Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Steve Jobs and NeXT: Rare PBS Documentary circa 1986
In 1985, shortly after being fired from Apple, Steve Jobs founded NeXT, the somewhat short-lived but revolutionary company focused on higher education and business services. It was there that Jobs honed his visionary approach to computing and design, and crystalized his lens of priorities — the very qualities that made him not only a cultural icon but also a personal hero.
This fascinating PBS documentary, titled The Entrepreneurs and filmed in 1986, offers a rare glimpse of Jobs’ original vision with NeXT, from his aspirations for higher education and simulated learning environments to his decision-making process on price point and product features to his approach to company culture and motivational morale.
Merely 48 months later, Jobs stood up in front of a riveted audience at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall and introduced four fully crystalized, groundbreaking NeXT products, including “some of the neatest apps that have ever been created for any desktop platform,” “the best color that’s ever been,” and “the most important new application area in the 1990s…interpersonal computing.”
Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment
ABOUT THIS TALK
Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.
Grow it Yourself: Hydroponic Gardening in Your Home
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/windowfarms-hydroponic-gardening-in-your-home#ooid=ZpZnBlMjpP8-DVwvtRD11JrFrH-06OSP
I, like many of you, am one of the two billion people on Earth who live in cities. And there are days -- I don't know about the rest of you guys -- but there are days when I palpably feel how much I rely on other people for pretty much everything in my life. And some days, that can even be a little scary. But what I'm here to talk to you about today is how that same interdependence is actually an extremely powerful social infrastructure that we can actually harness to help heal some of our deepest civic issues, if we apply open source collaboration.
A couple of years ago, I read an article by New York Times writer Michael Pollan in which he argued that growing even some of our own food is one of the best things that we can do for the environment. Now at the time that I was reading this, it was the middle of the winter and I definitely did not have room for a lot of dirt in my New York City apartment. So I was basically just willing to settle for just reading the next Wired magazine and finding out how the experts were going to figure out how to solve all these problems for us in the future. But that was actually exactly the point that Michael Pollan was making in this article -- was it's precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all these things to specialists that we cause the kind of messes that we see with the food system.
So, I happen to know a little bit from my own work about how NASA has been using hydroponics to explore growing food in space. And you can actually get optimal nutritional yield by running a kind of high-quality liquid soil over plants' root systems. Now to a vegetable plant, my apartment has got to be about as foreign as outer space. But I can offer some natural light and year-round climate control.
Fast-forward two years later: we now have window farms, which are vertical, hydroponic platforms for food-growing indoors. And the way it works is that there's a pump at the bottom, which periodically sends some of this liquid nutrient solution up to the top, which then trickles down through plants' root systems that are suspended in clay pellets -- so there's no dirt involved. Now light and temperature vary with each window's microclimate, so a window farm requires a farmer, and she must decide what kind of crops she is going to put in her window farm, and whether she is going to feed her food organically.
Back at the time, a window farm was no more than a technically complex idea that was going to require a lot of testing. And I really wanted it to be an open project, because hydroponics is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting in the United States right now and could possibly become another area like Monsanto, where we have a lot of corporate intellectual property in the way of people's food. So I decided that, instead of creating a product, what I was going to do was open this up to a whole bunch of co-developers.
The first few systems that we created, they kind of worked. We were actually able to grow about a salad a week in a typical New York City apartment window. And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff. But the first few systems were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers that Martha Stewart would definitely never have approved. (Laughter) So to bring on more co-developers, what we did was we created a social media site on which we published the designs, we explained how they worked, and we even went so far as to point out everything that was wrong with these systems. And then we invited people all over the world to build them and experiment with us. So actually now on this website, we have 18,000 people. And we have window farms all over the world.
What we're doing is what NASA or a large corporation would call R&D, or research and development. But what we call it is R&D-I-Y, or research and develop it yourself. So for example, Jackson came along and suggested that we use air pumps instead of water pumps. It took building a whole bunch of systems to get it right, but once we did, we were able to cut our carbon footprint nearly in half. Tony in Chicago has been taking on growing experiments, like lots of other window farmers, and he's been able to get his strawberries to fruit for nine months of the year in low-light conditions by simply changing out the organic nutrients. And window farmers in Finland have been customizing their window farms for the dark days of the Finnish winters by outfitting them with LED grow lights that they're now making open source and part of the project.
So window farms have been evolving through a rapid versioning process similar to software. And with every open source project, the real benefit is the interplay between the specific concerns of people customizing their systems for their own particular concerns and the universal concerns. So my core team and I are able to concentrate on the improvements that really benefit everyone. And we're able to look out for the needs of newcomers.
So for do-it-yourselfers, we provide free, very well-tested instructions so that anyone, anywhere around the world, can build one of these systems for free. And there's a patent pending on these systems as well that's held by the community. And to fund the project, we partner to create products that we then sell to schools and to individuals who don't have time to build their own systems.
Now within our community, a certain culture has appeared. In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else's idea than it is to be just the idea guy. What we get out of this project is we get support for our own work, as well as an experience of actually contributing to the environmental movement in a way other than just screwing in new light bulbs. But I think that Eileen expresses best what we really get out of this, which is the actual joy of collaboration. So she expresses here what it's like to see someone halfway across the world having taken your idea, built upon it and then acknowledging you for contributing. If we really want to see the kind of wide consumer behavior change that we're all talking about as environmentalists and food people, maybe we just need to ditch the term "consumer" and get behind the people who are doing stuff.
Open source projects tend to have a momentum of their own. And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y has moved beyond just window farms and LEDs into solar panels and aquaponic systems. And we're building upon innovations of generations who went before us. And we're looking ahead at generations who really need us to retool our lives now. So we ask that you join us in rediscovering the value of citizens united, and to declare that we are all still pioneers.
(Applause)
Windowfarm Timelapse
Lincoln's Windowfarm - 2011-07-29
Indoor Gardening
Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.
Grow it Yourself: Hydroponic Gardening in Your Home
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/windowfarms-hydroponic-gardening-in-your-home#ooid=ZpZnBlMjpP8-DVwvtRD11JrFrH-06OSP
I, like many of you, am one of the two billion people on Earth who live in cities. And there are days -- I don't know about the rest of you guys -- but there are days when I palpably feel how much I rely on other people for pretty much everything in my life. And some days, that can even be a little scary. But what I'm here to talk to you about today is how that same interdependence is actually an extremely powerful social infrastructure that we can actually harness to help heal some of our deepest civic issues, if we apply open source collaboration.
A couple of years ago, I read an article by New York Times writer Michael Pollan in which he argued that growing even some of our own food is one of the best things that we can do for the environment. Now at the time that I was reading this, it was the middle of the winter and I definitely did not have room for a lot of dirt in my New York City apartment. So I was basically just willing to settle for just reading the next Wired magazine and finding out how the experts were going to figure out how to solve all these problems for us in the future. But that was actually exactly the point that Michael Pollan was making in this article -- was it's precisely when we hand over the responsibility for all these things to specialists that we cause the kind of messes that we see with the food system.
So, I happen to know a little bit from my own work about how NASA has been using hydroponics to explore growing food in space. And you can actually get optimal nutritional yield by running a kind of high-quality liquid soil over plants' root systems. Now to a vegetable plant, my apartment has got to be about as foreign as outer space. But I can offer some natural light and year-round climate control.
Fast-forward two years later: we now have window farms, which are vertical, hydroponic platforms for food-growing indoors. And the way it works is that there's a pump at the bottom, which periodically sends some of this liquid nutrient solution up to the top, which then trickles down through plants' root systems that are suspended in clay pellets -- so there's no dirt involved. Now light and temperature vary with each window's microclimate, so a window farm requires a farmer, and she must decide what kind of crops she is going to put in her window farm, and whether she is going to feed her food organically.
Back at the time, a window farm was no more than a technically complex idea that was going to require a lot of testing. And I really wanted it to be an open project, because hydroponics is one of the fastest growing areas of patenting in the United States right now and could possibly become another area like Monsanto, where we have a lot of corporate intellectual property in the way of people's food. So I decided that, instead of creating a product, what I was going to do was open this up to a whole bunch of co-developers.
The first few systems that we created, they kind of worked. We were actually able to grow about a salad a week in a typical New York City apartment window. And we were able to grow cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, all kinds of stuff. But the first few systems were these leaky, loud power-guzzlers that Martha Stewart would definitely never have approved. (Laughter) So to bring on more co-developers, what we did was we created a social media site on which we published the designs, we explained how they worked, and we even went so far as to point out everything that was wrong with these systems. And then we invited people all over the world to build them and experiment with us. So actually now on this website, we have 18,000 people. And we have window farms all over the world.
What we're doing is what NASA or a large corporation would call R&D, or research and development. But what we call it is R&D-I-Y, or research and develop it yourself. So for example, Jackson came along and suggested that we use air pumps instead of water pumps. It took building a whole bunch of systems to get it right, but once we did, we were able to cut our carbon footprint nearly in half. Tony in Chicago has been taking on growing experiments, like lots of other window farmers, and he's been able to get his strawberries to fruit for nine months of the year in low-light conditions by simply changing out the organic nutrients. And window farmers in Finland have been customizing their window farms for the dark days of the Finnish winters by outfitting them with LED grow lights that they're now making open source and part of the project.
So window farms have been evolving through a rapid versioning process similar to software. And with every open source project, the real benefit is the interplay between the specific concerns of people customizing their systems for their own particular concerns and the universal concerns. So my core team and I are able to concentrate on the improvements that really benefit everyone. And we're able to look out for the needs of newcomers.
