Past TEDTalks at EPL
November 10 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Deb Roy: The birth of a word
Deb Roy, an MIT researcher and cognitive scientist, wanted to understand how his infant son learned language—so he wired up his house with video cameras to capture almost every moment of his son's life over a three year period. Analysis of 90,000 hours of video and 140,000 hours of audio reveals how his son’s "gaaaa" slowly turns into "water." This innovative and data-rich research into how we communicate has deep implications for understanding human speech, learning, and social behaviour.
Deb Roy directs the Cognitive Machines group at the MIT Media Lab and is the co-founder and CEO of Bluefin Labs, a venture-backed technology company. He studies how children learn language, analyzes social media commentary to measure real-time audience response to TV ads and shows, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways.
"As our world becomes increasingly instrumented and we have the capabilities to collect and connect the dots between what people are saying and the context they're saying it in, what's emerging is an ability to see new social structures and dynamics that have previously not been seen ... And I think the implications here are profound, whether it's for science, for commerce, for government, or perhaps most of all, for us as individuals."
October 13, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman: Let's talk parenting taboos
Babble.com publishers Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, in a lively tag-team, expose 4 facts that parents never, ever admit -- and why they should. Funny and honest, for parents and nonparents alike.
Alisa Volkman co-founded Babble with her husband, Rufus Griscom, in December 2006, and has spent the past four years growing the site to attract more than 4 million parents a month. As VP of Sales Strategy and Brand Development, Volkman oversees design, influences product development, and creates and sells custom ad programs.
Griscom serves as Babble’s CEO. He was co-founder of the pathbreaking Nerve.com in 1997, as the website’s founding editor and CEO. In the decade that followed, Griscom grew Nerve Media into a profitable website and online dating business, in the process spinning off Spring Street Networks. He serves as an advisor to several New York-based internet companies. Volkman and Griscom have three sons, Declan, Grey and the brand-new Rye.
"At work, [Griscom] and Volkman try to keep their relationship low-key. 'It’s in the elevator ride up to our offices that a transformation occurs,' Griscom says. 'We start the ride as a couple and end it as business associates."
September 8, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Jeremy Rifkin: The empathetic civilization
In this talk from RSA Animate, bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways it has shaped human development and society.
Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the author of 17 bestselling books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society and the environment. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages and are used in thousands of universities, corporations and government agencies around the world.
"The Empathic Civilization is emerging. A younger generation is fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth."
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_rifkin_on_the_empathic_civilization.html
May 12, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity
In this funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk from 2009, author Elizabeth Gilbert shares how she came to terms with the unexpected success of her internationally bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. She admits that writing is her life-long love and fascination, and yet she describes the expectations for her much-anticipated follow-up book as daunting. She is plagued by the fear that despite her relatively young age, her best work might be behind her and that she may never be able to replicate what she describes as the “freakish” success of Eat, Pray, Love.
In order to keep writing and not be paralyzed by her fears, Gilbert began thinking long and hard about the true nature of genius, where it comes from, and how it impacts the creative process of writers and other artists. Her self-examination prompts her to question why society collectively accepts the notion that creativity and suffering go hand in hand and that artistry ultimately leads to anguish. It is better, Gilbert maintains, to encourage our creative minds to live. And so she shares the radical idea derived from the ancient Greeks and Romans that instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. Join us as she inspires and encourages artists of all disciplines to work with their genius and in some cases, in spite of their genius, in order to manage the inherent emotional risks of creativity.
Elizabeth Gilbert is a long-time magazine writer, covering music and politics for Spin and GQ. She is also a novelist and short-story writer. Her other books include the story collection Pilgrims, the novel Stern Men (about lobster fishermen in Maine), and a biography of the woodsman Eustace Conway, called The Last American Man. When she was faced with a pre-midlife crisis, she did what many of us secretly dream of doing--she ran off and travelled for a year. Her travels through Italy, India and Indonesia resulted in the bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love about her process of finding herself by leaving home. Since the recording of this TEDTalk, Gilbert has successfully completed Committed, the sequel to Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert also owns and runs an import shop in Frenchtown, New Jersey.
April 14, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Making global labor fair
How are unsafe working conditions, forced child labour, and human rights abuses implicated in the chocolate, cell phone, pharmaceutical, and cotton products that we purchase on a daily basis? What would it take to correct these abuses, which are part of the global supply chain that brings us our favourite consumer goods?
In this eye-opening TED Talk, labor activist Auret van Heerden talks about the next frontier of workers' rights -- globalized industries where no single national body can keep workers safe and protected. As the head of the Fair Labor Association, Van Heerden takes a practical approach to workers' rights, persuading corporations and NGOs to protect labor in their global supply chains.
Why you should listen to him:
Raised in apartheid South Africa, Auret van Heerden became an activist early. As a student, he agitated for workers' rights and co-wrote a book on trade unionism; he was tortured and placed in solitary confinement, then exiled in 1987. For the past decade he's been the president and CEO of the Fair Labor Association (FLA).
Founded in 1999, The Fair Labor Association grew out of a task force convened by former President Bill Clinton to investigate and end child labor and other sweatshop practices. Difficult enough in the US and Canada, protecting labor is even more complex in the global economy, with its multiple sets of laws and layers of contractors and outsourcers. Policing the entire chain is impossible, so FLA works instead to help all parties agree that protecting workers is the best way to do business, and agree on voluntary initiatives to further this goal.
Van Heerden and FLA create a safe space in which stakeholders representing different interest groups within a global supply chain can work together to resolve conflicts of rights and interests. He is also on the Advisory Board of The Institute for Human Rights and Business which is dedicated to being a global centre of excellence and expertise on the relationship between business and internationally proclaimed human rights standards.
