TED Day 3 - highlights

DAY 3 – I was sick today & so had to spend a whole heap of time in the hospital whilst they were working out what to do with me. They finally decided that my new side effects aren’t life threatening & so I was allowed to go home. I saw the first session live & then had to watch the rest delayed when I got home. I REALLY wish the hospital had wifi so I could have watched it from my bed - at least I got my favorite room, with a lovely view over Black Mountain. My sister & I were so bored we played pictionary - trying to guess different elements from the periodic table :-)

Here are my highlights...

- Philip Zimbardo - a great psychologist who gave a “3 min talk”, that wasn’t 3 mins at all - the Demise of Guys (dropping out of school, committing suicide, 5 times more likely to have ADHD). Why – because of arousal addictions (to internet, gaming & porn). Boys brains are being digitally rewired for action, change, novelty. “What’s the solution –not my job, I’m here to alarm, not to calm.”

- Dennis Hong (Roboticist) – developing a robotic car for DARPA & a robotic car for the blind. (called Brian) – using non-visual user interfaces The side effects of the blind car program is technologies that can be used in other situations. I so wish my good friend Connor was here – he wants to be a robotic engineer – he would find this stuff exciting.

- Sebastian Thrum (from Google & Stanford) – won the DARPA robotic car challenge. He wants to save 1 million people a year, by creating a car that is autonomous (he had a good friend die in a car accident when he was 18). The cars are at the TED conference & you can “drive” them – that would be fun.

- A live cross to TED Active in Palm Springs (yay, hello Steve from TEDx Canberra) - elevated .org – to get students more involved in education. Talking the ideas behind the TED talks & turning them into TED walks. This reminds me that I’ve been looking at the Khan Academy website today & it looks really great.

- Ai Weiwei (artist, architecht & activist) – Weiwei is critical of Chinese authorities & how they stifle artists & more importantly people in general. He is constantly under surveillance. He talked about living in a society in which freedom of speech is not allowed. Weiwei is trying to connect art & social change. Recently had his studio demolished in Shanghai. Got a standing ovation!! I struggled with this talk a lot. I admire him as a rights activist, and as an artist in general, but find his controversial works just so confronting (he took 6,000 year old Han dynasty urns and took photo’s of him smashing them – he’s also taken Neolithic pottery and ground it to dust & put it in a glass jar). Such rare precious & unreplaceable piece of antiquity being destroyed like that is painful to see. You can see his work here http://dailyserving.com/2010/07/ai-weiwei-dropping-the-urn/

- Eli Pariser – founder of MoveOn (the US version of GetUp). Google & facebook have started filtering things it thinks we want to see, rather than what we need to see – eg if different people do a search for Egypt in google, they will get different responses, depending on their browsing history. There used to be human gate keepers (news editors), now they are digital (algorithmic) - & those online filters don’t have the ethics that human ones do- they don’t take their civic responsibility seriously to give out important information – merely what is “most relevant”. We need to make sure that the algorithms coded into them a sense of civic responsibility, so that we can decide about what information is important.

- Eythor Bender (Berkley Bionics) – This team has made a bionic suit to give extra strength, to help with balance for US soldiers. The average US soldier on average carries 100 pounds of gear on their back, causing back & other injuries. They have made an exoskeleton to help carry this load. They are also working in other areas – There are 68 million wheelchair users world wide (I am 1 of them), which is 1% of the total world population. They have made Elex – an exoskeleton similar for the US military, to help paraplegics . They got Amanda to demonstrate (she has been paralysed from a skiing accident 19 years ago) – she was able to walk for the first time in 19 years!! Amanda got a standing ovation – she looks so incredibly happy to be walking! She asked the MC for a hug – commenting that it was great to do it face to face – when you are in a wheelchair you miss being at eye level with everyone (you get sick of looking at crotches and bellybuttons). It was wonderful to be a part of that moment for Amanda.

- Juan Enriquez (futurist) – I thought it was amazing that they can do so much with silk – to be able to make artificial bones, veins, cups to hold water, store medication so that it is stable etc – a wonderful new use of a very old product. In a way this talk reminded me of Chef Homaro Canto talking about how he makes food (by pushing all the boundaries of nature).

