2. Edinburgh, Scotland
July 11-15, 2011
50-plus speakers and performers from all over the world
“The Stuff of Life”
Friday, February 3, 12
3. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Interpersonal Societal Shifts & Discovering the
World Peace Media Sustainability
Relations Constructs Human Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Lying Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Bio Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
4. TED Global 2011’s Highlights
Paul Bloom Rebecca MacKinnon Tim Hartford
Psychologist Media Activist Communications Technology Innovator
How Pleasure Works On An Internet For The People On Making Good Mistakes
Why do we like an original painting
MacKinnon explores private sovereignty Leaders and leading thinkers may
better than a forgery if we can’t tell
in cyberspace--and how the empowering come to believe that their answer is
the difference?
potential of technology is being always the only/best one. Hartford
constrained due to big company’s terms this the, “God complex”
Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that
it’s more than the status of a limited compliance with nation-states.
Harford suggests, we need to learn to
item.
She calls for a citizen-centric rather than admit our fallibility, embrace failure and
Human beings are essentialists -- our government-centric internet revolution. to constantly adapt, improvise and plan
beliefs about the history & essence of to work from the bottom up rather than
objects changes how we experience “What people can and cannot do with the top down.
them and how much pleasure (or information has more effect than ever on the
pain) we derive. exercise of power in the physical world.”
Each and every one of us has a vital part to
play in building a world in which government
and technology serve the world’s people and
Learn not the other way around.” Learn Learn
More More More
Friday, February 3, 12
5. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Interpersonal Societal Shifts & Human
World Peace Media Sustainability
Relations Constructs Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Bio Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Lying
Language Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
6. Interpersonal Relations
Pamela Meyer Mark Pagel
Lie Detector Evolutionary Biologist
On Lying and Deception On the Evolution of
Language
We all lie or are lied to between 10
and 200 times a day. “Lying is our “Language is the voice of our
attempt to bridge the gap between genes”
how we wish we could be and what Observing and learning from
we’re really like.” others’ mistakes helps us choose
...lying can be catastrophic. the best options, and evolve with
better options.
“Last year, we were deceived by the
financial sector to the tune of $1
“Social theft” --> “Social Learning”
trillion.”
Paul Zak Sheril Kirshenbaum
Neuroeconomist Biologist
On Oxytocin On Kissing
Zak is the pioneer in a new study We kiss for more than just romantic
that has identified Oxytocin as reasons.
responsible for a variety of virtuous
behaviors in humans such as It’s how we test our security, how
empathy, generosity and trust. It’s we choose our mates, and how we
what he calls the brain’s “moral find our way.
molecule.”
“We’re interpreting our mouths
But he suggests, “8 hugs a day” as more than we realize”
the best recipe for morality, over
doses of Oxytocin.
Friday, February 3, 12
7. Pamela Meyer
Lie detector
Pamela Meyer is the CEO of social networking company Simpatico Networks.
She has also been working with a team of researchers over several years to collect and review most of the research on deception that has been published,
from law-enforcement to military to psychology to espionage.
She became an expert herself, receiving advanced training in deception detection, including multiple courses of advanced training in interrogation,
microexpression analysis, statement analysis, behavior and body language interpretation, and emotion recognition.
Her research is synthetized in her bestselling book Liespotting.
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
8. Paul Zak
Neuroeconomist
A professor at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, Zak believes most humans are biologically wired to cooperate, but that business and
economics ignore the biological foundations of human reciprocity, risking loss: when oxytocin levels are high in subjects, people’s generosity to strangers
increases up to 80 percent; and countries with higher levels of trust – lower crime, better education – fare better economically.
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
9. Mark Pagel
Evolutionary
Biologist
Pagel builds statistical models to examine the evolutionary processes imprinted in human behavior, from genomics to the emergence of complex
systems -- to culture.
He’s looking for patterns in the rates of evolution of language elements, and hoping to find the social factors that influence trends of language evolution.
