Chris Jordan’s presentation at TED is sobering. I’m not up to date in the field of contemporary art but I can’t imagine that there is a more important artist for our time. His message to try and help us understand our culture better so that we might consciously change is exactly what we need.
On a tangential note: I used to play the game Civilization II for hours. ( Civ is a simulation game where you manage the development of a civilization from huts to space ships. ) I found it fascinating to manage the growth of a civilization. Although climate, and the number of competing civilizations, were the biggest factors in how a game began they all ended the same for me. By the 1500s I would have dominated the world and from there all my time was spent building a vast, sprawling civilization that transformed every inch of the land into a city. It’s just what I did.
But the simulation is very good. Near the end all my efforts in managing the civilization were in effect to clean up the mess that I created to get to that point. In the game industrialization comes at the cost of, you guessed it, global warming. So once industrialization was well under way I had access to create solar plants and recycling centers.
By the very end of the game every city had maxed out its productivity, taxes were set to practically nothing, and there was no military. It took a huge management effort to get my civilization to that point but that’s what always happened.
Oddly enough I think that’s why I’m optimistic that we’ll reach that same state in our real civilization. But there was one major difference: I was the benevolent despot that managed single handedly. Any chance we could manage that in a global civilization with conflicting cultures and governments?
This reminds me: I’d really like to volunteer to teach/tutor about programming and mathematics a day or two a week at the local high school. I’ll check into that next Fall. Remind me if I forget
The TED.com website has undergone quite a few changes recently with a new design and features. This morning I saw a video on their site that uses a very simple and usable form of video navigation that I think everyone should see. (In addition the video content itself is worthy of viewing.)
The video interface looks simple enough, as you see here. It pretty much your standard layout. What they did that is unique is when you mouse over the video timeline it expands - as you can see to the right here. In the expansion you get additional information about the video in how the content is arranged. So you can drag your playhead to view a specific portion. But even better, you con simply click on a label in the expansion and jump to that section of the video. So not only do you get more information about how the video content is organized and it’s length but you can navigate straight to it.
It’s pretty clear that to make this work you need to have Adobe Communication Server, or whatever they’re calling it today, because the video needs to be streamed instead of progressive. But this is TED where pretty much everything they do is top shelf.
You could do this with a progressive download but the user wouldn’t be able to jump to portions of the video that haven’t been downloaded yet.
This is the sort of User eXperience (UX) that when you see it you think, “Well, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” I’ll see what I can do to add a UX like this to my video.Maru code.
Lets get some context here: I’ve seen most of the TED.com presentations. I don’t recall a standing ovation before. This presentation is moving, and perhaps life altering.
There was a movie out recently that purposed what it would be like if a comedian ran for president of the United States, and won. You might think that outside the real of possibility but it could happen if Al Gore ran in 2008.
Al Gore’s presentation at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) showed again what an extraordinary person he is and how far he’s come from the “cardboard Gore” days. I remember watching him speak back in the early ninety’s and again during the 2000 presidential campaign and thinking, “Geez, would this guy just lighten up.” And then when he did lighten up for the camera it seemed like he was just acting it out. He didn’t seem sincere. He’s totally different now.
He has said, both before and after the debut of “An Inconvenient Truth” that he has no intention of running for president in 2008. We’ll have to wait and see because this guy would be very hard to beat. He seems much more genuine these days, more worldly, and more at ease with himself. But most importantly he really seems to believe in himself.
From TED: Al Gore, in his own words, “used to be the next President of the United States of America” but has since changed professions. This talk is a follow-up to his now-famous presentation, featured in the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” In it, he outlines what we can do to avert a global climate crisis. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)
Peter Donnelly at TED: It isn’t often that someone can stand before an audience of highly educated, successful people and tell them that they are wrong, most of the time, when they have an opinion on a subject governed by uncertainty. Peter Donnelly, statistics professor at Oxford University, does just that during his TED presentation on statistics of uncertainty.
He uses everyday examples where uncertainty and logic are often at odds with each other. The subject is far to complex for him to elucidate us on how to think correctly about uncertainty and statistics. Instead he uses everyday examples where people have gotten the statistics horribly wrong. Thus the message is: if you are dealing with a decision based on statistical evidence of an uncertain event then you are likely to get it wrong. Therefore before making that decision you should consider that even though it seems logical you are, very likely, making a logical error and should look harder at the problem.
From TED:
Statistician Peter Donnelly explores the common mistakes humans make in interpreting statistics, and the devastating impact these errors can have on the outcome of criminal trials. Donnelly is a statistics professor at Oxford University who collaborates with biologists, applying statistical models to genetics, with the hope of shedding more light on evolutionary history and the structure of the human genome (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:06)
Is there a difference in being happy because you have what you want or that you want what you have? (Read it again. It does make sense.)
Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, gave a presentation at TED where he covered just that. I don’t want to give anything away but you’ll be happier if you see this 22 minute presentation. And if you’re already happy, you’ll probably understand why.