So for do-it-yourselfers, we provide free, very well-tested instructions so that anyone, anywhere around the world, can build one of these systems for free. And there's a patent pending on these systems as well that's held by the community. And to fund the project, we partner to create products that we then sell to schools and to individuals who don't have time to build their own systems.
Now within our community, a certain culture has appeared. In our culture, it is better to be a tester who supports someone else's idea than it is to be just the idea guy. What we get out of this project is we get support for our own work, as well as an experience of actually contributing to the environmental movement in a way other than just screwing in new light bulbs. But I think that Eileen expresses best what we really get out of this, which is the actual joy of collaboration. So she expresses here what it's like to see someone halfway across the world having taken your idea, built upon it and then acknowledging you for contributing. If we really want to see the kind of wide consumer behavior change that we're all talking about as environmentalists and food people, maybe we just need to ditch the term "consumer" and get behind the people who are doing stuff.
Open source projects tend to have a momentum of their own. And what we're seeing is that R&D-I-Y has moved beyond just window farms and LEDs into solar panels and aquaponic systems. And we're building upon innovations of generations who went before us. And we're looking ahead at generations who really need us to retool our lives now. So we ask that you join us in rediscovering the value of citizens united, and to declare that we are all still pioneers.
(Applause)
Windowfarm Timelapse
Lincoln's Windowfarm - 2011-07-29
Indoor Gardening
Louie Schwartzberg: Nature. Beauty. Gratitude.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Louie Schwartzberg
Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director and producer who captures breathtaking images that celebrate life -- revealing connections, universal rhythms, patterns and beauty.
交大材料宣傳影片
交大材料宣傳影片
00 前進交大 01 簡介 02 關於交大 03 就業工作 04 交大材料研究方向
05 關於金屬材料 06 關於電子材料 07 關於高分子材料 08 關於陶瓷材料 09 關於奈米科技
10 工學院長談話 11 材料系主任談話 12 陳智教授談話 13 材料所學生感想 14 材料系學生感想
15 結尾
00 前進交大 01 簡介 02 關於交大 03 就業工作 04 交大材料研究方向
05 關於金屬材料 06 關於電子材料 07 關於高分子材料 08 關於陶瓷材料 09 關於奈米科技
10 工學院長談話 11 材料系主任談話 12 陳智教授談話 13 材料所學生感想 14 材料系學生感想
15 結尾
Home > Courses > Materials Science and Engineering > Introduction to Solid State Chemistry > 1. Introduction to Solid State Chemistry OCW Scholar 1. I
This lecture is an introduction to the class.
Professor Sadoway begins with important information about the course objectives, organization, and expectations, and proceehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifds to introduce the subject of solid state chemistry. 3.091 integrates thorough coverage of the principles of chemistry with various applications to engineering systems. The thesis of 3.091 is that electronic structure holds the key to understanding the world around us.
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/materials-science-and-engineering/3-091sc-introduction-to-solid-state-chemistry-fall-2010/1-introduction-to-solid-state-chemistry/MIT3_091SCF09_lec1.pdf
Monday, November 28, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
What If You Are…
When I started my career, all I ever heard was no. So many doors never opened, and the number of times I felt I wasn’t good enough were endless. But still something inside me kept trying. I kept asking myself, “How can I get better? How can I grow?” And my answer to that never changed – and It still hasn’t changed:
Keep trying.
Work harder.
Stay out of your head.
Ask for advice.
Ask for honesty.
Stay open.
Listen.
And no matter how bad the criticism or the word “no” feels, don’t stop believing in what you have to say photographically.
So, I say to all of you: What If you are good enough?
Whatever it is you want to do, you can do it. Whatever it is you want to be, you can be it. So go do it. That is your final assignment.
There is no way I could have ever anticipated what an online, live-streamed food photography workshop would have ignited in the thousands who watched this past weekend.
I couldn’t sleep a wink Sunday night after it was over, I was stirring so much; the energy, the adrenaline, replaying moments, thinking about the different scenes we created in one weekend, all in the name of food photography. But still, that wasn’t what kept my mind racing. It was all the tweets, Facebook messages, comments on this blog, and the hundreds of personal emails I received over the past 72 hours.
Many of them were thank you notes, others heartfelt words of gratitude – and some were very personal accounts of lost dreams that people have decided to reclaim and believe in again.
These words from you all have moved me beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Something changed for me personally, too. I have no idea what all of this means, but I do know one thing: we walked through a threshold this past weekend. No one knows how or when that will materialize or manifest, but I personally can’t wait to see what happens.
Thanks to all of you from the bottom of my heart for the support and kind words.
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from an email that especially touched me when I read it early Monday morning. I think it says everything:
“I turned forty years old a few months ago, and out of nowhere, someone just showed me how to find the passion I had when I was fourteen. What the hell, Penny? It’s a tremendous gift, and maybe I deserve it, maybe I don’t. But if I fail to do anything with it, then I would have answered that question.
Someone just took me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye, and laid out the simple truth: “If you’re not doing what you love, why not?” I have no answer for you, but that was the point, wasn’t it? There’s just no acceptable answer.
The last three days—and most especially the final hour of those three days—I heard my muse give me the ultimatum. And I don’t care that I’m forty; this fire within feels ageless.
I’m not going to say that you showed me the career I always wanted, because I’m not looking for a new career. What you showed me is much more than that: you showed me who I was, who I’ve always been. I never realized how much I needed to see myself again. I’ve lost so much recently, and I’m still listing the things I’ve lost in an endless parade of spreadsheets. But no one makes you list the dreams you’ve lost, the hopes you’ve abandoned, the passions you’ve pushed into the background.
So thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart—a heart much larger now because my muse has finally reclaimed her rightful space in it”
Friday, November 25, 2011
The Power of Food Photography
The Power of Food Photography from Penny De Los Santos on Vimeo.
When you think about food photography, it's not just about what's on the plate. It's about everything around it. The details, the scenes, the people, the culture, the history, the geography, and especially the moments. Food connects all of us. Food photography is the crossroad, where culture, food, and people come together.
On Assignment with Penny De Los Santos: Chef Joanne Chang, Boston, MA from Penny De Los Santos on Vimeo.
In Boston a few weeks ago the three of us fell in love with Chef Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery and Myers & Chang Restaurant. After a few meals and meeting her, we decided she needed to be a subject. Our subject. We found that her energy, grace and incredible food inspired us. By the end of our shoot we didn’t want to leave. I personally wanted to spend the rest of my days in a bowl of her wok-roasted mussels. Wow!
"On-Assignment with Penny" video: The Barbacoa Lady from Penny De Los Santos on Vimeo.
This is a video series called "On Assignment" with professional food and travel photographer Penny De Los Santos. Each short episode is an intimate look at being on a photographic assignment with Penny as she visually explores a subject, inspiring people and locations throughout the country. In this third episode Penny goes back to visit a very special subject in east LA. She takes you along as she shares a meal and recounts the story she did for Saveur Magazine with Flor and the lost art of barbacoa.
On Assignment with Penny De Los Santos: Austin Food Trailers from Penny De Los Santos on Vimeo.
This is a video series called "On Assignment" with professional food and travel photographer Penny De Los Santos. Each short episode is an intimate look at being on a photographic assignment with Penny as she visually explores a subject, inspiring people and locations throughout the country. In this second episode Penny goes to her hometown of Austin, Texas and talks about what she does to connect and feel at home again when re-enterring her life in Austin. She explores on bicycle her favorite food scene in Austin, food trailers, with a group of food blogger and twitter friends from around the country.
Blog: pennydelossantos.wordpress.com/
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
AMG Performance Media Track Monitor Shown
AMG recently showed its AMG Performance Media module for its cars. The video below shows the data that can be accessed via the APM. These include 0-100 km/h acceleration times, a G-meter to measure acceleration, braking and cornering forces, throttle and brake inputs, lap timer, engine output, tire pressures, engine temp and a history function for comparing your and the car’s performance across various tracks. For the enthusiast, monitoring these functions enables one to use the data to improve the performance of the car and driver combination.
These real-time data logging functions have been available for some time now from aftermarket companies. But by allowing this data to be accessed through the multifunction display, the interior of the AMG vehicle retains its look without having a tacky add-on mar the availability of the additional data.
By the way, the demonstration run you will see was done on an SLS AMG at the Hockenheim circuit in Germany.
Mercedes-Benz Classic Center
by Emmanuel (RSS feed) October 19th, 2011 at 8:11 pm
Vintage race cars, pre-war models, one-off custom cars. Any one of these cars would fetch a commanding price if it were to find itself at an auction. But for the technicians at the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center, finding themselves in the middle of this rich automotive history is all in a day’s work. Entering the shop as rusting hulks, these cars each have a story to tell and the people in the Center are justifiably proud when what was once a heap of rusty metal components is turned into a concours-quality masterpiece.
As you will see, what these master craftsmen strive for is perfection in all aspects of a restoration. Whether it is in the exact tolerances of the mechanical parts, or the authenticity of the look or even in the way it’s put together. Because of this goal towards authenticity, the cars that come out of the shop don’t look restored but are instead presented as timeless pieces of automotive history.
CLS63 AMG Design Process Time-Lapsed
We all know that Mercedes-Benzes are highly complex cars that are masterpieces from the minds of designers and engineers from the company’s tech centers. Unlike the sometimes overwhelming feeds on new models and spyshots that we get on a weekly basis, the design process is not as readily available. But now, a time-lapse video has hit YouTube, showing some elements of the design process, from the proverbial clean sheet of paper, to a digital rendering on a computer, which will become the basis for CAD/CAM processes that make up the steps in automobile production.
