Watching TED Talks: Reframe

After a 75 minute break, TED starts again - again, I am live-blogging the event.

REFRAME

Tom O'Reilly - What's in the Gift Bags

All of us are completely envious about the gift bag.

Associate members gift box

• Shows the "ideas worth spreading" diary book - I thought quite funny that they have a physical book
• Poster, Flash cards
• "When I am on my deathbed, I want to feel like I made a difference in people's lives. It may sound selfish, but it is the way I was brought up." - Richard Branson

Actual gift bags

• Coke bottle bags
• Stuffed Panda from WWF
• Metal bottle for drinking
• Everfy - teach high school kids how to understand finance
• iForest - plant a tree somewhere - shake the phone to water the tree and such
• SCALE - new DVD
• Darius Goes West - documentary film about Darius Weams - road movie
• Merino Wool Garment from IceBreaker
• ActionMethod by Behance
• Hint Mints
• One for One - Tom Shoes
• Show of Hands book

Tim Berners-Lee - New Reframing

Imagine 20 years ago that a link could go to any server in the world - not just the CD (as in hyperlinking). Want to get people to put data on the web.

What's the difference between documents versus data? Showing data in visual representations - data is in the brown-box, and puts it together in a visual representation. Think of a world where all of the data is available on the web.

He calls it "Linked Data":

• use URIs for people. places, products, pages and such
• use the HTTP protocol to fetch the info - get information back
• when I get the information, it also has the relationships included (e.g. hyperlinking the data contents like X is in Y, Y has other companies)

Linked Data Standards - allows for connectivity to the applications via a standardized interface. Showing the tool dbpedia.com

Discusses gov't data and how Obama has promised making data transparent. He hopes Obama uses Linked Data concepts.

RAW DATA NOW!

Science: problem is that the data is LOCKED UP - and the scientists need to free the data.
Discusses the social networking site - and how the walls of data are difficult. Funny part - Power.com enables it pretty well.

OpenStreetMap.org

People doing their bit to improve the data - everyone else does their bit to improve the data and give it meaning (sounds like crowdsourcing).

Make the demand for RAW DATA!

Cindy Gallup - Hardcore Pornography is Becoming Sex Education

Too many people think that you see in hard-core pornography is "supposedly" the way to have sex - especially with our challenge of poor schooling, bad situations with parents feeling awkward - not providing guidance.

Annonuncing the Make Love Not Porn website - to show that there is more to sex than just PORN. (TED Blog post on Cindy)

Yair Landau

Using wiki tools to generate glocal creativity - Mass Animation. Built a solution using the CGI animation process to the world via Facebook and exposed an animation tool. Working to make desktop animation viable.

Demos a short created by 12 animators in 5 countries - excellent work.

Nandan Nilekani - How to handle India

Why is India such a wide variation? The rise and fall of India.
Can discuss in terms of people, ideas is much more effective.

• Ideas that have arrived
• Ideas in progress
• Ideas in conflict
• Ideas in anticipation

There are six Ideas that have Arrived in India:

• People: from being a burden to becoming engines of growth - moving to "human capital" linked to the fact that there is a demographic shift. Demographic dividend can also be a demographic disaster.
• Entrepreneurs: from villains to role models - shifted in the past 60 years. Contributed to the white collar
• English: from language of colonizers to the languages of jobs - language of aspiration
• Technology: from man versus machine to man AND machine. India has 8M phones (with 1.1B people???). Pre-pay phones primary - empowering.
• Globalization: from Bombay Plan to Bombay House - as the companies go abroad - comapnies are gaining confidence. Only "young" country in the Asian world.
• Deepening of democracy: from one party rule to 13 party rule - bottom-up process - benefits of having a voice - democracy has become embedded.
  

Ideas in Progress (accepted, but not implemented)

• Education: universal access to primary schools - never given the attention it required. More than 50% of urban kids going to private schools.
• Infrastructure: connecting the nation - roads need work, telecoms, etc. 20 years ago: food clothing and shelters. Now: electricity, water and roads - focus on infrastructure
  
• Cities/Urbanization: engines of growth - long time, neglected the Indian cities.
  
• Single Market: smooth, seamless flow of goods across states. [Really???]

Ideas in Conflict

• Conflicting political ideologies: policy making gridlock - due to the caste system - needs to be resolved
• Labor preforms: job protection hampering job creation - 93% in the unstructured/informal job force. need new set of labor laws.
  
• Higher education: state control or private funding

Ideas in Anticipation

• eGovernance: democracy, technology, efficiency and tranparency
• Health: avoiding diseases of prosperity (highest of heart attacks, diabetes, etc)
  
• Pensions and entitlements: taking care of the future - chance to put into place a model pension system
• Environment: can India's growth be clean?
• Energy: driving growth around a new energy model

Why care? More than a Billion people, it is a democracy. Growth and democracy is not incompatable. If you can solve these problems, can solve the poverty/enviroment problems around the world. Will ensure the solutions have the scale, cost, reach to accomplish the goals in a short amount time.

Situation of Rapid Growth - need a clear strategy for India which can be applied to the world.

Pattie Maes - the Sixth Sense

From the MIT Media Lab - use the five senses to ascertain the world. We normally do not have easy access to all the data, information or knowledge made over the years. Recently, it has become available online. What is the missing "sense" to access to this meta-information (the sixth sense).

Built a device to create the "sixth sense". Camera, portable battery projector, mirror, colored caps - all of these things communicate with the cell phone. Great gesture system - tracks iconic gestures, can mange the content on any surfaces.

• Video annotations from newspaper articles
  
• Tag cloud associated with the person projected on the preson
• Best pricing and preferences for physical products
  
• Commentary on books (due to product recognition), rankings, annotations on pages
• Recognizing a ticket and getting delays and changes to bookings
  

[Ed Note: INCREDIBLE!!!]

Al Gore - State of the Earth

Global Ice Cap - beating heart of the Earth. Release of carbon becoming methane.
Clean Coal - the new Joe Camel?
Discussing RepowerAmerica - wind, sun - new investments into building the energy infrastructure.

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We need to go far - quickly.