Mikko Hypponen: Fighting viruses, defending the net

 

It's been 25 years since the first PC virus (Brain A) hit the net, and what was once an annoyance has become a sophisticated tool for crime and espionage. Computer security expert Mikko Hyppönen tells us how we can stop these new viruses from threatening the internet as we know it.

 

Speakers Mikko Hypponen: Cybersecurity expert

As computer access expands, Mikko Hypponen asks: What's the next killer virus, and will the world be able to cope with it?

Why you should listen to him:

The chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation in Finland, Mikko Hypponen has led his team through some of the largest computer virus outbreaks in history. His team took down the world-wide network used by the Sobig.F worm. He was the first to warn the world about the Sasser outbreak, and he has done classified briefings on the operation of the Stuxnet worm -- a hugely complex worm designed to sabotage Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities.
As a few hundred million more Internet users join the web from India and China and elsewhere, and as governments and corporations become more sophisticated at using viruses as weapons, Hypponen asks, what's next? Who will be at the front defending the world’s networks from malicious software? His work offers a peek into the post-Stuxnet future.

He says: "It's more than unsettling to realize there are large companies out there developing backdoors, exploits and trojans."

Read his open-season Q&A on Reddit:"My TEDTalk was just posted. Ask me anything." >>

"Hypponen believes that malware attacks will increasingly be directed at social networks."

The Inquirer

Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities.

Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.

Speakers Geoffrey West: Theorist

Physicist Geoffrey West believes that complex systems from organisms to cities are in many ways governed by simple laws -- laws that can be discovered and analyzed.

Why you should listen to him:

Trained as a theoretical physicist, Geoffrey West has turned his analytical mind toward the inner workings of more concrete things, like ... animals. In a paper for Science in 1997, he and his team uncovered what he sees as a surprisingly universal law of biology — the way in which heart rate, size and energy consumption are related, consistently, across most living animals. (Though not all animals: “There are always going to be people who say, ‘What about the crayfish?’ " he says. “Well, what about it? Every fundamental law has exceptions. But you still need the law or else all you have is observations that don’t make sense.")
A past president of the multidisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (after decades working  in high-energy physics at Los Alamos and Stanford), West now studies the behavior and development of cities. In his newest work, he proposes that one simple number, population, can predict a stunning array of details about any city, from crime rate to economic activity. It's all about the plumbing, he says, the infrastructure that powers growth or dysfunction. His next target for study: corporations.

He says: "Focusing on the differences [between cities] misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what."

"His gifts are precisely what's needed to encourage scientific disciplines to mingle so freely. "

Murray Gell-Mann, Time

A robot that flies like a bird

 

Plenty of robots can fly -- but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings.

 

 

 

Speakers Markus Fischer: Designer

Markus Fischer led the team at Festo that developed the first ultralight artificial bird capable of flying like a real bird.

Why you should listen to him:

One of the oldest dreams of mankind is to fly like a bird. Many, from Leonardo da Vinci to contemporary research teams, tried to crack the "code" for the flight of birds, unsuccessfully. Until in 2011 the engineers of the Bionic Learning Network established by Festo, a German technology company, developed a flight model of an artificial bird that's capable of taking off and rising in the air by means of its flapping wings alone. It's called SmartBird. Markus Fischer is Festo's head of corporate design, where he's responsible for a wide array of initiatives. He established the Bionic Learning Network in 2006.
SmartBird is inspired by the herring gull. The wings not only beat up and down but twist like those of a real bird -- and seeing it fly leaves no doubt: it's a perfect technical imitation of the natural model, just bigger. (Even birds think so.) Its wingspan is almost two meters, while its carbon-fiber structure weighs only 450 grams.

Fischer says: "We learned from the birds how to move the wings, but also the need to be very energy efficient."

"[Fischer's team] has created robot penguins and jellyfish in the search for more efficient designs for industrial automation. But of all their nature-inspired creation, Smartbird comes the closest of all to the real thing."

Wall Street Daily

Melinda French Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola

 

Melinda Gates makes a provocative case for nonprofits taking a cue from corporations such as Coca-Cola, whose plugged-in, global network of marketers and distributors ensures that every remote village wants -- and can get -- a Coke.

 

 

Speakers Melinda French Gates: Philanthropist

Melinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Why you should listen to her:

As co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda French Gates helps shape and approve foundation strategies, review results, advocate for foundation issues and set the overall direction of the organization.

