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This is a nice try, and I'll admit that the remote robotic stuff is kind of nice. There are some applications for security robots that are autonomous (including some UAV's) that do their patrols and when the AI picks up something "unusual" they transmit a signal that alerts a human operator.

All this said, NASA remote robotics is the leading edge of this technology. For something really interesting, this TED talk goes into some of the next generation developments in autonomous robots. While there is some sponsorship by NASA, this is a private group that has been developing much of the technology for other purposes besides what they are doing in space. This is about multi-million dollar remote vehicles that can't be easily recovered but are not used in space.

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.

In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."

Listen to this presentation from Ted Talks

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

Ever look at a city from the sky? [...] One of the things that never ceases to surprise me is just how... fractal most cities are.

If this sort of thing holds your interest, you might want to spend a quarter of an hour on Ron Eglash's TED talk on African fractals. Just a thought.

They should get Hans Rosling, he's got some neat visualizations of data, especially about halfway in.

Hi! I'm a teacher! (math, computers, science, French, Japanese...heck, you name it! :-)

I think she should pursue origami...yep, origami...be a professional origamist, like this guy:
Prof. Robert Lang, who holds over 50 patents on lasers and optoelectronics, now pro origamist ;-)
He suggests letting "dead people do all the work for you...", take a look:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html

TED talks for anyone wondering if they should go into math/science/engineering/etc. and need inspiration!

This guy could make something more fun out of it. His work uses DNA (really, just RNA) plus staples that automatically hit the right points due to DNA's matching. It can easily be folded into sheets, and now those sheets can have embedded wiring. The only thing missing is hanging functional parts off of the staples, and computer science tells us that it takes very few different basic components to become computationally complete.

TED has a decent video on the possibilities of tissue regeneration. Not to difficult to imagine more generalized use soon.

Not sure how easy it is to turn up the gain but how hard can it be to strap a can-tenna to one of the new mind controlled video game controllers?

CNN already uses holograms. /snicker

Fantastic video.

I originally saw it on a TED talk. The talk itself is great, but the video (higher quality, less compression) starts at 6:54.

Hope somebody else enjoys as much as I did.

You have a typically wrong view of Africa. The continent is not all poverty and hunger. It has a mixed set of highs and lows.
See this entertaining talk:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html/

The speaker begins by noting that technology has marginal impact where schools are already good, but huge impact where schools are bad or non-existent. He then discusses how his work shows that children collaborate in learning.

Also http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html which in addition to some super cool eye candy graphs, points out the growing convergence of first-world and third-world problems.

A big ask where respondents are notorious for not RTFA, but I found both talks fascinating and hope that you do too.

The speaker begins by noting that technology has marginal impact where schools are already good, but huge impact where schools are bad or non-existent. He then discusses how his work shows that children collaborate in learning.

Also http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html which in addition to some super cool eye candy graphs, points out the growing convergence of first-world and third-world problems.

A big ask where respondents are notorious for not RTFA, but I found both talks fascinating and hope that you do too.

I was just about to mention this. And he beat the Indians to it - he started this in Bangladesh. I just watched Iqbal's talk at TED a few days ago.

And don't forget TED. More great stuff than you can shake a stick at!

There was an excellent TED Lecture on the topic of geoengineering, given by David Keith. It's a little over 15 minutes but well worth the time, and it skips all the sci-fi platitudes.

I watched an interesting video a while back about what can be done to increase your chances of survival during a nuclear attack. The gist of it is that after the detonation you should make sure you get out of the path of the radiation which will be flowing with the wind. The presentation approaches the issue in a more rational way than most of our politicians.

You can basically WTFA. Lessig gave a good TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

It shares a fair amount of content with TFA, but would also be good to supplement it if you're interested in the speaker and/or the topic.

