TED Blog
20 January 2012
Udder genius: Fellows Friday with Su Kahumbu
What does iCow do?
The iCow application essentially reminds small-scale dairy farmers in Kenya of important periods in gestation. This was information farmers previously had to acquire by contacting veterinary offices or artificial insemination providers. Now, via SMS, farmers register, inputting information about their livestock, and iCow pushes information and instructions to them, prompting them on what to do during vital gestation days. It also offers tips and information on feeding practices, disease control, and so on. Much of this information is delivered over SMS, but farmers may also speak to a live person in our customer care centre. Our farmers will never trust something that is absolutely virtual — they like to know there’s a voice at the other end of the phone if they need it!
But iCow has already grown from when we launched it in June 2011 with two features — the gestation calendar and a search directory to help farmers find nearby vets and artificial inseminators. Literally — within two days — farmers started asking for more features. So we started building them, such as the iCow marketplace.
How does the marketplace work?
Many farmers in the dairy sector often upgrade or sell their animals. There’s as much interest in selling your in-calf heifers as there is in selling milk to processors. But while the processors have done a fairly good job of networking on developing milk-aggregating posts, not as much has been done where farmers can actually find other farmers who are selling animals. iCow allows farmers to post notices of animals for sale on the platform, and then farmers across the country can find them. If you’re looking for a specific breed within a particular distance, you can find out easily whether there’s one for sale.
Also, some products don’t have a very well-developed value chain — say, goat’s milk. iCow enables farmers who have only have few goats and therefore small amounts of milk to find each other and aggregate their product so that it can be taken to market. Farmers can post produce for direct sale on the platform as well, of course.
But the platform goes beyond serving farmers’ needs.
iCow is the last mile to the farmer. And that is very, very powerful. For many organizations, government ministries, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector, the only way to get out to the farm is either by vehicle or working in small projects with us around the country. iCow essentially networks farmers that would otherwise be very difficult to access. Right now, iCow has 80 percent geographical penetration across the country. This enables all of the other stakeholders access to those farmers. iCow is already becoming a tool that’s not only used by farmers, but also by government and other agricultural industry stakeholders.
For example, the platform allows farmers to alert the system immediately when there are disease outbreaks, allowing everyone react to it very quickly. The local authorities can then broadcast this news to all farmers on the platform in the affected region, telling them where and when to find vaccination services. Other stakeholders are using it to advertise agricultural field days or exhibitions in certain locations, or to offer financial services, for example.
18 January 2012
Why SOPA is a bad idea: Clay Shirky on TED.com
What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume. (Recorded at the TED offices, January 2012, in New York. Duration: 13:59)
Watch Clay Shirky’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.
18 January 2012
Three types of online attack: Mikko Hypponen on TED.com
Cybercrime expert Mikko Hypponen talks us through three types of online attack on our privacy and data — and only two are considered crimes. (Recorded at TEDxBrussels 2011, November 2011, in Brussels, Belgium. Duration: 9:23)
Watch Mikko Hypponen’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.
18 January 2012
What we’re doing about PIPA/SOPA: Talking about it
Today, several of our favorite websites are going dark or blacking out their homepages to raise awareness of two bills, in the US House and Senate, that threaten people’s ability to share on the web. In the past week, we’ve pondered what TED.com should be doing to help raise awareness of the PIPA and SOPA bills, and concluded that our best option was to do what we do best: share knowledge.
So we’ve lined up two TEDTalks today, to cover two important facets of this issue.
This morning, we’re posting a powerful TEDx talk from Mikko Hypponen. Last summer, Mikko talked to us about cybercrime. Now, at TEDxBrussels, he takes on a broader topic: threats to the web as we know it — threats to our privacy, our data, our ability to network. Some of those threats come from criminals, and some from government. But the takeaway is: The web is ours to defend.
And we are premiering a brand-new talk from Clay Shirky. Yesterday, Clay came in to the TED office to share his thoughts about what PIPA/SOPA means to our shareable world. And he delivered a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume. The video is being edited right this minute, and we’ll post it as soon as we can.
Let us know what you think.
UPDATE: See the comments below for more great suggestions of TEDTalks and TEDxTalks that touch on this issue.