As you will see, the video is a demonstration of the design process and not an actual work in progress. For one, the computer has obviously been set up in a conference room and, as we said, some steps are apparently skipped. Some commenters have also noted some faults in the original sketch. But as AMG says, this is a demo of how a great car like the CLS is made into a reality, and for most of the world, it is highly informative.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Former VP and Apple Director Al Gore on Steve Jobs and More: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)
We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Al Gore, former Vice President, Nobel Prize winner, environmental activist, sometime VC, occasional entrepreneur and all-around busy dude.
Of course, Gore talked about a wide range of issues, from the legacy of Apple’s Steve Jobs (Gore is on the company’s board), to being an adviser to Google, to the “broken” U.S. political system, to alternative energy.
Here’s his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:
AsiaD: Jonney Shih Full Session
AsiaD: Jonney Shih Full Session
Asus chairman Jonney Shih talked with Walt Mossberg about the blurring boundaries between tablets, notebooks and smartphones at AllThingsD's AsiaD conference last month.
AsiaD: Jerry Yang Full Session
AsiaD: Jerry Yang Full Session
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Rose Tsou, who oversees the company's business interests in Asia, spoke with Walt Mossberg at AllThingsD's inaugural Asian conference last month.
Former VP and Apple Director Al Gore on Steve Jobs and More: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)
We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Al Gore, former Vice President, Nobel Prize winner, environmental activist, sometime VC, occasional entrepreneur and all-around busy dude.
Of course, Gore talked about a wide range of issues, from the legacy of Apple’s Steve Jobs (Gore is on the company’s board), to being an adviser to Google, to the “broken” U.S. political system, to alternative energy.
Here’s his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:
Sony’s Kazuo Hirai on Reviving the Iconic CE Brand and More: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)
We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.
We’ve been following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Sony’s Kazuo Hirai.
Hirai is a key figure at the Japanese consumer electronics giant, which has been struggling to revive itself after dominance turned to years of decline; he is widely considered the second in line to CEO Howard Stringer.
In an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg, the elegant exec, who was a longtime gaming exec at Sony, talked about the next-generation (but delayed) Vita game player, smartphones and Sony’s first Google Android tablets, which are now launching.
Here’s the video:
Huawei’s John Roese on the Telecom Giant That Wants to Roar: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)
We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: John Roese, head of Huawei’s North American R&D team.
While not as well known as others, the Chinese company is the world’s second-largest maker of telecommunications and networking gear. You might hear more about it soon, though, since Huawei aims to increase its annual revenue to more than $100 billion per year within the next decade, by expanding its business beyond communications service providers.
Roese is one of the execs charged with making it so by expanding in the U.S. and focusing on research.
Here’s his onstage interview with Ina Fried:
Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang on Superman Quad-Core Chip, Microsoft and Apple: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)
We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.
An early pioneer in graphics chips, the tech company is now aiming at the market for processors driving smartphones, tablets and, soon, PCs. Nvidia’s latest effort is a quad-core chip code named Kal-El, which is the Krypton moniker of Superman.
Is Huang the Man of Steel? Or, at least, can he steal some of major rival Qualcomm’s thunder?
Here’s the video of his onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:
Self-assembly and self-healing for robotic collectives
In the future, Rubenstein hopes to implement his thesis work on “Self-assembly and self-healing for robotic collectives” on the kilobots. An example of such a system is show in the video below.
Mike Rubenstein is a postdoctoral researcher from the Self-organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard. In an effort to make large swarms of robots a reality, he’s been building 1024 coin-sized robots dubbed kilobots. Challenges include making the robots low-cost and easy to assemble, recharge, reprogram and control. The final system is made with only $14 worth of parts, takes 5 minutes to assemble and can be operated in less than a minute. The open source release of all the electronics and assembly documents is expected near the end of this year.
After bording a plane with 100+ robots, Rubenstein was able to demonstrate the system at IROS.
Rezero is the name of a unique Ballbot, able to balance and drive on a single sphere.
Rezero is the name of a unique Ballbot, able to balance and drive on a single sphere. Especially designed for high acceleration, it moves in a very organic and elegant way. Rezero is the first Ballbot prototype which is able to show the full capacities of a Ballbot.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Software (Siri)
Though it comes a few days after its release, the iPhone 4S ushers in the world of iOS 5. This latest revision of Apple's mobile operating system helps to clean some of the dust off of what was starting to feel a bit dated without actually changing any fundamentals. iOS 5 introduces a slew of improvements and enhancements, some minor and some rather more major. We've already posted a particularly comprehensive iOS 5 review, so we won't blather on about it any longer here except to say it's a very solid update that will make your smartphone an even more seamless, integral part of your life.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Alexander Tsiaras: Conception to birth -- visualized
ABOUT THIS TALK
Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. (Some graphic images.)
I was offered a position as associate professor of medicine and chief of scientific visualization at Yale University in the department of medicine. And my job was to write many of the algorithms and code for NASA to do virtual surgery in preparation for the astronauts going into deep spaceflight, so they could be kept in robotic pods. One of the fascinating things about what we were actually working on is that we were seeing, using new kinds of scanning technologies, things that had just never been seen before -- I mean, not only in disease management, but also things that allowed us to see things above the body that just made you marvel.
I remember one of the first times we were looking at collagen. And your entire body, everything -- your hair, skin, bone, nails -- everything is made of collagen. And it's a kind of rope-like structure that twirls and swirls like this. And the only place that collagen changes its structure is in the cornea of your eye. In your eye, it becomes a grid formation, and therefore, it becomes transparent, as opposed to opaque. So perfectly organized a structure, it was hard not to attribute divinity to it. Because we kept on seeing this over and over and over again in different parts of the body.
One of the opportunities I had was one person was working on a really interesting micromagnetic resin imaging machine with the NIH. And what we were going to do was scan a new project on the development of the fetus from conception to birth using these kinds of new technologies. So I wrote the algorithms in code, and he built the hardware -- Paul Lauterbur -- then went onto win the Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI. I got the data. And I'm going to show you a sample of the piece, "From Conception to Birth."
(Music)
Video text: "From Conception to Birth" Oocyte Sperm Egg Inseminated 24 Hours: Baby's first division The fertilized ovum divides a few hours after fusion ... And divides anew every 12 to 15 hours. Early Embryo Yolk sack still feeding Baby. 25 Days: Heart chamber developing 32 Days: Arms & hands are developing 36 Days: Beginning of the primitive vertabrae These weeks are the period of the most rapid development of the fetus. If the fetus continues to grow at this speed for the entire nine months, it would be 1.5 tons at birth. 45 Days Embryo's heart is beating twice as fast as the mother's. 51 Days 52 Days: Developing retina, nose and fingers The fetus' continual movement in the womb is necessary for muscular and skeletal growth. 12 Weeks: Indifferent penis -- girl or boy yet to be determined 8 Months The moment of birth Delivery: the expulsion stage
(Applause)
Alexander Tsiaras: Thank you. But as you can see, when you actually start working on this data, it's pretty spectacular. And as we kept on scanning more and more, working on this project, looking at these two simple cells that have this kind of unbelievable machinery that will become the magic of you. And as we kept on working on this data, looking at small clusters of the body, these little pieces of tissue that were a trophoblast coming off of a blastocycst, all of a sudden burrowing itself into the side of the uterus, saying, "I'm here to stay." All of a sudden having conversation and communications with the estrogens, the progesterones, saying, "I'm here to stay, plant me," building this incredible trilinear fetus that becomes, within 44 days, something that you can recognize, and then at nine weeks is really kind of a little human being. The marvel of this information: How do we actually have this biological mechanism inside our body to actually see this information?
I'm going to show you something pretty unique. Here's a human heart at 25. It's just basically two strands. And like this magnificent origami, cells are developing at one million cells per second at four weeks, as it's just folding on itself. Within five weeks, you can start to see the early atrium and the early ventricles. Six weeks, these folds are now beginning with the papilla on the inside of the heart actually being able to pull down each one of those valves in your heart until you get a mature heart -- and then basically the development of the entire human body. The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go -- the complexity of these mathematical models of how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension.
Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel of how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us? It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity. Then you start to take a look at adult life. Take a look at this little tuft of capillaries. It's just a tiny sub-sub-substructure, microscopic. But basically by the time you're nine months and you're given birth, you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels inside your body. I mean, and only one mile is visible. 59,999 miles that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away. The complexity of building that within a single system is, again, beyond any comprehension or any existing mathematics today.
And that instruction set, from the brain to every other part of the body -- look at the complexity of the folding. Where does this intelligence of knowing that a fold can actually hold more information, so as you actually watch the baby's brain grow -- and this is one of the things that we're doing right now. We're actually doing the launch of two new studies of actually scanning babies' brains from the moment they're born. Every six months until they're six years old -- we're going to be doing actually to about 250 children -- watching exactly how the gyri and the sulci of the brains fold to see how this magnificent development actually turns into memories and the marvel that is us.
And it's not just our own existence, but how does the woman's body understand to have genetic structure that not only builds her own, but then has the understanding that allows her to become a walking immunological, cardiovascular system that basically is a mobile system that can actually nurture, treat this child with a kind of marvel that is beyond, again, our comprehension -- the magic that is existence, that is us?
Thank you.
