one of the things that defines a tedster is you 've taken your passion , and you 've turned it into stewardship .
you actually put action to the issues you care about .
but what you 're going to find eventually is you may need to actually get elected officials to help you out .
so , how do you do that ?
one of the things i should probably tell you is , i worked for the discovery channel early in my career , and that sort of warped my framework .
so , when you start to think about politicians , you 've got to realize these are strange creatures .
other than the fact that they ca n't tell directions , and they have very strange breeding habits , how do you actually work with these things ? -lrb- laughter -rrb- what we need to understand is : what drives the political creature ?
and there are two things that are primary in a politician 's heart : one is reputation and influence .
these are the primary tools by which a politician can do his job .
the second one - unlike most animals , which is survival of the species - this is preservation of self .
now you may think it 's money , but that 's actually sort of a proxy to what i can do to preserve myself .
now , the challenge with you moving your issue forward is these animals are getting broadcast to all the time .
so , what does n't work , in terms of getting your issue to be important ?
you can send them an email .
well , unfortunately , i 've got so many viagra ads coming at me , your email is lost .
it does n't matter , it 's spam .
how about you get on the phone ?
well , chances are i 've got a droid who 's picking up the phone , " yes , they called , and they said they did n't like it . "
that does n't move .
face to face would work , but it 's hard to set it up .
it 's hard to get the context and actually get the communication to work .
yes , contributions actually do make a difference and they set a context for having a conversation , but it takes some time to build up .
so what actually works ?
and the answer is rather strange .
it 's a letter .
we live in a digital world , but we 're fairly analog creatures .
letters actually work .
even the top dog himself takes time every day to read 10 letters that are picked out by staff .
i can tell you that every official that i 've ever worked with will tell you about the letters they get and what they mean .
so , how are you going to write your letter ?
first of all , you 're going to pick up an analog device : a pen .
i know these are tough , and you may have a hard time getting your hand bent around it , -lrb- laughter -rrb- but this is actually critical .
and it is critical that you actually handwrite your letter .
it is so novel to see this , that somebody actually picked up an analog device and has written to me .
second of all , i 'm going to recommend that you get into a proactive stance and write to your elected officials at least once a month .
here 's my promise to you : if you are consistent and do this , within three months the elected official will start calling you when that issue comes up and say , " what do you think ? "
now , i 'm going to give you a four paragraph format to work with .
now , when you approach these animals , you need to understand there 's a dangerous end to them , and you also need to approach them with some level of respect and a little bit of wariness .
so in paragraph number one , what i 'm going to tell you to do is very simply this : you appreciate them .
you may not appreciate the person , you may not appreciate anything else , but maybe you appreciate the fact that they 've got a tough gig .
when animals are going to make a point , they make the point .
they do n't spend a lot of time dicking around .
so , here you go . -lrb- laughter -rrb- paragraph number two : you may actually have to just get very blunt and say what 's really on your mind .
when you do this , do n't attack people ; you attack tactics .
ad hominem attacks will get you nowhere .
paragraph number three : when animals are attacked or cornered , they will fight to the death , so you have to give them an exit .
most of the time , if they have an exit strategy , they should take it .
" obviously , you 're intelligent .
if you had the right information , you would have done the right thing . " -lrb- laughter -rrb- lastly , you want to be the nurturing agent .
you 're the safe place to come in to .
so , in paragraph number four , you 're going to tell people , " if no one is providing you with this information , let me help . " -lrb- laughter -rrb- animals do displays . they do two things : they warn you or they try to attract you and say , " we need to mate . "
you 're going to do that by the way you sign your letter .
you do a number of things : you 're a vice president , you volunteer , you do something else .
why is is this important ?
because this establishes the two primary criteria for the political creature : that you have influence in a large sphere , and that my preservation depends on you .
here is one very quick hack , especially for the feds in the audience .
here 's how you mail your letter .
first of all , you send the original to the district office .
so , you send the copy to the main office .
if they follow protocol , they 'll pick up the phone and say , " hey , do you have the original ? "
then some droid in the back puts the name on a tickler and says , " oh , this is an important letter . "
and you actually get into the folder that the elected official actually has to read .
so , what your letter means : i 've got to tell you , we are all in a party , and political officials are the pinatas .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- we are harangued , lectured to , sold , marketed , but a letter is actually one of the few times that we have honest communication .
i got this letter when i was first elected , and i still carry it to every council meeting i go to .
this is an opportunity at real dialogue , and if you have stewardship and want to communicate , that dialogue is incredibly powerful .
so when you do that , here 's what i can promise : you 're going to be the 800 pound gorilla in the forest .
get writing .
-lrb- applause -rrb- namaste . salaam .
shalom . sat sri akal .
greetings to all of you from pakistan .
it is often said that we fear that which we do not know .
and pakistan , in this particular vein , is very similar .
because it has provoked , and does provoke , a visceral anxiety in the bellies of many a western soul , especially when viewed through the monochromatic lens of turbulence and turmoil .
but there are many other dimensions to pakistan .
and what follows is a stream of images , a series of images captured by some of pakistan 's most dynamic and young photographers , that aims to give you an alternative glimpse , a look inside the hearts and minds of some ordinary pakistani citizens .
here are some of the stories they wanted us to share with you .
my name is abdul khan . i come from peshawar .
i hope that you will be able to see not just my taliban-like beard , but also the richness and color of my perceptions , aspirations and dreams , as rich and colorful as the satchels that i sell .
my name is meher and this is my friend irim .
i hope to become a vet when i grow up so that i can take care of stray cats and dogs who wander around the streets of the village that i live near gilgit , northern pakistan .
my name is kailash . and i like to enrich lives through technicolored glass .
madame , would you like some of those orange bangles with the pink polka dots ?
my name is zamin .
and i 'm an idp , an internally displaced person , from swat .
do you see me on the other side of this fence ?
do i matter , or really exist for you ?
my name is iman . i am a fashion model , an up-and-coming model from lahore .
do you see me simply smothered in cloth ?
or can you move beyond my veil and see me for who i truly am inside ?
my name is ahmed . i am an afghan refugee from the khyber agency .
i have come from a place of intense darkness .
and that is why i want to illuminate the world .
my name is papusay .
my heart and drum beat as one .
if religion is the opium of the masses , then for me , music is my one and only ganja .
a rising tide lifts all boats .
and the rising tide of india 's spectacular economic growth has lifted over 400 million indians into a buoyant middle class .
but there are still over 650 million indians , pakistanis , sri lankans , bangladeshis , nepalese , who remain washed up on the shores of poverty .
therefore as india and pakistan , as you and i , it behooves us to transcend our differences , to celebrate our diversity , to leverage our common humanity .
our collective vision at naya jeevan , which for many of you , as you all recognize , means " new life " in urdu and hindi , is to rejuvenate the lives of millions of low income families by providing them with affordable access to catastrophic health care .
indeed it is the emerging world 's first hmo for the urban working poor .
why should we do this as indians and pakistanis ?
we are but two threads cut from the same cloth .
and if our fates are intertwined , then we believe that it is good karma , it is good fortune .
and for many of us , our fortunes do indeed lie at the bottom of the pyramid . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- chris anderson : fantastic . just stay up here .
that was fantastic .
i found that really moving .
you know , we fought hard to get at least a small pakistani contingent to come .
it felt like it was really important .
they went through a lot to get here .
would the pakistanis please just stand up please ?
i just really wanted to acknowledge you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- thank you so much .
so , imagine you 're standing on a street anywhere in america and a japanese man comes up to you and says , " excuse me , what is the name of this block ? "
and you say , " i 'm sorry , well , this is oak street , that 's elm street .
this is 26th , that 's 27th . "
he says , " ok , but what is the name of that block ? "
you say , " well , blocks do n't have names .
streets have names ; blocks are just the unnamed spaces in between streets . "
he leaves , a little confused and disappointed .
so , now imagine you 're standing on a street , anywhere in japan , you turn to a person next to you and say , " excuse me , what is the name of this street ? "
they say , " oh , well that 's block 17 and this is block 16 . "
and you say , " ok , but what is the name of this street ? "
and they say , " well , streets do n't have names .
blocks have names .
just look at google maps here . there 's block 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 .
all of these blocks have names , and the streets are just the unnamed spaces in between the blocks .
and you say then , " ok , then how do you know your home address ? "
he said , " well , easy , this is district eight .
there 's block 17 , house number one . "
you say , " ok , but walking around the neighborhood , i noticed that the house numbers do n't go in order . "
he says , " of course they do . they go in the order in which they were built .
the first house ever built on a block is house number one .
the second house ever built is house number two .
third is house number three . it 's easy . it 's obvious . "
so , i love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions we did n't even know we had , and realize that the opposite of them may also be true .
so , for example , there are doctors in china who believe that it 's their job to keep you healthy .
so , any month you are healthy you pay them , and when you 're sick you do n't have to pay them because they failed at their job . they get rich when you 're healthy , not sick .
-lrb- applause -rrb- in most music , we think of the " one " as the downbeat , the beginning of the musical phrase : one , two , three , four .
but in west african music , the " one " is thought of as the end of the phrase , like the period at the end of a sentence .
so , you can hear it not just in the phrasing , but the way they count off their music : two , three , four , one .
and this map is also accurate .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- there 's a saying that whatever true thing you can say about india , the opposite is also true .
so , let 's never forget , whether at ted , or anywhere else , that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear , that the opposite may also be true .
domo arigato gozaimashita .
i have a daughter , mulan .
and when she was eight , last year , she was doing a report for school or she had some homework about frogs .
and we were at this restaurant , and she said , " so , basically , frogs lay eggs and the eggs turn into tadpoles , and tadpoles turn into frogs . "
and i said , " yeah . you know , i 'm not really up on my frog reproduction that much .
it 's the females , i think , that lay the eggs , and then the males fertilize them .
and then they become tadpoles and frogs . "
and she says , " what ? only the females have eggs ? "
and i said , " yeah . "
and she goes , " and what 's this fertilizing ? "
so i kind of said , " oh , it 's this extra ingredient , you know , that you need to create a new frog from the mom and dad frog . " -lrb- laughter -rrb- and she said , " oh , so is that true for humans too ? "
and i thought , " okay , here we go . "
i did n't know it would happen so quick , at eight .
i was trying to remember all the guidebooks , and all i could remember was , " only answer the question they 're asking .
do n't give any more information . " -lrb- laughter -rrb- so i said , " yes . "
and she said , " and where do , um , where do human women , like , where do women lay their eggs ? "
and i said , " well , funny you should ask . -lrb- laughter -rrb- we have evolved to have our own pond .
we have our very own pond inside our bodies .
and we lay our eggs there , we do n't have to worry about other eggs or anything like that .
it 's our own pond . and that 's how it happens . "
and she goes , " then how do they get fertilized ? "
and i said , " well , men , through their penis , they fertilize the eggs by the sperm coming out .
and you go through the woman 's vagina . "
and so we 're just eating , and her jaw just drops , and she goes , " mom !
like , where you go to the bathroom ? "
and i said , " i know .
i know . "
-lrb- laughter -rrb- that 's how we evolved . it does seem odd .
it is a little bit like having a waste treatment plant right next to an amusement park ...
bad zoning , but ... " -lrb- laughter -rrb- she 's like , " what ? " and she goes , " but mom , but men and women ca n't ever see each other naked , mom .
so how could that ever happen ? "
and then i go , " well , " and then i put my margaret mead hat on .
" human males and females develop a special bond , and when they 're much older , much , much older than you , and they have a very special feeling , then they can be naked together . "
and she said , " mom , have you done this before ? "
and i said , " yes . "
and she said , " but mom , you ca n't have kids . "
because she knows that i adopted her and that i ca n't have kids .
and i said , " yes . "
and she said , " well , you do n't have to do that again . "
and i said , ... " "
and then she said , " but how does it happen when a man and woman are together ?
like , how do they know that 's the time ?
mom , does the man just say , ' is now the time to take off my pants ? " ' -lrb- laughter -rrb- and i said , " yes . "
-lrb- laughter -rrb- " that is exactly right .
that 's exactly how it happens . "
so we 're driving home and she 's looking out the window , and she goes , " mom . what if two just people saw each other on the street , like a man and a woman , they just started doing it . would that ever happen ? "
and i said , " oh , no . humans are so private .
oh ... "
and then she goes , " what if there was like a party , and there was just like a whole bunch of girls and a whole bunch of boys , and there was a bunch of men and women and they just started doing it , mom ?
would that ever happen ? "
and i said , " oh , no , no .
that 's not how we do it . "
then we got home and we see the cat . and she goes , " mom , how do cats do it ? "
and i go , " oh , it 's the same . it 's basically the same . "
and then she got all caught up in the legs . " but how would the legs go , mom ?
i do n't understand the legs . "
she goes , " mom , everyone ca n't do the splits . "
and i go , " i know , but the legs ... "
and i 'm probably like , " the legs get worked out . "
and she goes , " but i just ca n't understand it . "
so i go , " you know , why do n't we go on the internet , and maybe we can see ... like on wikipedia . " -lrb- laughter -rrb- so we go online , and we put in " cats mating . "
and , unfortunately , on youtube , there 's many cats mating videos .
and we watched them and i 'm so thankful , because she 's just like , " wow ! this is so amazing . "
she goes , " what about dogs ? "
so we put in dogs mating , and , you know , we 're watching it , and she 's totally absorbed .
and then she goes , " mom , do you think they would have , on the internet , any humans mating ? "
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and then i realized that i had taken my little eight year old 's hand , and taken her right into internet porn . -lrb- laughter -rrb- and i looked into this trusting , loving face , and i said , " oh , no .
that would never happen . "
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- thank you . i 'm so happy to be here .
last year here at ted i asked you to give me your data , to put your data on the web , on the basis that if people put data onto the web - government data , scientific data , community data , whatever it is - it will be used by other people to do wonderful things , in ways that they never could have imagined .
so , today i 'm back just to show you a few things , to show you , in fact , there is an open data movement afoot , now , around the world .
the cry of " raw data now ! "
which i made people make in the auditorium , was heard around the world .
so , let 's roll the video .
a classic story , the first one which lots of people picked up , was when in march - on march 10th in fact , soon after ted - paul clarke , in the u.k. government , blogged , " oh , i 've just got some raw data . here it is , it 's about bicycle accidents . "
two days it took the times online to make a map , a mashable map - we call these things mash-ups - a mashed-up user interface that allows you to go in there and have a look and find out whether your bicycle route to work was affected .
here 's more data , traffic survey data , again , put out by the u.k. government , and because they put it up using the linked data standards , then a user could just make a map , just by clicking .
does this data affect things ? well , let 's get back to 2008 .
look at zanesville , ohio .
here 's a map a lawyer made . he put on it the water plant , and which houses are there , which houses have been connected to the water .
and he got , from other data sources , information to show which houses are occupied by white people .
well , there was too much of a correlation , he felt , between which houses were occupied by white people and which houses had water , and the judge was not impressed either .
the judge was not impressed to the tune of 10.9 million dollars .
that 's the power of taking one piece of data , another piece of data , putting it together , and showing the result .
let 's look at some data from the u.k. now .
this is u.k. government data , a completely independent site , where does my money go .
it allows anybody to go there and burrow down .
you can burrow down by a particular type of spending , or you can go through all the different regions and compare them .
so , that 's happening in the u.k. with u.k. government data .
yes , certainly you can do it over here .
here 's a site which allows you to look at recovery spending in california .
take an arbitrary example , long beach , california , you can go and have a look at what recovery money they 've been spending on different things such as energy .
in fact , this is the graph of the number of data sets in the repositories of data.gov , and data.gov.uk.
and i 'm delighted to see a great competition between the u.k. in blue , and the u.s. in red .
how can you use this stuff ?
well , for example , if you have lots of data about places you can take , from a postcode - which is like a zip plus four - for a specific group of houses , you can make paper , print off a paper which has got very , very specific things about the bus stops , the things specifically near you .
on a larger scale , this is a mash-up of the data which was released about the afghan elections .
it allows you to set your own criteria for what sort of things you want to look at .
the red circles are polling stations , selected by your criteria .
and then you can select also other things on the map to see what other factors , like the threat level .
so , that was government data .
i also talked about community-generated data - in fact i edited some .
this is the wiki map , this is the open street map .
