(Courtesy of TED
here are three mind-expanding illustrated talks.)
CAN
WE REALLY SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF HUNGER IN THE WORLD?
You bet we really can!
Josette
Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations World
Food Programme, based in Rome, oversees the largest humanitarian agency
fighting hunger around the globe. Every year, her program feeds more
than 90 million people, including victims of war and natural disasters,
families affected by HIV/AIDS, and schoolchildren in poor communities.
Sheeran believes that hunger and poverty must and can be solved through
both immediate actions and long-term policies. At the Millennium
Development Goal Summit last fall, she outlined 10 ways the world can
end hunger. They include providing school meals, connecting small
farmers to markets, empowering women and building the resiliency of
vulnerable communities. Sheeran has a long history of helping others.
Prior to joining the UN in 2007, Sheeran was the Under Secretary for
Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs at the US Department of
State, where she frequently focused on economic diplomacy to help
emerging nations move toward self-sufficiency and prosperity. She put
together several initiatives to bring US aid to the Middle East. She
also served as Deputy US Trade Representative, helping African nations
develop their trade capacity. She says: "I think we can, in our
lifetime, win the battle against hunger because we now have the
science, technology, know-how, and the logistics to be able to meet
hunger where it comes. Those pictures of children with swollen bellies
will be a thing of history."
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IS
THERE A WAY TO STOP ORGANIZED CRIME VIRUSES FROM DESTROYING THE
INTERNET?
You bet there is!
Computer
security expert Mikko Hypponen tells us
how we can stop new viruses from threatening the internet as we know
it. It's been 25 years since the first PC virus (Brain A) hit the net,
and what was once an annoyance has become a sophisticated tool for
crime and espionage. The chief research officer at F-Secure Corporation
in Finland, Mikko Hypponen has led his team through some of the largest
computer virus outbreaks in history. His team took down the world-wide
network used by the Sobig.F worm. He was the first to warn the world
about the Sasser outbreak, and he has done classified briefings on the
operation of the Stuxnet worm -- a hugely complex worm designed to
sabotage Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. As a few hundred
million more Internet users join the web from India and China and
elsewhere, and as governments and corporations become more
sophisticated at using viruses as weapons, Hypponen asks what's next?
Who will be at the front defending the world's networks from malicious
software? His work offers a peek into the post-Stuxnet future. He says:
"It's more than unsettling to realize there are large companies out
there developing backdoors, exploits and trojans."
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CAN
WE SOLVE MORE WITH TRIAL AND ERROR THAN BY ASKING EXPERTS?
You bet we can!
Economics
writer Tim Harford studies complex
systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they
were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from
TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making
better mistakes.In the Undercover Economist column he writes for the
Financial Times, Tim Harford looks at familiar situations in unfamiliar
ways and explains the fundamental principles of the modern economy. He
illuminates them with clear writing and a variety of examples borrowed
from daily life. His new book, "Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With
Failure", argues that the world has become far too unpredictable and
complex for today's challenges to be tackled with ready-made solutions
and expert opinions. Instead, Harford suggests, we need to learn to
embrace failure and to constantly adapt, to improvise rather than plan,
to work from the bottom up rather than the top down. He also presents
the BBC radio series "More or Less", a rare broadcast program devoted,
as he says, to "the powerful, sometimes beautiful, often abused but
ever ubiquitous world of numbers." He adds: "I'd like to see many more
complex problems approached with a willingness to experiment."
