TED2006: War and love

Tenth session of TED2006 (background): running notes.

Jim Crupi thinks that in the new world of warfare "intelligence is everything". He's a military strategist, and goes on stage at TED to talk about "the future of war". To illustrate it he offers a scary simulation (a fake radio broadcast after a biological terrorist attack in California), a list of nextools of war (ant robots, non-lethal weapons that incapacitate without killing, bio/nuclear, and of course code, artificial intelligence and nanotech), and a framework for understanding today's conflicts: "the battleground is moving from the physical to the ideological", Al Qaeda is a virtual nation, war is beliefs- and issues-based, and its objective in the future won't be to win, but to protect one big idea (or several) such as freedom, democracy, or faith. In this context, "intelligence is everything". During the Vietnam war, he reminds us, the Americans were bombing bridges so that the Vietnamese could not cross certain rivers, and sending airplanes on daily recognition flights to make sure that the bridges were not being rebuilt, "yet thousands of Vietnamese crossed the rivers". How? They built the bridges six inches under water, so that they could not be seen. "The future of war is about intelligence and out-thinking the adversary".

He leaves the audience in a sort of state of grim suspension, into which comes actress Julia Sweeney, and in her amazing way she lights up everyone again with a hilarious fragment from her monologue "Letting go of God", about faith and growing up. There is a recording of parts of it on Chicaco Public Radio's website.

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist of relationships and love. She talks of "what is to love?" (when a person starts taking on a special meaning). She scanned the brains of 32 people "in love" (15 of which had been rejected) and came to the conclusion that "romantic love is not an emotion: it is a drive, a craving more powerful than sex drive". She asks "why do we fall in love with one person rather than another?" and answers through proximity, mystery, and the tendency "to gravitate towards people with complementary brain systems". "We are now returning to an ancient form of marriage: one based on equality and symmetry (...) If there were ever a time in human history when we had the opportunity to make good marriages, it's now."

Nat Irvin speaks on a background of loud music, and at times he sounds like a preacher. He has a great insight: a new social identity is emerging among urban young black people. He calls them "the thrivals": those who are switching from seeing themselves and their families/communities as victims of the forces of history ("survival"), to shaping those same forces ("thrival"). But for the whole speech I keep waiting for examples and more details, and he never produces them. (UPDATE 27 February: Nat has seen this post and sends me an elegant e-mail, saying among other things: "here is what you wished I had shared" (PDF format). Indeed, it's a great article. Thanx Nat.)

The end of the session sees a child go on stage: 11-year-old violinist Sirena Huang. And I'm at loss for words to describe her virtuosity and the magic of her music, so watch out for her first record (she recently made her professional solo debut with the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra).

(tags TED2006 - TED 2006) (TED site  - flickr photos)