TED 2012: Lower Those Anti-Poetry Deflection Shields

Billy Collins, twice poet laureate of the US, announced that he was at TED to give us our recommended daily allowancae of poetry.  Never having been one to read a lot of poetry, I braced myself to listen to some beautiful language while struggling to absorb a deep and subtle meaning.

However, after lowering my 'anti-poetry deflection shield', I sat back and loved Collins' readings of clever, witty poetry.  It was totally accessible.  The audience seemed to agree as Collins received close to a full standing ovation.
 
For at least this one member of the audience, it inspired me to read some poetry, at least that of Billy Collins.   I recommend you do the same.

Bryan Stevenson: People are Better Than the Worst Thing They've Done

When Bryan Stevenson finished his talk here at TED 2012, I didn't think people were ever going to sit down.  The thunderous applause rolled on and on.  Powerful just doesn't begin to describe the response he evoked.

Stevenson is a public interest lawyer.  He spends most of his time in jails.  And he says that if you have a brush with the America justice system, it's better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent. 

There were lots of disturbing statistics in his talk, including facts that the Americans in this highly educated audience didn't know. 

• In 1972, there were 300,000 people in jail in the US.  Today, there are 2.3M, with a further 7M on probation and parole.
• One third of the the black men between the ages of 18 and 30 are in jail, on probation, or on parole.  That percentage rises to 60% in big cities.
• America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world; with 5% of world population, they account for 25% of the world's incarcerated.
• Three-strike laws mean that people can face life imprisonment for a minor crime like stealing a bicycle.
• If you're been to jail in the US, you lose the right to vote for the rest of your life.  
• The US is one of the few countries that still have the death penalty.  [I looked up on Wikipedia the number of people executed in 2010, broken out by country and it went like this: China: 2000+, Iran: 252+, North Korea: 60+, Yemen: 53+, USA: 46] 

 But it wasn't all statistics.  Stevenson lamented how many young people were tried as adults, and subject to life incarceration.  One night his frustration that a poor black 14-year-old boy was slated to be tried as an adult led him to write a brief arguing that if the boy was to be tried as an adult, he should be tried as a wealthy, privileged, 70-year-old white male. 

Stevenson said that people in America had to talk about the relationships between race and justice.  South Africa had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of apartheid, but the US has never such a discussion since the end of slavery.   He lamented the death penalty that fell disproportionately on black people; a German likened it to a situation where Germans had a death penalty which fell disproportionately on Jews.  Germans could never tolerate this; why could Americans?

Stevenson's talk was the one most frequently discussed at all the breaks.  On the final day, Chris Anderson told the audience that Stevenson needed $1.5M to continue the next phase of the Equal Justice Initiative.  Given that the TED community had been so moved by Stevenson's talk, Chris exhorted TEDsters to contribute the $1.5M needed.  Five people started by contributing $100,000 each and Chris went on to get others to donate $10,000 and $1,000 each.  Within ten minutes, $1.12M had been raised.   Chris has been working for years to build TEDsters into a commmunity which will work to change the world.  There are some very generous pocketbooks in the room, and a lot of power where someone is able to move them.

The talk has just been posted here. 

TED 2012: Books and Their Covers

I love books.  One of the best days of my life was wandering through the many books stores - new, used and antiquarian - along a few blocks of Queen Street in Toronto, with my dear friend Mark Seltzer, just browsing.  Mark knew all the booksellers in all those stores, and we had just a wonderful day.

Lately, I've been seduced by the incredible convenience of digital books.  Many books in a small package, electronic look-up and note taking - ah, it's just hard to resist.  But I do love the tactile sense of a good old-fashioned book. 

Today, the nostalgia grew deeper during the impassioned talk by Chip Kidd about his 25-year career designing book covers.    Kidd's talk was larded with witticisms and raunchy humour.  It had all the colour, energy and feistiness of his suit and I loved it!  But underlying the humour was his obvious love affair with books - their appearance, their touch, their smell.

What book covers he showed us! I'll share a few with you.

Kidd designed the cover of the Jurassic Park novel, and that design went on to form the basis of the imagery for the movie.

He designed the cheeky cover for the David Sedaris book Naked.  Those shorts are actually a wrap around the book, and can be slid off.  But you might be surprised at what's underneath!

My favourite was Kidd's design for the covers of a series of books about Buddha by Osama Tezuka.  Each cover individually was good; but lining all eight up on a shelf was truly magical.

TED 2012: Batteries - Think Big and Think Cheap

Computers follow Moore's Law - the power of computing will approximately double every 18 months.  A variety of other fields which are primarily information-based are jumping on that same curve.  That's what happened in genetics, for instance.  It's basically an information-based science, so it's now careening along that curve.  Most sciences have gone that way.  Except for batteries. Batteries haven't improved much at all.

Yet, batteries are critical to the exploitation of intermittent energy from renewable sources.  And until we can integrate giant battery storage sinks into our electrical grid, we will be trapped into building transmission systems for peak capacity.

Donald Sadoway thinks he has a breakthrough that will solve these issues.  It involves a low cost battery which is operated at high levels of heat, using magnesium and antimony separated by molten salt.  It's a dirt cheap design.  The energy generated by the battery is enough to maintain heat for its operation.  A couple of his students have formed a company which has attracted investment from Bill Gates and expects to bring a product to market in a couple of years.

This could be a huge breakthrough in the energy field - exciting stuff.  And it goes completely against the traditional wisdom in batteries that you can't let a battery get hot; on the contrary, this battery depends on being hot to operate.

There were some interesting aspects of this talk, from a presentation point of view, some good and some bad.

• TED is known for its whizz-bang presentations (and it's getting to be ever more produced, but more about that later).  Sadoway was refreshing in his highly effective use of that old-fashioned device, the blackboard.  Bravo!
• Although the majority of TED attendees are American, the conference attracts people from many countries and strives for a world view.  Sadoway was notable for presenting this as an American problem (hmm, does the rest of the world not need to solve energy issues?) that would be solved by American ingenuity (are there no scientists outside America?). 
• It was also one of the most arrogant talks I've heard at TED, chock full of first person pronouns.

 Having said that, if Sadoway and Gates are right in believing in this invention, it is very good news indeed.