Yossi Vardi TED Talk

The threat of blogging for males according to Yossi Vardi is a very real and does not get a sufficient amount of attention. While blogging, the overheating of a laptop on a man's lap can cause heat and may set fire to a rather essential part of the body. Other problems abound about this blogging problem, also known as local warming, including posture. Make sure that next time you are blogging with a laptop that the upper thigh area is well aired out and away from the laptop so that the prospect of local warming can be avoided.

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this speech was how crazy is this guy to go onto TED, a stage that is world renowned for its great ideas, and spit out some completely random speech about "local warming." I figured that maybe due to the name and accent, this guy may be KGB and is simply trying to infiltrate a great American idea generating system, but figured the body build just made him a little unqualified for covert operations. Then the idea came to me that Yossi really had no purpose except for an intrinsic motivation to simply entertain other people. I think this speech really showed the power of intrinsic motivation because this guy has risked anyone ever taking him seriously again just so he could entertain an audience. I can't simply delve into the mind of Yossi and figure out the real power this motivation had on his mind, it is obvious that the motivation that Dan Pink wrote a whole book about is in the driver's seat for Mr. Vardi.

I think that Yossi's talk was very entertaining mostly because of the way he went around doing the speech. I have absolutely no idea how the idea that he should come to a national conference and proceed to talk about the potential flammability of one's scrotum, but I'm glad he did because he probably gave me some ideas for my own TED talk. His speech was simply hilarious because of all the abstract examples that seemingly came out of nowhere. I knew that I couldn't miss a second of this presentation because a couple seconds later he would be off somewhere else talking about shaving as opposed to crossing one's legs. While being as rapid fire as Yossi may not be the wisest idea, I think that using a bunch of examples that are at least pretty good will keep the audience engaged since they know that they will be lost if they zone out for a couple of seconds. I know that the pastor at my church uses the exact same strategy because occasionally I zone out for like a minute and I have no idea what in the world he is talking about. Needless to say I have learned not to zone out and his sermons have kept me hooked.

The idea of local warming has absolutely no significance for this world, but the ideas from which local warming came have a great deal of importance for human success. The ideas that local warming sprouted from were simply having fun with our lives and acting to please others along with yourself. The idea of having fun is literally so important an aptitude for the future that Dan Pink has a whole chapter devoted to it just so the reader gets that having fun isn't only enjoyable but in other ways can be productive. While Yossi wasn't exactly productive in his fun, there are plenty of other ways in which fun can be productive especially in the workplace. The loosening of the mood that laughter brings can really benefit businesses by easing tensions, connecting different sides of an argument, and bringing more kindly interactions. How far though can having fun and jesting go without becoming a distraction? I think that as long it stays away from being offensive or overused a couple of jokes or maybe a quick break for a game of hockey would be beneficial to companies and other workplaces. Dan Pink even brought up allowing computer games in the office because it extends creativity and boosts performance. Well, I just tried that out and played a couple of minutes of Dolphin Olympics and I feel a lot better right now about writing so I don't doubt the power of having fun. The act of pleasing others was another idea that gave birth to local warming. I am 100% sure he went up there to please others with his idea of the dangers of blogging because what other reason would he have to go up there and maybe strip himself of his credibility? There is no other reason, and in the process of entertaining the audience it seemed as though he himself was having a great time for himself also. The benefits in attending to others is limitless not only for others but also for one's self. I guarantee that in business the employee who is constantly serving his boss's needs and wants without hesitation will get the pay raise or promotion much faster than the guy who sits in his office and doesn't help at all. It is kind of like the catchy design of the Coke commercial where the lyrics of the song are, "You get a little love and it all comes back to you." Even the point that Mr. Vardi was trying to get across was directed at the safety of the audience, thereby helping them.

It may seem hard to believe, but a talk on why one shouldn't blog because of the flammability risk may actually have reinforced a couple of aspects that I never would have thought of.

Dave Eggers TED Talk

A pirate store, tutoring and time traveling. Dave Eggers is able to use a very right brained approach and pull together three seemingly unrelated ideas and produce a pretty good speech. This off the bat relates to Dan Pink's ideas, but the idea of intrinsic motivation is really the driving force of what Dave Eggers is trying to get across. He works at a pirate shop tutoring center and wants kids to get the one on one help they deserve in schooling that they simply can not get at schools. He and a bunch of other tutors sit down and help kids with their schoolwork for free because they see a problem in the schooling system and want to try to solve this problem. This program is especially helpful to these specific kids because it is a poorer section of town and their homes tend to not be the best places to do homework.

Dave Eggers speaking style was not particularly effective I thought, and it is too bad because the topic he was trying to get across was an important one for people to hear. I personally felt as though he dragged on with the same subjects for too long and probably should have put a couple more examples in there and kept the audience on their toes. When the speaker changes subjects somewhat frequently without getting off topic it is very effective because it keeps the listeners on their toes and still gets the point across. With Eggers he must have talked about his own little pirate shop with a tutoring center for half of the time, and I felt myself dosing off at times. The humor though did get me a little more engaged because who can't pay attention to a tutoring center that doubles as a time travel specialty shop or a super hero supply vendor.

I think that this easy to access one on one tutoring is a really good idea because as class sizes continue to grow with budget cuts it seems as though students get less and less attention. Our school's offerings such as writing lab and spanish lab are good and I think are on the right track to what Eggers is talking about. Sometimes though when I go to writing lab it is like the teachers are just trying to hustle me out of there instead of really trying to help. I have never been to spanish lab so I can't call that out, but I think it is better to hold this kind of thing after school because then you will find the tutors that really want to stay and help the kids while those that don't can just leave and do something else. I personally feel like I learn a lot better one on one with a teacher because all of their attention and effort is focused on you and the teachers seem to get more involved. I think maybe in our five day a week classes we should have a day every two weeks that is just reserved for one on one help with students from the teacher, and those that need or want help can have easy access to it.

I think that the world really should learn from Dave Eggers's talk but widen their view on the picture he painted. Most of the time the best help comes from a one on one talk rather than in a group. Whether that be how to hold a rifle better in the Army or how to better start a campfire in Boy Scouts, I feel as though more one on one attention needs to be given. Plus, when the original instructor is not available, people like Dave Eggers need to be willing to step up and volunteer their efforts to help these people.

Bjorn Lomborg TED Talk

Changing the world. This is what all people dream about in some way or another but very little succeed at actually doing. Bjorn Lomborg wants to give people the path to changing the world in the best ways possible, and compiled a list of the world's ten top problems. These problems included climate change, corruption, malnutrition, and disease among others. The Copenhagen Consensus, a program that Lomborg heads, used many world renowned economists to then research the benefits and costs of solving these different problems and came out with a list ranking the problems that should be solved. At the bottom of the list was climate change because of the high cost and low reward of solving this problem compared to other problems. Malnutrition was the second highest on the list because many millions of people simply don't get enough food or the food they get just does not have enough in it to sustain, but if this problem was focused on it would help many people and cost relatively little. The top solution on the list was the prevention of HIV/AIDS because if we focused on preventing HIV/AIDS we may prevent 28 million cases of the disease with only 27 billion dollars invested. This problem also topped the list since it is such a severe problem in Africa and that the benefits of the investment in prevention could reach 40 times as high as 27 billion dollars.

I thought of all of the TED talks I have done so far that this talk was definitely the best talk because while most of the time in the other videos was spent identifying the problem and very little time on giving a solution, most of the time in Lomborg's talk was directed at the solution. He wants people to use the information that he uses and share the ideas to have direct change on the world rather than having the listeners go around and simply regurgitate the problem. His proposed reforms will probably have a greater effect on listeners because they now know what to do.

I had to agree with a lot of the stuff he was talking about because the facts he laid out seemed very valid and very convincing. One thing that I questioned though was why clean water wasn't near the top of the list. Water is the most abundant and most essential resource on the planet and really would take steps in solving Bjorn's two top problems of malnutrition and preventing disease. A very large number of diseases are carried in the unclean water of third world countries but to nourish themselves the citizens of these nations must drink the water. If we make all of the water that people have to drink in this world it would probably have a profound effect on the disease totals and also more people could check that off of the list of their necessities to survive. I can't imagine it would cost very much to solve the problem of unclean water too because water is extremely abundant and there are plenty of ways in use in America today which filter large quantities of water, and due to the abundance prices are low.

Bjorn's speaking style was only mildly entertaining, but he found the necessary information to put in his TED talk that made it good. Other than a few pieces of humor, the talk was almost all facts and information, yet the information was interesting enough to keep people engaged. I think that 99% of the time to make a good talk one must entertain his audience so that they stay engaged, but the other 1% comes if the information shared is engaging enough in itself.

Bjorn Lomborg's TED talk really challenged people to go out into the world and change it, just like everyone dreams of doing. He gave the necessary information to change the world and the listeners of this TED talk may just be inspired to do so.

