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."

Comments

Low tech == High tech

[MrNaz]

Things that are going to change the world I think don't need to be super high tech or invented 5 years ago. Personally I predict that it will be the mundane tech deployed in just the right places is what will change the world in the next few decades. Things like commodity telecommunications to the other 90% of the planet who currently don't own a PC (OLPC I feel lacks the velocity and momentum to make a difference, but is on the right trajectory) and recycled cellphones sent to Kenya and Uganda to provide affordable communication capacity for populations there. Projects like this are the cutting edge of this millennium.

We as humans have invented everything that we need to make this world a wonderful place to live, we just need to learn how to distribute it fairly and use it sustainably.

Not that I think there is no place for research into new pharmaceuticals and microchips and superconductors etc, but they will bring, at this stage in our history, incremental gains to welfare, and only for the rich. The giant leaps of living standards now will be made by advances in our capacity to deal equitably with each other.

Re:Low tech == High tech

[MrNaz]

You are not poor. If you have a PC with broadband, you are richer than approximately 90% of the planet. Malaria tablets are under $1 each, yet *millions* die every year because they can't afford it. I'm not seeing much trickling down over there, I lament to say.

Re:Low tech == High tech

[emilper]

Instead of reinventing charcoal and charity and niceness and pink unicorns, how about giving those "poor third world people" a chance and removing the trade barriers that keep them poor and allow you to import only what you want to import, and to export whatever they can afford to buy ?

I find TED nauseous and fake: it peddles "appropriate" technology that only a junior-high-school-dropout housewife would find interesting.

"The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel" -- for God's sake, do you know how many times the income of the people that are the target of this shit do those solar panels cost ?

How about dropping farm subsidies and giving them a chance to sell their food ?

Re:Low tech == High tech

[bhsx]

I really wanted to mod you Overrated, but I'll reply instead.
You find TED nauseous and fake, because they're not doing anything about American farm subsidies? That's what I 'got' as the point of your post. You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears? I really don't understand what you're bitching about at all. You come off as a troll that somehow worded your post well enough to get modded up.
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.'
If you can't do that, then please do stfu.

Re:Low tech == High tech

[AshtangiMan]

There is a lot of wrongness in your post, but I'll stick to this one:
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.
With 40GW of solar panels Romania will generate a years worth of power in 1462 hours, or about 180 days given 8 hours of daylight per day. (thems big numbers but I get 58,490,000,000,000 Wh/year / 40,000,000,000W). But here's the thing, if that much money poured into buying solar panels, the price would come down, the manufacturing would further innovate, and likely efficiencies would go up. Solar thermal generation technologies are not new, but they are innovations relative to coal and ng power plants and these things are low tech enough to be viable now. As we (the rich countries like Germany) deploy them they also get cheaper and can be viable cheap alternatives to emerging countries.

Re:Low tech == High tech

[emilper]

sorry to have worked you up this way ... my point was that there is not enough space anywhere on earth to install enough solar panels to make a difference. According to Wikipedia, Germany Analysts estimate that solar cells in Germany now generate about 2 TWh of electricity per year, or about one-half of one percent of German electricity consumption. This is neat, how much of that never gets used, since most of the power is generated during the day ? How many coal power stations have to be kept on stand-by to cover for cloudy days ?

Solar panels make sense there where bringing in the grid would be too expensive ... I want solar panels and efficient wind power as much as any other slashdot troll, but, the same way it happens with holographic displays and voice controlled computers, we have a hell of a long way to go until we get there. The tread is about TED and what technologies it should talk about to help make the world a better place usw. My take is that before technology we have to get rid of the WWI mindset (food security policies -- farming subsidies were introduced during the WWI and kept afterwards to ensure that countries did not have to rely on imports to provide the food they needed, just in case another war broke out --, trade restrictions, locked borders), which would make a difference a lot sooner and at a lower price.

Buying a lot of solar panels does not really make sense, since most of the money, I think, come from the state, and you could just put the same amount of money into research.

Re:Low tech == High tech

[Jyms]

Farm subsidies must be one of the most misunderstood topics on earth. The problem is not so much that the US and EU subsidize their farmers as it is that they (plus WB, IMF, etc.) demand that the developing/3rd world don't.

I grew up on a farm in the developing world (South Africa). While we had farm subsidies (pre GATT etc.) my father produced about three times as much food as he does today (actual figures). This, despite the fact that we went through one of the worst droughts during those years ('76-86, Northern Cape Province). Today, we have much better climatic conditions, but no subsidies. So why does he need subsidies if the climatic conditions are good? Security. Twenty plus years ago, he could maximize production, because if something went wrong, the government would step in to help. Low interest loans, guaranteed prices, etc. Today he has to farm ultra conservatively, because one misstep and he goes belly up. The result, decreased production. His income has gone down because the increase in food prices at the retail stores do not get passed on to the producers, but he still does okay. The consumer however has to shell out more to get less and a whole lot of people go to bed hungry.

