TED Community » Traian Popa

More About Me

I'm passionate about

brain-computer interface, cyborgs, prosthetics, learning, robots, photography

Talk to me about

Human-machine interface, learning, teaching strategies, environment protection, global policies, cultural fusion, language

Comments

• TEDCred score: +64.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: Do individuals have a social media strategy

  Feb 20 2012: Dodging the current social media juggernaut is in itself a strategy. Strange enough, the friends who I find most communicative and really supportive in real life maintain a surprisingly low profile online! It seems to me that very often social media is just a surrogate of human touch there where true and direct human touch is too problematic to get.

• A reply on Talk: Danielle de Niese: A flirtatious aria

  Jan 14 2012: Thank you so much fpr posting the lyrics here! Maybe this will help introducing the marvels of this language to those who were unfortunate enough not to have a chance of truly tasting it's depths.

• A reply on Talk: Danielle de Niese: A flirtatious aria

  Jan 14 2012: thx for the posting! a real treat!

• A comment on Talk: Adam Ostrow: After your final status update

  Aug 15 2011: and here comes the long promised immortality and the paradise where everybody will leave together and interact for the next 1000 years (beyond that i think will be a radical paradigm shift that at this time point the human mind cannot comprehend)
• +7

  A reply on Talk: Adam Ostrow: After your final status update

  Aug 15 2011: 200 years ago it was impossible think an object heavier than the air could actually fly. 100 years ago humans were still making most of the calculations by hand. 10 years ago it was pure scifi to think one could fit a super computer in a shirt pocket. saying that technology will "never" replicate the human brain complexity might have a very short validity period...
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Isabel Behncke: Evolution's gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans

  Apr 4 2011: Very interesting data presentation!
  
  However, one aspect remains quite obscure to me: HOW IS "PLAY" DEFINED?
  
  I see a lot of comments about the role of play, the economic advantages it might bring to society, the social bonds it creates etc Some are for and some are against emphasizing it. But still, what activity (human and/or nonhuman) do we consider as play and what is not? Something that bears less responsibility?! Something that is less prone to suffering?!
  
  When is a playful activity degenerating and becoming something else? What else? Is there a clear antonym to 'play'?
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon

  Apr 3 2011: Let's not forget that the talk comments on a piece of software and not on nuclear power. It's more a "proof of principle": we depend so much on complex technology today (a technology way beyond our control at individual level) that we can not afford anymore to act and think at a local scale. We should go global, as the problems have to face.

• A reply on Talk: Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools

  Mar 9 2011: I am curious how would you define 'society' in this case...
  Education is a very delicate achievement of human evolution, and one that requires a lot of energy to get it going. Just to remind you of what education as a "private process" would mean, let me suggest you a simple but tremendously profound talk posted here on TED not a long time ago:
  http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html

• A reply on Talk: Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools

  Mar 9 2011: This is applicable to some very narrow fields, which usually can get you a free-lance job, but which bring only marginal gain to the society/system as a whole. Would you allow yourself to be treated by a doctor trained on facebook or videotuts, or would you trust a building or a machine built by engineers "trained" the same way?
  As Joshua was saying, true and efficient learning is achieved only through confrontation with a real specialist and through direct interaction with other colleagues "on the field".
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Lisa Gansky: The future of business is the "mesh"

  Feb 28 2011: A second key point in this inspiring talk, besides sharing, is platform: the car-sharing should become like a customized public transport. The very principle of owing a car is already melting in the increasingly agglomerate urban environment: one looses an enormous amount of time (and money) by just looking for a parking place, not to mention the increasingly prohibitive tax for car idling (i.e. parking fee). Imagine a system in which one gets out of the car and the car is reused within minutes.