Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Guy-Philippe Goldstein: How cyberattacks threaten real-world peace
ABOUT THIS TALK
More and more, nations are waging attacks with cyber weapons -- silent strikes on another country's computer systems that leave behind no trace. (Think of the Stuxnet worm.) At TEDxParis, Guy-Philippe Goldstein shows how cyberattacks can leap between the digital and physical worlds to prompt armed conflict -- and how we might avert this global security hazard.
Good afternoon. If you have followed diplomatic news in the past weeks, you may have heard of a kind of crisis between China and the U.S. regarding cyberattacks against the American company Google. Many things have been said about this. Some people have called a cyberwar what may actually be just a spy operation -- and obviously, a quite mishandled one. However, this episode reveals the growing anxiety in the Western world regarding these emerging cyber weapons.
It so happens that these weapons are dangerous. They're of a new nature: they could lead the world into a digital conflict that could turn into an armed struggle. These virtual weapons can also destroy the physical world. In 1982, in the middle of the Cold War in Soviet Siberia, a pipeline exploded with a burst of 3 kilotons, the equivalent of a fourth of the Hiroshima bomb. Now we know today -- this was revealed by Thomas Reed, Ronald Reagan's former U.S. Air Force Secretary -- this explosion was actually the result of a CIA sabotage operation, in which they had managed to infiltrate the IT management systems of that pipeline.
More recently, the U.S. government revealed that in September 2008, more than 3 million people in the state of Espirito Santo in Brazil were plunged into darkness, victims of a blackmail operation from cyber pirates. Even more worrying for the Americans, in December 2008 the holiest of holies, the IT systems of CENTCOM, the central command managing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, may have been infiltrated by hackers who used these: plain but infected USB keys. And with these keys, they may have been able to get inside CENTCOM's systems, to see and hear everything, and maybe even infect some of them. As a result, the Americans take the threat very seriously. I'll quote General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who says in a report to Congress that cyberattacks could be as powerful as weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, the Americans have decided to spend over 30 billion dollars in the next five years to build up their cyberwar capabilities.
And across the world today, we see a sort of cyber arms race, with cyberwar units built up by countries like North Korea or even Iran. Yet, what you'll never hear from spokespeople from the Pentagon or the French Department of Defence is that the question isn't really who's the enemy, but actually the very nature of cyber weapons. And to understand why, we must look at how, through the ages, military technologies have maintained or destroyed world peace. For example, if we'd had TEDxParis 350 years ago, we would have talked about the military innovation of the day -- the massive Vauban-style fortifications -- and we could have predicted a period of stability in the world or in Europe. which was indeed the case in Europe between 1650 and 1750.
Similarly, if we'd had this talk 30 or 40 years ago, we would have seen how the rise of nuclear weapons, and the threat of mutually assured destruction they imply, prevents a direct fight between the two superpowers. However, if we'd had this talk 60 years ago, we would have seen how the emergence of new aircraft and tank technologies, which give the advantage to the attacker, make the Blitzkrieg doctrine very credible and thus create the possibility of war in Europe. So military technologies can influence the course of the world, can make or break world peace -- and there lies the issue with cyber weapons.
The first issue: Imagine a potential enemy announcing they're building a cyberwar unit, but only for their country's defense. Okay, but what distinguishes it from an offensive unit? It gets even more complicated when the doctrines of use become ambiguous. Just 3 years ago, both the U.S. and France were saying they were investing militarily in cyberspace, strictly to defend their IT systems. But today both countries say the best defense is to attack. And so, they're joining China, whose doctrine of use for 15 years has been both defensive and offensive.
The second issue: Your country could be under cyberattack with entire regions plunged into total darkness, and you may not even know who's attacking you. Cyber weapons have this peculiar feature: they can be used without leaving traces. This gives a tremendous advantage to the attacker, because the defender doesn't know who to fight back against. And if the defender retaliates against the wrong adversary, they risk making one more enemy and ending up diplomatically isolated. This issue isn't just theoretical.