(Applause)
Image-maker Alexander Tsiaras shares a powerful medical visualization, showing human development from conception to birth and beyond. (Some graphic images.)
I was offered a position as associate professor of medicine and chief of scientific visualization at Yale University in the department of medicine. And my job was to write many of the algorithms and code for NASA to do virtual surgery in preparation for the astronauts going into deep spaceflight, so they could be kept in robotic pods. One of the fascinating things about what we were actually working on is that we were seeing, using new kinds of scanning technologies, things that had just never been seen before -- I mean, not only in disease management, but also things that allowed us to see things above the body that just made you marvel.
I remember one of the first times we were looking at collagen. And your entire body, everything -- your hair, skin, bone, nails -- everything is made of collagen. And it's a kind of rope-like structure that twirls and swirls like this. And the only place that collagen changes its structure is in the cornea of your eye. In your eye, it becomes a grid formation, and therefore, it becomes transparent, as opposed to opaque. So perfectly organized a structure, it was hard not to attribute divinity to it. Because we kept on seeing this over and over and over again in different parts of the body.
One of the opportunities I had was one person was working on a really interesting micromagnetic resin imaging machine with the NIH. And what we were going to do was scan a new project on the development of the fetus from conception to birth using these kinds of new technologies. So I wrote the algorithms in code, and he built the hardware -- Paul Lauterbur -- then went onto win the Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI. I got the data. And I'm going to show you a sample of the piece, "From Conception to Birth."
(Music)
Video text: "From Conception to Birth" Oocyte Sperm Egg Inseminated 24 Hours: Baby's first division The fertilized ovum divides a few hours after fusion ... And divides anew every 12 to 15 hours. Early Embryo Yolk sack still feeding Baby. 25 Days: Heart chamber developing 32 Days: Arms & hands are developing 36 Days: Beginning of the primitive vertabrae These weeks are the period of the most rapid development of the fetus. If the fetus continues to grow at this speed for the entire nine months, it would be 1.5 tons at birth. 45 Days Embryo's heart is beating twice as fast as the mother's. 51 Days 52 Days: Developing retina, nose and fingers The fetus' continual movement in the womb is necessary for muscular and skeletal growth. 12 Weeks: Indifferent penis -- girl or boy yet to be determined 8 Months The moment of birth Delivery: the expulsion stage
(Applause)
Alexander Tsiaras: Thank you. But as you can see, when you actually start working on this data, it's pretty spectacular. And as we kept on scanning more and more, working on this project, looking at these two simple cells that have this kind of unbelievable machinery that will become the magic of you. And as we kept on working on this data, looking at small clusters of the body, these little pieces of tissue that were a trophoblast coming off of a blastocycst, all of a sudden burrowing itself into the side of the uterus, saying, "I'm here to stay." All of a sudden having conversation and communications with the estrogens, the progesterones, saying, "I'm here to stay, plant me," building this incredible trilinear fetus that becomes, within 44 days, something that you can recognize, and then at nine weeks is really kind of a little human being. The marvel of this information: How do we actually have this biological mechanism inside our body to actually see this information?
I'm going to show you something pretty unique. Here's a human heart at 25. It's just basically two strands. And like this magnificent origami, cells are developing at one million cells per second at four weeks, as it's just folding on itself. Within five weeks, you can start to see the early atrium and the early ventricles. Six weeks, these folds are now beginning with the papilla on the inside of the heart actually being able to pull down each one of those valves in your heart until you get a mature heart -- and then basically the development of the entire human body. The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go -- the complexity of these mathematical models of how these things are indeed done are beyond human comprehension.
Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel of how do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us? It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity. Then you start to take a look at adult life. Take a look at this little tuft of capillaries. It's just a tiny sub-sub-substructure, microscopic. But basically by the time you're nine months and you're given birth, you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels inside your body. I mean, and only one mile is visible. 59,999 miles that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away. The complexity of building that within a single system is, again, beyond any comprehension or any existing mathematics today.
And that instruction set, from the brain to every other part of the body -- look at the complexity of the folding. Where does this intelligence of knowing that a fold can actually hold more information, so as you actually watch the baby's brain grow -- and this is one of the things that we're doing right now. We're actually doing the launch of two new studies of actually scanning babies' brains from the moment they're born. Every six months until they're six years old -- we're going to be doing actually to about 250 children -- watching exactly how the gyri and the sulci of the brains fold to see how this magnificent development actually turns into memories and the marvel that is us.
And it's not just our own existence, but how does the woman's body understand to have genetic structure that not only builds her own, but then has the understanding that allows her to become a walking immunological, cardiovascular system that basically is a mobile system that can actually nurture, treat this child with a kind of marvel that is beyond, again, our comprehension -- the magic that is existence, that is us?
Thank you.
(Applause)
Chris Bangle says great cars are Art
ABOUT THIS TALK
American designer Chris Bangle explains his philosophy that car design is an art form in its own right, with an entertaining -- and ultimately moving -- account of the BMW Group's Deep Blue project, intended to create the SUV of the future.
What I want to talk about is, as background, is the idea that cars are art. This is actually quite meaningful to me, because car designers tend to be a little bit low on the totem pole -- we don't do coffee table books with just one lamp inside of it -- and cars are thought so much as a product that it's a little bit difficult to get into the aesthetic side under the same sort of terminology that one would discuss art. And so cars, as art, brings it into an emotional plane -- if you accept that -- that you have to deal with on the same level you would with art with a capital A.
Now at this point you're going to see a picture of Michelangelo. This is completely different than automobiles. Automobiles are self-moving things, right? Elevators are automobiles. And they're not very emotional; they solve a purpose; and certainly automobiles have been around for 100 years and have made our lives functionally a lot better in many ways; they've also been a real pain in the ass, because automobiles are really the thing we have to solve. We have to solve the pollution, we have to solve the congestion -- but that's not what interests me in this speech.
What interests me in this speech is cars. Automobiles may be what you use, but cars are what we are, in many ways. And as long as we can solve the problems of automobiles, and I believe we can, with fuel cells or hydrogen, like BMW is really hip on, and lots of other things, then I think we can look past that and try and understand why this hook is in many of us -- of this car-y-ness -- and what that means, what we can learn from it. That's what I want to get to. Cars are not a suit of clothes; cars are an avatar. Cars are an expansion of yourself: they take your thoughts, your ideas, your emotions, and they multiply it -- your anger, whatever. It's an avatar. It's a super-waldo that you happen to be inside of, and if you feel sexy, the car is sexy. And if you're full of road rage, you've got a "Chevy: Like a Rock," right?
Cars are a sculpture -- did you know this? That every car you see out there is sculpted by hand. Many people think, "Well, it's computers, and it's done by machines and stuff like that." Well, they reproduce it, but the originals are all done by hand. It's done by men and women who believe a lot in their craft. And they put that same kind of tension into the sculpting of a car that you do in a great sculpture that you would go and look at in a museum. That tension between the need to express, the need to discover, then you put something new into it, and at the same time you have bounds of craftsmanship. Rules that say, this is how you handle surfaces; this is what control is all about; this is how you show you're a master of your craft. And that tension, that discovery, that push for something new -- and at the same time, that sense of obligation to the regards of craftsmanship -- that's as strong in cars as it is in anything. We work in clay, which hasn't changed much since Michelangelo started screwing around with it, and there's a very interesting analogy to that too. Real quickly -- Michelangelo once said he's there to "discover the figure within," OK? There we go, the automobile. That was 100 years right there -- did you catch that? Between that one there, and that one there, it changed a lot didn't it? OK, it's not marketing; there's a very interesting car concept here, but the marketing part is not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about this. Why it means you have to wash a car, what is it, that sensuality you have to touch about it? That's the sculpture that goes into it. That sensuality. And it's done by men and women working just like this, making cars.
Now this little quote about sculpture from Henry Moore, I believe that that "pressure within" that Moore's talking about -- at least when it comes to cars -- comes right back to this idea of the mean. It's that will to live, that need to survive, to express itself, that comes in a car, and takes over people like me. And we tell other people, "Do this, do this, do this," until this thing comes alive. We are completely infected. And beauty can be the result of this infectiousness; it's quite wonderful. This sculpture is, of course, at the heart of all of it, and it's really what puts the craftsmanship into our cars. And it's not a whole lot different, really, when they're working like this, or when somebody works like this. It's that same kind of commitment, that same kind of beauty.
Now, now I get to the point. I want to talk about cars as art. Art, in the Platonic sense, is truth; it's beauty, and love. Now this is really where designers in car business diverge from the engineers. We don't really have a problem talking about love. We don't have a problem talking about truth or beauty in that sense. That's what we're searching for -- when we're working our craft, we are really trying to find that truth out there. We're not trying to find vanity and beauty. We're trying to find the beauty in the truth. However, engineers tend to look at things a little bit more Newtonian, instead of this quantum approach. We're dealing with irrationalisms, and we're dealing with paradoxes that we admit exist, and the engineers tend to look things a little bit more like two and two is four, and if you get 4.0 it's better, and 4.000 is even better. And that sometimes leads to bit of a divergence in why we're doing what we're doing. We've pretty much accepted the fact, though, that we are the women in the organization at BMW -- BMW is a very manly type business, -- men, men, men; it's engineers. And we're kind of the female side to that. That's OK, that's cool. You go off and be manly. We're going to be a little bit more female. Because what we're interested in is finding form that's more than just a function.
