art Center College of Design and graduated with a bachelor of arts honors degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Industrial Design in 1995.
Alexander Zwissler
Alexander Zwissler is the Executive Director and CEO of the Chabot Space and Science Center, a position he has held since April, 2007.
Prior to joining Chabot, Zwissler was the Executive Director of the Fort Mason Foundation in San Francisco, California from 1999 to 2006. Zwissler attended public schools before going on to receive a B.A. in Political Science, with Honors, at the University of California at Berkeley. After graduating from Berkeley, Zwissler went on to become a Postgraduate Research Fellow at the Centre for Mass Communication Research at the University of Leicester, England, conducting research on the development of international satellite broadcasting.
Prior to joining the Fort Mason Foundation in 1999, Zwissler had a 17-year career in the cable television and telecommunications industry and was Director of ComTel, the United Kingdom’s fourth largest cable television and telephone company.
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CEP COMMENT: In a similar vein, “JP Morgan is now able to run risk analysis and price its global credit portfolio in near real-time after implementing application-led, High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities.” What took 8 hours is now accomplished in 238 seconds (using FPGA accelerators). — <http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3290494/jp-morgan-supercomputer-offers-risk-analysis-in-near-real-time/> <http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/110511.html>
Data In Sight: Making the Transparent Visual
<http://fora.tv/2011/06/25/Data_In_Sight_Making_the_Transparent_Visual#fullprogram>
1:02:50
ABSTRACT
Is data your daily bread? Hear from data visualization experts then roll up your sleeves and get hacking on a visualization of your own and compete for prizes. Data sets provided. Or feel free to mash it up with a data set of your own.
BIO
Thomas Castro
LUST is a graphic and interactive design practice established in 1996 by Thomas Castro, Jeroen Barendse, and Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen and based in The Hague (NL). LUST projects are centered around the exploration of new pathways for design at the cutting edge, where new media and information technologies, architecture and urban systems, and graphic design and typography overlap. In 2010, LUST founded LUSTlab <http://lustlab.net/> as a research laboratory for media and technology to develop new communication tools, man-machine installations, and physical products using digital content.
Joris Maltha
Catalogtree is a multidisciplinary design studio founded in 2001 by Daniel Gross and Joris Maltha. The studio works continuously on commissioned and self initiated design projects. The studios’ guiding design tactic is FORM = BEHAVIOUR. Typography, generative graphic design and the visualisation of quantitative data are daily routines. Other recent endeavours include: D.I.Y. structured-light 3D-scanning, Bristle bot development, and the visualisation of financial tick-data.
Benjamin Wiederkehr
Interactive Things is a user experience design studio established in 2010 by Benjamin Wiederkehr, Christian Siegrist, and Jeremy Stucki. The Zurich-based team designs interactive products and information visualizations in the areas of education, finance, communication, and publishing among others. On Datavisualization.ch, they provide insight into their working process as well as document research findings and topical use cases in the field of data visualization.
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CEP COMMENT:
David Brin: Doing It Ourselves
<http://fora.tv/2011/05/21/David_Brin_Doing_It_Ourselves>
29:05
ABSTRACT
Traditions of autonomy, innovation, teamwork and competitiveness are as alive as ever. But what about optimism and our sense of confidence? Can people still believe in a future that will be better than the past? David Brin is a scientist, inventor, lecturer, and New York Times best selling author, as well as the creator of a graphic novel, Tinkerers, that explores a future world where makers are much in demand. Brin suggests that tinkerers and startups and team- builders may be vital in helping determine the difference between a tomorrow of Bladerunner and one of Star Trek.
BIO
David Brin is a scientist, inventor, lecturer, and New York Time bestselling author, and creator of the graphic novel, Tinkerers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin>
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CEP COMMENT: Fabric is looking for early testers – <mailto:beta-please@fabric-engine.com>
Fabric Engine: Multithreading the Web
<http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=googletechtalks#p/u/0/WWjJE-6Ln24>
1:02:02
ABSTRACT
The architecture in modern computing platforms has changed significantly over the last decade – multi-core CPU architectures and the use of the GPU for computation have brought significant challenges for software developers. This hardware is incredibly powerful when properly leveraged, but writing software that can take advantage of multiple cores and heterogeneous architectures is a daunting task. Factor in the many different software and hardware platforms that must be addressed, and it’s easy to see what a tough problem this is.
Web technologies solve one aspect of this problem – they are ubiquitous and bring many advantages to developers and their customers. In an ideal world, we would use the browser for all of our computing needs. However, web applications lag behind the performance of native applications – largely because the browser is unable to take advantage of modern hardware. This means that many types of application are not possible in today’s browsers. As native developers begin to utilize multi-core CPUs and GPUs, this performance gap is only going to become more pronounced.
Our talk will cover the following:
– how hardware has changed over the past decade, and where it is heading next
– how fragmentation is becoming a big deal again
– the problems of developing for heterogeneous architectures
– challenges around the performance of current web technologies
– an overview of our approach to multi-threading in the browser
– computation on the GPU
– a brief demo of Fabric Engine, showing some of these methods in action
– QA session
Fabric Engine is a web technology that extends the browser to become a high performance application platform, allowing developers to write applications that can take full advantage of CPU and GPU resources on many different devices.
Fabric Engine was founded in 2010 in Montreal. For more information, see <http://www.fabric-engine.com/>
BIO
Phil Taylor:
CTO — An Emmy-nominated animator for his work on the 2002 Animal Planet documentary series “The Most Extreme”, Philip went on to found the company “Character Animation Technologies”. There, he designed and led the development of the Character Animation Toolkit (CAT), which became widely-used throughout the animation industry. Avid Technology acquired Character Animation Technologies and as part of the acquisition Phil became Head of Animation at Softimage, a division of Avid. Phil moved on to become animation lead at Trapdoor Inc. (a game company) before leaving to become an independent contractor and to found Fabric. Phil has been published in the industry publication “Game Programming Gems” and is a widely known and respected figure in the animation industry.
Peter Zion
VP Engineering — Peter specializes in low-level device driver, library and application development, including iPhone application development. A former driver developer at Broadcom, Peter also has experience in developing derivative trading applications, the performance optimization of 3-D content creation software and the design of web database applications. Most recently, Peter co-founded and worked as a principal developer for a small consulting group specializing in large cloud-based web applications and iPhone applications. Peter holds a M.Sc. in pure mathematics from the University of Toronto.
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CEP COMMENT: Discusses lessons learned from the fall of the USSR and how they are applicable to our near future. Resilient community through community action. See for instance <http://www.miiu.org/wiki/Bryn_Athyn>.
The Road Ahead for Community Action
<http://vimeo.com/25262968>
1:00:13
ABSTRACT
“I just attended a workshop in Falmouth, Massachusetts organized by Community Action associations of Southern New England titled “The Road Ahead for Community Action: Helping People in Turbulent Times.” (Clearly, trying to integrate poor people into a global economy that is collapsing before our eyes is not such a good idea, so I stressed relocalization and community self-sufficiency.) I reused the slides from last year, when I presented at CAP’s annual convention in Boston, because they still work; if anything, they work better as time goes on.” <http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/06/road-ahead-for-community-action.html>
BIO
Dmitry Orlov <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov>
His book Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects
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08-09-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT: Something to do on a long winter night… Also check out <http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/07/circuitbee-sharing-electronic-schematics-on-your-blog.html> for more long winter night projects.
Cooking with Jeri: making chips at home
Pt 1 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM> 8:52
Pt 2 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFzsyQOTXbM> 10:00
ABSTRACT
Not content with making simple transistors at home, Jeri has moved up to making integrated circuits in her homelab.
BIO
Jeri Ellsworth <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeri_Ellsworth> youtube channel <http://www.youtube.com/user/jeriellsworth>
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CEP COMMENT:
DEFCON 18: Hardware Hacking for Software Guys
Pt 1 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8yVaYpWDxE> 14:57
Pt 2 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tb-nT_dPYY> 14:57
Pt 3 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm8sQhJhyZg> 14:57
Pt 4 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WAlTvccmBA> 1:39
ABSTRACT
Hardware hacking is cool, but it can be daunting to software guys. Microcontrollers mix hardware and software basically allowing software guys to do hardware in software. Lately several products have emerged that make it even easier for software guys to get hardware up and working.
