TED Talks, take 1 - Bionics

http://biomech.media.mit.edu

On the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing I wanted to share a TED talk by Hugh Herr, head of MIT’s Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group. A double amputee himself he demonstrates what prosthetics, biomechanical limbs are capable of and what they can do into the future.  He maintains that people are never broken, but the technology is.

To demonstrate what he can do, he brings to the talk ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the Boston Marathon bombing, to perform for the first time since she lost her leg on the TED stage.  It’s a modest, but emotionally powerful dance.  As someone who had a traumatic lower leg injury and nearly lost a leg to a sporting accident I can tell you, that not only standing up straight and walking, but dancing, and having the mental strength to do so is awe-inspiring.  The leg’s movements are phenomenal and I’m inspired to see that had I lost a leg, maybe I’d be very ok today.

Disrupt

So, you’ve read and heard about disruption “this” and “that” and have maybe, like me wondered, what has been disrupted and how exactly.  Apparently there is “the Law of Disruption” – much like Murphy’s Law (more on that later) – and it has to do with the dissemination of change being uneven, that is the ‘analog’ world is not keeping pace with changes in the ‘digital’ world.  Digital changes grow exponentially hence being disruptive to our more contemplative analog world we live in physically that grows incrementally.  A world were our elders do not necessarily understand computers and new technology, where the rest of us who are not born after 2000 sometimes wonder how many new things we will learn, adapt to and unlearn because they were a fad in an effort to keep up and stay relevant, both for our jobs and our children.  

TED Talks

TED talks are highly addictive and the most welcome, educational and inspiring time sink I can think of.  Last weekend I indulged and revisited some old friends and found some new ones I wanted to share. 

 

For those of you who are new to TED, TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment and Design.  Since, TED talks have spread in many directions and in particular onto their amazing website onto which all TED talk videos are uploaded. 

Megatrends

I came across megatrends repeatedly doing research for my next documentary Identity and the Other and decided to do a bit of further digging. I found different definitions for different countries and cultures, no surprise there. The following seemed the most comprehensive. 

 

Megatrends are defined as forces (i.e. trends) affecting all aspects of our lives over a long period of time. Factors are: