Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world. Understanding the flow of food will help us reconnect with what we eat. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK. Duration: 15:41)
Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnett syndrome — when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon. (Recorded at TED2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 18:48)
Kevil Kelly is the co-founding executive editor of Wired magazine and the former editor of Whole Earth Review. Don’t think you could attain any more geek-cred than that. TED’s ever-updating always-fascinating series of talks continues with this entry where Kelly discusses his investigations into technology trends…
through the lens of biology, drawing upon Richard Dawkins’ evolutionary concept of the selfish gene, to ask what technology wants. Kelly finds that the long-term trends of biological evolution- increased ubiquity, diversity, specialization, complexity, and socialization- are the exact same long-term trends of technological evolution. Thus, Kelly suggests we may consider technology as the seventh kingdom of life, sprouting from the animal kingdom, although technology deviates from biology in that technology does not die out, but rather accelerates evolution, or how we search for ideas. Technology participates in an infinite game that is continuous; it is played to keep playing and rewards evolving evolution as a means to perpetuate the game.