We're interested in finding beauty that's more than just an aesthetic; it's really a truth. And I think this idea of soul, as being at the heart of great cars, is very applicable. You all know it. You know a car when you've seen it, with soul. You know how strong this is. Well, this experience of love, and the experience of design, to me, are interchangeable. And now I'm coming to my story.
I discovered something about love and design through a project called Deep Blue. And first of all, you have to go with me for a second, and say, you know, you could take the word "love" out of a lot of things in our society, put the word "design" in, and it still works, like this quote here, you know. It kind of works, you know? You can understand that. It works in truisms. "All is fair in design and war." Certainly we live in a competitive society. I think this one here, there's a pop song that really describes Philippe Starck for me, you know, this is like you know, this is like puppy love, you know, this is cool right? Toothbrush, cool. It really only gets serious when you look at something like this. OK?
(Laughter)
This is one substitution that I believe all of us, in design management, are guilty of. And this idea that there is more to love, more to design, when it gets down to your neighbor, your other, it can be physical like this, and maybe in the future it will be. But right now it's in dealing with our own people, our own teams who are doing the creating. So, to my story. The idea of people-work is what we work with here, and I have to make a bond with my designers when we're creating BMWs. We have to have a shared intimacy, a shared vision -- that means we have to work as one family; we have to understand ourselves that way. There's good times; there's interesting times; and there's some stress times too. You want to do cars, you've got to go outside. You've got to do cars in the rain; you've got to do cars in the snow. That's, by the way, is a presentation we made to our board of directors. We haul their butts out in the snow, too. You want to know cars outside? Well, you've got to stand outside to do this. And because these are artists, they have very artistic temperaments. All right? Now one thing about art is, art is discovery, and art is discovering yourself through your art. Right? And one thing about cars is we're all a little bit like Pygmalion, we are completely in love with our own creations. This is one of my favorite paintings, it really describes our relationship with cars. This is sick beyond belief.
(Laughter)
But because of this, the intimacy with which we work together as a team takes on a new dimension, a new meaning. We have a shared center; we have a shared focus -- that car stays at the middle of all our relationships. And it's my job, in the competitive process, to narrow this down. I heard today about Joseph's death genes that have to go in and kill cell reproduction. You know, that's what I have to do sometimes. We start out with 10 cars; we narrow it down to five cars, down to three cars, down to two cars, down to one car, and I'm in the middle of that killing, basically. Someone's love, someone's baby. This is very difficult, and you have to have a bond with your team that permits you to do this, because their life is wrapped up in that too. They've got that gene infected in them as well, and they want that to live, more than anything else.
Well, this project, Deep Blue, put me in contact with my team in a way that I never expected, and I want to pass it on to you, because I want you to reflect on this, perhaps in your own relationships. We wanted to a do a car which was a complete leap of faith for BMW. We wanted to do a team which was so removed from the way we'd done it, that I only had a phone number that connected me to them. So, what we did was: instead of having a staff of artists that are just your wrist, we decided to free up a team of creative designers and engineers to find out what's the successor to the SUV phenomenon in America. This is 1996 we did this project. And so we sent them off with this team name, Deep Blue. Now many people know Deep Blue from IBM -- we actually stole it from them because we figured if anybody read our faxes they'd think we're talking about computers. It turned out it was quite clever because Deep Blue, in a company like BMW, has a hook -- "Deep Blue," wow, cool name. So people get wrapped up in it. And we took a team of designers, and we sent them off to America. And we gave them a budget, what we thought was a set of deliverables, a timetable, and nothing else. Like I said, I just had a phone number that connected me to them.
And a group of engineers worked in Germany, and the idea was they would work separately on this problem of what's the successor to the SUV. They would come together, compare notes. Then they would work apart, come together, and they would produce together a monumental set of diverse opinions that didn't pollute each other's ideas -- but at the same time came together and resolved the problems. Hopefully, really understand the customer at its heart, where the customer is, live with them in America. So -- sent the team off, and actually something different happened. They went other places.
(Laughter)
They disappeared, quite honestly, and all I got was postcards. Now, I got some postcards of these guys in Las Vegas, and I got some postcards of these guys in the Grand Canyon, and I got these postcards of Niagara Falls, and pretty soon they're in New York, and I don't know where else. And I'm telling myself, "This is going to be a great car, they're doing research that I've never even thought about before." Right? And they decided that instead of, like, having a studio, and six or seven apartments, it was cheaper to rent Elizabeth Taylor's ex-house in Malibu. And -- at least they told me it was her house, I guess it was at one time, she had a party there or something. But anyway, this was the house, and they all lived there. Now this is 24/7 living, half-a-dozen people who'd left their -- some had left their wives behind and families behind, and they literally lived in this house for the entire six months the project was in America, but the first three months were the most intensive. And one of the young women in the project, she was a fantastic lady, she actually built her room in the bathroom. The bathroom was so big, she built the bed over the bathtub -- it's quite fascinating.
On the other hand, I didn't know anything about this. OK? Nothing. This is all going on, and all I'm getting is postcards of these guys in Las Vegas, or whatever, saying, "Don't worry Chris, this is really going to be good." OK? So my concept of what a design studio was probably -- I wasn't up to speed on where these guys were.
However, the engineers back in Munich had taken on this kind of Newtonian solution, and they were trying to find how many cup holders can dance on the head of a pin, and, you know, these really serious questions that are confronting the modern consumer. And one was hoping that these two teams would get together, and this collusion of incredible creativity, under these incredible surroundings, and these incredibly stressed-out engineers, would create some incredible solutions. Well, what I didn't know was, and what we found out was -- these guys, they can't even like talk to each other under those conditions. You get a divergence of Newtonian and quantum thinking at that point, you have a split in your dialog that is so deep, and so far, that they cannot bring this together at all.
And so we had our first meeting, after three months, in Tiburon, which is just up the road from here -- you know Tiburon? And the idea was after the first three months of this independent research they would present it all to Dr. Goschel -- who is now my boss, and at that time he was co-mentor on the project -- and they would present their results. We would see where we were going, we would see the first indication of what could be the successive phenomenon to the SUV in America. And so I had these ideas in my head, that this is going to be great. I mean, I'm going to see so much work, it's so intense -- I know probably Las Vegas meant a lot about it, and I'm not really sure where the Grand Canyon came in either -- but somehow all this is going to come together, and I'm going to see some really great product. So we went to Tiburon, after three months, and the team had gotten together the week before, many days ahead of time. The engineers flew over, and designers got together with them, and they put their presentation together.
Well, it turns out that the engineers hadn't done anything. And they hadn't done anything because -- kind of, like in car business, engineers are there to solve problems, and we were asking them to create a problem. And the engineers were waiting for the designers to say, "This is the problem that we've created, now help us solve it." And they couldn't talk about it. So what happened was, the engineers showed up with nothing. And the engineers told the designers, "If you go in with all your stuff, we'll walk out, we'll walk right out of the project."
So I didn't know any of this, and we got a presentation that had an agenda, looked like this. There was a whole lot of dialog. We spent four hours being told all about vocabulary that needs to be built between engineers and designers. And here I'm expecting at any moment, "OK, they're going to turn the page, and I'm going to see the cars, I'm going to see the sketches, I'm going to see maybe some idea of where it's going." Dialog kept on going, with mental maps of words, and pretty soon it was becoming obvious that instead of being dazzled with brilliance, I was seriously being baffled with bullshit. And if you can imagine what this is like, to have these months of postcard indication of how great this team is working, and they're out there spending all this money, and they're learning, and they're doing all this stuff. I went fucking ballistic, right? I went nuts. You can probably remember Tiburon, it used to look like this.
After four hours of this, I stood up, and I took this team apart. I screamed at them, I yelled at them, "What the hell are you doing? You're letting me down, you're my designers, you're supposed to be the creative ones, what the hell is going on around here?" It was probably one of my better tirades, I have some good ones, but this was probably one of my better ones. And I went into these people; how could they take BMW's money, how could they have a holiday for three months and produce nothing, nothing? Because of course they didn't tell us that they had three station wagons full of drawings, model concepts, pictures -- everything I wanted, they'd locked up in the cars, because they had shown solidarity with the engineers -- and they'd decided not to show me anything, in order to give the chance for problem solving a chance to start, because they hadn't realized, of course, that they couldn't do problem creating. So we went to lunch --
(Laughter)
And I've got to tell you, this was one seriously quiet lunch. The engineers all sat at one end of the table, the designers and I sat at the other end of the table, really quiet. And I was just fucking furious, furious. OK? Probably because they had all the fun and I didn't, you know. That's what you get furious about right? And somebody asked me about Catherine, my wife, you know, did she fly out with me or something? I said, "No," and it triggered a set of thoughts about my wife. And I recalled that when Catherine and I were married, the priest gave a very nice sermon, and he said something very important. He said, "Love is not selfish," he said, "Love does not mean counting how many times I say, 'I love you.' It doesn't mean you had sex this many times this month, and it's two times less than last month, so that means you don't love me as much. Love is not selfish." And I thought about this, and I thought, "You know, I'm not showing love here. I'm seriously not showing love. I'm in the air, I'm in the air without trust. This cannot be. This cannot be that I'm expecting a certain number of sketches, and to me that's my quantification method for qualifying a team. This cannot be."
So I told them this story. I said, "Guys, I'm thinking about something here, this isn't right. I can't have a relationship with you guys based on a premise that is a quantifiable one. Based on a dictate premise that says, 'I'm a boss, you do what I say, without trust.'" I said "This can't be." Actually, we all broke down into tears, to be quite honest about it, because they still could not tell me how much frustration they had built up inside of them, not being able to show me what I wanted, and merely having to ask me to trust them that it would come. And I think we felt much closer that day, we cut a lot of strings that didn't need to be there, and we forged the concept for what real team and creativity is all about. We put the car back at the center of our thoughts, and we put love, I think, truly back into the center of the process.
