Hack a banana, make a keyboard!
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0:01 - 0:02Hey guys.
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0:02 - 0:04It's funny, someone just mentioned MacGyver,
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0:04 - 0:06because that was, like, I loved it,
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0:06 - 0:11and when I was seven, I taped a fork to a drill
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0:11 - 0:14and I was like, "Hey, Mom, I'm going to Olive Garden."
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0:14 - 0:18And -- (Drilling noise) (Laughter)
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0:18 - 0:21And it worked really well there.
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0:21 - 0:25And you know, it had a profound effect on me.
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0:25 - 0:27It sounds silly, but I thought, okay,
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0:27 - 0:30the way the world works can be changed,
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0:30 - 0:32and it can be changed by me in these small ways.
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0:32 - 0:34And my relationship to
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0:34 - 0:35especially human-made objects
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0:35 - 0:37which someone else said they work like this,
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0:37 - 0:40well, I can say they work a different way, a little bit.
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0:40 - 0:43And so, about 20 years later,
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0:43 - 0:44I didn't realize the full effect of this,
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0:44 - 0:46but I went to Costa Rica
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0:46 - 0:48and I stayed with these Guaymí natives there,
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0:48 - 0:52and they could pull leaves off of trees and make shingles out of them,
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0:52 - 0:55and they could make beds out of trees,
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0:55 - 0:57and they could -- I watched this woman for three days.
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0:57 - 1:00I was there. She was peeling this palm frond apart,
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1:00 - 1:03these little threads off of it, and she'd roll the threads together
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1:03 - 1:06and make little thicker threads, like strings,
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1:06 - 1:09and she would weave the strings together,
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1:09 - 1:12and as the materiality of this exact very bag
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1:12 - 1:15formed before my eyes over those three days,
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1:15 - 1:19the materiality of the way the world works,
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1:19 - 1:21of reality, kind of started to unravel in my mind,
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1:21 - 1:24because I realized that this bag and these clothes
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1:24 - 1:27and the trampoline you have at home and the pencil sharpener,
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1:27 - 1:31everything you have is made out of either a tree or a rock
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1:31 - 1:33or something we dug out of the ground and did some process to,
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1:33 - 1:37maybe a more complicated one, but still, everything was made that way.
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1:37 - 1:39And so I had to start studying,
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1:39 - 1:41who is it that's making these decisions?
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1:41 - 1:43Who's making these things? How did they make them?
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1:43 - 1:44What stops us from making them?
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1:44 - 1:47Because this is how reality is created.
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1:47 - 1:50So I started right away. I was at MIT Media Lab,
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1:50 - 1:52and I was studying the maker movement
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1:52 - 1:54and makers and creativity.
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1:54 - 1:56And I started in nature, because I saw these Guaymís
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1:56 - 1:59doing it in nature, and there just seems to be less barriers.
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1:59 - 2:03So I went to Vermont to Not Back to School Camp,
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2:03 - 2:06where there's unschoolers who are just kind of hanging out
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2:06 - 2:07and willing to try anything.
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2:07 - 2:10So I said, "Let's go into the woods near this stream
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2:10 - 2:12and just put stuff together, you know, make something,
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2:12 - 2:14I don't care, geometrical shapes, just grab some junk from around you.
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2:14 - 2:16We won't bring anything with us.
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2:16 - 2:18And, like, within minutes, this is very easy for adults
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2:18 - 2:19and teens to do.
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2:19 - 2:23Here's a triangle that was being formed underneath a flowing stream,
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2:23 - 2:25and the shape of an oak leaf being made
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2:25 - 2:28by other small oak leaves being put together.
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2:28 - 2:31A leaf tied to a stick with a blade of grass.
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2:31 - 2:34The materiality and fleshiness and meat of the mushroom
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2:34 - 2:37being explored by how it can hold up different objects being stuck into it.
