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What Tech Should Be Seen At TED?
J0sh writes "I've been lucky enough to be asked to do tech spotting for the TED conference, one of the biggest and most exclusive technology, entertainment, and design conferences in the US. Many of the folks there are superstars in their field (like Craig Venter and Stephen Hawking), and most of them have the opportunity to take action on the technology that they see there. The problem is that I'm only one guy trying to find the most mind-blowing technology on the planet in order to inform the few people who can make an immediate impact with it. I figured if there's one place to find those kinds of advances, it's here. What unknown tech is about to completely change the world that these people need to know about? Let me know."
If a talk is worth watching fullscreen I usually download it.
PS: You can make the ted window quite big by clicking the arrow thingy in the top-right corner.
No sig today...
There have been many breakthroughs in neural networks recently, which allow us to train "deep architectures" (with many hidden layers). This was not feasible with traditional backpropagation. This work by Hinton/LeCun/Bengio has led to a resurgence in the field of ANNs, with some experts now believing general AI to be attainable within the next decade.
Anyone interested should have a look at Geoff Hinton's Google Tech talk on the matter. A very interesting talk for anyone in machine learning. He does a way better job of explaining it then I could. Fast forward to 21:30 for the live demo.
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
Things that are "only for the rich" invariably trickle down to us "poor folk". I am more than happy to have rich people around overpaying for cellphones, electric cars, plasma TVs, life-extending medicines, etc., funding the research to develop better, cheaper replacements that can then become available to the masses (i.e. me).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Or subscribe to the TED Podcast and watch the MP4 file full screen.
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Try watching them with Miro. Fullscreen functionality, saved to your computer in high definition, automatic downloads of the latest episodes, and yeah, fullscreen downloads. Search for TED in the Miro guide after installing and add the channel. Watching TED talks is one of the things that got me interested in Miro development :)
(The UI is nice but sometimes feels a little slow and clunky... that's being totaly overhauled for the next release.)
http://mediagoblin.org/
I was curious what a "rollable water container" was, so I went out and found this youtube video. It seems it's a kind of water drum that you pull behind you, and it rolls so you don't have to carry it on your back or something. It's for third-world countries that have to travel somewhere and bring back their potable water.
You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears?
These (solar powered heater, charcoal from dung or solar smelters etc.) are no innovations or inventions. They are gadgets, and expensive gadgets too ( you can probably boil beans with a "solar smelter", but you won't smelt anything unless you can get some really large mirrors). If they are distributed they will make the "beneficiaries" become more dependent on aid and handouts because they will kill whatever industry supplied those people with the same services as the "innovations and inventions" pushed by TED.
TED and the folk behind it are no better than the Victorian ladies that went slumming and giving handouts to the polite paupers. It did not help the paupers much, but it made those ladies feel a lot better about themselves.
Those "poor third world people" are not helpless dopes. If they can't export wine or grain, they will export cocaine or opium, since it's a lot easier to sneak in a 5kg package than to sneak it's equivalent in grain or frozen meat. This was done by Europeans, too, when they were themselves third world countries (Opium Wars happened only because the Chinese taxed imports to death when not forbidding them outright, and opium was the only thing that had a high enough mark up to justify the trouble of fitting a ship).
Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
"evolutionary technological advances" ? Have you watched the TED movies ? Dung or corn stalk charcoal is a technological innovation ? "improve the lives of billions of people" ? Can anybody pay for solar panels to improve the lives of billions ? Last time I heard there were not enough money to pay for solar panels to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands: in my area a 40W (peak power) solar panel costs 380 Euro. At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year.
Want to help the poor ? Then stop sending aid, and give them a chance to build their economies. Or, if you are into churches and going on missions, send English language teachers and set up Internet Cafes besides talking about Jeesus H. Christ and handing out used clothes.
Don't worry about "farm subsidies" right now: worry about "quality standards", "sanitary regulations" etc. ... yes, about the Bumpers Amendment, too, if you do care about "foreign aid".
The sad part is that the whole trade lockup is not directed against the "third world countries", but is set up against the other "first world countries". The 'poor aborigines' are just innocent bystanders that get slugged down when US and EU and the other big guys fire trade regulations and taxes at each other.
Seconded. Here is a link with more detail on Hawkins (even a video).
Please explain what TED is supposed to do about US import/export policy. Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
TED gets the kind of people who can afford to pay $6k for a conference, and who on top of that have enough pull to get on the list. The total net worth of the attendees is in the tens of billions, possibly the hundreds of billions. These are people who get listened to.
You talk as if farm policies will get fixed by themselves. That's ridiculous; they have gotten worse lately, not better. The person you reply to is right; no bit of technological gimcrackery could improve the lives of the poor as much as just buying what they're selling at a fair price. Instead we spend tens of billions every year distorting the marketplace, keeping them in poverty. Then we give a fraction of that back as aid and pat ourselves on the back.
Diverting the attention of those who could make a difference may be fun, and it may be profitable, but nobody should think it particularly effective.