By the way, that team went on to create six different concepts for the next model of what would be the proposal for the next generation after SUVs in America. One of those was the idea of a crossover coupes -- you see it downstairs, the X Coupe -- they had a lot of fun with that. It was the rendition of our motorcycle, the GS, as Carl Magnusson says, "brute-iful," as the idea of what could be a motorcycle, if you add two more wheels. And so, in conclusion, my lesson that I wanted to pass on to you, was this one here. I'm also going to steal a little quote out of "Little Prince." There's a lot to be said about trust and love, if you know that those two words are synonymous for design. I had a very, very meaningful relationship with my team that day, and it's stayed that way ever since. And I hope that you too find that there's more to design, and more towards the art of the design, than doing it yourself. It's true that the trust and the love, that makes it worthwhile.
Thanks so much.
(Applause)
作為背景介紹 我想談一下 汽車是藝術的概念 這對我意義相當大 因為汽車設計師的階級有點低 我們不設計咖啡桌邊書 裡頭只裝一個燈泡 人們過於把汽車看成產品 以致不太容易進入美學世界 放在討論藝術的範疇裡 如果你認同 汽車身為藝術 把事情提升到情感的層次 就像你對待藝術一樣
你將看到米開朗基羅的圖片 這跟汽車完全不同 汽車是自動的對吧？電梯也算汽車 不帶情感 只解決問題 汽車有百年的歷史 大幅改善許多生活的實用面 但也令人討厭 因為汽車才是我們得解決的問題 要解決污染和交通阻塞 但以上不是我想演講的
我想講的是車子本身 也許汽車是你的工具 但在很多方面 汽車就是我們 只要能解決汽車的問題 我相信燃料電池和BMW熱衷的氫燃料做得到 然後就可以看得更遠 嘗試了解許多人心中的「車癮」 它具有的意義及教誨 這是我演講的目標 汽車不是一套衣服 汽車是個化身 是你自己的延伸 增加你的所思所想 情感 憤怒等等 反正 汽車是個化身 是你能坐進去的超級機械 你若覺得自己性感 車子就性感 你若覺得暴怒 就會像--「雪佛蘭：勢如強石」
汽車就是雕像 你可知道 街上每輛車都是用手雕塑的？ 許多人都認為：用電腦做的 用機器製造的等等 機器是進行複製 不過原型全是手工製的 由自豪的工匠親手完成 雕塑汽車時的謹慎 跟你在美術館看的偉大雕塑品一樣 表現與發掘之間的張力 你加入一些新元素 同時也面對技法的限制 規定你如何處理表面 而控制正是在界限中 將技藝掌控自如 而張力 發掘 求新的動力 在此同時 對技藝的把關 在汽車設計裡也一樣嚴格 我們使用陶土雕塑 自米開朗基羅以來 這似乎未曾改變太多 有個有趣的比喻 米開朗基羅說：我只是去發掘（石頭裡）內藏的雕像 汽車的百年歷史 就刻在那裡 你看到了嗎？ 從這輛到這輛 是否改變極大？ 這不是行銷 這是個很有趣的汽車概念 但行銷不是我今天想談的 我想談的是這個 為什麼你要洗車？ 為什麼你想觸摸車子？因為那內藏著雕像，感官的愉悅 男人們女人們像如此這般打造一台車
在此引用亨利莫爾的說法「雕塑是創造自內在的壓力」 我想莫爾說的內在壓力 至少在汽車方面 其實是回到本義 生存意願 求生需求 抒發自我 融入車體 然後迷倒像我這樣的人 我們告訴別人：做這個！！！直到真的實現 車子徹底感染了我們 而這感染力 可以創造出美 真的很棒 當然雕塑才是一切的重心 讓精緻工藝展現在車子上 態度上是沒有差別的 無論是這樣工作 還是這樣工作 一樣的投入 一樣的美
說回主題 來談汽車就是藝術 柏拉圖式的說法：藝術就是真 美 愛 這點是汽車設計師與工程師的差異 我們可以談論愛 真或美 都沒問題 這些都是我們所追求的 工作時 我們嘗試尋找存在的真 並非虛榮與美麗 而是尋找真實裡的美 但工程師傾向用牛頓的角度辦事 而不是跳躍式的方法 我們面對的是非理性主義 應付存在的矛盾 但工程師看事情比較像 2+2=4,如果是4.0就更好 最好是4.0000 這有時會導致分歧 在我們為何要做這件事情上 我們大都已接受一個事實 我們是BMW組織裡的女性 BMW是非常陽剛的企業 工程師全都是男人 而設計師有點像是相對的女性 這很酷 你可以很MAN 但我們想要更女性化一點 因為我們追求的是 在功能之上的形體
我們追求美觀之上的美感 那就是「真」 好車的重點在於靈魂 這說法很恰當 你們全都看得懂 有靈魂的車子 也了解這有多麼堅固 對我而言 愛和設計兩種經驗 是通用的 現在來說說我的故事
我經由參與「深藍計畫」而發現了的愛和設計 首先 你得附和一下 你可以從社會各處找到「愛」這個字 若用「設計」取代 還是行得通 像「設計多麼美好」 似乎可行 大家都了解 老生常談也可以換 「設計和戰爭是不擇手段的」 這個社會競爭強烈 這首流行歌曲 把菲利普斯塔克形容得很貼切 就好像初戀 很酷吧？ 牙刷 酷 變成「設計你的鄰居」 事態才會變嚴重
（笑聲）
我相信「設計你的鄰居」 會讓所有設計管理的人有罪惡感 愛和設計都還有更多面的想法 一旦涉及你的鄰居或其他同類 實體上可能變成這樣 或未來會是這樣 不過現在是與自己人相處 與執行創作的人互動 回到我的故事 在公司我們以「人的工作」為態度 創造BMW 我必須跟設計師建立好關係 要有默契和共同的理念 這意謂著我們得像家人一樣 必須以這基礎理解彼此 有美好的時光 有趣味的時光 當然也會有壓力 你想設計車子 就得走出去 你得在大雨中製造車，你也得在大雪中製造車 這是我們給董事會做的簡報 我們也把他們請到雪地去 你想了解汽車的外殼？ 就得站在戶外 這群人因為都是藝術家 有著強烈的藝術性格 藝術當中有一點就是探索 藝術就是透過作品探索自我，對吧 汽車其實就是 我們都有點像畢馬龍 我們完全愛上自己的創作 這是我最喜愛的畫之一 徹底描繪出我們與汽車的關係 不可置信的病態
（笑聲）
正因為如此 工作團隊的親密關係 提升到新的層面和意義 有著共同的主旨和焦點 車子處於我們的關係之中 我的職責在競爭過程中 就是縮小範圍 今天我聽到喬瑟夫講死亡基因 功能是阻斷細胞再生 那就是我有時得做的事 從開始的十輛減到五輛 再減到三輛 兩輛 到最後的一輛 基本上我就是負責去阻斷的人 除掉某人的最愛或某人的寶貝 這很困難 而你必須跟團隊有夠強的連結 才能順利完成 因為他們的重心可能就此結束 他們內心也有戀車的基因 而他們最大的願望就是讓那基因存活
深藍計劃讓我和我的團隊 體驗不曾預期的事情 而我想跟大家分享 因為我想也許可以讓各位所屬的關係中有所藉鏡 我們想創造一輛前所未有的BMW 想要有個創新的團隊來執行 而我只有電話號碼能跟他們聯繫 與其有一批藝術家來當左右手 我們放逐有創意的設計師和工程師 去尋找美國下一代的SUV 1996年我們做這個計畫 團隊也就用「深藍」的名字 許多人都知道IBM的深藍 我們其實偷用了這個名字 因為我們發現 因為如果有人看到傳真 會誤認為是在講電腦 這點子很聰明 因為深藍 在BMW有種吸引力 深藍 好酷的名字 讓人著迷 我們找了一組設計師 送他們到美國 給一筆預算 我們期待看到實際成果 和時間表 就這樣 如之前說的 我只有電話可以聯繫他們
另一組工程師在德國工作 當時的想法是分開作業 找出下一代的SUV 他們將會集合 比對資料 然後再分開 再會合 再一起理出定案 一整套龐大的看法，彼此的想法互不影響 但同時協力解決問題 希望他們徹底了解顧客的心 了解顧客在哪？像顧客一樣生活在美國，所以我們送工作人員出國 但卻發生不一樣的事 他們去了別的地方
（笑聲）
他們消失了 真的 我只收到明信片 一些來自拉斯維加斯 一些來自大峽谷 一些來自尼加拉大瀑布 他們很快到了紐約 我不知道他們還去了哪裡 我告訴自己：這將會是一輛很棒的車 他們到我想不到的地方去做調查 是吧 他們還決定與其租一個工作室 和六七間公寓 租伊麗莎白泰勒馬里布的老家還比較便宜 他們至少告訴我那是泰勒的房子 伊麗莎白曾在那辦過宴會或什麼的 總之 他們全都住在那裡 有些人離開自己的家 有些人離開妻子家人 他們都住那兒 在美國執行計劃的六個月期間內 前三個月最緊張 其中一位年輕女組員 她很棒 甚至在浴室蓋了自己的房間 浴室很大 她把床蓋在浴缸上 真的很不可思議
另一方面 我完全不曉得 完全不曉得 我只收到明信片而已 來自拉斯維加斯等地方 寫著：「克里斯 不要擔心 一切都會很好」 我對設計工作室的想法 可能跟不上這群人
在慕尼黑的工程師團隊 依循牛頓式的辦法 他們研究有多少杯架 可以在針頭上跳舞 而且你知道 面對現代消費者 這些是很重要的問題 我盼望這兩組人馬會集合 結合驚人的創意 在良好的環境下 這些壓力大的工程師 會有一些驚人的解決問題的方式 但，最後我們發現 他們甚至無法 在美好環境下跟彼此交談 你面臨分歧的牛頓式和跳躍式思考 對話出現又深又寬的鴻溝 兩組人無法整合在一起
三個月後我們在提布倫第一次開會 你們知道 就在這附近 提布倫 有一個想法是 前三個月的分別調查作業結束後 他們要呈報給戈雪爾博士 我現在的上司 當時計劃的顧問之一 他們要呈報調查成果 我們會看到未來的路 我們將會看到未來的方向 看到美國未來SUV的初步雛形 我心中覺得一切都會很棒 我將看到許多成果 我熱切期盼著 我或許猜得出拉斯維加斯的重要 但真的不懂大峽谷有何關係 但總之所有的東西都將合而為一 我將會看到一些很棒的作品 所以三個月後我們到了提布倫 團隊在一個星期前就集合了 在開會前好幾天 工程師飛過來跟設計師會合 一起把簡報準備好
結果是工程師什麼也沒做 沒做的原因是 在汽車工業工程師只負責解決問題 而我們卻要求他們製造問題 工程師等著設計師說： 「這裡有個問題 請協助解決」 工程師又不能說 於是 工程師兩手空空來了 而且工程師告訴設計師 你若帶作品進去開會 我們就走人 離開深藍計劃
我根本不知道這件事 所以我們只得到一張這樣的議程表 對話進行很長的時間 花四小時聽工程師和設計師談 他們需要建立共同的詞彙 我在那兒期待：快進入下個主題 我將會看到各種車 草圖 我將會看到也許是未來的想法 但是對話持續著 寫著文字心智圖 很快我意識到 根本沒有很炫的創意 他們用廢話在敷衍我 如果你能想像 幾個月以來那些明信片暗示你團隊有多認真 他們在外花錢 學習 而他們只做了這樣 我狂怒 氣瘋了 你們大概記得提布倫以前的樣子
四小時之後 我站起來分開整個團隊 朝他們怒吼：「你們在幹什麼？ 你們讓我失望 你們是我的設計師 你們應該很有創意 到底發生了什麼事？」 這大概是比較好聽一點的長篇大論，我還有更猛的 這是比較好聽的之一 我怒不可遏 他們怎能拿BMW的錢 享受三個月的假期而沒有成果 當然他們沒說其實有三台旅行車 裝滿所有我想看的草圖 模型概念 圖片 但全鎖住了 因為他們跟工程師立場一致 設計師決定不讓我看任何東西 好讓工程師有機會開始工作 因為他們想不到 自己竟然不會創造問題 最後 我們去吃午餐
（笑聲）
那是頓很嚴肅安靜的午餐 工程師全坐在桌子的一端 我跟設計師坐在另一端 異常安靜 我是真的真的憤怒 也許是因為他們有享樂 而我沒有 這令人生氣不是嗎？ 這時有人問起我太太凱瑟琳 她是否有一起飛過來什麼的 我回說沒有 然後我連想起關於我太太的事 我想起跟凱瑟琳結婚時 神父佈道 說了很重要的話 他說：愛不是自私的 愛不是計算說多少次「我愛你」 不是這個月你做愛的次數 比上個月少兩次 就代表你愛我少一點 愛不是自私的 於是我領悟到 我並沒有真的展現出我的愛 我在空中卻沒有信任 這不可能 我怎能期待一些草圖 用量化的方式來評估團隊 這怎麼行
所以我說了這個故事 告訴他們：各位 我有些想法 這不對 我跟你們的關係 不能建立在成果的產量上 或建立在命令上說：我是老闆 照說的做 卻沒有信任 我說：這怎麼行 然後我們全哭了出來 真的 因為設計師還是不能告訴我 他們承受多少內心的懊惱 不能給我看我想看的 只是要求我信任他們 那天起我們的關係又更近了些 我們解除了一些不必要的束縛 打造團隊和創意的真義 把汽車放回思考的中心 我們把愛 真的放回創造過程的中心
