What Tech Should Be Seen At TED?

J0sh writes "I've been lucky enough to be asked to do tech spotting for the TED conference, one of the biggest and most exclusive technology, entertainment, and design conferences in the US. Many of the folks there are superstars in their field (like Craig Venter and Stephen Hawking), and most of them have the opportunity to take action on the technology that they see there. The problem is that I'm only one guy trying to find the most mind-blowing technology on the planet in order to inform the few people who can make an immediate impact with it. I figured if there's one place to find those kinds of advances, it's here. What unknown tech is about to completely change the world that these people need to know about? Let me know."

Word-changing tech

What unknown tech is about to completely change the world that these people need to know about?

You came to slashdot to ask that?

Be fair.

I'd rather they ask Slashdot than Microsoft, Google or Yahoo. However, it would probably be just as useful to ask on I Can Has Cheezburger or Cute Overload. (OMG, Ponies!!!)

Low tech == High tech

Things that are going to change the world I think don't need to be super high tech or invented 5 years ago. Personally I predict that it will be the mundane tech deployed in just the right places is what will change the world in the next few decades. Things like commodity telecommunications to the other 90% of the planet who currently don't own a PC (OLPC I feel lacks the velocity and momentum to make a difference, but is on the right trajectory) and recycled cellphones sent to Kenya and Uganda to provide affordable communication capacity for populations there. Projects like this are the cutting edge of this millennium.

We as humans have invented everything that we need to make this world a wonderful place to live, we just need to learn how to distribute it fairly and use it sustainably.

Not that I think there is no place for research into new pharmaceuticals and microchips and superconductors etc, but they will bring, at this stage in our history, incremental gains to welfare, and only for the rich. The giant leaps of living standards now will be made by advances in our capacity to deal equitably with each other.

Re:Low tech == High tech

Yup - it's the small, simple and readily available things that count, a few ideas:

* The rollable water container - a round thing that you can roll over to get water with, rather than carrying it on your back/arms/head
* The little heater with an AA rechargeable battery in it for the fan, that you recharge at the local solar panel
* The huge and incredible mobile phone informal/illegal repair subculture in developing countries - such as putting 2 simms in the same mobile with a simple switch mechanism.
* The pot with sand in it, and a smaller pot inside, that uses the physical properties of wet sand to create a refrigeration system for fruit and other perishables at markets
* The solar furnace - a curved mirror or reflective sheet with a black pot in the middle.
* The indian project to use harvested stomach bacteria to process recycled food into gas for cooking.

Loads of this stuff is happening and IT teams are out in the craziest places doing incredible things - these examples above are old, and I could dig out links if needed, but there's 10000 other projects that TED could highlight, even if you just want to talk about software: as well as the IT needed to create information infrastructures around completely non-IT stuff - like (this is more of a developed world example) the simple discussion boards and mailing lists used to power next generation barter/free/exchange systems like freecycle, freeconomy, feral trade and various post-LETS barter systems that are now taking off now that the administrative time-suck has been dealt with. Next step I think, will be project management systems that are just as simple and low-tech, so you can organise say a milk round around it.

Re:Low tech == High tech

I really wanted to mod you Overrated, but I'll reply instead.
You find TED nauseous and fake, because they're not doing anything about American farm subsidies? That's what I 'got' as the point of your post. You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears? I really don't understand what you're bitching about at all. You come off as a troll that somehow worded your post well enough to get modded up.
Please explain what TED is supposed to do about US import/export policy. Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'
If you can't do that, then please do stfu.

Re:Low tech == High tech

You'd rather see these inovations (if not pure "inventions") buried in a closet somewhere until the corn lobby disappears?

These (solar powered heater, charcoal from dung or solar smelters etc.) are no innovations or inventions. They are gadgets, and expensive gadgets too ( you can probably boil beans with a "solar smelter", but you won't smelt anything unless you can get some really large mirrors). If they are distributed they will make the "beneficiaries" become more dependent on aid and handouts because they will kill whatever industry supplied those people with the same services as the "innovations and inventions" pushed by TED.

