This is Tech

The TED Conference is underway in Monterey California. Those those unfamiliar with the conference, TED brings together forward thinkers from around the world to give short talks on technology, entertainment and design. Past TED talks are available for download from their website and through iTunes. The short length of the speeches makes them easy to digest and get you thinking expansively about some really cool stuff.

There are several bloggers reporting live from the event, including Mark Frauenfelder from BoingBoing.net, one of the best blogs on the web. I will post links to coverage of the talks that look most interesting here. TED releases the talks onto iTunes slowly over time, so you probably wont be able to watch this most recent round of talks for a while. The good news is that their are lots of old ones posted, and you will have plenty to watch while you wait. If you have favorite TED talks, post links in the comments below.

Other Bloggers Covering the Event: Ethan Zuckerman’s blog | Renny Gleeson’s blog | Michael Parekh’s blog

TED 2008 — Susan Blackmore: (I’m liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA)

Presenter: Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine.

History of life is a history of replicators.

Language is a parasite we’ve adapted to. It may have started out being harmful, but we’ve developed a symbiotic relationship with it.

First replicators were genes. Then memes. We now have temes (tech memes) are a third repliciator on our planet.

Don’t think of intelligence, thinnk of replicators.

New Drake equation. Start with number of planets — what fraction of those get a first replicator, a 2nd replicator, a 3rd?

Getting a new replicator is dangerous. We need to pull through each time. The 2nd replicator (memes) was dangerous -= big brains are painful: kills a lot of mothers and babies. Brains uses 20% of body energy for 2% of body weight; it may have nearly killed us off.

temes are just information — they use humans to suck up planet’s resources. Don’t think we created the internet to benefit us; we are being being used by temes. It convenient for temes to piggyback on us because we replicate. But when temes can replicate without us, they will carry on without us.

(Via Boing Boing.)

TED 2008 — Garrett Lisi’s E8 Theory of Everything: “(I’m liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA) Presenter:

Garrett Lisi is introduced as a surfing physicist working on a grand unified theory - E8. He wants to find all the particles and forces that make a complete picture of our universe. He starts by making fun of himself, coming onto the stage and saying ‘Woah dude, check out those killer equations!’

But he wants to talk about particle physics without using equations. He starts showing images of corals. Coral polyps branch into copies. So do universes. He shows a funny slide of the Shroedinger’s Cat problem (for comic effect, he puts Erwin in the box, and the cat gets to run the experiment). We see Shroedinger branching like a coral polyp in the unopened box. Quantum physics says ‘Everything that can happen does.’

The four different known forces have different kinds of charges. The hypothetical Higgs particle gives mass to things, and the Large Hadron Collider that’s about to go into operation will hopefully prove the existence of Higgs particles.

Electric charges are combinations of two different charges, hyper charges and weak charge.

Strong interactions between quarks are happening millions of times a second, holding atomic nuclei together. These particles are at the very limit of our knowledge. The known pattern of charges could come from a more perfect pattern that gets broken. to do these we need to introduce new charges with new directions. He shows a colorful animated pattern of elementary particle interactions. The interactions are taking place in the 8th dimension. Some of the places where there should be particles are blank. They need to be filled in with currently unknown particles.

What’s one reason E8 is so appealing to him? ‘At the heart of this mathematics is pure, beautiful geometry.’

He finishes by showing photos of his three obessions: physics, love, and surfing. He has been living in a van in Maui.

The consensus around here is that even though Lisi avoided equations, it was pretty incomprehensible. That’s why I’m attracted to Renny Gleeson’s explanation of the talk: it was about Spirograph art.

”

(Via Boing Boing.)

TED 2008: Todd Machover: “(I’m liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA)

Presenter: MIT Media Lab’s Todd Machover, who talks about how music has a special power in our lives.

We all love music, but it’s even more powerful if you don’t just listen to it — you must make it yourself. Mozart Effect (increasing IQ in babies by subjecting them to music) doesn’t work, you can’t just listen to music to become smarter, you have to make it.

He created Brain Opera, which is 100 instruments anyone can play using natural skills — you don’t need to know how to play a traditional instrument. The Brain Opera led to Guitar Hero, which also came out of MIT Media Lab.

Music can change your life and the way you communicate with others and change your mind. What’s after Guitar Hero? We are making toys for little kids like squeezie instruments. Software to help kids make music, called Hyperscore, allows anyone to compose music.

Music is one of the only things that people with advanced Alheimer’s can respond to. It’s also good for people with schizophrenia and other metal illnesses. Music is accelerating treatment in hospitals.

Music shows you who you really are. He says he’s more nervous talking on stage than playing music. He’s working on an opera called Death and the Powers. It will premiere in Monaco in September 2009. It’s about a rich guy who wants to live forever, so he downloads himself into the environment. The stage becomes a character. The stage is a giant stringed instrument. There’s also an army of robots on stage, a Greek chorus that observes the action. They are cubes, but they have a lot of personality. Stage also has a library with robotic books, each of which have high packed LEDs on the spines.

Machover wants to make personal opera and personal instruments, that can be adapted to the way you personally behave. It’s the future of interfaces. He invites a young man on stage. His name is Dan Ellsey and he’s in a wheelchair. He has cerebral palsy. He was flown in from the hospital where he lives in a special jet. He hardly ever travels — this is the second time he’s been out of Massachusetts in his life. He’s using a text-to-speech to talk the audience. He just said he loves musics, and is using this personal instrument to compose and perform music.

Dan says he is going to perform a song called, ‘My Eagle Song.’ They are showing his Hyperscore composition. Now the music is playing. I’m not sure if Dan is controlling the playing of the music or not: he has a headband with some LEDs on it, and an iSight camera trained on him, so I think he is controlling the playback of his composition in some way.

Here’s an article about Dan with a link to his music. Link

”

(Via Boing Boing.)

TED 2008: Crow vending machine maker Joshua Klein: “(I’m liveblogging from TED 2008, in Monterey, CA)

Presenter:

Technology hacker Joshua Klein built a vending machine that teaches crows to deposit coins they find into a special vending machine that dispenses peanuts. He has been studying crows for over ten years and has learned that they are very intelligent. Their brain/body weight ratios are similar to chimpanzees. He’s showing a video of how a crow learned to use a tool to pull an object out of of a tube. It’s impressive.

Crows are smart and adaptable. For example, they drop nuts on streets so cars run over them, then wait for the traffic signal to change so they can pick up the food. Other crows who see this happen quickly learn how to do this for themselves.

His machine uses Skinnerian training. He put coins and peanuts around the machine. The crows eat the peanut on the feeder tray. Then Joshua took away the nuts and left coins in the feeder tray. It pisses off the crows. They sweep the coins around with their beaks, looking for food. When a coin accidentally drops into the slot, it dispenses a peanut. Next, Joshua took away the coins. The crows learned to find coins elsewhere and deposit them.

So now he wants to train crows for search and rescue, picking up trash, and other mutually beneficial tasks.

”

(Via Boing Boing.)