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2:37 - 2:41And after about 45 minutes, you get really intricate projects
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2:41 - 2:44like leaves sorted by hue, so you get a color fade
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2:44 - 2:46and put in a circle like a wreath.
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2:46 - 2:48And the creator of this, he said,
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2:48 - 2:50"This is fire. I call this fire."
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2:50 - 2:52And someone asked him, "How do you get those sticks
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2:52 - 2:54to stay on that tree?"
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2:54 - 2:57And he's like, "I don't know, but I can show you."
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2:57 - 2:59And I'm like, "Wow, that's really amazing.
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2:59 - 3:00He doesn't know, but he can show you."
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3:00 - 3:03So his hands know and his intuition knows,
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3:03 - 3:06but sometimes what we know gets in the way
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3:06 - 3:08of what could be, especially
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3:08 - 3:11when it comes to the human-made, human-built world.
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3:11 - 3:13We think we already know how something works,
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3:13 - 3:15so we can't imagine how it could work.
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3:15 - 3:16We know how it's supposed to work,
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3:16 - 3:20so we can't suppose all the things that could be possible.
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3:20 - 3:24So kids don't have as hard of a time with this,
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3:24 - 3:27and I saw in my own son, I gave him this book.
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3:27 - 3:29I'm a good hippie dad, so I'm like,
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3:29 - 3:31"Okay, you're going to learn to love the moon.
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3:31 - 3:34I'm going to give you some building blocks
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3:34 - 3:37and they're nonrectilinear cactus building blocks,
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3:37 - 3:39so it's totally legit."
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3:39 - 3:41But he doesn't really know what to do with these.
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3:41 - 3:42I didn't show him.
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3:42 - 3:44And so he's like, "Okay, I'll just mess around with this."
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3:44 - 3:48This is no different than the sticks are to the teens in the forest.
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3:48 - 3:50Just going to try to put them in shapes
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3:50 - 3:52and push on them and stuff.
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3:52 - 3:55And before long, he's kind of got this mechanism
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3:55 - 3:58where you can almost launch and catapult objects around,
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3:58 - 4:01and he enlists us in helping him.
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4:01 - 4:03And at this point, I'm starting to wonder,
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4:03 - 4:05what kind of tools can we give people,
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4:05 - 4:08especially adults, who know too much,
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4:08 - 4:11so that they can see the world as malleable,
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4:11 - 4:12so they see themselves as agents of change
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4:12 - 4:14in their everyday lives.
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4:14 - 4:16Because the most advanced scientists are really
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4:16 - 4:19just kind of pushing the way the world itself works,
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4:19 - 4:20pushing what matter can do,
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4:20 - 4:23the most advanced artists are just pushing the medium,
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4:23 - 4:25and any sufficiently complicated task,
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4:25 - 4:28whether you're a cook or a carpenter or you're raising a child --
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4:28 - 4:29anything that's complicated --
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4:29 - 4:32comes up with problems that aren't solved in the middle of it,
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4:32 - 4:35and you can't do a good job getting it done unless you can say,
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4:35 - 4:37"Okay, well we're just going to have to refigure this.
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4:37 - 4:40I don't care that pencils are supposed to be for writing.
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4:40 - 4:42I'm going to use them a different way."
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4:42 - 4:47So let me show you a little demo.
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4:47 - 4:52This is a little piano circuit right in here,
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4:52 - 4:54and this is an ordinary paintbrush
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4:54 - 4:57that I smashed it together with. (Beeping)
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4:57 - 4:59And so, with some ketchup,
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4:59 - 5:02— (musical notes) —
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5:02 - 5:03and then I can kind of
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5:03 - 5:10— (musical notes) —
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5:10 - 5:12(Laughter) (Applause)
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5:12 - 5:14And that's awesome, right?
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5:14 - 5:16But this is not what's awesome.
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5:16 - 5:17What's awesome is what happens
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5:17 - 5:21when you give the piano circuit to people.