Arduinos <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino> are relatively cheap, open source, all-in-one prototyping boards with a strong community behind them. All you need is a USB cable and the Arduino IDE (which is also open source). The Arduino language is easy to learn for anyone with even a basic knowledge of coding. Arduinos can be made into many different security devices including keyboard emulators, RFID readers/writers, combination lock brute forcing robots, magnetic stripe card emulators, and automated cell phone dialers. In a way, an Arduino is kind of like the hardware equivalent of scripting languages. They make development quick and are a good fit for many projects.
In this talk you’ll see examples of projects built with Arduinos and information on how they were done. You’ll also see some limitations of Arduinos and some alternatives to typical Arduinos. In the end you’ll see that anyone can make really cool hardware, even without a degree in electrical engineering.
For presentations, whitepapers or audio version of the Defcon 18 presentations visit: <http://defcon.org/html/links/dc-archives/dc-18-archive.html>
BIO
Dave King <http://www.defcon.org/dc-18-speakers.html#King>
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CEP COMMENT:
Rajesh Rao: A Rosetta Stone for the Indus script
<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rajesh_rao_computing_a_rosetta_stone_for_the_indus_script.html>
17:01
ABSTRACT
Rajesh Rao is fascinated by “the mother of all crossword puzzles”: How to decipher the 4000 year old Indus script <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script>. At TED 2011 he tells how he is enlisting modern computational techniques to read the Indus language, the key piece to understanding this ancient civilization.
BIO
Rajesh Rao <http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/rao/> seeks to understand the human brain through computational modeling, on two fronts: developing computer models of our minds, and using tech to decipher the 4,000-year-old script of the Indus valley civilization.
Why you should listen to him: Rajesh Rao is looking for the computational principles underlying the brain’s remarkable ability to learn, process and store information — hoping to apply this knowledge to the task of building adaptive robotic systems and artificially intelligent agents.
Some of the questions that motivate his research include: How does the brain learn efficient representations of novel objects and events occurring in the natural environment? What are the algorithms that allow useful sensorimotor routines and behaviors to be learned? What computational mechanisms allow the brain to adapt to changing circumstances and remain fault-tolerant and robust?
By investigating these questions within a computational and probabilistic framework, it is often possible to derive algorithms that not only provide functional interpretations of neurobiological properties but also suggest solutions to difficult problems in computer vision, speech, robotics and artificial intelligence.
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CEP COMMENT:
Anil Ananthaswamy: What it takes to do extreme astrophysics
<http://www.ted.com/talks/anil_ananthaswamy.html>
14:09
ABSTRACT
All over the planet, giant telescopes and detectors are looking (and listening) for clues to the workings of the universe. At the INK Conference, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy tours us around these amazing installations, taking us to some of the most remote and silent places on Earth.
BIO
Anil Ananthaswamy is the author of “The Edge of Physics.” A former software engineer, he was inspired to become a science writer by his passionate curiosity about the world.
Why you should listen to him: Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist in London. He has worked at the magazine in various capacities since 2000, most recently as deputy news editor. He is also a contributor to National Geographic News.
Ananthaswamy worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley before training as a journalist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He’s the author of The Edge of Physics (published as The Edge of Reason by Penguin in India).
Book: The Edge of Physics
Also see <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ>
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08-23-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
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CEP COMMENT:
Kevin Slavin “Those algorithms that govern our lives”
<http://liftconference.com/news/new-video-kevin-slavin-those-algorithms-govern-our-lives>
26:10
ABSTRACT
Digital technologies and on-line platforms are essential to the way we work and live. Interestingly, they are defined by algorithms which are not neutral. Kevin discusses how they define new social norms and how our culture is affected by the possibilities embedded in the software we use.
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CEP COMMENT: Fun for kids from 5 to ??
The Mathemagician
<http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/the_mathemagician>
57:16
ABSTRACT
In this highly entertaining performance combining math with magic, Arthur Benjamin — aka, the the “Mathemagician” — displays amazing feats of mental mathematical gymnastics and explains the secrets behind his lightning-fast math skills. How does the Mathemagician best an electronic calculator?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_T._Benjamin>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathemagician>
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CEP COMMENT:
Robert Sapolsky: Are Humans Just Another Primate?
<http://fora.tv/2011/02/15/Robert_Sapolsky_Are_Humans_Just_Another_Primate#fullprogram>
1:16:08
ABSTRACT
Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses his work as professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and as a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. His enviable gift for storytelling led the New York Times to print, “If you crossed Jane Goodall with a borscht-belt comedian, she might have written a book like A Primate’s Memoir.” Dr. Sapolsky’s account of his early years as a field biologist. He is sure to dazzle and delight with tales of what it means to be human.
BIO
Dr. Robert Sapolsky <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky>
Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya. Dr. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate’s Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals.
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CEP COMMENT:
Game Changers: New Technologies to Cure Disease
<http://fora.tv/2011/07/01/Game_Changers_New_Technologies_to_Cure_Disease>
1:00:20
ABSTRACT
GAME CHANGERS: New Technologies to Cure Disease and Treat Injury
BIO
Karl Deisseroth
Karl Deisseroth is associate professor of bioengineering and psychiatry at Stanford University. Deisseroth created optogenetics, a technology that uses light to precisely control and tune brain activity. His group is now extending this technology to probe the dynamics of neural circuits in health and disease. As a practicing psychiatrist, Deisseroth also employs brain stimulation for therapeutic purposes. His group uses a wide range of techniques including optics, stem cell and tissue engineering, electrophysiology, genomics, animal behavior, and computational network modeling. He has received numerous awards including the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE), the McKnight Foundation Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award, the Coulter Foundation Early Career Translational Research Award in Biomedical Engineering, and the Brilliant 10 Award from Popular Science, to name a few.
Thomas Goetz
Thomas Goetz is executive editor of WIRED magazine and author of the book The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. Since Goetz joined WIRED in 2001, the magazine has been nominated for 18 National Magazine awards and has won nine times, including the top award for General Excellence three times. His cover stories at WIRED have been selected for both the Best American Science Writing and the Best Technology Writing anthologies. Before joining WIRED, Goetz held posts at the Village Voice, then at the Wall Street Journal, and The Industry Standard.
Hans Keirstead
Hans Keirstead is an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology, and co-director and founder of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. Additionally, Keirstead is a professor at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center (RIRC). Founded by actor Christopher Reeve and philanthropist Joan Irvine, RIRC is a leading center for spinal cord injury research.
Keirstead directs research that investigates diseases of the nervous system. In order to bring his treatments to clinical trials, he has founded or partnered with biotechnology companies to fund and conduct pre-clinical and clinical development. He has won many awards including the National Institutes of Health’s Mathilde Solowey Award in the Neurosciences in 2010. He has testified at the US Senate and House of Representatives on multiple occasions regarding stem cell research and policy.
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CEP COMMENT:
Ed Moses: Clean Fusion Power This Decade
<http://fora.tv/2010/06/16/Ed_Moses_Clean_Fusion_Power_This_Decade#fullprogram>
1:39:28
ABSTRACT
Finally achieving fusion energy may be closer than everyone thinks. For decades the dream has been to employ the reaction that powers stars to generate high-volume electricity without the drawbacks of fission reactors — no high-level waste, no weapons application, no risk of meltdown, no use of uranium, and (as with fission) no greenhouse gases.
Ed Moses is director of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore Labs. Focusing massive amounts of laser light for a billionth of a second, the NIF is expected to demonstrate ignition of a fusion reaction (more energy out than in) for the first time in the coming year, followed by the prospect of a prototype machine for generating continuous clean energy by the end of this decade. That could change everything. The NIF itself is a spectacular work of “technological sublime.”
BIO
Ed Moses <https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/people/management/edward_moses.php>
Dr. Edward Moses is the Director for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the Principal Associate Director for the NIF and Photon Science organization at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California.
