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 - 0:27the journey of learning that took place from that point.
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0:27 - 0:30And one idea I want to leave you with today
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0:30 - 0:32is what would would happen differently in your life
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0:32 - 0:37if you saw information the way you saw food?
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0:37 - 0:39I was born in Calcutta --
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0:39 - 0:43a family where my father and his father before him
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0:43 - 0:45were journalists,
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0:45 - 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 - 0:58And I mean books everywhere around the house.
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0:58 - 1:00And that's actually a shop in Calcutta,
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1:00 - 1:04but it's a place where we like our books.
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1:04 - 1:07In fact, I've got 38,000 of them now
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1:07 - 1:10and no Kindle in sight.
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1:10 - 1:15But growing up as a child with the books around everywhere,
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1:15 - 1:18with people to talk to about those books,
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1:18 - 1:21this wasn't a sort of slightly learned thing.
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1:21 - 1:24By the time I was 18, I had a deep passion for books.
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1:24 - 1:27It wasn't the only passion I had.
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1:27 - 1:29I was a South Indian
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1:29 - 1:31brought up in Bengal.
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1:31 - 1:34And two of the things about Bengal:
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1:34 - 1:36they like their savory dishes
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1:36 - 1:38and they like their sweets.
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1:38 - 1:40So by the time I grew up,
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1:40 - 1:43again, I had a well-established passion for food.
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1:43 - 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 - 1:53but these two were the ones that differentiated me.
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1:53 - 1:55(Laughter)
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1:55 - 1:57And then life was fine, dandy.
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1:57 - 1:59Everything was okay,
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1:59 - 2:03until I got to about the age of 26,
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2:03 - 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 - 2:14and it's going to be coming out next year.
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2:14 - 2:17It's the story of this experimental robot
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2:17 - 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 - 2:27And I suddenly realized that for a robot
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2:27 - 2:30both information as well as food
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2:30 - 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 - 2:37data came to it in some form or shape.
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2:37 - 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 - 2:48as if energy and information were the two things I had as input --
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2:48 - 2:53as if food and information were similar in some form or shape.
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2:53 - 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 - 3:01that actually human beings as primates
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3:01 - 3:04have far smaller stomachs
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3:04 - 3:07than should be the size for our body weight
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3:07 - 3:10and far larger brains.
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3:10 - 3:13And as I went to research that even further,
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3:13 - 3:17I got to a point where I discovered something
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3:17 - 3:20called the expensive tissue hypothesis.
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3:20 - 3:24That actually for a given body mass of a primate
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3:24 - 3:27the metabolic rate was static.
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3:27 - 3:31What changed was the balance of the tissues available.
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3:31 - 3:34And two of the most expensive tissues in our human body
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3:34 - 3:38are nervous tissue and digestive tissue.
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3:38 - 3:42And what transpired was that people had put forward a hypothesis
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3:42 - 3:47that was apparently coming up with some fabulous results by about 1995.
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3:47 - 3:50It's a lady named Leslie Aiello.
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3:50 - 3:54And the paper then suggested that you traded one for the other.
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3:54 - 3:58If you wanted your brain for a particular body mass to be large,
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3:58 - 4:01you had to live with a smaller gut.
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4:01 - 4:04That then set me off completely
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4:04 - 4:07to say, Okay, these two are connected.
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4:07 - 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 - 4:38create ownership and wealth and structure and settlement.
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4:38 - 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 - 5:06and said no, no you can ferment it.
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5:06 - 5:08You bring it all together and mash it up
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5:08 - 5:10and the value emerges that way.
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5:10 - 5:13The same is again true with information.
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5:13 - 5:17But consumption was where it started getting really enjoyable.
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5:17 - 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 - 5:25They'd buy it from the shop as raw ingredients.
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5:25 - 5:27Do you cook it? Do you have it served to you?
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5:27 - 5:29Do you go to a restaurant?
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5:29 - 5:33The same is true every time as I started thinking about information.
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5:33 - 5:35The analogies were getting crazy --
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5:35 - 5:38that information had sell-by dates,
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5:38 - 5:42that people had misused information that wasn't dated properly
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5:42 - 5:44and could really make an effect on the stock market,
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5:44 - 5:46on corporate values, etc.
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5:46 - 5:49And by this time I was hooked.
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5:49 - 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 - 5:58as we start having mash-ups of fact and fiction,
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5:58 - 6:01docu-dramas, mockumentaries, whatever you call it.
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6:01 - 6:03Are we going to reach the stage
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6:03 - 6:07where information has a percentage for fact associated with it?
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6:07 - 6:11We start labeling information for the fact percentage?
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6:11 - 6:13Are we going to start looking at what happens
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6:13 - 6:17when your information source is turned off, as a famine?
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6:17 - 6:19Which brings me to the final element of this.
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6:19 - 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 - 6:31if viewed from the point of food,
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6:31 - 6:35is never a production issue; you never speak of food overload.
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6:35 - 6:37Fundamentally it's a consumption issue.
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6:37 - 6:39And we have to start thinking
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6:39 - 6:44about how we create diets within ourselves, exercise within ourselves,
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6:44 - 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 - 7:00if an individual had 31 days nonstop Fox News?
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7:00 - 7:02(Laughter)
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7:02 - 7:05Would there be time to be able to work with it?
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7:05 - 7:08So you start really understanding
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7:08 - 7:14that you can have diseases, toxins, a need to balance your diet,
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7:14 - 7:17and once you start looking, and from that point on,
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7:17 - 7:21everything I have done in terms of the consumption of information,
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7:21 - 7:24the production of information, the preparation of information,
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7:24 - 7:27I've looked at from the viewpoint of food.
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7:27 - 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 - 7:36But I'd like to leave you with just that question:
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7:36 - 7:39If you began to think of all the information that you consume
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7:39 - 7:41the way you think of food,
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7:41 - 7:43what would you do differently?
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7:43 - 7:45Thank you very much for your time.
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7:45 - 7:47(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
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