Information is food
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0:01 - 0:02I love my food.
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0:02 - 0:05And I love information.
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0:05 - 0:08My children usually tell me
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0:08 - 0:12that one of those passions is a little more apparent than the other.
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0:12 - 0:14(Laughter)
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0:14 - 0:16But what I want to do in the next eight minutes or so
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0:16 - 0:18is to take you through how those passions developed,
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0:18 - 0:22the point in my life when the two passions merged,
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0:22 - 0:26the journey of learning that took place from that point.
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0:26 - 0:29And one idea I want to leave you with today
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0:29 - 0:31is what would would happen differently in your life
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0:31 - 0:36if you saw information the way you saw food?
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0:36 - 0:40I was born in Calcutta --
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0:40 - 0:42a family where my father and his father before him
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0:42 - 0:44were journalists,
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0:44 - 0:48and they wrote magazines in the English language.
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0:48 - 0:50That was the family business.
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0:50 - 0:52And as a result of that,
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0:52 - 0:55I grew up with books everywhere around the house.
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0:55 - 0:57And I mean books everywhere around the house.
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0:57 - 1:00And that's actually a shop in Calcutta,
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1:00 - 1:03but it's a place where we like our books.
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1:03 - 1:06In fact, I've got 38,000 of them now
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1:06 - 1:09and no Kindle in sight.
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1:09 - 1:15But growing up as a child with the books around everywhere,
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1:15 - 1:17with people to talk to about those books,
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1:17 - 1:20this wasn't a sort of slightly learned thing.
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1:20 - 1:23By the time I was 18, I had a deep passion for books.
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1:23 - 1:26It wasn't the only passion I had.
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1:26 - 1:28I was a South Indian
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1:28 - 1:31brought up in Bengal.
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1:31 - 1:33And two of the things about Bengal:
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1:33 - 1:35They like their savory dishes
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1:35 - 1:37and they like their sweets.
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1:37 - 1:39So by the time I grew up,
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1:39 - 1:42again, I had a well-established passion for food.
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1:42 - 1:46Now I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s,
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1:46 - 1:50and there were a number of other passions I was also interested in,
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1:50 - 1:52but these two were the ones that differentiated me.
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1:52 - 1:55(Laughter)
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1:55 - 1:57And then life was fine, dandy.
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1:57 - 1:58Everything was okay,
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1:58 - 2:02until I got to about the age of 26,
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2:02 - 2:07and I went to a movie called "Short Circuit."
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2:07 - 2:09Oh, some of you have seen it.
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2:09 - 2:12And apparently it's being remade right now
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2:12 - 2:13and it's going to be coming out next year.
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2:13 - 2:16It's the story of this experimental robot
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2:16 - 2:20which got electrocuted and found a life.
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2:20 - 2:24And as it ran, this thing was saying, "Give me input. Give me input."
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2:24 - 2:26And I suddenly realized that for a robot
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2:26 - 2:29both information as well as food
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2:29 - 2:33were the same thing.
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2:33 - 2:35Energy came to it in some form or shape,
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2:35 - 2:36data came to it in some form or shape.
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2:36 - 2:40And I began to think,
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2:40 - 2:42I wonder what it would be like
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2:42 - 2:44to start imagining myself
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2:44 - 2:49as if energy and information were the two things I had as input --
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2:49 - 2:50as if food and information were similar in some form or shape.
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2:50 - 2:56I started doing some research then, and this was the 25-year journey,
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2:56 - 2:57and started finding out
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2:57 - 3:00that actually human beings as primates
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3:00 - 3:03have far smaller stomachs
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3:03 - 3:06than should be the size for our body weight
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3:06 - 3:08and far larger brains.
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3:08 - 3:12And as I went to research that even further,
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3:12 - 3:17I got to a point where I discovered something
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3:17 - 3:19called the expensive tissue hypothesis.
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3:19 - 3:24That actually for a given body mass of a primate
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3:24 - 3:26the metabolic rate was static.
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3:26 - 3:30What changed was the balance of the tissues available.
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3:30 - 3:34And two of the most expensive tissues in our human body
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3:34 - 3:37are nervous tissue and digestive tissue.
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3:37 - 3:42And what transpired was that people had put forward a hypothesis
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3:42 - 3:46that was apparently coming up with some fabulous results by about 1995.
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3:46 - 3:50It's a lady named Leslie Aiello.
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3:50 - 3:53And the paper then suggested that you traded one for the other.
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3:53 - 3:58If you wanted your brain for a particular body mass to be large,
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3:58 - 4:00you had to live with a smaller gut.
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4:00 - 4:04That then set me off completely
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4:04 - 4:06to say, Okay, these two are connected.
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4:06 - 4:11So I looked at the cultivation of information as if it were food
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4:11 - 4:14and said, So we were hunter-gathers of information.
