sundance

The 30 Project: Three decades to a more sustainable food system

Remember 1980? The Miracle on Ice? Voodoo economics? “Funkytown” at the top of the charts? Seems like eons ago, doesn’t it? You may not remember (or even realize) that 1980 was also a seminal year (or, the round-about time for big changes) in our food system. Consolidation of agriculture? That’s when we started to see it. High-fructose corn syrup? It started showing up in, well, everything right about then. A decrease in US agricultural aid to other countries? That, too.

So, is any of this important to us now, or just a little food history trivia?

See a year in TODAY

TODAY from m ss ng p eces on Vimeo. In February I blogged about TED speaker and tech whiz Jonathan Harris, whose stunning web-based storytelling projects bridge the gap between cold computer screens and real human emotion. In 2009, Harris began work on “Today,” a year-long project in which he took one photo each day [...]

CREATIVE COMPUTING – looking back at Jonathan Harris

The emotional dot matrix of “We Feel Fine” Five years ago Jonathan Harris released an Internet-based storytelling project called “We Feel Fine.” It’s essentially a computer program that identifies and collects moments of online self-expression and draws conclusions about that data based on age, gender and location. Every two minutes “We Feel Fine” scans every [...]

Wanderlust

Wanderlust from Thinklab on Vimeo. I’m mesmerized by the video Wanderlust. Since stumbling upon it via Vimeo I’ve repeatedly gone back to the little gem to sneak peeks of the world these filmmakers captured. It’s directed by Thinklab who “inspired by a TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister, packed up a Canon 5D and travelled through South [...]

Neill Blomkamp’s TED talk

Neill Blomkamp, director of DISTRICT 9, gave an interesting talk at TED where he articulately provides a lucid overview on the possibility of extraterrestrial life that had my inner geek utterly swooning. Sparked by an interviewer’s question about whether he believed the aliens in his film accurately represented what he believed aliens looked like, he responded absolutely not. He explains that the film was an allegory for identity and racism, and not about science fiction. However, he is fascinated by the search for extraterrestrials and the science behind it. His talk reminds me of my own late night peregrinations on Wikipedia where one page can lead me down the geek rabbit hole, such as the rare earth hypothesis versus the principle of mediocrity theory, Type 1 and Type 2 civilizations (Earthlings are a type 0), Dyson spheres, the technological singularity, and why we haven’t seen evidence of other civilizations. Watch the talk and prepare for your mind to be blown.

TED: How to make a splash in social media

Watch this 5 minute TED talk by Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, a link aggregate social website from which a-many memes and items have virally emerged. Ohanian’s 5 minute speech titled “How to make a splash in social media” provides an interesting blueprint on how people can leverage the power of social media and online [...]

It’s time for TED

Ever since TED nixed the personal invitations and opened its doors to anyone who can afford the $6,000 ticket, the response has been so overwhelming they’ve had to extend the event to a satellite campus in Palm Springs, 100 miles away from the main event in Long Beach. The Palm Springs location, dubbed TEDActive, is also completely sold out, but you can still sign up for the livestream, which entitles you access to the everything the TEDsters in California are seeing for $1,000 (TED encourages you to split it with 10 friends).

David Blaine at TED

Magician David Blaine gets a bad rap in some circles, but I always suspect that they are secretly as fascinated by him and his acts, many of which cross the line from magic to the realm of an endurance sport-slash-public art performances, as the rest of us. Blaine gave this riveting and entertaining talk at [...]