" terrace theater " i actually put on the map because it was n't on the map before ted last year .
i was not the only person editing the open street map .
each flash on this visualization - put together by ito world - shows an edit in 2009 made to the open street map .
let 's now spin the world during the same year .
every flash is an edit . somebody somewhere looking at the open street map , and realizing it could be better .
you can see europe is ablaze with updates .
some places , perhaps not as much as they should be .
here focusing in on haiti .
the map of port au-prince at the end of 2009 was not all it could be , not as good as the map of california .
fortunately , just after the earthquake , geoeye , a commercial company , released satellite imagery with a license , which allowed the open-source community to use it .
this is january , in time lapse , of people editing ... that 's the earthquake .
after the earthquake , immediately , people all over the world , mappers who wanted to help , and could , looked at that imagery , built the map , quickly building it up .
we 're focusing now on port-au-prince .
the light blue is refugee camps these volunteers had spotted from the -lsb- satellite images -rsb- .
so , now we have , immediately , a real-time map showing where there are refugee camps - rapidly became the best map to use if you 're doing relief work in port-au-prince .
witness the fact that it 's here on this garmin device being used by rescue team in haiti .
there 's the map showing , on the left-hand side , that hospital - actually that 's a hospital ship .
this is a real-time map that shows blocked roads , damaged buildings , refugee camps - it shows things that are needed -lsb- for rescue and relief work -rsb- .
so , if you 've been involved in that at all , i just wanted to say : whatever you 've been doing , whether you 've just been chanting , " raw data now ! "
or you 've been putting government or scientific data online , i just wanted to take this opportunity to say : thank you very much , and we have only just started !
-lrb- applause -rrb- please close your eyes , and open your hands .
now imagine what you could place in your hands : an apple , maybe your wallet .
now open your eyes .
what about a life ?
what you see here is a premature baby .
he looks like he 's resting peacefully , but in fact he 's struggling to stay alive because he ca n't regulate his own body temperature .
this baby is so tiny he does n't have enough fat on his body to stay warm .
sadly , 20 million babies like this are born every year around the world .
four million of these babies die annually .
but the bigger problem is that the ones who do survive grow up with severe , long-term health problems .
the reason is because in the first month of a baby 's life , its only job is to grow .
if it 's battling hypothermia , its organs ca n't develop normally , resulting in a range of health problems from diabetes , to heart disease , to low i.q.
imagine : many of these problems could be prevented if these babies were just kept warm .
that is the primary function of an incubator .
but traditional incubators require electricity and cost up to 20 thousand dollars .
so , you 're not going to find them in rural areas of developing countries .
as a result , parents resort to local solutions like tying hot water bottles around their babies ' bodies , or placing them under light bulbs like the ones you see here - methods that are both ineffective and unsafe .
i 've seen this firsthand over and over again .
on one of my first trips to india , i met this young woman , sevitha , who had just given birth to a tiny premature baby , rani .
she took her baby to the nearest village clinic , and the doctor advised her to take rani to a city hospital so she could be placed in an incubator .
but that hospital was over four hours away , and sevitha did n't have the means to get there , so her baby died .
inspired by this story , and dozens of other similar stories like this , my team and i realized what was needed was a local solution , something that could work without electricity , that was simple enough for a mother or a midwife to use , given that the majority of births still take place in the home .
we needed something that was portable , something that could be sterilized and reused across multiple babies and something ultra-low-cost , compared to the 20,000 dollars that an incubator in the u.s. costs .
so , this is what we came up with .
what you see here looks nothing like an incubator .
it looks like a small sleeping bag for a baby .
you can open it up completely . it 's waterproof .
there 's no seams inside so you can sterilize it very easily .
but the magic is in this pouch of wax .
this is a phase-change material .
it 's a wax-like substance with a melting point of human body temperature , 37 degrees celsius .
you can melt this simply using hot water and then when it melts it 's able to maintain one constant temperature for four to six hours at a time , after which you simply reheat the pouch .
so , you then place it into this little pocket back here , and it creates a warm micro-environment for the baby .
looks simple , but we 've reiterated this dozens of times by going into the field to talk to doctors , moms and clinicians to ensure that this really meets the needs of the local communities .
we plan to launch this product in india in 2010 , and the target price point will be 25 dollars , less than 0.1 percent of the cost of a traditional incubator .
over the next five years we hope to save the lives of almost a million babies .
but the longer-term social impact is a reduction in population growth .
this seems counterintuitive , but turns out that as infant mortality is reduced , population sizes also decrease , because parents do n't need to anticipate that their babies are going to die .
we hope that the embrace infant warmer and other simple innovations like this represent a new trend for the future of technology : simple , localized , affordable solutions that have the potential to make huge social impact .
in designing this we followed a few basic principles .
we really tried to understand the end user , in this case , people like sevitha .
we tried to understand the root of the problem rather than being biased by what already exists .
and then we thought of the most simple solution we could to address this problem .
in doing this , i believe we can truly bring technology to the masses .
and we can save millions of lives through the simple warmth of an embrace .
so , basically we have public leaders , public officials who are out of control ; they are writing bills that are unintelligible , and out of these bills are going to come maybe 40,000 pages of regulations , total complexity , which has a dramatically negative impact on our life .
if you 're a veteran coming back from iraq or vietnam you face a blizzard of paperwork to get your benefits ; if you 're trying to get a small business loan , you face a blizzard of paperwork .
what are we going to do about it ? i define simplicity as a means to achieving clarity , transparency and empathy , building humanity into communications .
i 've been simplifying things for 30 years .
i come out of the advertising and design business .
my focus is understanding you people , and how you interact with the government to get your benefits , how you interact with corporations to decide whom you 're going to do business with , and how you view brands .
so , very quickly , when president obama said , " i do n't see why we ca n't have a one-page , plain english consumer credit agreement . "
so , i locked myself in a room , figured out the content , organized the document , and wrote it in plain english .
i 've had this checked by the two top consumer credit lawyers in the country .
this is a real thing .
now , i went one step further and said , " why do we have to stick with the stodgy lawyers and just have a paper document ? let 's go online . "
and many people might need help in computation .
working with the harvard business school , you 'll see this example when you talk about minimum payment : if you spent 62 dollars for a meal , the longer you take to pay out that loan , you see , over a period of time using the minimum payment it 's 99 dollars and 17 cents .
how about that ? do you think your bank is going to show that to people ?
but it 's going to work . it 's more effective than just computational aids .
and what about terms like " over the limit " ?
perhaps a stealth thing .
define it in context . tell people what it means .
when you put it in plain english , you almost force the institution to give the people a way , a default out of that , and not put themselves at risk .
plain english is about changing the content .
and one of the things i 'm most proud of is this agreement for ibm .
it 's a grid , it 's a calendar .
at such and such a date , ibm has responsibilities , you have responsibilities .
received very favorably by business .
and there is some good news to report today .
each year , one in 10 taxpayers receives a notice from the irs .
there are 200 million letters that go out .
running through this typical letter that they had , i ran it through my simplicity lab , it 's pretty unintelligible .
all the parts of the document in red are not intelligible .
we looked at doing over 1,000 letters that cover 70 percent of their transactions in plain english .
they have been tested in the laboratory .
when i run it through my lab , this heat-mapping shows everything is intelligible .
and the irs has introduced the program .
-lrb- applause -rrb- there are a couple of things going on right now that i want to bring to your attention .
there is a lot of discussion now about a consumer financial protection agency , how to mandate simplicity .
we see all this complexity .
it 's incumbent upon us , and this organization , i believe , to make clarity , transparency and empathy a national priority .
there is no way that we should allow government to communicate the way they communicate .
there is no way we should do business with companies that have agreements with stealth provisions and that are unintelligible .
so , how are we going to change the world ?
make clarity , transparency and simplicity a national priority .
i thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- i 'm going to talk today about energy and climate .
and that might seem a bit surprising because my full-time work at the foundation is mostly about vaccines and seeds , about the things that we need to invent and deliver to help the poorest two billion live better lives .
but energy and climate are extremely important to these people - in fact , more important than to anyone else on the planet .
the climate getting worse means that many years , their crops wo n't grow : there will be too much rain , not enough rain , things will change in ways that their fragile environment simply ca n't support .
and that leads to starvation , it leads to uncertainty , it leads to unrest .
so , the climate changes will be terrible for them .
also , the price of energy is very important to them .
in fact , if you could pick just one thing to lower the price of , to reduce poverty , by far you would pick energy .
now , the price of energy has come down over time .
really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy .
the coal revolution fueled the industrial revolution , and , even in the 1900s we 've seen a very rapid decline in the price of electricity , and that 's why we have refrigerators , air-conditioning , we can make modern materials and do so many things .
and so , we 're in a wonderful situation with electricity in the rich world .
but , as we make it cheaper - and let 's go for making it twice as cheap - we need to meet a new constraint , and that constraint has to do with co2 .
co2 is warming the planet , and the equation on co2 is actually a very straightforward one .
if you sum up the co2 that gets emitted , that leads to a temperature increase , and that temperature increase leads to some very negative effects : the effects on the weather ; perhaps worse , the indirect effects , in that the natural ecosystems ca n't adjust to these rapid changes , and so you get ecosystem collapses .
now , the exact amount of how you map from a certain increase of co2 to what temperature will be and where the positive feedbacks are , there 's some uncertainty there , but not very much .
and there 's certainly uncertainty about how bad those effects will be , but they will be extremely bad .
i asked the top scientists on this several times : do we really have to get down to near zero ?
ca n't we just cut it in half or a quarter ?
and the answer is that until we get near to zero , the temperature will continue to rise .
and so that 's a big challenge .
it 's very different than saying " we 're a twelve-foot-high truck trying to get under a ten-foot bridge , and we can just sort of squeeze under . "
this is something that has to get to zero .
now , we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year , over 26 billion tons .
for each american , it 's about 20 tons ; for people in poor countries , it 's less than one ton .
it 's an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet .
and , somehow , we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero .
it 's been constantly going up .
it 's only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all , so we have to go from rapidly rising to falling , and falling all the way to zero .
this equation has four factors , a little bit of multiplication : so , you 've got a thing on the left , co2 , that you want to get to zero , and that 's going to be based on the number of people , the services each person 's using on average , the energy on average for each service , and the co2 being put out per unit of energy .
so , let 's look at each one of these and see how we can get this down to zero .
probably , one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero .
now that 's back from high school algebra , but let 's take a look .
first , we 've got population .
the world today has 6.8 billion people .
that 's headed up to about nine billion .
now , if we do a really great job on new vaccines , health care , reproductive health services , we could lower that by , perhaps , 10 or 15 percent , but there we see an increase of about 1.3 .
the second factor is the services we use .
this encompasses everything : the food we eat , clothing , tv , heating .
these are very good things : getting rid of poverty means providing these services to almost everyone on the planet .
and it 's a great thing for this number to go up .
in the rich world , perhaps the top one billion , we probably could cut back and use less , but every year , this number , on average , is going to go up , and so , over all , that will more than double the services delivered per person .
here we have a very basic service : do you have lighting in your house to be able to read your homework ?
and , in fact , these kids do n't , so they 're going out and reading their school work under the street lamps .
now , efficiency , e , the energy for each service , here finally we have some good news .
we have something that 's not going up .
through various inventions and new ways of doing lighting , through different types of cars , different ways of building buildings - there are a lot of services where you can bring the energy for that service down quite substantially .
some individual services even bring it down by 90 percent .
there are other services like how we make fertilizer , or how we do air transport , where the rooms for improvement are far , far less .
and so , overall here , if we 're optimistic , we may get a reduction of a factor of three to even , perhaps , a factor of six .
but for these first three factors now , we 've gone from 26 billion to , at best , maybe 13 billion tons , and that just wo n't cut it .
so let 's look at this fourth factor - this is going to be a key one - and this is the amount of co2 put out per each unit of energy .
and so the question is : can you actually get that to zero ?
if you burn coal , no .
if you burn natural gas , no .
almost every way we make electricity today , except for the emerging renewables and nuclear , puts out co2 .
and so , what we 're going to have to do at a global scale , is create a new system .
and so , we need energy miracles .
now , when i use the term " miracle , " i do n't mean something that 's impossible .
the microprocessor is a miracle . the personal computer is a miracle .
the internet and its services are a miracle .
so , the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles .
usually , we do n't have a deadline , where you have to get the miracle by a certain date .
usually , you just kind of stand by , and some come along , some do n't .
this is a case where we actually have to drive at full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline .
now , i thought , " how could i really capture this ?
is there some kind of natural illustration , some demonstration that would grab people 's imagination here ? "
i thought back to a year ago when i brought mosquitos , and somehow people enjoyed that .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- it really got them involved in the idea of , you know , there are people who live with mosquitos .
so , with energy , all i could come up with is this .
i decided that releasing fireflies would be my contribution to the environment here this year .
so here we have some natural fireflies .
i 'm told they do n't bite ; in fact , they might not even leave that jar .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- now , there 's all sorts of gimmicky solutions like that one , but they do n't really add up to much .
we need solutions - either one or several - that have unbelievable scale and unbelievable reliability , and , although there 's many directions people are seeking , i really only see five that can achieve the big numbers .
i 've left out tide , geothermal , fusion , biofuels .
those may make some contribution , and if they can do better than i expect , so much the better , but my key point here is that we 're going to have to work on each of these five , and we ca n't give up any of them because they look daunting , because they all have significant challenges .
let 's look first at the burning fossil fuels , either burning coal or burning natural gas .
what you need to do there , seems like it might be simple , but it 's not , and that 's to take all the co2 , after you 've burned it , going out the flue , pressurize it , create a liquid , put it somewhere , and hope it stays there .
now we have some pilot things that do this at the 60 to 80 percent level , but getting up to that full percentage , that will be very tricky , and agreeing on where these co2 quantities should be put will be hard , but the toughest one here is this long-term issue .
who 's going to be sure ?
who 's going to guarantee something that is literally billions of times larger than any type of waste you think of in terms of nuclear or other things ?
this is a lot of volume .
so that 's a tough one .
next would be nuclear .
it also has three big problems : cost , particularly in highly regulated countries , is high ; the issue of the safety , really feeling good about nothing could go wrong , that , even though you have these human operators , that the fuel does n't get used for weapons .
and then what do you do with the waste ?
and , although it 's not very large , there are a lot of concerns about that .
people need to feel good about it .
so three very tough problems that might be solvable , and so , should be worked on .
the last three of the five , i 've grouped together .
these are what people often refer to as the renewable sources .
and they actually - although it 's great they do n't require fuel - they have some disadvantages .
one is that the density of energy gathered in these technologies is dramatically less than a power plant .
this is energy farming , so you 're talking about many square miles , thousands of time more area than you think of as a normal energy plant .
also , these are intermittent sources .
the sun does n't shine all day , it does n't shine every day , and , likewise , the wind does n't blow all the time .
and so , if you depend on these sources , you have to have some way of getting the energy during those time periods that it 's not available .
so , we 've got big cost challenges here , we have transmission challenges : for example , say this energy source is outside your country ; you not only need the technology , but you have to deal with the risk of the energy coming from elsewhere .
and , finally , this storage problem .
and , to dimensionalize this , i went through and looked at all the types of batteries that get made - for cars , for computers , for phones , for flashlights , for everything - and compared that to the amount of electrical energy the world uses , and what i found is that all the batteries we make now could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy .
and so , in fact , we need a big breakthrough here , something that 's going to be a factor of 100 better than the approaches we have now .
it 's not impossible , but it 's not a very easy thing .
now , this shows up when you try to get the intermittent source to be above , say , 20 to 30 percent of what you 're using .
if you 're counting on it for 100 percent , you need an incredible miracle battery .
now , how we 're going to go forward on this - what 's the right approach ?
is it a manhattan project ? what 's the thing that can get us there ?
well , we need lots of companies working on this , hundreds .
in each of these five paths , we need at least a hundred people .
and a lot of them , you 'll look at and say , " they 're crazy . " that 's good .
and , i think , here in the ted group , we have many people who are already pursuing this .
bill gross has several companies , including one called esolar that has some great solar thermal technologies .
vinod khosla 's investing in dozens of companies that are doing great things and have interesting possibilities , and i 'm trying to help back that .
nathan myhrvold and i actually are backing a company that , perhaps surprisingly , is actually taking the nuclear approach .
there are some innovations in nuclear : modular , liquid .
and innovation really stopped in this industry quite some ago , so the idea that there 's some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising .
the idea of terrapower is that , instead of burning a part of uranium - the one percent , which is the u235 - we decided , " let 's burn the 99 percent , the u238 . "
it is kind of a crazy idea .
in fact , people had talked about it for a long time , but they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not , and so it 's through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and see that , yes , with the right material 's approach , this looks like it would work .
and , because you 're burning that 99 percent , you have greatly improved cost profile .
you actually burn up the waste , and you can actually use as fuel all the leftover waste from today 's reactors .
so , instead of worrying about them , you just take that . it 's a great thing .
it breathes this uranium as it goes along , so it 's kind of like a candle .
you can see it 's a log there , often referred to as a traveling wave reactor .
in terms of fuel , this really solves the problem .
i 've got a picture here of a place in kentucky .
this is the leftover , the 99 percent , where they 've taken out the part they burn now , so it 's called depleted uranium .
that would power the u.s. for hundreds of years .
and , simply by filtering seawater in an inexpensive process , you 'd have enough fuel for the entire lifetime of the rest of the planet .
so , you know , it 's got lots of challenges ahead , but it is an example of the many hundreds and hundreds of ideas that we need to move forward .
so let 's think : how should we measure ourselves ?
what should our report card look like ?
well , let 's go out to where we really need to get , and then look at the intermediate .
for 2050 , you 've heard many people talk about this 80 percent reduction .
that really is very important , that we get there .
and that 20 percent will be used up by things going on in poor countries , still some agriculture , hopefully we will have cleaned up forestry , cement .
so , to get to that 80 percent , the developed countries , including countries like china , will have had to switch their electricity generation altogether .
so , the other grade is : are we deploying this zero-emission technology , have we deployed it in all the developed countries and we 're in the process of getting it elsewhere ?
that 's super important .
that 's a key element of making that report card .
so , backing up from there , what should the 2020 report card look like ?
well , again , it should have the two elements .
we should go through these efficiency measures to start getting reductions : the less we emit , the less that sum will be of co2 , and , therefore , the less the temperature .
but in some ways , the grade we get there , doing things that do n't get us all the way to the big reductions , is only equally , or maybe even slightly less , important than the other , which is the piece of innovation on these breakthroughs .
these breakthroughs , we need to move those at full speed , and we can measure that in terms of companies , pilot projects , regulatory things that have been changed .
there 's a lot of great books that have been written about this .
the al gore book , " our choice " and the david mckay book , " sustainable energy without the hot air . "
they really go through it and create a framework that this can be discussed broadly , because we need broad backing for this .
there 's a lot that has to come together .
so this is a wish .
it 's a very concrete wish that we invent this technology .
if you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years - i could pick who 's president , i could pick a vaccine , which is something i love , or i could pick that this thing that 's half the cost with no co2 gets invented - this is the wish i would pick .
this is the one with the greatest impact .
if we do n't get this wish , the division between the people who think short term and long term will be terrible , between the u.s. and china , between poor countries and rich , and most of all the lives of those two billion will be far worse .
so , what do we have to do ?
what am i appealing to you to step forward and drive ?
we need to go for more research funding .
when countries get together in places like copenhagen , they should n't just discuss the co2 .
they should discuss this innovation agenda , and you 'd be stunned at the ridiculously low levels of spending on these innovative approaches .
we do need the market incentives - co2 tax , cap and trade - something that gets that price signal out there .
we need to get the message out .
we need to have this dialogue be a more rational , more understandable dialogue , including the steps that the government takes .
this is an important wish , but it is one i think we can achieve .
