| Title | Date | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Why wind turbines have three blades | May-2016 | Showing how mindless following of conventional wisdom leaves wind turbines much less efficient than they could be. | |
| Executive ego and the Sony Pictures network hack | Dec-2014 | How the idiot bloated ego's at Sony were to blame for the (N. Korean) hack, resulting in the non-release of The Interview . | |
| An impending black swan for electric cars | Mar-2014 | Predicting a step-shift in battery technology (maybe Sulphur-Lithium based) - which of course would affect all sorts of other things, such as mobile device longevity. | |
| Doug Engelbart, visionary | Jul-2013 | Obituary for a great man - and claims that DE envisioned much of what he famously demo'd at Stanford in 1968 (mouse and other not-yet-feasible computer interfaces that we now take for granted) in 1950! | |
| ... back from the dead… again | Apr-2013 | Phew! a reprieve after this year's annual predictions announced he would stop blogging! I look forward to the book that has enabled this. | |
| Off with their heads! Why financial regulation stopped working | Oct-2012 | A shut-them-down-after-three-faults sanction is the only way to
make financial institutions toe the line. But with a fascinating lead-in linking this to his unplanned witnessing of a judicial beheading in Saudi in 1982. |
|
| Prediction: Amazon and Bezos supplant Apple and Jobs | Jan-2012 | Sadly the end of the line for Cringely's annual predictions, as he turns 60 and moves from blogging to publishing. But, here he pitches that Amazon have such a broad market base that they could be the first $1 trillion company ... Amazon competes with [media, home electronics and computing]companies and Walmart. Apple would never sell cars ... Can you see Amazon selling cars? I can | |
| Major Jalloud | Feb-2011 | Brutal henchman to Qadaffi's showman as an explanation for the brutalities on both sides of the Arab Spring. Interesting mainly as indicator of the depth and breadth of Cringely's contacts and experience! | |
| SIDS / Chase Cringely - Finding Meaning in a Lost Life | Apr-2002 | Description of the death of his infant son (link is to Internet Archive page - PBS original no longer available)
and his determination and challenge to devise a cheap monitor to address the SIDS that killed him.
Then, this letter in Jan-2013 raging at the lack of take up by the X-Prize organisation of the solution he devised (and follow-on response from X-Prize and his riposte to that). Then his Apr-2017 spec for switching his design to Amazon's Echo Dot. |
| Title | Mins | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philippe Petit: The journey across the high wire | 19 | Mar-2012 | Slightly smug but entertaining talk about his walks. Particularly the one across Hinnom valley (Gehenna, an ancient Judean child sacrifice site) in Israel with overtones of peace-encouraging. |
| Suzanne Lee: Why Biofabrication is the next Industrial Revolution | 12 | Jul-2019 | Use of Biofabrication to grow fabrics, concrete and other materials. |
| Stuart Oda: Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture | 9 | Jun-2019 | Indoor farms located where the food is needed solve the world's problems - less land, water, transport; better quality. ... but he sadly skirted the cost of the electricity needed to make it viable. |
| Yeonmi Park: WhatI learned about freedom after escaping North Korea | 10 | Apr-2019 | Moving talk from young woman who escaped. Makes some interesting points, such as that you can only be isolated if you don't know you are. Also pleads to consider the freedom-less N. Koreans at least as much as Climate Change and other things that the free can worry about. |
| Dina Katabi: A new way to monitor vital signs that can see through walls | 13 | Apr-2018 | Fascinating use of Wi-Fi signals and an ultra-sensitive detector for a sort of "radar" to monitor peoples bodies, and their location. Difficult to see it not being widely used for nefarious purposes before long (despite her rather feeble built-in mechanism to try to prevent this). |
