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| "Eco-Warrior" Willie Smits on his DeforestAction project, using a combination of satellites and students to help track illegal deforestation activities in Borneo |
TED grew into TEDx, the 'x' denoting independently organised events that are intended to give a "TED-like experience", and since then, Hong Kong has seen all sorts of TEDx's, including TEDxWanchai, TEDxYouth@Hong Kong, TEDxVictoriaHarbour, several TEDxPearlRivers and another TEDxHong Kong last year.
The second TEDxHong Kong was held yesterday (Friday 2 Dec 2011) and was called "Forever 2011", which included speakers talking about such diverse topics as sustainability, human regenerative engineering, generational use of technology, Hongkong-ness, gender equality, child psychology, accounting (uhuh!) and cryonics.
I volunteered to live tweet for the organisers (using the @TEDxHongKong handle) for the afternoon/evening so I could go check it out, as I'd never been to a TED or TEDx event before.
The afternoon consisted of an ambitious programme of 15 speakers - Eric Schuldenfrei, Yat Siu, Douglas Young, Samantha Hung, John Hung, Katrien Jacobs, Mok Ho-Yan, Louise Porter, Ravi Mantha, Aubrey de Grey, Max More, Alex Backer, Gary Biddle, Willie Smits and Glenn Frommer.
I'm not going to summarise each one as my eyes are threatening to fall out like a couple of dry raisins, and plenty of others will be covering the event (21cb.net for one), so I'll just be totally unscientific about it and talk about a few that stood out for me (and so I'll remember what I want to read up on later...)
Dr. Louise Porter
The author of "Children are people too" discussed how we (laymen adults) generally view children - stubborn and disruptive on purpose etc. and says it's basically ageism. (If we applied those beliefs to different races, it would definitely be seen as racism, which she showed in sample sentences). One of her main points was that children, just like teens and adults, have needs that need to be met. Instead of using the hardline, reward-and-punishment approach to them, we should look at their behaviour - say, tantrums- as an expression of need, and treat it accordingly. If you, an adult, is unhappy about something, the last thing you want is to be put in a corner, or a chair facing a wall, right? Yet we do that to children in the name of discipline. When they do something good, we give them a reward - game time, candy - then children will be conditioned into doing things for an actual reward, rather than joy. Dr. Porter suggests we should genuinely celebrate achievements with children, through vernacular that we already know and use as adults - "congratulations", "I'm so proud of you".
On a personal level, I found this insight amazing, because my parents would never, ever, have said anything like that, and I sort of blame it on Asian culture. The Confucian ideas that imply or even encourage power struggles between parents and children. Children are always expected to be respectful - that wouldn't be a problem if parents (or older people in general) were also expected to reciprocate, regardless of age. Ageism, I would argue, it ingrained in Chinese or Confucian-influenced cultures. I'm curious as to how well Dr. Porter's views would sit with my parents and grandparents!
Dr. Aubrey de Grey
Dr. de Grey is Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, charity that "works to develop, promote and ensure widespread access to rejuvenation biotechnologies which comprehensively address the disabilities and diseases of aging". He is a biomedical gerontologist, gerontology being the study of aging (I don't think I'd even seen this word before this talk). His approach to aging is akin to engineering, he says, and in his presentation, he talked about how your body can be "maintained", like a car, and thus kept biologically young. This differs from geriatrics, as that treats the ailments that come with old age just like ailments of those who are younger, focusing on treating symptoms.
In his mile-a-minute speech, he cited stem cell research, for example, as a way of "regeneration" - replacing parts in your body, rejuvenating them, rather than let them degenerate as a result of the damages done by metabolism (like wear and tear), so that at the choronological age of 90, you might have the body of a 60-year-old.
Dr. de Grey mentioned some excuses that people would give him about why they couldn't accept this concept of regeneration; one of which was, "I won't be around long enough" for things to be invented/discovered to save each part of their body, and the response to that was simple - "do you have children?" then "do you want your children to live healthier?".
On the subject of "health", he also concluded that with regeneration, he only wants people to live healthier, and that longevity would simply be a nice side-effect.
Ravi Matha
The medical writer started by suggesting that the "human body is a pond", in which there's heaps of bacteria. He goes on to debunk myths about antibacterials, antibiotics etc. and questions why we spend so many resources on making 'sexy' antibiotics for treating symptoms and not spend more on finding out the root cause of illnesses. Incredibly entertaining, yet he uses his time to explain an astounding number of facts and figures. He proves that logic and skepticism doesn't have to sound radical or dry.
Katrien Jacobs
"People's Pornography" is the name of Jacobs's book, and that was the topic of her talk, which was about eroticism as activism, and how pornography in Mainland China is in fact a socio-political act against censorship and other social taboos. She gave various examples eg. DIY porn, the rise of VPN use because of Japanese porn star Sola Aoi's Twitter account, and of course Ai Wei Wei's "One Tiger, Eight Breasts" project that inspired some Chinese to courageously air their thoughts about censorship. And yes, as @crocophant duly noted, her PowerPoint contained porn.
Some great talks and topics, with ideas definitely worth spreading, or at least worth further reading. Speakers aside, the event itself was only okay. I want to say that everyone was really into the spirit of TED, with dreams, positive attitudes, no weird ulterior motives and so on, but that wasn't always the case. Oh, and the lack of WiFi, ticketing (HK$350 a ticket...) - here I go again, blah blah blah, who cares what I think. So, that's all from me, folks.