At the University of Reading, Pagel heads the Evolution Laboratory in the biology department, where he explores such questions as, "Why would
humans evolve a system of communication that prevents them with communicating with other members of the same species?"
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
10. Sheril Kirshenbaum
Biologist and writer
A research scientist at the University of Texas, Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote The Science of Kissing, containing "everything you always wanted to know about
kissing but either haven't asked, couldn't find out, or didn't realize you should understand."
She also co-authored Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future with Chris Mooney, named by President Obama's science advisor,
John Holdren, as his top recommended read.
She works with the Webber Energy Group at the University of Texas at Austin's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, where she works on
projects to enhance public understanding of energy issues as they relate to food, oceans and culture.
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
11. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Interpersonal Societal Shifts & Human
World Peace Media Sustainability
Relations Constructs Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Lying Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Bio Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
12. World Peace Julia Bacha
Filmmaker
Jarreth Merz
Filmmaker, “An African Election”
On the Power of Attention On Discovering His African
Identity
Just like acts of violent terrorism, non-violent
efforts for change are examples of, “theater
While venturing to Ghana to film the
seeking an audience”.
presidential elections, Merz discovered
that contrary to stereotype, and despite
The international community must pay more
violence in the nation, “Africans can
attention to non-violent acts to turn non-
govern themselves.”
violence into a functional behavior.
Jeremy Gilley Maajid Nawaz
Anti-Extremism Activist Anti-Extremism Activist
On Peace One Day On Extremism & Social
Movements
For the past 10 years, filmmaker Jeremy Gilley We’re in “The Age of Behavior”: defined by
has been promoting September 21 as a true ideas and narratives.
international day of ceasefire, a day to carry out
humanitarian aid in the world's most dangerous Extremism is the result of successful social
zones. The practical challenge is huge, but movements. Whereas Democratic activists on
Gilley says that, “By working together, I the other hand, have been plagued by
seriously think we can start to change things complacency, political correctness, failing
and create peace one day.” politics and economics, and an ideology of
resistance.
Democratic advocates must move beyond a
political goal and establish a social movement.
Friday, February 3, 12
13. Julia Bacha
Filmmaker
Julia Bacha is the director and producer of "Budrus," a documentary about a West Bank village, a giant barrier and nonviolent resistance.
Bacha was also the co-director of Encounter Point, featured during Pangea Day in 2009 -- a feature documentary film about four ordinary people, on both sides
of the conflict, who lost nearly everything but who nevertheless work for an end to occupation in favor of peace.
She says: "We are providing alternative role models. I have seen people challenged, inspired and motivated to take action based on the stories we tell.”
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
14. Jarreth Merz
Filmmaker
Jarreth Merz' new film, "An African Election," follows the 2008 presidential elections in Ghana from start to finish.
Raised in Ghana, Switzerland and Germany, Jarreth Merz is a filmmaker and actor.
As a director, his work is rooted in observing life as it presents itself in all its complexities -- as shown in his latest documentary, “An African Election,” which follows
the 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa.
Merz's stepfather, a political player on Ghana, helped him get access behind the scenes; then Jarreth and his cameraman brother, Kevin, followed the presidential
candidates in the unpredictable months leading up to the final night.
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More
Friday, February 3, 12
15. Maajid Nawaz
Anti-extremism activist
Maajid Nawaz works to promote conversation, tolerance and democracy in Muslim and non-Muslim communities.
As a teenager, British-born Maajid Nawaz was recruited to the global Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir
In 2009, he founded Khudi, a counter-extremism social movement working to promote a democratic culture in Pakistan. In the UK, the think tank he co-
founded, Quilliam, engages in “counter-Islamist thought-generating” -- looking for new narratives of citizenship, identity and belonging in a globalized world.
He says: "I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.”
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Video
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Friday, February 3, 12
16. Jeremy Gilley
Peace activist
Filmmaker Jeremy Gilley founded Peace One Day to create an annual Peace Day.
