TED Community » Charalambos Paraskeva

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.40 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Technology doesn't create loneliness, it reveals it. Once revealed, technology can help alleviate isolation and spur connection.

  Apr 4 2012: It is not so much the filling of voids at issue here, but the type or kind of the filling used.
  
  In one way or another technology functions in the very same way that capitalism does (my intention is not to critique based on ideology here though, but to compare functioning processes). Having said that I would argue that technology attempts to multiply the possible connections between people by effectively reducing the amount of labour and time required to form and maintain them.
  
  Once upon a time you would have to talk with someone to discover their likes or dislikes and assess the possibility of real connection to them. Now the same can be done without verbal or physical or even reciprocal connection to the other via social networking site profiles (issues with content fidelity and truthfulness also arise). This indeed fills in the void, but it only does so with information, not with feelings or physical communication.
  
  Also if you note the format of websites, blogs (TED included) and social networking sites everything comes with a cap, a limit. Every message has to be a maximum of characters, every photo has to be of a certain size. This may be based on the physical limits of our current technologies, but it does set limits to communication too.
  
  Turning to connections per se they do not and for the moment cannot replace the non-verbal communication. The majority of our online world (video-chatting is the only exception) is constructed around bits of textual or graphical information. We send public and private text messages (less is more again prevails) and inform of our decisions, intentions and feelings through text. We tend to forget one thing though...non-verbal communication used to make two thirds of all communication.
  
  The links between technology and isolation are multi-directional and have just started to be explored. The more we use technology, the more we learn of ourselves and our relationships with others. I for one remain optimistic for the future.

• A comment on Conversation: Can we invent our way out of our coming crises?

  Mar 30 2012: The short answer is no, or at least not until we are capable of creating matter out of nothing. All kinds of commodities/products and most definitely the scarce resources need to be translatable into universally recognised mediums. This is the function of all types of currencies in the world and it took mankind almost three millennia to come to a point where there are essentially very few currencies representing a much wider array of social formations, which in effect is one of the forces driving the globalization of economies. We may try to establish a universal currency and attempt to equalize prices at a global level, but I remain doubtful that this approach would be pursued by our greedy Western World.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Does society need more interdisciplinary work? Or more well-rounded individuals working together?

  Mar 30 2012: As numerous contemporary philosophers have recently observed our society is moving towards two directions. On the one hand divergence through specialization and on the other hand convergence due to the inherent connectedness of our knowledge fields.It is not so much of an issue, as it is an observable phenomenon. To explain this we need to understand that we've arrived at a junction where our knowledge increases at exponential rates both on the collective and personal levels and at the same time the links between knowledge, mostly due to the improvement of communications technology, are also being recognized at a much higher pace than before. Based on the above, specialization as a term is redefined. Today the specialist emerges as not the solver, but the holder of a piece of a wider puzzle. And it is through the creative and collective contributions of all specialists that mankind strides towards the future.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Will we ever truly be able to model nature?

  Mar 6 2012: The question posed is in need of a terminological clarification. This is because conceptually modelling is different from actually reproducing/copying nature. Better yet the former is the prior step to the latter, as the former deals mostly with our subjective/objective perception of nature, whilst the latter is a practical procedure that employs it in order to reproduce both the theorem and nature itself.
  
  On the first account of modelling, it will depend on the capacity of technology to produce ever more complex equipment to perform the calculations necessary to model natural systems (social systems are considered subsystems), as well as developments in mathematics and statistics. In this direction we are still quite far away from truly modelling nature due to the number of factors that we need to take into consideration.
  
  On the second account of copying I would say we are already very close. Technology, physics, chemistry and mechanics are already cooperating on many facets of replication of nature ranging from abstract general laws to real world events and objects. For the moment we are essentially able to copy nature by using alternative materials. It is within reason that at some point we will be able to exactly copy nature, as we are indeed striving to decode the underlying mechanisms linking its various components.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Which video game has challenged your perspective on the way you live your life and how?

  Jan 24 2012: Well for me the game that did the trick is a third person Role Playing Game called Diablo II. I absolutely loved my role in it as a mighty Paladin and spent endless days and maybe months playing the game. The basic principle of this is mouse clicking until you develop carpal tunnel syndrome or kill off all your demons. Nevertheless I somehow managed to finish it on all levels and acquire all sorts of weird, rare and powerful items that made me both happy and proud.
  
  How did this game challenge my perspective?
  
  Upon completion of all the wonderful tasks and acquisition of power, fame, admiration and virtual objects I came to the realisation that none of these mattered. Nothing that happens within a virtual world has or has had any impact on my real life. All the power concentrated in the game did not represent anything more than bits moving on my hard drive in the physical world. This was the game that taught me that spending a vast amount of your life in a virtual environment really contributes to disengaging you from what really matters. It showed to me what I should try to avoid becoming in the future and allowed me to concentrate on activities that cause me emotion within and about the real world and not a virtual fantasy world. I do not deny the necessity of gaming, but I do acknowledge its power to render you less human.

• A comment on Talk: Kathryn Schulz: Don't regret regret

  Dec 2 2011: As long as feeling regret is not used as a get out of jail card by any or everyone, I do agree on the conclusions of this talk at least on the level of the individual person carrying the limited responsibility of the self. Feeling a little bad every now and then, does make you a better person. Also more open and accepting to other people as peers in this flawed human network we call the world.
  
  In terms of interpersonal/group/corporate/government regret, issues of responsibility and damage magnitude arise, which need to be dealt with differently. This is one aspect of the issue missing in this talk, as all regrets in the examples given are actions affecting only the self. What about regret for things you did that were harmful to others? There is a whole new world of exploration there.

• A comment on Conversation: Why evolution could never solve aging?

  Nov 21 2011: In regards to evolution solving the ageing problem my opinion is the following:
  
  A. Evolution is a mechanism that allows an organism to survive and it is based on a dynamic equilibrium between stresses and opportunities for the organism within its environment.
  
  B. Survival does not necessarily have to do with life span. Living longer or living forever does not ensure survival. It is acknowledged however that a longer life span might be beneficial under certain circumstances (relative isolation, absence of pressures) and for specific reasons (reproductive success), which often are related to the emergence of other issues (especially scarcity of food supplies and power struggle over habitat areas).
  
  C. If for survival to be achieved, an organisms needs to live less, then evolution has already solved ageing by allowing its existence.
  
  Maybe the issue here lies within the question, as it regards biological immortality as a desirable or maybe the ultimate goal for organisms. Maybe senescence IS the answer to sustaining life.
  
  PS: Note that this is a simplification of arguments. There is a much longer debate regarding the issue of overpopulation, while the finite nature of our planet's natural resources needs also to be taken into consideration in one such dialogue.
  
  PS 2: Some organisms have indeed achieved immortality (see the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula and Hydras), but that only means it is for those species a successful evolutionary trait. If for another species one such mutation or adaptation proves useless or does not promote life sustenance, it would probably devolve, evolve by rejecting the unsuccessful trait or become extinct.

• A comment on Conversation: Fill in the blank: I would like ________ (a living expert) to give me a 5 minute lesson on ________ (a creative topic).

  Nov 17 2011: I would like Prof. Alexander Bentley to give me a 5 minute lesson on the implementation of agent based modelling in archaeology.