| Yasmin Green: How technology can fight extremism and online harassment | 11 | Apr-2018 | Encouraging talk about Google's Jigsaw unit using AI and some form of (unexplained) way of identifying useful counter-messages to generate "ads" counteracting the very professional and effective extremists, and harrassers, messages. Apparently started in 2016, I wonder if it is as good as she says. |
| Keller Rinaudo: How we're using drones to deliver blood and save lives | 15 | Aug-2017 | Talking about his Zipline startup using economical drones (with nice low-tech catapult launchers) to deliver blood supplies around Rwanda. Both solving a costly distribution problem and getting good tech and training on the ground in Africa. |
| David Casarett: A doctor's case for medical marijuana | 15 | Nov-2016 | Explaining how MM both gives patients control of degenerative symptoms (which, as he says, we will all come to at some point) but also how the clinics dispensing it are shining example of client focus - happily spending an hour advising a potential customer - by contrast to traditional main-stream medicine. |
| Jonathan Haidt: Can a divided America heal? | 20 | Nov-2016 | Filmed just before the Trump election. Great "interview" by TED founder Chris Anderson letting the massively eloquent JH to explain how mankind has become more partisan and divided. Also to encourage people to empathise with folk that disgust them as the only way of reversing the polarisation. |
Don Tapscott: How the blockchain is changing money and business |
18 | Jun-2016 | Reasonably intelligible explanation of blockchains along with many wonderful ways they are and can be used. I wonder if it will really bring the nirvana he eloquently outlines! |
| 13 | Dec-2013 | In much the same vein as Atul Gawande's "How do we heal medicine" talk. This palliative doctor describes how listening to patients wishes for their end of life, rather than focussing on treating the prevalent ailments, often extends their life, certainly gives them a better one with much less hospitalisation and, by the way, costs less. | |
| James Veitch: This is what happens when you reply to spam email | 10 | Dec-2015 | Bit of fun as comedian retells how he got into conversation with a couple of money-grubbing email scammers. |
| Atul Gawande: How do we heal medicine? | 19 | Mar-2012 | Eloquent talk about how Doctors (particularly) can and need to
improve medical outcomes. And how this doesn't need to be by
spending more - one great example being a check-list before surgery
which made dramatic improvement to success rates.
Also good to see the author of the fantastic book Being Mortal in the flesh (almost!). |
| Abe Davis: New Video Technology that reveals an object's hidden properties | 18 | Mar-2015 | Using clever algorithms this guy and his team "amplify" tiny
movements caught on video recordings. This might sound arcane but
feels like one of those things that might have profound uses (and
not just for spies). He starts showing how video of an apparently inert human (eg: old person or sleeping and motionless baby) can show a healthy pulse or breathing. Then, spookily, by amplifying the microscopic disturbances made on objects by sound waves he can hear sounds using only a video signal. He shows a remote camera filming a crisp packet and "hearing" what nearby folk are saying. Finally by extrapolating tiny movements he has built a computer model to examine the physical "life-size" behaviour of an object when manipulated on the computer. A blue sky "for instance" suggests being able to interactively answer the question "how would this bridge behave when such and such a force were applied". |
| TED Talk about sounding smart in a TED Talk | 6 | Jan-2015 | Great send-up of TED talk styles. |
| Brian Dettmer: Old books reborn as art | 6 | Nov-2014 | Beautiful carvings into physical books, cleverly exposing slivers
of their content. Slightly reminiscent of the Body Worlds flayed humans. Must keep a look out for his exhibition if it comes our way. Surprisingly wooden and un-artistic presenter. |
| Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win | 16 | Oct-2014 | Slightly trite and overlong making the point that recent social change, using mobile and Internet tools, is less lasting than, for instance, the 1960's Civil Rights movement which needed so much more dedication and organisation. |