For the past 10 years, Jeremy Gilley has been promoting September 21 as a true international day of ceasefire, a day to carry out humanitarian aid
in the world's most dangerous zones.
Gilley has recorded successes. For instance, on September 21, 2008, some 1.85 million children under 5 years old, in seven Afghan provinces
where conflict has previously prevented access, were given a vaccine for polio.
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
17. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Interpersonal Societal Shifts & Human
World Peace Media Sustainability
Relations Constructs Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Lying Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Bio Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
18. Media
Yang Lan Misha Glenny
Media Mogul, TV Host Underworld Investigator, McMafia
On Social Media On Hackers
Yang Lan’s story; going from “The internet embodies a complex
struggling actress to the “Oprah of dilemma that pits the demands of
security with the desire for freedom.”
China”.
Glenny’s current focus is on hackers
“With barriers stacked against Chinese
and their characteristics.
youth who have a social media voice,
change is afoot 140 characters at a time.” These people should be given jobs
with the state to help the authorities
stop terrorist and criminal hacking so
we can keep control of the Internet.
Nadia al-Sakkaf Mikko Hypponen
Cyber Security Expert
On Being Editor-in-Chief of
On Cyber Security
The Yemini Times
Nadia Al-Sakkaf became the chief editor of There are potentially huge
the Yemen Times, the country's first and problems with the Internet.
most widely read independent English-
language newspaper. Viruses are being written by
organized criminals who find ways
In allowing herself to be interviewed, she to steal credit card information and
embezzle millions of dollars.
drives home the point that, “In times of
revolution, one message to the West: It’s very
“If we don’t fight online crime, we
important for YOU to listen to OUR voice.”
run the risk of losing it all.”
Friday, February 3, 12
19. Yang Lan
Media mogul, TV host
Yang is a self-made entrepreneur and the most powerful woman in the Chinese media. As chair of Sun Media Investment Holdings, a business empire she built
with her husband, Yang is a pioneer of open communication.
Yang started her journalism career by establishing the first current-events TV program in China. She created and hosted many other groundbreaking shows.
The popular Her Village, which now includes an online magazine and website, brings together China’s largest community of professional women (more than
200 million people a month).
Friday, February 3, 12
20. Nadia Al-Sakkaf
Journalist
Nadia Al-Sakkaf became the chief editor of the Yemen Times, the country's first and most widely read independent English-language newspaper, in March 2005,
and quickly became a leading voice in Yemen and worldwide media on issues of media, gender, development and politics.
During the May 2011 leadership crisis in Yemen, Al-Sakkaf and her organization were vital in reporting the news and putting the political situation in context for
the wider world. And as the crisis rolls on, the role of an independent press becomes even more vital. The Yemen Times has reporters on the ground in Sana'a,
Taiz, Aden and Hodeida covering the uprising.
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Friday, February 3, 12
21. Misha Glenny
Underworld investigator
In minute detail, Misha Glenny's 2008 book, McMafia, illuminates the byzantine outlines of global organized crime. To research this magisterial work Glenny
penetrated the convoluted, globalized and franchised modern underworld -- often at considerable personal risk.
Legal society ignores this world at its peril, but Glenny suggests that conventional law enforcement might not be able to combat a problem whose roots lie in
global instability.
While covering the Central Europe beat for the Guardian and the BBC, Glenny wrote several acclaimed books on the fall of Yugoslavia and the rise of the
Balkan nations.
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Friday, February 3, 12
22. Mikko Hypponen
Cybersecurity expert
The chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation in Finland, Mikko Hypponen has led his team through some of the largest computer virus outbreaks in
history. His team took down the world-wide network used by the Sobig.F worm.
He was the first to warn the world about the Sasser outbreak, and he has done classified briefings on the operation of the Stuxnet worm -- a hugely
complex worm designed to sabotage Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities.