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people's health with vaccines and other life-saving tools and giving them a chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to dramatically improve education so that all young people have the opportunity to reach their full potential. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Nicholas Christakis: How social networks predict epidemics

 

 

Speakers Nicholas Christakis: Physician, social scientist

Nicholas Christakis explores how the large-scale, face-to-face social networks in which we are embedded affect our lives, and what we can do to take advantage of this fact

Why you should listen to him:

People aren't merely social animals in the usual sense, for we don't just live in groups. We live in networks -- and we have done so ever since we emerged from the African savannah. Via intricately branching paths tracing out cascading family connections, friendship ties, and work relationships, we are interconnected to hundreds or even thousands of specific people, most of whom we do not know. We affect them and they affect us.

Nicholas Christakis' work examines the biological, psychological, sociological, and mathematical rules that govern how we form these social networks, and the rules that govern how they shape our lives. His work shows how phenomena as diverse as obesity, smoking, emotions, ideas, germs, and altruism can spread through our social ties, and how genes can partially underlie our creation of social ties to begin with. His work also sheds light on how we might take advantage of an understanding of social networks to make the world a better place.

At Harvard, Christakis is a Professor of Medicine, Health Care Policy, and Sociology, and he directs a diverse research group investigating social networks. His popular undergraduate course (Life and Death in the US) is podcast [available on itunes]. His book, Connected, co-authored with James H. Fowler, appeared in 2009, and has been translated into nearly 20 languages. In 2009, he was named by Time magazine to its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and also byForeign Policy magazine to its list of 100 top global thinkers.

"'Connected' is [in the category of] works of brilliant originality that stimulate and enlighten and can sometimes even change the way we understand the world"

NY Times Book Review

Carl Safina: The oil spill's unseen culprits, victims

The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.

 

Carl Safina's writing explores the scientific, moral and social dimensions of our relationship with nature.

Why you should listen to him:

Carl Safina explores how the ocean is changing, and what those changes mean for wildlife and for people. In the 1990s he helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write US federal fisheries law, work toward international conservation of tunas, sharks and other fishes, and achieve passage of a UN global fisheries treaty.
Safina is author of five books, and more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including featured work in National Geographic and The New York Times. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, was chosen a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second, Eye of the Albatross, won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and was chosen by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine as the year's best book for communicating science.

"Safina’s encyclopedic knowledge and spirited prose provide a stunningly intimate portrait of an environment."

Publishers Weekly

Ellen Gustafson: Obesity + Hunger = 1 global food issue

 

1 billion hungry , 1 billion overweight

 

 

 

Speakers Ellen Gustafson: Social entrepreneur

Co-founder of FEED and creator of The 30 Project, Ellen Gustafson is trying to change the way the world eats.

Why you should listen to her:

Ellen Gustafson co-founded FEED Projects in 2007, creating an immensely popular bag whose profits are donated to the UN World Food Program (WFP). As a former employee of the WFP, she supported their mission to provide school lunches in developing countries so that children could receive both the nutrition and education they need. FEED has also created special bags and a new fund to address the crisis in Haiti, helping the children they once fed at school to rebuild their schools.
At TEDxEast in May 2010, Gustafson launched The 30 Project -- an effort to address the world’s hunger and obesity problems as a holistic global food issue. In her new venture, she hopes to stimulate a movement that will change our food and agricultural systems over the next 30 years so that healthy, balanced meals are available to all. Before her efforts to fix the world’s food issues, Gustafson’s primary concern was international security. She wrote and edited pieces on international terrorism for ABC and was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Children around the world are suffering from malnutrition, despite there being enough food for everyone. "

Ellen Gustafson

 

 

What is the 30 Project

The 30 Project is a new way to understand and change the food system.

In the past 30 years, our food system has changed significantly, and today, there is more hunger, more obesity and less healthy agricultural production around the world than ever before.

Changes that started around 1980, precipitated by the consolidation of US agriculture, a decrease in US agricultural aid abroad, and the creation of new and cheap processed foods (like high-fructose corn syrup), have led to our current global landscape of 1 billion hungry and 1 billion overweight.

By a taking a 30-year look back we can see the trajectory of how we got to where we are now and, we believe, that if we can a 30-year look forward, we can envision a global food system that provides healthy, affordable food for people around the world.

The 30 Project will bring together key organizations and activists working around the world on addressing hunger, obesity, and agriculture issues to talk about their visions for a 30-year food system. Many of the best anti-hunger and anti-obesity organizations have been so focused on their important work, that they have not been able to work together on common challenges. The 30 Project will be the table that brings the best people together to work towards creating a truly healthy and sustainable global food system.

http://www.30project.org/

Clay Shirky: The world has over a trillion hours a year of free time to commit to shared projects

 

The world has over a trillion hours a year of free time to commit to shared projects. How cognitive surplus will change the world.