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- thank you .
chris anderson : thank you . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- thank you . so to understand more about terrapower , right - i mean , first of all , can you give a sense of what scale of investment this is ?
bil gates : to actually do the software , buy the supercomputer , hire all the great scientists , which we 've done , that 's only tens of millions , and even once we test our materials out in a russian reactor to make sure that our materials work properly , then you 'll only be up in the hundreds of millions .
the tough thing is building the pilot reactor ; finding the several billion , finding the regulator , the location that will actually build the first one of these .
once you get the first one built , if it works as advertised , then it 's just clear as day , because the economics , the energy density , are so different than nuclear as we know it .
ca : and so , to understand it right , this involves building deep into the ground almost like a vertical kind of column of nuclear fuel , of this sort of spent uranium , and then the process starts at the top and kind of works down ?
bg : that 's right . today , you 're always refueling the reactor , so you have lots of people and lots of controls that can go wrong : that thing where you 're opening it up and moving things in and out , that 's not good .
so , if you have very cheap fuel that you can put 60 years in - just think of it as a log - put it down and not have those same complexities .
and it just sits there and burns for the 60 years , and then it 's done .
ca : it 's a nuclear power plant that is its own waste disposal solution .
bg : yeah . well , what happens with the waste , you can let it sit there - there 's a lot less waste under this approach - then you can actually take that , and put it into another one and burn that .
and we start off actually by taking the waste that exists today , that 's sitting in these cooling pools or dry casking by reactors - that 's our fuel to begin with .
so , the thing that 's been a problem from those reactors is actually what gets fed into ours , and you 're reducing the volume of the waste quite dramatically as you 're going through this process .
ca : i mean , you 're talking to different people around the world about the possibilities here .
where is there most interest in actually doing something with this ?
bg : well , we have n't picked a particular place , and there 's all these interesting disclosure rules about anything that 's called " nuclear , " so we 've got a lot of interest , that people from the company have been in russia , india , china - i 've been back seeing the secretary of energy here , talking about how this fits into the energy agenda .
so i 'm optimistic . you know , the french and japanese have done some work .
this is a variant on something that has been done .
it 's an important advance , but it 's like a fast reactor , and a lot of countries have built them , so anybody who 's done a fast reactor is a candidate to be where the first one gets built .
ca : so , in your mind , timescale and likelihood of actually taking something like this live ?
bg : well , we need - for one of these high-scale , electro-generation things that 's very cheap , we have 20 years to invent and then 20 years to deploy .
that 's sort of the deadline that the environmental models have shown us that we have to meet .
and , you know , terrapower , if things go well - which is wishing for a lot - could easily meet that .
and there are , fortunately now , dozens of companies - we need it to be hundreds - who , likewise , if their science goes well , if the funding for their pilot plants goes well , that they can compete for this .
and it 's best if multiple succeed , because then you could use a mix of these things .
we certainly need one to succeed .
ca : in terms of big-scale possible game changes , is this the biggest that you 're aware of out there ?
bg : an energy breakthrough is the most important thing .
it would have been , even without the environmental constraint , but the environmental constraint just makes it so much greater .
in the nuclear space , there are other innovators .
you know , we do n't know their work as well as we know this one , but the modular people , that 's a different approach .
there 's a liquid-type reactor , which seems a little hard , but maybe they say that about us .
and so , there are different ones , but the beauty of this is a molecule of uranium has a million times as much energy as a molecule of , say , coal , and so - if you can deal with the negatives , which are essentially the radiation - the footprint and cost , the potential , in terms of effect on land and various things , is almost in a class of its own .
ca : if this does n't work , then what ?
do we have to start taking emergency measures to try and keep the temperature of the earth stable ?
bg : if you get into that situation , it 's like if you 've been over-eating , and you 're about to have a heart attack : then where do you go ? you may need heart surgery or something .
there is a line of research on what 's called geoengineering , which are various techniques that would delay the heating to buy us 20 or 30 years to get our act together .
now , that 's just an insurance policy .
you hope you do n't need to do that .
some people say you should n't even work on the insurance policy because it might make you lazy , that you 'll keep eating because you know heart surgery will be there to save you .
i 'm not sure that 's wise , given the importance of the problem , but there 's now the geoengineering discussion about - should that be in the back pocket in case things happen faster , or this innovation goes a lot slower than we expect ?
ca : climate skeptics : if you had a sentence or two to say to them , how might you persuade them that they 're wrong ?
bg : well , unfortunately , the skeptics come in different camps .
the ones who make scientific arguments are very few .
are they saying that there 's negative feedback effects that have to do with clouds that offset things ?
there are very , very few things that they can even say there 's a chance in a million of those things .
the main problem we have here , it 's kind of like aids .
you make the mistake now , and you pay for it a lot later .
and so , when you have all sorts of urgent problems , the idea of taking pain now that has to do with a gain later , and a somewhat uncertain pain thing - in fact , the ipcc report , that 's not necessarily the worst case , and there are people in the rich world who look at ipcc and say , " ok , that is n't that big of a deal . "
the fact is it 's that uncertain part that should move us towards this .
but my dream here is that , if you can make it economic , and meet the co2 constraints , then the skeptics say , " ok , i do n't care that it does n't put out co2 , i kind of wish it did put out co2 , but i guess i 'll accept it because it 's cheaper than what 's come before . "
-lrb- applause -rrb- ca : and so , that would be your response to the bjorn lomborg argument , that basically if you spend all this energy trying to solve the co2 problem , it 's going to take away all your other goals of trying to rid the world of poverty and malaria and so forth , it 's a stupid waste of the earth 's resources to put money towards that when there are better things we can do .
bg : well , the actual spending on the r & d piece - say the u.s. should spend 10 billion a year more than it is right now - it 's not that dramatic .
it should n't take away from other things .
the thing you get into big money on , and this , reasonable people can disagree , is when you have something that 's non-economic and you 're trying to fund that - that , to me , mostly is a waste .
unless you 're very close and you 're just funding the learning curve and it 's going to get very cheap , i believe we should try more things that have a potential to be far less expensive .
if the trade-off you get into is , " let 's make energy super expensive , " then the rich can afford that .
i mean , all of us here could pay five times as much for our energy and not change our lifestyle .
the disaster is for that two billion .
and even lomborg has changed .
his shtick now is , " why is n't the r & d getting more discussed ? "
he 's still , because of his earlier stuff , still associated with the skeptic camp , but he 's realized that 's a pretty lonely camp , and so , he 's making the r & d point .
and so there is a thread of something that i think is appropriate .
the r & d piece , it 's crazy how little it 's funded .
ca : well bill , i suspect i speak on the behalf of most people here to say i really hope your wish comes true . thank you so much .
bg : thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- about a year ago , i asked myself a question : " knowing what i know , why am i not a vegetarian ? "
after all , i 'm one of the green guys : i grew up with hippie parents in a log cabin .
i started a site called treehugger - i care about this stuff .
i knew that eating a mere hamburger a day can increase my risk of dying by a third .
cruelty : i knew that the 10 billion animals we raise each year for meat are raised in factory farm conditions that we , hypocritically , would n't even consider for our own cats , dogs and other pets .
environmentally , meat , amazingly , causes more emissions than all of transportation combined : cars , trains , planes , buses , boats , all of it .
and beef production uses 100 times the water that most vegetables do .
i also knew that i 'm not alone .
we as a society are eating twice as much meat as we did in the 50s .
so what was once the special little side treat now is the main , much more regular .
so really , any of these angles should have been enough to convince me to go vegetarian .
yet , there i was - chk , chk , chk - tucking into a big old steak .
so why was i stalling ?
i realized that what i was being pitched was a binary solution .
it was either you 're a meat eater or you 're a vegetarian , and i guess i just was n't quite ready .
imagine your last hamburger .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- so my common sense , my good intentions , were in conflict with my taste buds .
and i 'd commit to doing it later , and not surprisingly , later never came .
sound familiar ?
so i wondered , might there be a third solution ?
and i thought about it , and i came up with one .
i 've been doing it for the last year , and it 's great .
it 's called weekday veg .
the name says it all : nothing with a face monday through friday .
on the weekend , your choice .
simple .
if you want to take it to the next level , remember , the major culprits in terms of environmental damage and health are red and processed meats .
so you want to swap those out with some good , sustainably harvested fish .
it 's structured , so it ends up being simple to remember , and it 's okay to break it here and there .
after all , cutting five days a week is cutting 70 percent of your meat intake .
the program has been great , weekday veg .
my footprint 's smaller , i 'm lessening pollution , i feel better about the animals , i 'm even saving money .
best of all , i 'm healthier , i know that i 'm going to live longer , and i 've even lost a little weight .
so , please ask yourselves , for your health , for your pocketbook , for the environment , for the animals : what 's stopping you from giving weekday veg a shot ?
after all , if all of us ate half as much meat , it would be like half of us were vegetarians .
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- so , now , there are a lot of web 2.0 consultants who make a lot of money .
in fact , they make their livings on this kind of stuff .
i 'm going to try and save you all the time and all the money and go through it in the next three minutes , so bear with me .
started a website back in 2005 , with a few friends of mine , called reddit.com.
that 's what you 'd call a social news website .
basically all that means is that the democratic front page is the best stuff on the web . you find some interesting content , say a tedtalk , submit it to reddit , and the community of your peers will vote it up if they like it , vote it down if they do n't .
and that creates the front page . it 's always rising , falling , always changing .
about a half million people visit every day . but this is n't about reddit .
this is actually about discovering new things that pop up on the web .
because in the last four years we 've seen all kinds of memes , all kinds of trends get born right on our front page .
but this is n't even about reddit itself .
it 's actually about humpback whales .
well , okay , technically it 's actually about greenpeace , which is an environmental organization that wanted to stop the japanese government on their whaling campaign .
these humpback whales were getting killed .
they wanted to put an end to it . and one of the ways they wanted to do it was to put a tracking chip inside one of these humpback whales .
but to really kind of personify the movement , they wanted to name it .
so , in true web fashion they put together a poll where they had a bunch of very erudite , very thoughtful , cultured names .
i believe this is a farsi word for " immortal . "
i think this means " divine power of the ocean " in a polynesian language .
and then there was this : mister splashy pants .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and this , this was special . mister pants , or splashy , to his friends , was very popular on the internet .
in fact , someone on reddit thought , " oh , what a great thing , we should all vote this up . "
and , you know , redditors responded and all agreed .
so , the voting started and we actually got behind it ourselves .
we changed our logo , for the day , from the alien to a splashy , to sort of help the cause .
and it was n't long before other sites like fark and boing boing and the rest of the internet started saying , " yes ! we love splashy pants . "
so , it went from about five percent , which was when this meme started , to 70 percent at the end of voting .
which is pretty impressive right ? we won ! mister splashy pants was chosen . hmm , just kidding . okay .
so , greenpeace actually was n't that crazy about it , because they wanted one of their more thoughtful names to win .
so they said , " no , no , just kidding . we 'll give it another week of voting . "
well , that got us a little angry .
so , we changed it to fightin ' splashy .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and the reddit community , really , and the rest of the internet , rather , really got behind this .
facebook groups were getting created . facebook applications were getting created .
the idea was , " vote your conscience , " vote for mister splashy pants .
and people were putting up signs in the real world - -lrb- laughter -rrb- - about this whale .
and this was the final vote . when all was cleared ...
78 percent of the votes , and to give you an idea of the landslide , the next highest name pulled in three . okay ?
so , there was a clear lesson here .
and that was that the internet loves mister splashy pants .
which is obvious . it 's a great name .
everyone wants to hear their news anchor say , " mister splashy pants . "
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and i think that 's what helped drive this .
but what was cool was that the repercussions now for greenpeace was , they created an entire marketing campaign around it .
they sell mister splashy pants shirts and pins .
they even created an e-card so you could send your friend a dancing splashy .
but what was even more important was the fact that they actually accomplished their mission . the japanese government called off their whaling expedition . mission accomplished .
greenpeace was thrilled . the whales were happy . that 's a quote .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and actually , redditors in the internet community were happy to participate , but they were n't whale lovers .
a few of them certainly were . but we 're talking about a lot of people who were just really interested and really caught up in this great meme , and in fact someone from greenpeace came back on the site and thanked reddit for its participation .
but this was n't really out of altruism . this was just out of interest in doing something cool .
and this is kind of how the internet works .
this is that great big secret . because the internet provides this level playing field .
your link is just as good as your link , which is just as good as my link . as long as we have a browser , anyone can get to any website no matter how big a budget you have .
that is , as long as you can keep net neutrality in place .
the other important thing is that it costs nothing to get that content online now .
there are so many great publishing tools that are available , it only takes a few minutes of your time now to actually produce something .
and the cost of iteration is so cheap that you might as well give it a go .
and if you do , be genuine about it . be honest . be up front .
and one of the great lessons that greenpeace actually learned was that it 's okay to lose control .
it 's okay to take yourself a little less seriously , given that , even though it 's a very serious cause , you could ultimately achieve your final goal .
and that 's the final message that i want to share with all of you - that you can do well online .
but no longer is the message going to be coming from just the top down .
if you want to succeed you 've got to be okay to just lose control .