TED and the folk behind it are no better than the Victorian ladies that went slumming and giving handouts to the polite paupers. It did not help the paupers much, but it made those ladies feel a lot better about themselves.

Those "poor third world people" are not helpless dopes. If they can't export wine or grain, they will export cocaine or opium, since it's a lot easier to sneak in a 5kg package than to sneak it's equivalent in grain or frozen meat. This was done by Europeans, too, when they were themselves third world countries (Opium Wars happened only because the Chinese taxed imports to death when not forbidding them outright, and opium was the only thing that had a high enough mark up to justify the trouble of fitting a ship).

Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'

"evolutionary technological advances" ? Have you watched the TED movies ? Dung or corn stalk charcoal is a technological innovation ? "improve the lives of billions of people" ? Can anybody pay for solar panels to improve the lives of billions ? Last time I heard there were not enough money to pay for solar panels to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands: in my area a 40W (peak power) solar panel costs 380 Euro. At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year [wikipedia.org].

Want to help the poor ? Then stop sending aid [blogspot.com], and give them a chance to build their economies. Or, if you are into churches and going on missions, send English language teachers and set up Internet Cafes besides talking about Jeesus H. Christ and handing out used clothes.

Don't worry about "farm subsidies" right now: worry about "quality standards", "sanitary regulations" etc. ... yes, about the Bumpers Amendment [biotech-monitor.nl], too, if you do care about "foreign aid".

The sad part is that the whole trade lockup is not directed against the "third world countries", but is set up against the other "first world countries". The 'poor aborigines' are just innocent bystanders that get slugged down when US and EU and the other big guys fire trade regulations and taxes at each other.

Re:Low tech == High tech

There is a lot of wrongness in your post, but I'll stick to this one:
At this price the whole military budget of US for 2008 will buy about 40GW of power, which is less than what, for example, Rumania uses during one year.
With 40GW of solar panels Romania will generate a years worth of power in 1462 hours, or about 180 days given 8 hours of daylight per day. (thems big numbers but I get 58,490,000,000,000 Wh/year / 40,000,000,000W). But here's the thing, if that much money poured into buying solar panels, the price would come down, the manufacturing would further innovate, and likely efficiencies would go up. Solar thermal generation technologies are not new, but they are innovations relative to coal and ng power plants and these things are low tech enough to be viable now. As we (the rich countries like Germany) deploy them they also get cheaper and can be viable cheap alternatives to emerging countries.

Re:Low tech == High tech

Please explain what TED is supposed to do about US import/export policy. Please explain why you think there isn't room for evolutionary technological advances that can improve the lives of billions of people until we get our own governmental policies 'fixed.'

TED gets the kind of people who can afford to pay $6k for a conference, and who on top of that have enough pull to get on the list. The total net worth of the attendees is in the tens of billions, possibly the hundreds of billions. These are people who get listened to.

You talk as if farm policies will get fixed by themselves. That's ridiculous; they have gotten worse lately, not better. The person you reply to is right; no bit of technological gimcrackery could improve the lives of the poor as much as just buying what they're selling at a fair price. Instead we spend tens of billions every year distorting the marketplace, keeping them in poverty. Then we give a fraction of that back as aid and pat ourselves on the back.

Diverting the attention of those who could make a difference may be fun, and it may be profitable, but nobody should think it particularly effective.

Farm subsidies

Calvin Coolidge, who grew up on a farm, was against farm subsidies because "farmers have never made much money" (and shouldn't expect to). Then the Depression hit and the government couldn't resist the notion that having most of the farms go out of business could be a bad idea. So is the problem our farm subsidies, or the failure of the third world to enact their own tariffs and subsidies to protect their own agricultural base? With the current price of transport, countries which have maintained local production, rather than increased dependency on foreign trade for foodstuffs, are far better positioned.