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
23. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Interpersonal Societal Human
World Peace Media Sustainability
Relations Meta Shifts Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Lying Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Bio Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
24. Sustainability for
a Better World
Paul Snelgrove Justin Hall Tipping Josette Sheeran
Marine Biologist Biologist Anti-hunger leader
On Oceans On Nano Energy On Eradicating Global
Hunger
Oceans cover 70% of the planet, Free energy and electricity to the
produce half the oxygen we breathe, and world; a cleaner planet with fresh
1 out of every 7 people in the world
constitute the largest habitat on earth. drinking water--harnessed by
don’t know how/where to find food
controlling the electron.
each day.
Snelgrove is part of a huge effort to
create an oceanic census of the world’s Let’s eliminate power plants and
“We shouldn’t look at the hungry as
marine life--an attempt to try to stop the grid, and store energy by
victims, but as the solution--as the
destructing oceans and to, “try to transferring power to each other.
value chain to fight hunger.”
preserve what’s left.”
Erik Hersman Shoshei Shigematsu
Blogger Architect
On Innovation in Africa On Architecture
The new face of Africa says, Shigematsu uses the box as a way
“sustainable”. New ideas coming to exemplify the notion that, “shape
out of Africa is no longer the doesn’t really matter.” But he aims
exception, it should be expected. to “do something unknown with a
very known shape”
“To those from Africa, until we own
the narrative about our continent, He calls for a “grand vision of
someone else will,” he says. “To urbanism”, post Japanese
those outside of Africa, I would say tsunami-- “we can’t just rebuild the
disaster zone”
Bunker
Roy—On
Building
a
Better
School another look.”
take
Friday, February 3, 12
25. Paul Snelgrove
Marine biologist
Paul Snelgrove, a professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland, studies benthic sedimentary ecosystems. He led the team that produced the book
and led the group that pulled together the findings of the Census of Marine Life -- synthesizing 10 years and 540 expeditions into a book of wonders.
Snelgrove's synthesized this mass of findings into a book, Discoveries of the Census of Marine Life.
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Friday, February 3, 12
26. Justin Hall-Tipping
Science entrepreneur
Justin Hall-Tipping works on nano-energy startups -- mastering the electron to create power.
Justin Hall-Tipping had an epiphany about energy after seeing footage of a chunk of ice the size of his home state (Connecticut) falling off Antarctica into the
ocean, and decided to focus on science to find new forms of energy.
He formed Nanoholdings to work closely with universities and labs who are studying new forms of nano-scale energy.
Nanotech as a field is still very young and nano-energy in particular holds tremendous promise.
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Friday, February 3, 12
27. Shohei Shigematsu
Architect
The director of OMA*AMO in New York, Shohei Shigematsu thinks about how society shapes buildings.
The director of Rem Koolhaas' New York office, OMA*AMO, Shohei Shigematsu has worked on high-profile buildings like the CCTV tower in Beijing, and
his conceptual work drives projects like the (unbuilt) Whitney Museum extension in New York City and the Prada Epicenters in London and Shanghai.
His approach balances the design approach with the often dense matrix of site-specific, economic and emotional connections.
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Friday, February 3, 12
28. Erik Hersman
Blogger
Blogger, geek, and power networker Erik Hersman, is a key member of the African blog revolution.
Erik Hersman grew up in Kenya and Sudan. From his home in the US, he keeps two influential blogs: WhiteAfrican, where he writes about technology on the
African continent, and AfriGadget, a group blog that celebrates African ingenuity.
During the Kenyan post-election crisis of 2007-2008, Hersman helped create the website Ushahidi, a place to report incidents of violence via the web and
texts. The original Ushahidi tool was written in two days; later that year, it won the NetSquared Mashup Challenge.
Learn
More
Friday, February 3, 12
29. Josette Sheeran
Anti-hunger leader
Josette Sheeran, executive director of the Rome-based United Nations World Food Programme, oversees the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger
around the globe.
