TED Community » Daniel Prieto

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I'm passionate about

Education, soundscape design, computers, open source, sound, music, improvisation

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  A comment on Talk: Robert Neuwirth on our "shadow cities"

  Oct 19 2012: Although he's got some points, this extreme and patronizing exotization of the poverty legitimates the miserable conditions in which people in slums (or 'cities of the future') lives, and ignores –or naturalizes– the public policy underlying the perpetuation of poverty. Is this a first-world or educated middle-class disease? I've seen discourses like that in Colombia, claiming that life in the most abject slums is just 'free and simple'. Who benefits with the 'softening' of the visions of poverty?

• A comment on Conversation: "Morality" is an abused term/concept. Can you suggest a solid definition?

  Nov 3 2011: I talk about historical and social contexts different that the one in we live, we share a greater sphere called by some 'West', that has developed historically, just as -say- the middle ages, or an uncontacted contemporary tribe in the amazon, or the future, which we ignore. In any of these contexts, society shapes and validates certain types of knowledge that constitute a certain way to build the truth, to render something so humane, and thus artificial, into nature. If you search for 'universals' in these contexts your results will be different.
  
  I believe as well in democracy, and it's my preferred moral compass, or prime structure, but I don't think it's natural or universal. I proselite about it, I judge from its parameters, but I must recognise that it's artificial.

• A reply on Conversation: "Morality" is an abused term/concept. Can you suggest a solid definition?

  Nov 2 2011: It is YOUR morality (and mine too), but how can a greater, more abstract definition can be found. Yours and mine is an instance of the morality, not the morality.

• A comment on Conversation: Do low levels of oxytocin cause a person to become unfaithful (have an affair)?

  Nov 2 2011: Maybe not, since it's a social endorphine, and the trueness of the values is validated in the greater text of the culture, which can have contradictory sayings about values, such as fidelity, sharing or other things, and thus being moral is not a static and unique way of being.

• A comment on Talk: Paul Zak: Trust, morality -- and oxytocin?

  Nov 2 2011: I feel that this reading is quite ethnocentric. Are there more more readings possible? What other traits for morality can be traced?

• A reply on Conversation: "Morality" is an abused term/concept. Can you suggest a solid definition?

  Nov 2 2011: I think that you've got a point, morality implies enhancement in some way, but where do your moral imperatives come? Aren't they part of a greater system of thought that brought us democracy and other constructions? What if you ask the universal values in a completely different context?
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  A comment on Conversation: "Morality" is an abused term/concept. Can you suggest a solid definition?

  Nov 2 2011: Morality is to act according a certain arbitrary subset of a 'system of actions', in which some are chosen as virtue, thus given more value, instead of others, which are devaluated and become vices. Morality can be found in aesthetical taste, sex, communication, food preparing and hygiene, or attitude towards others or political preferences, because they respond to a set of arbitrary values that become paradigmatic and –in a certain way– indisputable. Because of its arbitrary nature, morality is not universal, but a definition like this can be transposed to many contexts.
  
  The arbitrary choice of values comes from human needs, but human needs vary according to the environment, physical (productive) and cultural (ideological). This needs arise from the need of fulfilling of a collective or cultural project, a 'munis', that ultimately leads to some final end, a 'telos', but –again– the ends and means depend on culture. The fulfillment of one's role in the 'munis' leads one to 'be more', 'be better', more moral.
  
  Also, the values that are considered 'moral' change through time, a couple of hundred years ago an enlightened moralist would think that basic human needs for a colonist in South America would be different for the peasant, for the slave and for the indian, and he was right in his context, from his point of view, because those were the moral values of their time, and he was fulfilling his role in his social scheme. Now we could consider this moral as wicked and 'immoral', because it's not our moral system, nor thought schemes, nor economic conditions or social structures. Western thought has modeled a variety of ways to looking at values, from Plato, to St. Agustine to Derrida and beyond, but they are not unique, nor 'naturally true'.
  
  I tend to agree that when one discusses about moral things as natural, given, or axiomatic in any way, one has a non natural interest, a will to be accomplished though others, a will to exercise power.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Julian Treasure: Shh! Sound health in 8 steps

  Oct 1 2010: According to the 'Handbook for acoustic ecology', Soundscapes are environments of sound in the way they are perceived by the individual and the society, and the word 'soundscape' might refer to an actual environment of sound as well as an artificial construct, such as a recorded song, or an audio montage. There is the phisical aspect of the soundscape, the sound pressure, the spectral content of it; but the emphasis is placed in the perceptual aspect, or how does it makes sense to you, how does it affects your sonic behaviour, listening or producing sound, and your health, not only aural (of your ears) but of the whole body and psychological.
  
  The book that Mr. Treasure recommends in another post (The Tuning of the World) is a seminal work, to the soundscape studies, but you can also find out in the Handbook (http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/index.html) I mentioned, and the Soundscape Journal from the University of Oregon (http://interact.uoregon.edu/medialit/wfae/journal/)