What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets. There are countries with plenty of farms, but starving populations, because the farmers are growing fancy stuff for us rather than staples for their neighbors.

There's a strong argument that agricultural trade should be severely limited, with people becoming "localvores [localvore.co.uk]." I write this as I'm drinking some Sumatran coffee, so I haven't totally bought the argument. Still, based on the cost of oil-based transport, the plain fact is the world needs to transition quickly back to local agricultural economies. What technological developments can help speed that?

Re:Farm subsidies

Funny thing is, "poor countries" are enacting their own tariffs [twnside.org.sg], if they get a chance (nobody financing a civil war) or don't care about getting loans from development agencies.

I don't think I'll ever become a "localvore" ... there is only so much cabbage and potatoes I can eat ... or I'll have to become a nomad, to be a 'localvore' in a more than one climate zone.

"What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets." -- if they don't grow crops for export, how are they going to buy computers ( and iPods :-P ) ?

Re:Low tech == High tech

You are not poor. If you have a PC with broadband, you are richer than approximately 90% of the planet. Malaria tablets are under $1 each, yet *millions* die every year because they can't afford it. I'm not seeing much trickling down over there, I lament to say.

might not change the world

But this is cool if it works:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore.html [wired.com]

http://www.gizmag.com/go/7214/ [gizmag.com]

frightening

A venue with the kind of visibility and recognition as TED shouldn't send out "spotters" who need to ask Slashdot, it should follow some established protocols for finding and evaluating work. And I think the haphazard selection processs is reflected in the quality of the program.

Re:frightening

Given the quality of TED conferences, it's not a criticism to say the quality of the process is reflected in the program. The strength of TED is that it shows a broad cross-section of what's out there, rather than the more usual scheme of presenting and reinforcing the interests and prejudices of some clique of "experts" who think they know the subject well enough that they don't need to ask the community at large.

It's not about having too limited an understanding to come up with something to say; it's about being willing to consider that somebody else in the world (outside your usual group of contacts) might have a good idea that's worth hearing -- and then sharing.

Coal Liquefaction

If one technology could really change the world, it would be coal liquefaction. It's an 80 year old, proven, technology - that no one has ever heard of.

What is it? It solves the gasoline crunch by converting coal (which is crazy abundant, especially in America) into gasoline. It throws off energy as a byproduct (which helps solve our energy grid needs) as well as CO2 -- which sounds bad, but can be trapped easily since it is in a closed loop.

Cleanly converting coal to gas is more expensive than the normal FT process, but still produces gas at around the $2 a gallon level, which would be enough to kickstart our economy, rescue the airlines, save energy costs for poor people (as much wealthy environmentalists hate to admit it, poor people are the ones that get fucked by sky-high gas and energy costs), and produce CO2, which is needed for, aha!, Craig Venter's latest pet project, which involves custom bacteria that consume large amounts of C02, and which he's publicly stated he needs a large supply thereof.

Best of all, it's a mature technology. It was used to power the entire Nazi war machine in WWII, and South Africans under apartheid. Not because evil countries have an affinity for it, but because they were cut off from the world's oil supplies.

And yet when Coal Liquefaction was debated in congress, retarded children like our very own Senator Feinstein claimed that it was an immature technology, and voted it down.

Why oil price increase equals economic trouble

Oil is a fundamental commodity in economic terms because changes in its price cause changes, with different time lags, in the prices of all other goods and services. An increasing oil price causes inflation. A severe increase causes severe inflation. It's the price increase, not the absolute price, that's important.

The oil price has more than doubled in the last year, and quadrupled in the last three years. There has never before been such an extreme, sustained increase in the oil price. This will cause severe inflation, and the economic consequences will be severe.

