TED Community » Erik Richardson

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• A comment on Conversation: Is the cultural anthropological impact of technology and information changing?

  Apr 30 2013: Part of what we are starting to see—and will see more of—is that there is a universal maximum on the curve of information-technology's impact. People are moving from idea to idea and paradigm to paradigm faster and faster to feed the addiction for novelty, and the result is that the potential applicability of claims in a given paradigm is not being tested out in meat-space. The impact is that hope of change and optimism about potential disruption will accelerate, but actual progress on the ground will slow toward 0, and without competition among paradigms in anything more than a virtual arena, the evolution of infrastructure and superstructure will be stunted. The biggest change will be the decline of change - except within the system to support the novelty-stream of the armchair rationalists.
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  A reply on Conversation: If you were to give a TED talk what would it be about? What points would you make about your topic?

  Mar 3 2013: Honestly, I just don't have the time to put together something that might or might not land somewhere, and I can't give up the time to peddle it door to door, so to speak. :-D I'll just keep building evidence through my teaching and see what happens once it achieves some kind of critical mass.

• A reply on Conversation: What is the best way of an at home introduction to robotics?

  Feb 24 2013: Sometimes a team can be formed by several schools joining together as well, which helps to diffuse the costs in time, money, and personnel to run the program.

• A comment on Conversation: What would Homo Sapiens possibly evolve into?

  Feb 24 2013: Advances in neuropsychology and biofeedback technology (driving quality up and costs down to make it useful and accessible) will result in the ability to monitor and adjust our stress reactions, which will result in a vast number of societal and personal improvements including increased lifespan, decreased health-care costs, and greater levels of output/efficiency in almost every area of human endeavor.
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  A comment on Conversation: What genetically engineered machines (modified bacteria) should we build?

  Feb 24 2013: Something that gives off a strong bio-electric charge that could be used to amplify solar energy methods.
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  A comment on Conversation: If you were to give a TED talk what would it be about? What points would you make about your topic?

  Feb 24 2013: How science fiction—reading it, writing it, discussing it—could re-ignite our education system.
  
  1.I would talk about the way textbooks suck all the blood out of learning about science.
  
  2.I would share key quotes and comments from contemporary researchers talking about the influence that things like Star Trek and Asimov's novels had on them in their formative years.
  
  3.I would offer some examples of surprising and innovative thinking that have resulted from my own students when challenged with problems common to sci-fi stories.
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  A comment on Conversation: What is the most important thing you've learned on your own?

  Feb 24 2013: As a teacher, the most amazing thing that I have learned, and continue to learn every year, is that the mind of a child is more amazing than the entire night sky full of stars. On the heels of that, I also have learned/will keep learning that I wouldn't trade the teacher's life for all the money on Wall Street.

• A comment on Conversation: What is it that keeps us from being closer to other human beings ?

  Feb 24 2013: We have lost sight of the classical understanding that being closer to other people is a central part of what it means to live the "good life." The reasons this has happened are complex, and embedded in a variety of historical paradigm shifts, but a powerful and consistent dynamic helping to explain this is that if the wolves can convince each of the sheep that it is already separated from the herd, then it is so much easier to control.

• A comment on Conversation: If humans are supposed to be the cleverest animals in the world, why are they the only ones that have to go to work ?

  Feb 24 2013: Ah, but we are the only creatures who can step back and ask that question, and that, indeed, is the essence of our deepest, most profound intelligence. :-D
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  A comment on Conversation: What is the something you learned as an adult you wished you learned as a child?

  Feb 24 2013: That science can be joyful and fun and that that mindset is highly contagious.