Ted Talks

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design - though not limited to those fields anymore it seems!) is a non-profit organisation which is famous for holding regular conferences where they promote "ideas worth spreading" (as their motto frequently states).

Speakers

At the elaborate conferences (mostly held in the US, but also in Europe) there are a series of lectures (or TED talks as they colloquially call them) given by speakers who are both:

1. Experts in their field.
2. Great speakers.

Examples of past speakers include the authors of Freakanomics, the founders of Google, Billy Graham and Al Gore, as well as countless academics, authors and businesspeople.

Format

A key point to note is that TED limit the talks to eighteen minutes. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that TED have produced some physiological research which states that that is the best length for a lecture to last, and a graph mapping the diminishing returns from longer talks!

The format of the conferences most definitely impacts the types of speakers, and thus their disciplines. The focus seems to be solely on the speaker, overuse of a slide-show is looked down upon, and even if used the slide-show ought to be unique in its style (and definitely the software they use!).

The "big ideas" that are put forward in such a small amount of time (compare it to a conventional lecture which would last a full hour or more) forces the speaker to do something nearly impossible, be both interesting (and often humorous) and get an idea across which has perhaps been the basis of several years of research, a great corpus of writing.

How to access

The conferences are recorded and are uploaded regularly to their easy-to-use website (www.ted.com) The website itself is excellent for a few reasons:

• It's simple.
• Their latest videos are on the homepage.
• If you hover over the video it gives all the basic information.
• Videos which are more popular appear as larger thumbnails.
• They have useful filters.
• The quality of the talks is excellent.
• They are downloadable, both as videos or audio files.

Academic resource

Students like to use Wikipedia as a tool for research for a number of reasons, chiefly it is comprehensive in scope, free and easy to use. I think the same can be said of TED, and other similar websites. Obviously TED is not an encyclopedia and comparisons to Wikipedia may seem naive, but the style is similar and that I believe is what makes it such a popular website.

Unlike Wikipedia we know who the person giving the talk is, they are accomplished in their field and are usually putting forward an idea that they have researched and written on. In addition the format (being a short and interesting talk) captures out attention, allows us to give our full attention to the speaker and perhaps be inspired to learn more on the topic.

Next

In the next blog I'm going to look at TED in more detail, using the example of it's most watched talk of all time. Hopefully in this blog was successful in showing the benefit of TED to students, proving that TED is a digital academic source. In the next blog I hope to be able to show the use of TED from the other perspective, not from the user but the provider. Why should academics (and perhaps historians in particular) use TED (and others like it).

Google's role in preserving history

Google have come to an agreement with the Italians to digitise almost one million books!

I posted the article as it makes an interesting point, being digitalised the books are protected "forever" and can not fall victim to disasters;

Mario Resca of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage said the deal would help save the books' content forever, noting that the 1966 Florence flood ruined thousands of books in the city's library

Climategate - loss of history?

If you haven't heard about "Climategate" you have either lived under a rock or work for the IPCC.

In a nutshell thousands of e-mails between scientists working for the Climatic Research Unity (based at the University of East Anglia) were leaked and distributed online, one month before the Climate Conference which took place in Copenhagen in December 2009. They showed the lengths at which scientists went in order to discredit and essentially silence climate change septics.

In one email, Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., wrote to the director of the climate-study center that he was "tempted to beat" up Mr. Michaels. Mr. Santer couldn't be reached for comment Sunday.

In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.

Wall Street Journal, 23rd November 2009

An article in today's Guardian, How to avoid your own 'climategate' scandal, highlights the risks for academics working in the post Freedom of Information age. The Freedom of Information Act which is so beneficial in many ways inevitably has several unintended consequences, namely;

For sensitive information that you would not want in the public domain, rather than putting it in email or in a document, it may be better to discuss it face-to-face or on the phone.

Documents of historical value will nto exist as academics (but also policy makers etc.) will for fear of a climategate style scandal avoid using communication methods which could become public.

"Every email I write," says a lawyer colleague of mine, "I write as though next week I could be reading it in the newspaper."