順便一提 該團隊創造出六種不同的 關於下一世代概念車的企劃 作為美國繼SUV之後下個車款的提案 其中一個是綜合雙門轎車 樓下有展示X Coupe 團隊做得很開心 是摩托車GS的轉型 如卡爾邁奴森所說的：裸美 原本摩托車的概念 多添加了兩個輪子 最後 我想傳達的就是 我將擷取一小段《小王子》 我們可以談論信任和愛 這兩個詞都是設計的同義詞 那天我跟我團隊的關係變得意義重大 自此之後從未變過 我希望各位也能體會到 比起獨力完成 設計和設計的藝術還有更多學習之處 信任和愛真的讓一切變得值得
謝謝大家
（鼓掌）
Yves Rossy: Fly with the Jetman
ABOUT THIS TALK
Strapped to a jet-powered wing, Yves Rossy is the Jetman -- flying free, his body as the rudder, above the Swiss Alps and the Grand Canyon. After a powerful short film shows how it works, Rossy takes the TEDGlobal stage to share the experience and thrill of flying.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
(第十四堂) 色即是空～沒有行囊的壯遊(上)
北藝大第十四堂 色即是空～沒有行囊的壯遊
1.為何需要「死」? 練習認識「死」...
2.為何會「怕死」? 練習思考「接受身死」...
3.能不能「不死」? 練習理解「心永恆」...
死亡不是生命的結束,自然死亡是生命「進化」的重要機會
真正的體悟生死才是創作的動能。
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Aparna Rao: High-tech art (with a sense of humor)
ABOUT THIS TALK
Artist and TED Fellow Aparna Rao re-imagines the familiar in surprising, often humorous ways. With her collaborator Soren Pors, Rao creates high-tech art installations -- a typewriter that sends emails, a camera that tracks you through the room only to make you invisible on screen -- that put a playful spin on ordinary objects and interactions.
Hi. Today, I'm going to take you through glimpses of about eight of my projects, done in collaboration with Danish artist Soren Pors. We call ourselves Pors & Rao, and we live and work in India.
I'd like to begin with my very first object, which I call "The Uncle Phone." And it was inspired by my uncle's peculiar habit of constantly asking me to do things for him, almost like I were an extension of his body -- to turn on the lights or to bring him a glass of water, a pack of cigarettes. And as I grew up, it became worse and worse, And I started to think of it as a form of control. But of course, I could never say anything, because the uncle is a respected figure in the Indian family. And the situation that irked me and mystified me the most was his use of a landline telephone. He would hold on to the receiver and expect me to dial a number for him. And so as a response and as a gift to my uncle, I made him "The Uncle Phone." It's so long that it requires two people to use it. It's exactly the way my uncle uses a phone that's designed for one person.
But the problem is that, when I left home and went to college, I started missing his commands. And so I made him a golden typewriter through which he could dispense his commands to nephews and nieces around the world as an email. So what he had to do was take a piece of paper, roll it into the carriage, type his email or command and pull the paper out. This device would automatically send the intended person the letter as an email. So here you can see, we embedded a lot of electronics that understands all of the mechanical actions and converts it to digital. So my uncle is only dealing with a mechanical interface. And of course, the object had to be very grand and have a sense of ritualism, the way my uncle likes it.
The next work is a sound-sensitive installation that we affectionately call "The Pygmies." And we wanted to work with a notion of being surrounded by a tribe of very shy, sensitive and sweet creatures. So how it works is we have these panels, which we have on the wall, and behind them, we have these little creatures which hide. And as soon as it's silent, they sort of creep out. And if it's even more silent, they stretch their necks out. And at the slightest sound, they hide back again.
So we had these panels on three walls of a room. And we had over 500 of these little pygmies hiding behind them. So this is how it works. This is a video prototype. So when it's quiet, it's sort of coming out from behind the panels. And they hear like humans do, or real creatures do. So they get immune to sounds that scare them after awhile. And they don't react to background sounds. You'll hear a train in moment that they don't react to. (Noise) But they react to foreground sounds. You'll hear that in a second. (Whistling) So we worked very hard to make them as lifelike as possible. So each pygmy has its own behavior, psyche, mood swings, personalities and so on. So this is a very early prototype. Of course, it got much better after that. And we made them react to people, but we found that people were being quite playful and childlike with them.
This is a video installation called "The Missing Person." And we were quite intrigued with playing with the notion of invisibility. How would it be possible to experience a sense of invisibility? So we worked with a company that specializes in camera surveillance, and we asked them to develop a piece of software with us, using a camera that could look at people in the room, track them and replace one person with the background, rendering them invisible.
So I'm just going to show you a very early prototype. On the right side you can see my colleague Soren, who's actually in the space. And on the left side, you'll see the processed video where the camera has made him invisible. Soren enters the room. Pop! He goes invisible. And you can see that the camera is tracking him and erasing. It's a very early video, so we haven't yet dealt with the overlap and all of that, but that got refined pretty soon, later. So how we used it was in a room where we had a camera looking into the space, and we had one monitor, one on each wall. And as people walked into the room, they would see themselves in the monitor, except with one difference: one person was constantly invisible wherever they moved in the room.
