Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Chris Anderson TED Talk

Chris Anderson, who runs TED,  talks about the future and potential innovative potential of online video. One idea in the talk that is interesting is the idea of scientists distributing videos of how exactly they conduct their experiments to facilitate replication. He argues that online video will do for verbal communication what Guttenberg did for written communication. He also argues that it will change teaching and  universities -  "for the first time in human history talented students don't have to have their dreams and potential written out of history by lousy teachers. They can sit two feet in front of the world's finest". Some of the jargon surrounding these initiatives is a little grating but, for want of an alternative, let me go with it. He basically argues that communication in this medium is going from "one-to-many" to "many-to-many", predicting a surge in the amount of people who provide informative content to the online world. He has a nice twist in the end with a clip beamed in from a correspondent living in a Kenyan slum talking about innovative initiatives taking place within his area.

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