The Best of TED
The Best of TED: Massive-scale online collaboration
Sunday, January 8th, 2012Here’s another installment of my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
Today’s installment is from Luis von Ahn, a member of the team that invented the Captcha system, which helped websites like Ticketmaster and Amazon ensure that the person buying the product was, indeed, a person. Today, these sites use something called ReCaptcha, which shows the user two words instead of one. If you don’t know why, then you’ll find his talk fascinating. You’ll also learn how the same technology can help you learn a foreign language, while at the same time, making digital content available to people all around the world . . . . for free.
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The Best of TED: Why are we happy?
Friday, September 3rd, 2010Here’s another installment of my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
Today’s installment represents the only time I’ve found two videos from the same presenter that struck me as worth discussing. Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, discusses the concept of happiness, and uses the scientific method to examine how it is created and how long it lasts. Here’s a good way to summarize the talk:
We believe that synthetic happiness is not of the same quality as what we might call natural happiness. What are these terms? Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted. And in our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind.
He goes on to present situations where people don’t get what they want, but legitimately come away from the experience happier than they otherwise would have. And he proves that it’s real by testing the same theories on amnesiacs, and through the more traditional control groups.
If you feel like you’re constantly searching for happiness, give this a watch . . . and then go make some happiness of your own!
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The Best of TED: The Power of the Pentatonic Scale
Sunday, August 1st, 2010Here’s another installment of my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
Today’s installment isn’t even a TED talk at all, but it was posted by TED on their website under a heading called Best of the Web which, “highlight[s] inspired talks on sites other than TED.com.” In this short video, famed musician Bobby McFerrin turns an audience at a science festival into a musical instrument, first by “tuning” them to sing certain notes when he hops up and down on the stage at certain spots, and then by using the innate knowledge of music we all seem to be born with to get them to independently infer other notes in the (pentatonic) scale. If you’ve ever doubted the power of music, or the genius of Bobby McFerrin, watch this:
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The Best of TED: The paradox of choice
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010Here’s another installment of my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
In today’s installment, author Barry Schwartz discusses what he calls “the official dogma:”
If we are interested in maximizing the welfare of our citizens, the way to do that is to maximize individual freedom. The reason for this is both that freedom is in and of itself good, valuable, worthwhile, essential to being human. And because if people have freedom, then each of us can act on our own to do the things that will maximize our welfare, and no one has to decide on our behalf. The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. The more choice people have, the more freedom they have, and the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have.
As you might imagine, he then goes on to offer a very convincing argument that this isn’t true. The more choices we have, Mr. Schwartz tells us, the more paralyzed we become. He gives many examples, but my favorite is this one:
I wear jeans almost all the time. And there was a time when jeans came in one flavor, and you bought them, and they fit like crap, and they were incredibly uncomfortable, and if you wore them long enough and washed them enough times, they started to feel OK. So I went to replace my jeans after years and years of wearing these old ones, and I said, “You know, I want a pair of jeans, here’s my size.” And the shopkeeper said, “Do you want slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit? You want button fly or zipper fly? You want stonewashed or acid washed? Do you want them distressed? You want boot cut, you want tapered, blah blah blah …” On and on he went. My jaw dropped, and after I recovered, I said, “I want the kind that used to be the only kind.”
He makes similar points about how the presence of smartphones give us the choice to work, even when we’re at our kids’ soccer games, or how people with more mutual funds to choose from tend to participate less in their company’s 401(k) plan.
The talk reminded me of another Mr. Schwartz – Stephen Schwartz – who wrote, among other things, a Broadway musical called Pippin, about the son of Charlemagne, who spends his life searching for total fulfillment. In the end, he winds up married to a simple farm girl with a young son, and he sings:
Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly.[But] I’m not a river or a giant bird
That soars to the sea
And if I’m never tied to anything
I’ll never be free.
I’ll encourage you to watch the entire video. Unfortunately, as both Mr. Schwartz’s might tell us, it’s your choice…
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The Best of TED: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
Saturday, June 5th, 2010Here’s another installment of my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
Today’s installment is a demonstration by Pranav Mistry, a PhD student at MIT, and inventor of what he calls “SixthSense” technology. This is wearable technology. Not in the sense that you can clip your iPhone onto your belt loop. This is stuff that will display a clock face on your wrist when you tap on it, so you don’t have to wear a watch, or recognize an airline ticket when you look at it and display the on-time status of the flight right on the ticket.
I’ll admit to being a gadget geek, but I can’t imagine anyone watching this and not thinking it is simply the coolest invention they’ve ever seen. Trust me – you won’t regret watching this one (and if you start to doubt me, give him until at least 5:30 or so, when he stops talking about the things he invented years ago that led him to today’s ideas, and starts demoing his latest stuff). I promise – this is even cooler than the iPad:
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The Best of TED: Our mistaken expectations
Monday, May 3rd, 2010Here’s another installment of my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
This one comes from Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, and deals with how we calculate expected value for a given activity or transaction. Stuff like, “Would you prefer 50 dollars now or 60 dollars in a month?” Like Dan Ariely’s talk that I linked to previously, this is peppered with lots of wonderful examples of decisions we make every day, and how the logical thing to decide would be exactly the opposite. Here’s an example:
Imagine that you’re going to the theater. You’re on your way to the theater. In your wallet you have a ticket, for which you paid 20 dollars. You also have a 20-dollar bill. When you arrive at the theater, you discover that somewhere along the way you’ve lost the ticket. Would you spend your remaining money on replacing it? Most people answer, no. Now, let’s just change one thing in this scenario. You’re on your way to the theater, and in your wallet you have two 20-dollar bills. When you arrive you discover you’ve lost one of them. Would you spend your remaining 20 dollars on a ticket? Well, of course: I went to the theater to see the play. What does the loss of 20 dollars along the way have to do?
