TED Community » Steve Borton

More About Me

I'm passionate about

This universe and what makes it tick. Infinity. Visual representations of complexities. The sustainability of humankind. Human perception across the spectrum of the senses.

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• TEDCred score: +4.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Talk: Fiorenzo Omenetto: Silk, the ancient material of the future

  May 29 2011: I believe that the info is available to contact this speaker directly. My guess is that he would be happy to share more information about his product. There is one sure way of finding out, ask him.

• A comment on Talk: Gel: Gotta share!

  May 29 2011: Interesting and fun social comment. The musical style was a bit hokey for my taste, but each to their own. I saw this as somewhat like the court jester poking fun at the king, but in the process pointing out the value of the kings actions.
  I was half expecting to see a count of how many people had been reached via media in the 30 or 40 seconds or whatever that this had been on.
  Using social media is obviously one of the major events of the last five or so years. However an individual uses it is obviously of value to that individual. Whether or not it has value to you is part of the expansion of communication that has occurred through this. Now instead of boring one person with the latest on my grocery shopping I can bore hundreds. They get to choose whether or not they are going to pay attention to it. On the other hand someone else out there may share my political views and it is good for me to hear about this.
  Who knows the next Nobel prize in physics might come about as a result of two or three people kicking around some ideas via the web.
  My point is that IMHO I think that we should be free to use this amazing tool as we see fit without being criticized or censored by those that don't understand or feel the same way.
  This talk just showed an alternative viewpoint in a humorous and entertaining way.
  Isn't this posting board just one of the varieties of the whole shebang.

• A reply on Conversation: Genetic manipulation by humanity. How is it helpful and how is it harmful?

  May 15 2011: Although I agree that the advent of agriculture opened the door for an increase in disease in humnas, I disagree about the reasons. What agriculture eventually caused was the setting up of permanent dwelling places for humans. It also allowed for a remarkable increase in population. These two events alone can account for a significant increase in disease.
  Permanent dwelling places means that humans were left in close contact with their own waste products. Previously they were allways on the move and rarely stayed anywhere more than a couple of months. This allowed ultraviolet rays from the sun and biological processes to dispose and sterilize the waste. Bacteria, etc that lives on human waste will have an affinity for humans. Therefore it would be much easier for it to make evolutionary leaps to infecting humans directly.
  An increase in population means an increase in genetic diversity. A proportion of this genetic diversity will have negative effects on the organism. This along with the fact that an agricultural community can support weaker individuals would have resulted in a dilution of the strength of the genetic pool.
  These are both instances of how seemingly positive actions can have unanticipated negative results in the long run.

• A comment on Talk: Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse

  May 15 2011: One of the things that fascinated me most about the big bang theory was that our entire universe could fit into such a small amount of space.
  I concluded that a possible explanation for this could be an analogy of rocks. Consider that you have a bucket that is full of rocks. These rocks can be said to occupy a certain amount of space within the bucket. Much of this space is air. If you grind the rocks down into sand the resulting sand will occupy much less space within the bucket. What has actually happened is that you have exchanged where the air occupies the space and where the rocks occupy the space.
  If you consider the amount of area occupied by parrticles within an atom you will recognize that there is a lot of empty space. So if you break the atoms down into their constituent particles the particles will occupy less space than the atoms did. Consider breaking these particles down into even smaller particles and so on until the space they occupied was similar to the space occupied at the beginning of the big bang.
  It is possible that the big bang was a state of very basic particles which had relatively little empty space between them. By its nature this would appear to be very smooth to us. But this is just a matter of scale.
  The interesting aspect of this is that as the space occupied by particles decreases the number of individual particles increases.
  If this is the case then you should be able to calculate the size, mass and number of particles at different stages of the expansion of the universe. This would include what we consider to be the beginning of the big bang. It is possible though that there is no beginning of the big bang, it may be an event that has an infinite beginning.

• A reply on Conversation: Genetic manipulation by humanity. How is it helpful and how is it harmful?

  May 15 2011: There are some basic facts to consider here. First; everything affects everything. When we change one aspect of the biosphere we start a chain reaction that will eventually affect all aspects of the biosphere. Two; we do not have anywheres near enough knowledge about how these chain reactions occur. As a chain reaction goes through succesive steps it gets more complex in each step. Our ability to understand the effects of an action probably only run as far as three or four of these steps. Meanwhile there are hundreds or thousands of steps which we have initiated with absolutely no idea of what the result will be. Three; existing organisms on the planet are the result of millions of changes. What exists now is what has survived the past. Types of organisms that have existed for a long time show a propensity for surviving changes which have occurred. This does not mean that they will survive new changes.
  What history shows us is that when large changes occur over short periods of time there is a large number of organisms that do not survive. The more cataclysmic the change the more cataclysmic the die off. This would speak to the wisdom of not making any more changes to the biosphere. The question is, can we not make any more changes to the biosphere?