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4:14 - 4:18We moved from that to becoming farmers and cultivators of information.
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4:18 - 4:20Does that really explain what we're seeing
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4:20 - 4:23with the intellectual property battles nowadays?
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4:23 - 4:26Because those people who were hunter-gatherers in origin
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4:26 - 4:30wanted to be free and roam and pick up information as they wanted,
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4:30 - 4:32and those that were in the business of farming information
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4:32 - 4:35wanted to build fences around it,
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4:35 - 4:37create ownership and wealth and structure and settlement.
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4:37 - 4:41So there was always going to be a tension within that.
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4:41 - 4:43And everything I saw in the cultivation
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4:43 - 4:46said there were huge fights amongst the foodies
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4:46 - 4:48between the cultivators and the hunter-gatherers.
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4:48 - 4:50And this is happening here.
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4:50 - 4:53When I moved to preparation, this same thing was true,
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4:53 - 4:56expect that there were two schools.
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4:56 - 4:59One group of people said you can distill your information,
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4:59 - 5:02you can extract value, separate it and serve it up,
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5:02 - 5:04while another group turned around
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5:04 - 5:05and said no, no you can ferment it.
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5:05 - 5:08You bring it all together and mash it up
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5:08 - 5:09and the value emerges that way.
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5:09 - 5:12The same is again true with information.
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5:12 - 5:16But consumption was where it started getting really enjoyable.
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5:16 - 5:19Because what I began to see then
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5:19 - 5:22was there were so many different ways people would consume this.
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5:22 - 5:24They'd buy it from the shop as raw ingredients.
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5:24 - 5:27Do you cook it? Do you have it served to you?
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5:27 - 5:28Do you go to a restaurant?
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5:28 - 5:32The same is true every time as I started thinking about information.
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5:32 - 5:34The analogies were getting crazy --
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5:34 - 5:37that information had sell-by dates,
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5:37 - 5:42that people had misused information that wasn't dated properly
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5:42 - 5:44and could really have an effect on the stock market,
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5:44 - 5:46on corporate values, etc.
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5:46 - 5:48And by this time I was hooked.
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5:48 - 5:52And this is about 23 years into this process.
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5:52 - 5:54And I began to start thinking of myself
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5:54 - 5:57as we start having mash-ups of fact and fiction,
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5:57 - 6:01docu-dramas, mockumentaries, whatever you call it.
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6:01 - 6:02Are we going to reach the stage
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6:02 - 6:06where information has a percentage for fact associated with it?
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6:06 - 6:10We start labeling information for the fact percentage?
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6:10 - 6:13Are we going to start looking at what happens
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6:13 - 6:16when your information source is turned off, as a famine?
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6:16 - 6:18Which brings me to the final element of this.
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6:18 - 6:22Clay Shirky once stated that "There is no such animal as information overload,
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6:22 - 6:26there is only filter failure."
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6:26 - 6:28I put it to you that information,
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6:28 - 6:30if viewed from the point of food,
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6:30 - 6:34is never a production issue; you never speak of food overload.
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6:34 - 6:36Fundamentally it's a consumption issue.
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6:36 - 6:39And we have to start thinking
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6:39 - 6:45about how we create diets within ourselves, exercise within ourselves,
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6:45 - 6:47to have the faculties to be able to deal with information,
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6:47 - 6:50to have the labeling to be able to do it responsibly.
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6:50 - 6:54In fact, when I saw "Supersize Me," I starting thinking of saying,
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6:54 - 6:56What would happen
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6:56 - 6:59if an individual had 31 days nonstop Fox News?
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6:59 - 7:04Would there be time to be able to work with it?
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7:04 - 7:08So you start really understanding
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7:08 - 7:13that you can have diseases, toxins, a need to balance your diet,
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7:13 - 7:16and once you start looking, and from that point on,
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7:16 - 7:21everything I have done in terms of the consumption of information,
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7:21 - 7:23the production of information, the preparation of information,
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7:23 - 7:26I've looked at from the viewpoint of food.
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7:26 - 7:30It has probably not helped my waistline any
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7:30 - 7:32because I like practicing on both sides.
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7:32 - 7:35But I'd like to leave you with just that question:
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7:35 - 7:38If you began to think of all the information that you consume
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7:38 - 7:40the way you think of food,
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7:40 - 7:42what would you do differently?
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7:42 - 7:45Thank you very much for your time.
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7:45 - 7:46(Applause)
- Title:
- Information is food
- Speaker:
- JP Rangaswami
- Description:
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How do we consume data? At TED@SXSWi, technologist JP Rangaswami muses on our relationship to information, and offers a surprising and sharp insight: we treat it like food.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 08:08
Jenny Zurawell edited English subtitles for Information is food | ||
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