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- several years ago here at ted , peter skillman introduced a design challenge called the marshmallow challenge .
and the idea 's pretty simple : teams of four have to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti , one yard of tape , one yard of string and a marshmallow .
the marshmallow has to be on top .
and , though it seems really simple , it 's actually pretty hard because it forces people to collaborate very quickly .
and so , i thought this was an interesting idea , and i incorporated it into a design workshop .
and it was a huge success .
and since then , i 've conducted about 70 design workshops across the world with students and designers and architects , even the ctos of the fortune 50 , and there 's something about this exercise that reveals very deep lessons about the nature of collaboration , and i 'd like to share some of them with you .
so , normally , most people begin by orienting themselves to the task .
they talk about it , they figure out what it 's going to look like , they jockey for power .
then they spend some time planning , organizing , they sketch and they lay out spaghetti .
they spend the majority of their time assembling the sticks into ever-growing structures .
and then finally , just as they 're running out of time , someone takes out the marshmallow , and then they gingerly put it on top , and then they stand back , and - ta-da ! - they admire their work .
but what really happens , most of the time , is that the " ta-da " turns into an " uh-oh , " because the weight of the marshmallow causes the entire structure to buckle and to collapse .
so there are a number of people who have a lot more " uh-oh " moments than others , and among the worst are recent graduates of business school .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- they lie , they cheat , they get distracted and they produce really lame structures .
and of course there are teams that have a lot more " ta-da " structures , and among the best are recent graduates of kindergarten .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and it 's pretty amazing .
as peter tells us , not only do they produce the tallest structures , but they 're the most interesting structures of them all .
so the question you want to ask is : how come ? why ? what is it about them ?
and peter likes to say that none of the kids spend any time trying to be ceo of spaghetti , inc . right ?
they do n't spend time jockeying for power .
but there 's another reason as well .
and the reason is that business students are trained to find the single right plan , right ?
and then they execute on it .
and then what happens is , when they put the marshmallow on the top , they run out of time and what happens ?
it 's a crisis .
sound familiar ? right .
what kindergarteners do differently is that they start with the marshmallow , and they build prototypes , successive prototypes , always keeping the marshmallow on top , so they have multiple times to fix when they build prototypes along the way .
designers recognize this type of collaboration as the essence of the iterative process .
and with each version , kids get instant feedback about what works and what does n't work .
so the capacity to play in prototype is really essential , but let 's look at how different teams perform .
so the average for most people is around 20 inches ; business schools students , about half of that ; lawyers , a little better , but not much better than that , kindergarteners , better than most adults .
who does the very best ?
architects and engineers , thankfully .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- thirty-nine inches is the tallest structure i 've seen .
and why is it ? because they understand triangles and self-reinforcing geometrical patterns are the key to building stable structures .
so ceos , a little bit better than average , but here 's where it gets interesting .
if you put you put an executive admin. on the team , they get significantly better .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- it 's incredible . you know , you look around , you go , " oh , that team 's going to win . "
you can just tell beforehand . and why is that ?
because they have special skills of facilitation .
they manage the process , they understand the process .
and any team who manages and pays close attention to work will significantly improve the team 's performance .
specialized skills and facilitation skills are the combination that leads to strong success .
if you have 10 teams that typically perform , you 'll get maybe six or so that have standing structures .
and i tried something interesting .
i thought , let 's up the ante , once .
so i offered a 10,000 dollar prize of software to the winning team .
so what do you think happened to these design students ?
what was the result ?
here 's what happened : not one team had a standing structure .
if anyone had built , say , a one inch structure , they would have taken home the prize .
so , is n't that interesting ? that high stakes have a strong impact .
we did the exercise again with the same students .
what do you think happened then ?
so now they understand the value of prototyping .
so the same team went from being the very worst to being among the very best .
they produced the tallest structures in the least amount of time .
so there 's deep lessons for us about the nature of incentives and success .
so , you might ask : why would anyone actually spend time writing a marshmallow challenge ?
and the reason is , i help create digital tools and processes to help teams build cars and video games and visual effects .
and what the marshmallow challenge does is it helps them identify the hidden assumptions .
because , frankly , every project has its own marshmallow , does n't it ?
the challenge provides a shared experience , a common language , a common stance to build the right prototype .
and so , this is the value of the experience , of this so simple exercise .
and those of you who are interested may want to go to marshmallowchallenge.com.
it 's a blog that you can look at how to build the marshmallows .
there 's step-by-step instructions on this .
there are crazy examples from around the world of how people tweak and adjust the system .
there 's world records that are on this as well .
and the fundamental lesson , i believe , is that design truly is a contact sport .
it demands that we bring all of our senses to the task , and that we apply the very best of our thinking , our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand .
and sometimes , a little prototype of this experience is all that it takes to turn us from an " uh-oh " moment to a " ta-da " moment .
and that can make a big difference .
thank you very much .
-lrb- applause -rrb- one day , los angeles times columnist steve lopez was walking along the streets of downtown los angeles when he heard beautiful music .
and the source was a man , an african-american man , charming , rugged , homeless , playing a violin that only had two strings .
and i 'm telling a story that many of you know , because steve 's columns became the basis for a book , which was turned into a movie , with robert downey jr. acting as steve lopez , and jamie foxx as nathaniel anthony ayers , the juilliard-trained double bassist whose promising career was cut short by a tragic affliction with paranoid schizophrenia .
nathaniel dropped out of juilliard , he suffered a complete breakdown , and 30 years later he was living homeless on the streets of skid row in downtown los angeles .
i encourage all of you to read steve 's book or to watch the movie to understand not only the beautiful bond that formed between these two men , but how music helped shape that bond , and ultimately was instrumental - if you 'll pardon the pun - in helping nathaniel get off the streets .
i met mr. ayers in 2008 , two years ago , at walt disney concert hall .
he had just heard a performance of beethoven 's first and fourth symphonies , and came backstage and introduced himself .
he was speaking in a very jovial and gregarious way about yo-yo ma and hillary clinton and how the dodgers were never going to make the world series , all because of the treacherous first violin passage work in the last movement of beethoven 's fourth symphony .
and we got talking about music , and i got an email from steve a few days later saying that nathaniel was interested in a violin lesson with me .
now , i should mention that nathaniel refuses treatment because when he was treated it was with shock therapy and thorazine and handcuffs , and that scar has stayed with him for his entire life .
but as a result now , he is prone to these schizophrenic episodes , the worst of which can manifest themselves as him exploding and then disappearing for days , wandering the streets of skid row , exposed to its horrors , with the torment of his own mind unleashed upon him .
and nathaniel was in such a state of agitation when we started our first lesson at walt disney concert hall - he had a kind of manic glint in his eyes , he was lost .
and he was talking about invisible demons and smoke , and how someone was poisoning him in his sleep .
and i was afraid , not for myself , but i was afraid that i was going to lose him , that he was going to sink into one of his states , and that i would ruin his relationship with the violin if i started talking about scales and arpeggios and other exciting forms of didactic violin pedagogy .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- so , i just started playing .
and i played the first movement of the beethoven violin concerto .
and as i played , i understood that there was a profound change occurring in nathaniel 's eyes .
it was as if he was in the grip of some invisible pharmaceutical , a chemical reaction , for which my playing the music was its catalyst .
and nathaniel 's manic rage was transformed into understanding , a quiet curiosity and grace .
and in a miracle , he lifted his own violin and he started playing , by ear , certain snippets of violin concertos which he then asked me to complete - mendelssohn , tchaikovsky , sibelius .
and we started talking about music , from bach to beethoven and brahms , bruckner , all the b 's , from bartók , all the way up to esa-pekka salonen .
and i understood that he not only had an encyclopedic knowledge of music , but he related to this music at a personal level .
he spoke about it with the kind of passion and understanding that i share with my colleagues in the los angeles philharmonic .
and through playing music and talking about music , this man had transformed from the paranoid , disturbed man that had just come from walking the streets of downtown los angeles to the charming , erudite , brilliant , juilliard-trained musician .
music is medicine . music changes us .
and for nathaniel , music is sanity .
because music allows him to take his thoughts and delusions and shape them through his imagination and his creativity , into reality .
and that is an escape from his tormented state .
and i understood that this was the very essence of art .
this was the very reason why we made music , that we take something that exists within all of us at our very fundamental core , our emotions , and through our artistic lens , through our creativity , we 're able to shape those emotions into reality .
and the reality of that expression reaches all of us and moves us , inspires and unites us .
and for nathaniel , music brought him back into a fold of friends .
the redemptive power of music brought him back into a family of musicians that understood him , that recognized his talents and respected him .
and i will always make music with nathaniel , whether we 're at walt disney concert hall or on skid row , because he reminds me why i became a musician .
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- bruno giussani : thank you . thanks .
robert gupta .
-lrb- applause -rrb- robert gupta : i 'm going to play something that i shamelessly stole from cellists .
so , please forgive me .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- -lrb- music -rrb- -lrb- applause -rrb- i 'd like to talk to you today about the human brain , which is what we do research on at the university of california .
just think about this problem for a second .
here is a lump of flesh , about three pounds , which you can hold in the palm of your hand .
but it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space .
it can contemplate the meaning of infinity , ask questions about the meaning of its own existence , about the nature of god .
and this is truly the most amazing thing in the world .
it 's the greatest mystery confronting human beings : how does this all come about ?
well , the brain , as you know , is made up of neurons .
we 're looking at neurons here .
there are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain .
and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain .
and based on this , people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe .
so , how do you go about studying the brain ?
one approach is to look at patients who had lesions in different part of the brain , and study changes in their behavior .
this is what i spoke about in the last ted .
today i 'll talk about a different approach , which is to put electrodes in different parts of the brain , and actually record the activity of individual nerve cells in the brain .
sort of eavesdrop on the activity of nerve cells in the brain .
now , one recent discovery that has been made by researchers in italy , in parma , by giacomo rizzolatti and his colleagues , is a group of neurons called mirror neurons , which are on the front of the brain in the frontal lobes .
now , it turns out there are neurons which are called ordinary motor command neurons in the front of the brain , which have been known for over 50 years .
these neurons will fire when a person performs a specific action .
for example , if i do that , and reach and grab an apple , a motor command neuron in the front of my brain will fire .
if i reach out and pull an object , another neuron will fire , commanding me to pull that object .
these are called motor command neurons that have been known for a long time .
but what rizzolatti found was a subset of these neurons , maybe about 20 percent of them , will also fire when i 'm looking at somebody else performing the same action .
so , here is a neuron that fires when i reach and grab something , but it also fires when i watch joe reaching and grabbing something .
and this is truly astonishing .
because it 's as though this neuron is adopting the other person 's point of view .
it 's almost as though it 's performing a virtual reality simulation of the other person 's action .
now , what is the significance of these mirror neurons ?
for one thing they must be involved in things like imitation and emulation .
because to imitate a complex act requires my brain to adopt the other person 's point of view .
so , this is important for imitation and emulation .
well , why is that important ?
well , let 's take a look at the next slide .
so , how do you do imitation ? why is imitation important ?
mirror neurons and imitation , emulation .
now , let 's look at culture , the phenomenon of human culture .
if you go back in time about -lsb- 75,000 -rsb- to 100,000 years ago , let 's look at human evolution , it turns out that something very important happened around 75,000 years ago .
and that is , there is a sudden emergence and rapid spread of a number of skills that are unique to human beings like tool use , the use of fire , the use of shelters , and , of course , language , and the ability to read somebody else 's mind and interpret that person 's behavior .
all of that happened relatively quickly .
even though the human brain had achieved its present size almost three or four hundred thousand years ago , 100,000 years ago all of this happened very , very quickly .
and i claim that what happened was the sudden emergence of a sophisticated mirror neuron system , which allowed you to emulate and imitate other people 's actions .
so that when there was a sudden accidental discovery by one member of the group , say the use of fire , or a particular type of tool , instead of dying out , this spread rapidly , horizontally across the population , or was transmitted vertically , down the generations .
so , this made evolution suddenly lamarckian , instead of darwinian .
darwinian evolution is slow ; it takes hundreds of thousands of years .
a polar bear , to evolve a coat , will take thousands of generations , maybe 100,000 years .
a human being , a child , can just watch its parent kill another polar bear , and skin it and put the skin on its body , fur on the body , and learn it in one step . what the polar bear took 100,000 years to learn , it can learn in five minutes , maybe 10 minutes .
and then once it 's learned this it spreads in geometric proportion across a population .
this is the basis . the imitation of complex skills is what we call culture and is the basis of civilization .
now there is another kind of mirror neuron , which is involved in something quite different .
and that is , there are mirror neurons , just as there are mirror neurons for action , there are mirror neurons for touch .
in other words , if somebody touches me , my hand , neuron in the somatosensory cortex in the sensory region of the brain fires .
but the same neuron , in some cases , will fire when i simply watch another person being touched .
so , it 's empathizing the other person being touched .
so , most of them will fire when i 'm touched in different locations . different neurons for different locations .
but a subset of them will fire even when i watch somebody else being touched in the same location .
so , here again you have neurons which are enrolled in empathy .
now , the question then arises : if i simply watch another person being touched , why do i not get confused and literally feel that touch sensation merely by watching somebody being touched ?
i mean , i empathize with that person but i do n't literally feel the touch .
well , that 's because you 've got receptors in your skin , touch and pain receptors , going back into your brain and saying " do n't worry , you 're not being touched .
so , empathize , by all means , with the other person , but do not actually experience the touch , otherwise you 'll get confused and muddled . "
okay , so there is a feedback signal that vetoes the signal of the mirror neuron preventing you from consciously experiencing that touch .
but if you remove the arm , you simply anesthetize my arm , so you put an injection into my arm , anesthetize the brachial plexus , so the arm is numb , and there is no sensations coming in , if i now watch you being touched , i literally feel it in my hand .
in other words , you have dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings .
so , i call them gandhi neurons , or empathy neurons .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and this is not in some abstract metaphorical sense .
all that 's separating you from him , from the other person , is your skin .
remove the skin , you experience that person 's touch in your mind .
you 've dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings .
and this , of course , is the basis of much of eastern philosophy , and that is there is no real independent self , aloof from other human beings , inspecting the world , inspecting other people .
you are , in fact , connected not just via facebook and internet , you 're actually quite literally connected by your neurons .
and there is whole chains of neurons around this room , talking to each other .
and there is no real distinctiveness of your consciousness from somebody else 's consciousness .
and this is not mumbo-jumbo philosophy .
it emerges from our understanding of basic neuroscience .
so , you have a patient with a phantom limb . if the arm has been removed and you have a phantom , and you watch somebody else being touched , you feel it in your phantom .
now the astonishing thing is , if you have pain in your phantom limb , you squeeze the other person 's hand , massage the other person 's hand , that relieves the pain in your phantom hand , almost as though the neuron were obtaining relief from merely watching somebody else being massaged .
so , here you have my last slide .
for the longest time people have regarded science and humanities as being distinct .
c.p. snow spoke of the two cultures : science on the one hand , humanities on the other ; never the twain shall meet .
so , i 'm saying the mirror neuron system underlies the interface allowing you to rethink about issues like consciousness , representation of self , what separates you from other human beings , what allows you to empathize with other human beings , and also even things like the emergence of culture and civilization , which is unique to human beings . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- for some time i have been interested in the placebo effect , which might seem like an odd thing for a magician to be interested in , unless you think of it in the terms that i do , which is , " something fake is believed in enough by somebody that it becomes something real . "
in other words , sugar pills have a measurable effect in certain kinds of studies , the placebo effect , just because the person thinks that what 's happening to them is a pharmaceutical or some sort of a - for pain management , for example , if they believe it enough there is a measurable effect in the body called the placebo effect .
something fake becomes something real because of someone 's perception of it .
in order for us to understand each other , i want to start by showing you a rudimentary , very simple magic trick .
and i 'm going to show you how it works . this is a trick that 's been in every children 's magic book since at least the 1950s .
i learned it myself from cub scout magic in the 1970s .
i 'll do it for you , and then i 'll explain it .
and then i 'll explain why i explained it .
so , here 's what happens .
the knife , which you can examine ; my hand , which you could examine .
i 'm just going to hold the knife in my fist like this .
i 'll get my sleeve back .
and to make sure nothing goes up or down my sleeve i 'm just going to squeeze my wrist right here .
that way you can see that at no time can anything travel , as long as i 'm squeezing there nothing can go up or down my sleeve .
and the object of this is quite simple .
i 'm going to open my hand , and hopefully , if all is well , my pure animal magnetism will hold the knife .
in fact it 's held so tightly in place that i can shake it , and the knife does not come off .
nothing goes up or down my sleeve , no trickery . and you can examine everything .
ta-da !
-lrb- applause -rrb- so , this is a trick that i often teach to young children that are interested in magic , because you can learn a great deal about deception by studying this very - even though it 's a very simple trick methodologically .
probably many of you in the room know this trick .
what happens is this .
i hold the knife in my hand .
i say i 'm going to grab hold of my wrist to make sure nothing goes up or down my sleeve , that is a lie .
the reason i 'm holding onto my wrist is because that 's actually the secret of the illusion .
in a moment when my hand moves from facing you to being away from you , this finger right here , my index finger is just going to shift from where it is , to a position pointing out like this .
nice one .
someone who did n't have a childhood is out there .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- so , it goes like this , from here , right .
and as i move around my finger shifts .
and we could talk about why this is deceptive , why you do n't notice there are only three fingers down here , because the mind , and the way it processes information , it does n't count , one , two , three . it groups them .
but that 's not really what this is about . right ? and then i open my hand up .
obviously it 's clinging there , not by animal magnetism , but by chicanery , my index finger being there .
and then when i close my finger , same thing , as i move back , this motion kind of covers the moving back of my finger .
i take this hand away . you give the knife out .
there is a trick you can do for your friends and neighbors . thanks .
now , -lrb- laughter -rrb- what does that have to do with the placebo effect ?
i read a study a year or so ago that really blew my mind wide open .
i 'm not a doctor or a researcher , so this , to me , was an astonishing thing .
it turns out that if you administer a placebo in the form of a white pill , that 's like aspirin shaped - it 's just a round white pill - it has some certain measurable effect .
but if you change the form that you give the placebo in , like you make a smaller pill , and color it blue , and stamp a letter into it , it is actually measurably more effective .
even though neither one of these things has any pharmaceutical - they 're sugar pills .
but a white pill is not as good as a blue pill .
what ? -lrb- laughter -rrb- that really flipped me out .
turns out though , that that 's not even where it stops .
if you have capsules , they 're more effective than tablets in any form .
a colored capsule , that 's yellow on one end and red on the other is better than a white capsule .
dosage has something to do with this .
one pill twice a day is not as good at three pills - i do n't remember the statistic now . sorry .
but the point is ...
