TEDx Brussels : hacking BANG!

A week ago today I attended TEDxBrussels. You know the drill in TED events, right? A room full of people (2000+ in our case) taking notes on our favorite gadget or the provided little black book, a great list of speakers, and slots of 12 or 18 minutes speaking time each. Most of the videos have been uploaded to the YouTube channel by know, so I won't repeat the stories here.This year's theme explored the building blocks of science under the word BANG : bits, atoms, neurons and genes. It started with the Scala choir singing their version of 'Creep' as they did in the Social Network movie, and that was a great reminder of the fact I still haven't seen that movie...

Looking back one week later, the talk that stood out and combined all others in my eyes was Mitch Altman's talk on the hackerspace community.


Throw away any 'evil terrorist' notion you have of hacking. His definition of hacking includes two elements: improving something and sharing that openly. And since everything can be improved, everything can be hacked (hack yourself!). And that is exactly what all speakers did: they have an idea for improving something and shared that with us.

• Hacking Technology : technology has improved our lives dramatically in past decades, and continues to do so. Steve Wozniak (yep, the mythical Apple guy) wonders where the wealth went that was created by technology... Not all technology is shared openly, far from it. Pitty.
• Hacking Life: Alan Greene has a simple but potentially powerful idea for improving early life: cutting the cord 90 seconds later. 
• Hacking Material : we start to understand the 'building blocks' of materials and what we can do with them. Zoe Laughlin gave a great demo.
• Dale Stephen came to talk how he hacked education (unschooling - the power of the misfits / start by what makes you different). Ben Kestner "if you can google the answer you are asking the wrong question" and gave a glimpse of what was done at the earlier TEDxKids event.
• Hacking genes: Eri Gentry's talk. BTW, did you know you are only 10% human (the rest is bacteria - yes, I'm talking about you!)
• Hacking music : Bruno Zambarlin gave a great demonstration on how you can make music with all kind of objects. (Mitch joined the stage at this point to try it out)
• Hacking social : get our lives back and avoid a Digital Vertigo according to Andrew Keen.(on escaping the cult of the social)
• Hacking science : according to Stuart Firestein, science is mostly like looking for a black cat in the dark. (Science is replacing lower quality ignorance with higher quality ignorance.)
• Hacking medicine : with cheap self-tests for diseases, supported by smart apps like Scanadu. Rudi Pauwels pleas for personal healthcare (why should all drugs work exactly the same on all people?)
• Hacking urban design: starting from an artwork picturing a white square in a white space, Alexandre D'Hooghe explains his vision on the universal building. 

and even... hacking pigs...

Playing with Pigs: Pig Chase Playtest from Utrecht School of the Arts on Vimeo.

Now here is my idea for hacking TED itself : what if we would have a 5 min break between sessions so we can actually stop and think for a brief moment, talk to people about it before rushing to the next topic?

PS Also learned there are TED Books now...