(*)Acrostic (let´s play with the letters of HALLOWEEN and create your own acrostic).Have fun!
HAPPINESS
ALEGRIA
LIBERTAD
LOYALTY
OPTIMISM
WARMTH
ESPERANZA
ENTHUSIASM
NATURE
C.M.
Source: Google images
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! (*)
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
(*)Acrostic (let´s play with the letters of HALLOWEEN and create your own acrostic).Have fun!
HAPPINESS
ALEGRIA
LIBERTAD
LOYALTY
OPTIMISM
WARMTH
ESPERANZA
ENTHUSIASM
NATURE
C.M.
Source: Google images
(*)Acrostic (let´s play with the letters of HALLOWEEN and create your own acrostic).Have fun!
HAPPINESS
ALEGRIA
LIBERTAD
LOYALTY
OPTIMISM
WARMTH
ESPERANZA
ENTHUSIASM
NATURE
C.M.
Source: Google images
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
BUS-The art of strategy (*)
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The art of strategy
(*)The editing function of this post has not been working properly. Sorry!
Examining how strategies are created, implemented, and executed is a relatively recent practice. In this video interview, McKinsey’s Chris Bradley and Angus Dawson explain how strategic thought has evolved and where it is headed.
October 2013
Good strategy isn’t easy. Yet we know vastly more today than we did even a year ago about how corporate strategies should be crafted and implemented. In this video, McKinsey principal Chris Bradley and director Angus Dawson trace the evolution of strategic thinking in recent years; outline a thorough, action-oriented approach executives can adopt; and discuss strategy’s next frontiers. What follows is an edited transcript of their remarks. Interview transcript Strategy today Angus Dawson: Strategy is still a relatively young discipline. It emerged in academia in the ’60s and went into corporations in a mainstream way in the ’70s. And so if you look back 10 or 15 years, we’ve probably doubled the sheer stock of experience in doing strategy work in corporations over that time period. And in doing that, I think we’ve got an incredibly rich source of insights into what it actually takes to do great strategy. If I look back 10 or 15 years, when I was a younger consultant doing strategy work, what you did when you started a piece of strategy work was you’d look for a framework. And someone like McKinsey had a whole library of wonderful, powerful frameworks. But you’d hope that you would kind of pick the right things off the menu and apply them in the right way and keep your fingers crossed that you’d therefore get to a great answer. I think it’s changed now. Chris Bradley: I think what’s happened is we’ve layered on top of that in a few ways. The first one is empirics—common math applied to common data with common wisdom. And I think we’ve got ways now of understanding the laws of physics, so to speak, for strategy, but also bringing a lot more analytical rigor into strategy in very, very important ways. Another layer is bringing psychology and adult learning into strategy and realizing that strategy’s not just about what’s written on the paper but about the thinking and feeling processes of the leaders of the company. Another layer, which we’re adding now, is to bring a cohesive method on top of the frameworks and the latest theory and actually get down to the realization that, just like operating a plant takes a lot of experience, a lot of diligence, and a lot of hard work, the same goes for strategy. Our strategy method Angus Dawson: It starts with a belief that you need to “diagnose.” You need to form a point of view on why you make money. Then you need to form a point of view on the future, what we call “forecast.” You then need to come up with some genuine options as to what you might do to create value. We call that “search.” You’ve got to then choose a strategy, and often a real choice requires you to have a choice between alternatives. And then finally you have to commit. And this last piece of committing to strategy is what we call “finishing the strategy.” We find that, with a lot of our clients, one of the sins is leaving the strategy unfinished. A strategy’s unfinished until you’ve been able to roll back the future into tangible, proximate goals, until you can communicate it very clearly to convey the real magic of what has to change for people, and until resources have been shifted. One of my colleagues often says, “I don’t want to read your strategy plan. I want to see what’s shifted in your budget. Then I’ll tell you what your strategy is.” Making change happen Angus Dawson: Often with our clients, a good meeting is defined as a tidy meeting when people said what they were meant to say, it all went to plan, we stuck to the agenda, and everyone signed off. Big strategic calls don’t happen like that. We have to actually think of designing a social process such that people can really grapple with the big ideas and come to grips with changing deeply held biases about what the company should do in the future. Because in the end, it’s a year or two away when the big calls will happen, and in their gut, if they haven’t actually grappled, if they haven’t actually changed their beliefs, if they don’t have conviction, then the strategy won’t actually get implemented. The future Chris Bradley: One of the trends in the way we’re looking at strategy is to be very analytical about it. And what we’re finding is a whole series of empirical norms that are actually challenging many of the ways companies actually do strategy. For example, we’ve just done a study of economic profit and have found that 60 percent of companies are really in a very flat zone. Most of the action happens up in the top quintile. But the trick is it’s actually very rare to escape that middle class. Over 80 percent of companies who start there are still there ten years later. The companies that do escape the middle class have to do something very, very special. And they ordinarily are riding a huge industry trend to get into the top quintile. Resource allocation is another topic where we’ve brought empirics into the picture. Resource allocation is fundamentally important in differentiating high performance from low performance, particularly on stock-market returns. But this jars against the fact that most companies actually are very sticky in the way they allocate resources. Granularity of growth is another example. If you look at what drives the growth of companies, it turns out that selection at a micromarket level is much more important than trying to gain market share. In fact, 80 percent of growth is explained by decisions about where to compete or by market selection. If I weave these threads together, what it says to me is that companies should be just as focused about positional improvement as they are on performance improvement. It reveals the importance of strategy in that light, not as a method of how we gain market share or decide what our edge is going be in the next quarter, but as a way to fundamentally position the company against the right trends, catch the right waves, and put our bets on the right markets. About the authors Chris Bradley is a principal in McKinsey’s Sydney office, where Angus Dawson is a director. Source: www.mckinsey.com
The art of strategy
(*)The editing function of this post has not been working properly. Sorry!
Examining how strategies are created, implemented, and executed is a relatively recent practice. In this video interview, McKinsey’s Chris Bradley and Angus Dawson explain how strategic thought has evolved and where it is headed.
October 2013
Good strategy isn’t easy. Yet we know vastly more today than we did even a year ago about how corporate strategies should be crafted and implemented. In this video, McKinsey principal Chris Bradley and director Angus Dawson trace the evolution of strategic thinking in recent years; outline a thorough, action-oriented approach executives can adopt; and discuss strategy’s next frontiers. What follows is an edited transcript of their remarks. Interview transcript Strategy today Angus Dawson: Strategy is still a relatively young discipline. It emerged in academia in the ’60s and went into corporations in a mainstream way in the ’70s. And so if you look back 10 or 15 years, we’ve probably doubled the sheer stock of experience in doing strategy work in corporations over that time period. And in doing that, I think we’ve got an incredibly rich source of insights into what it actually takes to do great strategy. If I look back 10 or 15 years, when I was a younger consultant doing strategy work, what you did when you started a piece of strategy work was you’d look for a framework. And someone like McKinsey had a whole library of wonderful, powerful frameworks. But you’d hope that you would kind of pick the right things off the menu and apply them in the right way and keep your fingers crossed that you’d therefore get to a great answer. I think it’s changed now. Chris Bradley: I think what’s happened is we’ve layered on top of that in a few ways. The first one is empirics—common math applied to common data with common wisdom. And I think we’ve got ways now of understanding the laws of physics, so to speak, for strategy, but also bringing a lot more analytical rigor into strategy in very, very important ways. Another layer is bringing psychology and adult learning into strategy and realizing that strategy’s not just about what’s written on the paper but about the thinking and feeling processes of the leaders of the company. Another layer, which we’re adding now, is to bring a cohesive method on top of the frameworks and the latest theory and actually get down to the realization that, just like operating a plant takes a lot of experience, a lot of diligence, and a lot of hard work, the same goes for strategy. Our strategy method Angus Dawson: It starts with a belief that you need to “diagnose.” You need to form a point of view on why you make money. Then you need to form a point of view on the future, what we call “forecast.” You then need to come up with some genuine options as to what you might do to create value. We call that “search.” You’ve got to then choose a strategy, and often a real choice requires you to have a choice between alternatives. And then finally you have to commit. And this last piece of committing to strategy is what we call “finishing the strategy.” We find that, with a lot of our clients, one of the sins is leaving the strategy unfinished. A strategy’s unfinished until you’ve been able to roll back the future into tangible, proximate goals, until you can communicate it very clearly to convey the real magic of what has to change for people, and until resources have been shifted. One of my colleagues often says, “I don’t want to read your strategy plan. I want to see what’s shifted in your budget. Then I’ll tell you what your strategy is.” Making change happen Angus Dawson: Often with our clients, a good meeting is defined as a tidy meeting when people said what they were meant to say, it all went to plan, we stuck to the agenda, and everyone signed off. Big strategic calls don’t happen like that. We have to actually think of designing a social process such that people can really grapple with the big ideas and come to grips with changing deeply held biases about what the company should do in the future. Because in the end, it’s a year or two away when the big calls will happen, and in their gut, if they haven’t actually grappled, if they haven’t actually changed their beliefs, if they don’t have conviction, then the strategy won’t actually get implemented. The future Chris Bradley: One of the trends in the way we’re looking at strategy is to be very analytical about it. And what we’re finding is a whole series of empirical norms that are actually challenging many of the ways companies actually do strategy. For example, we’ve just done a study of economic profit and have found that 60 percent of companies are really in a very flat zone. Most of the action happens up in the top quintile. But the trick is it’s actually very rare to escape that middle class. Over 80 percent of companies who start there are still there ten years later. The companies that do escape the middle class have to do something very, very special. And they ordinarily are riding a huge industry trend to get into the top quintile. Resource allocation is another topic where we’ve brought empirics into the picture. Resource allocation is fundamentally important in differentiating high performance from low performance, particularly on stock-market returns. But this jars against the fact that most companies actually are very sticky in the way they allocate resources. Granularity of growth is another example. If you look at what drives the growth of companies, it turns out that selection at a micromarket level is much more important than trying to gain market share. In fact, 80 percent of growth is explained by decisions about where to compete or by market selection. If I weave these threads together, what it says to me is that companies should be just as focused about positional improvement as they are on performance improvement. It reveals the importance of strategy in that light, not as a method of how we gain market share or decide what our edge is going be in the next quarter, but as a way to fundamentally position the company against the right trends, catch the right waves, and put our bets on the right markets. About the authors Chris Bradley is a principal in McKinsey’s Sydney office, where Angus Dawson is a director. Source: www.mckinsey.com
Monday, October 28, 2013
TOEFL iBT-Tips-72 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
TOEFL iBT-Tips
Source: www.slideshare.net
TOEFL iBT-Tips
TOEFL_Tips from zip pink
Source: www.slideshare.net
MUSIC/LEARN/TEACH-Someone like you – Adele
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Someone like you – Adele
Hi Everyone! Listening to music with English lyrics is an excellent way of developing your vocabulary, grammar and listening skills. We’ve used several songs with students before and we thought we would start posting some of them here so you can enjoy them too. Happy listening!
Here’s one interpretation of what the song is about:
‘To me this song describes perfectly the feeling that you get when you see someone you loved moving on and happy when you feel like you’ve ended up worse off. But obviously you’re still somehow close and wouldn’t wish anything bad upon them. And it seems the only way to be happy again is to find a replica of them that still won’t quite match up.’
Listen to it yourself and see if you agree. Before you listen, look at the vocabulary activity below – you’ll need these words to understand the lyrics.
Vocabulary Activity:
Match the words in the left column to their correct definitions in the right column.
1.To settle down a. used to mean that time passes very and surprisingly quickly
2.To hold back b.to arrive or appear somewhere, usually unexpectedly or in a way that was not planned
3.Ain’t c. to continue being good
4.To turn up d.to not do something, often because of fear or because you do not want to make a bad situation worse
5.Out of the blue e. To be finished
6.To be over 1.to make a very strong and urgent request
7.To last g.to accept responsibilities and live a calmer life
8.Time flies h.completely unexpected
9.To beg 1.short form of: am not, is not, are not, has not, or have not (slang)
Now listen to the song, you can read the lyrics at the same time if you like or read them afterwards. While listening, listen out for the words you studied in the vocabulary activity. When you’ve finished, look back at the vocabulary activity and check whether the definitions you chose seem correct.
Lyrics:
I heard that you’re settled down
That you found a girl and you’re married now
I heard that your dreams came true
Guess she gave you things I didn’t give to you
Old friend, why are you so shy?
Ain’t like you to hold back or hide from the light
I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me, it isn’t over
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
You know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised in a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days
I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me, it isn’t over yet
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead, yeah
Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Source: www.youtube.com/englishlanguageclasses.wordpress.com
Someone like you – Adele
Hi Everyone! Listening to music with English lyrics is an excellent way of developing your vocabulary, grammar and listening skills. We’ve used several songs with students before and we thought we would start posting some of them here so you can enjoy them too. Happy listening!
Here’s one interpretation of what the song is about:
‘To me this song describes perfectly the feeling that you get when you see someone you loved moving on and happy when you feel like you’ve ended up worse off. But obviously you’re still somehow close and wouldn’t wish anything bad upon them. And it seems the only way to be happy again is to find a replica of them that still won’t quite match up.’
Listen to it yourself and see if you agree. Before you listen, look at the vocabulary activity below – you’ll need these words to understand the lyrics.
Vocabulary Activity:
Match the words in the left column to their correct definitions in the right column.
1.To settle down a. used to mean that time passes very and surprisingly quickly
2.To hold back b.to arrive or appear somewhere, usually unexpectedly or in a way that was not planned
3.Ain’t c. to continue being good
4.To turn up d.to not do something, often because of fear or because you do not want to make a bad situation worse
5.Out of the blue e. To be finished
6.To be over 1.to make a very strong and urgent request
7.To last g.to accept responsibilities and live a calmer life
8.Time flies h.completely unexpected
9.To beg 1.short form of: am not, is not, are not, has not, or have not (slang)
Now listen to the song, you can read the lyrics at the same time if you like or read them afterwards. While listening, listen out for the words you studied in the vocabulary activity. When you’ve finished, look back at the vocabulary activity and check whether the definitions you chose seem correct.
Lyrics:
I heard that you’re settled down
That you found a girl and you’re married now
I heard that your dreams came true
Guess she gave you things I didn’t give to you
Old friend, why are you so shy?
Ain’t like you to hold back or hide from the light
I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me, it isn’t over
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
You know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised in a summer haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days
I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me, it isn’t over yet
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead, yeah
Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I begged, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead
Source: www.youtube.com/englishlanguageclasses.wordpress.com
TOEFL iBT-Essay Topics & Essay Patterns-Video
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Source: www.engvid.com
Source: www.engvid.com
TOEFL iBT-Writing Practice by Barron´s- 379 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Source: www.slideshare.net
Source: www.slideshare.net
Sunday, October 27, 2013
HEALTH/GralInt-21st Century Healthcare: From E-health to Personalized Medicine
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
21st Century Healthcare: From E-health to Personalized Medicine
Spain began its electronic health record (EHR) initiative in the region of Andalusia, implementing EHRs for 8 million people. This effort has since been expanded to other regions of the country, and the regional health records are now being integrated at the federal level. By 2010, more than 95 percent of primary health-care providers across Spain had used the electronic records. In 2005, the Spanish government began implementing electronic prescriptions as well, and by 2010 more than 250 million prescriptions were being submitted electronically to pharmacies, placing Spain among the top nations in the world for utilization of these technologies. In the regions where these e-prescriptions are employed, visits to primary care physicians have decreased by about 15 percent. "Years ago, a chronic patient had to go to the pharmacy every week, and had to go to the primary care doctor just to get that weekly prescription," says Pablo Rivero, director of international e-health development for the Spanish Association of the Information and Communications Technology Industry (AMETIC in Spanish). "Now, the patient can simply go directly to the pharmacy." This change has saved significant cost as well as time. Managing health-care expenses is a key goal of the Madrid-based consulting company everis; everis is one of the top two companies in Spain in experience with EHR and personal health records, and its solutions cover more than 20 million users. The company's engineers are now working to improve chronic disease management. "Chronic patients consume about 50 percent of the global health budget," says everis business director Santiago Martín. But the management of different diseases demands different plans, so Everis has developed solutions for a number of tasks. First, its software segments a population by sufferers from each disease to be managed, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and lung diseases. Then, for a given disease, the software classifies the population further, depending on the level of care required, and defines the care needed and the technology solutions that can help meet those needs. For instance, one diabetes patient may require only an interface that allows her to upload her weight daily; this can be integrated with a tablet or mobile phone. A more seriously ill patient may require additional technologies, such as advanced sensors for evaluating health outcomes. Martín explains that this segmentation avoids the expense of automatically installing a wide range of health-care technologies in every patient's house.