Get as angry as you want. The fact is working in a sweatshop is better than dying, and that is the choice they have. I'm sorry that's the case, I'm afraid I don't follow your point about foreign investment creating unemployment. As with the industrial revolution in the West, people are coming to cities to work and live in near total squalor, but they do it to avoid starving quietly in the countryside.
I agree with you that foreign investment can be a negative force when done incorrectly. But in the case of China specifically, the days of the unequal treaties are over. In Latin America, the days of the cold war are over. And in the case overall, I believe foreign investment is the only chance many countries have.
And yes, I have seen grinding poverty in India, Yemen and Egypt and the lingering economic malaise in Syria. It's not that I don't care about the misery in those places. But I choose to throw my support behind the best way I believe things are going to get better for them. No the IMF and the World Bank are not perfect organizations and they have made mistakes, but I do not believe they are out to screw countries over but rather to help them, misguided and unsuccessful as some of their efforts may be.
Despite how it seems, the world is actually getting healthier and richer for almost all its inhabitants with the exception of Africa. This talk you may have seen demonstrates that:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

I believe open markets are in large part responsible for this massive improvement in the lives of so much of humanity, particularly in Asia. So on the balance, yes I do believe foreign investment is incredibly important for the future of humanity, and I disagree entirely that it is "rarely a good thing" for developing countries. I believe you are looking very closely at existing misery in the world and failing to realize that, miserable as it is, it is vastly improved from where it was even just a few decades ago or where it would be without open markets.

...but "For natural comfort [male bloggers] naturally sit with their legs further apart." -- Yossi Vardi http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/yossi_vardi_fights_local_warming.html

So... Google wants its own TED?

- RG>

I don't know how many of you view the TED podcasts, but just last week they posted Jonathan Haidt's presentation of his research on this. It's a pretty good explanation.

The point? I'm going to guess that there are a few people that just simply would like to see these giant tortoises swimming around again. There are probably some people that would like to say "see, evolution DOES work"

There have been some hints that traits of those who survived past plagues could be used similarly, not through eugenics, but through gene therapy to improve mankind's overall situation with regard to retroviruses. Any experimentation in this regard could one day help to better mankind or repopulate parts of the world with food stocks that are more suited to the climate.

I'm not sure what Mastadon burgers taste like, but Fred and Barney seemed to like them, so if climate change makes that a more reliable feed stock for McD's I guess I'm okay with it. Closer to home, repopulating areas devastated by pollution or other natural disaster with a purpose bred animal which is similar/close to that which was lost in the catastrophe would be a good thing. Restock the pond with as close as we can get, let evolution do the rest.

There are animals that we would not like to see disappear. Odd creatures give us the ability to see how evolution has solved problems. See this TED talk http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robert_full_on_animal_movement.html for reasons that we want to study odd little creatures, and perhaps even bring a few back to life from extinction.

So I went home and investigated this a little bit more and it turns out my original point still stands. Radation shielding is still a very important consideration, this time to protect the pilots from the nuclear blasts going off out back.

There are also several other reasons this would not be a good technology such as people looking at the rocket take off would be blinded etc

I found this video very informative on the subject and it explains some of the problems with the idea. The guy (the son of one of the project founders) also explains how he is selling the plans he has back to NASA. So all we have at present is some drawings and a few proof of concept prototypes which are in no way definitive. That does not equal a tech existing and I think there are quite a few obvious problems which when you think about it are quite considerable obstacles.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/george_dyson_on_project_orion.html

This is on the same topic to an insightful talk I was watching earner today, Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives.

It runs to nearly 20mins but he kept my attention for all of it (quite the achievement). Here's their descriptive blurb:

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

Republicans are cowards.

Not necessarily. However, they are willing to give up freedoms for security and social stability is more important protections of minorities.

TED had a very good talk about psychology of left vs. right without necessarily putting down one or the other.

Basically, what they found out was that Liberals have two main axes of morality: Harm and Fairness.

Conservatives have five: Harm, Fairness, In-Group, Authority, Purity.

I always read it more as "having been mugged they allowed fear to take over their lives, replacing their sense of justice with a more Machiavellian approach to the world."

I think that's a naive interpretation of the saying. In this case "mugged" tends to be a metaphor for "negative experience". A negative experience does sometimes teach people to be a little harsher.