17 January 2012
FAQ with Alain de Botton on ‘religion for atheists’
As a companion to today’s TEDTalk from Alain de Botton, he sent us this FAQ, a brief introduction to the thinking behind Atheism 2.0:
What do you think of the aggressive atheism we have seen in the past few years?
I am an atheist, but a gentle one. I don’t feel the need to mock anyone who believes. I really disagree with the hard tone of some atheists who approach religion like a silly fairy tale. I am deeply respectful of religion, but I believe in none of its supernatural aspects. So my position is perhaps unusual: I am at once very respectful and completely impious.
What is it you’re most interested in in religion?
The secular world believes that if we have good ideas, we will be reminded of them just when it matters. Religions don’t agree. They are all about structure; they want to build calendars for us, that will make sure that we regularly encounter reminders of significant concepts. That is what rituals are: they are attempts to make vivid to us things we already know, but are likely to have forgotten. Religions are also keen to see us as more than just rational minds, we are emotional and physical creatures, and therefore, we need to be seduced via our bodies and our senses too.
You propose to reform schools and universities to teach humans how to deal with the most important existential problems; loneliness, pain and death for example. Why? Can existential lessons be taught at school?
The starting point of religion is that we are children, and we need guidance. The secular world often gets offended by this. It assumes that all adults are mature – and therefore, it hates didacticism, it hates the idea of moral instruction. But of course we are children, big children who need guidance and reminders of how to live. And yet the modern education system denies this. It treats us all as far too rational, reasonable, in control. We are far more desperate than secular modernity recognises. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time – and religions recognise this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.
Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people’s lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organisations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.
Don’t you think that, in order to truly appreciate religious music and art, you have to be a believer – or, at least, don’t you think that non-believers miss something important in the experience?
I am interested in the modern claim that we have now found a way to replace religion: with art. You often hear people say, ‘Museums are our new churches’. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not true, and it’s principally not true because of the way that museums are laid out and present art. They prevent anyone from having an emotional relationship with the works on display. They encourage an academic interest, but prevent a more didactic and therapeutic kind of contact. I recommend that even if we don’t believe, we learn to use art (even secular art) as a resource for comfort, identification, guidance and edification, very much what religions do with art.
17 January 2012
Announcing: TEDTalks DVD on Demand!
Spreading ideas just got easier. Today TED announces DVD On Demand, which allows users to create custom TEDTalk DVDs from a library of over 700 available talks. Each disc holds up to six talks, each with the option to order with subtitles in up to 32 languages. DVDs, available for $9.99, can be shipped to and watched in any region of the world.
“By putting our TEDTalks online for free, we’ve helped spread ideas to over half a billion viewers,” said June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media. “But not everyone has access to the internet, nor are they necessarily tech-savvy enough to stream talks when they do. There are times when you need to watch talks off-line. And our DVDs – think of them as ‘mix tapes’ of talks – are a simple alternative: inexpensive, highly personalized and easy to play on any DVD player.”
Learn more about TEDTalks DVD on Demand >>
17 January 2012
Atheism 2.0: Alain de Botton on TED.com
What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a “religion for atheists” — call it Atheism 2.0 — that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 19:20.)
Watch Alain de Botton’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.
13 January 2012
Waterwise: Fellows Friday with Sonaar Luthra
You have a background as a writer, educator and journalist. How did you end up creating the Water Canary?
I went to NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) because I realized that so many of the social outcomes I was after as an educator and journalist could be better accomplished by designing better tools. I wanted to come up with some way of becoming what I was calling an “urban planner for the global village.” At that point, I was thinking about tools that could transform classrooms, but it was really a bigger vision than that.
I fell in love with circuitry and with making tangible objects that had real functionality. Next thing I knew, I found myself in a class called Design for UNICEF, taught by Clay Shirky in association with UNICEF’s Innovations Lab. We were looking at ways to leverage technology and telecommunications strategies to transform the work that UNICEF does in the field. This was just as things like Ushahidi (an open source project that lets users crowdsource crisis information via mobile) were beginning to gain traction. People were just starting to realize the potential of leveraging mobile phones. I was interested in other ways we might design social interventions that relied on simple but important pieces of information. I wanted to see what was possible with water, and I was lucky to have an incredible team and the support of faculty that were willing to take on such a huge challenge. We started off as novices but we all became water experts in the process.
Why water?