-lrb- laughter -rrb- ... these dosages have something to do with it .
and the form has something to do with it .
and if you want the ultimate in placebo , you 've go to the needle .
right ? a syringe with some inert - a couple ccs of some inert something , and you inject this into a patient ...
well this is such a powerful image in their mind , it 's so much stronger than the white pill .
it 's a really , this graph , well i 'll show it to you some other time when we have slides .
the point is the white pill is not as good as the blue pill is not as good as the capsule is not as good as the needle .
and none of it has any real pharmaceutical quality , it 's only your belief that makes it real in your body and makes a stronger effect .
i wanted to see if i could take that idea and apply it to a magic trick .
and take something that is obviously a fake trick and make it seem real .
and we know from that study that when you want reality , you go to the needle .
this is a seven-inch hatpin . it 's very , very sharp , and i 'm going to just sterilize it a tiny bit .
this is really my flesh . this is not damian 's special-grown flesh .
that 's my skin right there . this is not a hollywood special effect .
i 'm going to pierce my skin and run this needle through to the other side .
if you 're queasy - -lrb- laughs -rrb- if you faint easily - i was doing this for some friends in the hotel room last night , and some people that i did n't know , and one woman almost passed out .
so , i suggest if you get queasy easy that you look away for about the next 30 - in fact , you know what , i 'll do the first bad part behind it .
you 'll get to see , you can look away too if you 'd like to .
so , here is what happens , right here , the beginning of my flesh at the lower part of my arm i just make a little pierce .
i 'm sorry , man . am i freaking you out ?
ok , and then just through my skin a tiny bit , and then out the other side like this .
now , essentially we 're in the same position we were in with the knife trick .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- sort of .
but you ca n't count my fingers right now can you ?
so , let me show them to you . that 's one , two three , four , five .
yes , well ...
i know what people think when they see this .
they go , " well , he 's certainly not dumb enough to stab himself through the skin to entertain us for a few minutes .
so , let me give you a little peek .
how 's that look out there ? pretty good .
-lrb- laughs -rrb- yeah , i know . -lrb- laughs -rrb- and the people in the back go , " ok , i did n't really see that . "
people in the satellite room are starting to move in now .
let me give you good close look at this .
that really is my skin . that is not a hollywood special effect .
that 's my flesh , and i can twist that around .
i 'm sorry . if you 're getting queasy , look away , do n't look at the thing .
people in the back or people on video years from now watching this will go , " well yeah , that looks kind of neat in some sort of effect there , but if it were real he would be - see there 's a hole there and a hole there , if it were real he would be bleeding .
well let me work up some blood for you .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- yes , there it is .
-lrb- applause -rrb- -lrb- laughter -rrb- normally now , i would take the needle out .
i would clean off my arm , and i would show you that there are no wounds .
but i think in this context and with the idea of taking something fake and making it into something real , i 'm just going to leave it there , and walk off the stage .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- i will be seeing you several times over the next few days .
i hope you 're looking forward to that . thank you very much .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- -lrb- applause -rrb- hello , everyone . because this is my first time at ted , i 've decided to bring along an old friend to help break the ice a bit .
yes . that 's right . this is barbie .
she 's 50 years old . and she 's looking as young as ever .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- but i 'd also like to introduce you to what may be an unfamiliar face .
this is fulla . fulla is the arab world 's answer to barbie .
now , according to proponents of the clash of civilizations , barbie and fulla occupy these completely separate spheres .
they have different interests . they have divergent values .
and should they ever come in contact ...
well , i 've got to tell you , it 's just not going to be pretty .
my experience , however , in the islamic world is very different .
where i work , in the arab region , people are busy taking up western innovations and changing them into things which are neither conventionally western , nor are they traditionally islamic .
i want to show you two examples .
the first is 4shbab .
it means " for youth " and it 's a new arab tv channel .
-lrb- video -rrb- : video clips from across the globe .
the usa .
♫ i am not afraid to stand alone ♫ ♫ i am not afraid to stand alone , if allah is by my side ♫ ♫ i am not afraid to stand alone ♫ ♫ everything will be all right ♫ ♫ i am not afraid to stand alone ♫ the arab world .
-lrb- music -rrb- ♫ she was preserved by modesty of the religion ♫ ♫ she was adorned by the light of the quran ♫ shereen el feki : 4shbab has been dubbed islamic mtv .
its creator , who is an egyptian tv producer called ahmed abu haïba , wants young people to be inspired by islam to lead better lives .
he reckons the best way to get that message across is to use the enormously popular medium of music videos .
4shbab was set up as an alternative to existing arab music channels .
and they look something like this .
-lrb- music -rrb- that , by the way is haifa wehbe . she 's a lebanese pop star and pan-arab pin-up girl .
in the world of 4shbab , it 's not about bump and grind .
but it 's not about fire and brimstone either .
its videos are intended to show a kinder , gentler face of islam , for young people to deal with life 's challenges .
now , my second example is for a slightly younger crowd .
and it 's called " the 99 . "
now , these are the world 's first islamic superheroes .
they were created by a kuwaiti psychologist called naif al mutawa .
and his desire is to rescue islam from images of intolerance , all in a child-friendly format .
" the 99 . " the characters are meant to embody the 99 attributes of allah : justice , wisdom , mercy , among others .
so , for example , there is the character of noora .
she is meant to have the power to look inside people and see the good and bad in everyone .
another character called jami has the ability to create fantastic inventions .
now , " the 99 " is not just a comic book .
it 's now a theme park .
there is an animated series in the works .
and by this time next year , the likes of superman and wonder woman will have joined forces with " the 99 " to beat injustice wherever they find it .
" the 99 " and 4shbab are just two of many examples of this sort of islamic cross-cultural hybridization .
we 're not talking here about a clash of civilizations .
nor is it some sort of indistinguishable mash .
i like to think of it as a mesh of civilizations , in which the strands of different cultures are intertwined .
now , while 4shbab and " the 99 " may look new and shiny , there is actually a very long tradition of this .
throughout its history , islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations both ancient and modern .
after all , it 's the quran which encourages us to do this : " we made you into nations and tribes so that you could learn from one another . "
and to my mind , those are pretty wise words , no matter what your creed . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- can geographic information make you healthy ?
in 2001 i got hit by a train .
my train was a heart attack .
i found myself in a hospital in an intensive-care ward , recuperating from emergency surgery .
and i suddenly realized something : that i was completely in the dark .
i started asking my questions , " well , why me ? "
" why now ? " " why here ? "
" could my doctor have warned me ? "
so , what i want to do here in the few minutes i have with you is really talk about what is the formula for life and good health .
genetics , lifestyle and environment .
that 's going to sort of contain our risks , and if we manage those risks we 're going to live a good life and a good healthy life .
well , i understand the genetics and lifestyle part .
and you know why i understand that ?
because my physicians constantly ask me questions about this .
have you ever had to fill out those long , legal-size forms in your doctor 's office ?
i mean , if you 're lucky enough you get to do it more than once , right ?
-lrb- laughter -rrb- do it over and over again . and they ask you questions about your lifestyle and your family history , your medication history , your surgical history , your allergy history ... did i forget any history ?
but this part of the equation i did n't really get , and i do n't think my physicians really get this part of the equation .
what does that mean , my environment ?
well , it can mean a lot of things .
this is my life . these are my life places .
we all have these .
while i 'm talking i 'd like you to also be thinking about : how many places have you lived ?
just think about that , you know , wander through your life thinking about this .
and you realize that you spend it in a variety of different places .
you spend it at rest and you spend it at work .
and if you 're like me , you 're in an airplane a good portion of your time traveling some place .
so , it 's not really simple when somebody asks you , " where do you live , where do you work , and where do you spend all your time ?
and where do you expose yourselves to risks that maybe perhaps you do n't even see ? "
well , when i have done this on myself , i always come to the conclusion that i spend about 75 percent of my time relatively in a small number of places .
and i do n't wander far from that place for a majority of my time , even though i 'm an extensive global trekker .
now , i 'm going to take you on a little journey here .
i started off in scranton , pennsylvania .
i do n't know if anybody might hail from northeastern pennsylvania , but this is where i spent my first 19 years with my little young lungs .
you know , breathing high concentrations here of sulfur dioxide , carbon dioxide and methane gas , in unequal quantities - 19 years of this .
and if you 've been in that part of the country , this is what those piles of burning , smoldering coal waste look like .
so then i decided to leave that part of the world , and i was going to go to the mid-west .
ok , so i ended up in louisville , kentucky .
well , i decided to be neighbors to a place called rubbertown .
they manufacture plastics . they use large quantities chloroprene and benzene .
okay , i spent 25 years , in my middle-age lungs now , breathing various concentrations of that .
and on a clear day it always looked like this , so you never saw it .
it was insidious and it was really happening .
then i decided i had to get really smart , i would take this job in the west coast .
and i moved to redlands california .
very nice , and there my older , senior lungs , as i like to call them , i filled with particulate matter , carbon dioxide and very high doses of ozone .
okay ? almost like the highest in the nation .
alright , this is what it looks like on a good day .
if you 've been there , you know what i 'm talking about .
so , what 's wrong with this picture ?
well , the picture is , there is a huge gap here .
the one thing that never happens in my doctor 's office : they never ask me about my place history .
no doctor , can i remember , ever asking me , " where have you lived ? "
they have n't asked me what kind of the quality of the drinking water that i put in my mouth or the food that i ingest into my stomach .
they really do n't do that . it 's missing .
look at the kind of data that 's available .
this data 's from all over the world - countries spend billions of dollars investing in this kind of research .
now , i 've circled the places where i 've been .
well , by design , if i wanted to have a heart attack i 'd been in the right places . right ?
so , how many people are in the white ?
how many people in the room have spent the majority of their life in the white space ?
anybody ? boy you 're lucky .
how many have spent it in the red places ?
oh , not so lucky .
there are thousands of these kinds of maps that are displayed in atlases all over the world .
they give us some sense of what 's going to be our train wreck .
but none of that 's in my medical record .
and it 's not in yours either .
so , here 's my friend paul .
he 's a colleague . he allowed his cell phone to be tracked every two hours , 24/7 , 365 days out of the year for the last two years , everywhere he went .
and you can see he 's been to a few places around the united states .
and this is where he has spent most of his time .
if you really studied that you might have some clues as to what paul likes to do .
anybody got any clues ? ski . right .
we can zoom in here , and we suddenly see that now we see where paul has really spent a majority of his time .
and all of those black dots are all of the toxic release inventories that are monitored by the epa .
did you know that data existed ?
for every community in the united states , you could have your own personalized map of that .
so , our cell phones can now build a place history .
this is how paul did it . he did it with his iphone .
this might be what we end up with .
this is what the physician would have in front of him and her when we enter that exam room instead of just the pink slip that said i paid at the counter . right ?
this could be my little assessment .
and he looks at that and he says , " whoa bill , i suggest that maybe you not decide , just because you 're out here in beautiful california , and it 's warm every day , that you get out and run at six o 'clock at night .
i 'd suggest that that 's a bad idea bill , because of this report . "
what i 'd like to leave you for are two prescriptions .
okay , number one is , we must teach physicians about the value of geographical information .
it 's called geomedicine . there are about a half a dozen programs in the world right now that are focused on this .
and they 're in the early stages of development .
these programs need to be supported , and we need to teach our future doctors of the world the importance of some of the information i 've shared here with you today .
the second thing we need to do is while we 're spending billions and billions of dollars all over the world building an electronic health record , we make sure we put a place history inside that medical record .
it not only will be important for the physician ; it will be important for the researchers that now will have huge samples to draw upon .
but it will also be useful for us .
i could have made the decision , if i had this information , not to move to the ozone capital of the united states , could n't i ? i could make that decision .
or i could negotiate with my employer to make that decision in the best interest of myself and my company .
with that , i would like to just say that jack lord said this almost 10 years ago .
just look at that for a minute .
that was what the conclusion of the dartmouth atlas of healthcare was about , was saying that we can explain the geographic variations that occur in disease , in illness , in wellness , and how our healthcare system actually operates .
that was what he was talking about on that quote .
and i would say he got it right almost a decade ago .
so , i 'd very much like to see us begin to really seize this as an opportunity to get this into our medical records .
so with that , i 'll leave you that in my particular view of view of health : geography always matters .
and i believe that geographic information can make both you and me very healthy . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- we are drowning in news .
reuters alone puts out three and a half million news stories a year .
that 's just one source .
my question is : how many of those stories are actually going to matter in the long run ?
that 's the idea behind the long news .
it 's a project by the long now foundation , which was founded by tedsters including kevin kelly and stewart brand .
and what we 're looking for is news stories that might still matter 50 or 100 or 10,000 years from now .
and when you look at the news through that filter , a lot falls by the wayside .
to take the top stories from the a.p. this last year , is this going to matter in a decade ?
or this ?
or this ?
really ?
is this going to matter in 50 or 100 years ?
okay , that was kind of cool .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- but the top story of this past year was the economy , and i 'm just betting that , sooner or later , this particular recession is going to be old news .
so , what kind of stories might make a difference for the future ?
well , let 's take science .
someday , little robots will go through our bloodstreams fixing things .
that someday is already here if you 're a mouse .
some recent stories : nanobees zap tumors with real bee venom ; they 're sending genes into the brain ; a robot they built that can crawl through the human body .
what about resources ? how are we going to feed nine billion people ?
we 're having trouble feeding six billion today .
as we heard yesterday , there 's over a billion people hungry .
britain will starve without genetically modified crops .
bill gates , fortunately , has bet a billion on -lsb- agricultural -rsb- research .
what about global politics ?
the world 's going to be very different when and if china sets the agenda , and they may .
they 've overtaken the u.s. as the world 's biggest car market , they 've overtaken germany as the largest exporter , and they 've started doing dna tests on kids to choose their careers .
we 're finding all kinds of ways to push back the limits of what we know .
some recent discoveries : there 's an ant colony from argentina that has now spread to every continent but antarctica ; there 's a self-directed robot scientist that 's made a discovery - soon , science may no longer need us , and life may no longer need us either ; a microbe wakes up after 120,000 years .
it seems that with or without us , life will go on .
but my pick for the top long news story of this past year was this one : water found on the moon .
makes it a lot easier to put a colony up there .
and if nasa does n't do it , china might , or somebody in this room might write a big check .
my point is this : in the long run , some news stories are more important than others .
-lrb- applause -rrb- in 2008 , cyclone nargis devastated myanmar .
millions of people were in severe need of help .
the u.n. wanted to rush people and supplies to the area .
but there were no maps , no maps of roads , no maps showing hospitals , no way for help to reach the cyclone victims .
when we look at a map of los angeles or london , it is hard to believe that as of 2005 , only 15 percent of the world was mapped to a geo-codable level of detail .
the u.n. ran headfirst into a problem that the majority of the world 's populous faces : not having detailed maps .
but help was coming .
at google , 40 volunteers used a new software to map 120,000 kilometers of roads , 3,000 hospitals , logistics and relief points .
and it took them four days .
the new software they used ? google mapmaker .
google mapmaker is a technology that empowers each of us to map what we know locally .
people have used this software to map everything from roads to rivers , from schools to local businesses , and video stores to the corner store .
maps matter .
nobel prize nominee hernando de soto recognized that the key to economic liftoff for most developing countries is to tap the vast amounts of uncapitalized land .
for example , a trillion dollars of real estate remains uncapitalized in india alone .
in the last year alone , thousands of users in 170 countries have mapped millions of pieces of information , and created a map of a level of detail never thought viable .
and this was made possible by the power of passionate users everywhere .
let 's look at some of the maps being created by users right now .
so , as we speak , people are mapping the world in these 170 countries .
you can see bridget in africa who just mapped a road in senegal .
and , closer to home , chalua , an n.g. road in bangalore .
this is the result of computational geometry , gesture recognition , and machine learning .
this is a victory of thousands of users , in hundreds of cities , one user , one edit at a time .
this is an invitation to the 70 percent of our unmapped planet .
welcome to the new world .