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5:21 - 5:22A pencil is not just a pencil.
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5:22 - 5:24Look what it has in the middle of it.
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5:24 - 5:27That's a wire running down the middle,
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5:27 - 5:28and not only is it a wire,
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5:28 - 5:30if you take that piano circuit, you can thumbtack
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5:30 - 5:32into the middle of a pencil,
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5:32 - 5:35and you can lay out wire on the page, too,
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5:35 - 5:38and get electrical current to run through it.
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5:38 - 5:40And so you can kind of hack a pencil,
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5:40 - 5:45just by thumbtacking into it with a little piano electrical circuit.
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5:45 - 5:47And the electricity runs through your body too.
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5:47 - 5:50And then you can take the little piano circuit off the pencil.
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5:50 - 5:54You can make one of these brushes just on the fly.
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5:54 - 5:56All you do is connect to the bristles,
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5:56 - 5:58and the bristles are wet, so they conduct,
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5:58 - 6:00and the person's body conducts,
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6:00 - 6:02and leather is great to paint on,
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6:02 - 6:05and then you can start hooking to everything,
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6:05 - 6:06even the kitchen sink.
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6:06 - 6:08The metal in the sink is conductive.
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6:08 - 6:11Flowing water acts like a theremin or a violin.
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6:11 - 6:16(Musical notes)
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6:16 - 6:18And you can even hook to the trees.
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6:18 - 6:21Anything in the world is either conductive or not conductive,
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6:21 - 6:23and you can use those together.
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6:23 - 6:24So — (Laughter) —
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6:24 - 6:27I took this to those same teens, because those teens are
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6:27 - 6:30really awesome, and they'll try things that I won't try.
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6:30 - 6:33I don't even have access to a facial piercing if I wanted to.
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6:33 - 6:37And this young woman, she made what she called a hula-looper,
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6:37 - 6:39and as the hula hoop traveled around her body,
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6:39 - 6:42she has a circuit taped to her shirt right there.
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6:42 - 6:44You can see her pointing to it in the picture.
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6:44 - 6:46And every time the hula hoop would smush against her body,
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6:46 - 6:49it would connect two little pieces of copper tape,
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6:49 - 6:50and it would make a sound, and the next sound,
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6:50 - 6:53and it would loop the same sounds over and over again.
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6:53 - 6:55I ran these workshops everywhere.
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6:55 - 6:58In Taiwan, at an art museum, this 12-year-old girl
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6:58 - 7:01made a mushroom organ out of some mushrooms that were from Taiwan
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7:01 - 7:03and some electrical tape and hot glue.
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7:03 - 7:05And professional designers were making artifacts
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7:05 - 7:07with this thing strapped onto it.
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7:07 - 7:09And big companies like Intel
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7:09 - 7:13or smaller design firms like Ideo or startups like Bump,
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7:13 - 7:15were inviting me to give workshops,
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7:15 - 7:17just to practice this idea of smashing electronics
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7:17 - 7:19and everyday objects together.
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7:19 - 7:21And then we came up with this idea
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7:21 - 7:23to not just use electronics,
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7:23 - 7:26but let's just smash computers with everyday objects
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7:26 - 7:29and see how that goes over.
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7:29 - 7:32And so I just want to do a quick demo.
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7:32 - 7:35So this is the MaKey MaKey circuit,
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7:35 - 7:38and I'm just going to set it up from the beginning in front of you.
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7:38 - 7:42So I'll just plug it in, and now it's on by USB.
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7:42 - 7:45And I'll just hook up the forward arrow.
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7:45 - 7:48You guys are facing that way, so I'll hook it to this one.
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7:48 - 7:52And I'll just hook up a little ground wire to it.
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7:52 - 7:54And now, if I touch this piece of pizza,
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7:54 - 7:57the slides that I showed you before should go forward.