Dr. Moses was responsible for completing construction and activation of the NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser system and transforming it into an experimental platform for the broad national and international scientific user community. Experiments on NIF will access high energy density regimes with direct application to strategic security as well as applications for fusion energy research, high energy density science, and astrophysics.
Dr. Moses is also the National Director of the National Ignition Campaign to achieve fusion ignition in the laboratory, the culmination of a 50-year quest. The NIF and Photon Science principal directorate is also responsible for the development of advanced diagnostics and laser technologies for homeland security, economic competitiveness, and energy needs.
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CEP COMMENT:
Jonah Lehrer: How We Decide
<http://fora.tv/2010/01/05/Jonah_Lehrer_How_We_Decide#fullprogram>
1:13:21
ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years, neuroscience research has fundamentally changed our understanding of decision making.
Lehrer, a critically acclaimed science writer and the popular blogger behind “The Frontal Cortex,” explains what the latest in cutting-edge research can tell us about how our minds work. How do we make decisions? And how can we make decisions…better?
BIO
Jonah Lehrer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer>
Jonah Lehrer is an author and journalist who writes often about neuroscience and psychology. He has published two books, “Proust Was a Neuroscientist,” about the connections between science and the humanities, and “How We Decide,” about the brain and decision-making. He has written for The New Yorker about the science of insight and about the psychology of delayed gratification.
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CEP COMMENT: Agree or Disagree?
Choice
<http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/06/16/rsa-animate-choice-2/>
10:44
ABSTRACT
Fusing sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Professor Renata Salecl shows that individual choice is rarely based on a simple rational decision with a predictable outcome.
BIO
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renata_Salecl>
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CEP COMMENT:
Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=player_embedded>
15:05
ABSTRACT
Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself — at the university’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.
Transcript of Steve Jobs’ address: <http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>
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CEP COMMENT: See <http://www.youtube.com/v/UuMTSU9DcqQ>, <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903554904576461571362279948.html>
Bill Gates in Conversation at Aspen Ideas Festival
<http://fora.tv/2010/07/08/A_Conversation_with_Bill_Gates_at_Aspen_Ideas_Festival#fullprogram>
1:01:54
ABSTRACT
An Afternoon of Conversation engages big thinkers and doers in serious discussion about their work and the future.
This conversation features Bill Gates and Walter Isaacson.
BIO
Bill Gates <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates> <http://www.thegatesnotes.com/>
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CEP COMMENT:
Robots and Education – Bridging the Gap
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/18/gBZyHGJPmrA>
46:27
ABSTRACT
The phrase “students learn by doing” is especially true in today’s world. Bringing robots into the classroom lets kids “do” science, technology, engineering, math- and much more. Besides learning mathematical and computational ideas, students also learn to work together, think creatively and solve problems. Robots engage kids by providing real world interaction that they can control, create and customize. Robots bridge the gap between hands-on activities and abstract concepts typically found in technical curricula. Today’s wide range and low cost of sensors, actuators and microcontrollers coupled with easy to learn visual programming languages enable students to explore advanced concepts. This talk will focus on how robots are being used in New Zealand education to stimulate innovation and develop tomorrow’s workforce. This talk is geared to kids of all ages- with plenty of real-life robot action!
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CEP COMMENT:
Historypin: Google Maps and the 4th Dimension
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/5/JjgjYacsq6E>
26:34
ABSTRACT
This week, Historypin <http://www.historypin.com/>, a project developed by London non-profit We Are What We Do in partnership with Google, launched its new site and Android app. The project aims to being millions of people together around historical content and the stories and recollections behind it. The site and app enable users to pin content in place and time, as well as layer street level content onto Street View.
BIO
Nick Stanhope is CEO of We Are What We Do <http://wearewhatwedo.org/pages/nick-stanhope/> and Executive Director of Historypin. Nick graduated in Modern History from Oxford University in 2002 and worked as a history teacher and community worker till 2007, when he took over at We Are What We Do and set up the organisation to create a stream of successful products and tools that aim to affect people’s behaviour in positive ways, including the famous I’m Not a Plastic Bag shopper and Internet Buttons
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CEP COMMENT:
The Tao of Warren Buffet
<http://fora.tv/2007/01/12/Mary_Buffett#fullprogram>
30:19
ABSTRACT
The Tao of Warren Buffet
A collection of pithy and inspiring sayings from America’s favorite businessman that reveal his secrets of success.
Like the sayings of the ancient Chinese philospher Lao-tzu, Warren Buffett’s worldly wisdom is deceptively simple and enormously powerful in application. In “The Tao of Warren Buffett,” Mary Buffett – author of three books on Warren Buffett’s investment methods – joins noted Buffettologist and international lecturer David Clark to bring you Warren Buffett’s smartest, funniest, and most memorable sayings with an eye toward revealing the life philosophy and the investment strategies that have made Warren Buffett, and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, so enormously wealthy.
Warren Buffett’s investment achievements are unparalleled. He owes his success to hard work, integrity, and that most elusive commodity of all, common sense. The quotations in this book exemplify Warren’s practical strategies and provide useful illustrations for every investor – large or small – and models everyone can follow. The quotes are culled from a variety of sources, including personal conversations, corporate reports, profiles, and interviews. The authors provide short explanations for each quote and use examples from Buffett’s own business transactions whenever possible to illustrate his words at work – Books Inc.
BIO
Mary Buffett
Mary Buffett is an author and lecturer on investing and was married to Warren’s son Peter for twelve years. She and David Clark – a longtime friend of the Buffett family who is a portfolio manager, attorney, and lecturer on the subject of Buffettology – are the bestselling authors of the internationally acclaimed investment books Buffettology, The New Buffettology, and The Buffettology Workbook.
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CEP COMMENT:
The Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFMfW1jY1xE&feature=youtube_gdata>
1:17:34
ABSTRACT
One of the most obvious facts about the universe is that the past is different from the future. We can remember yesterday, but not tomorrow; we can turn an egg into an omelet, but can’t turn an omelet into an egg. That’s the arrow of time, which is consistent throughout the observable universe. The arrow can be explained by assuming that the very early universe was extremely orderly, and disorder has been increasing ever since. But why did the universe start out so orderly?
I will talk about the nature of time, the origin of entropy, and how what happened before the Big Bang may be responsible for the arrow of time we observe today.
Speaker Info: Sean Carroll <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Carroll>
I’m a theoretical physicist at Caltech in sunny Pasadena, California. My research interests include theoretical aspects of cosmology, field theory, and gravitation. I want to learn about fundamental physics by studying the structure and evolution of the universe. These days I’m especially interested in inflation, the arrow of time, and what happened at or before the Big Bang. I’ve done a bunch of work on dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, topological defects, extra dimensions, and violations of fundamental symmetries.
I recently finished writing a popular-level book on cosmology and the arrow of time: From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, which I expect all of you to buy. I previously wrote a graduate textbook, Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity, and recorded a set of lectures on cosmology for the Teaching Company. I started blogging back in 2004, and keep it up to this day with the help of several friends at Cosmic Variance.
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CEP COMMENT:
Netmap: A Novel Framework for High Speed Packet I/O
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/1/SPtoXNW9yEQ>
1:07:04
ABSTRACT
Software packet processing at line rate is problematic both in userspace and within the kernel, due to the cost of managing in-kernel metadata, and system calls/and data copy overhead.
We present a novel framework, called netmap, that solves these challenges by integrating and extending good ideas from existing proposals. With netmap, it takes as little as 70 clock cycles to move one packet between the wire and userspace processes — more than 10 times faster than existing APIs. As an example, a single core running at 900MHz can generate the 14.8Mpps that saturate a 10GigE interface. This efficiency is an enabling factor for doing high speed packet processing within the safe and feature-rich user space environment provided by modern operating systems.
In the talk we will present netmap and its internals, explain why it is efficient yet safe and easy to use, and report our experience in developing and porting applications to the new API — a task made easy by the existence of a pcap compatibility library.
netmap is available on FreeBSD — work supported by EU FP7 Project “CHANGE”
URL <http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/>
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CEP COMMENT:
Helping Domain Experts Build Better Algorithms
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/2/bA-XwDStjng>
1:08:12
ABSTRACT
Algorithm developers and end users in a wide variety of areas often face questions like the following:
* Which parameter setting should I use to optimize my algorithm’s empirical performance?
* Which algorithm components are most critical to achieve good performance?
* Which of two (or more) available algorithms will perform best on a given new instance?
We describe fully formalized domain-independent methods that aim to answer these problems based on machine learning and optimization techniques. We illustrate the power of these automated methods by optimizing state-of-the-art solvers for two fundamental problems: propositional satisfiability (SAT) and mixed integer programming (MIP). With minimal human effort, in several cases our methods sped up the best existing SAT and MIP solvers by orders of magnitude.
Based on joint work with Holger Hoos and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Speaker Info:
Frank Hutter <http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hutter/>
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CEP COMMENT:
A Geek’s Guide to Digital Forensics
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/5/rPd-HiEvhhw>
55:48
ABSTRACT
Full Title: “A Geek’s Guide to Digital Forensics, or How i Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hex Editor”
This talk will provide a technical introduction to digital forensics geared towards fellow geeks who think tinkering with data in hex is fun and interesting. The talk will provide a brief background on forensics and important concepts including acquisition and verification techniques. Forensic analysis, the really fun stuff, will be covered in detail including specific a walkthrough on how to carve YAFFS2 timestamps from a nandump of an Android device. Finally, we will cover the emerging intersection of digital forensics and traditional security, specifically mobile app security and continuous forensic monitoring of key systems.
Link to slides:
<http://viaforensics.com/computer-forensics/google-tech-talk-geeks-guide-to-digital-forensics-june-2011.html>
Speaker Info:
Andrew Hoog is a computer scientist, certified forensic analyst (GCFA and CCE), computer and mobile forensics researcher, author of two forensic and security books, expert witness and co-founder of viaForensics, an innovative digital forensic and security firm. He divides his energies between investigations, forensic software development, and research in digital forensics and security. He also has two patents pending in the areas of forensics and data recovery.
He lives in Oak Park, IL, where he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, great wine, science fiction, and tinkering with geeky gadgets.
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CEP COMMENT: Brief shots of what makes Japanese homes so earthquake resilient.
A Xoogler in Tohoku – Two Months of Volunteering in the Disaster Zone
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwU–meig7k>
1:05:24
ABSTRACT
On April 15th, I arrived in Ofunato to join All Hands Volunteers, a US-based NPO, to assist with the relief and recovery efforts in the tsunami-devastated areas of Iwate prefecture. During my two-month stay, I talked to tsunami victims, helped coordinate projects, developed custom software, led work-teams on carpentry jobs in individuals’ homes, and was project leader on an isolated “satellite” project in another city, operating independently from the main organization. My activities took me through Ofunato, Rikuzentakata, and Yamada, as well as many smaller communities along the coast.
The goals of this talk are to share with you what I experienced, learned, saw, and smelled out in the disaster area, as well as to give a first-hand account of the conditions on the ground. I would also like to dedicate some time to discussing ways in which the tech industry could help, and will leave ample time for questions and answers at the end.
About Ryo Chijiiwa:
After spending 4 years as a software engineer in Silicon Valley at Yahoo! then Google, I left the cubicle life in 2009 and embarked on a journey. I eventually bought 60 acres of land in the backwoods of North-Eastern California, where I built a cabin, and learned to live mostly off of the grid. As I watched live footage of the March 11th tsunami from my cabin, I felt a strong desire to do something. A month later, I left my cabin, for an open-ended trip to Japan…
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CEP COMMENT:
Human-Computer Interaction meets Economics: How to Measure Interface Utility with Mechanical Turkers
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8hv9piPizY&feature=relmfu>
59:11
ABSTRACT
In 1983, Donald Norman presented the very first paper at the very first meeting of the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference, and posed a still open problem: can we scientifically measure and optimize “user satisfaction”? Specifically, can we predict which interfaces users will value and choose to use, before building and deploying a product? Twenty-eight years later, we have yet to find objective measures of an interface’s “value” or “user satisfaction.”
We present a new method to measure and quantify user choice based on Economics. To understand user behavior we run economic experiments with thousands of humans on the web. We pay users different amounts of money to use different interfaces that accomplish the same task, and determine the monetary amount that an interface variation is worth. For instance, we find that aesthetic changes to an interface significantly changes the amount of money we have to pay. Thus, our approach provides direct measures of user behavior and how much improvements in interfaces are worth to different types of users. This will help designers understand the trade-offs inherent in interface design.
In addition, our methods allows for experiments that were previously not possible in both HCI and Economics. In this talk we explain our method, initial experiments, planned extensions, and the implications for both HCI and Economics.
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CEP COMMENT:
Ben Sherwood: The Survivors Club
<http://fora.tv/2009/03/05/Ben_Sherwood_The_Survivors_Club>
34:06
ABSTRACT
Journalist and author Ben Sherwood discusses the lessons he learned researching his latest book, The Survivors Club, which chronicles the tales of people who have come face to face with life-threatening situations and lived to tell about it.
He explores how ordinary people are able to overcome extraordinary circumstances, and what separates the people who survive from those who don’t. He extends these ideas to the business world, and explores how companies can survive and thrive in the current economic environment.
BIO
Ben Sherwood <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sherwood>
Ben Sherwood is a bestselling author, award-winning journalist and executive director of <http://www.thesurvivorsclub.org/>. >From 2004 to 2006, he worked as executive producer of ABC’s Good Morning America during the two most successful seasons in the program’s history. Sherwood guided prize-winning coverage of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the devastation of hurricane Katrina, and the presidential election of 2004.
Sherwood’s book, The Survivors Club, is a non-fiction exploration of the science and secrets of who bounces back from everyday adversity and who doesn’t; who beats life-threatening disease and who succumbs; and who triumphs after economic hardship and who surrenders.
Book – The Survivors Club
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CEP COMMENT:
Game Changers: New Technologies to Cure Disease
<http://fora.tv/2011/07/01/Game_Changers_New_Technologies_to_Cure_Disease>
1:00:20
ABSTRACT
GAME CHANGERS: New Technologies to Cure Disease and Treat Injury
Entering its seventh year, the Aspen Ideas Festival will gather some of the most interesting thinkers and leaders from around the US and abroad to discuss their work, the issues that inspire them, and their ideas. Presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, the Festival is unique in its dedication to dialogue and exchange, and in its commitment to bringing ideas to the public at large. FORA.tv is pleased to present Festival programs taking place at the Aspen Institute’s Paepcke Auditorium.
BIO
Karl Deisseroth
Karl Deisseroth is associate professor of bioengineering and psychiatry at Stanford University. Deisseroth created optogenetics, a technology that uses light to precisely control and tune brain activity. His group is now extending this technology to probe the dynamics of neural circuits in health and disease. As a practicing psychiatrist, Deisseroth also employs brain stimulation for therapeutic purposes. His group uses a wide range of techniques including optics, stem cell and tissue engineering, electrophysiology, genomics, animal behavior, and computational network modeling. He has received numerous awards including the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE), the McKnight Foundation Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award, the Coulter Foundation Early Career Translational Research Award in Biomedical Engineering, and the Brilliant 10 Award from Popular Science, to name a few.
Thomas Goetz
Thomas Goetz is executive editor of WIRED magazine and author of the book The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. Since Goetz joined WIRED in 2001, the magazine has been nominated for 18 National Magazine awards and has won nine times, including the top award for General Excellence three times. His cover stories at WIRED have been selected for both the Best American Science Writing and the Best Technology Writing anthologies. Before joining WIRED, Goetz held posts at the Village Voice, then at the Wall Street Journal, and The Industry Standard.
Hans Keirstead
Hans Keirstead is an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology, and co-director and founder of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. Additionally, Keirstead is a professor at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center (RIRC). Founded by actor Christopher Reeve and philanthropist Joan Irvine, RIRC is a leading center for spinal cord injury research.
Keirstead directs research that investigates diseases of the nervous system. In order to bring his treatments to clinical trials, he has founded or partnered with biotechnology companies to fund and conduct pre-clinical and clinical development. He has won many awards including the National Institutes of Health’s Mathilde Solowey Award in the Neurosciences in 2010. He has testified at the US Senate and House of Representatives on multiple occasions regarding stem cell research and policy.
