TED Community » Cal Jahan

More About Me

I'm passionate about

education as a process of discovering and developing our hidden talent. This "daemon" is the continuation of the evolution process that created us. It's ultimate goal is a World Civilization.

An idea worth spreading

World Peace is achievable in our lifetime! Mcluhan said, technology extends our senses. Kevin Kelly said, we are the vehicles for extending internet technologies. Both are technically accurate but missed the "feely" part. First, we are becoming extensions of one another through the internet more so than TV/radio because of cheap feedback system. And two, this extension is increasing our locus of empathy. Limitations of politics, religion, history or mythology is being overwritten by technology.

I see ethics embedded in technology. As it extends our senses to encompass other's experiences, we cannot help but feel empathy for the "other". This empathy translates to ethical behavior toward others. We are at the verge of beginning to treat others without suspicion and hate but as our other self (En Lak Ech as the Mayans greeted).

Achieving the impossible is just one person, one relationship away.
The uniqueness of man is not that he creates tools, but that his tools recreate him.

Talk to me about

executing education and development projects in Bangladesh that focuses on developing the middle class and technical education (engineering, medicine, etc.).

People don't know that I'm good at

hustling people to do good and help someone else.

My TED Story

I discovered TED.com beginning of 2007, after moving to Bangladesh, and have watched every single talks (yes, ALL) from Dhaka. I felt I finally found "my people", my friends, my teachers, my compatriots. I am cataloging all the presentations to spread TEDsters ideas among the young University students in Bangladesh. I think TEDsters are the new "chosen" who will bring forth World Peace. To these ends I'd like to start a TED Village in Dhaka where TEDsters can live very cheaply (less than $1000/month or perhaps lower) with other TEDsters around to collaborate with. No cooking, laundry or housekeeping to worry about, so that they can focus on their work in a relaxed environment. There is the additional benefit of testing out new ideas/techniques/technologies in a needy area quickly, cheaply and without much (or any) red tape. Btw, I still keep up with all the TEDTalks online so much so that a friend has dubbed me TED Yoda :-)

Comments

• TEDCred score: +2110.50 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

  Nov 12 2012: A good biopic of Julian early life as a hacker at 17. Definitely worth a look.
  Underground: The Julian Assange Story
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2357453/

• A reply on Conversation: Can we "engineer" our own interests through repeated exposure?

  Mar 29 2012: littleBits TEDTalk is online! http://www.ted.com/talks/ayah_bdeir_building_blocks_that_blink_beep_and_teach.html

• A reply on Conversation: Can we "engineer" our own interests through repeated exposure?

  Mar 29 2012: Trevor, Pinker credits chance more than genetics...
  "..two different bodies of research with a similar finding. What it suggests is that children are shaped not by their parents over the long run, but in part -- only in part -- by their genes, in part by their culture -- the culture of the country at large and the children's own culture, namely their peer group -- as we heard from Jill Sobule earlier today, that's what kids care about -- and, to a very large extent, larger than most people are prepared to acknowledge, by chance: chance events in the wiring of the brain in utero; chance events as you live your life."
  
  Matt, regarding the math analogy, I'd re-order the sequence of events that instead of good grades leading to liking math, it's more likely in majority of the cases that students like a subject so they study it hence gets good grades in that subject. But I get your point and agree that environment plays a role & we can do something about that whereas we're not ready yet to splice a math DNA into anyone :)
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Can we "engineer" our own interests through repeated exposure?

  Mar 29 2012: Thanks Matt. Yup, I'm with Ken. We certainly are way overdue for a process of redefining education & schooling. One of these redefinition ought to be who is a (great) teacher. As you say, they play a very critical role. A teacher ought to LOVE the subject s/he is teaching & continues to be a student of that subject all his/her life. Students have to be infected with that love for long-term engagement.
  
  Also, there's a precedence in the history of the American culture that we can learn from & perhaps reuse. They were comic books & science fictions. I think an argument can be made that a boom in sci-fi post-depression and comic books post-WWII helped the US get a man in the moon. The connection is this, the adults who eventually got us there were able to do it because they grew a passion for science as children living through those eras. For this generation, it may not be either of those mediums but how about a science based RPG or electronic lego like http://littlebits.cc/thebits presented at this past TED?
  
