TED Community » Nathan Knight

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Music (creating and listening), learning, collaborating with people (I like the idea of large-scale collaboration), and computer science.

An idea worth spreading

In any moment that you find an opportunity, seek out the good in your reality. Focus on the progress and useful aspects of your situation. If nothing else, just take the time for a positive thought. Think about how much you appreciate a person, organization, nature, an animal, etc. I believe it helps more than we realize at this time. Hate begets hate, Love begets love.

Talk to me about

Technology, Mobile Devices, Biology, Genetics, Philosophy, Religion

People don't know that I'm good at

Listening. Empathy or using the sociological perspective. Thinking outside of the box.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do

  May 14 2012: "Preserve Your Memories; They're All That's Left You"
  From Old Friends / Bookends Theme by Simon & Garfunkel

• A comment on Talk: Charles Limb: Building the musical muscle

  Dec 1 2011: What was the piece his student was performing? I want to learn it now! It was amazing.
• +4

  A reply on Conversation: Is the internet, not formal education, the new great equalizer?

  Oct 6 2011: The amount of video lectures, how-to videos, online video courses, interactive games/exercise, and documentaries available on the internet alone are enough to serve as a monumental resource for even the illiterate. All they would have to do is be shown how to get to the right sites (a handful would do). Or to be shown a specific list of videos to watch.
  
  Furthermore, an illiterate person could begin their journey in educating themselves by becoming literate, perhaps with some help, using internet resource alone (videos or interactive games would be the only real viable options in this case that come to mind).
  
  I agree with your other points. It is true that there is a learning curve to self-education on the internet. In fact, I consider it a new kind of literacy. Internet literacy is the education paradigm on our century. And it is creating a great divide among even those who are formally educated.

• A comment on Conversation: Is the internet, not formal education, the new great equalizer?

  Oct 6 2011: The education tools and schools forming on the internet are going to become to pervasive and sophisticated that they will inevitably envelop all modern and traditional forms of education. Just as the introduction of the computer itself has done, most classrooms with be integrated with the internet and its vast array of tools and resources.
  That is not to say that formal education will fade away. Most obsolete technologies and traditions stay around, at least to some extent, but they will be increasingly less relevant to the crucial goal of educating people all over the planet.

• A comment on Conversation: The Anti-Corporation Movement Around the World.

  Oct 6 2011: 1 - Is this the beginning to true social reform?
  I would say it will become a movement of true social reform as it matures. If we can continue the trend of making it more difficult to white-wash the information that people are receiving and hold each other responsible to objectivity of communicating information, we can begin to get the the source of corruption that goes on behind closed doors.
  2 - What can this type of protest and movement achieve?
  To me, it depends upon the overall perception of the movement. One wild card can indelibly damage the reputation of such a movement. Much like Muslim extremists have been a plague to millions of peaceful and loving Muslim people around the world.
  3 - Is "class-warfare" a reality or fabricated?
  It seems to be fabricated in part, but it needs that kind of hyperbole to cut through the din of media and distractions being put into the average citizens mind.
  4 - Is this an anti-capitalism movement?
  Not anti-capitalism, but maybe any materialism. I see it as refocusing the lens of society onto the human and the virtuous rather than the dollar sign and the profit margin.
  5 - What are the consequences of challenging establishments like Wall Street?
  I would say that economic dynamism and overall power as a country will plummet, as it should in my opinion.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: How can Apple continue to take shape in new ways and build on the legacy of Steve Jobs ?

  Oct 6 2011: I honestly wish they would split into separate companies: one handling hardware and the other handling software. That way, the benefits of their impeccable industrial design teams would continue to prosper while their software could move more towards open-source movements and 'get in the game' more with the other companies in the software community.
  Sadly, I know that the paradigm is that Apple products are designed in completion as one indivisible product, which is a great in virtue, but not in practicality.
• +1

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

  Aug 5 2011: He raises a great point about evolution favoring the unique and most suitable solutions to a given problem (most mammals has two eyes for vision, a single mouth, a nose with two nostrils, etc).
  I think that a single language will inevitably gain overwhelming popularity.

• A reply on Talk: Emiliano Salinas: A civil response to violence

  Jun 28 2011: Brendan, that's a great point. I think that Taiwanese people might also be inspired by this talk. I found it to be very moving even though I don't feel any particularly pressing imperative in my own country. This kind of sobering talk could be great for many Americans to hear though. As Mexico is our neighboring country, I hope that some good and peace will come of ideas of Salinas.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Our public vs our private persona

  Jun 25 2011: I would say that to some degree the practice of maintaining a public persona that is not necessarily identical to the private persona is not unhealthy and can greatly promote social harmony. To attempt to unite the two with absolution is a kind of grasping for extremities, in my view. We don't need to be as persistent and constant as a mathematical concept. We are living, changing beings that change and adapt to suit our ever-changing environment and variety of situational conditions (social, psychological, etc).
  The public and private personas can be maintained as two separate sets of ideas that are not necessarily congruent at all times.
  That being said, there are certainly times where one should risk compromising the good of social harmony to do away with some heinous or unsustainable sort of behavior.
  
  To the last question, I have found that those of my friends who are currently in a struggle to be consistently that 'same person' with as few stipulations as they can have been subject to increased tensions in their social interactions and they don't seem to benefit much from having done so.
  Furthermore, if we're already, somewhat naturally, tending to carry on as we are, what's wrong with it? Social patterns and sets of behaviors often emerge for a reason; often for good and advantageous reasons.

• A comment on Conversation: Why do things "speed up" over time? (Science, Innovation, War, Information...)

  Jun 25 2011: I would say that this, fundamentally, is related to the fact that entropy is on a never-ending, or seemingly never-ending, path of growth. Entropy is perpetually increasing, so, the amount of potentialities is increasing.
  Actually, in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil discusses the trend of rapid increase in the rates of technological innovation and invention. I forget the details of his take on this matter, but it was a great read overall, I'd recommend it!