 

 

Clay Shirky: Social media theorist

Clay Shirky believes that new technologies enabling loose ­collaboration — and taking advantage of “spare” brainpower — will change the way society works.

Why you should listen to him:

Clay Shirky's work focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting. In his writings and speeches he has argued that "a group is its own worst enemy." His clients have included Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC.

Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches a course named “Social Weather.” He’s the author of Here Comes Everybody, about the power of crowds, and the brand-new Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

"Shirky is one of the handful of people with justifiable claim to the digerati moniker. He's become a consistently prescient voice on networks, social software, and technology's effects on society."

WIRED

Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile , the Gross National Happiness index

 

When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count.

 

 

Speakers Chip Conley: CEO, author

Chip Conley creates joyful hotels, where he hopes his employees, customers and investors alike can realize their full potential. His books share that philosophy with the wider world.

Why you should listen to him:

In 1987, at the age of 26 and seeking a little "joy of life," Chip Conley founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality by transforming a small motel in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district into the now-legendary Phoenix. Today, Joie de Vivre operates nearly 40 unique hotels across California, each built on an innovative design formula that inspires guests to experience an "identity refreshment" during their visits.

During the dotcom bust in 2001, Conley found himself in the self-help section of the bookstore, where he became reacquainted with one of the most famous theories of human behavior -- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which separates human desires into five ascending levels, from base needs such as eating to the highest goal of self-actualization, characterized by the full realization and achievement of one’s potential. Influenced by Maslow's pyramid, Conleyrevamped his business model to focus on the intangible, higher needs of his company's three main constituencies -- employees, customers and investors. He credits this shift for helping Joie de Vivre triple its annual revenues between 2001 and 2008.

Conley has written three books, including his most recent, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, and is at work on two new ones, Emotional Equations and PEAK Leadership. He consults widely on transformative enterprises, corporate social responsibility and creative business development. He traveled to Bhutan last year to study its Gross National Happiness index, the country's unique method of measuring success and its citizens' quality of life.

"Chip Conley is that rare breed of CEO who possesses both a brilliant business mind and a very big heart. He’s a true role model for anyone who wants to lead."

Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco

Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?

 

 

Nuclear power: the energy crisis has even die-hard environmentalists reconsidering it. In this first-ever TED debate, Stewart Brand and Mark Z. Jacobson square off over the pros and cons. A discussion that'll make you think -- and might even change your mind.

 

 

Stewart Brand: Futurist

Since the counterculture Sixties, Stewart Brand has been a critical thinker and innovator who helped lay the foundations of our internetworked world.

Why you should listen to him:

Founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of the Well and the Long Now Foundation, writer, editor and game designer, Stewart Brand has helped to define the collaborative, data-sharing, forward-thinking world we live in now.
Since the 1960s, he has maintained that -- given access to the information we need -- humanity can make the world a better place. One of his early accomplishments: helping to persuade NASA to release the first photo of the Earth from space. The iconic Big Blue Marble became the cover for his Whole Earth Catalog, a massive compendium of resources and facts he thought people might like to know. And we did: the 1972 edition sold 1.5 million copies. In 1987, he wrote The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT; in 1994, How Buildings Learn.
Currently Brand is working with computer scientist Danny Hillis to build the Clock of the Long Now, a 10,000-year timepiece; his Long Now Foundation also runs a number of spinoff projects, including the Rosetta Project, cataloguing the world's languages, and the Long Bets website. He's also busy with the Global Business Network (part of the Monitor Group), helping businesses plan for the near and way-far future.

 

 

Mark Z. Jacobson: Civil and environmental engineer

At Stanford, Mark Z. Jacobson uses numerical models to study the effects of energy systems and vehicles on climate and air pollution, and to analyze renewable energy resources.

Why you should listen to him:

Mark Z. Jacobson's research looks at the causes and effects of vastly complex processes -- the physics and chemistry of our atmosphere. He and his team at Stanford have pioneered new atmospheric research and analysis techniques that give a picture of the current state of our atmosphere, show what pollution from aerosols, ethanol, agriculture, and ultraviolet radiation are doing to it, and predict how these might affect the climate.

Jacobson developed the first interactive model showing the combined effects of gas, aerosols and radiative air-pollution on weather systems. He also discovered that black carbon -- the main component of soot particles -- may be the second-leading cause of global warming after carbon dioxide.

