TED Blog: TED2007: Day two wrap-up

09 March 2007

TED2007: Day two wrap-up

Quotes of the day:

Former US president Bill Clinton, TEDprize 2007 winner: "Help me in creating a better future for Rwanda by assisting my foundation, in partnership with the Rwandan government, to build a sustainable, high quality rural health system for the whole country, that can then be a model for other countries. We have a chance here to prove that a country that almost slaughtered itself out of existence (while none of us, most of all me, did anything to help) can practice reconciliation, reorganize itself, focus on tomorrow and provide comprehensive healthcare to its citizens."

News photographer James Nachtwey, TEDprize 2007 winner: "I am a witness and I want my testimony to be honest and uncensored. I also want it to be powerful and eloquent and do justice to the people I'm photographing."

Biologist E.O. Wilson, TEDprize 2007 winner: "I've come on a special mission on behalf of my constituency, the millions of trillions of insects and other small creatures, to make a plea for them. Please keep in mind that if we would wipe out insects from the planet - which we are trying hard to do - the rest of life would disappear within a few months."

Author Michael Pollan: "Looking at the world from other species' point of view is a cure for human self-importance."

Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold: "I have this picture up on my computer screen, and a woman comes up and asks whether that's a Jackson Pollock painting, but no, it's a picture of penguin shit on rocks."

VC John Doerr: "I'm scared. I don't think we're gonna make it." (About climate change)

Former Nigerian Finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: "There is an Africa that you don't hear often about, the Africa that's changing, the Africa of people that are taking their destiny into their hands."

TED Media Director June Cohen: "The newest digital technologies are returning us to the most ancient form of media — one in which a natural order is restored; our individual stories take center stage, with the rest of the world as a backdrop."

Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig: "We have to recognize they kids different from us. We watch TV, they make TV. It is technology that has made them different."

Posted by Bruno Giussani | Permalink

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Comments

It seems to me that the proposed formula (a "microformat" ) for marking-up, in HTML, the names of species (and subspecies, cultivars, varieties, hybrids, etc.) of plants, animals and other living things is relevant to Prof. Wilson#s wish.

Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed,
searched for, saved, cross-referenced or combined. More technically, they are items of semantic mark-up, using just standard (X)HTML with a set of common class-names. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.

The proposed format respects all existing biological taxonomies, and is not intended to change or supplant any of them - it merely provides webmasters with a method of either:

1) marking up a taxonomical name (or taxon-common name pair) in such a way that its components can be recognised by computers

2) marking up a common name, so as to associative with it a taxonomical name, in such a way that the latter's components can be recognised by computers

For instance, if I use it to mark up a list of common names on a website I maintain:

using that microformat, a visitor might have browser tool which lists all the species on the page, sorted into alphabetical order within taxonomic class, or in taxonomic order, and then creates links to, say (for Joe Public) their entries on Wikipedia, or (for scientists) some academic database of the users choosing - or for either, the database prosed by Prof. Wilson. Likewise, that site could use it, to allow user to cross reference entries on the site with other such sites.

Current thoughts (which are being updated frequently) on the format are on an editable "wiki", here:

Please feel free to participate - the proposal needs both messages of support (particularly from people or organisations who have websites on which they might use them) and, especially, comments and constructive criticisms. Even a few words saying that you have noted the proposals and will be interested in developments would help.

You can use the above wiki, or the microformats mailing list:

--
Andy Mabbett
Birmingham, England

Posted by: Andy Mabbett | 12 March 2007 at 03:00 PM

Balst! SOmething ate my URLs. They were

'Species' proposal:
microformats.org/wiki/species

website I manage:
www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/ladywalk/latest.htm

Microformats wiki:
microformats.org/wiki/

Microformats mailing list:
microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/

Posted by: Andy Mabbett | 13 March 2007 at 07:04 AM