-lrb- applause -rrb- i only have three minutes so i 'm going to have to talk fast , and it will use up your spare mental cycles , so multitasking may be hard .
so , 27 years ago i got a traffic ticket that got me thinking .
i 've had some time to think it over .
and energy efficiency is more than just about the vehicle - it 's also about the road .
road design makes a difference , particularly intersections , of which there are two types : signalized and unsignalized , which means stop signs .
fifty percent of crashes happen at intersections .
roundabouts are much better .
a study of 24 intersections has found crashes drop 40 percent from when you convert a traffic light into a roundabout .
injury crashes have dropped 76 percent , fatal crashes down 90 percent .
but that 's just safety .
what about time and gas ?
so , traffic keeps flowing , so that means less braking , which means less accelerating , less gas and less pollution , less time wasted , and that partly accounts for europe 's better efficiency than we have in the united states .
so , unsignalized intersections , meaning stop signs , they save many lives , but there 's an excessive proliferation of them .
small roundabouts are starting to appear .
this is one in my neighborhood . and they are much better - better than traffic lights , better than four-way stop signs .
they 're expensive to install , but they are more expensive not to . so , we should look at that .
but they are not applicable in all situations .
so , take , for example , the three-way intersection .
so , it 's logical that you 'd have one there , on the minor road entering the major .
but the other two are somewhat questionable .
so , here 's one . there 's another one which i studied .
cars rarely appear on that third road .
and so , the question is , what does that cost us ?
that intersection i looked at had about 3,000 cars per day in each direction , and so that 's two ounces of gas to accelerate out of .
that 's five cents each , and times 3,000 cars per day , that 's $ 51,000 per year .
that 's just the gasoline cost . there is also pollution , wear on the car , and time .
what 's that time worth ?
well , at 10 seconds per 3,000 cars , that 's 8.3 hours per day . the average wage in the u.s.
is $ 20 an hour . that is 60,000 per year .
add that together with the gas , and it 's $ 112,000 per year , just for that sign in each direction .
discount that back to the present , at five percent : over two million dollars for a stop sign , in each direction .
now , if you look at what that adjacent property is worth , you could actually buy the property , cut down the shrubbery to improve the sight line , and then sell it off again .
and you 'd still come out ahead .
so , it makes one wonder , " why is it there ? "
i mean , why is there that stop sign in each direction ?
because it is saving lives . so , is there a better way to accomplish that goal ?
the answer is to enable cars to come in from that side road safely .
because there are a lot of people who might live up there and if they 're waiting forever a long queue could form because the cars are n't slowing down on the main road .
can that be accomplished with existing signs ?
so , there is a long history of stop signs and yield signs .
stop signs were invented in 1915 , yield signs in 1950 . but that 's all we got .
so , why not use a yield sign ?
well the meaning of yield is : you must yield the right-of-way .
that means that if there are five cars waiting , you have to wait till they all go , then you go . it lacks the notion of alternating , or taking turns , and it 's always on the minor road , allowing the major one to have primacy .
so , it 's hard to create a new meaning for the existing sign .
you could n't suddenly tell everyone , " ok , remember what you used to do at yield signs ? now do something different . "
that would not work .
so , what the world needs now is a new type of sign .
-lrb- applause -rrb- so , you 'd have a little instruction below it , you know , for those who did n't see the public service announcements .
and it merges the stop sign and yield signs .
it 's kind of shaped like a t , as in taking turns .
and uncertainty results in caution .
when people come to an unfamiliar situation they do n't know how to deal with they slow down .
so , now that you are all " road scholars " ...
-lrb- laughter -rrb- do n't wait for that sign to be adopted , these things do n't change quickly .
but you all are members of communities , and you can exercise your community influence to create more sensible traffic flows .
and you can have more impact on the environment just getting your neighborhood to change these things than by changing your vehicle . thank you very much .
-lrb- applause -rrb- hi . for those of you who have n't seen dancing bears , these are the dancing bears .
in 1995 , we started working on a two-year investigative research project to try and find out what was going on .
because the sloth bears in the wild were obviously getting depleted because of this .
this is the qalandar community . they are a marginalized islamic community who live across india , and have been in india since the 13th century .
we went about getting evidence of what was going on .
and this is footage from a hidden camera in a button .
and we went in , pretending to be buyers .
and we found this right in this very state , in karnataka .
and the bear cubs were being harvested from across the country and being sold and traded .
these were being sold for about 2,000 dollars each , and they are used for bear paw soup , and also being trained , later on , to become dancing bears like the one you just saw .
sadly , the family of qalandars depended on this bear .
the couple are barely 18 years old .
they already have four children beside them . you can see them .
and the economy of the family and their livelihood depended on those animals .
so , we had to deal with it in a very practical and sustainable manner .
now , when we started working deeper and digging deeper , we found that it 's an illegal act .
these guys could go to jail for up to seven years if they were caught by authorities .
and what they were doing to the bears was really appalling .
it was unacceptable .
the mother bears are usually killed .
the cubs , which are taken , are separated .
their teeth are basically bashed out with a metal rod .
and they use a red hot iron needle to make a hole through the muzzle .
now we had to start changing these people and converting them from using that for a livelihood , to getting something else .
so , this is bitu qalandar , who was our first experiment .
and we were so unsure that this would work .
we were n't sure at all . and we managed to convince him .
and we said , " okay , here is some seed fund .
let 's see if you can get something else . " and we got the bear surrendered to - we set up a sanctuary . we have four sanctuaries in india .
and now he sells cool drinks , he 's by the highway .
he has a telephone booth .
and then it started , there was no turning back after that .
this is sadua who came and surrendered his bear .
and now he runs a cattle fodder store and a grain store near agra .
then there was no looking back at all for us .
we gave cycle rickshaws .
we set up carpet-weaving units , vocational training for the women .
the women were just not allowed to come out of the community and work with mainstream society . so , we were able to address that .
education . the kids never went to school .
they only had islamic education , very little of it .
and they were never allowed to go to school because they were an extra earning hand at home . so we managed to get education .
so , we sponsor 600 children education programs today .
we were able to ensure brighter futures for these people .
of course we also had to get the bears in .
this is what happens to the bears when they come in .
and this is what we turn them into .
we have a veterinary facility in our rescue centers .
so , basically in 2002 there were 1,200 dancing bears .
we rescued over 550 dancing bears .
we 've been able to ensure better futures for the people and the bears .
the big news that i want to announce today is that next month we will be bringing in the very last bear of india , into our rescue center .
-lrb- applause -rrb- and india will no longer have to witness this cruel barbaric practice which has been here for centuries .
and the people can hold their heads up high .
and the qalandar people will rise above all this cruel barbaric past that they 've lived all their lives .
and the beautiful bears can of course live in the wild again .
and there will be no more removing of these bears .
and the children , both humans and bear cubs can live peacefully . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- first of all , i 'm a geek .
i 'm an organic food-eating , carbon footprint-minimizing , robotic surgery geek .
and i really want to build green , but i 'm very suspicious of all of these well-meaning articles , people long on moral authority and short on data , telling me how to do these kinds of things .
and so i have to figure this out for myself .
for example : is this evil ?
i have dropped a blob of organic yogurt from happy self-actualized local cows on my counter top , and i grab a paper towel and i want to wipe it up .
but can i use a paper towel ? -lrb- laughter -rrb- the answer to this can be found in embodied energy .
this is the amount of energy that goes into any paper towel or embodied water , and every time i use a paper towel , i am using this much virtual energy and water .
wipe it up , throw it away .
now , if i compare that to a cotton towel that i can use a thousand times , i do n't have a whole lot of embodied energy until i wash that yogurty towel .
this is now operating energy .
so if i throw my towel in the washing machine , i 've now put energy and water back into that towel ...
unless i use a front-loading , high-efficiency washing machine , -lrb- laughter -rrb- and then it looks a little bit better .
but what about a recycled paper towel that comes in those little half sheets ?
well , now a paper towel looks better .
screw the paper towels . let 's go to a sponge .
i wipe it up with a sponge , and i put it under the running water , and i have a lot less energy and a lot more water .
unless you 're like me and you leave the handle in the position of hot even when you turn it on , and then you start to use more energy .
or worse , you let it run until it 's warm to rinse out your towel .
and now all bets are off .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- so what this says is that sometimes the things that you least expect - the position in which you put the handle - have a bigger effect than any of those other things that you were trying to optimize .
now imagine someone as twisted as me trying to build a house .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- that 's what my husband and i are doing right now .
and so , we wanted to know , how green could we be ?
and there 's a thousand and one articles out there telling us how to make all these green trade-offs .
and they are just as suspect in telling us to optimize these little things around the edges and missing the elephant in the living room .
now , the average house has about 300 megawatt hours of embodied energy in it ; this is the energy it takes to make it - millions and millions of paper towels .
we wanted to know how much better we could do .
and so , like many people , we start with a house on a lot , and i 'm going to show you a typical construction on the top and what we 're doing on the bottom .
so first , we demolish it .
it takes some energy , but if you deconstruct it - you take it all apart , you use the bits - you can get some of that energy back .
we then dug a big hole to put in a rainwater catchment tank to take our yard water independent .
and then we poured a big foundation for passive solar .
now , you can reduce the embodied energy by about 25 percent by using high fly ash concrete .
we then put in framing .
and so this is framing - lumber , composite materials - and it 's kind of hard to get the embodied energy out of that , but it can be a sustainable resource if you use fsc-certified lumber .
we then go on to the first thing that was very surprising .
if we put aluminum windows in this house , we would double the energy use right there .
now , pvc is a little bit better , but still not as good as the wood that we chose .
we then put in plumbing , electrical and hvac , and insulate .
now , spray foam is an excellent insulator - it fills in all the cracks - but it is pretty high embodied energy , and , sprayed-in cellulose or blue jeans is a much lower energy alternative to that .
we also used straw bale infill for our library , which has zero embodied energy .
when it comes time to sheetrock , if you use ecorock it 's about a quarter of the embodied energy of standard sheetrock .
and then you get to the finishes , the subject of all of those " go green " articles , and on the scale of a house they almost make no difference at all .
and yet , all the press is focused on that .
except for flooring .
if you put carpeting in your house , it 's about a tenth of the embodied energy of the entire house , unless you use concrete or wood for a much lower embodied energy .
so now we add in the final construction energy , we add it all up , and we 've built a house for less than half of the typical embodied energy for building a house like this .
but before we pat ourselves too much on the back , we have poured 151 megawatt hours of energy into constructing this house when there was a house there before .
and so the question is : how could we make that back ?
and so if i run my new energy-efficient house forward , compared with the old , non-energy-efficient house , we make it back in about six years .
now , i probably would have upgraded the old house to be more energy-efficient , and in that case , it would take me more about 20 years to break even .
now , if i had n't paid attention to embodied energy , it would have taken us over 50 years to break even compared to the upgraded house .
so what does this mean ?
on the scale of my portion of the house , this is equivalent to about as much as i drive in a year , it 's about five times as much as if i went entirely vegetarian .
but my elephant in the living room flies .
clearly , i need to walk home from ted .
but all the calculations for embodied energy are on the blog .
and , remember , it 's sometimes the things that you are not expecting to be the biggest changes that are .
thank you . -lrb- applause -rrb- i 'd like to share with you a discovery that i made a few months ago while writing an article for italian wired .
i always keep my thesaurus handy whenever i 'm writing anything , but i 'd already finished editing the piece , and i realized that i had never once in my life looked up the word " disabled " to see what i 'd find .
let me read you the entry .
" disabled , adjective : crippled , helpless , useless , wrecked , stalled , maimed , wounded , mangled , lame , mutilated , run-down , worn-out , weakened , impotent , castrated , paralyzed , handicapped , senile , decrepit , laid-up , done-up , done-for , done-in cracked-up , counted-out ; see also hurt , useless and weak .
antonyms , healthy , strong , capable . "
i was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing , it was so ludicrous , but i 'd just gotten past " mangled , " and my voice broke , and i had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed .
you know , of course , this is my raggedy old thesaurus so i 'm thinking this must be an ancient print date , right ?
but , in fact , the print date was the early 1980s , when i would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me .
and , needless to say , thank god i was n't using a thesaurus back then .
i mean , from this entry , it would seem that i was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them , when in fact , today i 'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured .
so , i immediately went to look up the 2009 online edition , expecting to find a revision worth noting .
here 's the updated version of this entry .
unfortunately , it 's not much better .
i find the last two words under " near antonyms , " particularly unsettling : " whole " and " wholesome . "
so , it 's not just about the words .
it 's what we believe about people when we name them with these words .
it 's about the values behind the words , and how we construct those values .
our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people .
in fact , many ancient societies , including the greeks and the romans , believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful , because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence .
so , what reality do we want to call into existence : a person who is limited , or a person who 's empowered ?
by casually doing something as simple as naming a person , a child , we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power .
would n't we want to open doors for them instead ?
one such person who opened doors for me was my childhood doctor at the a.i. dupont institute in wilmington , delaware .
his name was dr. pizzutillo , an italian american , whose name , apparently , was too difficult for most americans to pronounce , so he went by dr. p.
and dr. p always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children .
i loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital , with the exception of my physical therapy sessions .
i had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick , elastic bands - different colors , you know - to help build up my leg muscles , and i hated these bands more than anything - i hated them , had names for them . i hated them .
and , you know , i was already bargaining , as a five year-old child , with dr. p to try to get out of doing these exercises , unsuccessfully , of course .
and , one day , he came in to my session - exhaustive and unforgiving , these sessions - and he said to me , " wow . aimee , you are such a strong and powerful little girl , i think you 're going to break one of those bands .
when you do break it , i 'm going to give you a hundred bucks . "
now , of course , this was a simple ploy on dr. p 's part to get me to do the exercises i did n't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five-year-old in the second floor ward , but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me .
and i have to wonder today to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong , powerful and athletic person well into the future .
this is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child .
but , in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries , our language is n't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want , the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable .
our language has n't caught up with the changes in our society , many of which have been brought about by technology .
certainly , from a medical standpoint , my legs , laser surgery for vision impairment , titanium knees and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities , and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them - not to mention social networking platforms allow people to self-identify , to claim their own descriptions of themselves , so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing .
so , perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth : that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society , and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset .
the human ability to adapt , it 's an interesting thing , because people have continually wanted to talk to me about overcoming adversity , and i 'm going to make an admission : this phrase never sat right with me , and i always felt uneasy trying to answer people 's questions about it , and i think i 'm starting to figure out why .
implicit in this phrase of " overcoming adversity " is the idea that success , or happiness , is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience , as if my successes in life have come about from an ability to sidestep or circumnavigate the presumed pitfalls of a life with prosthetics , or what other people perceive as my disability .
but , in fact , we are changed . we are marked , of course , by a challenge , whether physically , emotionally or both .
and i 'm going to suggest that this is a good thing .
adversity is n't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life .
it 's part of our life .
and i tend to think of it like my shadow .
sometimes i see a lot of it , sometimes there 's very little , but it 's always with me .
and , certainly , i 'm not trying to diminish the impact , the weight , of a person 's struggle .
there is adversity and challenge in life , and it 's all very real and relative to every single person , but the question is n't whether or not you 're going to meet adversity , but how you 're going to meet it .
so , our responsibility is not simply shielding those we care for from adversity , but preparing them to meet it well .
and we do a disservice to our kids when we make them feel that they 're not equipped to adapt .
there 's an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not i 'm disabled .
and , truthfully , the only real and consistent disability i 've had to confront is the world ever thinking that i could be described by those definitions .
in our desire to protect those we care about by giving them the cold , hard truth about their medical prognosis , or , indeed , a prognosis on the expected quality of their life , we have to make sure that we do n't put the first brick in a wall that will actually disable someone .
perhaps the existing model of only looking at what is broken in you and how do we fix it , serves to be more disabling to the individual than the pathology itself .
by not treating the wholeness of a person , by not acknowledging their potency , we are creating another ill on top of whatever natural struggle they might have .
we are effectively grading someone 's worth to our community .
so we need to see through the pathology and into the range of human capability .
and , most importantly , there 's a partnership between those perceived deficiencies and our greatest creative ability .
so it 's not about devaluing , or negating , these more trying times as something we want to avoid or sweep under the rug , but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity .
so maybe the idea i want to put out there is not so much overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves up to it , embracing it , grappling with it , to use a wrestling term , maybe even dancing with it .
and , perhaps , if we see adversity as natural , consistent and useful , we 're less burdened by the presence of it .
this year we celebrate the 200th birthday of charles darwin , and it was 150 years ago , when writing about evolution , that darwin illustrated , i think , a truth about the human character .
to paraphrase : it 's not the strongest of the species that survives , nor is it the most intelligent that survives ; it is the one that is most adaptable to change .
conflict is the genesis of creation .
from darwin 's work , amongst others , we can recognize that the human ability to survive and flourish is driven by the struggle of the human spirit through conflict into transformation .
so , again , transformation , adaptation , is our greatest human skill .
and , perhaps , until we 're tested , we do n't know what we 're made of .
maybe that 's what adversity gives us : a sense of self , a sense of our own power .
so , we can give ourselves a gift .
we can re-imagine adversity as something more than just tough times .
maybe we can see it as change .
adversity is just change that we have n't adapted ourselves to yet .
i think the greatest adversity that we 've created for ourselves is this idea of normalcy .
now , who 's normal ?
there 's no normal .
there 's common , there 's typical . there 's no normal , and would you want to meet that poor , beige person if they existed ?