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7:57 - 8:01And now if I hook up this wire just by connecting it
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8:01 - 8:04to the left arrow, I'm kind of programming it by where I hook it up,
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8:04 - 8:07now I have a left arrow and a right arrow,
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8:07 - 8:09so I should be able to go forwards and backwards
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8:09 - 8:12and forwards and backwards. Awesome.
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8:12 - 8:15And so we're like, "We gotta put a video out about this."
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8:15 - 8:17Because no one really believed that this was important
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8:17 - 8:20or meaningful except me and, like, one other guy.
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8:20 - 8:22So we made a video to prove that
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8:22 - 8:24there's lots of stuff you can do.
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8:24 - 8:26You can kind of sketch with Play-Doh
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8:26 - 8:30and just Google for game controllers.
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8:30 - 8:32Just ordinary Play-Doh, nothing special.
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8:32 - 8:34And you can literally draw joysticks
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8:34 - 8:41and just find Pacman on your computer and then just hook it up. (Video game noises)
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8:41 - 8:45And you know the little plastic drawers you can get at Target?
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8:45 - 8:47Well, if you take those out, they hold water great,
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8:47 - 8:49but you can totally cut your toes,
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8:49 - 8:52so yeah, just be careful.
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8:52 - 8:54You know the Happiness Project, where the experts
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8:54 - 8:57are setting up the piano stairs, and how cool that is?
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8:57 - 8:58Well, I think it's cool,
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8:58 - 9:01but we should be doing that stuff ourselves.
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9:01 - 9:04It shouldn't be a set of experts engineering the way the world works.
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9:04 - 9:06We should all be participating
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9:06 - 9:08in changing the way the world works together.
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9:08 - 9:10Aluminum foil. Everybody has a cat.
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9:10 - 9:13Get a bowl of water. This is just Photo Booth on your Mac OS.
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9:13 - 9:15Hover the mouse over the "take a photo" button,
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9:15 - 9:17and you've got a little cat photo booth.
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9:17 - 9:19And so we needed hundreds of people to buy this.
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9:19 - 9:23If hundreds of people didn't buy this, we couldn't put it on the market.
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9:23 - 9:25And so we put it up on Kickstarter,
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9:25 - 9:28and hundreds of people bought it in the first day.
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9:28 - 9:29And then 30 days later,
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9:29 - 9:3311,000 people had backed the project.
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9:33 - 9:35And then what the best part is, we started getting
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9:35 - 9:39a flood of videos in of people doing crazy things with it.
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9:39 - 9:42So this is "The Star-Spangled Banner" by eating lunch,
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9:42 - 9:44including drinking Listerine.
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9:44 - 9:45And we actually sent this guy materials.
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9:45 - 9:47We're like, "We're sponsoring you, man.
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9:47 - 9:49You're, like, a pro maker."
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9:49 - 9:52Okay, just wait for this one. This is good.
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9:52 - 9:54(Laughter)
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9:54 - 9:58(Applause)
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9:58 - 10:00And these guys at the exploratorium are
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10:00 - 10:02playing house plants as if they were drums.
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10:05 - 10:08And dads and daughters are completing circuits in special ways.
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10:08 - 10:11And then this brother -- look at this diagram.
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10:11 - 10:12See where it says "sister"?
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10:12 - 10:14I love when people put humans on the diagram.
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10:14 - 10:17I always add humans to any technical --
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10:17 - 10:19if you're drawing a technical diagram, put a human in it.
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10:19 - 10:23And this kid is so sweet. He made this trampoline slideshow advancer for his sister
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10:23 - 10:26so that on her birthday, she could be the star of the show,
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10:26 - 10:28jumping on the trampoline to advance the slides.
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10:28 - 10:31And this guy rounded up his dogs and he made a dog piano.
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10:34 - 10:37And this is fun,
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10:37 - 10:39and what could be more useful than feeling alive and fun?
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10:39 - 10:42But it's also very serious because
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10:42 - 10:44all this accessibility stuff started coming up,
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10:44 - 10:47where people can't use computers, necessarily.
