TED2010

Last week I spend 4 days as a genuine night-hawk watching the TED2010 live webcast.

But it was worth it. Just a few highlights: (the official highlights)

-this post is only for proper TED-fans-

*Daniel Kahneman on the difference between the 'remembering self' and the 'experiencing self', in short, the only thing that seems to count afterwards is how we remember experiences. As such, the last part of any experience seems to be the most important one, because this is what we remember. I will post the video when it becomes available.

*William Li on some groundbreaking cancer research. In short, the fact that angiogenesis might become very important in the next generation of cancer treatments, an alternative to chemotherapy. His question 'can we eat cancer to dead?' on which the answer appeared to be 'yes we can' was very striking. Something to watch.


*The fact that TED-talks have been watched 200.000.000 times around the world, with 2500 people translating them.

*Dan Barber on true eco fish-farming without waste.

*Nicholas Christakis on 'obesity clusters', showing visualisations on how the fact whether you are obese depends largely on you social network. Striking.

*Kevin Bales on the fact that ALL slavery can be sustainably solved by spending $10.8 billion dollar. Amazing.

*Yoni Benatar pilots mini drones from his iphone with augmented reality.

*A debate pro-contra nuclear power, live, on stage between people who Really know what they are talking about, with an audience that can Really change the outcome of the nuclear debate, fascinating. Kind of changed my view on that matter actually.

*Jane McGonigal on the fact that we should harness the qualities of the gaming community to solve real world problems. We need more gaming. Not everybody agreed.

*David Byrne (talking heads) on how music adapts to its physical environment.

*Nathan Myhrvold with some geeked-out inventions. Including a machine that "Shoots musquitos with Lasers" (no kiddin, they did a live demo on stage..., proper Austin Powers, 'Laser')


*Stephen Wolfram on http://www.wolframalpha.com/
, the online search-engine that can do maths and solve problems by combining uncombined data..

*Seth Berkley on flu vaccins and how lucky we have been up until now. His work on making a "retrovacinallity" vaccin that might last much longer than one year. Also, HIV.



*Mark Roth on 'suspended animation', making organisms seem dead and make them able to sustain in low-oxygen environments by lowering temperature and applying hydrogyn sulfide while being able to wake them up again afterwards without any harm. Working tests on mice and others. Human trails are coming up.

*Sergey Brin, a google-founder in an on-stage interview about the threat made by google to stop censoring google in China due to gmail account being broken into by the Chinese government.

*Bill Gates on the energy- and climate-crisis. C02 = people x services/person x Energy/service x C02/energy-unit. The only thing we can really change is C02/energy-unit. By 2050 we Need -80%!

*Denis Dutton, philosopher. Bottom line(?)'How does beaty makes happy? -> esthetic pleasure is nature's trick-alternative to tasty things..

*George Whitesides on simplicity. What is it? Complexity has been studied, simplicity hasn't.

*Chip Conley on how we measure national welfare. GDP needs to become GNH (G National Happiness), isn't that what really counts.

*James Cameron, maker of titanic and avatar.

*Sir Ken Robinson, on 2 types of people: those who love what they do, those that endure instead of enjoy life, living for the weekend.

*Jamie Oliver (one of my heros) now fighting for a food revolution in the USA. 'obesity kills'. This year's TEDPrize winner, every year TED sets out to achieve one new TED-wich. I do think the public laughs a bit to much, it's not that funny... MUST SEE:
I am translating it into dutch as we speak.
See also