Flying Light
Everis began implementing its telemedicine and chronic-care solutions in Spain in 2011, and is working with public health administrations to determine the level of cost savings. Martín says thus far the range of savings for chronic patients is 20 to 40 percent over traditional care. Indra is also investigating the management of long-term chronic patients through a new center in Toledo, near Madrid. The company's engineers are working with the local health-care agency to define the resources and services its patients need, along with the most useful interfaces for the patient and health-care provider. A pilot project involving some 80 thousand individuals will soon be rolled out. In Andalusia, the region is moving toward the beginning of the next stage, implementing access to electronic health records on mobile devices. The care providers in an ambulance, for example, will be able to access a patient's records via a tablet or mobile phone, incorporate the information into the patient's care, and then update the record for the hospital. According to Rivero, the key to Spain's success has been the integration of clinicians into all levels of planning: "It's most important to involve health professionals from the very beginning. It's not a 100 percent technological project; it's a change in the process of how health care is delivered." Madrid-based Oesia has developed specialized software for hospitals and regional and federal health-care administrations, and is moving into the realm of artificial intelligence with a computerized clinical guide. As the doctor types information about a particular patient's condition, for instance, the guide may suggest that a certain scan is not necessary, based on the experiences of other patients. The doctor can then accept that decision, or override it and explain why, leading the system to learn a new pattern. Among other tasks, the software will be able to synthesize the data from existing patient records, and point out why a particular medication may conflict with the patient's other medications. "The doctor still has the final say," says Arnaud Marivain, director of the Oesia health business unit. "But in an emergency, or perhaps if someone is tired, there can be mistakes. This will help ensure the security of the patient." This product has been in development for the past year and should be out by the end of 2012.
TRANSFERRING EXPERIENCE OVERSEAS
The Spanish government and Spanish companies are taking their experience in e-health overseas, according to Rivero. "We believe that international collaboration is key for e-health development, to share information and best practices and to create a real network of international collaborators," he explains. Madrid-based Indra proposed to develop and operate a comprehensive system for Bahrain's entire national health-care system network over the course of the next 11 years.
The proposal was accepted based on the company's IT experience in the Spanish health-care system. The first step, says Diego García, Indra's director of health, will involve creating and sharing electronic records and clinical and administrative management systems. The second will include adding e-health functionalities such as telemedicine. In addition, Indra is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) on a telemedicine project in sub-Saharan Africa; the ESA is involved in projects that expand the reach of the agency's space technology (such as satellite communication) here on Earth. The feasibility study began in Senegal, focusing on basic needs such as the tools for videoconferencing, including a satellite dish, a modem, and electricity (using renew- able energy such as wind or solar if necessary). The prototype will allow health-care providers to confer with clinicians around the world, provide a model for e-learning, and facilitate EHRs. The results of the basic needs study were presented in the fall of 2011, and the pilot program has begun in Senegal and Kenya. GMV has also developed telemedicine for overseas communities, as part of a comprehensive platform for telemedicine that can range from the most simple configuration— a face-to-face consultation via webcam between a rural or homebound patient and a distant doctor— to a complex system that allows data from any type of device to be transmitted and reviewed. This project is the latest for the engineering company, which has decades of experience in the aerospace sector; based on its experience with NASA and the ESA, the company has applied its engineering expertise to health care in products including medical simulations and EHRs. GMV has set up a telemedicine platform at a soccer stadium in Cartagena, Columbia, which is networked with five hospitals; the company is now expanding in Latin America and Africa. Though the eventual goal is to offer such services in Spain (and other developed countries) as well, particularly in intensive-care units where there's a dearth of specialists and a need for immediate specialized care, Carlos Royo, director of business development, expects this will take off first in poor countries. "It's a paradox, but it's actually cheaper and more efficient to jump to the best, most advanced technology there," Royo points out. It's cheaper than, for instance, building a new hospital, even as telemedicine can afford patients a high level of care. "In the past, I used to talk about the cost of telemedicine. Now I talk about how quickly a government will receive a return on investment," through savings in transportation costs and in overall improved care for citizens, Royo continues.
PERSONALIZING MEDICAL CARE
The adoption of EHRs facilitates the move towards personalized medicine, points out Indra's García: "We believe that personalized medicine will be used in the future— and what's required is IT." Indra is participating in research projects that examine how health records software could gather all relevant information, including the patient's genetic profile, to tailor a particular diagnosis or treatment. The company has also initiated research into personalized medicine, beginning with an oncology project that analyzes samples and data from 1,000 patients suffering from two types of cancer. Part of the hope for personalized medicine is to fulfill the promise of matching the correct treatment to every patient. Not every patient will respond to every option, so clinicians at times cycle through a number of potential medications, or combinations of medication, before hitting on one that works. In response, Vivia Biotech has developed a technology that evaluates the most popular combinations of drugs to treat blood cancers (leukemias, lymphomas, and myelomas). "In blood cancer[s], doctors always give a cocktail of drugs to treat a patient, but there's nothing on the market to predict how the patients will respond to those four or five drugs," says Juan Ballesteros, chief scientific officer. "We're the first to do that." The company's technology, called ExviTech, consists of a platform that can rapidly analyze thousands of biological samples (such as blood samples in combination with medications) in 48 hours. For blood cancers, Vivia Biotech has taken the 18 most popular drug protocols already in use. The patient's blood is treated with each medication combination, which is then ranked by how many tumor cells that protocol kills. Says Ballesteros, "Our hope is not to cure the disease, but to reduce it to being chronic, by quickly finding the right drugs that kill the most tumor cells." The system is undergoing validation testing in Spain and the United Kingdom. The results are positive, according to Ballesteros— though yet unpublished— and as a result one regional health-care agency in Spain has agreed to initiate a pilot project for all diagnosed blood cancers. Though a test might cost $1,000, the savings it offers could leap to the tens of thousands by avoiding unnecessary and expensive drugs. Its cost-effectiveness will also be evaluated during the partnership with the health-care agency, and Vivia Biotech expects the tests to be on the market in 2012. Barcelona-based AB-Biotics has also developed a technology to determine a given patient's response to drugs, and has focused on those used most widely to treat psychiatric and neurological diseases. A DNA chip called Neurofarmagen analyzes the patient's saliva for genetic variations— published in the scientific literature or researched at the company's laboratory— that indicate responses to different drugs. "Some of the variations have to do with the metabolism of the drug, or with the therapeutic target, or with the patient's own biochemistry that could affect the intake and processing of that drug," says CEO Miquel Angel Bonachera. The company launched its first product, Neurofarmagen, in 2010; it is used for depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy. Further products include Neurofarmagen Epilepsy and Neurofarmagen ADHD. Because of their success in Spain, AB-Biotics is preparing a plan to sell these products abroad, first targeting the U. S. market.
REFINING BLOODTYPES
Current tests define blood type as A/B/O and Rh positive or negative, but some racial groups share a variety of more obscure variants, explains Antonio Martinez, CEO of Bilbao-based Progenika. African and Asians, for instance, might be negative for more rare antigens. These do not cause a problem when someone needs a single blood transfusion and receives antigen-mismatched blood; chronic patients, however, will eventually develop antibodies and suffer allergic reactions if the blood donor is not an exact match. Most blood banks currently accept the fact that some patients will live with these antigen-induced complications. Says Martinez, "We want to avoid this problem by supplying patients with the perfectly matched blood from the very beginning." So Progenika developed a DNA chip to identify whether a patient or blood donor is positive or negative for these blood types (their names include RHCE, Kell, Kidd, and Duffy). The test identifies 23 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, and labels them with fluorescent molecules. The DNA blood-typing chip, available since 2008, has already been adopted in blood banks across Europe. For the U. S. market, Progenika identified SNPs related to sickle-cell anemia. The company has already begun selling in the U. S., and recently signed an agreement with Novartis to sell Progenika products in the U. S. The company is now utilizing the same technology to identify markers for cancers, beginning with prostate cancer.
UNCOVERING TRACES OF DISEASE
Another hope of advanced personalized biotechnology is that new techniques will employ genomic sequencing to detect early markers of a disease, or a patient's genetic predisposition to a disease. Madrid-based BlackBio developed a DNA biosequencing technology that improved the speed and accuracy of sequencing, then moved into the realm of diagnostics. Instead of focusing on a patient's entire genome, BlackBio targeted a handful of SNPs that indicate a patient's likelihood of, for example, developing Type 2 diabetes. Says Gemma García, deputy general manager, "This is quite an important approach for personalized medicine.
If you have a high genetic risk of diabetes, you can take preventive steps: change your diet, exercise, try not to gain weight, get your blood pressure under control." The test is done using a simple oral swab. BlackBio began validating the kit with a hospital in Madrid in September 2011. In addition, BlackBio is teasing out the identification of a variety of diseases. Sepsis, a whole-body infection, can be both fast acting and deadly. Traditional microbiology to determine the source of an infection can take from 48 hours to a week, but the diagnostic kit developed by BlackBio can identify the bacterial source of an infection in only eight hours.
Two Catalonia-based companies, Oryzon and Reig Jofré Laboratories, the former a specialist in biomarkers and early diagnosis and the latter a larger, more traditional pharmaceutical company, have teamed up to offer a minimally invasive test to predict the occurrence of endometrial cancer. This cancer, after breast cancer the second most common among Spanish women, can appear at the same time as menopause, and a woman's irregular bleeding could result from either state. "Ninety-five percent of the time, the bleeding is purely natural," explains Ignasi Biosca, CEO of the Reig Jofré Group. "But in five percent of the cases, the bleeding is related to endometrial cancer. It's important to catch that five percent." Current tests demand a multistep process and are both expensive and invasive, involving sampling the uterine wall. And Carlos Buesa, CEO of Oryzon, says that "clinicians wanted something simple that could be done on the patient's first visit," without anesthesia. In response, the companies developed a test to evaluate genes found in the mucus on the uterine lining. Following a swab test, the technology can pick up the markers of five genes that are over-expressed in the presence of endometrial cancer. Oryzon and Reig-Jofré have conducted a clinical trial with 16 Spanish hospitals, comparing the swab test to actual results of the current multistep diagnostics for tissue samples from 500 women. The results, presented in September 2011, demonstrate 97% accuracy and compare favorably to current techniques, but these are available in a dramatically shorter time frame and at a significantly reduced cost. Buesa says that Oryzon's first product showcases the company's promise in diagnostic and personalized medicine, as the biomarker discovery platform demonstrates. Buesa continues, "We want to become a leader in molecular diagnostics, with specialization in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics."
Source: www.technologyreview.com
21st Century Healthcare: From E-health to Personalized Medicine
Spain began its electronic health record (EHR) initiative in the region of Andalusia, implementing EHRs for 8 million people. This effort has since been expanded to other regions of the country, and the regional health records are now being integrated at the federal level. By 2010, more than 95 percent of primary health-care providers across Spain had used the electronic records. In 2005, the Spanish government began implementing electronic prescriptions as well, and by 2010 more than 250 million prescriptions were being submitted electronically to pharmacies, placing Spain among the top nations in the world for utilization of these technologies. In the regions where these e-prescriptions are employed, visits to primary care physicians have decreased by about 15 percent. "Years ago, a chronic patient had to go to the pharmacy every week, and had to go to the primary care doctor just to get that weekly prescription," says Pablo Rivero, director of international e-health development for the Spanish Association of the Information and Communications Technology Industry (AMETIC in Spanish). "Now, the patient can simply go directly to the pharmacy." This change has saved significant cost as well as time. Managing health-care expenses is a key goal of the Madrid-based consulting company everis; everis is one of the top two companies in Spain in experience with EHR and personal health records, and its solutions cover more than 20 million users. The company's engineers are now working to improve chronic disease management. "Chronic patients consume about 50 percent of the global health budget," says everis business director Santiago Martín. But the management of different diseases demands different plans, so Everis has developed solutions for a number of tasks. First, its software segments a population by sufferers from each disease to be managed, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and lung diseases. Then, for a given disease, the software classifies the population further, depending on the level of care required, and defines the care needed and the technology solutions that can help meet those needs. For instance, one diabetes patient may require only an interface that allows her to upload her weight daily; this can be integrated with a tablet or mobile phone. A more seriously ill patient may require additional technologies, such as advanced sensors for evaluating health outcomes. Martín explains that this segmentation avoids the expense of automatically installing a wide range of health-care technologies in every patient's house.
Flying Light
Everis began implementing its telemedicine and chronic-care solutions in Spain in 2011, and is working with public health administrations to determine the level of cost savings. Martín says thus far the range of savings for chronic patients is 20 to 40 percent over traditional care. Indra is also investigating the management of long-term chronic patients through a new center in Toledo, near Madrid. The company's engineers are working with the local health-care agency to define the resources and services its patients need, along with the most useful interfaces for the patient and health-care provider. A pilot project involving some 80 thousand individuals will soon be rolled out. In Andalusia, the region is moving toward the beginning of the next stage, implementing access to electronic health records on mobile devices. The care providers in an ambulance, for example, will be able to access a patient's records via a tablet or mobile phone, incorporate the information into the patient's care, and then update the record for the hospital. According to Rivero, the key to Spain's success has been the integration of clinicians into all levels of planning: "It's most important to involve health professionals from the very beginning. It's not a 100 percent technological project; it's a change in the process of how health care is delivered." Madrid-based Oesia has developed specialized software for hospitals and regional and federal health-care administrations, and is moving into the realm of artificial intelligence with a computerized clinical guide. As the doctor types information about a particular patient's condition, for instance, the guide may suggest that a certain scan is not necessary, based on the experiences of other patients. The doctor can then accept that decision, or override it and explain why, leading the system to learn a new pattern. Among other tasks, the software will be able to synthesize the data from existing patient records, and point out why a particular medication may conflict with the patient's other medications. "The doctor still has the final say," says Arnaud Marivain, director of the Oesia health business unit. "But in an emergency, or perhaps if someone is tired, there can be mistakes. This will help ensure the security of the patient." This product has been in development for the past year and should be out by the end of 2012.
TRANSFERRING EXPERIENCE OVERSEAS
The Spanish government and Spanish companies are taking their experience in e-health overseas, according to Rivero. "We believe that international collaboration is key for e-health development, to share information and best practices and to create a real network of international collaborators," he explains. Madrid-based Indra proposed to develop and operate a comprehensive system for Bahrain's entire national health-care system network over the course of the next 11 years.
The proposal was accepted based on the company's IT experience in the Spanish health-care system. The first step, says Diego García, Indra's director of health, will involve creating and sharing electronic records and clinical and administrative management systems. The second will include adding e-health functionalities such as telemedicine. In addition, Indra is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) on a telemedicine project in sub-Saharan Africa; the ESA is involved in projects that expand the reach of the agency's space technology (such as satellite communication) here on Earth. The feasibility study began in Senegal, focusing on basic needs such as the tools for videoconferencing, including a satellite dish, a modem, and electricity (using renew- able energy such as wind or solar if necessary). The prototype will allow health-care providers to confer with clinicians around the world, provide a model for e-learning, and facilitate EHRs. The results of the basic needs study were presented in the fall of 2011, and the pilot program has begun in Senegal and Kenya. GMV has also developed telemedicine for overseas communities, as part of a comprehensive platform for telemedicine that can range from the most simple configuration— a face-to-face consultation via webcam between a rural or homebound patient and a distant doctor— to a complex system that allows data from any type of device to be transmitted and reviewed. This project is the latest for the engineering company, which has decades of experience in the aerospace sector; based on its experience with NASA and the ESA, the company has applied its engineering expertise to health care in products including medical simulations and EHRs. GMV has set up a telemedicine platform at a soccer stadium in Cartagena, Columbia, which is networked with five hospitals; the company is now expanding in Latin America and Africa. Though the eventual goal is to offer such services in Spain (and other developed countries) as well, particularly in intensive-care units where there's a dearth of specialists and a need for immediate specialized care, Carlos Royo, director of business development, expects this will take off first in poor countries. "It's a paradox, but it's actually cheaper and more efficient to jump to the best, most advanced technology there," Royo points out. It's cheaper than, for instance, building a new hospital, even as telemedicine can afford patients a high level of care. "In the past, I used to talk about the cost of telemedicine. Now I talk about how quickly a government will receive a return on investment," through savings in transportation costs and in overall improved care for citizens, Royo continues.
PERSONALIZING MEDICAL CARE
The adoption of EHRs facilitates the move towards personalized medicine, points out Indra's García: "We believe that personalized medicine will be used in the future— and what's required is IT." Indra is participating in research projects that examine how health records software could gather all relevant information, including the patient's genetic profile, to tailor a particular diagnosis or treatment. The company has also initiated research into personalized medicine, beginning with an oncology project that analyzes samples and data from 1,000 patients suffering from two types of cancer. Part of the hope for personalized medicine is to fulfill the promise of matching the correct treatment to every patient. Not every patient will respond to every option, so clinicians at times cycle through a number of potential medications, or combinations of medication, before hitting on one that works. In response, Vivia Biotech has developed a technology that evaluates the most popular combinations of drugs to treat blood cancers (leukemias, lymphomas, and myelomas). "In blood cancer[s], doctors always give a cocktail of drugs to treat a patient, but there's nothing on the market to predict how the patients will respond to those four or five drugs," says Juan Ballesteros, chief scientific officer. "We're the first to do that." The company's technology, called ExviTech, consists of a platform that can rapidly analyze thousands of biological samples (such as blood samples in combination with medications) in 48 hours. For blood cancers, Vivia Biotech has taken the 18 most popular drug protocols already in use. The patient's blood is treated with each medication combination, which is then ranked by how many tumor cells that protocol kills. Says Ballesteros, "Our hope is not to cure the disease, but to reduce it to being chronic, by quickly finding the right drugs that kill the most tumor cells." The system is undergoing validation testing in Spain and the United Kingdom. The results are positive, according to Ballesteros— though yet unpublished— and as a result one regional health-care agency in Spain has agreed to initiate a pilot project for all diagnosed blood cancers. Though a test might cost $1,000, the savings it offers could leap to the tens of thousands by avoiding unnecessary and expensive drugs. Its cost-effectiveness will also be evaluated during the partnership with the health-care agency, and Vivia Biotech expects the tests to be on the market in 2012. Barcelona-based AB-Biotics has also developed a technology to determine a given patient's response to drugs, and has focused on those used most widely to treat psychiatric and neurological diseases. A DNA chip called Neurofarmagen analyzes the patient's saliva for genetic variations— published in the scientific literature or researched at the company's laboratory— that indicate responses to different drugs. "Some of the variations have to do with the metabolism of the drug, or with the therapeutic target, or with the patient's own biochemistry that could affect the intake and processing of that drug," says CEO Miquel Angel Bonachera. The company launched its first product, Neurofarmagen, in 2010; it is used for depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy. Further products include Neurofarmagen Epilepsy and Neurofarmagen ADHD. Because of their success in Spain, AB-Biotics is preparing a plan to sell these products abroad, first targeting the U. S. market.
REFINING BLOODTYPES
Current tests define blood type as A/B/O and Rh positive or negative, but some racial groups share a variety of more obscure variants, explains Antonio Martinez, CEO of Bilbao-based Progenika. African and Asians, for instance, might be negative for more rare antigens. These do not cause a problem when someone needs a single blood transfusion and receives antigen-mismatched blood; chronic patients, however, will eventually develop antibodies and suffer allergic reactions if the blood donor is not an exact match. Most blood banks currently accept the fact that some patients will live with these antigen-induced complications. Says Martinez, "We want to avoid this problem by supplying patients with the perfectly matched blood from the very beginning." So Progenika developed a DNA chip to identify whether a patient or blood donor is positive or negative for these blood types (their names include RHCE, Kell, Kidd, and Duffy). The test identifies 23 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, and labels them with fluorescent molecules. The DNA blood-typing chip, available since 2008, has already been adopted in blood banks across Europe. For the U. S. market, Progenika identified SNPs related to sickle-cell anemia. The company has already begun selling in the U. S., and recently signed an agreement with Novartis to sell Progenika products in the U. S. The company is now utilizing the same technology to identify markers for cancers, beginning with prostate cancer.
UNCOVERING TRACES OF DISEASE
Another hope of advanced personalized biotechnology is that new techniques will employ genomic sequencing to detect early markers of a disease, or a patient's genetic predisposition to a disease. Madrid-based BlackBio developed a DNA biosequencing technology that improved the speed and accuracy of sequencing, then moved into the realm of diagnostics. Instead of focusing on a patient's entire genome, BlackBio targeted a handful of SNPs that indicate a patient's likelihood of, for example, developing Type 2 diabetes. Says Gemma García, deputy general manager, "This is quite an important approach for personalized medicine.
If you have a high genetic risk of diabetes, you can take preventive steps: change your diet, exercise, try not to gain weight, get your blood pressure under control." The test is done using a simple oral swab. BlackBio began validating the kit with a hospital in Madrid in September 2011. In addition, BlackBio is teasing out the identification of a variety of diseases. Sepsis, a whole-body infection, can be both fast acting and deadly. Traditional microbiology to determine the source of an infection can take from 48 hours to a week, but the diagnostic kit developed by BlackBio can identify the bacterial source of an infection in only eight hours.
Two Catalonia-based companies, Oryzon and Reig Jofré Laboratories, the former a specialist in biomarkers and early diagnosis and the latter a larger, more traditional pharmaceutical company, have teamed up to offer a minimally invasive test to predict the occurrence of endometrial cancer. This cancer, after breast cancer the second most common among Spanish women, can appear at the same time as menopause, and a woman's irregular bleeding could result from either state. "Ninety-five percent of the time, the bleeding is purely natural," explains Ignasi Biosca, CEO of the Reig Jofré Group. "But in five percent of the cases, the bleeding is related to endometrial cancer. It's important to catch that five percent." Current tests demand a multistep process and are both expensive and invasive, involving sampling the uterine wall. And Carlos Buesa, CEO of Oryzon, says that "clinicians wanted something simple that could be done on the patient's first visit," without anesthesia. In response, the companies developed a test to evaluate genes found in the mucus on the uterine lining. Following a swab test, the technology can pick up the markers of five genes that are over-expressed in the presence of endometrial cancer. Oryzon and Reig-Jofré have conducted a clinical trial with 16 Spanish hospitals, comparing the swab test to actual results of the current multistep diagnostics for tissue samples from 500 women. The results, presented in September 2011, demonstrate 97% accuracy and compare favorably to current techniques, but these are available in a dramatically shorter time frame and at a significantly reduced cost. Buesa says that Oryzon's first product showcases the company's promise in diagnostic and personalized medicine, as the biomarker discovery platform demonstrates. Buesa continues, "We want to become a leader in molecular diagnostics, with specialization in genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics."
Source: www.technologyreview.com
GralInt/TED Talks-Parul Sehgal: An ode to envy
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Parul Sehgal: An ode to envy
Filmed Jul 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDSalon NY2013
What is jealousy? What drives it, and why do we secretly love it? No study has ever been able to capture its “loneliness, longevity, grim thrill” -- that is, says Parul Sehgal, except for fiction. In an eloquent meditation she scours pages from literature to show how jealousy is not so different from a quest for knowledge.
Parul Sehgal is an editor for "The New York Times Book Review."
Transcript:
So when I was eight years old, a new girl came to join the class, and she was so impressive, as the new girl always seems to be. She had vast quantities of very shiny hair and a cute little pencil case, super strong on state capitals, just a great speller. And I just curdled with jealousy that year, until I hatched my devious plan. So one day I stayed a little late after school, a little too late, and I lurked in the girl's bathroom. When the coast was clear, I emerged, crept into the classroom, and took from my teacher's desk the grade book. And then I did it. I fiddled with my rival's grades, just a little, just demoted some of those A's. All of those A's. (Laughter) And I got ready to return the book to the drawer, when hang on, some of my other classmates had appallingly good grades too. So, in a frenzy, I corrected everybody's marks, not imaginatively. I gave everybody a row of D's and I gave myself a row of A's, just because I was there, you know, might as well.
And I am still baffled by my behavior. I don't understand where the idea came from. I don't understand why I felt so great doing it. I felt great. I don't understand why I was never caught. I mean, it should have been so blatantly obvious. I was never caught. But most of all, I am baffled by, why did it bother me so much that this little girl, this tiny little girl, was so good at spelling? Jealousy baffles me. It's so mysterious, and it's so pervasive. We know babies suffer from jealousy. We know primates do. Bluebirds are actually very prone. We know that jealousy is the number one cause of spousal murder in the United States. And yet, I have never read a study that can parse to me its loneliness or its longevity or its grim thrill. For that, we have to go to fiction, because the novel is the lab that has studied jealousy in every possible configuration. In fact, I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say that if we didn't have jealousy, would we even have literature? Well no faithless Helen, no "Odyssey." No jealous king, no "Arabian Nights." No Shakespeare. There goes high school reading lists, because we're losing "Sound and the Fury," we're losing "Gatsby," "Son Also Rises," we're losing "Madame Bovary," "Anna K." No jealousy, no Proust. And now, I mean, I know it's fashionable to say that Proust has the answers to everything, but in the case of jealousy, he kind of does. This year is the centennial of his masterpiece, "In Search of Lost Time," and it's the most exhaustive study of sexual jealousy and just regular competitiveness, my brand, that we can hope to have. (Laughter) And we think about Proust, we think about the sentimental bits, right? We think about a little boy trying to get to sleep. We think about a madeleine moistened in lavender tea. We forget how harsh his vision was. We forget how pitiless he is. I mean, these are books that Virginia Woolf said were tough as cat gut. I don't know what cat gut is, but let's assume it's formidable.
Let's look at why they go so well together, the novel and jealousy, jealousy and Proust. Is it something as obvious as that jealousy, which boils down into person, desire, impediment, is such a solid narrative foundation? I don't know. I think it cuts very close to the bone, because let's think about what happens when we feel jealous. When we feel jealous, we tell ourselves a story. We tell ourselves a story about other people's lives, and these stories make us feel terrible because they're designed to make us feel terrible. As the teller of the tale and the audience, we know just what details to include, to dig that knife in. Right? Jealousy makes us all amateur novelists, and this is something Proust understood.
In the first volume, Swann's Way, the series of books, Swann, one of the main characters, is thinking very fondly of his mistress and how great she is in bed, and suddenly, in the course of a few sentences, and these are Proustian sentences, so they're long as rivers, but in the course of a few sentences, he suddenly recoils and he realizes, "Hang on, everything I love about this woman, somebody else would love about this woman. Everything that she does that gives me pleasure could be giving somebody else pleasure, maybe right about now." And this is the story he starts to tell himself, and from then on, Proust writes that every fresh charm Swann detects in his mistress, he adds to his "collection of instruments in his private torture chamber."
Now Swann and Proust, we have to admit, were notoriously jealous. You know, Proust's boyfriends would have to leave the country if they wanted to break up with him. But you don't have to be that jealous to concede that it's hard work. Right? Jealous is exhausting. It's a hungry emotion. It must be fed.
And what does jealousy like? Jealously likes information. Jealously likes details. Jealously likes the vast quantities of shiny hair, the cute little pencil case. Jealously likes photos. That's why Instagram is such a hit. (Laughter) Proust actually links the language of scholarship and jealousy. When Swann is in his jealous throes, and suddenly he's listening at doorways and bribing his mistress' servants, he defends these behaviors. He says, "You know, look, I know you think this is repugnant, but it is no different from interpreting an ancient text or looking at a monument." He says, "They are scientific investigations with real intellectual value." Proust is trying to show us that jealousy feels intolerable and makes us look absurd, but it is, at its crux, a quest for knowledge, a quest for truth, painful truth, and actually, where Proust is concerned, the more painful the truth, the better. Grief, humiliation, loss: These were the avenues to wisdom for Proust. He says, "A woman whom we need who makes us suffer elicits from us a gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us." Is he telling us to just go and find cruel women? No. I think he's trying to say that jealousy reveals us to ourselves. And does any other emotion crack us open in this particular way? Does any other emotion reveal to us our aggression and our hideous ambition and our entitlement? Does any other emotion teach us to look with such peculiar intensity?
Freud would write about this later. One day, Freud was visited by this very anxious young man who was consumed with the thought of his wife cheating on him. And Freud says, it's something strange about this guy, because he's not looking at what his wife is doing. Because she's blameless; everybody knows it. The poor creature is just under suspicion for no cause. But he's looking for things that his wife is doing without noticing, unintentional behaviors. Is she smiling too brightly here, or did she accidentally brush up against a man there? [Freud] says that the man is becoming the custodian of his wife's unconscious.
The novel is very good on this point. The novel is very good at describing how jealousy trains us to look with intensity but not accuracy. In fact, the more intensely jealous we are, the more we become residents of fantasy. And this is why, I think, jealousy doesn't just provoke us to do violent things or illegal things. Jealousy prompts us to behave in ways that are wildly inventive. Now I'm thinking of myself at eight, I concede, but I'm also thinking of this story I heard on the news. A 52-year-old Michigan woman was caught creating a fake Facebook account from which she sent vile, hideous messages to herself for a year. For a year. A year. And she was trying to frame her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, and I have to confess when I heard this, I just reacted with admiration. (Laughter) Because, I mean, let's be real. What immense, if misplaced, creativity. Right? This is something from a novel. This is something from a Patricia Highsmith novel.
Now Highsmith is a particular favorite of mine. She is the very brilliant and bizarre woman of American letters. She's the author of "Strangers on a Train" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," books that are all about how jealousy, it muddles our minds, and once we're in the sphere, in that realm of jealousy, the membrane between what is and what could be can be pierced in an instant. Take Tom Ripley, her most famous character. Now, Tom Ripley goes from wanting you or wanting what you have to being you and having what you once had, and you're under the floorboards, he's answering to your name, he's wearing your rings, emptying your bank account. That's one way to go.
But what do we do? We can't go the Tom Ripley route. I can't give the world D's, as much as I would really like to some days. And it's a pity, because we live in envious times. We live in jealous times. I mean, we're all good citizens of social media, aren't we, where the currency is envy?
Does the novel show us a way out? I'm not sure. So let's do what characters always do when they're not sure, when they are in possession of a mystery. Let's go to 221B Baker Street and ask for Sherlock Holmes. When people think of Holmes, they think of his nemesis being Professor Moriarty, right, this criminal mastermind. But I've always preferred [Inspector] Lestrade, who is the rat-faced head of Scotland Yard who needs Holmes desperately, needs Holmes' genius, but resents him. Oh, it's so familiar to me. So Lestrade needs his help, resents him, and sort of seethes with bitterness over the course of the mysteries. But as they work together, something starts to change, and finally in "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons," once Holmes comes in, dazzles everybody with his solution, Lestrade turns to Holmes and he says, "We're not jealous of you, Mr. Holmes. We're proud of you." And he says that there's not a man at Scotland Yard who wouldn't want to shake Sherlock Holmes' hand.
It's one of the few times we see Holmes moved in the mysteries, and I find it very moving, this little scene, but it's also mysterious, right? It seems to treat jealousy as a problem of geometry, not emotion. You know, one minute Holmes is on the other side from Lestrade. The next minute they're on the same side. Suddenly, Lestrade is letting himself admire this mind that he's resented. Could it be so simple though? What if jealousy really is a matter of geometry, just a matter of where we allow ourselves to stand in relation to another? Well, maybe then we wouldn't have to resent somebody's excellence. We could align ourselves with it.
But I like contingency plans. So while we wait for that to happen, let us remember that we have fiction for consolation. Fiction alone demystifies jealousy. Fiction alone domesticates it, invites it to the table. And look who it gathers: sweet Lestrade, terrifying Tom Ripley, crazy Swann, Marcel Proust himself. We are in excellent company. Thank you. (Applause)
Parul Sehgal: An ode to envy
Filmed Jul 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDSalon NY2013
What is jealousy? What drives it, and why do we secretly love it? No study has ever been able to capture its “loneliness, longevity, grim thrill” -- that is, says Parul Sehgal, except for fiction. In an eloquent meditation she scours pages from literature to show how jealousy is not so different from a quest for knowledge.
Parul Sehgal is an editor for "The New York Times Book Review."
Transcript:
So when I was eight years old, a new girl came to join the class, and she was so impressive, as the new girl always seems to be. She had vast quantities of very shiny hair and a cute little pencil case, super strong on state capitals, just a great speller. And I just curdled with jealousy that year, until I hatched my devious plan. So one day I stayed a little late after school, a little too late, and I lurked in the girl's bathroom. When the coast was clear, I emerged, crept into the classroom, and took from my teacher's desk the grade book. And then I did it. I fiddled with my rival's grades, just a little, just demoted some of those A's. All of those A's. (Laughter) And I got ready to return the book to the drawer, when hang on, some of my other classmates had appallingly good grades too. So, in a frenzy, I corrected everybody's marks, not imaginatively. I gave everybody a row of D's and I gave myself a row of A's, just because I was there, you know, might as well.
And I am still baffled by my behavior. I don't understand where the idea came from. I don't understand why I felt so great doing it. I felt great. I don't understand why I was never caught. I mean, it should have been so blatantly obvious. I was never caught. But most of all, I am baffled by, why did it bother me so much that this little girl, this tiny little girl, was so good at spelling? Jealousy baffles me. It's so mysterious, and it's so pervasive. We know babies suffer from jealousy. We know primates do. Bluebirds are actually very prone. We know that jealousy is the number one cause of spousal murder in the United States. And yet, I have never read a study that can parse to me its loneliness or its longevity or its grim thrill. For that, we have to go to fiction, because the novel is the lab that has studied jealousy in every possible configuration. In fact, I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say that if we didn't have jealousy, would we even have literature? Well no faithless Helen, no "Odyssey." No jealous king, no "Arabian Nights." No Shakespeare. There goes high school reading lists, because we're losing "Sound and the Fury," we're losing "Gatsby," "Son Also Rises," we're losing "Madame Bovary," "Anna K." No jealousy, no Proust. And now, I mean, I know it's fashionable to say that Proust has the answers to everything, but in the case of jealousy, he kind of does. This year is the centennial of his masterpiece, "In Search of Lost Time," and it's the most exhaustive study of sexual jealousy and just regular competitiveness, my brand, that we can hope to have. (Laughter) And we think about Proust, we think about the sentimental bits, right? We think about a little boy trying to get to sleep. We think about a madeleine moistened in lavender tea. We forget how harsh his vision was. We forget how pitiless he is. I mean, these are books that Virginia Woolf said were tough as cat gut. I don't know what cat gut is, but let's assume it's formidable.
Let's look at why they go so well together, the novel and jealousy, jealousy and Proust. Is it something as obvious as that jealousy, which boils down into person, desire, impediment, is such a solid narrative foundation? I don't know. I think it cuts very close to the bone, because let's think about what happens when we feel jealous. When we feel jealous, we tell ourselves a story. We tell ourselves a story about other people's lives, and these stories make us feel terrible because they're designed to make us feel terrible. As the teller of the tale and the audience, we know just what details to include, to dig that knife in. Right? Jealousy makes us all amateur novelists, and this is something Proust understood.
In the first volume, Swann's Way, the series of books, Swann, one of the main characters, is thinking very fondly of his mistress and how great she is in bed, and suddenly, in the course of a few sentences, and these are Proustian sentences, so they're long as rivers, but in the course of a few sentences, he suddenly recoils and he realizes, "Hang on, everything I love about this woman, somebody else would love about this woman. Everything that she does that gives me pleasure could be giving somebody else pleasure, maybe right about now." And this is the story he starts to tell himself, and from then on, Proust writes that every fresh charm Swann detects in his mistress, he adds to his "collection of instruments in his private torture chamber."
Now Swann and Proust, we have to admit, were notoriously jealous. You know, Proust's boyfriends would have to leave the country if they wanted to break up with him. But you don't have to be that jealous to concede that it's hard work. Right? Jealous is exhausting. It's a hungry emotion. It must be fed.
And what does jealousy like? Jealously likes information. Jealously likes details. Jealously likes the vast quantities of shiny hair, the cute little pencil case. Jealously likes photos. That's why Instagram is such a hit. (Laughter) Proust actually links the language of scholarship and jealousy. When Swann is in his jealous throes, and suddenly he's listening at doorways and bribing his mistress' servants, he defends these behaviors. He says, "You know, look, I know you think this is repugnant, but it is no different from interpreting an ancient text or looking at a monument." He says, "They are scientific investigations with real intellectual value." Proust is trying to show us that jealousy feels intolerable and makes us look absurd, but it is, at its crux, a quest for knowledge, a quest for truth, painful truth, and actually, where Proust is concerned, the more painful the truth, the better. Grief, humiliation, loss: These were the avenues to wisdom for Proust. He says, "A woman whom we need who makes us suffer elicits from us a gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us." Is he telling us to just go and find cruel women? No. I think he's trying to say that jealousy reveals us to ourselves. And does any other emotion crack us open in this particular way? Does any other emotion reveal to us our aggression and our hideous ambition and our entitlement? Does any other emotion teach us to look with such peculiar intensity?
Freud would write about this later. One day, Freud was visited by this very anxious young man who was consumed with the thought of his wife cheating on him. And Freud says, it's something strange about this guy, because he's not looking at what his wife is doing. Because she's blameless; everybody knows it. The poor creature is just under suspicion for no cause. But he's looking for things that his wife is doing without noticing, unintentional behaviors. Is she smiling too brightly here, or did she accidentally brush up against a man there? [Freud] says that the man is becoming the custodian of his wife's unconscious.
The novel is very good on this point. The novel is very good at describing how jealousy trains us to look with intensity but not accuracy. In fact, the more intensely jealous we are, the more we become residents of fantasy. And this is why, I think, jealousy doesn't just provoke us to do violent things or illegal things. Jealousy prompts us to behave in ways that are wildly inventive. Now I'm thinking of myself at eight, I concede, but I'm also thinking of this story I heard on the news. A 52-year-old Michigan woman was caught creating a fake Facebook account from which she sent vile, hideous messages to herself for a year. For a year. A year. And she was trying to frame her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, and I have to confess when I heard this, I just reacted with admiration. (Laughter) Because, I mean, let's be real. What immense, if misplaced, creativity. Right? This is something from a novel. This is something from a Patricia Highsmith novel.
Now Highsmith is a particular favorite of mine. She is the very brilliant and bizarre woman of American letters. She's the author of "Strangers on a Train" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," books that are all about how jealousy, it muddles our minds, and once we're in the sphere, in that realm of jealousy, the membrane between what is and what could be can be pierced in an instant. Take Tom Ripley, her most famous character. Now, Tom Ripley goes from wanting you or wanting what you have to being you and having what you once had, and you're under the floorboards, he's answering to your name, he's wearing your rings, emptying your bank account. That's one way to go.
But what do we do? We can't go the Tom Ripley route. I can't give the world D's, as much as I would really like to some days. And it's a pity, because we live in envious times. We live in jealous times. I mean, we're all good citizens of social media, aren't we, where the currency is envy?
Does the novel show us a way out? I'm not sure. So let's do what characters always do when they're not sure, when they are in possession of a mystery. Let's go to 221B Baker Street and ask for Sherlock Holmes. When people think of Holmes, they think of his nemesis being Professor Moriarty, right, this criminal mastermind. But I've always preferred [Inspector] Lestrade, who is the rat-faced head of Scotland Yard who needs Holmes desperately, needs Holmes' genius, but resents him. Oh, it's so familiar to me. So Lestrade needs his help, resents him, and sort of seethes with bitterness over the course of the mysteries. But as they work together, something starts to change, and finally in "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons," once Holmes comes in, dazzles everybody with his solution, Lestrade turns to Holmes and he says, "We're not jealous of you, Mr. Holmes. We're proud of you." And he says that there's not a man at Scotland Yard who wouldn't want to shake Sherlock Holmes' hand.
It's one of the few times we see Holmes moved in the mysteries, and I find it very moving, this little scene, but it's also mysterious, right? It seems to treat jealousy as a problem of geometry, not emotion. You know, one minute Holmes is on the other side from Lestrade. The next minute they're on the same side. Suddenly, Lestrade is letting himself admire this mind that he's resented. Could it be so simple though? What if jealousy really is a matter of geometry, just a matter of where we allow ourselves to stand in relation to another? Well, maybe then we wouldn't have to resent somebody's excellence. We could align ourselves with it.
But I like contingency plans. So while we wait for that to happen, let us remember that we have fiction for consolation. Fiction alone demystifies jealousy. Fiction alone domesticates it, invites it to the table. And look who it gathers: sweet Lestrade, terrifying Tom Ripley, crazy Swann, Marcel Proust himself. We are in excellent company. Thank you. (Applause)
GralInt/ARCH-TED Talks-Xavier Vilalta: Architecture at home in its community
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Xavier Vilalta: Architecture at home in its community
Filmed Jun 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDGlobal 2013
When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of energy whose design had absolutely nothing to do with Africa. In this charming talk, Vilalta shows how he champions an alternative approach: to harness nature, reference design tradition and create beautiful, modern, iconic buildings fit for a community.
Barcelona-based architect Xavier Vilalta works in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He adopts and updates traditional design principles to construct modern buildings that truly suit their environment.
Transcript:
My work focuses on the connection of both thinking about our community life being part of the environment where architecture grows from the natural local conditions and traditions.
Today I brought two recent projects as an example of this. Both projects are in emerging countries, one in Ethiopia and another one in Tunisia. And also they have in common that the different analyses from different perspectives becomes an essential part of the final piece of architecture.
The first example started with an invitation to design a multistory shopping mall in Ethiopia's capital city Addis Ababa. And this is the type of building we were shown as an example, to my team and myself, of what we had to design. At first, the first thing I thought was, I want to run away.
(Laughter)
After seeing a few of these buildings -- there are many in the city -- we realized that they have three very big points. First, these buildings, they are almost empty because they have very large shops where people cannot afford to buy things. Second, they need tons of energy to perform because of the skin treatment with glass that creates heat in the inside, and then you need a lot of cooling. In a city where this shouldn't happen because they have really mild weather that ranges from 20 to 25 degrees the whole year. And third is that their image has nothing to do with Africa and with Ethiopia. It is a pity in a place that has such rich culture and traditions.
Also during our first visit to Ethiopia, I was really captivated by the old merkato that is this open-air structure where thousands of people, they go and buy things every day from small vendors. And also it has this idea of the public space that uses the outdoors to create activity. So I thought, this is what I really want to design, not a shopping mall. But the question was how we could do a multistory, contemporary building with these principles.
The next challenge was when we looked at the site, that is, in a really growing area of the city, where most of these buildings that you see in the image, they were not there. And it's also between two parallel streets that don't have any connection for hundreds of meters.
So the first thing we did was to create a connection between these two streets, putting all the entrances of the building. And this extends with an inclined atrium that creates an open-air space in the building that self-protects itself with its own shape from the sun and the rain. And around this void we placed this idea of the market with small shops, that change in each floor because of the shape of the void.
I also thought, how to close the building? And I really wanted to find a solution that would respond to the local climate conditions. And I started thinking about the textile like a shell made of concrete with perforations that would let the air in, and also the light, but in a filtered way. And then the inspiration came from these beautiful buttons of the Ethiopian women's dresses. That they have fractal geometry properties and this helped me to shape the whole facade. And we are building that with these small prefabricated pieces that are the windows that let the air and the light in a controlled way inside the building. And this is complemented by these small colored glasses that use the light from the inside of the building to light up the building at night.
With these ideas it was not easy first to convince the developers because they were like, "This is not a shopping mall. We didn't ask for that." But then we all realized that this idea of the market happened to be a lot more profitable than the idea of the shopping mall because basically they had more shops to sell. And also that the idea of the facade was much, much cheaper, not only because of the material compared with the glass, but also because we didn't need to have air conditioning anymore. So we created some budget savings that we used to implement the project.
And the first implementation was to think about how we could make the building self-sufficient in terms of energy in a city that has electricity cuts almost every day. So we created a huge asset by placing photovoltaics there on the roof. And then under those panels we thought about the roof like a new public space with gathering areas and bars that would create this urban oasis. And these porches on the roof, all together they collect the water to reuse for sanitation on the inside. Hopefully by the beginning of next year, because we are already on the fifth floor of the construction.
The second example is a master plan of 2,000 apartments and facilities in the city of Tunis. And for doing such a big project, the biggest project I've ever designed, I really needed to understand the city of Tunis, but also its surroundings and the tradition and culture.
During that analysis I paid special attention to the medina that is this 1,000-year-old structure that used to be closed by a wall, opened by twelve different gates, connected by almost straight lines. When I went to the site, the first design operation we did was to extend the existing streets, creating 12 initial blocks similar in size and characteristics to the ones we have in Barcelona and other cities in Europe with these courtyards. On top of that, we selected some strategic points reminded of this idea of the gates and connecting them by straight lines, and this modified this initial pattern.
And the last operation was to think about the cell, the small cell of the project, like the apartment, as an essential part of the master plan. And for that I thought, what would be the best orientation in the Mediterranean climate for an apartment? And it's north-south, because it creates a thermal difference between both sides of the house and then a natural ventilation. So we overlap a pattern that makes sure that most of the apartments are perfectly oriented in that direction.
And this is the result that is almost like a combination of the European block and the Arab city. It has these blocks with courtyards, and then on the ground floor you have all these connections for the pedestrians. And also it responds to the local regulations that establish a higher density on the upper levels and a lower density on the ground floor. And it also reinforces this idea of the gates.
The volume has this connecting shape that shades itself with three different types of apartments and also lets the light go on the ground floor in a very dense neighborhood And in the courtyards there are the different facilities, such as a gym and a kindergarten and close by, a series of commercial [spaces] that bring activity to the ground floor. The roof, which is my favorite space of the project is almost like giving back to the community the space taken by the construction. And it's where all the neighbors, they can go up and socialize, and do activities such as having a two-kilometer run in the morning, jumping from one building to another.
These two examples, they have a common approach in the design process. And also, they are in emerging countries where you can see the cities literally growing. In these cities, the impact of architecture in people's lives of today and tomorrow changes the local communities and economies at the same speed as the buildings grow. For this reason, I see even more importance to look at architecture finding simple but affordable solutions that enhance the relationship between the community and the environment and that aim to connect nature and people.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Xavier Vilalta: Architecture at home in its community
Filmed Jun 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDGlobal 2013
When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of energy whose design had absolutely nothing to do with Africa. In this charming talk, Vilalta shows how he champions an alternative approach: to harness nature, reference design tradition and create beautiful, modern, iconic buildings fit for a community.
Barcelona-based architect Xavier Vilalta works in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He adopts and updates traditional design principles to construct modern buildings that truly suit their environment.
Transcript:
My work focuses on the connection of both thinking about our community life being part of the environment where architecture grows from the natural local conditions and traditions.
Today I brought two recent projects as an example of this. Both projects are in emerging countries, one in Ethiopia and another one in Tunisia. And also they have in common that the different analyses from different perspectives becomes an essential part of the final piece of architecture.
The first example started with an invitation to design a multistory shopping mall in Ethiopia's capital city Addis Ababa. And this is the type of building we were shown as an example, to my team and myself, of what we had to design. At first, the first thing I thought was, I want to run away.
(Laughter)
After seeing a few of these buildings -- there are many in the city -- we realized that they have three very big points. First, these buildings, they are almost empty because they have very large shops where people cannot afford to buy things. Second, they need tons of energy to perform because of the skin treatment with glass that creates heat in the inside, and then you need a lot of cooling. In a city where this shouldn't happen because they have really mild weather that ranges from 20 to 25 degrees the whole year. And third is that their image has nothing to do with Africa and with Ethiopia. It is a pity in a place that has such rich culture and traditions.
Also during our first visit to Ethiopia, I was really captivated by the old merkato that is this open-air structure where thousands of people, they go and buy things every day from small vendors. And also it has this idea of the public space that uses the outdoors to create activity. So I thought, this is what I really want to design, not a shopping mall. But the question was how we could do a multistory, contemporary building with these principles.
The next challenge was when we looked at the site, that is, in a really growing area of the city, where most of these buildings that you see in the image, they were not there. And it's also between two parallel streets that don't have any connection for hundreds of meters.
So the first thing we did was to create a connection between these two streets, putting all the entrances of the building. And this extends with an inclined atrium that creates an open-air space in the building that self-protects itself with its own shape from the sun and the rain. And around this void we placed this idea of the market with small shops, that change in each floor because of the shape of the void.
I also thought, how to close the building? And I really wanted to find a solution that would respond to the local climate conditions. And I started thinking about the textile like a shell made of concrete with perforations that would let the air in, and also the light, but in a filtered way. And then the inspiration came from these beautiful buttons of the Ethiopian women's dresses. That they have fractal geometry properties and this helped me to shape the whole facade. And we are building that with these small prefabricated pieces that are the windows that let the air and the light in a controlled way inside the building. And this is complemented by these small colored glasses that use the light from the inside of the building to light up the building at night.
With these ideas it was not easy first to convince the developers because they were like, "This is not a shopping mall. We didn't ask for that." But then we all realized that this idea of the market happened to be a lot more profitable than the idea of the shopping mall because basically they had more shops to sell. And also that the idea of the facade was much, much cheaper, not only because of the material compared with the glass, but also because we didn't need to have air conditioning anymore. So we created some budget savings that we used to implement the project.
And the first implementation was to think about how we could make the building self-sufficient in terms of energy in a city that has electricity cuts almost every day. So we created a huge asset by placing photovoltaics there on the roof. And then under those panels we thought about the roof like a new public space with gathering areas and bars that would create this urban oasis. And these porches on the roof, all together they collect the water to reuse for sanitation on the inside. Hopefully by the beginning of next year, because we are already on the fifth floor of the construction.
The second example is a master plan of 2,000 apartments and facilities in the city of Tunis. And for doing such a big project, the biggest project I've ever designed, I really needed to understand the city of Tunis, but also its surroundings and the tradition and culture.
During that analysis I paid special attention to the medina that is this 1,000-year-old structure that used to be closed by a wall, opened by twelve different gates, connected by almost straight lines. When I went to the site, the first design operation we did was to extend the existing streets, creating 12 initial blocks similar in size and characteristics to the ones we have in Barcelona and other cities in Europe with these courtyards. On top of that, we selected some strategic points reminded of this idea of the gates and connecting them by straight lines, and this modified this initial pattern.
And the last operation was to think about the cell, the small cell of the project, like the apartment, as an essential part of the master plan. And for that I thought, what would be the best orientation in the Mediterranean climate for an apartment? And it's north-south, because it creates a thermal difference between both sides of the house and then a natural ventilation. So we overlap a pattern that makes sure that most of the apartments are perfectly oriented in that direction.
And this is the result that is almost like a combination of the European block and the Arab city. It has these blocks with courtyards, and then on the ground floor you have all these connections for the pedestrians. And also it responds to the local regulations that establish a higher density on the upper levels and a lower density on the ground floor. And it also reinforces this idea of the gates.
The volume has this connecting shape that shades itself with three different types of apartments and also lets the light go on the ground floor in a very dense neighborhood And in the courtyards there are the different facilities, such as a gym and a kindergarten and close by, a series of commercial [spaces] that bring activity to the ground floor. The roof, which is my favorite space of the project is almost like giving back to the community the space taken by the construction. And it's where all the neighbors, they can go up and socialize, and do activities such as having a two-kilometer run in the morning, jumping from one building to another.
These two examples, they have a common approach in the design process. And also, they are in emerging countries where you can see the cities literally growing. In these cities, the impact of architecture in people's lives of today and tomorrow changes the local communities and economies at the same speed as the buildings grow. For this reason, I see even more importance to look at architecture finding simple but affordable solutions that enhance the relationship between the community and the environment and that aim to connect nature and people.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
ECON/GralInt-TED Talks-Charles Robertson: Africa's next boom
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Charles Robertson: Africa's next boom
Filmed Jun 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDGlobal 2013
The past decade has seen slow and steady economic growth across the continent of Africa. But economist Charles Robertson has a bold thesis: Africa's about to boom. He talks through a few of the indicators -- from rising education levels to expanded global investment (and not just from China) -- that lead him to predict rapid growth for a billion people, sooner than you may think.
In "The Fastest Billion," Charles Robertson re-examines the narrative of economic growth in African nations.
Transcript:
Africa is booming. Per capita incomes since the year 2000 have doubled, and this boom is impacting on everyone. Life expectancy has increased by one year every three years for the last decade. That means if an African child is born today, rather than three days ago, they will get an extra day of life at the end of their lifespan. It's that quick. And HIV infection rates are down 27 percent: 600,000 less people a year are getting HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. The battle against malaria is being won, with deaths from malaria down 27 percent, according to the latest World Bank data. And malaria nets actually are playing a role in that. This shouldn't surprise us, because actually, everybody grows. If you go back to Imperial Rome in the Year 1 A.D., there was admittedly about 1,800 years where there wasn't an awful lot of growth. But then the people that the Romans would have called Scottish barbarians, my ancestors, were actually part of the Industrial Revolution, and in the 19th century, growth began to accelerate, and you saw that get quicker and quicker, and it's been impacting everyone. It doesn't matter if this is the jungles of Singapore or the tundra of northern Finland. Everybody gets involved. It's just a matter of when the inevitable happens.
Among the reasons I think it's happening right now is the quality of the leadership across Africa. I think most of us would agree that in the 1990s, the greatest politician in the world was African, but I'm meeting brilliant people across the continent the entire time, and they're doing the reforms which have transformed the economic situation for their countries.
And the West is engaging with that. The West has given debt forgiveness programs which have halved sub-Saharan debt from about 70 percent of GDP down to about 40. At the same time, our debt level's gone up to 120 and we're all feeling slightly miserable as a result. Politics gets weaker when debt is high. When public sector debt is low, governments don't have to choose between investing in education and health and paying interest on that debt you owe. And it's not just the public sector which is looking so good. The private sector as well. Again, in the West, we have private sector debt of 200 percent of GDP in Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. That's an awful lot of debt. Africa, many African countries, are sitting at 10 to 30 percent of GDP. If there's any continent that can do what China has done -- China's at about 130 percent of GDP on that chart -- if anyone can do what China has done in the last 30 years, it'll be Africa in the next 30.
So they've got great government finances, great private sector debt. Does anyone recognize this? In fact, they do. Foreign direct investment has poured into Africa in the last 15 years. Back in the '70s, no one touched the continent with a barge pole. And this investment is actually Western-led. We hear a lot about China, and they do lend a lot of money, but 60 percent of the FDI in the last couple of years has come from Europe, America, Australia, Canada. Ten percent's come from India. And they're investing in energy. Africa produces 10 million barrels a day of oil now. It's the same as Saudi Arabia or Russia. And they're investing in telecoms, shopping malls. And this very encouraging story, I think, is partly demographic-led. And it's not just about African demographics. I'm showing you the number of 15- to 24-year-olds in various parts of the world, and the blue line is the one I want you to focus on for a second. Ten years ago, say you're Foxconn setting up an iPhone factory, by chance. You might choose China, which is the bulk of that East Asian blue line, where there's 200 million young people, and every year until 2010 that's getting bigger. Which means you're going to have new guys knocking on the door saying, "Give us a job," and, "I don't need a big pay rise, just please give me a job." Now, that's completely changed now. This decade, we're going to see a 20- to 30-percent fall in the number of 15- to 24-year-olds in China. So where do you set up your new factory? You look at South Asia, and people are. They're looking at Pakistan and Bangladesh, and they're also looking at Africa. And they're looking at Africa because that yellow line is showing you that the number of young Africans is going to continue to get bigger decade after decade after decade out to 2050.
Now, there's a problem with lots of young people coming into any market, particularly when they're young men. A bit dangerous, sometimes. I think one of the crucial factors is how educated is that demographic? If you look at the red line here, what you're going to see is that in 1975, just nine percent of kids were in secondary school education in sub-Saharan Africa. Would you set up a factory in sub-Sahara in the mid-1970s? Nobody else did. They chose instead Turkey and Mexico to set up the textiles factories, because their education levels were 25 to 30 percent. Today, sub-Sahara is at the levels that Turkey and Mexico were at in 1975. They will get the textiles jobs that will take people out of rural poverty and put them on the road to industrialization and wealth.
So what's Africa looking like today? This is how I look at Africa. It's a bit odd, because I'm an economist. Each little box is about a billion dollars, and you see that I pay an awful lot of attention to Nigeria sitting there in the middle. South Africa is playing a role. But when I'm thinking about the future, I'm actually most interested in Central, Western and Southern Africa. If I look at Africa by population, East Africa stands out as so much potential.
And I'm showing you something else with these maps. I'm showing you democracy versus autocracy. Fragile democracies is the beige color. Strong democracies are the orange color. And what you'll see here is that most Africans are now living in democracies. Why does that matter? Because what people want is what politicians try, they don't always succeed, but they try and deliver. And what you've got is a reinforcing positive circle going on. In Ghana in the elections, in December 2012, the battle between the two candidates was over education. One guy offered free secondary school education to all, not just 30 percent. The other guy had to say, I'm going to build 50 new schools. He won by a margin. So democracy is encouraging governments to invest in education. Education is helping growth and investment, and that's giving budget revenues, which is giving governments more money, which is helping growth through education. It's a positive, virtuous circle.
But I get asked this question, and this particular question makes me quite sad: It's, "But what about corruption? How can you invest in Africa when there's corruption?" And what makes me sad about it is that this graph here is showing you that the biggest correlation with corruption is wealth. When you're poor, corruption is not your biggest priority. And the countries on the right hand side, you'll see the per capita GDP, basically every country with a per capita GDP of, say, less than 5,000 dollars, has got a corruption score of roughly, what's that, about three? Three out of 10. That's not good. Every poor country is corrupt. Every rich country is relatively uncorrupt. How do you get from poverty and corruption to wealth and less corruption? You see the middle class grow. And the way to do that is to invest, not to say I'm not investing in that continent because there's too much corruption.
Now, I don't want to be an apologist for corruption. I've been arrested because I refused to pay a bribe -- not in Africa, actually. But what I'm saying here is that we can make a difference and we can do that by investing.
Now I'm going to let you in on a little not-so-secret. Economists aren't great at forecasting. Because the question really is, what happens next? And if you go back to the year 2000, what you'll find is The Economist had a very famous cover, "The Hopeless Continent," and what they'd done is they'd looked at growth in Africa over the previous 10 years -- two percent -- and they said, what's going to happen in the next 10 years? They assumed two percent, and that made it a pretty hopeless story, because population growth was two and a half. People got poorer in Africa in the 1990s. Now 2012, The Economist has a new cover, and what does that new cover show? That new cover shows, well, Africa rising, because the growth over the last 10 years has been about five and a half percent.
I would like to see if you can all now become economists, because if growth for the last 10 years has been five and a half percent, what do you think the IMF is forecasting for the next five years of growth in Africa? Very good. I think you're secretly saying to your head, probably five and a half percent. You're all economists, and I think, like most economists, wrong. No offense.
What I like to do is try and find the countries that are doing exactly what Africa has already done, and it means that jump from 1,800 years of nothing to whoof, suddenly shooting through the roof. India is one of those examples. This is Indian growth from 1960 to 2010. Ignore the scale on the bottom for a second. Actually, for the first 20 years, the '60s and '70s, India didn't really grow. It grew at two percent when population growth was about two and a half. If that's familiar, that's exactly what happened in sub-Sahara in the '80s and the '90s. And then something happened in 1980. Boom! India began to explode. It wasn't a "Hindu rate of growth," "democracies can't grow." Actually India could. And if I lay sub-Saharan growth on top of the Indian growth story, it's remarkably similar. Twenty years of not much growth and a trend line which is actually telling you that sub-Saharan African growth is slightly better than India. And if I then lay developing Asia on top of this, I'm saying India is 20 years ahead of Africa, I'm saying developing Asia is 10 years ahead of India, I can draw out some forecasts for the next 30 to 40 years which I think are better than the ones where you're looking backwards. And that tells me this: that Africa is going to go from a $2 trillion economy today to a $29 trillion economy by 2050. Now that's bigger than Europe and America put together in today's money. Life expectancy is going to go up by 13 years. The population's going to double from one billion to two billion, so household incomes are going to go up sevenfold in the next 35 years. And when I present this in Africa -- Nairobi, Lagos, Accra -- I get one question. "Charlie, why are you so pessimistic?"
And you know what? Actually, I think they've got a point. Am I really saying that there can be nothing learned, yes from the positives in Asia and India, but also the negatives? Perhaps Africa can avoid some of the mistakes that have been made. Surely, the technologies that we're talking about here this last week, surely some of these can perhaps help Africa grow even faster? And I think here we can play a role. Because technology does let you help. You can go and download some of the great African literature from the Internet now. No, not right now, just 30 seconds. You can go and buy some of the great tunes. My iPod's full of them. Buy African products. Go on holiday and see for yourself the change that's happening. Invest. Perhaps hire people, give them the skills that they can take back to Africa, and their companies will grow an awful lot faster than most of ours here in the West. And then you and I can help make sure that for Africa, the 21st century is their century.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Charles Robertson: Africa's next boom
Filmed Jun 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDGlobal 2013
The past decade has seen slow and steady economic growth across the continent of Africa. But economist Charles Robertson has a bold thesis: Africa's about to boom. He talks through a few of the indicators -- from rising education levels to expanded global investment (and not just from China) -- that lead him to predict rapid growth for a billion people, sooner than you may think.
In "The Fastest Billion," Charles Robertson re-examines the narrative of economic growth in African nations.
Transcript:
Africa is booming. Per capita incomes since the year 2000 have doubled, and this boom is impacting on everyone. Life expectancy has increased by one year every three years for the last decade. That means if an African child is born today, rather than three days ago, they will get an extra day of life at the end of their lifespan. It's that quick. And HIV infection rates are down 27 percent: 600,000 less people a year are getting HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. The battle against malaria is being won, with deaths from malaria down 27 percent, according to the latest World Bank data. And malaria nets actually are playing a role in that. This shouldn't surprise us, because actually, everybody grows. If you go back to Imperial Rome in the Year 1 A.D., there was admittedly about 1,800 years where there wasn't an awful lot of growth. But then the people that the Romans would have called Scottish barbarians, my ancestors, were actually part of the Industrial Revolution, and in the 19th century, growth began to accelerate, and you saw that get quicker and quicker, and it's been impacting everyone. It doesn't matter if this is the jungles of Singapore or the tundra of northern Finland. Everybody gets involved. It's just a matter of when the inevitable happens.
Among the reasons I think it's happening right now is the quality of the leadership across Africa. I think most of us would agree that in the 1990s, the greatest politician in the world was African, but I'm meeting brilliant people across the continent the entire time, and they're doing the reforms which have transformed the economic situation for their countries.
And the West is engaging with that. The West has given debt forgiveness programs which have halved sub-Saharan debt from about 70 percent of GDP down to about 40. At the same time, our debt level's gone up to 120 and we're all feeling slightly miserable as a result. Politics gets weaker when debt is high. When public sector debt is low, governments don't have to choose between investing in education and health and paying interest on that debt you owe. And it's not just the public sector which is looking so good. The private sector as well. Again, in the West, we have private sector debt of 200 percent of GDP in Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. That's an awful lot of debt. Africa, many African countries, are sitting at 10 to 30 percent of GDP. If there's any continent that can do what China has done -- China's at about 130 percent of GDP on that chart -- if anyone can do what China has done in the last 30 years, it'll be Africa in the next 30.
So they've got great government finances, great private sector debt. Does anyone recognize this? In fact, they do. Foreign direct investment has poured into Africa in the last 15 years. Back in the '70s, no one touched the continent with a barge pole. And this investment is actually Western-led. We hear a lot about China, and they do lend a lot of money, but 60 percent of the FDI in the last couple of years has come from Europe, America, Australia, Canada. Ten percent's come from India. And they're investing in energy. Africa produces 10 million barrels a day of oil now. It's the same as Saudi Arabia or Russia. And they're investing in telecoms, shopping malls. And this very encouraging story, I think, is partly demographic-led. And it's not just about African demographics. I'm showing you the number of 15- to 24-year-olds in various parts of the world, and the blue line is the one I want you to focus on for a second. Ten years ago, say you're Foxconn setting up an iPhone factory, by chance. You might choose China, which is the bulk of that East Asian blue line, where there's 200 million young people, and every year until 2010 that's getting bigger. Which means you're going to have new guys knocking on the door saying, "Give us a job," and, "I don't need a big pay rise, just please give me a job." Now, that's completely changed now. This decade, we're going to see a 20- to 30-percent fall in the number of 15- to 24-year-olds in China. So where do you set up your new factory? You look at South Asia, and people are. They're looking at Pakistan and Bangladesh, and they're also looking at Africa. And they're looking at Africa because that yellow line is showing you that the number of young Africans is going to continue to get bigger decade after decade after decade out to 2050.
Now, there's a problem with lots of young people coming into any market, particularly when they're young men. A bit dangerous, sometimes. I think one of the crucial factors is how educated is that demographic? If you look at the red line here, what you're going to see is that in 1975, just nine percent of kids were in secondary school education in sub-Saharan Africa. Would you set up a factory in sub-Sahara in the mid-1970s? Nobody else did. They chose instead Turkey and Mexico to set up the textiles factories, because their education levels were 25 to 30 percent. Today, sub-Sahara is at the levels that Turkey and Mexico were at in 1975. They will get the textiles jobs that will take people out of rural poverty and put them on the road to industrialization and wealth.
So what's Africa looking like today? This is how I look at Africa. It's a bit odd, because I'm an economist. Each little box is about a billion dollars, and you see that I pay an awful lot of attention to Nigeria sitting there in the middle. South Africa is playing a role. But when I'm thinking about the future, I'm actually most interested in Central, Western and Southern Africa. If I look at Africa by population, East Africa stands out as so much potential.
And I'm showing you something else with these maps. I'm showing you democracy versus autocracy. Fragile democracies is the beige color. Strong democracies are the orange color. And what you'll see here is that most Africans are now living in democracies. Why does that matter? Because what people want is what politicians try, they don't always succeed, but they try and deliver. And what you've got is a reinforcing positive circle going on. In Ghana in the elections, in December 2012, the battle between the two candidates was over education. One guy offered free secondary school education to all, not just 30 percent. The other guy had to say, I'm going to build 50 new schools. He won by a margin. So democracy is encouraging governments to invest in education. Education is helping growth and investment, and that's giving budget revenues, which is giving governments more money, which is helping growth through education. It's a positive, virtuous circle.
But I get asked this question, and this particular question makes me quite sad: It's, "But what about corruption? How can you invest in Africa when there's corruption?" And what makes me sad about it is that this graph here is showing you that the biggest correlation with corruption is wealth. When you're poor, corruption is not your biggest priority. And the countries on the right hand side, you'll see the per capita GDP, basically every country with a per capita GDP of, say, less than 5,000 dollars, has got a corruption score of roughly, what's that, about three? Three out of 10. That's not good. Every poor country is corrupt. Every rich country is relatively uncorrupt. How do you get from poverty and corruption to wealth and less corruption? You see the middle class grow. And the way to do that is to invest, not to say I'm not investing in that continent because there's too much corruption.
Now, I don't want to be an apologist for corruption. I've been arrested because I refused to pay a bribe -- not in Africa, actually. But what I'm saying here is that we can make a difference and we can do that by investing.
Now I'm going to let you in on a little not-so-secret. Economists aren't great at forecasting. Because the question really is, what happens next? And if you go back to the year 2000, what you'll find is The Economist had a very famous cover, "The Hopeless Continent," and what they'd done is they'd looked at growth in Africa over the previous 10 years -- two percent -- and they said, what's going to happen in the next 10 years? They assumed two percent, and that made it a pretty hopeless story, because population growth was two and a half. People got poorer in Africa in the 1990s. Now 2012, The Economist has a new cover, and what does that new cover show? That new cover shows, well, Africa rising, because the growth over the last 10 years has been about five and a half percent.
I would like to see if you can all now become economists, because if growth for the last 10 years has been five and a half percent, what do you think the IMF is forecasting for the next five years of growth in Africa? Very good. I think you're secretly saying to your head, probably five and a half percent. You're all economists, and I think, like most economists, wrong. No offense.
What I like to do is try and find the countries that are doing exactly what Africa has already done, and it means that jump from 1,800 years of nothing to whoof, suddenly shooting through the roof. India is one of those examples. This is Indian growth from 1960 to 2010. Ignore the scale on the bottom for a second. Actually, for the first 20 years, the '60s and '70s, India didn't really grow. It grew at two percent when population growth was about two and a half. If that's familiar, that's exactly what happened in sub-Sahara in the '80s and the '90s. And then something happened in 1980. Boom! India began to explode. It wasn't a "Hindu rate of growth," "democracies can't grow." Actually India could. And if I lay sub-Saharan growth on top of the Indian growth story, it's remarkably similar. Twenty years of not much growth and a trend line which is actually telling you that sub-Saharan African growth is slightly better than India. And if I then lay developing Asia on top of this, I'm saying India is 20 years ahead of Africa, I'm saying developing Asia is 10 years ahead of India, I can draw out some forecasts for the next 30 to 40 years which I think are better than the ones where you're looking backwards. And that tells me this: that Africa is going to go from a $2 trillion economy today to a $29 trillion economy by 2050. Now that's bigger than Europe and America put together in today's money. Life expectancy is going to go up by 13 years. The population's going to double from one billion to two billion, so household incomes are going to go up sevenfold in the next 35 years. And when I present this in Africa -- Nairobi, Lagos, Accra -- I get one question. "Charlie, why are you so pessimistic?"
And you know what? Actually, I think they've got a point. Am I really saying that there can be nothing learned, yes from the positives in Asia and India, but also the negatives? Perhaps Africa can avoid some of the mistakes that have been made. Surely, the technologies that we're talking about here this last week, surely some of these can perhaps help Africa grow even faster? And I think here we can play a role. Because technology does let you help. You can go and download some of the great African literature from the Internet now. No, not right now, just 30 seconds. You can go and buy some of the great tunes. My iPod's full of them. Buy African products. Go on holiday and see for yourself the change that's happening. Invest. Perhaps hire people, give them the skills that they can take back to Africa, and their companies will grow an awful lot faster than most of ours here in the West. And then you and I can help make sure that for Africa, the 21st century is their century.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
GralInt/ENV-TED Talks-Steve Howard: Let's go all-in on selling sustainability
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Steve Howard: Let's go all-in on selling sustainability
Filmed Jun 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDGlobal 2013
The big blue buildings of Ikea have sprouted solar panels and wind turbines; inside, shelves are stocked with LED lighting and recycled cotton. Why? Because as Steve Howard puts it: “Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a must-do.” Howard, the chief sustainability officer at the furniture megastore, talks about his quest to sell eco-friendly materials and practices -- both internally and to worldwide customers -- and lays a challenge for other global giants.
Steve Howard leads the sustainability effort at Ikea, helping the low-price-furniture giant to bring sustainable products to millions of people.
Transcript:
I've spent my life working on sustainability. I set up a climate change NGO called The Climate Group. I worked on forestry issues in WWF. I worked on development and agriculture issues in the U.N. system. About 25 years in total, and then three years ago, I found myself talking to IKEA's CEO about joining his team. Like many people here, well, I want to maximize my personal impact in the world, so I'm going to explain why I joined the team there.
But first, let's just take three numbers.
The first number is three: three billion people. This is the number of people joining the global middle class by 2030, coming out of poverty. It's fantastic for them and their families, but we've got two billion people in the global middle class today, and this swells that number to five, a big challenge when we already have resource scarcity.
The second number is six: This is six degrees centigrade, what we're heading towards in terms of global warming. We're not heading towards one degree or three degrees or four degrees, we're heading toward six degrees. And if you think about it, all of the weird weather we've been having the last few years, much of that is due to just one degree warming, and we need CO2 emissions to peak by the end of this decade globally and then come down. It's not inevitable, but we need to act decisively.
The third number is 12: That's the number of cities in the world that had a million or more people when my grandmother was born. You can see my grandmother there. That was in the beginning of the last century. So just 12 cities. She was born in Manchester, England, the ninth largest city in the world. Now there are 500 cities, nearly, with a million people or more in them. And if you look at the century from 1950 to 2050, that's the century when we build all the world's cities, the century that we're in the middle of right now. Every other century was kind of practice, and this lays down a blueprint for how we live.
So think about it. We're building cities like never before, bringing people out of poverty like never before, and changing the climate like never before. Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a must-do. it's about what we do right here, right now, and for the rest of our working lives.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about what business can do and what a business like IKEA can do, and we have a sustainability strategy called "people and planet positive" to help guide our business to have a positive impact on the world. Why would we not want to have a positive impact on the world as a business? Other companies have sustainability strategies. I'm going to refer to some of those as well, and I'm just going to mention a few of the commitments as illustrations that we've got.
But first, let's think of customers. We know from asking people from China to the U.S. that the vast majority of people care about sustainability after the day-to-day issues, the day-to-day issues of, how do I get my kids to school? Can I pay the bills at the end of the month? Then they care about big issues like climate change. But they want it to be easy, affordable and attractive, and they expect business to help, and they're a little bit disappointed today.
So take your mind back and think of the first sustainable products. We had detergents that could wash your whites grayer. We had the early energy-efficient light bulbs that took five minutes to warm up and then you were left looking a kind of sickly color. And we had the rough, recycled toilet paper. So every time you pulled on a t-shirt, or switched the light on, or went to the bathroom, or sometimes all three together, you were reminded sustainability was about compromise. It wasn't a great start.
Today we have choices. We can make products that are beautiful or ugly, sustainable or unsustainable, affordable or expensive, functional or useless. So let's make beautiful, functional, affordable, sustainable products.
Let's take the LED. The LED is the next best thing to daylight. The old-fashioned lightbulbs, the incandescent bulbs -- I'm not going to ask for a show of hands of how many of you still have them in your homes, wasting energy every time you switch them on -- change them after this -- or whether we have them on the stage here at TED or not -- but those old incandescent light bulbs really should have been sold as heaters. They were mis-sold for more than a hundred years. They produced heat and a little bit of light on the side. Now we have lights that produce light and a little bit of heat on the side. You save 85 percent of the electricity with an LED that you would have done in an old incandescent. And the best thing is, they'll also last for more than 20 years. So think about that. You'll change your smartphone seven or eight times, probably more if you're in this audience. You'll change your car, if you have one, three or four times. Your kids could go to school, go to college, go away and have kids of their own, come back, bring the grandkids, you'll have the same lightbulb saving you energy. So LEDs are fantastic. What we decided to do was not to sell LEDs on the side marked up high and continue to push all the old bulbs, the halogens and the CFLs. We decided, over the next two years, we will ban the halogens and the CFLs ourselves. We will go all in. And this is what business needs to do: go all-in, go 100 percent, because then you stop investing in the old stuff, you invest in the new stuff, you lower costs, you use your supply chain and your creativity and you get the prices down so everybody can afford the best lights so they can save energy.
(Applause)
It's not just about products in people's homes. We've got to think about the raw materials that produce our products. Obviously there's fantastic opportunities with recycled materials, and we can and will go zero waste. And there's opportunities in a circular economy. But we're still dependent on natural, raw materials. Let's take cotton. Cotton's brilliant. Probably many people are wearing cotton right now. It's a brilliant textile in use. It's really dirty in production. It uses lots of pesticides, lots of fertilizer, lots of water. So we've worked with others, with other businesses and NGOs, on the Better Cotton Initiative, working right back down to the farm, and there you can halve the amount of water and halve the chemical inputs, the yields increase, and 60 percent of the costs of running many of these farms with farmers with low incomes can be chemical imports. Yields increase, and you halve the input costs. Farmers are coming out of poverty. They love it. Already hundreds of thousands of farmers have been reached, and now we've got 60 percent better cotton in our business. Again, we're going all-in. By 2015, we'll be 100 percent Better Cotton.
Take the topic of 100 percent targets, actually. People sometimes think that 100 percent's going to be hard, and we've had the conversation in the business. Actually, we found 100 percent is easier to do than 90 percent or 50 percent. If you have a 90 percent target, everyone in the business finds a reason to be in the 10 percent. When it's 100 percent, it's kind of clear, and businesspeople like clarity, because then you just get the job done.
So, wood. We know with forestry, it's a choice. You've got illegal logging and deforestation still on a very large scale, or you can have fantastic, responsible forestry that we can be proud of. It's a simple choice, so we've worked for many years with the Forest Stewardship Council, with literally hundreds of other organizations, and there's a point here about collaboration. So hundreds of others, of NGOs, of forest workers' unions, and of businesses, have helped create the Forest Stewardship Council, which sets standards for forestry and then checks the forestry's good on the ground. Now together, through our supply chain, with partners, we've managed to certify 35 million hectares of forestry. That's about the size of Germany. And we've decided in the next three years, we will double the volume of certified material we put through our business. So be decisive on these issues. Use your supply chain to drive good.
But then it comes to your operations. Some things are certain, I think. We know we'll use electricity in 20 or 30 years' time. We know the sun will be shining somewhere, and the wind will still be blowing in 20 or 30 years' time. So why not make our energy out of the sun and the wind? And why not take control of it ourselves? So we're going 100 percent renewable. By 2020, we'll produce more renewable energy than the energy we consume as a business. For all of our stores, our own factories, our distribution centers, we've installed 300,000 solar panels so far, and we've got 14 wind farms we own and operate in six countries, and we're not done yet. But think of a solar panel. A solar panel pays for itself in seven or eight years. The electricity is free. Every time the sun comes out after that, the electricity is free. So this is a good thing for the CFO, not just the sustainability guy. Every business can do things like this.
But then we've got to look beyond our operations, and I think everybody would agree that now business has to take full responsibility for the impacts of your supply chain. Many businesses now, fortunately, have codes of conduct and audit their supply chains, but not every business. Far from it. And this came in IKEA actually in the '90s. We found there was a risk of child labor in the supply chain, and people in the business were shocked. And it was clearly totally unacceptable, so then you have to act. So a code of conduct was developed, and now we have 80 auditors out in the world every day making sure all our factories secure good working conditions and protect human rights and make sure there is no child labor.
But it's not just as simple as making sure there's no child labor. You've got to say that's not enough today. I think we'd all agree that children are the most important people in the world and the most vulnerable. So what can a business do today to actually use your total value chain to support a better quality of life and protect child rights? We've worked with UNICEF and Save the Children on developing some new business principles with children's rights. Increasing numbers of businesses are signing up to these, but actually in a survey, many business leaders said they thought their business had nothing to do with children. So what we decided to do was, we will look and ask ourselves the tough questions with partners who know more than us, what can we do to go beyond our business to help improve the lives of children? We also have a foundation that's committed to work through partners and help improve the lives and protect the rights of 100 million children by 2015.
You know the phrase, you can manage what you measure? Well, you should measure what you care about. If you're not measuring things, you don't care and you don't know. So let's take an example, measure the things that are important in your business. Isn't it about time that businesses were led equally by men and women?
(Applause)
So we know for our 17,000 managers across IKEA that 47 percent are women today, but it's not enough, and we want to close the gap and follow it all the way through to senior management. And we do not want to wait another hundred years. So we've launched a women's open network this week in IKEA, and we'll do whatever it takes to lead the change. So the message here is, measure what you care about and lead the change, and don't wait a hundred years.
So we've gone from sustainability being a nice-to-do to a must-do. It's a must-do. It's still nice to do, but it's a must-do. And everybody can do something on this as an individual. Be a discerning consumer. Vote with your wallets. Search out the companies that are acting on this. But also, there are other businesses already acting. I mentioned renewable energy. You go to Google or Lego, they're going 100 percent renewable too, in the same way that we are. On having really good sustainability strategies, there are companies like Nike, Patagonia, Timberland, Marks & Spencer. But I don't think any of those businesses would say they're perfect. We certainly wouldn't. We'll make mistakes going forward, but it's about setting a clear direction, being transparent, having a dialogue with the right partners, and choosing to lead on the issues that really count.
So if you're a business leader, if you're not already weaving sustainability right into the heart of your business model, I'd urge you to do so. And together, we can help create a sustainable world, and, if we get it right, we can make sustainability affordable for the many people, not a luxury for the few.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Steve Howard: Let's go all-in on selling sustainability
Filmed Jun 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDGlobal 2013
The big blue buildings of Ikea have sprouted solar panels and wind turbines; inside, shelves are stocked with LED lighting and recycled cotton. Why? Because as Steve Howard puts it: “Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a must-do.” Howard, the chief sustainability officer at the furniture megastore, talks about his quest to sell eco-friendly materials and practices -- both internally and to worldwide customers -- and lays a challenge for other global giants.