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CEP COMMENT: “The implications of this work related to the capabilities and prevalence of mobile computing devices — the electrical efficiency of electronic computing has doubled every 1.6 years since the mid 1940s. That means that for a fixed amount of computational power, the need for battery capacity will fall by half every 1.6 years, and that trend bodes well for the continued explosive growth in mobile computing, sensors and controls.”
Why We Can Expect Ever More Amazing Mobile Computing Devices in the Years Ahead
<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=142677>
1:04:35
ABSTRACT
Information technology (IT) has captured the popular imagination, in part because of the tangible benefits IT brings, but also because the underlying technological trends proceed at easily measurable, remarkably predictable, and unusually rapid rates. The number of transistors on a chip has doubled more or less every two years for decades, a trend that is popularly (but often imprecisely) encapsulated as “Moore’s Law.”
This talk will explore the relationship between the performance of computers and the electricity needed to deliver that performance. Computations per kWh grew about as fast as performance for desktop computers starting in 1981, doubling every 1.5 years, a pace of change in computational efficiency comparable to that from 1946 to the present. Computations per kWh grew even more rapidly during the vacuum tube computing era and during the transition from tubes to transistors but more slowly during the era of discrete transistors. As expected, the transition from tubes to transistors shows a large jump in computations per kWh.
In 1985, the physicist Richard Feynman identified a factor of one hundred billion possible theoretical improvement in the electricity used per computation. Since that time computations per kWh have increased by less than five orders of magnitude, leaving significant headroom for continued improvements. The main trend driving towards increased performance and reduced costs, namely smaller transistor size, also tends to reduce power use, which explains why the industry has been able to improve computational performance and electrical efficiency at similar rates. If these trends continue (and we have every reason to believe they will for at least the next five to ten years), this research points towards continuing rapid reductions in the size and power use of battery-powered mobile computers, allowing further rapid progress in mobile sensors, computing, and controls.
The paper documenting the work to be summarized in this talk is Koomey, Jonathan G., Stephen Berard, Marla Sanchez, and Henry Wong. 2010. ‘Implications of Historical Trends in The Electrical Efficiency of Computing.’ In Press at the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. March. <http://csdl.computer.org/dl/mags/an/2011/03/man2011030046.pdf>
BIO
Jonathan Koomey <http://www.koomey.com/about.html>
Also see <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/the-green-corollary-to-moores-law/59643/> <http://hardware.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=11/09/13/2148202>
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CEP COMMENT:
Edward Tenner: Unintended consequences
<http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_tenner_unintended_consequences.html>
16:10
ABSTRACT
Every new invention changes the world — in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.
BIO
Edward Tenner <http://www.edwardtenner.com/>
Edward Tenner is an independent writer and speaker on the history of technology and the unintended consequences of innovation. He writes for The Atlantic on history and current events, and was a founding advisor of Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center, where he remains a senior research associate. He was executive editor for physical science and history at Princeton University Press, he has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton and has held visiting research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. He is now a visiting scholar in the Rutgers School of Communication and Information and an affiliate of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School.
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CEP COMMENT:
Google Translate Lightning Talk
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/11/Yvvrwkxmdqc>
8:18
ABSTRACT
Google hosted 100 members of the 2011 conference for the Association of the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) at our San Francisco office. The program show cased a featured talk by Director of Research Peter Norvig and a lightning talk series on an array of projects relevant to the field of artificial intelligence and its applications.
BIO
Franz Och <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Och>
Franz Och is a principal scientist at Google and one of the chief architects of Google Translate at <http://translate.google.com> where we allow Google users to translate text and web pages between different languages, or perform web search in foreign languages.
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CEP COMMENT:
Micro Concentrated Solar Power from Sopogy
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/search/2/OupOfCWUw54>
41:26
ABSTRACT
Sopogy <http://sopogy.com/> is bringing smaller concentrated solar energy systems to the market: Process heat, air conditioning, and power generation. You will hear about the first renewable energy and solar technology to ever be awarded the New Product of the Year by the Society of Professional Engineers. A product will be set up for viewing.
BIO
Al Yuen
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopogy>
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CEP COMMENT:
Genetics and Intelligence
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/3/62jZENi1ed8>
1:06:31
ABSTRACT
How do genes affect cognitive ability? I begin with a brief review of psychometric measurements of intelligence, introducing the idea of a “general factor” or IQ score. The main results concern the stability, validity (predictive power), and heritability of adult IQ. Next, I discuss ongoing Genome Wide Association Studies which investigate the genetic basis of intelligence. Due mainly to the rapidly decreasing cost of sequencing, it is likely that within the next 5-10 years we will identify genes which account for a significant fraction of total IQ variation.
We are currently seeking volunteers for a study of high cognitive ability. Participants will receive free genotyping.
BIO
Steve Hsu <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hsu>
Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oregon and Director of its Institute of Theoretical Science. Educated at Caltech and Berkeley, he was a Harvard Junior Fellow and Assistant Professor at Yale before moving to Oregon in 1998. He is also the founder of two Silicon Valley software startups in the area of information security. He serves as Scientific Advisor to the Cognitive Genomics Lab of BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute), one of the leading genomics research centers in the world.
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CEP COMMENT:
Google NYC Presents: The 20% Solution
<http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/14/HAOw3wQi18g>
1:18:35
ABSTRACT
As Google continues to expand its workforce, preserving its engineers’ talent and fostering creativity has been key to the company’s continued success. The 20% project is designed to maintain that piece of Google’s philosophy and culture. Furthermore, the 20% project allows Google to maintain the start up feel in a 20,000+ sized company and attracts a diverse pool of skilled engineers. During this talk, you will hear from a panel of engineers that have worked on various 20% projects. You will have the opportunity to listen to their successes, how they got involved in their respective projects, and how ideas have come to fruition.
BIO
Marc Donner, Engineering Director
20% Project: Google Art Project ( <http://googleartproject.com/> )
Zach Lloyd, Software Engineer
20% Project: Google Spreadsheets
Andrew Hogue, Tech Lead/Manager
20% Project: Various Projects
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CEP COMMENT:
Sarah Kaminsky: My father the forger
<http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kaminsky.html> In French with English subtitles.
14:01
ABSTRACT
Sarah Kaminsky tells the extraordinary story of her father Adolpho and his activity during World War II — using his ingenuity and talent for forgery to save lives.
BIO
Sarah Kaminsky writes about her father, Adolfo Kaminsky, a forger with a mission.
Born in 1979 in Algeria, of an Argentinean father with Russian origins, and a Tuareg Algerian mother, Sarah Kaminsky arrived in France when she was 3 years old. Passionate about art since her childhood, she started learning the cello at age 4. As a teenager, she discovered two passions, which are still vibrant in her life: theater and writing. Since then, she’s shared her time between her acting career and writing screenplays, plays or books.
In 2009, Sarah wrote a book worthy of the best spy novels, based on the true story of her father, Adolfo Kaminsky, genius-forger who committed his know-how and convictions to serve the French Resistance during World War II, saving thousands of Jewish families, and many others over the course of 30 years for various causes around the world.
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CEP COMMENT: Weird Science… <http://www.i-sis.org.uk/The_Z_theory_of_everything.php>
AlienScientist Interview with Frank Znidarsic
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ykCWaVcjSA>
9:48 + 9:03
ABSTRACT
Frank Znidarsic explains his paper in this exclusive first ever interview! If this new theory turns out to be correct, it will revolutionize modern physics as we know it, bringing us a wave of new technologies just as the original understandings of Quantum Mechanics brought us radio, computers, fiber optics, cell phones, etc. The most profound aspect would have to be the fact that this theory was derived from cold fusion and antigravity experiments. Two of the technologies that will most certainly emerge from this new understanding of the physical laws of atoms. This means no more addiction to oil, and no more need for huge expensive rockets to put people in space. Clean, sustainable energy and a barrage of new propulsion technologies are in store for any understand these new laws and apply them.
Franks Paper: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/25455268/Control-of-the-Natural-Forces>
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10-04-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT:
Skylar Tibbits: Can we make things that make themselves?