  As for hitting that critical period, I say hit'em with all we got at 9th or 10th grade as they come into high school. It gives them a bit of time to think & prepare for what to pursue at university
• +4

  A comment on Conversation: Can we "engineer" our own interests through repeated exposure?

  Mar 29 2012: Small events have lesser and lesser effect on us as we grow older as we lose our physical & psychological elasticity. So while those small events may nudge us toward/away from something as children, it's the more dramatic singular interactions/events that take us in a new direction as adults.
  
  How to get more young people excited about science? We have to remind ourselves that all children are born researchers/experimenters. We disrupt their exploration & discovery of the world by giving them theories and continue to spoon-feed ever more complicated theories without showing the connection to the world in terms of applications. How about a "Discovery Education" model. Students come to class and have to solve a real-world problem like how much paint they have to buy to color the room or what the height of a building is (using sunlight & proportions).
  
  If we want science, we have to let students re-discover the theories/formulas. It is absolutely possible that some of these students may develop some new formulas in the process that we haven't considered yet. As for repeated exposure, sure, as during childhood.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity

  Sep 20 2011: This TEDTalk could've been simplified to application of middle class institutions. Mr. Ferguson should have spent a bit more time talking about the Imperialism Elephant in the room to clarify his position. From reading other's comments, it's obvious many missed his perspective. What he ought to have zeroed in on is that unlike the other/oriental empires, the reigns of the Western empires were taken up by a rising middle class whereas in the other cases, the middle class was absent. The 6 killer apps he mentions all boils down to middle class institutions.
  1) Being in the middle, mandated competition among peers instead of dynsatic monopolies.
  2) Whereas a few emperors in the east supported science, in the West, it was the middle that was trying to carve a place for itself with new ideas.
  3) Property rights is a must when you have the dynasties on top roaming about who can take your hard-earned property on a whim.
  4) Modern medicine falls under modern science as well
  5) The consumer society is a necessity for unlanded commerce.
  6) Obviously the work ethic of kings are well known, so once again it's a middle class institution.
  Lastly, when he talks about other parts of the world rising, he is actually addressing the rising middle class.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Raghava KK: Shake up your story

  Sep 10 2011: I loved how Raghava simplifies promotion of empathy using/teaching perspectivism which is absolutely right. Goes great with Chimamanda Adichie's TEDTalk which explores the consequences of knowing only a single perspetive. Most of the time we all are at conflict because we don't have the emotional patience to listen attentively to another perspective which in turn inhibits us intellectually to understand (stand under) that perspective. His message was clear, concise, short but with potential for a huge impact! A great TEDTalk! Thanks Raghava!
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Edward Tenner: Unintended consequences

  Sep 6 2011: Ok, whatever is our opinion of the presentation, we must admit the idea is wonderful since EVERY SINGLE invention/innovation has unintended consequences. Including some very basic examples might make this TEDTalk more engaging:
  1) God creating Man to worship Him & tend to the Earth --> insert your diatribe on the current condition of humanity
  2) Columbus's intention of finding an alternative route to India --> Discovery of the Americas
  3) Development of the internet for Defense/research --> Boom in pornography... and others :)
  
  I think the speaker should've explored the idea that our whole world is created by a series of "happy" accidents. Even if we skip thinking of the Big Bang as the biggest accident, the process of evolution that created man is filled with accidents. The record shows 5 great extinctions, the last killing the Dinosaurs with something like 20 smaller ones. Hence we should welcome accidents and try our best to make more of it happen.
  
  Additionally Chaos can be defined as an order we cannot perceive, not disorder. Hence another reason to appreciate it so that our mind is stretched to make sense of it and discover a new order.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity

  Aug 15 2011: We ought to re-evaluate the premise this talk was based on. Language developed for collaboration is not too different from cooperative political theories coming out of the Enlightenment. It wasn't wrong or inaccurate then, just slightly biased to see one side of the coin, the smaller side. We ought to ask, why do we communicate? And we don't have to look too far into pre-history to find this answer. If we look at how Facebook is used (as one illustration within this talk), we note that most of it is not for exchanging ideas or collaboration but for sharing, mostly emotional in nature. The same can be seen when telephone was first publically available. Despite the campaigns to only use that technology for economic/collaborative reasons, people overwhelmingly used it to call each other just to say Hi or feel close to one another. Sadly some of our scientists/academics do not understand or account for this basic human need.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Jor-El: Last-ditch appeal to save the planet

  Apr 1 2010: good one! :-)