So this is a work called "The Sun Shadow." And it was almost like a sheet of paper, like a cutout of a childlike drawing of an oil spill or a sun. And from the front, this object appeared to be very strong and robust, and from the side, it almost seemed very weak. So people would walking into the room and they'd almost ignore it, thinking it was some crap laying around. But as soon as they passed by, it would start to climb up the wall in jerky fashion. And it would get exhausted, and it would collapse every time.
(Laughter)
So this work is a caricature of an upside-down man. His head is so heavy, full of heavy thoughts, that it's sort of fallen into his hat, and his body's grown out of him almost like a plant. Well what he does is he moves around in a very drunken fashion on his head in a very unpredictable and extremely slow movement. And it's kind of constrained by that circle. Because if that circle weren't there, and the floor was very even, it would start to wander about in the space. And there's no wires. So I'll just show you an instance -- so when people enter the room, it activates this object. And it very slowly, over a few minutes, sort of painfully goes up, and then it gains momentum and it looks like it's almost about to fall. And this is an important moment, because we wanted to instill in the viewer an instinct to almost go and help, or save the subject. But it doesn't really need it, because it, again, sort of manages to pull itself up.
So this work was a real technical challenge for us, and we worked very hard, like most of our works, over years to get the mechanics right and the equilibrium and the dynamics. And it was very important for us to establish the exact moment that it would fall, because if we made it in a way that it would topple over, then it would damage itself, and if it didn't fall enough, it wouldn't instill that fatalism, or that sense of wanting to go and help it. So I'm going to show you a very quick video where we are doing a test scenario -- it's much faster. That's my colleague. He's let it go. Now he's getting nervous, so he's going to go catch it. But he doesn't need to, because it manages to lift itself up on its own.
So this is a work that we were very intrigued with, working with the aesthetic of fur embedded with thousands of tiny different sizes of fiber optics, which twinkle like the night sky. And it's at the scale of the night sky. So we wrapped this around a blob-like form, which is in the shape of a teddy bear, which was hanging from the ceiling. And the idea was to sort of contrast something very cold and distant and abstract like the universe into the familiar form of a teddy bear, which is very comforting and intimate. And the idea was that at some point you would stop looking at the form of a teddy bear and you would almost perceive it to be a hole in the space, and as if you were looking out into the twinkling night sky.
So this is the last work, and a work in progress, and it's called "Space Filler." Well imagine a small cube that's about this big standing in front of you in the middle of the room, and as you approached it, it tried to intimidate you by growing into a cube that's twice its height and four times its volume. And so this object is constantly expanding and contracting to create a dynamic with people moving around it -- almost like it were trying to conceal a secret within its seams or something.
So we work with a lot of technology, but we don't really love technology, because it gives us a lot of pain in our work over years and years. But we use it because we're interested in the way that it can help us to express the emotions and behavioral patterns in these creatures that we create. And once a creature pops into our minds, it's almost like the process of creation is to discover the way this creature really wants to exist and what form it wants to take and what way it wants to move.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Ben Kacyra: Ancient wonders captured in 3D
ABOUT THIS TALK
Ancient monuments give us clues to astonishing past civilizations -- but they're under threat from pollution, war, neglect. Ben Kacyra, who invented a groundbreaking 3D scanning system, is using his invention to scan and preserve the world's heritage in archival detail. (Watch to the end for a little demo.)
I'd like to start with a short story. It's about a little boy whose father was a history buff and who used to take him by the hand to visit the ruins of an ancient metropolis on the outskirts of their camp. They would always stop by to visit these huge winged bulls that used to guard the gates of that ancient metropolis, and the boy used to be scared of these winged bulls, but at the same time they excited him. And the dad used to use those bulls to tell the boy stories about that civilization and their work.
Let's fast-forward to the San Francisco Bay Area many decades later, where I started a technology company that brought the world its first 3D laser scanning system. Let me show you how it works. Female Voice: Long range laser scanning by sending out a pulse that's a laser beam of light. The system measures the beam's time of flight, recording the time it takes for the light to hit a surface and make its return. With two mirrors, the scanner calculates the beam's horizontal and vertical angles, giving accurate x, y, and z coordinates. The point is then recorded into a 3D visualization program. All of this happens in seconds. Ben Kacyra: You can see here, these systems are extremely fast. They collect millions of points at a time with very high accuracy and very high resolution. A surveyor with traditional survey tools would be hard-pressed to produce maybe 500 points in a whole day. These babies would be producing something like ten thousand points a second. So, as you can imagine, this was a paradigm shift in the survey and construction as well as in reality capture industry.
Approximately ten years ago, my wife and I started a foundation to do good, and right about that time, the magnificent Bamiyan Buddhas, hundred and eighty foot tall in Afghanistan, were blown up by the Taliban. They were gone in an instant. And unfortunately, there was no detailed documentation of these Buddhas. This clearly devastated me, and I couldn't help but wonder about the fate of my old friends, the winged bulls, and the fate of the many, many heritage sites all over the world. Both my wife and I were so touched by this that we decided to expand the mission of our foundation to include digital heritage preservation of world sites. We called the project CyArk, which stands for Cyber Archive.
To date, with the help of a global network of partners, we've completed close to fifty projects. Let me show you some of them: Chichen Itza, Rapa Nui -- and what you're seeing here are the cloud of points -- Babylon, Rosslyn Chapel, Pompeii, and our latest project, Mt. Rushmore, which happened to be one of our most challenging projects. As you see here, we had to develop a special rig to bring the scanner up close and personal. The results of our work in the field are used to produce media and deliverables to be used by conservators and researchers. We also produce media for dissemination to the public -- free through the CyArk website. These would be used for education, cultural tourism, etc.
What you're looking at in here is a 3D viewer that we developed that would allow the display and manipulation of [the] cloud of points in real time, cutting sections through them and extracting dimensions. This happens to be the cloud of points for Tikal. In here you see a traditional 2D architectural engineering drawing that's used for preservation, and of course we tell the stories through fly-throughs. And here, this is a fly-through the cloud of points of Tikal, and here you see it rendered and photo-textured with the photography that we take of the site. And so this is not a video. This is actual 3D points with two to three millimeter accuracy. And of course the data can be used to develop 3D models that are very accurate and very detailed. And here you're looking at a model that's extracted from the cloud of points for Stirling Castle. It's used for studies, for visualization, as well as for education.
And finally, we produce mobile apps that include narrated virtual tools. The more I got involved in the heritage field, the more it became clear to me that we are losing the sites and the stories faster than we can physically preserve them. Of course, earthquakes and all the natural phenomena -- floods, tornadoes, etc. -- take their toll. However, what occurred to me was human-caused destruction, which was not only causing a significant portion of the destruction, but actually it was accelerating. This includes arson, urban sprawl, acid rain, not to mention terrorism and wars. It was getting more and more apparent that we're fighting a losing battle. We're losing our sites and the stories, and basically we're losing a piece -- and a significant piece -- of our collective memory. Imagine us as a human race not knowing where we came from.
Luckily, in the last two or three decades, digital technologies have been developing that have helped us to develop tools that we've brought to bear in the digital preservation, in our digital preservation war. This includes, for example, the 3D laser scanning systems, ever more powerful personal computers, 3D graphics, high-definition digital photography, not to mention the Internet. Because of this accelerated pace of destruction, it became clear to us that we needed to challenge ourselves and our partners to accelerate our work. And we created a project we call the CyArk 500 Challenge -- and that is to digitally preserve 500 World Heritage Sites in five years.
We do have the technology that's scaleable, and our network of global partners has been expanding and can be expanded at a rapid rate, so we're comfortable that this task can be accomplished. However, to me, the 500 is really just the first 500. In order to sustain our work into the future, we use technology centers where we partner with local universities and colleges to take the technology to them, whereby they then can help us with digital preservation of their heritage sites, and at the same time, it gives them the technology to benefit from in the future.
Let me close with another short story. Two years ago, we were approached by a partner of ours to digitally preserve an important heritage site, a UNESCO heritage site in Uganda, the Royal Kasubi Tombs. The work was done successfully in the field, and the data was archived and publicly disseminated through the CyArk website. Last March, we received very sad news. The Royal Tombs had been destroyed by suspected arson. A few days later, we received a call: "Is the data available and can it be used for reconstruction?" Our answer, of course, was yes.
Let me leave you with a final thought. Our heritage is much more than our collective memory -- it's our collective treasure. We owe it to our children, our grandchildren and the generations we will never meet to keep it safe and to pass it along. Thank you.
(Applause) Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, I'm staying here because we wanted to demonstrate to you the power of this technology and so, while I've been speaking, you have been scanned. (Laughter) The two wizards that I have that are behind the curtain will help me bring the results on the screen. (Applause)
This is all in 3D and of course you can fly through the cloud of points. You can look at it from on top, from the ceiling. You can look from different vantage points, but I'm going to ask Doug to zoom in on an individual in the crowd, just to show the amount of detail that we can create. So you have been digitally preserved in about four minutes. (Laughter)
I'd like to thank the wizards here. We were very lucky to have two of our partners participate in this: the Historic Scotland, and the Glasgow School of Art. I'd like to also thank personally the efforts of David Mitchell, who is the Director of Conservation at Historic Scotland. David. (Applause) And Doug Pritchard, who's the Head of Visualization at the Glasgow School of Art. Let's give them a hand.
(Applause)
Thank you.
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