<http://www.ted.com/talks/skylar_tibbits_can_we_make_things_that_make_themselves.html>
6:05
ABSTRACT
“MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits works on self-assembly — the idea that instead of building something (a chair, a skyscraper), we can create materials that build themselves, much the way a strand of DNA zips itself together. It’s a big concept at early stages; Tibbits shows us three in-the-lab projects that hint at what a self-assembling future might look like.”
BIO
Skylar Tibbits: Inventor <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/skylar-tibbits/4/b02/116>
“Skylar Tibbits, a TED Fellow, is an artist and computational architect working on “smart” components that can assemble themselves.
“Why you should listen to him: Skylar Tibbits is a trained architect, designer and computer scientist whose research focuses on developing self-assembly technologies for large-scale structures in our physical environment. At MIT’s Department of Architecture, he teaches a graduate design studio and co-teaches a seminar at MIT’s Media Lab. Previously, he worked at a number of design offices including Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture, SKIII Space Variations and Point b Design. His work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum and the Beijing Biennale.
“Tibbits has collaborated with a number of influential people over the years, including Neil Gershenfeld and The Center for Bits and Atoms, Erik and Marty Demaine at MIT, Adam Bly at SEED Media Group and Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY. In 2007, he and Marc Fornes co-curated Scriptedbypurpose, the first exhibition focused exclusively on scripted processes within design. Also in 2007, he founded SJET<http://www.sjet.us/>, a multifaceted practice and research platform for experimental computation + design. SJET crosses disciplines from architecture + design, fabrication, computer science and robotics.
Also see <http://news.discovery.com/tech/how-to-print-a-building-110916.html>
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CEP COMMENT:
Svante Pääbo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal
<http://www.ted.com/talks/svante_paeaebo_dna_clues_to_our_inner_neanderthal.html>
17:02
ABSTRACT
“Sharing the results of a massive, worldwide study, geneticist Svante Pääbo shows the DNA proof that early humans mated with Neanderthals after we moved out of Africa. (Yes, many of us have Neanderthal DNA.) He also shows how a tiny bone from a baby finger was enough to identify a whole new humanoid species.”
BIO
Svante Pääbo: Geneticist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_P%C3%A4%C3%A4bo>
“Svante Pääbo explores human genetic evolution by analyzing DNA extracted from ancient sources, including mummies, an Ice Age hunter and the bone fragments of Neanderthals.
“Why you should listen to him: Svante Pääbo’s research on the DNA of human and nonhuman primates has exposed the key genetic changes that transformed our grunting ape-like ancestors into the charming latte-sipping humans we are today. As a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Pääbo and his team developed a technique of isolating and sequencing the DNA of creatures long extinct, using a variety of fragile, ancient source material from Homo sapiens and other human species.
“His work shows that all humans trace their ancestry to a small population of Africans who later spread out across the world. We’ve also learned that Neanderthals, the short stocky hunters who disappeared 30,000 years ago, mated with the more modern human species and left their imprint deep within our genome. In 2007, Time named the Swedish biologist one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for his work.
“He says: “Neanderthals are not totally extinct. In some of us they live on, a little bit.”
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CEP COMMENT: Contrast this with the VW facility we saw a couple of months ago.
Fascinating 1936 Footage of Car Assembly Line
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPpTK2ezxL0>
9:40
ABSTRACT
“Filmed in 1936 at the Chevrolet Plant in Flint, Michigan.”
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CEP COMMENT:
Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide
<http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide.html>
5:34
ABSTRACT
“At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for “raw data now” — for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up.”
BIO
Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee>
“Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He leads the World Wide Web Consortium, overseeing the Web’s standards and development.
“Why you should listen to him: In the 1980s, scientists at CERN were asking themselves how massive, complex, collaborative projects — like the fledgling LHC — could be orchestrated and tracked. Tim Berners-Lee, then a contractor, answered by inventing the World Wide Web. This global system of hypertext documents, linked through the Internet, brought about a massive cultural shift ushered in by the new tech and content it made possible: AOL, eBay, Wikipedia, TED.com…
“Berners-Lee is now director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which maintains standards for the Web and continues to refine its design. Recently he has envisioned a “Semantic Web” — an evolved version of the same system that recognizes the meaning of the information it carries. He is also a senior researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and AI Lab.
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10-18-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT:
Christoph Adami: Finding life we can’t imagine
<http://www.ted.com/talks/christophe_adami_finding_life_we_can_t_imagine.html>
18:52
ABSTRACT
“How do we search for alien life if it’s nothing like the life that we know? At TEDxUIUC Christoph Adami shows how he uses his research into artificial life — self-replicating computer programs — to find a signature, a ‘biomarker,’ that is free of our preconceptions of what life is.”
BIO
Speakers Christoph Adami: Artificial life researcher <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Adami> <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christoph-adami/6/822/72>
Christoph Adami works on the nature of life and evolution, trying to define life in a way that is as free as possible from our preconceptions.
Why you should listen to him: Christoph Adami researches the nature of living systems, using ‘artificial life’ — small, self-replicating computer programs. His main research focus is Darwinian evolution, which he studies at different levels of organization (from simple molecules to brains). He has pioneered theapplication of methods from information theory to the study of evolution, and designed the “Avida” system that launched the use of digital life as a tool for investigating basic questions in evolutionary biology.
He is Professor of Applied Life Sciences at the Keck Graduate Institute in Claremont, CA, and a Visiting Professor at the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action at Michigan State University. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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11-01-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT:
Evolve your own objects for 3D printing
<http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/08/evolve-your-own-objects-for-3d.html>
2:00
ABSTRACT
“EndlessForms <http://endlessforms.com/> lets you start with a basic shape then evolve it by selecting simple variants or combining it with other shapes to create your ideal design. Users can then share and rate their designs on the site, allowing others to use them as basis for their own designs or request them to be 3D-printed in a variety of materials. Popular objects created on the site so far include a lamp, a mushroom and a butterfly, and each object’s page records its evolutionary history so you can go back and see how it was created.”
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CEP COMMENT: Recommended by Joe Plummer!
Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine
<http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html>
9:16
ABSTRACT
“What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.”
BIO
Speakers Hans Rosling: Global health expert; data visionary <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling>
“In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development—with some surprisingly good news—snaps into sharp focus.
“Why you should listen to him: Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the West. In fact, most of the Third World is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did.
“What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus.
“Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful. During his legendary presentations, Rosling takes this one step farther, narrating the animations with a sportscaster’s flair.
“Rosling developed the breakthrough software behind his visualizations through his nonprofit Gapminder, founded with his son and daughter-in-law. The free software — which can be loaded with any data — was purchased by Google in March 2007. (Rosling met the Google founders at TED.)
“Rosling began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations. He’s also personally argued with many heads of state, including Fidel Castro.
“As if all this weren’t enough, the irrepressible Rosling is also an accomplished sword-swallower — a skill he demonstrated at TED2007.
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CEP COMMENT: Also see <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220300/Rite_Aid_rolls_out_in_store_virtual_doctor_visits>
Abraham Verghese: A doctor’s touch
<http://www.ted.com/talks/abraham_verghese_a_doctor_s_touch.html>
18:32
ABSTRACT
“Modern medicine is in danger of losing a powerful, old-fashioned tool: human touch. Physician and writer Abraham Verghese describes our strange new world where patients are merely data points, and calls for a return to the traditional one-on-one physical exam.”
BIO
Speakers Abraham Verghese: Physician and author <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Verghese>
“In our era of the patient-as-data-point, Abraham Verghese believes in the old-fashioned physical exam, the bedside chat, the power of informed observation.
“Why you should listen to him: Before he finished medical school, Abraham Verghese spent a year on the other end of the medical pecking order, as a hospital orderly. Moving unseen through the wards, he saw the patients with new eyes, as human beings rather than collections of illnesses. The experience has informed his work as a doctor — and as a writer. “Imagining the Patient’s Experience” was the motto of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics, which he founded at the University of Texas San Antonio, where he brought a deep-seated empathy. He’s now a professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford, where his old-fashioned weekly rounds have inspired a new initiative, the Stanford 25, teaching 25 fundamental physical exam skills and their diagnostic benefits to interns.
