« Memeburn Goes Live | Main | If We Could Only SEE that We are ALL Designer Thinkers »
April 05, 2010
TEDX Berkeley: Inspiration, Music & Form Under the Wheeler Roof
Psychologist Dacher Keltner who focuses on the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotion, talked to us about the idea of compassion and sympathy breakthroughs. He used the example of Miklos Nyiszli, where 75% of soldiers refused to shoot the enemy.
To give us some background on others who have given this topic some thought, he also brought up Alfred Russel Wallace who believed that something as 'raw' as cmpassion and sympathy couldn't be formed by evolution.
Let's face it. Compassion is highly contageous. Human goodness has to be viral. We've all seen example after example where gratitude has spread through networks. Keltner shows us an unfortunate and yet not surprising chart on sympathy and compassion across about a dozen countries, which ranked U.S. children close to the bottom, only to be surpassed by the Brits. (the chart was referred to as A Compassion Deficit, sadly appropriate I thought).
From mercury and obesity to lifestyle and chemicals in our environment, we explore what we can do from what we learn through very early testing and what is simply beyond our control.
He gives us examples of what cutting-edge medical technology can and cannot tell us about our future health and what the implications are, including Orwellian possibilities. He talks about four of them:
1. Big Brother - we have to be careful about what we learn and where our medical records end up.
2. The Obama Effect - things are changing but we still have a long way to go.
3. Discrimination
4. Genetic thrallism (Gattaca)
David also shows us some frightening results of mercury from fish and discusses anxiety and fear factors - how and where they come into play.
We look at new 'creations' of wearable devices, which are continuously shrinking in size. Seniors can now wear attachable and embedded devices which means that loved ones can monitor their health and changes from miles away. Wearable devices are turning up trends we've never been able to discover before.
Robotic surgery will enable surgeons to be 'super-enabled,' by adding layers of augmented reality and augmented decision support in real-time. With brain-computer interfaces (BCI), you can use thought to control things you couldn't in the past. Minute robots will be able to move through your colon and perform surgery. Chips can turn into microscopes. Microbots will clean out our arteries after gobbling down a heavy-cheese layered pizza.
Other speakers included Neuroscientist Bradley Voytek, inspired by the personality shift and decline of his grandfather's brain from Parkinsons, TED prize winner Jill Tarter from SETI who reminded us that we are all made of stardust and come from the same source, and Diane Benscoter who talked about how her brain was affected by her time spent with the Moonies.
Eric Cheng encouraged us to save our oceans, Amit Deutsch shared his experience about a trip taken with Palestians in an effort to move closer to understanding and further away from hatred and Gerver Tulley, who I heard speak at TED several years ago, showed examples of students who learn in an exciting, dynamic way at the Tinkering School.
Amit Deutsch
Bradley Voytek
Drue Kataoka
Eric Cheng
Eric Gradman
UC Men's Octet
Gerver Tully
SETI's Jill Tarter
Curator Jessica Mah
UC Men's Octet
TED Berkeley's recap here.
April 5, 2010 in America The Free, Books, Conference Highlights, Events, On Health, On Nature, On People & Life, On Science | Permalink
TrackBack URL for this entry: Listed below are links to weblogs that reference TEDX Berkeley: Inspiration, Music & Form Under the Wheeler Roof: Another favorite on the TEDXB stage was an overview of the latest research and unveilings of David Ewing Duncan, who wrote a book I'm eager to read called "Experimental Man: What One Man's Body Reveals about His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World.
Physician Daniel Kraft gives us a future glimpse of medicine, with so many examples that it was overwhelming - so many implications. Fascinating and yet scary innovations that are within our grasp today and more coming within the next decade, shared a common theme: it's all going digital. There's an increasing integration of IT, devices and the web.
TrackBack
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c79e69e20133ec75ad5f970bComments
Post a comment