TED Community » Tabor Williams

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I like to smile. The world is an amazing place, and ideas and thoughts should be shared globally!

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• TEDCred score: +2.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?

  Apr 19 2013: I enjoyed this talk. While I think it could go more in depth and provide more examples, I appreciate the effort that Mr. Ariely expended in trying to see what makes people more or less productive, whether money is the main carrot, or there is something else that is more important.
  
  More of my thoughts here:
  http://taborwilliams.com/?p=243

• A comment on Talk: Elon Musk: The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ...

  Mar 26 2013: I particularly liked this TED talk as Elon Musk has been a very influential innovator and entrepreneur. Elon Musk is an exemplary figure in both business and life because he takes risks in ideas that he believes in, and as a result he has founded companies which are creating technologies and systems that are improving society. Rather than resting on his laurels from helping to create Paypal and his decision to eventually sale his share, he has strived to continue innovating. SpaceX, Solar City, and Tesla are proof of this.
  
  Harnessing renewable energies, and also using energies that we currently have more effectively to power our transportation is vital to the future of our world. We know that fossil fuels are a finite source of energy, and as a result his decision to pursue electricity as fundamental energy source of the coming decades is a step in the right direction. Mr. Musk is “extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority, and I predict it will be a plurality in less than 20 years.” Energy for the time being will still rely on fossil fuels to power their plants, but as Mr. Musk explains the factories they use to power their batteries is being used more efficiently than current standards. Using fossil fuels more efficiently allows for the technologies which are currently being innovated to be developed more efficiently. While big energy might scoff at this, businessmen have always railed against disruptive innovations which cut against their bottom line. Solar, wind, and water generated power plants are fundamental to our continued existence on this planet. His forward thinking ideas are necessary to insure that the planet remains habitable and healthy not only fifty years from now, but a hundred or hundreds of years from now.
  
  Continued here: http://taborwilliams.com/?p=226

• A comment on Talk: Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online

  Dec 17 2012: Separating fact from fiction has become something that anyone using the Internet has had to decipher. Before when news and facts were printed in book or on television, for the most part they were considered reputable, and trustworthy. Now people can upload data for anything you can imagine on the Internet, a lot of the time without having to be fact checked, or proofread.
  
  Fake news sometimes goes out, such as fake tweets and statuses when Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast. Journalists around the US were looking for credible sources, and one of the tools now being employed is Twitter. As Nolan states, ”Twitter is where most journalists now go. It’s like the de facto real-time newswire, if you know how to use it, because there is so much on Twitter.” This is helpful because although there is a tremendous amount of information that can create a paradox of choice, there are tools and tactics that can help you find the truth about a subject. When fake tweets and videos were posted during the storm, that meant the journalists had to deal with fakes, so we had to deal with old photos that were being reposted.” This obviously hits home, as Hurricane Sandy has been very much in the public eye.
  
  I enjoyed the investigation of the storm video he mentioned in his talk because it shows how different websites across the Internet can be used in different ways collectively to check the credibility of a piece of information. Mr. Nolan’s video ends on a positive note with him stating, “Although the web is running like a torrent, there’s so much information there that it’s incredibly hard to sift and getting harder every day, if you use them intelligently, you can find out incredible information.”
  
  We have the tools, now we just need to use them.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games

  Nov 29 2012: As a gamer I found this video particularly insightful, and positive. Typically gamers are told that they are wasting their time and energy by playing video games because they gain nothing from it. It's nice to see that video games such as action games actually increase our abilities. Gamers have better vision because the tracking ability has been honed. It has also been shown that gamers have better peripheral vision.
  
  Increased vision and attention span are two particularly advantageous traits to pick up from video games. As Ms. Bavelier states, "So your typical normal adult can have a span of about three or four objects of attention. That's what we just did. Your action video game player has a span of about six to seven objects of attention." We makes this work I feel like is that we do this subconsciously while playing action video games like CoD. In CoD you are always paying attention to a number of things: how many bullets you have in the chamber/the gun, the minimap in the corner of the screen which shows your position relative to enemies and allies, how many people you've killed in a row, and how close you are to a kill streak, all of that on top of the actual visuals of your character running around trying to kill other players. We don't realize how much it is making our brain work, but it is happening without us even realizing it.
  
  The best part about these things we are doing subconsciously is that they seem to stick because "After two weeks of training on action video games, they actually perform better, and the improvement is still there five months after having done the training." If these games are going to have long term lasting affects on education, and rehabilitation then as she stated that is very promising. It's promising for every gamer because even if we are looking solely for entertainment, we will at the same time be gaining education i.e. better vision and attention span albeit unknowingly.
  
  Continued here: http://taborwilliams.com/?p=195

• A reply on Conversation: If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

  Nov 22 2012: Interesting

• A reply on Conversation: If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

  Nov 22 2012: It's all good, thanks for engaging in the conversation!

• A reply on Conversation: If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

  Nov 19 2012: I never said that I think truth and lies are the same thing, so no need to call me 'seriously mental ill'. That's a very offensive thing to say.

• A reply on Conversation: If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

  Nov 18 2012: I wasn't making the comparison that you can pit sins against one another on a scale. I was actually saying the OPPOSITE that sins can't be compared.
  
  If you're taking the approach that truth comes from words, obviously an opinion on someone's shirt is irrelevant.

• A reply on Conversation: If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

  Nov 18 2012: I am indeed looking for justifications. Thanks for the response!

• A reply on Conversation: If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

  Nov 18 2012: Somebody asks you if you are proficient in something, say Microsoft word. In reality you've never used it. You then go home and learn it in a night. When called upon to use word, you're amazing at it.
  
  Not exactly the best example, but yeah.