Favorite Talks

Computers can/should augment humans abilities manyfold

• Inventing on Principle, Bret Victor, 2012: http://vimeo.com/36579366 A big vision makes you go out of the box and thus have more progress (same as Steve jobs ?). This talk (and the demos) inspired several new software projects, that are trying to break the disconnection between code and run, to new very dynamic interactive development environments.

• Stop Drawing Dead Fish, Bret Victor, 2012: http://vimeo.com/64895205 For the most part, we use computers in same way as paper (build static media - pictures) or tv (play static media - movies), but we can now leverage computers/devices to take advantage of user input(touch screens) at runtime to improve manyfold the way we create media. Computer code is (mostly) static and derived from language (not visual).

• Media for Thinking the Unthinkable, Bret Victor, 2013: http://vimeo.com/67076984 Written Language, math notation revolutionized human progress, becuase they introduced tools to think/manipulate thinking in new ways and reach the (previously) unthinkable, but they were invented at a paper age, computers are the new paper and they provide a much richer support. Thus computers should allow for more expressive and interactive “notations” tools, Bret is looking for it.

• The Future of programming, Bret Victor, 2013: http://vimeo.com/71278954 The 60’s and 70’s was fertile period for the field of computer programming, the computer was new and hot and a lot of brilliant ideas were being tried out, but somehow many of those ideas got forgotten over time and in many ways we went a step back. There is a natural resistance to change, and that is a big part of the reason, but more importantly the newest generations never were exposed to those ideas, so there is the risk that many things will be lost, and need to be rediscovered again.

• Sonic Pi: Teaching computer science with music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYO9N4kDK_o Computers should be used in a cyborg way, to extend the human powers, thats why kids should learn to program. Sam has developed a musical system on the Rasperi Pi, that allows kids to produce music by using simple programming. Talk includes Clojure and Ruby programming languages.

• Alan Kay - The Future Doesn’t Have to Be Incremental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o But anything by Alan Kay is good !

Improving life with numbers

• Knowledge Tracking - http://quantifiedself.com/2011/11/roger-craig-on-knowledge-tracking/

• Quantifying Seat Time - http://quantifiedself.com/2013/07/mark-leavitt-on-tracking-and-hacking-sitting/

• Spaced Repetition and Anki - http://quantifiedself.com/2013/06/roger-craig-on-spaced-repetition-and-anki/

Data Analysis

• Beyond Freakonomics: New Musings on the Economics of Everyday Life - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmo9YsNXWCc Steven Levitt

Others

• Inheritance - radiolab podcast

• How doctors want to die - radiolab podcast

• emergence - radiolad podcast

• Peek prosperity accelerated crash course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYyugz5wcrI. We currently live in a non-scalable manner: oil is a finite matter but we are fully dependent on it. World population is growing exponentially, we are bound to hit a breaking point where we wont be able to get more oil. We should start finding alternatives, to be less dependent on it. Interesting: Really nice exponential growth and curve fitting explanations.