TED Session 2 – Reframe

The second TED session was possibly more mind-blowing than the first. Great speakers and arts. Huge ideas. Calls for action.

Goes through the TED gift bag
Bags made from Coke bottles
Lots of very cool stuff, much of which has a sustainability or green or empowerment focus

20 years since inventing the WWW
Was a side project 18 months after he proposed it
“Vague but exciting” – memo note from TB-L’s boss
Hypertext documents cool but not enough
Now put your data there
Hyperlinked and manipulated data much more exciting, e.g. Hans Roslin’s TED talk
Linked data – data has relationships
dbpedia links data from Wikipedia to other related data sources!!!
Don’t hug your database, give us the unadulterated data (especially governments)
“Raw data now!”
Your social networks are about linked data – relationships
OpenStreetMap – add your own data
Make it and demand it

Growth of ideas(In India) we now think of people as human capital not a societal burden
Demographic dividend – India will be only young country in an aging world
Language an asset
From man vs machine to man and machine – technology now empowering
Indians very comfortable with globalisation – no longer viewed as a form of Imperialism
Deepening of democracy
Universal access to K-6
Infrastructure growth
Cities=growth engines
Single market
Policy making gridlock thanks to castes, etc.
Job protection hampering job creation
Energy drives growth

We use our senses to understand situations
We don’t have access to all the info we need
Can we have a 6th sense for metadata?
We don’t have the luxury of meta info as we need it and can’t make optimal decisions
MIT working on tools to give access to meta info
Current kit is US$350 – webcam, projector, cell phone
The camera software tracks gestures
Use any surface to interact with projected info
Totally mobile
Mass production for about the cost of a cell phone
Access to any required data based on personal preference
Harry Potter newspapers!
Tagged reality
Work in progress
10 years to being biologically wired in

methane content in atmosphere growing thanks to bioactivity related to increased ice melt
entire Antarctic now has negative ice balance
Himalayas now has new lakes that used to be glaciers – reduced river flow availability from melt available to 2B people!
Andes – drinking water volume down
dramatic global increase in forest fire
4x increase last 30 years over previous 75 years in climate-related disaster events
70M tons of CO2 each day into atmosphere from human
fossil fuel burn now a significant percentage of total emissions
clean coal is an OXYMORON
a new clean energy movement = jobs growth and financial recovery (at least in part)

Husband, father, grandfather and industrialist
As competitive as anyone else in business
Reinvent the industrial system
“Whole problem is the decline of the biosphere”
Potentially 1000 years for the atmosphere to recover
Read Ecology of Commerce in 1994
“Take nothing and do no harm”
“Unless somebody leads, nobody will”
“I am a recovering plunderer”
There must be a clear, demonstrable alternative
Modified Erlich equation
Down 82% in absolute tonnage of CO2 with 2x profit
75% reduction in H2O use in carpet tile manufacturing
50% reduction in H2O use in broadloom manufacturing
74K tons of used carpet completely recycled
85M sq yds of no net waste carpet sold since 2002Only halfway to Zero Footprint. 2020 target for Mission Zero.
Incredibly good for business
Protect Tomorrow’s Child (poem)