Now, just in case you’re not getting it, here’s a schematic of what happened, OK? Along the way, you lost something. In both cases, it was a piece of paper. In one case, it had a U.S. president on it; in the other case it didn’t. What the hell difference should it make? The difference is that when you lost the ticket you say to yourself, I’m not paying twice for the same thing. You compare the cost of the play now — 40 dollars — to the cost that it used to have — 20 dollars — and you say it’s a bad deal.
There are other great vignettes in there as well, followed by a really great Q&A in which Gilbert talks about our reaction to terrorism vs. other things that kill Americans every year (like the flu or swimming pools…), and also a rebuttal of sorts from an audience member who thinks we should stop defining “value” for people and then calling them stupid for picking the option with the lower value. He discusses the inherent value in buying lottery tickets. Really great stuff, IMHO…
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The Best of TED: Are we in control of our own decisions?
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010Wow…has it really been two weeks since I posted anything here? Sorry about that, folks – and thanks for coming back. I’ll try to not stay away so long again…
Today, I continue with my Best of TED series, in which I share talks from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference that have struck me over the years as particularly insightful or fascinating.
Today’s entry is by behavioral economist, Dan Ariely. In it, Dr. Ariely offers some frighteningly simple examples of how quickly and frequently we behave irrationally, even when we firmly believe we’re not. Here’s a taste:
Imagine I give you a choice. Do you want to go for a weekend to Rome? All expenses paid, hotel, transportation, food, breakfast, a continental breakfast, everything. Or a weekend in Paris? Now, a weekend in Paris, a weekend in Rome, these are different things. They have different food, different culture, different art.
Now imagine I added a choice to the set that nobody wanted. Imagine I said, “A weekend in Rome, a weekend in Paris, or having your car stolen?” It’s a funny idea. Because why would having your car stolen, in this set, influence anything? But what if the option to have your car stolen was not exactly like this. What if it was a trip to Rome, all expenses paid, transportation, breakfast. But doesn’t include coffee in the morning. If you want coffee you have to pay for it yourself. It’s two euros 50. Now in some ways, given that you can have Rome with coffee, why would you possibly want Rome without coffee? It’s like having your car stolen. It’s an inferior option.
But guess what happened? The moment you add Rome without coffee, Rome with coffee becomes more popular. And people choose it. The fact that you have Rome without coffee makes Rome with coffee look superior. And not just to Rome without coffee, even superior to Paris.
The kicker is this: having read the story, most everyone believes that they, themselves, would overcome the phenomenon. Other people may be silly enough to be swayed toward Rome simply because an inferior option is presented, but you would simply disregard that option and judge Rome vs. Paris on their merits, right? So if everyone, individually, is immune, why is it that as a group, we behave this way?
Watch the rest of the video for more:
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The Best of TED: Music and Passion
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010I’ve tried “regular features” on I Should Be Sleeping before, only to rack up considerable guilt for not keeping them up to date, and then abandoning them unless they’re brought back by popular demand. So I won’t promise any regularity here, but I have built up a considerable list of these videos, and my current plan is to share one every once in a while.
For those who aren’t familiar with TED, it’s the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, in which experts and luminaries of various stripes come to speak with other experts and luminaries who are willing to shell out a few thousand dollars to listen. Speakers have ranged from well-known folks like Al Gore and Bill Gates to virtually unknown college professors, researchers, artists and the like. The conference organizers cull what they believe are the best presentations and post them on TED.com, which means that just about every one of them is mildly interesting, and I’ve been jotting down the URL’s of the ones I’ve found particularly insightful for quite some time now.
The first talk that made me jot down the URL was this one by conductor and classical music enthusiast, Benjamin Zander:
In it, he talks about the lack of interest most people have toward classical music and his personal quest to change all of that. He starts by playing a short Prelude by Frederic Chopin on the piano, and acknowledging that by the second phrase, most people have begun thinking about their plans for their next vacation, and by the end, some have even nodded off to sleep.
But then, he explains the mechanics of the piece, sets the right emotional tone, and plays it again. Even if you’re not fond of classical music (especially if you’re not fond of it), I highly recommend you watch the video. I was amazed at how effective his explanation was. I’ve been a musician for most of my life, and while I’ve always had a great respect for classical music and the musicians who play it well, I’ve never been able to make it hold my interest for very long. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Zander’s second playing of Chopin’s piece.
All of that said, I hasten to point out that when I hear this…
I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.
When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May.
I guess you’ll say, ‘What can make me feel this way?’
My Girl.
…no one has to tell me what the author meant or how I should feel about it. Maybe that’s the advantage that popular music has over classical music right there. Or maybe the former has supplanted those qualities in the latter. Maybe Chopin’s audiences were able to understand his meaning without Mr. Zander’s explanation, in the same way that I understand Smokey Robinson? If so, it felt strangely satisfying to experience Chopin as it was originally intended.
Kind of like Frederic Chopin – Behind the Music. Or maybe that’s a bit much…
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