April 16, 2011 @ Whitemud Crossing Branch
E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth
One of the world's most distinguished scientists, E.O. Wilson is a professor and honorary curator in entomology at Harvard. In 1975, he published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, a work that described social behavior, from ants to humans.
Drawing from his deep knowledge of the Earth's "little creatures" and his sense that their contribution to the planet's ecology is underappreciated, he produced what may be his most important book, The Diversity of Life. In it he describes how an intricately interconnected natural system is threatened by man's encroachment, in a crisis he calls the "sixth extinction" (the fifth one wiped out the dinosaurs).
With his most recent book, The Creation, he wants to put the differences of science- and faith-based explanations aside "to protect Earth's vanishing natural habitats and species ...; in other words, the Creation, however we believe it came into existence." A recent documentary called Behold the Earth illustrates this human relationship to nature, or rather separation from an originally intended human bond with nature, through music, imagery, and thoughtful words from both Christians and scientists, including Wilson.
March 10, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Evelyn Glennie shows how to listen
In this soaring demonstration, deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie illustrates how listening to music involves much more than simply letting sound waves hit your eardrums. Glennie's music challenges the listener to ask where music comes from: Is it more than simply a translation from score to instrument to audience? How can a musician who has almost no hearing play with such sensitivity and compassion?
The Grammy-winning percussionist and composer became almost completely deaf by the age of 12, but her hearing loss brought her a deeper understanding of and connection to the music she loves. She's the subject of the documentary Touch the Sound, which explores this unconventional and intriguing approach to percussion.
Along with her vibrant solo career, Glennie has collaborated with musicians ranging from classical orchestras to Björk. Her career has taken her to hundreds of concert stages around the world, and she's recorded a dozen albums, winning a Grammy for her recording of Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, and another for her 2002 collaboration with Bela Fleck.
Her passion for music and musical literacy brought her to establish, in collaboration with fellow musicians Julian Lloyd Weber and Sir James Galway, the Music Education Consortium, which successfully lobbied for an investment of 332 million pounds in music education and musical resources in Britain.
February 10, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
You’ve probably heard arguments about whether or not beauty and art actually have a real purpose—does Denis Dutton have the answer? In a presentation that’s stunningly animated by illustrator Andrew Park, Dutton shows us that art, music and beauty all have deep roots in human evolution, and have been tools that have allowed us to survive. Think you’d like to see Dutton’s theory sketched out in front of your very eyes? This will be one TEDTalk unlike any other.
In his 2009 book The Art Instinct, philosopher Denis Dutton suggests that art is a need built into our systems, a complex and subtle evolutionary adaptation comparable to our facility for language. We humans evolved to love art because it helps us survive; for example, a well-expressed appreciation of art can -- even in modern times -- help us to find a mate. It’s a bold argument to make, bolstered by examples from the breadth of art history that Dutton keeps at his fingertips.
Dutton teaches philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and is the editor of Arts & Letters Daily, a three-column compendium of culture news from all over the web. (His own homepage is another storehouse of tidbits from his wide-ranging explorations in philosophy and culture.) He’s on the advisory board of Cybereditions, a publisher specializing in ebooks and print-on-demand editions of nonfiction works. And he’s an editor of Climate Debate Daily, a lively blog that takes a skeptical view of some climate-change arguments.
January 13, 2011 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Poverty, Money - and Love
What do you think of people in poverty? Maybe what Jessica Jackley once did: "they" need "our" help, in the form of a few coins in a jar. The co-founder of Kiva.org talks about how her attitude changed -- and how her work with microloans has brought new power to people who live on a few dollars a day.
Seven years ago, Jackley heard a speech by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh who had developed the idea of microcredit: loans offered to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. She says, "I was so completely blown away by the idea that I quit my job, dropped everything and moved to East Africa to help." In late 2005 she co-founded Kiva.org with Matt Flannery.
Kiva uses a peer-to-peer model in which lenders sort through profiles of potential borrowers -- be they a farmer in Cambodia, a pharmacist in Sierra Leone, or a shopkeeper in Mongolia -- and make loans to those they find most appealing. The minimum loan is $25, and the interest rate is 0%. The repayment rate for loans is more than 98%, Jackley says, and since the group was founded almost 700,000 people have pledged $128 million in loans to more than 325,000 people. Jackley's latest project is ProFounder, a new platform that helps small businesses in the United States access startup funding through community involvement.
December 9, 2010 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Is this how tomorrow's computers will be controlled?
Remember the data interface from the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report? Well, it's real, John Underkoffler invented it -- as a point-and-touch interface called g-speak -- and it's about to change the way we interact with data. In this TEDTalk, Underkoffler demonstrates g-speak -- the real-life version of the film's eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Come watch the online TEDTalk, then participate in a lively discussion and share your thoughts and opinions!
John Underkoffler led the team that came up with this interface, called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. His company, Oblong Industries, was founded to move g-speak into the real world. Oblong is building apps for aerospace, bioinformatics, video editing and more. But the big vision is ubiquity: g-speak on every laptop, every desktop, every microwave oven, TV, dashboard. "It has to be like this," he says. "We all of us every day feel that. We build starting there. We want to change it all."
October 14, 2010 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
The Oil Spill's Unseen Culprits, Victims
The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.
Carl Safina explores how the ocean is changing, and what those changes mean for wildlife and for people. In the 1990s he helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write US federal fisheries law, work toward international conservation of tunas, sharks and other fishes, and achieve passage of a UN global fisheries treaty.
September 9, 2010 @ Stanley A. Milner Library
Are schools killing creativity?
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. Come watch the TEDTalk, then participate in a lively discussion and share your thoughts and opinions!
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.
