TED Community » Pierfranco Fasola

More About Me

I'm passionate about

how things work, how things are behind the surface, in science, technology but especially in the human realm. Turning intuitions and ideas into projects, and projects into real things.

An idea worth spreading

Each of us has some in-born specific qualities and talents of which we are normally unaware of. It's a real treasure buried in our own field. In its essence, is the gift that a person brings to the world and a source of great pleasure and richness in life. Those willing to go through the struggle to unearth it and develop it put themselves on a kind of track well known since ancient times, and in the end make a great service to themselves and to the world. As Robert Pirsig put it, "The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there."

Talk to me about

anything you find inspiring and worth sharing. Mastery and the art of doing things well. Quality in design. Simplicity as a way of living. Things that you find beautiful.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +66.20 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +2

  A comment on Talk: Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley

  May 11 2013: Brilliant! as always. "There is no system in the world, or any school in the country, that is better than its teachers." True, very true. The problem, as he points out, is that we have a mechanistic conception of education, rather than an organic one and, as a result, we approach it as if it were an industrial process. Basically, we are using eighteenth century ideas about human nature. People don't just "function" or "perform", they grow and flourish if the conditions are right.
  
  I think the Death Valley example shows exactly what the problem is. "There are conditions under which people thrive, and conditions under which they don't." And if you create the conditions under which people thrive, life is inevitable.
• +6

  A comment on Talk: Ariel Garten: Know thyself, with a brain scanner

  Jan 27 2012: Well, that's the myth our time. The idea that brain chemistry and advanced technologies are the key to understanding ourselves and solve our deepest human problems. I wish it were that easy.
  
  This talk mixes pieces of ancient wisdom with the most trivial modern ideas in a really remarkable manner. Do we really need a machine to know our feelings? To tell us when we're relaxed or when we love something or someone? If we do, I think there is no hope for us. No "humanizing technology" can save us. To me this talk is a good example of the madness of our time and of how screwed up we really are. But what scares me most is when she uses the word "children". If we bring them into this kind of thinking, we're really doomed.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Louie Schwartzberg: The hidden beauty of pollination

  May 6 2011: Wonderful footage, it brings to our attention the little things that we don't notice, and shows us how beautiful and interconnected is the world around us. And I think this is a great thing because, as he says, "we'll protect what we fall in love with". Thank you Louie, great work indeed.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now

  Mar 27 2011: There have been a few replies to my seemingly controversial comment and I would like to clarify a couple of points. First of all, nobody denies the importance of technology. Technology has improved our standard of living in many ways and digital technologies, in particular, have provided us with amazing opportunities. No question about that.
  
  What I am saying is that the idea we can simply "augment reality" by technology, is naive. There is equilibrium in sensibility and when one area of experience is expanded or intensified another is numbed. And what is numbed is not necessarily less important or less valuable. There is a raft of research on that, so no need to articulate it here. For those interested, the latest book by Nicholas Carr provides a good starting point.
  
  But the point I was also trying to make is that not all technological change is progress. Some is not, and this happens not only because sometimes the drawbacks outweigh the benefits, but also because technological change nowadays is driven more by commercial reasons rather than actual needs and real usefulness. And as technology has an enormous impact on society and on our lives, embracing it uncritically, blissfully unaware of its effects, is unwise. As Carl Sagan once said "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology".
  
  However, with regard to new technologies, I find it interesting that when a less than overly enthusiastic viewpoint is expressed fierce opposition is encountered. To me, when this happens, it means that technology is becoming an ideology. And that's not a step forward. When everybody is thinking alike nobody is really thinking.
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: What are 10 things YOU know to be true?

  Mar 23 2011: That's a nice exercise. It made me think for a while. Here's my list:
  
  1. Not everything that is true to a human being can be said, shown or proven.
  2. When you see things in their interconnectedness, beauty arises.
  3. Often we get ill because of unexpressed potentialities.
  4. On personal matters, while your head can only suppose, your heart knows.
  5. Great sorrows open the door to beauty of some kind.
  6. The real problem of modern man is how to live or become sane within the asylum.
  7. A good way to get the best out of others is to give the best of yourself.
  8. Progress without spirit is a form of barbarism.
  9. What others think of you is their business, not yours.
  10. You need to find who you are. If you fail this, it doesn't matter what else you find.
• +13

  A comment on Talk: Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now

  Jan 11 2011: I guess I'm not in the cheering crowd on this topic but my point is this. If there is something that we have learnt about technology, especially from McLuhan onward, is that technological change is not additive, it's ecological: a new medium does not add something, it changes everything. The culture always pays a price for technology, and we do as well. But we don't realize it because we think the price we pay is just the purchasing cost. We focus only on what technology can do for us, not on what it will undo. The result is that we don't even know what we're loosing. To me, all technological change is a trade-off and the more I look into it the more it seems a kind of "Faustian bargain". Not to mention that the consequences of these changes are vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible. I'm not against innovation, not at all, but I think we'd better pay attention to what technology undoes in our lives, if we want to make sure we are not losing what we value most.

• A comment on Talk: John Hardy: My green school dream

  Nov 18 2010: Wow, what a beautiful school! And what a beautiful building. I think we don't reflect enough on the importance of architecture, and the environment we create, for our mental well-being. It seems to me this talk is not just about sustainability, but also about creating a place for living and learning both functional and beautiful. A place where the holistic vision is put into practice through a sustainable approach to life. Thank you very much John, wonderful talk.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Eric Berlow: Simplifying complexity

  Nov 12 2010: Interesting talk, although too brief for such an interesting topic. It reminds me of the Pareto principle: 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. In other words, most of the result comes from a small part of the effort. I found this to be true with complex problems but also with ordinary problems in real life. In my experience the time you spend finding out what that 20 percent is, meaning what matter most, is always time well spent.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Tim Jackson: An economic reality check

  Oct 5 2010: Excellent talk. He explained in plain English what the real problem is, with our economy and our way of living. This debt/credit expansion is insanity, but it's also a sad story about us, as he says, "about people being persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about".
  But the important point he makes, to me, is this: it all revolves around a certain idea of what we are as human beings and what a meaningful life is. It revolves around the question: "Who are we?" And I think we've answered that question way too poorly. As a result we've created economies that systematically privilege and encourage one narrow aspect of the human soul.
  
  He's right when he says that we need "a more credible, more robust and more realistic vision of what it means to be human". We're still a long way from that and I suspect we'll have to learn the lesson the hard way first.
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Michael Sandel: The lost art of democratic debate

  Jun 7 2010: "One thing the world needs is a better way of conducting our political debates. We need to rediscover the lost art of democratic argument". What a great statement. I would subscribe to that anytime. Michael Sandel is a brilliant lecturer and a wonderful teacher. He's really a pioneer of open education and the idea to extend this kind of conversations worldwide, to explore cultural differences and promote a richer kind of democratic debate, is an awesome project. I hope he finds the means to realize it.
  
  Other great lectures from Michael Sandel: www.justiceharvard.org