- Daniel Tammet (Linguist, educator, savant) – I love this guy, he is fascinating. It was a pleasure to hear him speak, and to have some sort of insight into what it is like living with such a gift. I think he is probably the closest thing we have to a superhero – with his amazing abilities.

- Janet Echelman – It is so wonderful to see someone who became such an influential artist without going to Art School (she applied to 7 art schools & they all turned her down). Her work is beautiful and so inspiring – we need someone in Australia like her!

- Ed Boyden (controlling brain circuits with light)- being able to control seizures and other brain problems with light instead of medication is exciting – the side effects of those medications are nasty, so it is great to hear about what he is doing.

- TEAM FUN was the nickname of the last session, & they were a lot of fun - it was great to have something to help my brain recover - it's getting a lot of exercise listening to all these amazing speakers.

- Beatrice Coron (papercutter & artist) – I think it is amazing to see what this lady can make with a sharp knife and a piece of paper. Have a look at her work, it is phenomenal - Check out her work here www.beatricecoron.com

- Sarah Kay (performance poet) – this was cool. It reminds me of the poetry slam I went to at the Greenbelt festival in England in 2009. It was great she got a standing ovation!

- Bruno Boden – this is the guy who made Santa Tracker!!! We had a lot of fun with this when we lived in the US (our neighbors kids loved it & introduced it to us, it really brought Santa alive for them).

- Jennifer Pogue (plastic surgeon) –she compared making her daughters Halloween costumes to doing plastic surgery. This was fun, but a little weird and gross.

- Kate Harpen (artist, technologist & communicator) – this lady was hugging a glacier & making interfaces for plants to send twitter messages. She was fun, but bat cr*p crazy. How does she make enough money to eat?? I suspect she must work in other types of art as well, and this is her whimsical side, brought to TED to give our brains a bit of a break and a boost from all the mind bending stuff from the earlier sessions.

- Loved the VW car ad with the force (one of the ads that they are showing as a part of a competition they are running for inspiring and illuminating advertising ). Our friend Steve Jamieson showed this to us a little while ago, & it is a lot of fun. This is the ultimate parental wish fulfilment.

- Shea Hembry (contemporary artist) – (described by the MC as a lunatic). This guy was great. He is often frustrated with the contemporary art world (for not being accessible to people, and not being of high enough quality in technique) & so he decided to organise his own biennial. When he couldn't find artists he was happy with exhibiting, he decided to invent 100 artists from around the world making bio’s and backgrounds for the artists, in various different styles, and then made the works himself. He “introduced” 27 of these artists – the works were amazing in skill, & the bio’s and background stories were really in depth, and very playful. Ok, this guy is kind of bat crap crazy as well (lunatic is a good label), but really interesting, & has mastered so many different styles of art. Either this guy is satirising artists & the art world, or he has his own alternate reality. This was fun, although very left of centre. I hope we were laughing with him & not at him. This guy really deserved his standing ovation – he was great and has a huge amount of skill as an artist (and as a bullsh*t artist as well - the stories of all his invented artists were very engaging).

- Bruno Giussani – head of TED global (which I am hoping to go to in July if I am well enough). His plug for TED global got me excited about the possibility of going.

A great TED talk from Sydney

I put the TED program on my Mum's phone, & instead of going to sleep last night, she & Dad stayed up looking at TED talks on the phone (it is so cool you can do that - we also spent some time playing with it in the hospital today). This is one talk Mum & Dad really liked. It was funny, but thought provoking at the same time (this is the guy that founded Earth Hour). It was filmed at TEDxSydney in May 2010.

Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work. "Work-life balance, says Nigel Marsh, is too important to be left in the hands of your employer. At TEDxSydney, Marsh lays out an ideal day balanced between family time, personal time and productivity -- and offers some stirring encouragement to make it happen."

