TED Community » Colin Hoy

More About Me

I'm passionate about

The mystery of the mind-brain relationship, creativity, philosophy, neuroscience, evolution, music, HOW ideas spread, good food (especially dessert), and humor, along with so much more!

An idea worth spreading

Hybrid or electric mail trucks. These vehicles spend a huge amount of time idle or at low speeds, making them prime candidates for hybrid technology.

Talk to me about

Anything from the mind to jazz to the universe!

People don't know that I'm good at

Saxophone, ultimate frisbee, soccer, and corny jokes.

My TED Story

A simple Best of 2008 email from iTunes got me onto the TED podcasts. I spent the next 4 hours glued to my computer on a TED talk binge. Ever since, I have dreamed of attending TED, TEDGlobal, or TEDActive. Since these goals aren't immediately attainable, I've brought TED to my local community. In 2010 I was granted a license to host TEDxHendrixCollege, the first TEDx event in Arkansas, which brought together a full crowd of 100 attendees with speakers from in-state and across the country and a live band to explore the theme "What Can Your Mind Do for You?" The success of this event has created a strong TED community at Hendrix College that includes a student organization that hosts monthly meeting to watch TED talks on a specific theme, with each talk followed by discussion moderated by an expert in the field. Additionally, we will be hosting TEDxHendrixCollegeWomen on December 1, 2011, and TEDxHendrixCollege 2012 will be hosted this coming spring.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +2300.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Heribert Watzke: The brain in your gut

  Jan 3 2011: While the "brain in our gut" is an interesting biological system to study, I'm most impressed by the approach Watzke suggests to affect it. In today's world, so many scientists are quick to jump to drugs that alter the chemistry of our body, such as antidepressants and diet drugs. Watzke is on the right track here to suggest alternate cooking methods and dietary changes to use the machinery already present in our digestive system to produce more favorable eating patterns. This is a similar approach to the one used by Mother Nature when perfecting species. She takes what is already present and adapts it to increase performance and function as needed, so I like that Watzke suggests noninvasive and natural solutions to our dietary problems.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Eric Lewis rocks the jazz world

  Nov 9 2010: I can appreciate his "shattering" interpretation of the emotion Evanescence puts into her songs, especially since that is one of her trademarks. He still maintains the melody even when he's banging out his expression of the song. I also found it really interesting that he took to plucking the actual strings of the piano in the beginning to get the sounds he wanted rather than using the proxy of the keys as nearly all other players do. A very raw, powerful approach.

• A comment on Talk: Kwabena Boahen on a computer that works like the brain

  Mar 31 2009: It seems that one of the biggest flaws in current computer design was the 'bottleneck' of the CPU and ALU that all information was forced through. While the new transistor technology enables more brain-like function, the real goal would be to integrate this technology into a network of processing units similar to the 'fluid' neural paths in the brain. This could also allow the data recovery Kwabena mentioned.
  
  If such a network of CPUs was created, repeated use of pathways would develop patterns in the movement of information. In some theories, this is closely related to the physical processes of thought. In all aspects of design, the closer computers come to modeling the brain, the closer we will get to REAL AI.