“He’s also a best-selling writer, with two memoirs and a recent novel, Cutting for Stone, a moving story of two Ethiopian brothers bound by medicine and betrayal.
He says: “I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.”
“Art and medicine may seem disparate worlds, but Dr. Verghese insists that for him they are one. Doctors and writers are both collectors of stories.” New York Times
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CEP COMMENT: Preparing for the Age Wave <http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3904.html>
Eric Dishman: Take health care off the mainframe
<http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_dishman_take_health_care_off_the_mainframe.html>
16:42
ABSTRACT
At TEDMED, Eric Dishman makes a bold argument: The US health care system is like computing circa 1959, tethered to big, unwieldy central systems: hospitals, doctors, nursing homes. As our aging population booms, it’s imperative, he says, to create personal, networked, home-based health care for all.
BIO
Speakers Eric Dishman: Social scientist
Eric Dishman does health care research for Intel — studying technical (and societal) solutions for problems in care for the aging.
Why you should listen to him: Eric Dishman is an Intel Fellow and director of health innovation and policy for Intel’s Digital Health Group. He founded the product research and innovation team responsible for driving Intel’s worldwide healthcare research, new product innovation, strategic planning, and health policy and standards activities.
Dishman is recognized globally for driving healthcare reform through home and community-based technologies and services, with a focus on enabling independent living for seniors. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post and Business Week, and The Wall Street Journal named him one of “12 People Who Are Changing Your Retirement.” He has delivered keynotes on independent living for events such as the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the IAHSA International Conference and the National Governors Association. He has published numerous articles on independent living technologies and co-authored government reports on health information technologies and health reform.
He has co-founded organizations devoted to advancing independent living, including the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre, the Center for Aging Services Technologies, the Everyday Technologies for Alzheimer’s Care program, and the Oregon Center for Aging & Technology.
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CEP COMMENT:
Kauffman Sketchbook – “Three Things”
<http://www.kauffman.org/KauffmanMultimedia.aspx?VideoId=1148130737001>
3:21
ABSTRACT
Kauffman Sketchbook 1 The Three Things Entrepreneurs Do for Our Economy Carl Schramm, President and CEO, Kauffman Foundation
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CEP COMMENT:
What we learned from 5 million books
<http://www.ted.com/talks/what_we_learned_from_5_million_books.html>
14:09
ABSTRACT
Have you played with Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer? <http://ngrams.googlelabs.com> It’s an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words.
BIO
Speakers Jean-Baptiste Michel: Data researcher
Jean-Baptiste Michel looks at how we can use large volumes of data to better understand our world.
Why you should listen to him: Jean-Baptiste Michel holds joint academic appointments at Harvard (FQEB Fellow) and Google (Visiting Faculty). His research focusses on using large volumes of data as tools that help better understand the world around us — from the way diseases progress in patients over years, to the way cultures change in human societies over centuries. With his colleague Erez Lieberman Aiden, Jean-Baptiste is a Founding Director of Harvard’s Cultural Observatory, where their research team pioneers the use of quantitative methods for the study of human culture, language and history. His research was featured on the covers of Science and Nature, on the front pages of the New York Times and the Boston Globe, in The Economist, Wired and many other venues. The online tool he helped create — <http://ngrams.googlelabs.com> — was used millions of times to browse cultural trends. Jean-Baptiste is an Engineer from Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), and holds an MS in Applied Mathematics and a PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard.
Speakers Erez Lieberman Aiden: Researcher
Erez Lieberman Aiden pursues a broad range of research interests, spanning genomics, linguistics, mathematics …
Why you should listen to him: Erez Lieberman Aiden is a fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and Visiting Faculty at Google. His research spans many disciplines and has won numerous awards, including recognition for one of the top 20 “Biotech Breakthroughs that will Change Medicine”, by Popular Mechanics; the Lemelson-MIT prize for the best student inventor at MIT; the American Physical Society’s Award for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Biological Physics; and membership in Technology Review’s 2009 TR35, recognizing the top 35 innovators under 35. His last three papers — two with JB Michel — have all appeared on the cover of Nature and Science.
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11-29-2011 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
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CEP COMMENT: <http://www.khanacademy.org/> also see this blog post “Now your kid can go to Harvard, MIT and Oxford – The Craigslist moment for most universities” <http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2011/10/now-your-kid-can-go-to-harvard-mit-and-oxford-the-craigslist-moment-for-moist-universities.html>.
Khan Academy’s Salman Khan: The Real YouTube Revolution
<http://fora.tv/2011/05/03/Khan_Academys_Salman_Khan_The_Real_YouTube_Revolution>
28:59
ABSTRACT
The Real YouTube Revolution: A New Way to Teach Everything
Salman Khan, Founder, Khan Academy in conversation with Clive Thompson, Contributing Editor, WIRED
BIO
Salman Khan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy>
Salman Khan is the founder and one-man faculty of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing free, high-quality education to “anyone, anywhere” in the world. A hedge fund analyst with degrees from MIT and Harvard, Khan was helping a young cousin with math in 2004, communicating by phone and using an interactive notepad. When others expressed interest, he began posting videos of his hand-scribbled tutorials on YouTube. Demand took off, and in 2009 he quit his day job. The Khan Academy website now provides self-pacing software and unlimited access to over 2,200 instructional videos on its YouTube channel, targeting the K-12 grade levels. It’s the most-used library of educational videos on the web, with over a million unique students per month and over 45 million lessons delivered. In 2009, the academy received the Microsoft Tech Award for Education. The following year, it was selected from among 150,000 submissions as one of five “world-changing” ideas in Google’s Project 10^100.
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CEP COMMENT: The Manhattan Project cost $3 Billion, the Norden Bombsight program cost $1.5 Billion. Factoide: during WW2 Pullman was the training center for bombsight operators. They’d come here for three months or so to learn how to program what essentially was an airborne analog computer.
Malcolm Gladwell: The strange tale of the Norden bombsight
<http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell.html>
15:01
ABSTRACT
“Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell tells the tale of the Norden bombsight <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norden_bombsight>, a groundbreaking piece of World War II technology with a deeply unexpected result.”
BIO
Malcolm Gladwell: Writer <http://www.gladwell.com/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell>
“Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell’s work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.”
“Why you should listen to him: Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996, he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters — a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe — and for that has become a star lecturer and bestselling author.”
“Sparkling with curiosity, undaunted by difficult research (yet an eloquent, accessible writer), his work uncovers truths hidden in strange data. His always-delightful blog tackles topics from serial killers to steroids in sports, while provocative recent work in the New Yorker sheds new light on the Flynn effect — the decades-spanning rise in I.Q. scores.”
“Gladwell has written four books. The Tipping Point, which began as a New Yorker piece, applies the principles of epidemiology to crime (and sneaker sales), while Blink examines the unconscious processes that allow the mind to “thin slice” reality — and make decisions in the blink of an eye. His third book, Outliers, questions the inevitabilities of success and identifies the relation of success to nature versus nurture. The newest work, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, is an anthology of his New Yorker contributions.”
He says: “There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.”
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CEP COMMENT:
Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain
<http://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain.html>
11:48
ABSTRACT
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It’s not simply “emotion on the right, reason on the left,” but something far more complex and interesting. A Best of the Web talk from RSA Animate.
BIO
Iain McGilchrist: Psychiatrist and writer <http://www.iainmcgilchrist.com/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary>
Psychatrist Iain McGilchrist is the author of “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.”
“Why you should listen to him: Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer. Before he came to medicine, he was a literary scholar — and his work on the brain is shaped by a deep questioning of the role of art and culture. As his official bio puts it: “He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise — the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains.” ”
“His recent book The Master and His Emissary explores the nature of the brain’s two hemispheres (the right is the “master,” in McGilchrist’s terms). How have our two hemispheres evolved to relate — and how did their relationship create our consciousness, our culture, and our ability to understand our own brains?”
