Homework post for 2E


If you haven’t come across TED before, their motto is “Ideas worth spreading”, and they feature talks and presentations from some of the world’s most fascinating thinkers – a visit to their website is highly recommended.
TASK: Pick a speaker, watch a talk, switch on the subtitles and write a summary. Word limit: 180-200. Deadline: January 3rd, 2010.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Jeff Han is a research scientist at NYU in New York. His fascinating and original presentation is about rear-projected drafting table with a multi-touch sensor. It is about thirty six inches wide. He assumes this high resolution touchscreen is going to change the way people will interact with machines from this point on.
The TED’s viewers are amongst the first people who see that icredible tool. This touchscreen allows to have multiple point of contact at the same time, which means you can use your both hands to do few things at the same time.
He showes an application, which enables you to see the picture the way you want. It permits you to move, zoom, rotate, grab and stretch a photo very easily. It is fantastic.
Jeff Han showes other applications, for instance WorldWind. It is a program with a great interface made by NASA, wchich allows you to see ”all the Word” in 3D.
Personally, I like new technology and I am very keen on it hence I up-date my knowledge about new discoveries every day. I look forwad to brand new findings being aware that technology changes all the time and wonder what revelations will occur in few years time.

Michał Podwysocki
Krzysiek Konopa said…
Why do we believe in every weird thing knocking on our doors? Well, Michael Shermer is definitely that guy, who can reveal all cards of “science, pseudo-science, non-science, junk-science, voodoo-science, pathological science, bad-science, non-science and plain old nonsense” (I love this line) and tell us what’s going on. He’s just like myth buster with great sense of humor saying that we’re getting smarter every decade, but it seems not to concern some scientist and inventions with coin flip chance of good work in every case…
It’s all about looking on what’s the most likely thing to happen, dependences between hits and misses, just like psychics or palmers use only hits, and – who would guess – our psyche. We have a tendency to see faces, everywhere. You can see Virgin Mary even in cheese sandwich and sell it for almost 30 000$ on eBay. Yep, that’s US, so sad…
But the best part is when it comes to manipulate your mind. When you get evil, sinister lyrics about Satan, you will hear that ”hidden message” in backward recorded song. Why? You will try to notice every single word. It’s not a magic…
There’s much more of this, that’s why it should be seen by everyone, not only UFO or “the Simpsons” fans.
Anonymous said…
Commencement speech of Steve Jobs which he has given to graduating students of Stanford University was so inspiring and motivating. I’ve realized that this successful entrepreneur had to faced so many adversities in his whole life although he has great energy to live in a way he wants to live. His advices about looking for things we love and doing them, experiencing every day, trusting in some kind of force majeure – God, destiny, karma, whatever... – were simple, very clear but most of people don’t remember about them or live in inefficient way – being angry, sad, blaming everybody for their own mistakes and failures etc.
Steve said that no one had ever escaped death and it’s true. So everybody should live his own life, not someone’s else and no one should live with the results of other people thinking. We should listen our heart, intuition, our own inner voice. And everything in order to, as years ago wrote Thoreau, not to discover, when we come to die, that we have not lived.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. I understand these words as encouragement to discovering every day something new, to enjoying our lives and every time wanting more and more because we can do it.

Mateusz Pohl
Anonymous said…
Andrea Ghez- The hunt for a supermassive black hole.
Andrea Ghez is a stargazing detective, tracking the visible and invisible forces lurking in the vastness of interstellar space.
She told about black hole.
First question was about supermassive black hole, second – interactive black hole on environment, and mainly is it exist.
Black hole is simple objects with three characteristic thing which can be describe: the spin, the mass, the charge.
Black hole of more than 4 million solar masses is located near region in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.
The Schwarzschild radius is now known to be the radius of the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole.
When the star had exploded, produced lots of energy. Form is supernova. Sometimes some part of star collapse and is forming black hole. We can convert the gravitation energy. And we now know black hole exist.
A black hole's mass becomes entirely compressed into a region with zero volume. It zero-volume, infinitely dense region at the center of a black hole is called a gravitational singularity.
She also said that technology (telescopes) make easier to know galaxies ( and black holes too).

Bryl D.
Piotr B. said…
I've randomly chosen „Philip Zimbardo shows how people become monsters ... or heroes”. He's a psychologist and he has recently written a book called „The Lucifer Effect”, in which he seeks the foundations of evil in our communities. He grew up in the Bronx, so he have to know much about the evil. In his speech, he presented few examples of transformation some good people into the vile 'bad-apples' - the Abu Ghraib incident and he was also the leader of Stanford Prison Experiment. He also brings the image of biblical Lucifer, the angel who descend to the hell.. He persuades that the evil is all about power. Power that comes from anonymity, from the sense of lacking responsibility. He also says that the systems ruling our lifes lead to the depravity of individuals. These systems – culture, laws, morality – have far greater infulence on our lifes than they should. The line between good and evil cross our hearts – and evil and acts of heroism depends on our decisions and deeds. And that line is almost inconspicuous.
ewak said…
I’ve chosen David Griffins lecture titled: „How photography connects us”. This kind of art inspires me because each photoes show facts and true reality. When you are looking at any item you can sense that moment’s atmosphere, feelings of people and also of the photographer. They risk theirs lives to shot such pictures. Some are breathtaking and outrageus. You can see what happens all over the world: poverty, poaching, power of human existence, indescribable events. Mr Griffin said that it remains what happend and what we were thinking on that topic. The speaker had shown amazing presentation of the best pictures ever taken published by National Geographic. They are so powerfull and focusing attention on problems of present society and the enviroment. He told the story how they were taken and what came about it. Sometimes they were funny but not always. They were frightening and bloodcurdling. To sum up, photography can make people realise reality and make us think. I reckon that it is the most impressing piece that we’re making every simple day. I belive that it can connect people.
Anonymous said…
I've choosen Steven Cowel who was talking about energy from fusion. I think that fusion is a promising source of energy. Solar power stations are alsow good but it need huge area to be build. Another problem with solar power stations is that sun isn't shining all the time for example in winter sun is shining for a very short time. Fusion is much better than another sources of enery, it's endless and frendy to environment because it produce carbon. I think that fusin could be the best way to replace present sources of energy, but we will be albe to produce that enerdy not sooner than in 15th years

Piotrek S
Oliwia said…
Julian Treasure – The 4 ways sound affects us

Most sound around us is accidental and unpleasant. There are four major ways sound is affecting us all the time.
First is physiological. The example is the sound of a loud alarm clock, which makes our organism to produce cortisol (fight/flight hormone).
The second is psychological, because music and natural sounds are the most powerful forms of sound that effects our emotional state, like classical music or birds chirping.
The third is cognitively, because we can’t understand two people speaking at the same time. That’s why the office noise makes our productivity 66% lower.
The fourth is behaviorally. We move away from unpleasant sound and towards pleasant sounds. The sound of jakehammer annoys us and for people who work with that noise, it is also demanding for their health. Also on sales music is very important because it can make us leave the shop fasters or turn around the door.
Music is powerful, because we recognize it fast and associate it. Many brands uses their brand sounds properly, like Nokia Tune which is played about 1,8 billion times a day. And what is brilliant – it cost Nokia nothing.
Oliwia said…
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