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I have a confession to make.

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As a scientist and engineer,[br]I've focused on efficiency for many years.

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But efficiency can be a cult,

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and today I'd like to tell you[br]about a journey

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that moved me out of the cult[br]and back to a far richer reality.

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A few years ago, after finishing my Ph.D. [br]in London, I moved to Boston.

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I lived in Boston and worked in Cambridge.

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I bought a racing bicycle that summer,

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and I bicycled every day to work.

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To find my way, I used my phone.

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It sent me over Mass. Ave.,[br]Massachusetts Avenue,

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the shortest route from[br]Boston to Cambridge.

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But after a month

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that I was cycling every day[br]on the car-packed Mass. Ave.,

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I took a different route one day.

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I'm not entirely sure why I took[br]a different route that day, a detour.

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I just remember a feeling of surprise;

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surprise at finding a street with no cars,

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as opposed to the nearby[br]Mass. Ave. full of cars;

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surprise at finding a street [br]draped by leaves and surrounded by trees.

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But after the feeling [br]of surprise, I felt shame.

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How could I have been so blind?

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For an entire month,

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I was so trapped in my mobile app

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that a journey to work[br]became one thing only:

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the shortest path.

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In this single journey,[br]there was no thought

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of enjoying the road,

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no pleasure in connecting with nature,

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no possibility of looking[br]people in the eyes.

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And why?

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Because I was saving a minute[br]out of my commute.

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Now let me ask you: Am I alone here?

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How many of you have never used[br]a mapping app for finding directions?

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Most of you, if not all, have.

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And don't get me wrong -- mapping apps[br]are the greatest game-changer

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for encouraging people[br]to explore the city.

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You take your phone out[br]and you know immediately where to go.

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However, the app also assumes

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there are only a handful[br]of directions to the destination.

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It has the power to make[br]those handful of directions

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the definitive direction[br]to that destination.

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After that experience, I changed.

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I changed my research[br]from traditional data-mining

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to understanding how people[br]experience the city.

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I used computer science tools

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to replicate social science[br]experiments at scale, at web scale.

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I became captivated[br]by the beauty and genius

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of traditional social science experiments

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done by Jane Jacobs,[br]Stanley Milgram, Kevin Lynch.

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The result of that research[br]has been the creation of new maps,

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maps where you don't only find[br]the shortest path, the blue one,

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but also the most enjoyable path,

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the red one.

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How was that possible?

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Einstein once said,

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"Logic will get you from A to B.

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Imagination will take you everywhere."

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So with a bit of imagination,

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we needed to understand

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which parts of the city[br]people find beautiful.

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At the University of Cambridge,[br]with colleagues,

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we thought about this simple experiment.

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If I were to show you[br]these two urban scenes,

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and I were to ask you[br]which one is more beautiful,

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which one would you say?

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Don't be shy.

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Who says A? Who says B?

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Brilliant.

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Based on that idea,

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we built a crowdsourcing platform,

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a web game.

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Players are shown pairs of urban scenes,

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and they're asked to choose which one [br]is more beautiful, quiet and happy.

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Based on thousands of user votes,

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then we are able to see[br]where consensus emerges.

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We are able to see which[br]are the urban scenes

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that make people happy.

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After that work, I joined Yahoo Labs,

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and I teamed up with Luca and Rossano,

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and together, we aggregated[br]those winning locations in London

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to build a new map of the city,

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a cartography weighted for human emotions.

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On this cartography, you're not only[br]able to see and connect

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from point A to point B [br]the shortest segments,

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but you're also able[br]to see the happy segment,

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the beautiful path, the quiet path.

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In tests, participants found the happy,[br]the beautiful, the quiet path

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far more enjoyable than the shortest one,

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and that just by adding[br]a few minutes to travel time.

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Participants also love to attach[br]memories to places.

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Shared memories --[br]that's where the old BBC building was;

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and personal memories --[br]that's where I gave my first kiss.

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They also recalled how some paths[br]smelled and sounded.

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So what if we had a mapping tool

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that would return[br]the most enjoyable routes

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based not only on aesthetics

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but also based on smell, sound, [br]and memories?

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That's where our research[br]is going right now.

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More generally, my research,

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what it tries to do is avoid[br]the danger of the single path,

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to avoid robbing people of fully[br]experiencing the city in which they live.

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Walk the path through the park,[br]not through the car park,

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and you have an entirely different path.

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Walk the path full of people you love

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and not full of cars,

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and you have an entirely different path.

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It's that simple.

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I would like to end with this thought:

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do you remember "The Truman Show?"

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It's a media satire in which a real person

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doesn't know he's living[br]in a fabricated world.

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Perhaps we live in a world[br]fabricated for efficiency.

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Look at some of your daily habits,

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and as Truman did in the movie,[br]escape the fabricated world.

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Why?

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Well, if you think that adventure[br]is dangerous, try routine. It's deadly.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)