In May 2007, Estonia was the victim of cyberattacks, that damaged its communication and banking systems. Estonia accused Russia. But NATO, though it defends Estonia, reacted very prudently. Why? Because NATO couldn't be 100% sure that the Kremlin was indeed behind these attacks. So to sum up, on the one hand, when a possible enemy announces they're building a cyberwar unit, you don't know whether it's for attack or defense. On the other hand, we know that these weapons give an advantage to attacking.
In a major article published in 1978, Professor Robert Jervis of Columbia University in New York described a model to understand how conflicts could arise. In this context, when you don't know if the potential enemy is preparing for defense or attack, and if the weapons give an advantage to attacking, then this environment is most likely to spark a conflict. This is the environment that's being created by cyber weapons today, and historically it was the environment in Europe at the onset of World War I. So cyber weapons are dangerous by nature, but in addition, they're emerging in a much more unstable environment.
If you remember the Cold War, it was a very hard game, but a stable one played only by two players, which allowed for some coordination between the two superpowers. Today we're moving to a multipolar world in which coordination is much more complicated, as we have seen at Copenhagen. And this coordination may become even trickier with the introduction of cyber weapons. Why? Because no nation knows for sure whether its neighbor is about to attack. So nations may live under the threat of what Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling called the "reciprocal fear of surprise attack," as I don't know if my neighbor is about to attack me or not -- I may never know -- so I might take the upper hand and attack first.
Just last week, in a New York Times article dated January 26, 2010, it was revealed for the first time that officials at the National Security Agency were considering the possibility of preemptive attacks in cases where the U.S. was about to be cyberattacked. And these preemptive attacks might not just remain in cyberspace. In May 2009, General Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. nuclear forces, stated that in the event of cyberattacks against the U.S., all options would be on the table.
Cyber weapons do not replace conventional or nuclear weapons -- they just add a new layer to the existing system of terror. But in doing so, they also add their own risk of triggering a conflict -- as we've just seen, a very important risk -- and a risk we may have to confront with a collective security solution which includes all of us: European allies, NATO members, our American friends and allies, our other Western allies, and maybe, by forcing their hand a little, our Russian and Chinese partners.
The information technologies Joël de Rosnay was talking about, which were historically born from military research, are today on the verge of developing an offensive capability of destruction, which could tomorrow, if we're not careful, completely destroy world peace.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Todd Kuiken: A prosthetic arm that "feels"
ABOUT THIS TALK
Physiatrist and engineer Todd Kuiken is building a prosthetic arm that connects with the human nervous system -- improving motion, control and even feeling. Onstage, patient Amanda Kitts helps demonstrate this next-gen robotic arm.
So today, I would like to talk with you about bionics, which is the popular term for the science of replacing part of a living organism with a mechatronic device, or a robot. It is essentially the stuff of life meets machine. And specifically, I'd like to talk with you about how bionics is evolving for people with arm amputations.
This is our motivation. Arm amputation causes a huge disability. I mean, the functional impairment is clear. Our hands are amazing instruments. And when you lose one, far less both, it's a lot harder to do the things we physically need to do. There's also a huge emotional impact. And actually, I spend as much of my time in clinic dealing with the emotional adjustment of patients as with the physical disability. And finally, there's a profound social impact. We talk with our hands. We greet with our hands. And we interact with the physical world with our hands. And when they're missing, it's a barrier. Arm amputation is usually caused by trauma, with things like industrial accidents, motor vehicle collisions or, very poignantly, war. There are also some children who are born without arms, called congenital limb deficiency.
Unfortunately, we don't do great with upper-limb prosthetics. There are two general types. They're called body-powered prostheses, which were invented just after the Civil War, refined in World War I and World War II. Here you see a patent for an arm in 1912. It's not a lot different than the one you see on my patient. They work by harnessing shoulder power. So when you squish your shoulders, they pull on a bicycle cable. And that bicycle cable can open or close a hand or a hook or bend an elbow. And we still use them commonly, because they're very robust and relatively simple devices.
The state of the art is what we call myoelectric prostheses. These are motorized devices that are controlled by little electrical signals from your muscle. Every time you contract a muscle, it emits a little electricity that you can record with antennae or electrodes and use that to operate the motorized prosthesis. They work pretty well for people who have just lost their hand, because your hand muscles are still there. You squeeze your hand, these muscles contract. You open it, these muscles contract. So it's intuitive, and it works pretty well.
Well how about with higher levels of amputation? Now you've lost your arm above the elbow. You're missing not only these muscles, but your hand and your elbow too. What do you do? Well our patients have to use very code-y systems of using just their arm muscles to operate robotic limbs. We have robotic limbs. There are several available on the market, and here you see a few. They contain just a hand that will open and close, a wrist rotator and an elbow. There's no other functions. If they did, how would we tell them what to do?
We built our own arm at the Rehab Institute of Chicago where we've added some wrist flexion and shoulder joints to get up to six motors, or six degrees of freedom. And we've had the opportunity to work with some very advanced arms that were funded by the U.S. military, using these prototypes, that had up to 10 different degrees of freedom including movable hands. But at the end of the day, how do we tell these robotic arms what to do? How do we control them? Well we need a neural interface, a way to connect to our nervous system or our thought processes so that it's intuitive, it's natural, like for you and I.
Well the body works by starting a motor command in your brain, going down your spinal cord, out the nerves and to your periphery. And your sensation's the exact opposite. You touch yourself, there's a stimulus that comes up those very same nerves back up to your brain. When you lose your arm, that nervous system still works. Those nerves can put out command signals. And if I tap the nerve ending on a World War II vet, he'll still feel his missing hand. So you might say, let's go to the brain and put something in the brain to record signals, or in the end of the peripheral nerve and record them there. And these are very exciting research areas, but it's really, really hard. You have to put in hundreds of microscopic wires to record from little tiny individual neurons -- ordinary fibers that put out tiny signals that are microbolts. And it's just too hard to use now and for my patients today.
So we developed a different approach. We're using a biological amplifier to amplify these nerve signals -- muscles. Muscles will amplify the nerve signals about a thousand-fold, so that we can record them from on top of the skin, like you saw earlier. So our approach is something we call targeted reinnervation. Imagine, with somebody who's lost their whole arm, we still have four major nerves that go down your arm. And we take the nerve away from your chest muscle and let these nerves grow into it. Now you think, "Close hand," and a little section of your chest contracts. You think, "Bend elbow," a different section contracts. And we can use electrodes or antennae to pick that up and tell the arm to move. That's the idea.
So this is the first man that we tried it on. His name is Jesse Sullivan. He's just a saint of a man -- 54-year-old lineman who touched the wrong wire and had both of his arms burnt so badly they had to be amputated at the shoulder. Jesse came to us at the RIC to be fit with these state-of-the-art devices, and here you see them. I'm still using that old technology with a bicycle cable on his right side. And he picks which joint he wants to move with those chin switches. On the left side he's got a modern motorized prosthesis with those three joints, and he operates little pads in his shoulder that he touches to make the arm go. And Jesse's a good crane operator, and he did okay by our standards.
He also required a revision surgery on his chest. And that gave us the opportunity to do targeted reinnervation. So my colleague, Dr. Greg Dumanian, did the surgery. First, we cut away the nerve to his own muscle, then we took the arm nerves and just kind of had them shift down onto his chest and closed him up. And after about three months, the nerves grew in a little bit and we could get a twitch. And after six months, the nerves grew in well, and you could see strong contractions. And this is what it looks like. This is what happens when Jesse thinks open and close his hand, or bend or straighten your elbow. You can see the movements on his chest, and those little hash marks are where we put our antennae, or electrodes. And I challenge anybody in the room to make their chest go like this. His brain is thinking about his arm. He has not learned how to do this with the chest. There is not a learning process. That's why it's intuitive.
So here's Jesse in our first little test with him. On the left-hand side, you see his original prosthesis, and he's using those switches to move little blocks from one box to the other. He's had that arm for about 20 months, so he's pretty good with it. On the right side, two months after we fit him with his targeted reinnervation prosthesis -- which, by the way, is the same physical arm, just programmed a little different -- you can see that he's much faster and much smoother as he moves these little blocks. And we're only able to use three of the signals at this time.
Then we had one of those little surprises in science. So we're all motivated to get motor commands to drive robotic arms. And after a few months, you touch Jesse on his chest, and he felt his missing hand. His hand sensation grew into his chest again probably because we had also taken away a lot of fat, so the skin was right down to the muscle and deinnervated, if you would, his skin. So you touch Jesse here, he feels his thumb; you touch it here, he feels his pinky. He feels light touch down to one gram of force. He feels hot, cold, sharp, dull, all in his missing hand, or both his hand and his chest, but he can attend to either. So this is really exciting for us, because now we have a portal, a portal, or a way to potentially give back sensation, so that he might feel what he touches with his prosthetic hand. Imagine sensors in the hand coming up and pressing on this new hand scan. So it was very exciting.
We've also gone on with what was initially our primary population of people with above-the-elbow amputations. And here we deinnervate, or cut the nerve away, just from little segments of muscle and leave others alone that give us our up-down signals and two others that will give us a hand open and close signal. This was one of our first patients, Chris. You see him with his original device on the left there after eight months of use, and on the right, it is two months. He's about four or five times as fast with this simple little performance metric.
All right. So one of the best parts of my job is working with really great patients who are also our research collaborators. And we're fortunate today to have Amanda Kitts come and join us. Please welcome Amanda Kitts.
(Applause)
So Amanda, would you please tell us how you lost your arm?
Amanda Kitts: Sure. In 2006, I had a car accident. And I was driving home from work, and a truck was coming the opposite direction, came over into my lane, ran over the top of my car and his axle tore my arm off.
Todd Kuiken: Okay, so after your amputation, you healed up. And you've got one of these conventional arms. Can you tell us how it worked?
AK: Well, it was a little difficult, because all I had to work with was a bicep and a tricep. So for the simple little things like picking something up, I would have to bend my elbow, and then I would have to cocontract to get it to change modes. When I did that, I had to use my bicep to get the hand to close, use my tricep to get it to open, cocontract again to get the elbow to work again.
TK: So it was a little slow?
AK: A little slow, and it was just hard to work. You had to concentrate a whole lot.
TK: Okay, so I think about nine months later that you had the targeted reinnervation surgery, took a couple months to have all the reinnervation. Then we fit her with a prosthesis. And how did that work for you?
AK: It works good. I was able to use my elbow and my hand simultaneously. I could work them just by my thoughts. So I didn't have to do any of the cocontracting and all that.
TK: A little faster?
AK: A little faster. And much more easy, much more natural.
TK: Okay, this was my goal. For 20 years, my goal was to let somebody [be] able to use their elbow and hand in an intuitive way and at the same time. And we now have over 50 patients around the world who have had this surgery, including over a dozen of our wounded warriors in the U.S. armed services. The success rate of the nerve transfers is very high. It's like 96 percent. Because we're putting a big fat nerve onto a little piece of muscle. And it provides intuitive control. Our functional testing, those little tests, all show that they're a lot quicker and a lot easier. And the most important thing is our patients have appreciated it.
So that was all very exciting. But we want to do better. There's a lot of information in those nerve signals, and we wanted to get more. You can move each finger. You can move your thumb, your wrist. Can we get more out of it? So we did some experiments where we saturated our poor patients with zillions of electrodes and then had them try to do two dozen different tasks -- from wiggling a finger to moving a whole arm to reaching for something -- and recorded this data. And then we used some algorithms that are a lot like speech recognition algorithms, called pattern recognition. See.
