Notes from TEDx MidAtlantic 2010: Experts from different fields converge to imagine “what if…?”

A large, diverse audience packed Washington, D.C.’s Sidney Harman Hall this past Friday for the independently organized TED event TEDx MidAtlantic. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and over the decades, that focus has broadened to include pretty much every imaginable field. At the downtown theater, expert speakers from a wide variety of disciplines presented forward-thinking ideas and perspectives on some of the biggest challenges facing humanity, under the conference’s umbrella theme of “what if?”

One major topic of discussion was the environment. In particular, the specter of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill loomed large. Marine toxicologist and founder/director of the
Marine Environmental Research Institute Susan Shaw stressed an important lesson learned from the oil spill that will come as no surprise to anyone reading this: Foresight, as it turns out, is necessary. A lack of preparedness paves the way for disaster, she said, driving her point home with a sobering statistic: 4.9 million barrels (over 200 million gallons) of oil spilled before the Deepwater Horizon well was finally capped.

But can foresight help in hindsight? The U.S. Department of the Interior has put together an interdisciplinary team of 14 scientists, including Shaw, to build scenarios examining possible consequences and scientifically assess the long-term impacts on humans and wildlife. The short answer: “The Gulf oil spill will result in chronic human health impacts over decades,” Shaw said, stressing that BP’s use of harmful dispersant chemicals to break up the large sheets of oil drifting towards the shore has “added [further] toxicity to the Gulf for decades.”

The fact that dispersants were used at all highlights the industry’s lack of preparedness. Francis Béland, vice president of prize development at the X PRIZE Foundation, pointed out that while drilling technology has made huge advances, clean-up technology has largely stayed the same. In other words, the same technology that wasn’t very effective cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 was still being used in the Gulf. To help promote innovation, an X Challenge was issued. Now, hundreds of research teams are competing to “develop breakthrough technologies for cleaning up our oceans.” The prize is one million dollars.

MIT research fellow Adam Pruden represented one of the teams competing in the X Challenge—the Seaswarm Project. Using next-generation smart technology, his team has created what they describe as a “fleet of low-cost oil-absorbing robots.” The solar-powered robots use a seamless water-resistant nanofabric that soaks up the oil, acting much like a reusable paper towel on a countertop. They start at the outer edges of an oil spill and then work inward, linking up together as they go.

The swarming robots’ “behavior” is patterned on that of ant colonies. Using sensors, WiFi, and GPS, they “can operate as a single entity or as a swarm,” relaying information back and forth in order to function without human support, Pruden said. The more units that work together the smarter they become. To that end, the Seaswarm Project is combining a high tech approach with the design solutions found in the natural world. This approach—taking design inspiration from Nature—is known as biomimicry.

Biomimicry was an underly
Biomimicry was an underlying trend that emerged in a number of presentations. Ecologist and Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier asked, “What if we took Nature’s grandest design, the ecosystem, and mimicked it with our technologies?” Cities have long been wasteful systems that only flow in one direction: Resources in, waste out. Conversely, the natural world is a more balanced, sustainable, circular-flowing system. “Ecosystems by definition live within their means,” Despommier said. “We don’t do that. We borrow. We’re borrowing from our future.”

His dynamic presentation on vertical farming in urban areas invited the audience to envision tall glass and steel high-rise buildings with fresh fruits and vegetables growing on each floor. These so-called “farmscrapers” could “provide a sustainable, safe, and abundant food and water supply for 10 billion people.”

Despommier eludicated the numerous advantages of indoor farming. They include zero runoff, excellent crop protection, and year-round production. The process uses 70% less water and no agrichemicals. In addition, vertical farms recycle resources and remediate gray water. They can also help create jobs in inner cities.

The concept of emulating the best ideas found in Nature popped up yet again during Rutgers University professor of applied mathematics Nina Fefferman’s engrossing talk, entitled “Social Behavior and Epidemics: Lessons from Natural, Theoretical, and Virtual Worlds.”

In the theoretical world, Fefferman applies mathematical models to better understand how infectious diseases spread. She calculates, for example, how much an individual action leads to a group outcome and the societal burden of disease, and creates simulations using mathematical formulas.

However, the numbers can only get you so far. Infectious diseases are inherently social problems, she argued, and to understand them in greater detail, it is necessary to look at different societies—starting with insects. Termites, ants, honeybees, and wasps demonstrate higher levels of organization and societal robustness than humans in the ways that they manage disease risks and make social decisions in the face of threats.

But how can human behavior in such situations be studied and analyzed? Interestingly enough, this is where massive multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft come in. In World of Warcraft, players balance risk against responsibility, and show everything from courage and altruism to blatant opportunism in the face of widespread catastrophes such as the pandemic virtual outbreak of “Corrupted Blood.” Fefferman cited empathy and curiosity as two emotional responses that hadn’t been included in the theoretical models until looking at virtual worlds.

Random snapshots from the day:

University of Virginia business professor Saras Sarasvathy, presenting on foresight and entrepreneurship: “To the extent we can predict the future, we can control it. To the extent we can control the future, we don’t need to predict it.”

Charles Limb’s neurological study of the creative process was fascinating—and now his colleagues have heard him rap.

Consumer genetics company 23andMe board member Esther Dyson compared understanding the human genome to translating a Russian novel, saying that right now, we only have a small glossary and “we don’t really know the grammar.” Those having their gene sequencing done are benefactors more than beneficiaries: They are “contributing to the body of research,” she said.

Finally, on a large dry-erase idea board, amidst the many humanity-affirming platitudes written in marker, were some imaginative endings to the big question “What if…?” These three in particular caught my eye:

…there was fully autonomous and sentient AI?
…[we could] copy ourselves to an inorganic substrate?
…virtual became real and real became virtual?

Learn more about Dickson Despommier’s Vertical Farm Project in THE FUTURIST.