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/nigel_marsh_how_to_make_work_life_balance_work.html

This is a photo of Nigel Marsh from the Allen & Unwin website (he's written some great books too)

Day 2 Highlights

DAY 2(getting up at 3am was much harder than I thought it was going to be :-} I can’t believe there are people that get up every day for work at this time ☹

Antonio Damasio (Neuroscientist) – this guy is bending my brain. I love the idea of the mind making internal maps of the body, that is fascinating. The definition of self was interesting – I’ll have to talk to my dad the philosopher about it more. It is interesting to see a young baby like my neighbour become more self aware, and it follows the requirements put forward by this speaker. I think I’ll have to watch this talk 4 or 5 times to really get the most out of it.

The Philosopher who teaches people in gaol (Dr Horowitz? He has the same name as my Lyme Disease Dr!) – as the daughter of a philosopher I found this fascinating. A great program – maybe we need it in our schools so that people can work out what they think & analyse their situation so they don’t end up in gaol.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon (Geobiologist) – this was absolutely fascinating. The fact that they discovered that some cells use arsenic instead of phosphorous, completely changing the way we have defined the way life is seen for hundreds of years – I see a Nobel prize somewhere in the future for this lady.

Aaron O’Connell – this talk was incredible. I’ve always been interested in quantum mechanics, and the fact that he got an object to act according to the laws of quantum mechanics is mind blowing – I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. It was amazing to see that he could get a piece of metal to be in two places at exactly the same time.

Morgan Spurlock – I think this talk will be the best talk from TED 2011 – so cool, I can’t wait to see the movie. I always love his work – he manages to get to the truth of the matter whilst being funny.

David Christian (historian) – I though that this was a very well presented talk & I would love for everyone to learn about BIG history, although I think he will have problems teaching people who have a particular religious perspective with the 13.7 billion year history that he explains.

Amina Az-Zubair (Development Worker) – As a member of the Girl Guides I am vey passionate about the Millennium Development Goals & have studied them for a long time. It is so wonderful to see a MDG success story. I knew that Nigeria was making progress with the MDG’s, but had no idea that how big the improvements were. If you want to know more about MDG’s you can see information here www.un.org/millenniumgoals & if you want to know what Girl Guides are doing about the MDG’s you can look here www.wagggsworld.org/en/take_action/gat/mdgs

Bruce Aylward (Epidemiologist) - Ok, now this is my favourite talk, so far…. It made me so proud to be human. Polio is such a horrible disease. Even though I’ve never had polio, I have been paralysed for a time & it is terrifying. I am lucky that I can do rehab to gain the use of my muscles again, it seems the kids with polio don’t have that option. It is amazing the suffering they are able to prevent with this vaccination program. The stats speak for themselves – a 99% reduction in polio cases in 1 year!! Go on Bill Gates – give these people LOTS of cash, they are changing the world into a better place.

Salman Khan (Educator) – This guy got a really big standing ovation & he really deserves it. His has basically taken what homeschoolers have been doing for decades and started to put it into classrooms – I can’t wait to jump online & use it. This looks like it will be a great resource for unschoolers as well – they can follow their passions around the site & let their brains get bigger in the process. I've already sent the link to the Khan Academy to a couple of my homeschool friends.

Bill Gates also got a standing ovation (and from a bunch of apple users that’s impressive). He picked really great speakers – he was a surprisingly good curator for his session.

Edith Widder (Deep Sea Explorer) – I thought that this was such a beautiful talk. It makes me want to look up the bioluminescence on youtube (it sounds like it would make a great screen saver). I also thought it was incredible that they could get some of the worlds greatest oceanographers together – it is wonderful when they can get so many great minds together, it is one of the reasons I love TED.

JR is a street artist who takes photos of people in disadvantaged situations, & puts up enormous posters of the photo’s on buildings (illegally!!). I especially liked the poster he stuck up in Switzerland (6 stories high on the side of a building) of a Minaret, just after building minarets in Switzerland had been banned. I also loved it when he went to Israel & Palestine & took photo’s of people doing the same jobs – I especially loved the three photo’s of the Rabbi, the Imam & the Priest, all pulling faces – it really showed our shared humanity.

