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- Universe 'too queer' to grasp
- Eco-designs on future cities
- Interactive map Urban explosion
- Big thinkers show the way forward
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Highlights:
- Meme Power
--- Humans invent their own realities to make sense of the infinitely complex worlds they are in.
--- Each species, in fact, has a different "reality". They work with different "software" to make them feel comfortable.
--- Middle world is the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or very large.
- Developing worlds
--- The only way to end poverty is to build viable systems on the ground that can deliver services to the poor in ways that are sustainable.
--- The West is being only concerned with design issues that affect them, and solving environmental problems for themselves.
- Future cities
--- Some 70 million people a year migrate from the country to cities.
--- Many of these set up home in squats, put together from scarce materials, if put together at all. There are a billion squatters in 2005. By 2050, that figure will reach three billion.
--- Cities have to engage these residents because they are building the cities of the future.
- Mr McDonough's Next City vision
--- We can only think of our future cities if we think about what our intention is as a species.
--- (The Next Cities) they can grow, they can breathe, and they can be ecologically sound, just as trees, forests, and gardens are.
--- We lay the city out so everyone can move in parks without crossing traffic, the buildings have daylight lighting, the university is at the centre, and with hi-tech connectivity.
--- The buildings and all around it work like biological, growing beings, photosynthesising and producing and re-using their own energy.
--- A quarter of the city's cooking will be done with gas from sewerage.
--- The energy systems will be solar energy. China will be largest solar manufacturer in the world.
--- The city will be inhabited by species and the top of the city will be green.
--- It shows that cities can change - humans can change the way they do things. Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.
- Ideas at TED
--- Despite terrorism, environmental destruction and poverty, the future could be bright.
--- Technology can solve more problems than it creates.
--- Entrepreneurs are good and governments are inflexible.
--- The philosophy of TED is that governments come and go, but ideas last forever. It is about nurturing those ideas and taking them to a new level, effecting change form the ground up.
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Source:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature @ 2005
