Live Blog: Ted2014 Conference in Vancouver From Sunray.

[TheCat]

We're at Sunray watching the Ted Conference simulcast from Vancouver. We're starting in session two:

[TheCat]

The host of session two jokes: as you know ted will you we will all live forever and your colleagues will be robots. Session 2 is about "history" or as it is being called "Retrospect".

Bran Ferren is now taking the ted stage.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Ferren. He was the visual designer for little shop of horrors, among other many accomplishments.

His parents were contemporary artists so he decided to get into engineering...he jokes,  to drive his parents crazy.

[TheCat]

When he visited Rome when he was a kid and thinks now a savvy marble sales man got one over on the officials.

He is discussing Oculus in the Pantheon. It is the largest concrete dome ever built.



- the shaft of light beaming through the Oculus showed him that light can be used for design.
- he concluded that the worlds of science and art are not mutually exclusive,  when combined they make the miraculous.

[TheCat]

Five miracles are needed for to create "game changers" like the Oculus but most people don't get past 1.5 miracles.

- The design of the roof only works with a hole in the center.

Now he is getting into recent examples of oculus type events

- getting on the moon and getting off.
- the internet, not so, it is like the concrete of the pantheon. It needs skillful application.
- autonomous vehicles. yes. Roads were vital to the success of the roman empire and the usa. They are the key technology that will allow us to redesign our cities. They will save lives. Cut energy use. Cut road congestion. Compel new designs for cities...where we work and where we live.
- it took people outside of the car industry had to create the process that can now be applied to autonomous vehicles.

5 miracles for autonomous vehicles:

1. where you are and exactly what time it is...GPS by government
2. where are roads and where are you going...web based maps
3. intense communication with
4. recognize people, signs and objects.
5. ?

Autonomous vehicles will simnifically change our world in the next couple of decades.

The miracle makers don't just pop up. They need nourishment from role models who allow them to fail and find their own path. And, on a cautionary note they need to be pried away from the modern miracles so they can experience the natural world....the ultimate point of it all.

Finally, art and science are not luxuries. They are essential. 

[TheCat]

Brian Green is on stage. Author of the elegant universe. He is telling the history of the Universe in four minutes.

- Imagine the history of the universe in one month. He breaks down key points of our history by time and date. One second before midnight on the final day modern science came about.

He has incredible graphics that I want. 

[TheCat]

TED has officially moved their headquarters to Vancouver.

Marc Kushner, architect, will talk about the last 30 years of architecture. he's starting with...New Jersey.



discusses how much he hated the layout of his house...because every time he went to the bathroom on the 2nd floor his family on the 1st floor would know. And, he hated it and that, he says, is architecture.

Architecture is powerful. Architects use tricks to evoke emotional responses. Uses columns as an example of creating emotive responses.

Shows the Livingston public library as a bad example of architecture.


Then shows this library in Seattle.

How does this happen he asks?

[TheCat]

Architecture is a pendulum and they use cheap symbols. Instead of creating places we're creating memories or "false" nostalgia.

Something amazing happened in 1997: guggenheim. Everyone loved it. Then every city got some iteration of guggenheim. Why? because that style symbolized culture and tourism. And, every mayor wanted a piece of that symbol.

[TheCat]

We are on the verge of the greatest movement in architecture. It's a media revolution. Essentially, he is saying architecture can become almost a real time process because the feed back loop is faster through media.

[TheCat]

- we don't need the "greeks" anymore to tell us about architecture. we can tell each other about architecture.

If the livingstone library was being built today it would start with a google search to see what others are doing to do new things.

Architects can hear you and you are not intimidated by architecture.

He says "this is the end of architectural history."

[TheCat]

The point is...architecture style is no longer bound by periods or time.

[TheCat]

documentary filmmaker.

She is focused on the homosexual experience. She starts with the juxtaposition of Obama winning on 2008 on the same night as proposition 8 lost.

Now, she says that blacks were immediately blamed for the failure of proposition 8. She was pissed, why was the gay rights movement being pit against the civil rights movement? She is the beneficiary of both movements. Why were they not supporting each other. The opposition did not make sense and in fact, were much more connected than it seems.

The gay rights movement, she says, uses many of the tactics of the civil rights movement.

[TheCat]

Compares the Montgomery Bus Boycotts (as she calls it "I'm tired of your foot on my neck" strategy). Fourteen years later homosexuals fought against police brutality in Greenwich Village.

1963: March on Washington or "we are visible and many in numbers" strategy. The march was organized by Bayard Rustin, an "out" gay man who went on to fight for LGBT rights.

October 11, 1979: Almost a million people showed up to Washington. Now, called "national coming out" day.

[TheCat]

She directed a move called "The New Black".

http://www.youtube.com/v/GX4XiTSuuF0

She is emphasizing that the civil rights is not just a one road journey with one purpose.

[TheCat]

Everyone got very serious as they introduced Edward Snowden to to the Ted stage. The curtains pulled back and something like this came out...only with Snowden live image.



Snowden: It doesn't matter if I am the worst person in the world or the best person in the world. What matters are the issues at hand. I wouldn't call my self a hero or a traitor. I would call myself an American.

- we do good things in the intelligence community. Some things that need to be done. But a lot of things are done without permission.

- when I thought about how to get this out...I could have gone to congress where I had no protection as a private contractor and I and the info. could have been buried.

- but giving it to the journalists where its adversarial nature force the government to answer questions [was what he thought was best].

[TheCat]

- This is PRISM it is not about metadata. It is about content. It can deputize corporations to do the dirty work of the government. Some of the companies did try to fight it and they lost in the courts. But, these are secret judges in secret courts. These judges have only rejected 11 requests out of over 30k requests for warrants.