My parents immigrated to Minnesota, but I used to spend summers in Delhi when I was a kid and worked there as a journalist, so it’s like home to me. I grew up seeing my grandfather getting up every morning at 5am to boil water, but not understanding why. I always found water safety confusing.
When I dug deeper, every document I read inevitably acknowledged that, even with the Millennium Development Goals, there was a complete lack of information about water. We had some information about water scarcity and depleting freshwater supplies, but almost nothing about water quality. I wondered, “What would happen if you knew whether your water was safe or not? What would that knowledge do in a city like New Delhi?” You can’t really excuse the lack of safe water there. It’s no longer a money issue. I decided it was really a matter of there being not enough demand for infrastructure — maybe if people had more information we could transform that.
So the idea behind the Water Canary was an inexpensive gadget that could instantly tell you whether your water was safe or not with a red light or green light, so you don’t have to be literate to use it. Over time, it occurred to us that what we really had was something that could transform disaster response with real-time information. This was right around the time when the Haiti earthquake happened. In emergencies, the assumption that every aid organization has to make is that all water is unsafe. And that leads to the entire response being completely inefficient. They never really know where help is needed. So it means you end up sending too many supplies to places that don’t need them, and that there’s never enough in areas that do.
It started out as a very simple device just for testing whether or not there was a high concentration of bacteria in the water, but that has expanded into detecting nutrient pollution and volatile chemicals as well as microbiological contaminants.
12 January 2012
Time for change in Haiti: TED Senior fellow Peter Haas responds
On the TED Fellows Blog today, TED Senior Fellow Peter Haas writes this powerful essay, considering the two-year anniversary of the deadly Haiti earthquake.
The National Palace is still in ruins 2 years on. Photo Credit: Cat Laine – http://www.paintedfoot.com
Today is the two-year anniversary of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and I wanted to write a positive article about the good projects I have seen there. Unfortunately after reflecting, I felt that it would be a disservice to all the people still living in camps; it would be a disservice to all those who have been evicted. Things are getting better and will improve in the coming year in Haiti, but we are a long way from having the rebuilt, revitalized Port-au-Prince that people hoped for. And it is respecting those hopes that I must say the international community, while good at meeting immediate needs, has done a poor job in transforming lives and livelihoods, and I fear we may fail to deliver what the Haitian people are expecting of us. Unfortunately we are running out of time to change our ways.
Failures from Past Disasters: Gonaïves
I want to bring your attention back to 2008 and another devastating tragedy in Haiti: the hurricanes and flooding in Gonaïves, a city a few hours north from the capital. Gonaïves flooded with 10 feet of water; 800 people were killed and there was over a billion dollars in damage. US$100 million was given in response (watch the video from Al Jazeera). The international community responded in force. Tents and emergency supplies were sent in. However, I invite you to visit Gonaïves 4 years on and tell me if that was money well spent. Many projects are half completed or not even started such as the US$19 million hospital pledged by the Canadian Government (http://www.canadahaitiaction.ca/content/failed-reconstruction-haiti-debated-canada). Admittedly there aren’t huge tent cities in Gonaïves, but that is because many people were able to reclaim existing housing stock when flood waters receded.
I bring up Gonaïves only because it is a comparatively small problem compared to what is being faced in Port-au-Prince. It is an important frame of reference. Out of US$2.6 billion given for the Haiti earthquake, only an estimated US$360 million remains in unspent private aid funding. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F01%2F10%2FMNKS1MN93L.DTL). Three times what was ultimately spent in Gonaïves is not enough to address the problems remaining in Port-au-Prince. Yet for some reason the UN recently declared “two years later, we can say that the humanitarian response was a success.”(http://defend.ht/politics/articles/international/2161-humanitarian-response-to-haiti-a-success-says-un). With 500,000 still under tarps and tents, with a Cholera outbreak started by the UN (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110824123128.htm), and with a huge sex scandal, you have to ask, what would failure have looked like?
12 January 2012
Rising Souls: Inside Out in Haiti
Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti.
This morning the people of Port au Prince woke up to portraits of their own – locals and members of the Haitian diaspora – plastered around the city. From Cité Soleil to Petion-Ville, over 500 images, taken by Haitian photographers and printed by JR’s Inside Out Project, celebrate the resilience of the Haitian people and visualizing a country being reborn.
Follow the action on Facebook >>>
First image credit: Inigo Gilmore
All other image credit: Anna Verghese
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