I know I tried a hands-off approach with administrating a web forum for a quite a while, and quickly found that a few disruptive members were driving away all the actual contributors to the discussions. I tried being reasonable and applying polite warnings. I mean, we were all adults, right? The only thing that happened was that these users got good at skirting the edge of the rules. They'd cross the line regularly, but tried not to do enough to warrant a perma-ban. They got especially good at pushing the buttons of other users such that otherwise contributing members became part of the problem. Then these users were able to play a game of public appeal when the mods pointed a finger at them.

In the end, there was only one solution. I clamped down. I hated doing it, I really did. But I managed to drive those users out, keep careful controls on the direction of threads, and attract many of our lost users to return. The community came together and really helped the site(s) it supported to thrive after that. I initially got some blame for the bans, but most users ended up thankful after only a short period of time. (Which I honestly didn't expect.)

I eventually relaxed the controls a bit, but I still found I had to keep vigilant or else someone would show up to attempt to ruin the forums again.

What I'm getting at is that Republicans aren't always wrong in those respects. Sometimes control and structure ARE necessary. It's just difficult for them to always know when. There's a fairly good talk from a psychologist on TED TV who echos these thoughts.

On the flip-side, I think the recent issue over deregulation shows that Republicans do try to relax controls, sometimes with disastrous effects. Which simply reinforces their ideas of control and structure.

I often use language to 'sort' people, and I do not socialize with the "wassup" crowd. Should "wassup" find itself in the dictionary, how will we sort the uneducated from the educated? I won't even touch upon the reasons for making the distinction in one's personal life, the educated among us should see them already.

Here's a lady that's doubtless more educated than you on the topic. You should watch it. You might learn something. Like how not to be a snob.
http://blog.ted.com/2007/08/redefining_the.php

Personally, I think there should be a number of world wide repositories for all papers. The cost of each country/corporation hosting one would be minimal.

Try here and for a nice talk describing the goals and ideals of the IA go here.

Me thinks you are missing the point.

Look at the Airplane / Trespassing issue presented in this video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

I wish my kids could be in a class where
they measure the speed of sound with a microphone and oscilloscope.

How do we get more people like this to teach 8th grade (and high school) physics?

Have a look at this Eleni Gabre-Madhin: Building a commodities market in Ethiopia

Broadband internet access would probably count as very useful part of the infrastructure needed for an African commodities market.

There was a fascinating talk on TED.com by Paul Rothemund saying exactly that.

I agree that this story is not a good place for this thread, so I'll try to keep my response as short as possible.

Richard Dawkins (a very brilliant person, regardless of his beliefs) has a lot to say on the matter of why science and religion should not (in his opinion) be compatible. He considers himself a "militant atheist", and wishes more atheists would follow in his steps. Whether or not I considered myself an atheist, I would agree that atheists SHOULD listen to what he's saying. It's a very interesting talk, and unfortunately, very hard to watch if you are on the other side of his argument -- i.e. if you're religious. Of course, isn't that always the case? If you're pro-life, for example, isn't it extremely difficult to list to pro-choice arguments?

Anyway, just throwing that out for you to listen to and evaluate. I hope you find it interesting.

Cheers,
also-treading-the-karma-death-pit's-edges

Have a look at this TED video. It's utterly fascinating.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

There is nothing Green or Sustainable about Industrial Society, or even civilisation itself, as all such efforts entail the inevitable draw down and destruction of irreplaceable natural resources.

So before you all go rushing off to buy your fuel cell cars to shlep you to your job enabling the mindless consumption of resources and goods, kindly apprise yourself of how utterly devastating your every choice is upon the planet.

A major failure of capitalist economics is its discounting of the future - it works to maximise immediate profits, but when applied to resource management, it necessarily entails ecocide.

So, sure: get in with the hydrogen economy, and push the species over the cliff. We're already well into overshoot, and fuel cells are just the first of what will prove to be many failed attempts at sustianing the unsustainable.

Or you could watch this TED lecture for a nice explanation:

The first part of the demo was actually the guy having a maaaaassive library of picture data comprising of hundreds of different images, and was able to zoom out and in at will in realtime into any picture he wanted, so I think part off the tech was to do with a very efficient method for handling large amounts of information over a network. Probably slightly analagous to having a massively free roaming game like Grand Theft Auto over a game with small static levels like Quake.

Here is the video :) It really is pretty impressive stuff, though I have no idea how the tech is working or I'd probably be more impressed.

The short version: it's pretty fucking cool.

The long version: The first time I saw the demo of Photosynth I was blown away. The second viewing wasn't as exciting which tells me that it's the concept of connecting 2D photos to a 3D model that's really amazing, a spatial way to navigate disconnected 2D data.

I've seen a video of a crow fashioning a hook out of a piece of wire and using it to snare something from the bottom of a glass beaker which exceeded the length of the crow's beak.

Here's the video you saw and here's more about the research about crow intelligence.

Check out Photosynth from Microsoft, as seen in this TED talk.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Photosynth

the book thing, i don't think can easily be faked by flash, nor the gigapixel resolution image nor the really neat zooming and zooming and zooming into stuff.

really what photosynth, and by extension seadragon which is what photosynth is built on, promises us is a way to semantically link all those photo's on the web together, to build up those real places into virtual places with little or nor human intervention.

this should enrich the web in a way we are only just beginning to see.

He wrote that in 1994, and it was based on even earlier research, so that part may be out of date these days, even as the general crisis in science has grown worse. His theme also conflates US corporate imperial dominance, and ignores many high performing "US" scientists were imported from Nazi Germany (Einstein or von Braun) or also from the USSR later.

I'm not as pessimistic as Goodstein is, since I do see the world transcending eventually to an economy of abundance where all people have more time for doing science (or other creative things) as a hobby. See for example:
    "TEDTalks : New insights on poverty and life around the world - Hans Rosling (2007)"
    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
"Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing."
Or:
    "RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper."
    http://www.reprap.org/

If your not already familiar with the work of William McDonough, I suggest the following talk at TED from 2005: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html fascinating and hopeful stuff!

How about this one: Computer needed 800 processors, at 4.7 Ghz, 15 Teraflops to beat a professional Go player.

We're talking about a computer needing gargantuan processing power to beat a human and we are impressed at the computer? Seriously?

That point, on how incredible the brain is, was also mentioned in a TED talk by Kwabena Boahen. A human body on whole uses 100 W, and of that, our brain uses 10 W. For computers to come close to a brain in terms bits/second in processing power, they need to consume on the order of megawatts.

It may be related to the fact that a brain does almost all calculations in parallel (with neurons), whereas a computer does almost all calculations in series (in one chip).

True. Yet all that is, is just a Graphic gadgets hardcore, and nothing more. It's not a revolutionary concept. What iPhone did to the cell phone market, is what we should be looking for. A browser, however impressive it's graphics, still works with the same keyboard and mouse, same two dimensional "pages" of sites...

However, the revolution is quite near, my friend. You don't have to look hard to hear about all sort of other interfaces being developed. I got some eye candy for you, if you like:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

True. Yet all that is, is just a Graphic gadgets hardcore, and nothing more. It's not a revolutionary concept. What iPhone did to the cell phone market, is what we should be looking for. A browser, however impressive it's graphics, still works with the same keyboard and mouse, same two dimensional "pages" of sites...

However, the revolution is quite near, my friend. You don't have to look hard to hear about all sort of other interfaces being developed. I got some eye candy for you, if you like:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_touchscreen.html
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

Excellent presentation on the moons of Saturn by Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini mission imaging team at the 2007 TED conference. (video)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn.html

I was watching this video just yesterday. It seems pretty relevant.

The next 5,000 days of the internet

Yes.. it *is* that George Dyson.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/george_dyson.html

Freeman Dyson's son. Both the TED talks he's given are awesome.

There is a very interesting video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking at the TED conference on this topic. He has a curious opinion and more of it is someone who tries to change the existing status quo. I highly recommend spending 20 minutes watching the video. You can watch it on: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html and the same video subtitled on: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5557136080634912581&q=tedtranslate&ei=TPKOSJSvOp6ijQKBtf3-Cw

On the subject of Project Orion, this TED talk by George Dyson is a must-see: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/george_dyson_on_project_orion.html/
It's a great presentation with uncovered previously classified stuff.