WEBVTT

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I have a confession to make.

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As a scientist and engineer,
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
about a journey

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

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A few years ago, after finishing my Ph.D. 
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.,
Massachusetts Avenue,

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the shortest route from
Boston to Cambridge.

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But after a month

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that I was cycling every day
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
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
Mass. Ave. full of cars;

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

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But after the feeling 
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
became one thing only:

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the shortest path.

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In this single journey,
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
people in the eyes.

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And why?

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Because I was saving a minute
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
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
are the greatest game-changer

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for encouraging people
to explore the city.

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You take your phone out
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
of directions to the destination.

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It has the power to make
those handful of directions

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the definitive direction
to that destination.

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After that experience, I changed.

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I changed my research
from traditional data-mining

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to understanding how people
experience the city.

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I used computer science tools

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to replicate social science
experiments at scale, at web scale.

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I became captivated
by the beauty and genius

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of traditional social science experiments

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done by Jane Jacobs,
Stanley Milgram, Kevin Lynch.

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

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maps where you don't only find
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
people find beautiful.

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At the University of Cambridge,
with colleagues,

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we thought about this simple experiment.

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If I were to show you
these two urban scenes,

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and I were to ask you
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 
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
where consensus emerges.

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We are able to see which
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
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
able to see and connect

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from point A to point B 
the shortest segments,

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but you're also able
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,
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
a few minutes to travel time.

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Participants also love to attach
memories to places.

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

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

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They also recalled how some paths
smelled and sounded.

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So what if we had a mapping tool

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that would return
the most enjoyable routes

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based not only on aesthetics

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but also based on smell, sound, 
and memories?

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That's where our research
is going right now.

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More generally, my research,

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

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

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Walk the path through the park,
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
in a fabricated world.

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Perhaps we live in a world
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,
escape the fabricated world.

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Why?

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

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Thank you.

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(Applause)