Steve Howard leads the sustainability effort at Ikea, helping the low-price-furniture giant to bring sustainable products to millions of people.
Transcript:
I've spent my life working on sustainability. I set up a climate change NGO called The Climate Group. I worked on forestry issues in WWF. I worked on development and agriculture issues in the U.N. system. About 25 years in total, and then three years ago, I found myself talking to IKEA's CEO about joining his team. Like many people here, well, I want to maximize my personal impact in the world, so I'm going to explain why I joined the team there.
But first, let's just take three numbers.
The first number is three: three billion people. This is the number of people joining the global middle class by 2030, coming out of poverty. It's fantastic for them and their families, but we've got two billion people in the global middle class today, and this swells that number to five, a big challenge when we already have resource scarcity.
The second number is six: This is six degrees centigrade, what we're heading towards in terms of global warming. We're not heading towards one degree or three degrees or four degrees, we're heading toward six degrees. And if you think about it, all of the weird weather we've been having the last few years, much of that is due to just one degree warming, and we need CO2 emissions to peak by the end of this decade globally and then come down. It's not inevitable, but we need to act decisively.
The third number is 12: That's the number of cities in the world that had a million or more people when my grandmother was born. You can see my grandmother there. That was in the beginning of the last century. So just 12 cities. She was born in Manchester, England, the ninth largest city in the world. Now there are 500 cities, nearly, with a million people or more in them. And if you look at the century from 1950 to 2050, that's the century when we build all the world's cities, the century that we're in the middle of right now. Every other century was kind of practice, and this lays down a blueprint for how we live.
So think about it. We're building cities like never before, bringing people out of poverty like never before, and changing the climate like never before. Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-do to a must-do. it's about what we do right here, right now, and for the rest of our working lives.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about what business can do and what a business like IKEA can do, and we have a sustainability strategy called "people and planet positive" to help guide our business to have a positive impact on the world. Why would we not want to have a positive impact on the world as a business? Other companies have sustainability strategies. I'm going to refer to some of those as well, and I'm just going to mention a few of the commitments as illustrations that we've got.
But first, let's think of customers. We know from asking people from China to the U.S. that the vast majority of people care about sustainability after the day-to-day issues, the day-to-day issues of, how do I get my kids to school? Can I pay the bills at the end of the month? Then they care about big issues like climate change. But they want it to be easy, affordable and attractive, and they expect business to help, and they're a little bit disappointed today.
So take your mind back and think of the first sustainable products. We had detergents that could wash your whites grayer. We had the early energy-efficient light bulbs that took five minutes to warm up and then you were left looking a kind of sickly color. And we had the rough, recycled toilet paper. So every time you pulled on a t-shirt, or switched the light on, or went to the bathroom, or sometimes all three together, you were reminded sustainability was about compromise. It wasn't a great start.
Today we have choices. We can make products that are beautiful or ugly, sustainable or unsustainable, affordable or expensive, functional or useless. So let's make beautiful, functional, affordable, sustainable products.
Let's take the LED. The LED is the next best thing to daylight. The old-fashioned lightbulbs, the incandescent bulbs -- I'm not going to ask for a show of hands of how many of you still have them in your homes, wasting energy every time you switch them on -- change them after this -- or whether we have them on the stage here at TED or not -- but those old incandescent light bulbs really should have been sold as heaters. They were mis-sold for more than a hundred years. They produced heat and a little bit of light on the side. Now we have lights that produce light and a little bit of heat on the side. You save 85 percent of the electricity with an LED that you would have done in an old incandescent. And the best thing is, they'll also last for more than 20 years. So think about that. You'll change your smartphone seven or eight times, probably more if you're in this audience. You'll change your car, if you have one, three or four times. Your kids could go to school, go to college, go away and have kids of their own, come back, bring the grandkids, you'll have the same lightbulb saving you energy. So LEDs are fantastic. What we decided to do was not to sell LEDs on the side marked up high and continue to push all the old bulbs, the halogens and the CFLs. We decided, over the next two years, we will ban the halogens and the CFLs ourselves. We will go all in. And this is what business needs to do: go all-in, go 100 percent, because then you stop investing in the old stuff, you invest in the new stuff, you lower costs, you use your supply chain and your creativity and you get the prices down so everybody can afford the best lights so they can save energy.
(Applause)
It's not just about products in people's homes. We've got to think about the raw materials that produce our products. Obviously there's fantastic opportunities with recycled materials, and we can and will go zero waste. And there's opportunities in a circular economy. But we're still dependent on natural, raw materials. Let's take cotton. Cotton's brilliant. Probably many people are wearing cotton right now. It's a brilliant textile in use. It's really dirty in production. It uses lots of pesticides, lots of fertilizer, lots of water. So we've worked with others, with other businesses and NGOs, on the Better Cotton Initiative, working right back down to the farm, and there you can halve the amount of water and halve the chemical inputs, the yields increase, and 60 percent of the costs of running many of these farms with farmers with low incomes can be chemical imports. Yields increase, and you halve the input costs. Farmers are coming out of poverty. They love it. Already hundreds of thousands of farmers have been reached, and now we've got 60 percent better cotton in our business. Again, we're going all-in. By 2015, we'll be 100 percent Better Cotton.
Take the topic of 100 percent targets, actually. People sometimes think that 100 percent's going to be hard, and we've had the conversation in the business. Actually, we found 100 percent is easier to do than 90 percent or 50 percent. If you have a 90 percent target, everyone in the business finds a reason to be in the 10 percent. When it's 100 percent, it's kind of clear, and businesspeople like clarity, because then you just get the job done.
So, wood. We know with forestry, it's a choice. You've got illegal logging and deforestation still on a very large scale, or you can have fantastic, responsible forestry that we can be proud of. It's a simple choice, so we've worked for many years with the Forest Stewardship Council, with literally hundreds of other organizations, and there's a point here about collaboration. So hundreds of others, of NGOs, of forest workers' unions, and of businesses, have helped create the Forest Stewardship Council, which sets standards for forestry and then checks the forestry's good on the ground. Now together, through our supply chain, with partners, we've managed to certify 35 million hectares of forestry. That's about the size of Germany. And we've decided in the next three years, we will double the volume of certified material we put through our business. So be decisive on these issues. Use your supply chain to drive good.
But then it comes to your operations. Some things are certain, I think. We know we'll use electricity in 20 or 30 years' time. We know the sun will be shining somewhere, and the wind will still be blowing in 20 or 30 years' time. So why not make our energy out of the sun and the wind? And why not take control of it ourselves? So we're going 100 percent renewable. By 2020, we'll produce more renewable energy than the energy we consume as a business. For all of our stores, our own factories, our distribution centers, we've installed 300,000 solar panels so far, and we've got 14 wind farms we own and operate in six countries, and we're not done yet. But think of a solar panel. A solar panel pays for itself in seven or eight years. The electricity is free. Every time the sun comes out after that, the electricity is free. So this is a good thing for the CFO, not just the sustainability guy. Every business can do things like this.
But then we've got to look beyond our operations, and I think everybody would agree that now business has to take full responsibility for the impacts of your supply chain. Many businesses now, fortunately, have codes of conduct and audit their supply chains, but not every business. Far from it. And this came in IKEA actually in the '90s. We found there was a risk of child labor in the supply chain, and people in the business were shocked. And it was clearly totally unacceptable, so then you have to act. So a code of conduct was developed, and now we have 80 auditors out in the world every day making sure all our factories secure good working conditions and protect human rights and make sure there is no child labor.
But it's not just as simple as making sure there's no child labor. You've got to say that's not enough today. I think we'd all agree that children are the most important people in the world and the most vulnerable. So what can a business do today to actually use your total value chain to support a better quality of life and protect child rights? We've worked with UNICEF and Save the Children on developing some new business principles with children's rights. Increasing numbers of businesses are signing up to these, but actually in a survey, many business leaders said they thought their business had nothing to do with children. So what we decided to do was, we will look and ask ourselves the tough questions with partners who know more than us, what can we do to go beyond our business to help improve the lives of children? We also have a foundation that's committed to work through partners and help improve the lives and protect the rights of 100 million children by 2015.
You know the phrase, you can manage what you measure? Well, you should measure what you care about. If you're not measuring things, you don't care and you don't know. So let's take an example, measure the things that are important in your business. Isn't it about time that businesses were led equally by men and women?
(Applause)
So we know for our 17,000 managers across IKEA that 47 percent are women today, but it's not enough, and we want to close the gap and follow it all the way through to senior management. And we do not want to wait another hundred years. So we've launched a women's open network this week in IKEA, and we'll do whatever it takes to lead the change. So the message here is, measure what you care about and lead the change, and don't wait a hundred years.
So we've gone from sustainability being a nice-to-do to a must-do. It's a must-do. It's still nice to do, but it's a must-do. And everybody can do something on this as an individual. Be a discerning consumer. Vote with your wallets. Search out the companies that are acting on this. But also, there are other businesses already acting. I mentioned renewable energy. You go to Google or Lego, they're going 100 percent renewable too, in the same way that we are. On having really good sustainability strategies, there are companies like Nike, Patagonia, Timberland, Marks & Spencer. But I don't think any of those businesses would say they're perfect. We certainly wouldn't. We'll make mistakes going forward, but it's about setting a clear direction, being transparent, having a dialogue with the right partners, and choosing to lead on the issues that really count.
So if you're a business leader, if you're not already weaving sustainability right into the heart of your business model, I'd urge you to do so. And together, we can help create a sustainable world, and, if we get it right, we can make sustainability affordable for the many people, not a luxury for the few.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Friday, October 25, 2013
Paul McCartney: "Queenie Eye"
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Paul McCartney se rodea de famosos
Celebridades de toda índole acompañan al beatle en su nuevo video, “Queenie Eye”. Ya descubrimos a los actores Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep y Jude Law, a las modelos Kate Moss y Lily Cole y al diseñador y cineasta Tom Ford. ¿A quién más encontraste?
Fuente:www.entremujeres.com
Paul McCartney se rodea de famosos
Celebridades de toda índole acompañan al beatle en su nuevo video, “Queenie Eye”. Ya descubrimos a los actores Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep y Jude Law, a las modelos Kate Moss y Lily Cole y al diseñador y cineasta Tom Ford. ¿A quién más encontraste?
Fuente:www.entremujeres.com
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
GralInt-TED Talks-Iwan Baan: Ingenious homes in unexpected places
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Iwan Baan: Ingenious homes in unexpected places
Filmed Sep 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDCity2.0
In the center of Caracas, Venezuela, stands the 45-story "Tower of David," an unfinished, abandoned skyscraper. But about eight years ago, people started moving in. Photographer Iwan Baan shows how people build homes in unlikely places, touring us through the family apartments of Torre David, a city on the water in Nigeria, and an underground village in China. Glorious images celebrate humanity's ability to survive and make a home -- anywhere.
Photographer Iwan Baan captures the many ways people shape their shared built environment -- from glossy starchitecture to handmade homes
Transcript:
Throughout my career, I've been fortunate enough to work with many of the great international architects, documenting their work and observing how their designs have the capacity to influence the cities in which they sit. I think of new cities like Dubai or ancient cities like Rome with Zaha Hadid's incredible MAXXI museum, or like right here in New York with the High Line, a city which has been so much influenced by the development of this.
But what I find really fascinating is what happens when architects and planners leave and these places become appropriated by people, like here in Chandigarh, India, the city which has been completely designed by the architect Le Corbusier. Now 60 years later, the city has been taken over by people in very different ways from whatever perhaps intended for, like here, where you have the people sitting in the windows of the assembly hall. But over the course of several years, I've been documenting Rem Koolhaas's CCTV building in Beijing and the olympic stadium in the same city by the architects Herzog and de Meuron. At these large-scale construction sites in China, you see a sort of makeshift camp where workers live during the entire building process. As the length of the construction takes years, workers end up forming a rather rough-and-ready informal city, making for quite a juxtaposition against the sophisticated structures that they're building.
Over the past seven years, I've been following my fascination with the built environment, and for those of you who know me, you would say that this obsession has led me to live out of a suitcase 365 days a year. Being constantly on the move means that sometimes I am able to catch life's most unpredictable moments, like here in New York the day after the Sandy storm hit the city.
Just over three years ago, I was for the first time in Caracas, Venezuela, and while flying over the city, I was just amazed by the extent to which the slums reach into every corner of the city, a place where nearly 70 percent of the population lives in slums, draped literally all over the mountains. During a conversation with local architects Urban-Think Tank, I learned about the Torre David, a 45-story office building which sits right in the center of Caracas. The building was under construction until the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the death of the developer in the early '90s. About eight years ago, people started moving into the abandoned tower and began to build their homes right in between every column of this unfinished tower. There's only one little entrance to the entire building, and the 3,000 residents come in and out through that single door. Together, the inhabitants created public spaces and designed them to feel more like a home and less like an unfinished tower. In the lobby, they painted the walls and planted trees. They also made a basketball court. But when you look up closely, you see massive holes where elevators and services would have run through.
Within the tower, people have come up with all sorts of solutions in response to the various needs which arise from living in an unfinished tower. With no elevators, the tower is like a 45-story walkup. Designed in very specific ways by this group of people who haven't had any education in architecture or design. And with each inhabitant finding their own unique way of coming by, this tower becomes like a living city, a place which is alive with micro-economies and small businesses. The inventive inhabitants, for instance, find opportunities in the most unexpected cases, like the adjacent parking garage, which has been reclaimed as a taxi route to shuttle the inhabitants up through the ramps in order to shorten the hike up to the apartments.
A walk through the tower reveals how residents have figured out how to create walls, how to make an air flow, how to create transparency, circulation throughout the tower, essentially creating a home that's completely adapted to the conditions of the site. When a new inhabitant moves into the tower, they already have a roof over their head, so they just typically mark their space with a few curtains or sheets. Slowly, from found materials, walls rise, and people create a space out of any found objects or materials.
It's remarkable to see the design decisions that they're making, like when everything is made out of red bricks, some residents will cover that red brick with another layer of red brick-patterned wallpaper just to make it a kind of clean finish.
The inhabitants literally built up these homes with their own hands, and this labor of love instills a great sense of pride in many families living in this tower. They typically make the best out of their conditions, and try to make their spaces look nice and homey, or at least up until as far as they can reach. Throughout the tower, you come across all kinds of services, like the barber, small factories, and every floor has a little grocery store or shop. And you even find a church. And on the 30th floor, there is a gym where all the weights and barbells are made out of the leftover pulleys from the elevators which were never installed. From the outside, behind this always-changing facade, you see how the fixed concrete beams provide a framework for the inhabitants to create their homes in an organic, intuitive way that responds directly to their needs.
Let's go now to Africa, to Nigeria, to a community called Makoko, a slum where 150,000 people live just meters above the Lagos Lagoon. While it may appear to be a completely chaotic place, when you see it from above, there seems to be a whole grid of waterways and canals connecting each and every home. From the main dock, people board long wooden canoes which carry them out to their various homes and shops located in the expansive area. When out on the water, it's clear that life has been completely adapted to this very specific way of living. Even the canoes become variety stores where ladies paddle from house to house, selling anything from toothpaste to fresh fruits. Behind every window and door frame, you'll see a small child peering back at you, and while Makoko seems to be packed with people, what's more shocking is actually the amount of children pouring out of every building. The population growth in Nigeria, and especially in these areas like Makoko, are painful reminders of how out of control things really are.
In Makoko, very few systems and infrastructures exist. Electricity is rigged and freshest water comes from self-built wells throughout the area. This entire economic model is designed to meet a specific way of living on the water, so fishing and boat-making are common professions. You'll have a set of entrepreneurs who have set up businesses throughout the area, like barbershops, CD and DVD stores, movie theaters, tailors, everything is there. There is even a photo studio where you see the sort of aspiration to live in a real house or to be associated with a faraway place, like that hotel in Sweden.
On this particular evening, I came across this live band dressed to the T in their coordinating outfits. They were floating through the canals in a large canoe with a fitted-out generator for all of the community to enjoy.
By nightfall, the area becomes almost pitch black, save for a small lightbulb or a fire.
What originally brought me to Makoko was this project from a friend of mine, Kunlé Adeyemi, who recently finished building this three-story floating school for the kids in Makoko. With this entire village existing on the water, public space is very limited, so now that the school is finished, the ground floor is a playground for the kids, but when classes are out, the platform is just like a town square, where the fishermen mend their nets and floating shopkeepers dock their boats.
Another place I'd like to share with you is the Zabbaleen in Cairo. They're descendants of farmers who began migrating from the upper Egypt in the '40s, and today they make their living by collecting and recycling waste from homes from all over Cairo. For years, the Zabbaleen would live in makeshift villages where they would move around trying to avoid the local authorities, but in the early 1980s, they settled on the Mokattam rocks just at the eastern edge of the city. Today, they live in this area, approximately 50,000 to 70,000 people, who live in this community of self-built multi-story houses where up to three generations live in one structure. While these apartments that they built for themselves appear to lack any planning or formal grid, each family specializing in a certain form of recycling means that the ground floor of each apartment is reserved for garbage-related activities and the upper floor is dedicated to living space. I find it incredible to see how these piles and piles of garbage are invisible to the people who live there, like this very distinguished man who is posing while all this garbage is sort of streaming out behind him, or like these two young men who are sitting and chatting amongst these tons of garbage. While to most of us, living amongst these piles and piles of garbage may seem totally uninhabitable, to those in the Zabbaleen, this is just a different type of normal. In all these places I've talked about today, what I do find fascinating is that there's really no such thing as normal, and it proves that people are able to adapt to any kind of situation. Throughout the day, it's quite common to come across a small party taking place in the streets, just like this engagement party. In this tradition, the bride-to-be displays all of their belongings, which they soon bring to their new husband. A gathering like this one offers such a juxtaposition where all the new stuff is displayed and all the garbage is used as props to display all their new home accessories. Like Makoko and the Torre David, throughout the Zabbaleen you'll find all the same facilities as in any typical neighborhood. There are the retail shops, the cafes and the restaurants, and the community is this community of Coptic Christians, so you'll also find a church, along with the scores of religious iconographies throughout the area, and also all the everyday services like the electronic repair shops, the barbers, everything.
Visiting the homes of the Zabbaleen is also full of surprises. While from the outside, these homes look like any other informal structure in the city, when you step inside, you are met with all manner of design decisions and interior decoration. Despite having limited access to space and money, the homes in the area are designed with care and detail. Every apartment is unique, and this individuality tells a story about each family's circumstances and values. Many of these people take their homes and interior spaces very seriously, putting a lot of work and care into the details. The shared spaces are also treated in the same manner, where walls are decorated in faux marble patterns.
But despite this elaborate decor, sometimes these apartments are used in very unexpected ways, like this home which caught my attention while all the mud and the grass was literally seeping out under the front door. When I was let in, it appeared that this fifth-floor apartment was being transformed into a complete animal farm, where six or seven cows stood grazing in what otherwise would be the living room. But then in the apartment across the hall from this cow shed lives a newly married couple in what locals describe as one of the nicest apartments in the area.
The attention to this detail astonished me, and as the owner of the home so proudly led me around this apartment, from floor to ceiling, every part was decorated. But if it weren't for the strangely familiar stomach-churning odor that constantly passes through the apartment, it would be easy to forget that you are standing next to a cow shed and on top of a landfill. What moved me the most was that despite these seemingly inhospitable conditions, I was welcomed with open arms into a home that was made with love, care, and unreserved passion.
Let's move across the map to China, to an area called Shanxi, Henan and Gansu. In a region famous for the soft, porous Loess Plateau soil, there lived until recently an estimated 40 million people in these houses underground. These dwellings are called the yaodongs. Through this architecture by subtraction, these yaodongs are built literally inside of the soil. In these villages, you see an entirely altered landscape, and hidden behind these mounds of dirt are these square, rectangular houses which sit seven meters below the ground. When I asked people why they were digging their houses from the ground, they simply replied that they are poor wheat and apple farmers who didn't have the money to buy materials, and this digging out was their most logical form of living.
From Makoko to Zabbaleen, these communities have approached the tasks of planning, design and management of their communities and neighborhoods in ways that respond specifically to their environment and circumstances. Created by these very people who live, work and play in these particular spaces, these neighborhoods are intuitively designed to make the most of their circumstances. In most of these places, the government is completely absent, leaving inhabitants with no choice but to reappropriate found materials, and while these communities are highly disadvantaged, they do present examples of brilliant forms of ingenuity, and prove that indeed we have the ability to adapt to all manner of circumstances. What makes places like the Torre David particularly remarkable is this sort of skeleton framework where people can have a foundation where they can tap into. Now imagine what these already ingenious communities could create themselves, and how highly particular their solutions would be, if they were given the basic infrastructures that they could tap into.
Today, you see these large residential development projects which offer cookie-cutter housing solutions to massive amounts of people. From China to Brazil, these projects attempt to provide as many houses as possible, but they're completely generic and simply do not work as an answer to the individual needs of the people.
I would like to end with a quote from a friend of mine and a source of inspiration, Zita Cobb, the founder of the wonderful Shorefast Foundation, based out of Fogo Island, Newfoundland. She says that "there's this plague of sameness which is killing the human joy," and I couldn't agree with her more.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Iwan Baan: Ingenious homes in unexpected places
Filmed Sep 2013 • Posted Oct 2013 • TEDCity2.0
In the center of Caracas, Venezuela, stands the 45-story "Tower of David," an unfinished, abandoned skyscraper. But about eight years ago, people started moving in. Photographer Iwan Baan shows how people build homes in unlikely places, touring us through the family apartments of Torre David, a city on the water in Nigeria, and an underground village in China. Glorious images celebrate humanity's ability to survive and make a home -- anywhere.
Photographer Iwan Baan captures the many ways people shape their shared built environment -- from glossy starchitecture to handmade homes
Transcript:
Throughout my career, I've been fortunate enough to work with many of the great international architects, documenting their work and observing how their designs have the capacity to influence the cities in which they sit. I think of new cities like Dubai or ancient cities like Rome with Zaha Hadid's incredible MAXXI museum, or like right here in New York with the High Line, a city which has been so much influenced by the development of this.
But what I find really fascinating is what happens when architects and planners leave and these places become appropriated by people, like here in Chandigarh, India, the city which has been completely designed by the architect Le Corbusier. Now 60 years later, the city has been taken over by people in very different ways from whatever perhaps intended for, like here, where you have the people sitting in the windows of the assembly hall. But over the course of several years, I've been documenting Rem Koolhaas's CCTV building in Beijing and the olympic stadium in the same city by the architects Herzog and de Meuron. At these large-scale construction sites in China, you see a sort of makeshift camp where workers live during the entire building process. As the length of the construction takes years, workers end up forming a rather rough-and-ready informal city, making for quite a juxtaposition against the sophisticated structures that they're building.
Over the past seven years, I've been following my fascination with the built environment, and for those of you who know me, you would say that this obsession has led me to live out of a suitcase 365 days a year. Being constantly on the move means that sometimes I am able to catch life's most unpredictable moments, like here in New York the day after the Sandy storm hit the city.
Just over three years ago, I was for the first time in Caracas, Venezuela, and while flying over the city, I was just amazed by the extent to which the slums reach into every corner of the city, a place where nearly 70 percent of the population lives in slums, draped literally all over the mountains. During a conversation with local architects Urban-Think Tank, I learned about the Torre David, a 45-story office building which sits right in the center of Caracas. The building was under construction until the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and the death of the developer in the early '90s. About eight years ago, people started moving into the abandoned tower and began to build their homes right in between every column of this unfinished tower. There's only one little entrance to the entire building, and the 3,000 residents come in and out through that single door. Together, the inhabitants created public spaces and designed them to feel more like a home and less like an unfinished tower. In the lobby, they painted the walls and planted trees. They also made a basketball court. But when you look up closely, you see massive holes where elevators and services would have run through.
Within the tower, people have come up with all sorts of solutions in response to the various needs which arise from living in an unfinished tower. With no elevators, the tower is like a 45-story walkup. Designed in very specific ways by this group of people who haven't had any education in architecture or design. And with each inhabitant finding their own unique way of coming by, this tower becomes like a living city, a place which is alive with micro-economies and small businesses. The inventive inhabitants, for instance, find opportunities in the most unexpected cases, like the adjacent parking garage, which has been reclaimed as a taxi route to shuttle the inhabitants up through the ramps in order to shorten the hike up to the apartments.
A walk through the tower reveals how residents have figured out how to create walls, how to make an air flow, how to create transparency, circulation throughout the tower, essentially creating a home that's completely adapted to the conditions of the site. When a new inhabitant moves into the tower, they already have a roof over their head, so they just typically mark their space with a few curtains or sheets. Slowly, from found materials, walls rise, and people create a space out of any found objects or materials.
It's remarkable to see the design decisions that they're making, like when everything is made out of red bricks, some residents will cover that red brick with another layer of red brick-patterned wallpaper just to make it a kind of clean finish.
The inhabitants literally built up these homes with their own hands, and this labor of love instills a great sense of pride in many families living in this tower. They typically make the best out of their conditions, and try to make their spaces look nice and homey, or at least up until as far as they can reach. Throughout the tower, you come across all kinds of services, like the barber, small factories, and every floor has a little grocery store or shop. And you even find a church. And on the 30th floor, there is a gym where all the weights and barbells are made out of the leftover pulleys from the elevators which were never installed. From the outside, behind this always-changing facade, you see how the fixed concrete beams provide a framework for the inhabitants to create their homes in an organic, intuitive way that responds directly to their needs.
Let's go now to Africa, to Nigeria, to a community called Makoko, a slum where 150,000 people live just meters above the Lagos Lagoon. While it may appear to be a completely chaotic place, when you see it from above, there seems to be a whole grid of waterways and canals connecting each and every home. From the main dock, people board long wooden canoes which carry them out to their various homes and shops located in the expansive area. When out on the water, it's clear that life has been completely adapted to this very specific way of living. Even the canoes become variety stores where ladies paddle from house to house, selling anything from toothpaste to fresh fruits. Behind every window and door frame, you'll see a small child peering back at you, and while Makoko seems to be packed with people, what's more shocking is actually the amount of children pouring out of every building. The population growth in Nigeria, and especially in these areas like Makoko, are painful reminders of how out of control things really are.
In Makoko, very few systems and infrastructures exist. Electricity is rigged and freshest water comes from self-built wells throughout the area. This entire economic model is designed to meet a specific way of living on the water, so fishing and boat-making are common professions. You'll have a set of entrepreneurs who have set up businesses throughout the area, like barbershops, CD and DVD stores, movie theaters, tailors, everything is there. There is even a photo studio where you see the sort of aspiration to live in a real house or to be associated with a faraway place, like that hotel in Sweden.
On this particular evening, I came across this live band dressed to the T in their coordinating outfits. They were floating through the canals in a large canoe with a fitted-out generator for all of the community to enjoy.
By nightfall, the area becomes almost pitch black, save for a small lightbulb or a fire.
What originally brought me to Makoko was this project from a friend of mine, Kunlé Adeyemi, who recently finished building this three-story floating school for the kids in Makoko. With this entire village existing on the water, public space is very limited, so now that the school is finished, the ground floor is a playground for the kids, but when classes are out, the platform is just like a town square, where the fishermen mend their nets and floating shopkeepers dock their boats.
Another place I'd like to share with you is the Zabbaleen in Cairo. They're descendants of farmers who began migrating from the upper Egypt in the '40s, and today they make their living by collecting and recycling waste from homes from all over Cairo. For years, the Zabbaleen would live in makeshift villages where they would move around trying to avoid the local authorities, but in the early 1980s, they settled on the Mokattam rocks just at the eastern edge of the city. Today, they live in this area, approximately 50,000 to 70,000 people, who live in this community of self-built multi-story houses where up to three generations live in one structure. While these apartments that they built for themselves appear to lack any planning or formal grid, each family specializing in a certain form of recycling means that the ground floor of each apartment is reserved for garbage-related activities and the upper floor is dedicated to living space. I find it incredible to see how these piles and piles of garbage are invisible to the people who live there, like this very distinguished man who is posing while all this garbage is sort of streaming out behind him, or like these two young men who are sitting and chatting amongst these tons of garbage. While to most of us, living amongst these piles and piles of garbage may seem totally uninhabitable, to those in the Zabbaleen, this is just a different type of normal. In all these places I've talked about today, what I do find fascinating is that there's really no such thing as normal, and it proves that people are able to adapt to any kind of situation. Throughout the day, it's quite common to come across a small party taking place in the streets, just like this engagement party. In this tradition, the bride-to-be displays all of their belongings, which they soon bring to their new husband. A gathering like this one offers such a juxtaposition where all the new stuff is displayed and all the garbage is used as props to display all their new home accessories. Like Makoko and the Torre David, throughout the Zabbaleen you'll find all the same facilities as in any typical neighborhood. There are the retail shops, the cafes and the restaurants, and the community is this community of Coptic Christians, so you'll also find a church, along with the scores of religious iconographies throughout the area, and also all the everyday services like the electronic repair shops, the barbers, everything.
Visiting the homes of the Zabbaleen is also full of surprises. While from the outside, these homes look like any other informal structure in the city, when you step inside, you are met with all manner of design decisions and interior decoration. Despite having limited access to space and money, the homes in the area are designed with care and detail. Every apartment is unique, and this individuality tells a story about each family's circumstances and values. Many of these people take their homes and interior spaces very seriously, putting a lot of work and care into the details. The shared spaces are also treated in the same manner, where walls are decorated in faux marble patterns.
But despite this elaborate decor, sometimes these apartments are used in very unexpected ways, like this home which caught my attention while all the mud and the grass was literally seeping out under the front door. When I was let in, it appeared that this fifth-floor apartment was being transformed into a complete animal farm, where six or seven cows stood grazing in what otherwise would be the living room. But then in the apartment across the hall from this cow shed lives a newly married couple in what locals describe as one of the nicest apartments in the area.
The attention to this detail astonished me, and as the owner of the home so proudly led me around this apartment, from floor to ceiling, every part was decorated. But if it weren't for the strangely familiar stomach-churning odor that constantly passes through the apartment, it would be easy to forget that you are standing next to a cow shed and on top of a landfill. What moved me the most was that despite these seemingly inhospitable conditions, I was welcomed with open arms into a home that was made with love, care, and unreserved passion.
Let's move across the map to China, to an area called Shanxi, Henan and Gansu. In a region famous for the soft, porous Loess Plateau soil, there lived until recently an estimated 40 million people in these houses underground. These dwellings are called the yaodongs. Through this architecture by subtraction, these yaodongs are built literally inside of the soil. In these villages, you see an entirely altered landscape, and hidden behind these mounds of dirt are these square, rectangular houses which sit seven meters below the ground. When I asked people why they were digging their houses from the ground, they simply replied that they are poor wheat and apple farmers who didn't have the money to buy materials, and this digging out was their most logical form of living.
From Makoko to Zabbaleen, these communities have approached the tasks of planning, design and management of their communities and neighborhoods in ways that respond specifically to their environment and circumstances. Created by these very people who live, work and play in these particular spaces, these neighborhoods are intuitively designed to make the most of their circumstances. In most of these places, the government is completely absent, leaving inhabitants with no choice but to reappropriate found materials, and while these communities are highly disadvantaged, they do present examples of brilliant forms of ingenuity, and prove that indeed we have the ability to adapt to all manner of circumstances. What makes places like the Torre David particularly remarkable is this sort of skeleton framework where people can have a foundation where they can tap into. Now imagine what these already ingenious communities could create themselves, and how highly particular their solutions would be, if they were given the basic infrastructures that they could tap into.
Today, you see these large residential development projects which offer cookie-cutter housing solutions to massive amounts of people. From China to Brazil, these projects attempt to provide as many houses as possible, but they're completely generic and simply do not work as an answer to the individual needs of the people.
I would like to end with a quote from a friend of mine and a source of inspiration, Zita Cobb, the founder of the wonderful Shorefast Foundation, based out of Fogo Island, Newfoundland. She says that "there's this plague of sameness which is killing the human joy," and I couldn't agree with her more.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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