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Rethink: A night of talks in partnership with Brightline Initiative

Par : Daryl Chen

If we want to do things differently, where do we begin? Curators Corey Hajim and Alex Moura host TED Salon: “Rethink,” in partnership with Brightline Initiative at the TED World Theater in New York City on June 6, 2019. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

The event: TED Salon: “Rethink,” hosted by TED business curator Corey Hajim and TED tech curator Alex Moura

When and where: Thursday, June 6, 2019, at the TED World Theater in New York City

The partner: Brightline Initiative, with Brightline executive director Ricardo Vargas warming up the audience with opening remarks

Music: Dark pop bangers from the Bloom Twins

The Bloom Twins, sisters Anna and Sofia Kuprienko, perform their special brand of “dark pop” at TED Salon: “Rethink,” in partnership with Brightline Initiative. (Photo: Jasmina Tomic / TED)

The talks in brief:

Heidi Grant, social psychologist, chief science officer of the Neuroleadership Institute and associate director of Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center  

  • Big idea: Asking for help can be awkward and embarrassing, but we all need to get comfortable with doing it.
    The most important thing about asking for help is to do it — out loud, explicitly, directly. Grant provides four tips to ensure that your ask will get a yes. First, be clear about what kind of help you need. No one wants to give “bad” help, so if they don’t understand what you’re looking for, they probably won’t respond. Next, avoid disclaimers, apologies and bribes — no prefacing your ask with, “I really hate to do this” or offering to pay for assistance, which makes others feel uneasy and self-conscious. Third, don’t ask for help over email or text, because it’s too easy for someone to say “no” electronically; do it face-to-face or in a phone call. And last, follow up after and tell the other person exactly how their help benefited you.
  • Quote of the talk: “The reality of modern work and modern life is that nobody does it alone. Nobody succeeds in a vacuum. More than ever, we actually do have to rely on other people, on their support and their collaboration, in order to be successful.”

Stuart Oda, urban farm innovator, cofounder and CEO of Alesca Life

  • Big idea: The future of farming is looking up — literally.
    Recent innovations in food production technology allows us to grow up — 40 stories, even — rather than across, like in traditional farming. The efficiency of this vertical method lessens the amount of soil, water, physical space and chemical pesticides used to generate year-round yields of quality vegetables, for less money and more peace of mind. Oda shares a vision for a not-too-distant future where indoor farms are integrated seamlessly into cityscapes, food deserts no longer exist, and nutrition for all reigns supreme.
  • Fun fact: In 2050, our global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion. We’ll need to grow more food in the next 30 to 40 years than in the previous 10,000 years combined to compensate.

Efosa Ojomo researches global prosperity, analyzing why and how corruption arises. He discusses how we could potentially eliminate it by investing in businesses focused on wiping out scarcity. (Photo: Jasmina Tomic / TED)

Efosa Ojomo, global prosperity researcher and senior fellow at Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation

  • Big idea: We can eliminate corruption by investing in innovative businesses that target scarce products.
    Conventional thinking about reducing corruption goes like this: in order to eliminate it, you put laws in place, development inspires investment, and the economy booms. Prosperity researcher Efosa Ojomo thinks we have this equation backwards. Through years of researching what makes societies prosperous, he’s found that the best way to stem corruption is to encourage investment in businesses that can wipe out the scarcity that spurs coercion, extortion and fraud. “Corruption, especially for most people in poor countries, is a workaround. It’s a utility in a place where there are fewer options to solve a problem. It’s their best solution to the problem of scarcity,” Ojomo says. Entrepreneurs who address scarcity in corruption-ridden regions could potentially eliminate it across entire sectors of markets, he explains. Take, for example, Mo Ibraham, the founder of mobile telecommunications company Celtel. His highly criticized idea to create an African cellular carrier put affordable cell phones in several sub-Saharan African countries for the first time, and today nearly every country there has its own carrier. It’s “market-creating innovations” like these that ignite major economic progress — and make corruption obsolete.
  • Quote of talk: “Societies don’t develop because they’ve reduced corruption; they’re able to reduce corruption because they’ve developed.”