There is some logic behind the negativity towards subsidies, as they can be abused and mismanaged, but banning them for those reasons is like turning of a server to secure it.

Remember, in the developing world a commercial farm often literally supports hundreds of people (laborers and their families) and not just a farmer and a couple of machines.

In my experience, the average PHB has much more IT knowledge than the average policy maker has farming knowledge.

Re:frightening

[Another, completely]

Given the quality of TED conferences, it's not a criticism to say the quality of the process is reflected in the program. The strength of TED is that it shows a broad cross-section of what's out there, rather than the more usual scheme of presenting and reinforcing the interests and prejudices of some clique of "experts" who think they know the subject well enough that they don't need to ask the community at large.

It's not about having too limited an understanding to come up with something to say; it's about being willing to consider that somebody else in the world (outside your usual group of contacts) might have a good idea that's worth hearing -- and then sharing.

Re:Missing the point in rarified air.

[jcr]

the attendees - and the speakers - simply believe that they are better than 99.999% of the human population.

Oh, you're a mind reader, I take it? You're on very thin ice when you presume to state what anyone else believes.

But they don't *do* anything.

I beg to differ. Just off the top of my head, James Watson has been a speaker there, and I'd say that discovering the double helical structure of DNA definitely qualifies as "doing something".

-jcr

Re:Coal Liquefaction

[WingedHorse]

Why should gasoline be used? As far as I see, electric cars can do the trick. I'm not saying that today but really, we are looking for what to do within the upcoming years and I see electiricity (and thus nuclear) based cars as feasible solution as liquified coal.

Also I find it interesting what americans think of the gas prices. "Oh no, 4 dollars! Our economy might collapse!". Well, know what? It's 2.5 times as much here in Finland (and most of Europe at that) without economy having collapsed. So could someone who panics about those things explain what's all the fuss about?

True artificial intelligence...

[JRHelgeson]

This is a MUST SEE TED issue -
Jeff Hawkins - Founder - Numenta

Jeff is the inventor of the Palm & Handspring. He has gone on to start up a phenomenal research company that has figured out how the brain learns, and has adapted it to solve the problem of artificial intelligence. He is close to solving the problem of having computers being able to actually SEE.

From showing a computer a line drawing of a sail boat, the computer can crawl Google images and pick out actual pictures (clip art) and photos of sailboats from any orientation, from the top, side, rear, bottom, just as a human could.

http://snipurl.com/rsa2008

Re:Coal Liquefaction

[wellingj]

I think America, taken on the whole, is quite a lot less evil than the Nazis and the South African regime. Now if you want to talk individuals... feel free.

Re:Low tech = High tech or MID TECH

[bzipitidoo]

Educate and empower the women. Most women don't want to have 8 or more kids, and wouldn't if they weren't being forcefully kept "barefoot and pregnant".

Most of the human brainpower on the planet is wasted. Advances that change that will have more profound effects than anything else. Could be anything from education for all and stopping brain-stunting malnourishment to miracle drugs that make people smarter (smart pills?), and curb addictive behavior including compulsions to watch too much TV or play too much WoW.

Re:frightening

[speedtux]

Please try and remember that almost every revolutionary idea was unpopular with the peer review system at their time.

Yes, and that is the problem with TED: in addition to using a peer review system, it uses pre-selection by scouts, non-anonymized reviewing, and it seems to go for celebrity factor. How much more exposure do Clinton, Bono, Gell-Mann, Brin, Page, or Wales need?

With a regular conference, at least everybody can submit and the review processes attempt to be fair and impartial. Reviewers still screw up, but at least there's a chance that something innovative and interesting comes through. With TED, just look at the result: it's the usual, media-savvy suspects.

Speckled Computing

[miruku]

Google has more.

Farm subsidies

[wytcld]

Calvin Coolidge, who grew up on a farm, was against farm subsidies because "farmers have never made much money" (and shouldn't expect to). Then the Depression hit and the government couldn't resist the notion that having most of the farms go out of business could be a bad idea. So is the problem our farm subsidies, or the failure of the third world to enact their own tariffs and subsidies to protect their own agricultural base? With the current price of transport, countries which have maintained local production, rather than increased dependency on foreign trade for foodstuffs, are far better positioned.

What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets. There are countries with plenty of farms, but starving populations, because the farmers are growing fancy stuff for us rather than staples for their neighbors.

There's a strong argument that agricultural trade should be severely limited, with people becoming "localvores." I write this as I'm drinking some Sumatran coffee, so I haven't totally bought the argument. Still, based on the cost of oil-based transport, the plain fact is the world needs to transition quickly back to local agricultural economies. What technological developments can help speed that?