Sheeran believes that hunger and poverty must and can be solved through both immediate actions and long-term policies.
Prior to joining the UN in 2007, Sheeran was the Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs at the US Department of State, where she
frequently focused on economic diplomacy to help emerging nations move toward self-sufficiency and prosperity.
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Friday, February 3, 12
30. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Interpersonal Societal Shifts & Human
World Peace Media Sustainability
Relations Constructs Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Lying Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Bio Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
31. Societal Shifts & Constructs
Geoffrey West Kevin Slavin
Theorist Algoworld Expert
On the Hidden Laws of Cities On Algorithms
Cities are where global problems originate
Slavin explores how algorithms are
from these days. Everything from health, to
pervasive and shaping our understanding of
economic, to political issues stem from
markets, behaviors and the world at large,
cities.
He suggests we rethink the role of math in
life and society, noting that there are 2,000
Yet, cities continue to grow; they are not
physicists working on Wall Street.
failing. This is because we are the city.
City = nature.
Many of them work on “black box trading”,
which, as Slavin facetiously pointed out,
makes up “70% of the algorithm formerly
known as your pension.”
Yasheng Huang Niall Ferguson
Political Economist Historian
On India Versus China On the End of Western
Dominance
In examining why China has grown
twice as fast as India in the past 30
years, some of the takeaways are... “The biggest story of our lifetime is
the end of Western predominance.”
- Political reform is a must if China
wishes to sustain growth and continue West had originally gained dominance
to be the economic superstar due to advances in science; property
- Women play a significant role in rights; modern medicine; a consumer
strong societies--this has contributed society; the work ethic.
to China’s triumph over India.
Now that information is all
democratized, nothing is exclusive.
Friday, February 3, 12
32. Yasheng Huang
Political economist
MIT and Fudan University professor Yasheng Huang is an authority on how to get ahead in emerging economies. The China and India Labs he founded at
MIT's Sloan School of Management specialize in helping local startups improve their strategies.
His book,Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (2008), chronicles three decades of economic reform in China and documents the critical role that private
entrepreneurship played in the Communist nation’s “economic miracle.”
Huang believes that China is moving away from Marxism (public ownership) but not Leninism (ideology of state control) -- and that strong social
fundamentals are the key reason for its growth.
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Friday, February 3, 12
33. Niall Ferguson
Historian
Niall Ferguson teaches history and business administration at Harvard and is a senior research fellow at several other universities, including Oxford.
His books chronicle a wide range of political and socio-economic events; he has written about everything from German politics during the era of inflation to a
financial history of the world. He’s now working on a biography of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Ferguson is a prolific and often controversial commentator on contemporary politics and economics.
His latest book and TV series, Civilization: The West and the Rest, aims to help 21st-century audiences understand the past and the present.
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Friday, February 3, 12
34. Geoffrey West
Theorist
Trained as a theoretical physicist, Geoffrey West has turned his analytical mind toward the inner workings of more concrete things, like ... animals. In a paper
for Science in 1997, he and his team uncovered what he sees as a surprisingly universal law of biology — the way in which heart rate, size and energy
consumption are related across most living animals.
A past president of the multidisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (after decades working in high-energy physics at Los Alamos and Stanford), West now studies the
behavior and development of cities.
In his newest work, he proposes that one simple number, population, can predict a stunning array of details about any city, from crime rate to economic activity.