(Laughter)
And here you can see, on Jesse's chest, when he just tried to do three different things, you can see three different patterns. But I can't put in an electrode and say, "Go there." So we collaborated with our colleagues in University of New Brunswick, came up with this algorithm control, which Amanda can now demonstrate.
AK: So I have the elbow that goes up and down. I have the wrist rotation that goes -- and it can go all the way around. And I have the wrist flexion and extension. And I also have the hand closed and open.
TK: Thank you, Amanda. Now this is a research arm, but it's made out of commercial components from here down and a few that I've borrowed from around the world. It's about seven pounds, which is probably about what my arm would weigh if I lost it right here. Obviously, that's heavy for Amanda. And in fact, it feels even heavier, because it's not glued on the same. She's carrying all the weight through harnesses.
So the exciting part isn't so much the mechatronics, but the control. So we've developed a small microcomputer that is blinking somewhere behind her back and is operating this all by the way she trains it to use her individual muscle signals. So Amanda, when you first started using this arm, how long did it take to use it?
AK: It took just about probably three to four hours to get it to train. I had to hook it up to a computer, so I couldn't just train it anywhere. So if it stopped working, I just had to take it off. So now it's able to train with just this little piece on the back. I can wear it around. If it stops working for some reason, I can retrain it. Takes about a minute.
TK: So we're really excited, because now we're getting to a clinically practical device. And that's where our goal is -- to have something clinically pragmatic to wear. We've also had Amanda able to use some of our more advanced arms that I showed you earlier. Here's Amanda using an arm made by DEKA Research Corporation. And I believe Dean Kamen presented it at TED a few years ago. So Amanda, you can see, has really good control. It's all the pattern recognition. And it now has a hand that can do different grasps. What we do is have the patient go all the way open and think, "What hand grasp pattern do I want?" It goes into that mode, and then you can do up to five or six different hand grasps with this hand. Amanda, how many were you able to do with the DEKA arm?
AK: I was able to get four. I had the key grip, I had a chuck grip, I had a power grasp and I had a fine pinch. But my favorite one was just when the hand was open, because I work with kids, and so all the time you're clapping and singing, so I was able to do that again, which was really good.
TK: That hand's not so good for clapping.
AK: Can't clap with this one.
TK: All right. So that's exciting on where we may go with the better mechatronics, if we make them good enough to put out on the market and use in a field trial. I want you to watch closely.
(Video) Claudia: Oooooh!
TK: That's Claudia, and that was the first time she got to feel sensation through her prosthetic. She had a little sensor at the end of her prosthesis that then she rubbed over different surfaces, and she could feel different textures of sandpaper, different grits, ribbon cable, as it pushed on her reinnervated hand scan. She said that when she just ran it across the table, it felt like her finger was rocking. So that's an exciting laboratory experiment on how to give back, potentially, some skin sensation.
But here's another video that shows some of our challenges. This is Jesse, and he's squeezing a foam toy. And the harder he squeezes -- you see a little black thing in the middle that's pushing on his skin proportional to how hard he squeezes. But look at all the electrodes around it. I've got a real estate problem. You're supposed to put a bunch of these things on there, but our little motor's making all kinds of noise right next to my electrodes. So we're really challenged on what we're doing there.
The future is bright. We're excited about where we are and a lot of things we want to do. So for example, one is to get rid of my real estate problem and get better signals. We want to develop these little tiny capsules about the size of a piece of risotto that we can put into the muscles and telemeter out the EMG signals, so that it's not worrying about electrode contact. And we can have the real estate open to try more sensation feedback. We want to build a better arm. This arm -- they're always made for the 50th percentile male -- which means they're too big for five-eighths of the world. So rather than a super strong or super fast arm, we're making an arm that is -- we're starting with, the 25th percentile female -- that will have a hand that wraps around, opens all the way, two degrees of freedom in the wrist and an elbow. So it'll be the smallest and lightest and the smartest arm ever made. Once we can do it that small, it's a lot easier making them bigger.