Jacobson's group developed the world's first wind map based on data at the height of modern wind turbines -- serving as the scientific justification for major wind farm proposals in recent years.

John Underkoffler points to the future of UI

 

Minority Report science adviser and inventor John Underkoffler demos g-speak -- the real-life version of the film's eye-popping, tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface. Is this how tomorrow's computers will be controlled?

 

 

 

Remember the data interface from Minority Report? Well, it's real, John Underkoffler invented it -- as a point-and-touch interface called g-speak -- and it's about to change the way we interact with data.

 

 

 

 

When Tom Cruise put on his data glove and started whooshing through video clips of future crimes, how many of us felt the stirrings of geek lust? This iconic scene in Minority Report marked a change in popular thinking about interfaces -- showing how sexy it could be to use natural gestures, without keyboard, mouse or command line.
John Underkoffler led the team that came up with this interface, called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. His company, Oblong Industries, was founded to move g-speak into the real world. Oblong is building apps for aerospace, bioinformatics, video editing and more. But the big vision is ubiquity: g-speak on every laptop, every desktop, every microwave oven, TV, dashboard. "It has to be like this," he says. "We all of us every day feel that. We build starting there. We want to change it all."
Before founding Oblong, Underkoffler spent 15 years at MIT's Media Laboratory, working in holography, animation and visualization techniques, and building the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room Systems.

"We're not finished until all the computers in the world work like this."

John Underkoffler

Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture

Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.

 

 

Johanna Blakley studies the impact of mass media and entertainment on our world.

Why you should listen to her:

As the Deputy Director of the Norman Lear Center (a media-focused think tank at the University of Southern California) Johanna Blakley spends much of her time exploring how our entertainment interacts with our political, commercial and social habits. She is especially interested in the surprising impact of intellectual property rights on innovation, organizing conferences around the lack of creative ownership in fashion as well as technology and the ownership of creative content.
Blakley has worked across a huge variety of media platforms -- producing for the web on a large scale, conducting gaming research, coordinating events for film festivals and executing consumer research on entertainment and politics. Drawing on this vast body of experience, she also lectures at USC and helped develop their masters program in Public Diplomacy.

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer?

 

William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.

 

William Li TED talk is here : http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html 

 

Speakers William Li: Cancer researcher

 

William Li heads the Angiogenesis Foundation, a nonprofit that is re-conceptualizing global disease fighting.

Why you should listen to him:

Many of society’s most devastating diseases -- cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, to name a few -- share a common denominator: faulty angiogenesis, the body’s growth of new capillary blood vessels. Given excessive or insufficient blood vessel growth, serious health issues arise. While researching under Harvard surgeon Judah Folkman, who pioneered the study of angiogenesis, Li learned how angiogenesis-based medicine helps patients overcome numerous diseases by restoring the balance of blood-vessel growth.
Li co-founded the Angiogenesis Foundation in 1994. The foundation’s Project ENABLE -- a global system that integrates patients, medical experts and healthcare professionals -- democratizes the spread and implementation of knowledge about angiogenesis-based medicines, diet and lifestyle. Some 40,000 physicians have been educated on new treatments, ranging from cancer care to wound care, by the foundation’s faculty of medical experts, and they are bringing new, lifesaving and disease-preventing techniques to people around the world.

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

 

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

 

 

 

 

In 2009, Simon Sinek released the book "Start With Why" -- a synopsis of the theory he has begun using to teach others how to become effective leaders and inspire change.

Why you should listen to him:

With an undergraduate degree in anthropology, most of Simon Sinek’s career has been spent in advertising. Although he began law school in London, he shortly left the program, moving to New York where he joined Euro RSCG, with a stint at Ogilvy & Mather, working on accounts for Oppenheimer Funds, MCI, NASDAQ and DISH Network.  In 2002, he started his own company, Sinek Partners. His book, Start With Why, outlines the basis of his current work in leadership consulting. 

Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks

 

We're all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don't even know.

 

 

 

Nicholas Christakis explores how the large-scale, face-to-face social networks in which we are embedded affect our lives, and what we can do to take advantage of this fact

A new, mosquito-zapping gizmo you have to see to believe

 

Nathan Myhrvold and team's latest inventions -- as brilliant as they are bold -- remind us that the world needs wild creativity to tackle big problems like malaria. And just as that idea sinks in, he rolls out a live demo of a new, mosquito-zapping gizmo you have to see to believe.

 

 

Nathan Myhrvold is a professional jack-of-all-trades. After leaving Microsoft in 1999, he's been a world barbecue champion, a wildlife photographer, a chef, a contributor to SETI, and a volcano explorer.