Jamie Oliver – he REALLY can’t stand still… ever. It was so fantastic to see how far the Food Revolution has come, and how passionate about it he is. Having just spent 12 months living in the US, I was shocked about the food situation over there. Many people in other western countries don’t realise how bad the obesity problem is in America. Finding good produce was actually MUCH harder in the US than at home in Australia, where we are so spoilt to have a farmers outlet 5 mins from our home, who pick the food in the morning & we are eating it in the afternoon (& the local farmer brings his meat to our kitchen, all packaged up to go in the freezer). I met so many families who didn’t cook in the US, it really surprised me – so it is great to see Jamie’s food trucks are going to be travelling around the US giving cooking lessons (I’d go, they sound like fun & who wouldn’t want a cooking lesson with Jamie Oliver!!!).

Set up to watch TED 2011 live

This is me set up to watch TED 2011 live. All I need is here - my laptop, my dog, & my IV.

TED - Day 1

Day 1 TED

Here are my highlights of Day 1 (I’m not commenting on each talk, just the ones I really loved)

Session 1 was a mind blowing start to the conference.

Astronaut Cady Coleman kicked off TED talking from the International Space Station – I’ve been a HUGE fan of hers for ages, so it was sooo exciting to hear her speak “live”.

Astrophysicist Janna Levin talked about the sound that black holes make (and that the univerise makes), and described multi-verses, which was a bit wild.

Eric Whitacre is a composer & conductor who has set up an AWESOME online choir – it was amazing to hear all those voices from around the world – it gave me goose bumps (and not just because it was early in the morning and cold).

Wadah Khanfar is the director general of the Al Jazeera Network – he spoke of his recent experience of the democracy movement in Egypt – it was really interesting hearing what he had to say. (note my Dad who is an Ethics Lecturer got me to look at the Al Jazeera code of ethics, it’s really interesting – check it out here http://english.aljazeera.net/aboutus/2006/11/2008525185733692771.html

Handspring Puppeteers – I’ve never seen a puppet so lifelike – I actually started thinking of the horse puppet as an animal, rather than just a prop.

Paul Nicklen – this one of my favourite talks of the day. It made me so inspired. I especially loved the image of him with the leopard seals, & his story of them trying to feed him a penguin. It reminds us all that we need to do something about climate change. Now.

Homaro Cantu – the food that they were showing and serving was wild. It makes the food that they served to the Apollo astronauts positively normal!

Ted.ed – I was sooo excited about the announcement of Ted Education – they are going to get a bunch of really inspiring people together to make short clips for an educational database that will be used by students of all ages – a great idea. For more info, or to check it out, go here http://education.ted.com

Tomorrow looks like it will be interesting, although it will be starting at 3am Canberra time :-(

About me – my name is Hannah & I’ve been sick all my life. Even though we didn’t know it at the time, I was born with Lyme Disease (my mum had it when she was pregnant with my twin sister & I), which means that I suffered hearing loss, seizures, severe dyslexia, & eventually paralysis, which put me in my wheelchair (it is very groovy, it’s painted with vines, and leaves & flowers & is called Ivy). The good news is that I am now starting to get well & am no longer dying – thanks to some really great Dr’s I am now able to walk, talk, swallow & breathe easily again. I’m still doing treatment and rehab, but I’m finally getting better & not dying anymore (my hope is for remission).

Because I’ve been sick for so long (I’m 16) I’ve not been able to go to school for a long time (9 years), so I’ve been homeschooled with my twin sister. I’ve been very lucky that where I live there are lots of other homeschoolers (so I’m not isolated), and LOTS of very interesting and very clever people – which means that a lot of my education has been learning directly from scientists, archaeologists, historians, artists, social justice campaigners, animal scientists (including Jane Goodall!!), & military ethics professors in their work place.

The other vital part of my education has been TED. TED has opened up a world of opportunities for me. I have been watching amazing people on the TED website, since April 2007, when I discovered Jane Goodall’s talk – my first TED talk. I like to say I’m a TED tragic, but my family say I’m a TED addict.

I am very lucky that Steve from TEDx Canberra organised for me to have a live web feed of TED 2011. So here I am, sharing my thoughts on TED 2011 in Long Beach California, viewed from my lounge room (with me hooked up to my IV for my daily treatment) – it just doesn’t get any better than this!!!

(if you want to learn more about Lyme Disease go here www.lymedisease.org or www.lymedisease.org.au )