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The
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Friday, February 3, 12
35. Edinburgh National
Conference Center
Discovering The
Interpersonal Societal
World Peace Media Sustainability Human
Relations Meta Shifts
Organism
Filmmaking Cyber-Security Architecture Algorithms Bio Chemistry
Communications
Neuroscience Anti-Hunger
Publishing Genetics
Lying Marine Biology Urbanism Psychology
Bio Anti-Extremism China’s Mass Media
Evolution Developing World Political Economics Brain Science
Friday, February 3, 12
36. Allan Jones Annie Murphy Paul
Discovering the Brain Scientist Science Author
On Mapping the Human Brain On Prenatal Learning
Human Organism Though harvesting the human brain, Jones and his Learning starts in the womb. “We’re learning
team have mapped its 86 billion neurons, and about the world before we even enter it”.
have been able to remap 50 million data points in
each brain. Language, smell, taste, emotion...
“The brain is still undiscovered, a new frontier” Pregnancy is the new frontier for discovering how
we develop.
Svante Paabo Alison Gopnik
Geneticist Child Development Psychologist
On Genomes On Thinking Babies
The majority of our bodies possess no differences “Babies are the research and development
from one another. department of the human species.”
So, “why are we so alike?” How and what babies think is more than just
irrational emotions--they’re learning a lot in little
Paabo and other scientists now think that time. Researchers are wondering why and how
some, if not all, early humans mixed with this happens.
Neanderthals after we began to migrate out
of Africa. Paabo’s work is helping to
understand our ancestral family tree of our
Daniel Wolpert
Brain Scientist
On Brains and Movement
“The only reason we have a brain is for
adaptable and complex movement.”
From the contractions that underpin our
speech and facial mimicry to the actions that
allow us to exert force — movement is the
only way to affect the world around us.
Friday, February 3, 12
37. Svante Paabo
Geneticist
Svante Paabo explores human genetic evolution by analyzing DNA extracted from ancient sources, including mummies, an Ice Age hunter and the bone
fragments of Neanderthals.
Svante Paabo's research on the DNA of human and nonhuman primates has exposed the key genetic changes that transformed our grunting ape-like
ancestors into the charming latte-sipping humans we are today.
As a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Paabo and his team developed a technique of isolating and
sequencing the DNA of creatures long extinct.
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Friday, February 3, 12
38. Jae Rhim Lee
Artist
Artist Jae Rhim Lee re-imagines the relationships between the body and the world.
Jae Rhim Lee is a visual artist and mushroom lover. In her early work, as a grad student at MIT, she built systems that reworked basic human processes:
sleeping, urinating and eating. Now she's working on a compelling new plan for the final human process: decomposition.
Her Infinity Burial Project explores the choices we face after death, and how our choices reflect our denial or acceptance of death’s physical implications.
She's been developing a new strain of fungus, the Infinity Mushroom, that feeds on and remediates the industrial toxins we store in our bodies and convert
our unused bodies efficiently into nutrients.
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Friday, February 3, 12
39. Allan Jones
Brain scientist
As CEO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Allan Jones leads an ambitious project to build an open, online, interactive atlas of the human brain.
The Allen Institute for Brain Science -- based in Seattle, kickstarted by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen -- has a mission to fuel discoveries about the human
brain by building tools the entire scientific community can use.
As CEO, one of Allan Jones' first projects was to lead the drive to create a comprehensive atlas of the brain of a mouse.
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Friday, February 3, 12
40. Daniel Wolpert
Movement expert
A neuroscientist and engineer, Daniel Wolpert studies how the brain controls the body.
At his lab in the Engineering department at Cambridge, Daniel Wolpert and his team are studying why, looking to understand the computations
underlying the brain's sensorimotor control of the body.
As he says, "I believe that to understand movement is to understand the whole brain. And therefore it’s important to remember when you are studying
memory, cognition, sensory processing, they’re there for a reason, and that reason is action.”
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Friday, February 3, 12
41. Annie Murphy Paul
Science author
Annie Murphy Paul investigates how life in the womb shapes who we become.
Science writer, she write “Origins”, a history and study of this emerging field structured around a personal narrative – Paul was pregnant with her second child
at the time.
What she finds suggests a far more dynamic nature between mother and fetus than typically acknowledged, and opens up the possibility that the time before
birth is as crucial to human development as early childhood.