-lrb- laughter -rrb- i do n't think so .
if we can change this paradigm from one of achieving normalcy to one of possibility - or potency , to be even a little bit more dangerous - we can release the power of so many more children , and invite them to engage their rare and valuable abilities with the community .
anthropologists tell us that the one thing we as humans have always required of our community members is to be of use , to be able to contribute .
there 's evidence that neanderthals , 60,000 years ago , carried their elderly and those with serious physical injury , and perhaps it 's because the life experience of survival of these people proved of value to the community .
they did n't view these people as broken and useless ; they were seen as rare and valuable .
a few years ago , i was in a food market in the town where i grew up in that red zone in northeastern pennsylvania , and i was standing over a bushel of tomatoes .
it was summertime : i had shorts on .
i hear this guy , his voice behind me say , " well , if it is n't aimee mullins . "
and i turn around , and it 's this older man . i have no idea who he is .
and i said , " i 'm sorry , sir , have we met ? i do n't remember meeting you . "
he said , " well , you would n't remember meeting me .
i mean , when we met i was delivering you from your mother 's womb . "
-lrb- laughter -rrb- oh , that guy .
and , but of course , actually , it did click .
this man was dr. kean , a man that i had only known about through my mother 's stories of that day , because , of course , typical fashion , i arrived late for my birthday by two weeks .
and so my mother 's prenatal physician had gone on vacation , so the man who delivered me was a complete stranger to my parents .
and , because i was born without the fibula bones , and had feet turned in , and a few toes in this foot and a few toes in that , he had to be the bearer - this stranger had to be the bearer of bad news .
he said to me , " i had to give this prognosis to your parents that you would never walk , and you would never have the kind of mobility that other kids have or any kind of life of independence , and you 've been making liar out of me ever since . "
-lrb- laughter -rrb- -lrb- applause -rrb- the extraordinary thing is that he said he had saved newspaper clippings throughout my whole childhood , whether winning a second grade spelling bee , marching with the girl scouts , you know , the halloween parade , winning my college scholarship , or any of my sports victories , and he was using it , and integrating it into teaching resident students , med students from hahnemann medical school and hershey medical school .
and he called this part of the course the x factor , the potential of the human will .
no prognosis can account for how powerful this could be as a determinant in the quality of someone 's life .
and dr. kean went on to tell me , he said , " in my experience , unless repeatedly told otherwise , and even if given a modicum of support , if left to their own devices , a child will achieve . "
see , dr. kean made that shift in thinking .
he understood that there 's a difference between the medical condition and what someone might do with it .
and there 's been a shift in my thinking over time , in that , if you had asked me at 15 years old , if i would have traded prosthetics for flesh-and-bone legs , i would n't have hesitated for a second .
i aspired to that kind of normalcy back then .
but if you ask me today , i 'm not so sure .
and it 's because of the experiences i 've had with them , not in spite of the experiences i 've had with them .
and perhaps this shift in me has happened because i 've been exposed to more people who have opened doors for me than those who have put lids and cast shadows on me .
see , all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your own power , and you 're off .
if you can hand somebody the key to their own power - the human spirit is so receptive - if you can do that and open a door for someone at a crucial moment , you are educating them in the best sense .
you 're teaching them to open doors for themselves .
in fact , the exact meaning of the word " educate " comes from the root word " educe . "
it means " to bring forth what is within , to bring out potential . "
so again , which potential do we want to bring out ?
there was a case study done in 1960s britain , when they were moving from grammar schools to comprehensive schools .
it 's called the streaming trials . we call it " tracking " here in the states .
it 's separating students from a , b , c , d and so on .
and the " a students " get the tougher curriculum , the best teachers , etc .
well , they took , over a three-month period , d-level students , gave them a 's , told them they were " a 's , " told them they were bright , and at the end of this three-month period , they were performing at a-level .
and , of course , the heartbreaking , flip side of this study , is that they took the " a students " and told them they were " d 's . "
and that 's what happened at the end of that three-month period .
those who were still around in school , besides the people who had dropped out .
a crucial part of this case study was that the teachers were duped too .
the teachers did n't know a switch had been made .
they were simply told , " these are the ' a-students , ' these are the ' d-students . " ' and that 's how they went about teaching them and treating them .
so , i think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit , a spirit that 's been crushed does n't have hope , it does n't see beauty , it no longer has our natural , childlike curiosity and our innate ability to imagine .
if instead , we can bolster a human spirit to keep hope , to see beauty in themselves and others , to be curious and imaginative , then we are truly using our power well .
when a spirit has those qualities , we are able to create new realities and new ways of being .
i 'd like to leave you with a poem by a fourteenth-century persian poet named hafiz that my friend , jacques dembois told me about , and the poem is called " the god who only knows four words " : " every child has known god , not the god of names , not the god of do n'ts , but the god who only knows four words and keeps repeating them , saying , ' come dance with me .
come , dance with me . come , dance with me . " ' thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- i 'm a writer and a journalist , and i 'm also an insanely curious person , so in 22 years as a journalist , i 've learned how to do a lot of new things .
and three years ago , one of the things i learned how to do was to become invisible .
i became one of the working homeless .
i quit my job as a newspaper editor after my father died in february of that same year , and decided to travel .
his death hit me pretty hard .
and there were a lot of things that i wanted to feel and deal with while i was doing that .
i 've camped my whole life . and i decided that living in a van for a year to do this would be like one long camping trip .
so i packed my cat , my rottweiler and my camping gear into a 1975 chevy van , and drove off into the sunset , having fully failed to realize three critical things .
one : that society equates living in a permanent structure , even a shack , with having value as a person .
two : i failed to realize how quickly the negative perceptions of other people can impact our reality , if we let it .
three : i failed to realize that homelessness is an attitude , not a lifestyle .
at first , living in the van was great .
i showered in campgrounds . i ate out regularly .
and i had time to relax and to grieve .
but then the anger and the depression about my father 's death set in .
my freelance job ended . and i had to get a full-time job to pay the bills .
what had been a really mild spring turned into a miserably hot summer .
and it became impossible to park anywhere - -lrb- laughs -rrb- - without being very obvious that i had a cat and a dog with me , and it was really hot .
the cat came and went through an open window in the van .
the doggy went into doggy day care .
and i sweated .
whenever i could , i used employee showers in office buildings and truck stops .
or i washed up in public rest rooms .
nighttime temperatures in the van rarely dropped below 80 degrees fahrenheit , making it difficult or impossible to sleep .
food rotted in the heat .
ice in my ice chest melted within hours , and it was pretty miserable .
i could n't afford to find an apartment , or could n't afford an apartment that would allow me to have the rottweiler and the cat .
and i refused to give them up , so i stayed in the van .
and when the heat made me too sick to walk the 50 feet to the public restroom outside my van at night , i used a bucket and a trash bag as a toilet .
when winter weather set in , the temperatures dropped below freezing . and they stayed there .
and i faced a whole new set of challenges .
i parked a different place every night so i would avoid being noticed and hassled by the police .
i did n't always succeed .
but i felt out of control of my life .
and i do n't know when or how it happened , but the speed at which i went from being a talented writer and journalist to being a homeless woman , living in a van , took my breath away .
i had n't changed . my i.q. had n't dropped .
my talent , my integrity , my values , everything about me remained the same .
but i had changed somehow .
i spiraled deeper and deeper into a depression .
and eventually someone referred me to a homeless health clinic .
and i went . i had n't bathed in three days .
i was as smelly and as depressed as anyone in line .
i just was n't drunk or high .
and when several of the homeless men realized that , including a former university professor , they said , " you are n't homeless . why are you really here ? "
other homeless people did n't see me as homeless , but i did .
then the professor listened to my story and he said , " you have a job . you have hope .
the real homeless do n't have hope . "
a reaction to the medication the clinic gave me for my depression left me suicidal . and i remember thinking , " if i killed myself , no one would notice . "
a friend told me , shortly after that , that she had heard that tim russert , a nationally renowned journalist , had been talking about me on national t.v.
an essay i 'd written about my father , the year before he died , was in tim 's new book .
and he was doing the talk show circuit . and he was talking about my writing .
and when i realized that tim russert , former moderator of " meet the press , " was talking about my writing , while i was living in a van in a wal-mart parking lot , i started laughing .
you should too .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- i started laughing because it got to the point where , was i a writer , or was i a homeless woman ?
so i went in the bookstore . and i found tim 's book .
and i stood there . and i reread my essay .
and i cried .
because i was a writer .
i was a writer .
shortly after that i moved back to tennessee .
i alternated between living in a van and couch surfing with friends .
and i started writing again .
by the summer of the following year i was a working journalist .
i was winning awards . i was living in my own apartment .
i was no longer homeless .
and i was no longer invisible .
thousands of people work full and part-time jobs , and live in their cars .
but society continues to stigmatize and criminalize living in your vehicle or on the streets .
so the homeless , the working homeless , primarily remain invisible .
but if you ever meet one , engage them , encourage them , and offer them hope .
the human spirit can overcome anything if it has hope .
and i 'm not here to be the poster girl for the homeless .
i 'm not here to encourage you to give money to the next panhandler you meet .
but i am here to tell you that , based on my experience , people are not where they live , where they sleep , or what their life situation is at any given time .
three years ago i was living in a van in a wal-mart parking lot , and today i 'm speaking at ted .
hope always , always finds a way . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- a few years ago , my eyes were opened to the dark side of the construction industry .
in 2006 , young qatari students took me to go and see the migrant worker camps .
and since then i 've followed the unfolding issue of worker rights .
in the last six months , more than 300 skyscrapers in the uae have been put on hold or canceled .
behind the headlines that lay behind these buildings is the fate of the often-indentured construction worker .
1.1 million of them .
mainly indian , pakistani , sri lankan and nepalese , these laborers risk everything to make money for their families back home .
they pay a middle-man thousands of dollars to be there .
and when they arrive , they find themselves in labor camps with no water , no air conditioning , and their passports taken away .
while it 's easy to point the finger at local officials and higher authorities , 99 percent of these people are hired by the private sector , and so therefore we 're equally , if not more , accountable .
groups like buildsafe uae have emerged , but the numbers are simply overwhelming .
in august 2008 , uae public officials noted that 40 percent of the country 's 1,098 labor camps had violated minimum health and fire safety regulations .
and last summer , more than 10,000 workers protested for the non-payment of wages , for the poor quality of food , and inadequate housing .
and then the financial collapse happened .
when the contractors have gone bust , as they 've been overleveraged like everyone else , the difference is everything goes missing , documentation , passports , and tickets home for these workers .
currently , right now , thousands of workers are abandoned .
there is no way back home .
and there is no way , and no proof of arrival .
these are the boom-and-bust refugees .
the question is , as a building professional , as an architect , an engineer , as a developer , if you know this is going on , as we go to the sights every single week , are you complacent or complicit in the human rights violations ?
so let 's forget your environmental footprint .
let 's think about your ethical footprint .
what good is it to build a zero-carbon , energy efficient complex , when the labor producing this architectural gem is unethical at best ?
now , recently i 've been told i 've been taking the high road .
but , quite frankly , on this issue , there is no other road .
so let 's not forget who is really paying the price of this financial collapse .
and that as we worry about our next job in the office , the next design that we can get , to keep our workers .
let 's not forget these men , who are truly dying to work .
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- i 'd like to ask you , what do these three people have in common ?
well , you probably recognize the first person .
i 'm sure you 're all avid " american idol " watchers .
but you might not recognize aydah al jahani , who is a contestant , indeed a finalist , in the poet of the millions competition , which is broadcast out of abu dhabi , and seen throughout the arab world .
in this contest people have to write and recite original poetry , in the nabati form of poetry , which is the traditional bedouin form .
and lima sahar was a finalist in the afghan star singing competition .
now , before i go any further , yes , i know it all began with " britain 's got talent . "
but my point in discussing this is to show you - i hope i 'll be able to show you how these merit-based competitions , with equal access to everyone , with the winner selected via voting by sms , are changing tribal societies .
and i 'm going to focus on afghanistan and the arab world with the uae , how they 're changing tribal societies , not by introducing western ideas , but by being integrated into the language in those places .
it all begins with enjoyment .
video : we are late to watch " afghan star . "
we are going to watch " afghan star . " we are late .
we are running late .
we must go to watch " afghan star . "
cynthia schneider : these programs are reaching incredibly deeply into society .
in afghanistan , people go to extraordinary lengths to be able to watch this program .
and you do n't necessarily have to have your own tv set .
people watch it all over the country also in public places .
but it goes beyond watching , because also , part of this is campaigning .
people become so engaged that they have volunteers , just like political volunteers anyway , who fan out over the countryside , campaigning for their candidate .
contestants also put themselves forward .
now , of course there is a certain degree of ethnic allegiance , but not entirely .
because each year the winner has come from a different tribal group .
this has opened up the door , particularly for women .
and in the last season there were two women in the finalists .
one of them , lima sahar , is a pashtun from kandahar , a very conservative part of the country .
and here she relates , in the documentary film " afghan star , " how her friends urged her not to do this and told her that she was leaving them for democracy .
but she also confides that she knows that members of the taliban are actually sms-ing votes in for her .
aydah al jahnani also took risks and put herself out , to compete in the poet of the millions competition .
i have to say , her husband backed her from the start .
but her tribe and family urged her not to compete and were very much against it .
but , once she started to win , then they got behind her again .
it turns out that competition and winning is a universal human value .
and she 's out there .
her poetry is about women , and the life of women in society .
so just by presenting herself and being in competition with men - this shows the voting on the program - it sets a very important example for young women - these are young women in the audience of the program - in abu dhabi , but also people in the viewing audience .
now you 'd think that " american idol " would introduce a measure of americanization .
but actually , just the opposite is happening .
by using this engaging popular format for traditional , local culture , it actually , in the gulf , is precipitating a revival of interest in nabati poetry , also in traditional dress and dance and music .
and for afghanistan , where the taliban banned music for many years , it is reintroducing their traditional music .
they do n't sing pop songs , they sing afghan music .
and they also have learned how to lose gracefully , without avenging the winner .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- no small thing .
and the final , sort of , formulation of this " american idol " format , which has just appeared in afghanistan , is a new program called " the candidate . "
and in this program , people present policy platforms that are then voted on .
many of them are too young to run for president , but by putting the issues out there , they are influencing the presidential race .
so for me , the substance of things unseen is how reality tv is driving reality .
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- i started my journey 30 years ago .
and i worked in mines . and i realized that this was a world unseen .
and i wanted , through color and large format cameras and very large prints , to make a body of work that somehow became symbols of our use of the landscape , how we use the land .
and to me this was a key component that somehow , through this medium of photography , which allows us to contemplate these landscapes , that i thought photography was perfectly suited to doing this type of work .
and after 17 years of photographing large industrial landscapes , it occurred to me that oil is underpinning the scale and speed .
because that is what has changed , is the speed at which we 're taking all our resources .
and so then i went out to develop a whole series on the landscape of oil .
and what i want to do is to kind of map an arc that there is extraction , where we 're taking it from the ground , refinement . and that 's one chapter .
the other chapter that i wanted to look at was how we use it - our cities , our cars , our motorcultures , where people gather around the vehicle as a celebration .
and then the third one is this idea of the end of oil , this entropic end , where all of our parts of cars , our tires , oil filters , helicopters , planes - where are the landscapes where all of that stuff ends up ?
and to me , again , photography was a way in which i could explore and research the world , and find those places .
and another idea that i had as well , that was brought forward by an ecologist - he basically did a calculation where he took one liter of gas and said , well , how much carbon it would take , and how much organic material ?
it was 23 metric tons for one liter .
so whenever i fill up my gas , i think of that liter , and how much carbon .
and i know that oil comes from the ocean and phytoplankton , but he did the calculations for our earth and what it had to do to produce that amount of energy .
from the photosynthetic growth , it would take 500 years of that growth to produce what we use , the 30 billion barrels we use per year .
and that also brought me to the fact that this poses such a risk to our society .
looking at 30 billion per year , we look at our two largest suppliers , saudi arabia and now canada , with its dirty oil .
and together they only form about 15 years of supply .
the whole world , at 1.2 trillion estimated reserves , only gives us about 45 years .
so , it 's not a question of if , but a question of when peak oil will come upon us .
so , to me , using photography - and i feel that all of us need to now begin to really take the task of using our talents , our ways of thinking , to begin to deal with what i think is probably one of the most challenging issues of our time , how to deal with our energy crisis .
and i would like to say that , on the other side of it , 30 , 40 years from now , the children that i have , i can look at them and say , " we did everything we possibly , humanly could do , to begin to mitigate this , what i feel is one of the most important and critical moments in our time . thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- once upon a time , at the age of 24 , i was a student at st. john 's medical college in bangalore .
i was a guest student during one month of a public health course .
and that changed my mindset forever .
the course was good , but it was not the course content in itself that changed the mindset .
it was the brutal realization , the first morning , that the indian students were better than me .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- you see , i was a study nerd .
i loved statistics from a young age .
and i studied very much in sweden .
i used to be in the upper quarter of all courses i attended .
but in st. john 's , i was in the lower quarter .
and the fact was that indian students studied harder than we did in sweden .
they read the textbook twice , or three times or four times .
in sweden we read it once and then we went partying .
-lrb- laugher -rrb- and that , to me , that personal experience was the first time in my life that the mindset i grew up with was changed .
and i realized that perhaps the western world will not continue to dominate the world forever .
and i think many of you have the same sort of personal experience .
it 's that realization of someone you meet that really made you change your ideas about the world .
it 's not the statistics , although i tried to make it funny .
and i will now , here , onstage , try to predict when that will happen - that asia will regain its dominant position as the leading part of the world , as it used to be , over thousands of years .
and i will do that by trying to predict precisely at what year the average income per person in india , in china , will reach that of the west .
and i do n't mean the whole economy , because to grow an economy of india to the size of u.k. - that 's a piece of cake , with one billion people .
but i want to see when will the average pay , the money for each person , per month , in india and china , when will that have reached that of u.k. and the united states ?
but i will start with a historical background .
and you can see my map if i get it up here . you know ?
i will start at 1858 .