Keith Barry TED Talk

Keith Barry with his acts of brain magic completely blew my mind away. From knowing under what cup a spike is under to driving a car while blind folded, Keith Barry's talk gave me a lot to think about. He started  by playing a trick on the audience by entangling his arms and then escaping from the knot that he had put his hands in. He then showed a video of himself driving a very long stretch of road blind folded and with a passenger that is scared out of her mind. This alone would have put me over the edge on how amazing this guy was, but he then went on to control people's nervous system, shatter a coke bottle with nothing more than a little shard of glass and risk maiming another man's hand on what seemed like guess work.

I have no idea how he did any of these outrageous acts, and the fact of the matter is his brain was working at a higher level than mine when he performed these acts. These acts in which he seemingly performed some outrageous magic were probably all staged in some way, but his thinking beat mine and he got what he wanted in confusing his audience. This story is true really throughout life, with the fact that whoever is more mentally prepared for a task is probably going to succeed over the person that is not as much mentally prepared. Whether it be trying to get a job in a high paying job, game 7 of the Stanley Cup, or being ranked first in the high school class the better prepared mentally wins. While I have no idea whether or not Keith Barry wanted to get this point across I have no idea, but his TED talk sure did give a lot of examples in which the better mind wins.

I think that there should be more of an emphasis on the mental effort in students rather than how well they perform especially at a young age. Many kids are ruled out of advanced classes or other privileges because they are not able to pick up material as quickly as some other students. The problem with this is if those kids are giving mental effort and do pick up this material they may deserve to be in those advanced classes. This goes back to Keith Barry's demonstration where the person with the harder thinking mind wins. These students may even be better off than some of the kids in those advanced classes where the effort really is not there, and therefore there is a flaw in the system. Many development organizations for sports actually run their selection processes in this way, selecting the kids that give the most effort. They know what they are talking about, but I don't think that the school really do.

Keith Barry's demonstration style was quite fast and entertaining. He got a lot done in less than 20 minutes, seemingly never stopping for a break, and really compelled me with what he was doing. All of the demonstrations that Barry did were very interesting and kept me hooked for the whole entire time. His commentary during these demonstrations was also very impressive because it seemed as though he was speaking exactly what the audience wanted to hear somehow. He also made what he did pretty funny and the humor added just another element to his great presentation.

I think that I need to stay mentally ahead of others in the future in order to succeed because in business and everything it seems like everything is turning into the competition. It seems as though only those that stay mentally in the game are the ones that are going to have a chance at winning in the game of life. Take Charlie Sheen for example. His brain is somewhere in orbit while his next show is in Detroit, and he is obviously not in the greatest place in his life right now. There is just nowhere for people like that to go, but the people that win the mental battle just like Keith Barry did in his TED talk will end up on top.

Clay Shirky TED Talk

Clay Shirky's TED Talk on cognitive surplus was pretty interesting, but brought up some questions in my mind. Shirky talked about how easy it is to access information and how this easy access to information can change the world. He used Ushahidi, a software developed by a couple of Kenyan citizens to monitor corruption in elections, to explain all of the upside to his cognitive surplus. A lady in Kenya simply decided to track all of the corruption in one of her government's elections, but realized that she could not track all of the information if she read new information all day. A couple of software engineers though told the woman that they could pool information from a variety of sources and share this pool with the world. This website worked and the software has expanded to many applications such as tracking snow accumulation in Washington D.C. The upside to this is that information is open to everyone in the world and can easily be spread, all of this with a bunch of volunteers.

Shirky is trying to show how great cognitive surplus is and trying to get people to expand its use. I agree with him that cognitive surplus is great at the point it is and has the potential for maybe a little bit of expansion. Although I don't think that cognitive surplus can expand all that much because there are so many jobs that are dependent on supplying information to people. These volunteers only volunteer to contribute to the source of cognitive surplus because they have another source of income and have an income. But people will not contribute their skills to the site of cognitive surplus if they have no other source of income. For example, the head mechanic at a Midas might contribute information to a do-it-yourself website, but when everyone does the work themselves and he is forced out of the job that mechanic won't be overly eager to contribute more to that website.

Plus, just think how easy this information would be to exploit. Cyber terrorists try to find sources of dependency to take down and mess up. If we are fully reliant on open source information and it is truly open source, it would be pretty simple to take down the system and put our society into chaos.

