TED - Technology Entertainment Design

Continuing my pasting interesting links rather than formulating my thoughts into blog posts.....

But, this time I will make a bit more effort to ADD value by hyping the link and explaining why its worth having a look at!

So, I received a newsletter email from Allen Holub. Allen has some great ideas on software design and at the very least all software developers should read his article on why setters and getters are evil. (also continuing from the last post concerning the social psychology that software developers tend to bump into, he has a good link to "Unskilled and unaware of it". Which also feeds into a great link I got from 37signals which is Judo quotes which are applicable to any pursuit really).

Anyways.... So TED... This is a conference in California where they get a bunch of people who have interesting ideas in the areas of technology entertainment and design. I downloaded several them earlier today and watched them. They are good! The one I found especially interesting is the one from Neil Gershenfeld. He talks about whats beyond the digital revolution. His talk focuses on computability entering the physical world. Things that can make themselves. Programming Biology. Creating and building real things customised to the individual. He talks about Fab Labs all around the world where kids / adults are creating devices and technology that solve local problems. He makes references how 3 MIT students are doing research papers on designs 8 year olds have come up with from these labs. Really quite interesting stuff! It also is quite related to a post Rod recently made.

What I'd like to know is what we are doing in New Zealand with these ideas... with our so called #8 wire innovation we should be eating these ideas alive!

The other thing I like about these talks is that the idealistic "feel" about uniting humanity through technology and understanding comes through quite well. Some talks deal with the problems of technology and the modern world and some paint a picture of a future based on these emerging ideas.