• A comment on Conversation: Genetic manipulation by humanity. How is it helpful and how is it harmful?

  May 15 2011: Since at least the age of agriculture humans have been improving their position within the biosphere at the expense of other organisms. This is a basic fact of nature. Our biosphere is a finite closed system. When one organism uses part of that system then other organisms cannot. For an organism to exist sustainably within such a system it must create new parts to be used at a similar rate to which it uses parts of the system.
  When you consider how complex our biosphere is it is easy to understand how easily balances that exist within the system may be disturbed. This complexity is also what creates the robustness of the system.
  The system of our biosphere as a whole is extremely robust. The individual parts of the biosphere are not as robust. This is where the human involvement in the biosphere has had it's greatest impact.
  Unfortunately we do not have enough knowledge of all of the components of the biosphere and how they interact for us currently to make changes to it based upon any form of knowledge or predictable results. As a result of this lack of understanding we frequently damage important parts of the biosphere without realizing that we have done so until the negative impact of our changes start to express themselves.
  This has created a situation where we are forced to make changes to the biosphere to remedy the results of previous changes. It is something like having a tiger by the tail. We have to continue making changes but we are still not sure about how those changes will turn out. Previous experience shows us that the new changes will probably require more changes to remedy their negative results.
  This has been a long winded way of saying that we really don't know how these changes will turn out, but our previous attempts to change the biosphere indicate that they will probably turn out in some negative manner.
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  A comment on Talk: Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse

  May 14 2011: A random thought.
  Let's consider time as a recognition of change. The smallest, ( and basic), unit of time would be the smallest possible amount of change. Lets consider this unit to be defined as an infinitely small particle moving am infinitely short distance at an infinitely fast speed.
  This allows for an infinite number of changes within a basic unit of time. This is one of the quirks of infinity. Therefore an infinite number of universes are also allowed.This leaves two forms of universes to be considered. One where change happens and one where change does not happen.I am only going to talk about the universe where change happens.
  Our universe is a universe where change happens.You could say that our universe began when it transitioned from a non changing universe. But there is no requirement for our universe to have previously been a non changing universe. Therefore our universe could possibly have always existed.In such a universe the big bang would be a stage or state of change. Coming from infinity and going into infinity. What happened 14.5 billion years or so ago is that our universe came into a state of being that we are capable of recognizing as a state of being. There is nothing to say that our universe does not get smaller or obey different laws of physics pre big bang.
  In such a situation 0 could be said to be a nonchanging universe, Always staying the same. 1 and -1 are different changing universes. Where the change of one would balance the other. The probability of this universe existing is infinitely small. It will happen, but not often. By a strange quirk of infinity though it will happen an infinite number of times.
  As for the universe occuring as we experience it , this also happens an infinite number of times. I am therefore I must be.
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  A comment on Talk: A whistleblower you haven't heard

  Feb 11 2011: I can't help but wonder how this guy would be at beatbox.
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  A comment on Talk: Michael Pawlyn: Using nature's genius in architecture

  Feb 10 2011: Good talk. Our current methods of building and manufacturing are akin to swimming upstream. Using biomimicry is more like travelling with the current.
  When you consider that over 95% of plants, all insects and reptiles are solar powered it seems a bit ludicrous that we humans have yet to master this.
  I suspect that this has more to do with politics than human ingenuity. Isn't it about time to let governments and corporations know what we want?
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  A comment on Talk: Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work

  Feb 7 2011: Exactly to the point. I was pointing out to a friend of mine the other day that the majority of us have 5 years or so of freedom. We then go to school for 12 to 20 years to learn to become good workers. We then work until we are 65 and then have another 5 years of freedom until we die.
  In our work life we get a few weeks of vacation a year. Of this about a week of it is used in getting out of work mode and then gearing up to go back to work. We tend to spend our vacations going to somewhere a few thousand miles away to be in the midst of a bunch of strangers in an unfamiliar place. Half the time is spent in a bar just like any other bar, then we go back home and brag about how great of a time we had in this fantastic place. We are being fooled into thinking that we have a satisfying life. But deep inside of us we know that this is not true. Look at the incidence of depression in N.America for evidence of this.