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CEP COMMENT: <http://www.suasnews.com/2011/11/9691/german-multicopter-makes-first-manned-flight/>
World’s first manned flight with an electric multicopter
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw&feature=player_embedded#!>
3:56
ABSTRACT
On October 21st, 2011, Thomas Senkel of e-volo made the first manned flight with an electric multicopter at an airstrip in the southwest of Germany. The flight lasted one minute and 30 seconds, after which the constructor and test pilot stated: “The flight characteristics are good natured. Without any steering input it would just hover there on the spot”. This could be the future of flight, piloting a device as simple as a car.
More information: <http://www.e-volo.com>
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CEP COMMENT:
Bruce Schneier: The security mirage
<http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_schneier.html>
21:05
ABSTRACT
The feeling of security and the reality of security don’t always match, says computer-security expert Bruce Schneier. At TEDxPSU, he explains why we spend billions addressing news story risks, like the “security theater” now playing at your local airport, while neglecting more probable risks — and how we can break this pattern.
BIO
Bruce Schneier: Security expert <http://www.schneier.com> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier>
“Bruce Schneier thinks hard about security — as a computer security guru, and as a philosopher of the larger notion of making a safer world.
Why you should listen to him:
“Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and author. Described by the Economist as a “security guru,” he is best known as a refreshingly candid and lucid security critic and commentator. When people want to know how security really works, they turn to Schneier.
“His first bestseller, Applied Cryptography, explained how the arcane science of secret codes actually works, and was described by Wired as “the book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published.” His book on computer and network security, Secrets and Lies, was called by Fortune “[a] jewel box of little surprises you can actually use.” Beyond Fear tackles the problems of security from the small to the large: personal safety, crime, corporate security, national security. His current book, Schneier on Security, offers insight into everything from the risk of identity theft (vastly overrated) to the long-range security threat of unchecked presidential power and the surprisingly simple way to tamper-proof elections.
“Schneier publishes a free monthly newsletter, Crypto-Gram, with over 150,000 readers. In its ten years of regular publication, Crypto-Gram has become one of the most widely read forums for free-wheeling discussions, pointed critiques and serious debate about security. As head curmudgeon at the table, Schneier explains, debunks and draws lessons from security stories that make the news.
BOOK: Applied Cryptography
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CEP COMMENT: Also see “App Inventor for Android” <http://www.appinventorbeta.com/about/> <http://www.appinventor.org/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_App_Inventor> <http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/08/16/2048207/App-Inventor-Continues-Life-at-MIT>
Thomas Suarez: A 12-year-old app developer
<http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_suarez_a_12_year_old_app_developer.html>
4:33
ABSTRACT
“Most 12-year-olds love playing videogames — Thomas Suarez taught himself how to create them. After developing iPhone apps like “Bustin Jeiber,” a whack-a-mole game, he is now using his skills to help other kids become developers.
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CEP COMMENT:
The Dark Matter of Biology
<http://fora.tv/2011/10/25/The_Dark_Matter_of_Biology>
24:18
ABSTRACT
Jonathan Eisen, Professor, University of California Davis
“Compass Summit, a forum for true interaction and exchange, examines some of today’s most pressing problems through the lens of global citizenship, recognizing that human ingenuity is an unlimited resource. Guided by NPR’s Ira Flatow, an intimate group of some of the world’s best thinkers and doers convened along the rugged Palos Verdes coastline on Oct 23-26, 2011 at Terranea Resort to engage in meaningful conversation, ask questions, and challenge ideas — we invite you to join in the conversation.
BIO
Jonathan Eisen <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Eisen>
“Jonathan Eisen is a Professor at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on the evolution of new functions and the genomic diversity of microbes and microbial communities.
“Eisen is also a vocal advocate for “open science”, the Academic Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Biology, an active and award-winning blogger (e.g., <http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com>), and a scientific prankster.
“Previously he was on the faculty of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) where he helped pioneer the field of phylogenomics. He earned his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University and his undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard College
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CEP COMMENT:
The Darwin Awards: Wendy Northcutt
<http://fora.tv/2009/03/10/The_Darwin_Awards_Wendy_Northcutt>
1:02:59
ABSTRACT
“Come discover the entertaining and morbid series of awards “‘presented’ in honor of the recipient doing something so stultifyingly stupid,” says author Wendy Northcutt, “that it results in the individual’s removal from being able to make any future donations to the human gene pool.”
“Her concept has become a cult favorite, leading to five books and a web site, filled with stories of individuals whose time on earth and contribution to the gene pool have ended.
BIO
Wendy Northcutt <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Northcutt> <http://www.darwinawards.com/>
“Wendy Northcutt is the creator of the Darwinawards.com website and author of five books on the Darwin Awards. Northcutt completed a degree in molecular biology at Berkeley, worked in a neuroscience research lab at Stanford, and later managed the protein purification group at a biotech startup developing cancer and diabetes therapeutics.
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CEP COMMENT:
Electricity Theater with Omega Recoil
<http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Electricity_Theater_with_Omega_Recoil>
28:43
ABSTRACT
“In the late 1800s, Nikola Tesla began experimenting with transmitting power wirelessly via the earth’s crust and the ionosphere. He invented what we now know as the Tesla Coil; this device was capable of generating extremely high voltages, and was the precursor to radio transmission. What was Tesla doing? How was he doing it? Does wireless power work? The Omega Recoil team have been re-creating some of Tesla’s wireless power experiments, with interesting results.
“Following on President Obama’s call to “begin again the work of remaking America,” Maker Faire 2009 was organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called “the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things.”
BIO
John Behrens
“John Behrens is currently a cinematographer who photographs independent features, television, documentaries and live music. He is the owner and operator of Point Beach Productions, a production and effects company for the motion picture and television industry. Behrens has also served as a high voltage consultant for Discovery Channel’s MythBusters.
Sparky Bartlett Jewell
“Sparky Jewell is a member of Omega Recoil, a team of scientists, builders, engineers, showmen and industrial artists that have been conducting experiments with electricity in the San Francisco Bay area since 1999.
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CEP COMMENT: Photos from presentation start around here <http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/page81/>
Esther Dyson: Tales of Cosmonaut Training
<http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Esther_Dyson_Tales_of_Cosmonaut_Training>
30:05
ABSTRACT
“What’s a nice lady like you doing in (a) space like this?
“Esther Dyson tells tales of her cosmonaut training. Recently returned from five months at the Yuri Gagarain Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow, she comes equipped with photos and stories – and a willingness to answer questions.
“Following on President Obama’s call to “begin again the work of remaking America,” Maker Faire 2009 was organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called “the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things.”
BIO
Esther Dyson
“Esther Dyson is a long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology in the U.S. and other markets, including Russia. Since selling her company, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in 2004, she has taken on newer challenges in private aviation and space as well as in health care (as a director of 23andMe, a consumer genetics company).
“Dyson’s IT investments have included Flickr and del.icio.us (both sold to Yahoo!), and Medstory (sold to Microsoft), as well as Meetup Inc., Eventful.com, Boxbe and Voxiva; she sits on the boards of the latter four companies. Dyson is also an active investor in air and space, with holdings in Space Adventures and Zero-G Corporation, as well as XCOR Aerospace, Constellation Services International, Coastal Technologies Group, Dopplr.com, Airship Ventures and Icon.
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CEP COMMENT:
Rodney Brooks: Remaking Manufacturing With Robotics
<http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Rodney_Brooks_Remaking_Manufacturing_With_Robotics>
32:45
ABSTRACT
“Heartland Robotics Chairman and CTO Rodney Brooks asks: What will it take for robots to be added to the toolchest of the makers of American manufacturing, so that they can increase productivity, provide better jobs for American workers, and compete even more strongly in our globalized world?
“Following on President Obama’s call to “begin again the work of remaking America,” Maker Faire 2009 was organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called “the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things.”
BIO
Rodney Brooks <http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Brooks>
“Dr. Rodney Brooks is a robotics entrepreneur and Founder, Chairman and CTO of Heartland Robotics, Inc. He is also a Founder, Board Member and former CTO (1991 – 2008) of iRobot Corp (Nasdaq: IRBT) and the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (on leave) at MIT. Dr. Brooks is the former Director (1997 – 2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He has published many papers and books in computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life.
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reflections on the technium 