TED 2013 (day 2)

Day 2 started with Craig and I skipping breakfast to find something on our own. I'm sure the food provided by TED Active was good, but it was impossible to find ingredient information. So we tended to do a walk-by of the meals, talk to a few people, and escape to get food I could eat at a restaurant at the resort. Handily, there were plenty of options. We took a picture of the flags hanging in the quad:



The talks started with Alastair Parvin. I was really inspired by his talk, which was about the future of building being driven by individuals instead of corporations. I am fascinated by his wikihouse project and by CDC machines (which cut materials following a computer produced pattern). This would have made Wood Shop so much more accessible (I never mastered that "measure twice, cut once" thing.)

Yo-Yo Performer Black was surprising. His talk was a slow-start for me, I just wasn't feeling it when he started. But his performance was pretty awesome!

When Amanda Palmer spoke [Note: that's a link to the talk, not just a blog about it], I jotted down only "share with Dave". I was unfamiliar with her and her music, so the discussion was far too esoteric for me. But she was talking about music rights, record labels, the music industry, and how music is supported and paid for - things I knew Dave would find interesting. She performed two days later, at which point her talk made a great deal more sense to me.

Larry Lessig gave an interesting talk about what is wrong with American politics and how to fix it. He presented some fascinating figures regarding the percentage of Americans (0.5%) who fund our elections.

Another talk I wanted to share with Dave - Mary Lou Jepsen talked about recent research and experimentation with creating images from brain scans. Hopefully I'll remember to update with a link to that talk when it's available.



The morning sessions were not as inspiring to me as the first day's sessions. I attribute part of that to TED-fatigue. I decided to skip the first afternoon session to work on something I've been wanting to write for some time. I finished a credible first draft, which I hope to edit into something by mom's birthday.

Then real exhaustion set in, so I skipped the second afternoon session to take a nap. I'm sure I missed some good stuff that afternoon, but I'm happy to have that draft finished and the nap was necessary. We finished the evening off-site in a search for food I could eat.