I agree with Clay Shirky in the regard that cognitive surplus is great, easy to access information is a nice luxury. I think though it has gone far enough, and that it really does not have much potential to expand.

Dan Pink Motivation TED Talk

The motivation of human instinct to solve tasks is getting a new look, and maybe starting to take a front seat as time rolls along. The old motivations of incentives and threats may decrease efficiency compared to the motivation of human instinct, and people around the world are starting to take notice. One of the people taking notice is Dan Pink, whose TED talk centered around this concept of the natural motivation of humans to solve tasks on their own.

Experiments and other examples of Dan Pink really point toward the fact that the motivation that is used in business around the world could be improved to increase production. For example, professor Sam Glucksberg of Princeton set a puzzle the candle problem, as shown below, in front of a group of participants in a study of natural human motivation and incentives. One half of the group was given an incentive of $5-20 for performing at a high pace in the task, and the other half was given no incentive. It took the group with the reward on the line an average of three and a half minutes longer to complete the candle problem than the group that had no incentive, which goes against what the motivational strategy in our current society is. This study simply proves the fact that natural human motivation can carry one farther than the motivation which drives our society right now.

Dan Pink while giving his presentation rattled off facts quickly and didn't stray much from the topic. He didn't seem to use very many tactics other than to stay on topic and throw in the occasional joke. I think he was lucky he had such an interesting topic that he could do this though, because other TED speakers had to throw a few creative techniques into their speech just to keep the audience engaged.

What I think might be a must in all truly great presentations is at least a little bit of humor. It seems as though all of the TED talks I have heard so far have tried to throw in some humor or other form of entertainment to keep their speech going. While it is consistently a must, if the form of entertainment is creative it has a great effect on the direction of the presentation because the audience likes to hear something funny or see something cool, because it gives them more energy and willingness to take in what they hear from the speaker.

What I don't get about this new form of motivation from Dan Pink is how this form of motivation will replace the motivation that comes from incentives and threats. While this natural human motivation may be effective when it comes to small tasks, people will not be too happy about giving up their salaries to be a little bit more effective. In the workforce, people in general work because of their pay. This salary is an incentive that motivates most people because without salary there would be nothing for people to survive off of, at least without robbery. For Dan Pink's new form of motivation to truly come to fruition throughout corporate America, I believe we would have to shift to a moneyless society. At the same time, this would probably mean embracing communism, and communism is a very difficult type of society to embrace. This means that a widespread embrace of natural motivation is almost impossible in my mind. I do think though that it can be used very effectively in smaller, more controlled environments where salary is not an issue.

Hans Rosling Poverty TED Talk

When Hans Rosling stepped on stage he stepped up with a purpose, and that was to show the world that the impoverished nations of the world are not hopeless. When he finished his TED talk, I was thoroughly convinced of this point. The hope that these third world nations are showing in recent trends is actually quite incredible, and the chance they have to level the playing field with big industrial nations may not be so much of a fantasy anymore.

The trends that Hans Rosling showed for the impoverished nations of this world is that they may be actually be progressing at a faster rate than industrial nations are now. The infant mortality rate for countries with lesser income is decreasing to the levels that the elite nations of this world are at, and the rates are lower for the impoverished nations per capita than at the time many elite nations were at that same per capita. This may actually mean that the countries that the elite nations of the world such as the United States and Great Britain write off may actually be the ones that have the potential to overtake them. Whether this rate keeps the same trend or not is still in question, but the gist of the matter is that third world nations are for real and have a shot to be great just like developed nations.

Hans Rosling does a great job of analyzing data and presenting it in a complex form that people still can comprehend. He compiled data from a span of over 150 years to pour into his presentation, and still used all of the complex parts of it to explain the point that the impoverished nations of the world are not given enough credit. He uses a program which tracks data and displays it in a bar graph, and in turn displays this program and other graphics in a power point format. This is effective in his presentation because it doesn't make the audience simply comprehend the data by hearing it, but allows them also to look at the data. Yet another tactic Hans uses in his presentation is his sense of humor. Humor it seems is a must in presentations because it is nearly impossible to keep an audience focused on the pure explanation of the point that is trying to be made for an extended period of time. One has to reel them back in at points, which is where humor can come into play.

While this speech I don't think means overly much for education, it means a lot for the world. The inequalities of this world are quite obvious and pretty easy to discriminate against. The world needs to accept the fact that people are people no matter how poor, and that no matter how far below the poverty level these people are they still have the same potential as the people who have it all.