1858 was a year of great technological advancement in the west .
that was the year when queen victoria was able , for the first time , to communicate with president buchanan , through the transatlantic telegraphic cable .
and they were the first to " twitter " transatlantically .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- -lrb- applause -rrb- and i 've been able , through this wonderful google and internet , to find the text of the telegram sent back from president buchanan to queen victoria .
and it ends like this : " this telegraph is a fantastic instrument to diffuse religion , civilization , liberty and law throughout the world . "
those are nice words . but i got sort of curious of what he meant with liberty , and liberty for whom .
and we will think about that when we look at the wider picture of the world in 1858 .
because 1858 was also watershed year in the history of asia .
1858 was the year when the courageous uprising against the foreign occupation of india was defeated by the british forces .
and india was up to 89 years more of foreign domination .
1858 in china was the victory in the opium war by the british forces .
and that meant that foreigners , as it said in the treaty , were allowed to trade freely in china .
it meant paying with opium for chinese goods .
and 1858 in japan was the year when japan had to sign the harris treaty and accept trade on favorable condition for the u.s.
and they were threatened by those black ships there , that had been in tokyo harbor over the last year .
but , japan , in contrast to india and china , maintained its national sovereignty .
and let 's see how much difference that can make .
and i will do that by bringing these bubbles back to a gapminder graph here , where you can see each bubble is a country .
the size of the bubble here is the population .
on this axis , as i used to have income per person in comparable dollar .
and on that axis i have life expectancy , the health of people .
and i also bring an innovation here .
i have transformed the laser beam into an ecological , recyclable version here , in green india .
-lrb- applause -rrb- and we will see , you know .
look here , 1858 , india was here , china was here , japan was there , united states and united kingdom was richer over there .
and i will start the world like this .
india was not always like this level .
actually if we go back into the historical record , there was a time hundreds of years ago when the income per person in india and china was even above that of europe .
but 1850 had already been many , many years of foreign domination , and india had been de-industrialized .
and you can see that the countries who were growing their economy was united states and united kingdom .
and they were also , by the end of the century , getting healthy , and japan was starting to catch up .
india was trying down here .
can you see how it starts to move there ?
but really , really natural sovereignty was good for japan .
and japan is trying to move up there .
and it 's the new century now . health is getting better , united kingdom , united states .
but careful now - we are approaching the first world war .
and the first world war , you know , we 'll see a lot of deaths and economical problems here .
united kingdom is going down .
and now comes the spanish flu also .
and then after the first world war , they continue up .
still under foreign domination , and without sovereignty , india and china are down in the corner .
not much has happened .
they have grown their population but not much more .
in the 1930 's now , you can see that japan is going to a period of war , with lower life expectancy .
and the second world war was really a terrible event , also economically for japan .
but they did recover quite fast afterwards .
and we are moving into the new world .
in 1947 india finally gained its independence .
and they could raise the indian flag and become a sovereign nation , but in very big difficulties down there .
-lrb- applause -rrb- in 1949 we saw the emergence of the modern china in a way which surprised the world .
and what happened ?
what happens in the after independence ?
you can see that the health started to improve .
children started to go to school .
health services were provided .
this is the great leap forward , when china fell down .
it was central planning by mao tse tung .
china recovered . then they said , " nevermore , stupid central planning . "
but they went up here , and india was trying to follow .
and they were catching up indeed .
and both countries had the better health , but still a very low economy .
and we came to 1978 , and mao tse tung died , and a new guy turned up from the left .
and it was deng xiaoping coming out here .
and he said , " does n't matter if a cat is white or black , as long as it catches mice . "
because catching mice is what the two cats wanted to do .
and you can see the two cats being here , china and india , wanting to catch the mices over there , you know .
and they decided to go not only for health and education , but also starting to grow their economy .
and the market reformer was successful there .
in ' 92 india follows with a market reform .
and they go quite closely together , and you can see that the similarity with india and china , in many ways , are greater than the differences with them .
and here they march on . and will they catch up ?
this is the big question today .
there they are today .
now what does it mean that the - -lrb- applause -rrb- the averages there - this is the average of china .
if i would split china , look here , shanghai has already catched up .
shanghai is already there .
and it 's healthier than the united states .
but on the other hand , guizhou , one of the poorest inland provinces of china , is there .
and if i split guizhou into urban and rural , the rural part of guizhou goes down there .
you see this enormous inequity in china , in the midst of fast economic growth .
and if i would also look at india , you have another type of inequity , actually , in india .
the geographical , macro-geographical difference is not so big .
uttar pradesh , the biggest of the states here , is poorer and has a lower health than the rest of india .
kerala is flying on top there , matching united states in health , but not in economy .
and here , maharashtra , with mumbai , is forging forward .
now in india , the big inequities are within the state , rather than between the states .
and that is not a bad thing , in itself .
if you have a lot inequity , macro-geographical inequities can be more difficult in the long term to deal with , than if it is in the same area where you have a growth center relatively close to where poor people are living .
no , there is one more inequity . look there , united states .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- oh , they broke my frame .
washington , d.c. went out here .
my friends at gapminder wanted me to show this because there is a new leader in washington who is really concerned about the health system .
and i can understand him , because washington , d.c.
is so rich over there but they are not as healthy as kerala .
it 's quite interesting , is n't it ?
-lrb- applause -rrb- i can see a business opportunity for kerala , helping fix the health system in the united states .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- -lrb- applause -rrb- now here we have the whole world . you have the legend down there .
and when you see the two giant cats here , pushing forward , you see that in between them and ahead of them , is the whole emerging economies of the world , which thomas friedman so correctly called the " flat world . "
you can see that in health and education , a large part of the world population is putting forward , but in africa , and other parts , as in rural guizhou in china , there is still people with low health and very low economy .
we have an enormous disparity in the world .
but most of the world in the middle are pushing forwards very fast .
now , back to my projections .
when will it catch up ? i have to go back to very conventional graph .
i will show income per person on this axis instead , poor down here , rich up there .
and then time here , from 1858 i start the world .
and we shall see what will happen with these countries .
you see , china under foreign domination actually lowered their income and came down to the indian level here .
whereas u.k. and united states is getting richer and richer .
and after second world war , united states is richer than u.k.
but independence is coming here .
growth is starting , economic reform .
growth is faster , and with projection from imf you can see where you expect them to be in 2014 .
now , the question is , " when will the catch up take place ? "
look at , look at the united states .
can you see the bubble ?
the bubbles , not my bubbles , but the financial bubbles .
that 's the dot com bubble . this is the lehman brothers doorstep there .
you see it came down there .
and it seems this is another rock coming down there , you know .
so they does n't seem to go this way , these countries .
they seem to go in a more humble growth way , you know .
and people interested in growth are turning their eyes towards asia .
i can compare to japan . this is japan coming up .
you see , japan did it like that .
we add japan to it .
and there is no doubt that fast catch up can take place .
can you see here what japan did ?
japan did it like this , until full catch up , and then they follow with the other high-income economies .
but the real projections for those ones , i would like to give it like this .
can be worse , can be better .
it 's always difficult to predict , especially about the future .
now , a historian tells me it 's even more difficult to predict about the past .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- i think i 'm in a difficult position here .
inequalities in china and india i consider really the big obstacle because to bring the entire population into growth and prosperity is what will create a domestic market , what will avoid social instability , and which will make use of the entire capacity of the population .
so , social investments in health , education and infrastructure , and electricity is really what is needed in india and china .
you know the climate . we have great international experts within india telling us that the climate is changing , and actions has to be taken , otherwise china and india would be the countries most to suffer from climate change .
and i consider india and china the best partners in the world in a good global climate policy .
but they ai n't going to pay for what others , who have more money , have largely created , and i can agree on that .
but what i 'm really worried about is war .
will the former rich countries really accept a completely changed world economy , and a shift of power away from where it has been the last 50 to 100 to 150 years , back to asia ?
and will asia be able to handle that new position of being in charge of being the most mighty , and the governors of the world ?
so , always avoid war , because that always pushes human beings backward .
now if these inequalities , climate and war can be avoided , get ready for a world in equity , because this is what seems to be happening .
and that vision that i got as a young student , 1972 , that indians can be much better than swedes , is just about to happen .
and it will happen precisely the year 2048 in the later part of the summer , in july , more precisely , the 27th of july .
-lrb- applause -rrb- the 27th of july , 2048 is my 100th birthday .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- and i expect to speak in the first session of the 39th ted india .
get your bookings in time . thank you very much .
-lrb- applause -rrb- today , i want you to look at children who become suicide bombers through a completely different lens .
in 2009 , there were 500 bomb blasts across pakistan .
i spent the year working with children who were training to become suicide bombers and with taliban recruiters , trying to understand how the taliban were converting these children into live ammunition and why these children were actively signing up to their cause .
i want you to watch a short video from my latest documentary film , " children of the taliban . "
-lrb- singing -rrb- the taliban now run their own schools .
they target poor families and convince the parents to send their children .
in return , they provide free food and shelter and sometimes pay the families a monthly stipend .
we 've obtained a propaganda video made by the taliban .
young boys are taught justifications for suicide attacks and the execution of spies .
i made contact with a child from swat who studied in a madrassa like this .
hazrat ali is from a poor farming family in swat .
he joined the taliban a year ago when he was 13 .
how do the taliban in your area get people to join them ?
hazrat ali : they first call us to the mosque and preach to us .
then they take us to a madrassa and teach us things from the koran .
sharmeen obaid chinoy : he tells me that children are then given months of military training .
ha : they teach us to use machine guns , kalashnikov , rocket launchers , grenades , bombs .
they ask us to use them only against the infidels .
then they teach us to do a suicide attack .
soc : would you like to carry out a suicide attack ?
ha : if god gives me strength .
soc : i , in my research , have seen that the taliban have perfected the way in which they recruit and train children , and i think it 's a five-step process .
step one is that the taliban prey on families that are large , that are poor , that live in rural areas .
they separate the parents from the children by promising to provide food , clothing , shelter to these children .
then they ship them off , hundreds of miles away to hard-line schools that run along the taliban agenda .
step two : they teach the children the koran , which is islam 's holiest book , in arabic , a language these children do not understand and can not speak .
they rely very heavily on teachers , who i have personally seen distort the message to these children as and when it suits their purpose to .
these children are explicitly forbidden from reading newspapers , listening to radio , reading any books that the teachers do not prescribe them .
if any child is found violating these rules , he is severely reprimanded .
effectively , the taliban create a complete blackout of any other source of information for these children .
step three : the taliban want these children to hate the world that they currently live in .
so they beat these children - i have seen it ; they feed them twice a day dried bread and water ; they rarely allow them to play games ; they tell them that , for eight hours at a time , all they have to do is read the koran .
the children are virtual prisoners ; they can not leave , they can not go home .
their parents are so poor , they have no resources to get them back .
step four : the older members of the taliban , the fighters , start talking to the younger boys about the glories of martyrdom .
they talk to them about how when they die , they will be received up with lakes of honey and milk , how there will be 72 virgins waiting for them in paradise , how there will be unlimited food , and how this glory is going to propel them to become heroes in their neighborhoods .
effectively , this is the brainwashing process that has begun .
step five : i believe the taliban have one of the most effective means of propaganda .
their videos that they use are intercut with photographs of men and women and children dying in iraq and afghanistan and in pakistan .
and the basic message is that the western powers do not care about civilian deaths , so those people who live in areas and support governments that work with western powers are fair game .
that 's why pakistani civilians , over 6,000 of whom have been killed in the last two years alone , are fair game .
now these children are primed to become suicide bombers .
they 're ready to go out and fight because they 've been told that this is effectively their only way to glorify islam .
i want you to watch another excerpt from the film .
this boy is called zenola .
he blew himself up , killing six .
this boy is called sadik .
he killed 22 .
this boy is called messoud .
he killed 28 .
the taliban are running suicide schools , preparing a generation of boys for atrocities against civilians .
do you want to carry out a suicide attack ?
boy : i would love to .
but only if i get permission from my dad .
when i look at suicide bombers younger than me , or my age , i get so inspired by their terrific attacks .
soc : what blessing would you get from carrying out a suicide attack ?
boy : on the day of judgment , god will ask me , " why did you do that ? "
i will answer , " my lord ! only to make you happy !
i have laid down my life fighting the infidels . "
then god will look at my intention .
if my intention was to eradicate evil for islam , then i will be rewarded with paradise .
singer : ♫ on the day of judgment ♫ ♫ my god will call me ♫ ♫ my body will be put back together ♫ ♫ and god will ask me why i did this ♫ soc : i leave you all with this thought : if you grew up in these circumstances , faced with these choices , would you choose to live in this world or in the glorious afterlife ?
as one taliban recruiter told me , " there will always be sacrificial lambs in this war . "
thank you .
-lrb- applause -rrb- in my industry , we believe that images can change the world .
okay , we 're naive , we 're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed .
the truth is that we know that the images themselves do n't change the world , but we 're also aware that , since the beginning of photography , images have provoked reactions in people , and those reactions have caused change to happen .
so let 's begin with a group of images .
i 'd be extremely surprised if you did n't recognize many or most of them .
they 're best described as iconic : so iconic , perhaps , they 're cliches .
in fact , they 're so well-known that you might even recognize them in a slightly or somewhat different form .
-lrb- laughter -rrb- but i think we 're looking for something more .
we 're looking for something more .
we 're looking for images that shine an uncompromising light on crucial issues , images that transcend borders , that transcend religions , images that provoke us to step up and do something - in other words , to act .
well , this image you 've all seen .
it changed our view of the physical world .
we had never seen our planet from this perspective before .
many people credit a lot of the birth of the environmental movement to our seeing the planet like this for the first time - its smallness , its fragility .
forty years later , this group , more than most , are well aware of the destructive power that our species can wield over our environment .
and at last , we appear to be doing something about it .
this destructive power takes many different forms .
for example , these images taken by brent stirton in the congo .
these gorillas were murdered , some would even say crucified , and unsurprisingly , they sparked international outrage .
most recently , we 've been tragically reminded of the destructive power of nature itself with the recent earthquake in haiti .
well , i think what is far worse is man 's destructive power over man .
samuel pisar , an auschwitz survivor , said , and i 'll quote him , " the holocaust teaches us that nature , even in its cruelest moments , is benign in comparison with man , when he loses his moral compass and his reason . "
there 's another kind of crucifixion .
the horrifying images from abu ghraib as well as the images from guantanamo had a profound impact .
the publication of those images , as opposed to the images themselves , caused a government to change its policies .
some would argue that it is those images that did more to fuel the insurgency in iraq than virtually any other single act .
furthermore , those images forever removed the so-called moral high ground of the occupying forces .
let 's go back a little .
in the 1960s and 1970s , the vietnam war was basically shown in america 's living rooms day in , day out .
news photos brought people face to face with the victims of the war : a little girl burned by napalm , a student killed by the national guard at kent state university in ohio during a protest .
in fact , these images became the voices of protest themselves .
now , images have power to shed light of understanding on suspicion , ignorance , and in particular - i 've given a lot of talks on this but i 'll just show one image - the issue of hiv / aids .
in the 1980s , the stigmatization of people with the disease was an enormous barrier to even discussing or addressing it .
a simple act , in 1987 , of the most famous woman in the world , the princess of wales , touching an hiv / aids infected baby did a great deal , especially in europe , to stop that .
she , better than most , knew the power of an image .
so when we are confronted by a powerful image , we all have a choice : we can look away , or we can address the image .
thankfully , when these photos appeared in the guardian in 1998 , they put a lot of focus and attention and , in the end , a lot of money towards the sudan famine relief efforts .
did the images change the world ?
no , but they had a major impact .
images often push us to question our core beliefs and our responsibilities to each other .
we all saw those images after katrina , and i think for millions of people they had a very strong impact .
and i think it 's very unlikely that they were far from the minds of americans when they went to vote in november 2008 .
unfortunately , some very important images are deemed too graphic or disturbing for us to see them .
i 'll show you one photo here , and it 's a photo by eugene richards of an iraq war veteran from an extraordinary piece of work , which has never been published , called war is personal .
but images do n't need to be graphic in order to remind us of the tragedy of war .
john moore set up this photo at arlington cemetery .
after all the tense moments of conflict in all the conflict zones of the world , there 's one photograph from a much quieter place that haunts me still , much more than the others .
ansel adams said , and i 'm going to disagree with him , " you do n't take a photograph , you make it . "
in my view , it 's not the photographer who makes the photo , it 's you .
we bring to each image our own values , our own belief systems , and as a result of that , the image resonates with us .
my company has 70 million images .
i have one image in my office .
here it is .
i hope that the next time you see an image that sparks something in you , you 'll better understand why , and i know that speaking to this audience , you 'll definitely do something about it .
and thank you to all the photographers .
-lrb- applause -rrb-