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Friday, February 3, 12
42. Alison Gopnik
Child development psychologist
Alison Gopnik takes us into the fascinating minds of babies and children, and shows us how much we understand before we even realize we do.
The author of The Philosophical Baby, The Scientist in the Crib and other influential books on cognitive development, Gopnik presents evidence that
babies and children are conscious of far more than we give them credit for, as they engage every sense and spend every waking moment discovering,
filing away, analyzing and acting on information about how the world works.
Gopnik’s work draws on psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical developments in child development research to understand how the human mind
learns, how and why we love, our ability to innovate, as well as giving us a deeper appreciation for the role of parenthood.
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Friday, February 3, 12
43. Paul Bloom
Psychologist
Cynthia Kenyon
Biochemist, geneticist
Paul Bloom studies our common-sense understanding of the world -- how we know what we know, why we like what we like.
Paul Bloom's latest book is called How Pleasure Works -- which is indicative of the kinds of questions he looks at, the big basic ones: Why do we like some things and not
others? How do we decide what's fair and unfair? And the million-dollar question: How much of our moral development, what we think of as our mature reasoning process, is
actually hard-wired and present in us from birth? To answer this question, at his Mind and Development Lab at Yale, he and his students study how babies make moral
decisions. (How do you present a moral quandary to a 1-year-old? Through simple, gamelike experiments that yield surprisingly adult-like results.)
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Friday, February 3, 12
44. Rebecca MacKinnon
Media activist
Rebecca MacKinnon looks at issues of privacy, free expression and governance (or lack of) in the digital networks, platforms and services on
which we are all increasingly dependent.
A former head of CNN’s Beijing and Tokyo bureaus, MacKinnon is an expert on Chinese Internet censorship. She’s one of the founders (with Ethan Watch The
Zuckerman) of the Global Voices Online blog network, which aggregates and translates news around the world that might otherwise go unheard. Video
Is there a human rights penalty we pay for trusting basic human connection to the Internet? As a Senior Fellow at the New America
Foundation, Rebecca MacKinnon looks at these big questions in her upcoming book, Consent of the Networked, “A treatise on the future of Learn
liberty in the Internet age”. More
Friday, February 3, 12
45. Kevin Slavin
Algoworld expert
Kevin Slavin navigates in the algoworld, the expanding space in our lives that is determined and run by algorithms.
Are you addicted to the dead-simple numbers game Drop 7 or Facebook’s Parking Wars? Blame Kevin Slavin and the game development company, Area/Code,
he co-founded in 2005, which makes clever game entertainments that enter the fabric of reality.
All this fun is powered by algorithms -- as, increasingly, is our daily life. From the Google algorithms to the algos that give you “recommendations” online to
those that automatically play the stock markets (and sometimes crash them): we may not realize it, but we live in the algoworld.
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Friday, February 3, 12
46. Tim Harford
Undercover economist
Tim Harford looks at familiar situations in unfamiliar ways to explain fundamental principles.
He writes the ‘Undercover Economist’ column for the Financial Times,
His new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure,
He also presents the BBC radio series More or Less, a rare broadcast program devoted, as he says, to "the powerful, sometimes beautiful, often abused but
ever ubiquitous world of numbers."
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Friday, February 3, 12
47. Malcolm Gladwell
Writer
Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996,
he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters -- a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe -- and for that has
become a star lecturer and bestselling author.
Gladwell has written four books. The Tipping Point, which began as a New Yorker piece, applies the principles of epidemiology to crime (and sneaker
sales), while Blink examines the unconscious processes that allow the mind to "thin slice" reality -- and make decisions in the blink of an eye. His third
book, Outliers, questions the inevitabilities of success and identifies the relation of success to nature versus nurture. The newest work, What the Dog Saw
and Other Adventures, is an anthology of his New Yorker contributions.
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Friday, February 3, 12