TED Community » Lewis Smart

Comments

• TEDCred score: +24.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

  May 7 2013: I agree that pride can take its toll, but I don't think that pride, or even shame, are inherently bad things. They're natural responses and feelings. What's important is how we respond to what we feel and how we feed those feelings back into our processes as we move forward.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

  May 6 2013: Yes, I agree that some times it is useful to take defensive action if you are likely to come to harm somehow through exposing yourself, but personally I don't want to be like that all the time, and I think it would be nice if more people were more openly and thoroughly engaged in online life, as themselves, and less hidden. I think that online things are much as in 'real life' where people who hide all day in their isolated bubbles and refuse to interact with community and society at large in an honest and personally involved manner are likely to suffer from that, and the world loses something due to their disengagement.
  
  Obviously my point, if taken to an extreme, presents an unworkable concept of complete publicity, but that's not what I mean. I mean wearing my heart, mind and soul on my sleeve - but not my pin number.
  
  I often use a pseudonym for creative projects, but there are many places online where that pseudonym can clearly be connected to my real name. As far as I'm concerned my 'pseudo'-name is just as real as my birth name. My parents chose one, I chose the other. One is registered with my nation of residence, the other is significant in my circles as a trademark of my work. Both are useful and perfectly valid to me.
  
  Even the use of a pseudonym for anonymity can be useful, and I am fine with people using anonymity for a variety of reasons. When it is used out of baseless timidity is all that bothers me, because it supports a timid climate of thought that is contagious, and I think this ultimately makes for a timid and oppressable society.

• A reply on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

  May 5 2013: When looking at such artifacts, it's also important to remember that those artifacts may not represent those people as they are now. We need to be able to let people shed their old skins. We can't hold it against people when we find some comment on a forum or in a tweet from years ago that we consider offensive somehow - we need to accept that people make mistakes and learn from them. We also need to be able to stand up for ourselves when our own histories are used against us by owning our mistakes and being proud of how they shaped us.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

  May 5 2013: I refuse to censor myself online. I won't pretend I am someone I'm not, and I don't fear people knowing my real identity and personality. I simply conduct my online behavior in a way I consider to be respectful and ethical.
  
  Sure, this means some prospective employers might not like me. Ultimately that is their loss, and this situation has helped motivate me to become more independent and self-employed.

• A reply on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo

  May 5 2013: What if all illness and senescence is overcome and your expected lifespan increases until it becomes for all intents and purposes unreachable?
  
  What if longevity technology became so ubiquitous that measures were taken to ensure that nobody could die? What if the desire to die anyway was treated as a mental illness and your suicide prevented, forever? And you were forced to read over your old TED posts.. forever?
  
  Aside from that, what do you know about being dead? You seem to know what it's like. Who's your source?
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: What impact would self-assembly products have on our economy? I.e. Production, spare parts, jobs,...

  Apr 8 2013: It could be that decentralised manufacturing technologies, as well as decentralisation of the knowledge required to operate and innovate those technologies, will bring the production of food, clothing, and shelter within the opportunities that become available to the unemployed.

• A reply on Conversation: Discuss the note to the TED community on the withdrawal of the TEDxWestHollywood license.

  Apr 8 2013: Do you have a response to the content of my post, or only that decoration of it?
  
  Here it is without the 'reductio ad hiterum'. See if my point is vastly different:
  
  In the hypothetical case that TED did want to prevent people from seeing the videos, how exactly would they go about that? Because it seems to me that censorship in the classical sense is impossible on the internet, and that the route they have taken with special derogatory framing of the videos is probably the most effective method they could hope to employ in the absence of true censorship.

• A reply on Conversation: Discuss the note to the TED community on the withdrawal of the TEDxWestHollywood license.

  Apr 8 2013: Ok, so it's not censorship in the classical sense of the word. But tell me, in the hypothetical case that TED did want to prevent people from seeing the videos, how exactly would they go about that? Because it seems to me that censorship in the classical sense is impossible on the internet, and that the route they have taken with special derogatory framing of the videos, reminiscent of the nazi's 'degenerate art' exhibitions, is probably the most effective method they could hope to employ in the absence of true censorship.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Discuss the note to the TED community on the withdrawal of the TEDxWestHollywood license.

  Apr 7 2013: Whether or not TED 'acted on Coyne's say-so', it appears that TED has acted much as Jerry Coyne would act - as a militant atheist or strict materialist.

• A reply on Conversation: He, she or s/he? Should languages be made gender neutral or be left on their own to preserve literary integrity?

  Apr 7 2013: This seems sort of true, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone demonstrated that a gendered language can conduce gender bias. If you're using a language that correlates different things to different genres, that's likely to have some sort of influence. Perhaps especially on children.