So those are just some of our goals. And we really appreciate you all being here today. I'd like to tell you a little bit about the dark side, with yesterday's theme. So Amanda came jet-lagged, she's using the arm, and everything goes wrong. There was a computer spook, a broken wire, a converter that sparked. We took out a whole circuit in the hotel and just about put on the fire alarm. And none of those problems could I have dealt with, but I have a really bright research team. And thankfully Dr. Annie Simon was with us and worked really hard yesterday to fix it. That's science. And fortunately, it worked today.
So thank you very much.
(Applause)
Nathalie Miebach: Art made of storms
ABOUT THIS TALK
Artist Nathalie Miebach takes weather data from massive storms and turns it into complex sculptures that embody the forces of nature and time. These sculptures then become musical scores for a string quartet to play.
(Music)
What you just heard are the interactions of barometric pressure, wind and temperature readings that were recorded of Hurricane Noel in 2007. The musicians played off a three-dimensional graph of weather data like this. Every single bead, every single colored band, represents a weather element that can also be read as a musical note. I find weather extremely fascinating. Weather is an amalgam of systems that is inherently invisible to most of us. So I use sculpture and music to make it, not just visible, but also tactile and audible.
All of my work begins very simple. I extract information from a specific environment using very low-tech data collecting devices -- generally anything I can find in the hardware store. I then compare my information to the things I find on the Internet -- satellite images, weather data from weather stations as well as offshore buoys. That's both historical as well as real data. And then I compile all of these numbers on these clipboards that you see here. These clipboards are filled with numbers. And from all of these numbers, I start with only two or three variables. That begins my translation process.
My translation medium is a very simple basket. A basket is made up of horizontal and vertical elements. When I assign values to the vertical and horizontal elements, I can use the changes of those data points over time to create the form. I use natural reed, because natural reed has a lot of tension in it that I cannot fully control. That means that it is the numbers that control the form, not me. What I come up with are forms like these. These forms are completely made up of weather data or science data. Every colored bead, every colored string, represents a weather element. And together, these elements, not only construct the form, but they also reveal behavioral relationships that may not come across through a two-dimensional graph.
When you step closer, you actually see that it is indeed all made up of numbers. The vertical elements are assigned a specific hour of the day. So all the way around, you have a 24-hour timeline. But it's also used to assign a temperature range. On that grid, I can then weave the high tide readings, water temperature, air temperature and Moon phases. I also translate weather data into musical scores. And musical notation allows me a more nuanced way of translating information without compromising it.
So all of these scores are made up of weather data. Every single color, dot, every single line, is a weather element. And together, these variables construct a score. I use these scores to collaborate with musicians. This is the 1913 Trio performing one of my pieces at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Meanwhile, I use these scores as blueprints to translate into sculptural forms like this, that function still in the sense of being a three-dimensional weather visualization, but now they're embedding the visual matrix of the musical score, so it can actually be read as a musical score.
What I love about this work is that it challenges our assumptions of what kind of visual vocabulary belongs in the world of art, versus science. This piece here is read very differently depending on where you place it. You place it in an art museum, it becomes a sculpture. You place it in a science museum, it becomes a three-dimensional visualization of data. You place it in a music hall, it all of a sudden becomes a musical score. And I really like that, because the viewer is really challenged as to what visual language is part of science versus art versus music.
The other reason why I really like this is because it offers an alternative entry point into the complexity of science. And not everyone has a Ph.D. in science. So for me, that was my way into it.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies
ABOUT THIS TALK
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
Development economics expert Ha-Joon Chang dispels the myths and prejudices that have come to dominate our understanding of how the world works in a lecture at the RSA.
RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation
Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.
RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
RSA Animate - Choice
In this new RSAnimate, Professor Renata Salecl explores the paralysing anxiety and dissatisfaction surrounding limitless choice. Does the freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us? Does our preoccupation with choosing and consuming actually obstruct social change?
Taken from the RSA's free public events programme www.thersa.org/events
Creative Presentation Ideas - Good Powerpoint Presentations VIDOONS
Put cartoon animations into your next powerpoint presentation. Create a unique and memorable business powerpoint presentation. Our team of professional illustrators will turn your ideas and script into video files you can drop straight into your next presentation to give it some real "wow" factor. Not only that, we can also produce a video version of the presentation to go on your company website or YouTube channel afterwards. Where ever you are in the World we can help you create a creative presentation.
Creative business presentation ideas are our speciality so too is turning a dull series of slides into good powerpoint presentations. We can help with script ideas to make your business presentation more visual. We will storyboard your ideas so you can approve the drawings, we'll record your voice (or provide a professional voice talent for the video version if you prefer). If you're looking for business powerpoint presentation ideas or creative powerpoint ideas please contact us to find out how we can help.
Once upon a time there was a businessman. Unfortunately the businessman had a problem. His boss told him he had to give a presentation to a roomful of very important people who were coming from all over the world. His boss said, "Make sure your slides are interesting. Because afterwards we going to publish the presentation on our website so everyone can see it".
But a lot of the content was very technical. For example the businessman had to talk about "marketing", "supply", "profits" and that sort of thing. Plus he had to explain concepts like "cloud computing infrastructure" and the "intercloud" which was a bit tricky. And then he had to deliver a lot of complex information involving macro economic forecasting about the economies of Europe, China and the United States and future trends in international trade and cross border exchanges.
The businessman worked hard on his presentation. He even worked at home late into the night and at weekends. Unfortunately, all this extra work and stress meant his wife wasn't very happy with him, nor were his children (who wanted him to play in the garden). Even the dog wasn't happy because she wanted the businessman to take her for a walk. But even though he worked really hard, and got really stressed, the slides just didn't seem to be getting any more interesting.
Then the businessman found out about a video production company based near London in UK called Kersh Media that created really cool animated cartoon presentations. Instead of boring, static slides; the company would produce cartoon animations which he could insert into his PowerPoint presentation to liven it up.
Not only that; the company would also produce a video version of the presentation which could be put on the company's website afterwards.
The businessman got in touch and the company started working on it straight away. They helped him with some ideas for his script to make it more visual. Then they created some artwork and showed him a storyboard.. the businessman liked what he saw! When the businessman had approved the storyboard, they came to his office to record him reading it. They even offered to provide a professional actor to read it for him, but the businessman preferred to read it himself - which was fine.
The presentation was a great success. The animations brought everything to life, helped participants engage and encouraged discussion. One person said it was the most memorable presentation he'd ever seen. And new audiences enjoyed watching the video on the company's website and on the company's YouTube channel. The animations and visual metaphors crossed language barriers and prompted further discussion. In fact it became a bit of an online sensation.. went viral and turned up in some very unusual places. All of this made the businessman very happy. And because the businessman wasn't stressed anymore, it made his wife and family happy too. Even the dog was happy!
Another happy ending from Kersh Media. If you want to add some "wow" factor to your next presentation, or create an engaging video to help spread your messages, Please contact us today to find out how we can help.
Version Francophone
WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson
One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?
With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.
Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.
Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.
RSA Animate -- Crisis of Capitalism
In this short RSA Animate, radical sociologist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism, towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that could be responsible, just and humane. View his full lecture at the RSA.
Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain
ABOUT THIS TALK
Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It's not simply "emotion on the right, reason on the left," but something far more complex and interesting. A Best of the Web talk from RSA Animate.
In this new RSAnimate, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our 'divided brain' has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society. Taken from a lecture given by Iain McGilchrist as part of the RSA's free public events programme.
Here's the full lecture.
The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how the 'divided brain' has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