| Moshe Safdie: How to reinvent the apartment building | 5 | Mar-2014 | Inspiring modern apartments - sadly mainly artists impressions, but I think the one in China is real, where a planning law demands all dwellings get 3 hours direct sunlight per day in winter. |
| Uldus Bakhtiozina: Wry photos that turn stereotypes upside down | 4 | Mar-2014 | Short talk by a beautiful ironic Russian artist which made me chuckle. |
| Simon Sinek: Why good leaders make you feel safe | 12 | Mar-2014 | Would make an excellent 5 minute talk. Nice examples of leaders who, for instance, think of heart-count not head-count, going out of their way to encourage and love their employees. With predictable good results. |
| Randall Munroe: Comics that ask "what if?" | 9 | Mar-2014 | Just interesting to me to see the guy behind the What If website/feed (which has sadly slipped over the years as the questions he follows become more arcane). |
| Michel Laberge: How synchronized hammer strikes could generate nuclear fusion | 13 | Mar-2014 | Inspiring view of possible fusion power, by engaging Skandi (I think) guy. |
| Andrew Bastawrous: Get your next eye exam on a smartphone | 6 | Mar-2014 | Another great use of mobiles to improve health. |
| James Patten: The best computer interface? Maybe ... your hands | 6 | Aug-2013 | Brief and not too illuminating use of mini hand manipulate-able thingy's. But given I didn't think anything of Jeff Han's fondle interface (see below) when I saw it before the iPhone used it, maybe this will also be run-of-the-mill before long! |
| Elizabeth Loftus: How reliable is your memory | 15 | Jun-2013 | Explains how memory can be affected and modified by careful or inadvertent externals. Particularly castigating some forms of psychiatry which may over encourage incorrect "memories". |
| Alessandro Acquisti: Why privacy matters | 15 | Jun-2013 | Marrying of Facebook photos and face recognition and public info
to infer secret stuff.
Coincidentally I saw this the day Bob C published Privacy is dead and here’s how. |
| Jennifer Healey: If cars could talk, accidents might be avoidable | 9 | Apr-2013 | Nice clear plea for smart cars that talk to each other. |
| David Pogue: 10 top time-saving tech tips | 6 | Feb-2013 | Excellent quick set of tips on using computers and smartphones. Must keep an eye our for other gems from him. |
| John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!! | 14 | Feb-2013 | Texting is a new language, not a form of writing. |
| Jinha Lee: Reach into the computer and grab a pixel | 6 | Feb-2013 | Slightly poor presentation on a 3-D computer/smart-phone interface. I couldn't grasp whether it will ever be of use in the mass-market, but then I didn't understand where Jeff Han's fondle demo (see below) would end up! |
| Hans Rosling: Religions and babies | 13 | Apr-2012 | Wonderfully clear data presentation - both computerised (with a
lovely long screen pointer!) but, the best uses 10 cardboard boxes
to show why, despite birth rates having already stabilised at
~2/woman, the world's population will plateau at 10 billion (from
today's 7). And, he argues and shows that, rather than being due to religion, it depends on a) better healthcare means that more children survive b) less children being needed for work c) women being educated and working and d) accessible family planning. HR will be Louis Potter's (brother of mappiness's George MacKerron) prof in Stockholm. |
| Maysoon Zayid: I got 99 problems... palsy is just one | 14 | Dec-2013 | Very amusing and telling talk by female comic with cerebral palsy. |
| Mark Kendall: Demo: A needle-free vaccine patch that's safer and way cheaper | 13 | Jun-2013 | Ingenious micro-spike replacement, and huge improvement, for jag. |
| Raffaello D'Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters | 16 | Jun-2013 | Very clever and visual use of maths and computing to make small electric powered flying machines react to real world situations. |
| Joshua Prager: In search of the man who broke my neck | 18 | Mar-2013 | A most compelling story-teller. The tale itself is intriguing (though raising many questions - how do recover from paraplegia to being hemiplegic? - and not answering them; read his eBook to find out more, I guess) and appropriately moralising! |
| Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud | 22 | Feb-2013 | Update on this lovely and amusing man's progress with kids self
learning. He points out that traditional education was optimised for the Victorian-era bureaucracy "machine", which needed masses of cifer-like workers, and the age of Empires, which needed folk who would follow orders regardless. He expands on some of his "Granny Cloud" successes and wants to build on this with a"Broadband + Collaboration + Encouragement" environment where "teachers" only pose questions, leaving kids to work on their own, but then be on hand to admire their answers. |
| Robin Chase: Excuse me, may I rent your car? | 12 | Jul-2012 | By the elegant founder of Zipcar (street pickup car rental) who has (10 years later) created Buzzcar (car sharing). Slightly rambling, but interesting passion on the other "peers inc." companies emerging and the hassles and wow's of the volunteers who effectively co-own the company. |
| Bobby Ghosh: Why global jihad is losing | 16 | Sep-2012 | Interestingly tells that the "original" definition of Jihad is of the internal struggles for believers - which he equates to the word Grace for Christians. But then says that "Global" and "Local" Jihad have been hijacked by minorities to mean world-wide/anti-western (now, he thinks a fading thing) and internal to a country - being used mainly for parochial and often non-religious fanaticism. |
| Amos Winter: The cheap all-terrain wheelchair | 11 | Jun-2012 | Cunning bit of design creating a massively geared chair from basic and cheap components. |
| Daphne
Koller: What we're learning from online education |
21 |
Jun-2012 |
Passionate talk on free online University. Very slightly American
focused, but fascinating on how they use peer- and self-
assessment, as well as clever computer-controlled presentation. |
| Donald
Sadoway: The missing link to renewable enery |
15 |
Mar-2012 |
Grid-level batteries using liquid metals. Example of design to a
price point. Slightly smug presentation, and units are still in the
lab, but fascinating if this does scale up as he claims. Also
wonderful to see a presentation using a blackboard instead of
PowerPoint! |
| Todd
Humphreys: How to fool a GPS |
16 |
Feb-2012 |
He starts out proclaiming how GPS accuracy will soon move from
meters to millimetres, with "GPS dots" becoming a cheap and
ubiquitous way to track our possessions (or ex-lovers). He describes the slightly alarming fact that GPS can be jammed and spoofed. Though illegal, this could, for instance, ruin aircraft and other navigation. |
| Paddy
Ashdown: The global power shift |
18 |
Dec-2011 |
Hugely fluent if slightly verbose, un-tele-prompted, outline of
how to handle globalization. Sort of the politics to address Parag
Khanna's world. |
| Rory
Stewart: Time to end the war in Afghanistan |
20 |
Jul-2011 |
Plea for less western (military) involvement. He's a compelling
speaker, and one wonders if he (a UK MP) will become better known
in UK politics. |
| Justin
Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid |
12 |
Jul-2011 |
Amazing claims of free energy from electron-level storage and
nano-tube technology. Let's hope he's right about it all. Moving
endnote. |
| Geoff
Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School |
6 | Jul-2011 | New, practically-focussed, UK schools teaching by doing. And getting good GCSE results! |
| Abraham Verghese: A doctor's touch | 18 | Jul-2011 | The need for much more physical contact between doctor and
patient, to reverse the growing from-behind-computer-data approach
to "care". Echo'ed similar worries about waning nursing standards
in the UK's Cavendish report (Sep-2011). Also, interesting to see the author of the superb Cutting for Stone. |
| Amy
Lockwood: Selling condoms in the Congo |
4 | Jul-2011 | Free condoms have poor takeup because they are marketed incorrectly. |
| Jeremy
Gilley: One day of peace |
17 | Jul-2011 | Delightfully enthusiastic and (apparently) unscripted/prompted diatribe on world peace from Daniel Craig lookalike! |
| The future of business is the "mesh" | 14 | Jan-2011 | Easy-listening round up of web-enabled real life. Given in Detroit, so somewhat car-centric (eg: Zipcar), but makes me want to read her "Mesh" book! |
| Voting without fraud | 7 | Jul-2010 | Very cheap and simple way to ensure secure voting in polling booth, avoiding intimidation and fraud; but I didn't see how vote removal would be easily caught, or how this applied to E-voting (the talk's title). |
| Sugata Mitra: Child-driven education | 17 | Jul-2010 | Hugely uplifting report on how kids from zero-education background can teach themselves if a) they work in groups (without adults!) and b) have access to the Internet. |
| The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone | 4 | Feb-2010 | Is this where the user interface goes next after the iPhone made Jeff Han's interface (see below) de-facto? |
| New traffic sign: Take Turns | 4 | Feb-2010 | |
| Build a tower, build a team | 7 | Feb-2010 | Design as a contact sport - the Marshmallow challenge. |
| Does the world need nuclear energy? | 23 | Feb-2010 | Includes references to: |
| Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero! | 27 | Feb-2010 | Slightly rambling but good. |
| Let's simplify legal jargon! | 4 | Feb-2010 | |
| Inside a school for suicide bombers | 8 | Feb-2010 | Scary. |
| How great leaders inspire action | 18 | Sep-2009 | Worth persevering through the initial poor sound (they switch mikes half way through) for this engaging talk about how to present products - and why Apple are so good at. |
| Parag
Khanna maps the future of countries |
19 |
Jul-2009 | The new global relationships. |
| Michael Pritchard: How to make filthy water drinkable | 9 | Jul-2009 | Great simple water purifier; not sure why one hasn't heard more
about it. Presumably not because the inventor/presenter does not come over well (unlike almost all TED's!). Interesting that Joe Madiath's Oct-2014 Better toilets, better life didn't mention it amongst its staggering fact that 70% of rural Indians defecate in the open, being 60% of all open defecations in the world. |
| 1.3m reasons to re-invent the syringe | 5 | Jul-2009 | Brilliant! If you don't know the story, stop the video at 3:50 just before he shows you in a few seconds his invention and see if you can guess what it is. |
| A lab the size of a postage stamp | 16 | Jul-2009 | More cheap medical innovation. |
| Bill Gates on mosquitos, malaria and education | 20 | Feb-2009 | Including plugs for KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Programme) as well as the famous release of mozzies into the audience! |
| This is broken | 15? | Sep-2006 | Amusing critique of bad design. |
| Jeff Han - mouseless user interface | 9 | Aug-2006 | eg: iPhone finger-interface (iPhone launched Jan-07, on sale Jun-07) |
| Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity | 19 | Feb-2006 | Powerful, almost overly standup-comic, talk. A plea that formal education, which was introduced to provid the Industrial Revolution with skilled workers, is not what is required for mankind now. |
| Malcolm Gladwell: Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce | 17 | Feb-2004 | Delightfully amusing, slightly tongue-in-cheek/shaggy-dog, lecture showing a) how people seldom know what they want, and b) that you need many variations of a product to handle folks' diversity. |
| Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness | 21 | Feb-2004 | Another (more academic, but equally well told) polemic on happiness, explaining how a) our brain makes us believe we're in the best of all possible worlds, and b) choice is often the antithesis of happiness. |
| Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|
| Populism, Aristotle and Hope - Rory Stewart | Oct-2023 | Bravura, note-free performance. Stood on background of 5 hitherto accepted beliefs (not so clearly rememberable):
|
| Is Society Ready for Driverless Cars - Professor Martyn Thomas | Oct-2017 |
Fascinating and salutory romp over issues of Driverless Cars (AV's).
The software being the car, who owns it? Who maintains it? How long would updates be available for? What happens if the "manufacturer" goes bust? All AV's would probably have to be leased not owned. What about "right to maintain"? Should it be illegal to drive an AV with out-of-date software. Current software is poor and shot full of bugs (as with commercial stuff); AV's would need to be Internet-updatable so hugely exposed to hacking and the horrors that could entail. Behavioural issues: Eye contact is key to some subtle interactions between 2 or more drivers; what if one is an AV? Pedestrians could stop traffic and behave selfishly, knowing that an AV would always avoid running them over. |
And