This is what's causing all the fuss. The economies of the world are in the early stages of heading into a very severe inflationary recession. Some people go further and anticipate economic collapse, others fear something similar to The Great Depression [wikipedia.org]. The technical term for it is stagflation [wikipedia.org]. Investors look for ways out of trouble, but the consensus is that there is no easy way out of this one. Some investors have therefore panicked. Panic is dangerous because it fuels itself, making the panic worse.

You are not going to see the same impact in Finland because Finland has much higher fuel taxes than in the USA, so the price increase of retail fuels has been much smaller in Finland than in the USA. But recession in the USA, which is the world's largest economy, will be felt in other countries, including Finland.

Next Generation Artificial Neural Networks

There have been many breakthroughs in neural networks recently, which allow us to train "deep architectures" (with many hidden layers). This was not feasible with traditional backpropagation. This work by Hinton/LeCun/Bengio has led to a resurgence in the field of ANNs, with some experts now believing general AI to be attainable within the next decade.

Anyone interested should have a look at Geoff Hinton's Google Tech talk [youtube.com] on the matter. A very interesting talk for anyone in machine learning. He does a way better job of explaining it then I could. Fast forward to 21:30 for the live demo.

Two inventions spring to mind.

First, the inflatable satellite dish. [gatr.com] Second, the six stroke engine. [wikipedia.org]

-jcr

Oh, the usual

You know, like, cold fusion, quantum computers, immersive VR. Stuff like that. I read somewhere all that and more is coming in the next five to twenty years. Oh, and that 110 MPG Mustang that goes from 0-60 MPH in 3 seconds flat. Should be a crowd pleaser.

Tin Eye...

The TinEye image search engine [tineye.com] should be up there - http://www.tineye.com/ [tineye.com] - one of the most mindboggling things I've seen in a hell of a long time.

So it befalls to me

Let's get it out of the way:

I'd like to see a beowulf cluster of Linux servers running Duke Nukem Forever on virtualised copies of Vista, whilst at the same time running a grid/distributed computing program that's testing proteins for possible AIDs/MRSA cures in spare GPU cycles - the whole lot powered by solar cells using a revolutionary optical coating, with the standby generator powered by algae-derived biofuel. The whole system to be owned by the former Soviet Union and housed in a hybrid solar/hydrogen-powered car, driven by Natalie Portman, with room in the back for three Senior citizens from North Korea to sit confortably while playing aforementioned game.

Oh, and the whole lot has to be available 'within the next 5 years' - as confirmed by NetCraft.

I'm sure I've missed something - help me out here guys.

It's more interesting than it sounds.

"Entrepreneurial mycologist Paul Stamets seeks to rescue the study of mushrooms from forest gourmets and psychedelic warlords. The focus of Stamets' research is the Northwest's native fungal genome, mycelium, but along the way he has filed 22 patents for mushroom-related technologies, including pesticidal fungi that trick insects into eating them, and mushrooms that can break down the neurotoxins used in nerve gas. There are cosmic implications as well. Stamets believes we could terraform other worlds in our galaxy by sowing a mix of fungal spores and other seeds to create an ecological footprint on a new planet." http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html [ted.com]

Re:Owner Free Filesystem

There was an article on [url="http://offsystem.sourceforge.net/"]this[/url] not too long ago right here on Slashdot, and it could quite possibly be the biggest innovation to file sharing and distribution since BitTorrent.

You probably shouldn't take technology advice from a person who uses BBCode on Slashdot.
 

All the videos have a "download" option...

If a talk is worth watching fullscreen I usually download it.

PS: You can make the ted window quite big by clicking the arrow thingy in the top-right corner.

Re:Missing the point in rarified air.

the attendees - and the speakers - simply believe that they are better than 99.999% of the human population.

Oh, you're a mind reader, I take it? You're on very thin ice when you presume to state what anyone else believes.

But they don't *do* anything.

I beg to differ. Just off the top of my head, James Watson has been a speaker there, and I'd say that discovering the double helical structure of DNA definitely qualifies as "doing something".

-jcr