Shannon Lee, podcaster and actress

  • Big idea: Shannon Lee’s famous father Bruce Lee died when she was only four years old, yet she still treasures his philosophy of self-actualization: how to be yourself in the best way possible.
    Our lives benefit when we can connect our “why” (our passions and purpose) to our “what” (our jobs, homes and hobbies). But how to do it? Like a martial artist, Lee says: by finding the connecting “how” that consistently and confidently expresses our values. If we show kindness and love in one part of our life yet behave harshly in another, then we are fragmented — and we cannot progress gracefully from our “why” to our “what.” To illustrate this philosophy, Lee asks the audience to consider the question, “How are you?” Or rather, “How can I fully be me?”
  • Quote of the talk: “There were not multiple Bruce Lees: there was not private and public Bruce Lee, or teacher Bruce Lee and actor Bruce Lee and family-man Bruce Lee. There was just one, unified, total Bruce Lee.”

When’s the last time you ate more, and exercised less, than you should? Dan Ariely explores why we make certain decisions — and how we can change our behavior for the better. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)

Dan Ariely, behavioral economist and author of Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

  • Big idea: To change people’s behavior, you can’t just give them information on what they should do. You have to actually change the environment in which they’re making decisions.
    To bridge the gap between a current behavior and a desired behavior, you must first reduce the friction, or remove the little obstacles and annoyances between those two endpoints. Then you need to think broadly about what new motivations you could bring into that person’s life. Financial literacy is great, for instance, but the positive impact of such information wears off after a few days. What else could be done to help people put more away for a rainy day? You could ask their kids to send a weekly text reminding them to save money, or you could give them some kind of visual reminder — perhaps a coin — to help even more. There’s a lot we can do to spark behavioral change, Ariely says. The key is to get creative and experiment with the ways we do it.
  • Quote of the talk: “Social science has made lots of strides, and the basic insight is … the right way is not to change people — it’s to change the environment.”

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darylwc

WHAAAAAT?: Notes from Session 4 of TED2020

For Session 4 of TED2020, experts in biohacking, synthetic biology, psychology and beyond explored topics ranging from discovering the relationship between the spinal cord and asparagus to using tools of science to answer critical questions about racial bias. Below, a recap of the night’s talks and performances.

“Every scientist can tell you about the time they ignored their doubts and did the experiment that would ‘never’ work,” says biomedical researcher Andrew Pelling. “And the thing is, every now and then, one of those experiments works out.” He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Andrew Pelling, biomedical researcher

Big idea: Could we use asparagus to repair spinal cords?

How? Andrew Pelling researches how we might use fruits, vegetables and plants to reconstruct damaged or diseased human tissues. (Check out his 2016 talk about making ears out of apples.) His lab strips these organisms of their DNA and cells, leaving just the fibers behind, which are then used as “scaffolds” to reconstruct tissue. Now, they’re busy working with asparagus, experimenting to see if the vegetable’s microchannels can guide the regeneration of cells after a spinal cord injury. There’s evidence in rats that it’s working, the first data of its kind to show that plant tissues might be capable of repairing such a complex injury. Pelling is also the cofounder of Spiderwort, a startup that’s translating these innovative discoveries into real-world applications. “Every scientist can tell you about the time they ignored their doubts and did the experiment that would ‘never’ work,” he says. “And the thing is, every now and then, one of those experiments works out.”


Synthetic designer Christina Agapakis shares projects that blur the line between art and science at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Christina Agapakis, synthetic designer

Big idea: Synthetic biology isn’t an oxymoron; it investigates the boundary between nature and technology — and it could shape the future.

How? From teaching bacteria how to play sudoku to self-healing concrete, Christina Agapakis introduces us to the wonders of synthetic biology: a multidisciplinary science that seeks to create and sometimes redesign systems found in nature. “We have been promised a future of chrome, but what if the future is fleshy?” asks Agapakis. She delves into the ways biology could expand technology and alter the way we understand ourselves, exposing the surprisingly blurred lines between art, science and society. “It starts by recognizing that we as synthetic biologists are also shaped by a culture that values ‘real’ engineering more than any of the squishy stuff. We get so caught up in circuits and what happens inside of computers that we sometimes lose sight of the magic that’s happening inside of us,” says Agapakis.

Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius perform “White Lies” and “Turn It Around” at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED.)

Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of indie pop band Lucius provide an enchanting musical break between talks, performing their songs “White Lies” and “Turn It Around.”


“[The] association with blackness and crime … makes its way into all of our children, into all of us. Our minds are shaped by the racial disparities we see out in the world, and the narratives that help us to make sense of the disparities we see,” says psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt. She speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Jennifer L. Eberhardt, psychologist

Big idea: We can use science to break down the societal and personal biases that unfairly target Black people.

How? When Jennifer Eberhardt flew with her five-year-old son one day, he turned to her after looking at the only other Black man on the plane and said, “I hope he doesn’t rob the plane” — showing Eberhardt undeniable evidence that racial bias seeps into every crack of society. For Eberhardt, a MacArthur-winning psychologist specializing in implicit bias, this surfaced a key question at the core of our society: How do we break down the societal and personal biases that target blackness? Just because we’re vulnerable to bias doesn’t mean we need to act on it, Eberhardt says. We can create “friction” points that eliminate impulsive social media posts based on implicit bias, such as when Nextdoor fought back against its “racial profiling problem” that required users to answer a few simple questions before allowing them to raise the alarm on “suspicious” visitors to their neighborhoods. Friction isn’t just a matter of online interaction, either. With the help of similar questions, the Oakland Police Department instituted protocols that reduce traffic stops of African-Americans by 43 percent. “Categorization and the bias that it seeds allow our brains to make judgments more quickly and efficiently,” Eberhardt says. “Just as the categories we create allow us to make quick decisions, they also reinforce bias — so the very things that help us to see the world also can blind us to it. They render our choices effortless, friction-free, yet they exact a heavy toll.”


 

Biological programmer Michael Levin (right) speaks with head of TED Chris Anderson about the wild frontiers of cellular memory at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Michael Levin, biological programmer

Big idea: DNA isn’t the only builder in the biological world — there’s also an invisible electrical matrix directing cells to change into organs, telling tadpoles to become frogs, and instructing flatworms to regenerate new bodies once sliced in half. If Michael Levin and his colleagues can learn this cellular “machine language,” human beings may be one step closer to curing birth defects, eliminating cancer and evading aging.

How? As cells become organs, systems and bodies, they communicate via an electrical system dictating where the finished parts will go. Guided by this cellular network, organisms grow, transform and even build new limbs (or bodies) after trauma. At Michael Levin’s lab, scientists are cracking this code — and have even succeeded in creating autonomous organisms out of skin cells by altering the cell electrically without genetic manipulation. Mastering this code could not only allow humans to create microscopic biological “xenobots” to rebuild and medicate our bodies from the inside but also let us to grow new organs — and perhaps rejuvenate ourselves as we age. “We are now beginning to crack this morphogenetic code to ask: How is it that these tissues store a map of what to do?” Levin asks. “[How can we] go in and rewrite that map to new outcomes?”


“My vision for the future is that when things come to life, they do so with joy,” says Ali Kashani. He speaks at TED2020: Uncharted on June 11, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Ali Kashani, VP of special projects at Postmates

Big idea: Robots are becoming a part of everyday life in urban centers, which means we’ll have to design them to be accessible, communicative and human-friendly.

How? On the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, delivery robots bustle along neighborhood sidewalks to drop-off packages and food. With potential benefits ranging from environmental responsibility to community-building, these robots offer us an incredible glimpse into the future. The challenge now is ensuring that robots can move out of the lab and fit into our world and among us as well, says Kashani. At Postmates, Kashani designs robots with human reaction in mind. Instead of frightening, dystopian imagery, he wants people to understand robots as familiar and friendly. This is why Postmates’s robots are reminiscent of beloved characters like the Minions and Wall-E; they can use their eyes to communicate with humans and acknowledge obstacles like traffic stops in real-time. There are so many ways robots can help us and our communities: picking up extra food from restaurants for shelters, delivering emergency medication to those in need and more. By designing robots to integrate into our physical and social infrastructures, we can welcome them to the world seamlessly and create a better future for all. “My vision for the future is that when things come to life, they do so with joy,” Kashani says.

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