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10:47 - 10:50Like this dad who wrote us, his son has cerebral palsy
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10:50 - 10:52and he can't use a normal keyboard.
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10:52 - 10:55And so his dad couldn't necessarily afford
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10:55 - 10:57to buy all these custom controllers.
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10:57 - 10:59And so, with the MaKey MaKey, he planned to make
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10:59 - 11:02these gloves to allow him to navigate the web.
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11:02 - 11:04And a huge eruption of discussion
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11:04 - 11:07around accessibility came, and we're really excited about that.
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11:07 - 11:09We didn't plan for that at all.
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11:09 - 11:11And then all these professional musicians started using it,
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11:11 - 11:14like at Coachella, just this weekend
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11:14 - 11:17Jurassic 5 was using this onstage,
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11:17 - 11:20and this D.J. is just from Brooklyn, right around here,
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11:20 - 11:22and he put this up last month.
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11:22 - 11:25And I love the carrot on the turntable.
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11:25 - 11:31(Music: Massive Attack — "Teardrop")
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11:31 - 11:34Most people cannot play them that way. (Laughter)
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11:34 - 11:36And when this started to get serious,
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11:36 - 11:39I thought, I'd better put a really serious warning label on the box that this comes in,
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11:39 - 11:41because otherwise people are going to be getting this
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11:41 - 11:43and they're going to be turning into agents of creative change,
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11:43 - 11:44and governments will be crumbling,
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11:44 - 11:47and I wouldn't have told people, so I thought I'd better warn them.
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11:47 - 11:49And I also put this little surprise. When you open the lid
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11:49 - 11:52of the box, it says, "The world is a construction kit."
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11:52 - 11:54And as you start to mess around this way,
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11:54 - 11:57I think that, in some small ways, you do start to see
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11:57 - 11:59the landscape of your everyday life
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11:59 - 12:02a little bit more like something you could express yourself with,
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12:02 - 12:04and a little bit more like you could participate
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12:04 - 12:06in designing the future of the way the world works.
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12:06 - 12:10And so next time you're on an escalator
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12:10 - 12:12and you drop an M&M by accident,
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12:12 - 12:15you know, maybe that's an M&M surfboard, not an escalator,
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12:15 - 12:16so don't pick it up right away.
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12:16 - 12:18Maybe take some more stuff out of your pockets
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12:18 - 12:22and throw it down, and maybe some chapstick, whatever.
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12:22 - 12:27I used to want to design a utopian society
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12:27 - 12:29or a perfect world or something like that.
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12:29 - 12:30But as I'm kind of getting older
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12:30 - 12:32and kind of messing with all this stuff,
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12:32 - 12:35I'm realizing that my idea of a perfect world
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12:35 - 12:37really can't be designed by one person
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12:37 - 12:38or even by a million experts.
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12:38 - 12:42It's really going to be seven billion pairs of hands,
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12:42 - 12:44each following their own passions,
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12:44 - 12:46and each kind of like a mosaic coming up
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12:46 - 12:48and creating this world in their backyards
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12:48 - 12:49and in their kitchens.
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12:49 - 12:52And that's the world I really want to live in.
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12:52 - 12:53Thank you.
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12:53 - 12:59(Applause)
- Title:
- Hack a banana, make a keyboard!
- Speaker:
- Jay Silver
- Description:
-
Why can't two slices of pizza be used as a slide clicker? Why shouldn't you make music with ketchup? In this charming talk, inventor Jay Silver talks about the urge to play with the world around you. He shares some of his messiest inventions, and demos MaKey MaKey, a kit for hacking everyday objects.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:15
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Hack a banana, make a keyboard! | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Hack a banana, make a keyboard! | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Hack a banana, make a keyboard! | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Hack a banana, make a keyboard! | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Hack a banana, make a keyboard! | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Hack a banana, make a keyboard! | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |