Eli, Beau and Isabel, Three TEDS in the Stream

Last week at Stream (an awesome conference organized by WPP and Yossi Vardi) I met two very interesting dudes, Beau Lotto and Eli Pariser. And one very cool woman, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo. All of them had spoken previously at TED. I dediced to compare mythologies.

Eli Pariser is an internet superstar, who among other things co-founded Upworthy. Upworthy is a site in which worthy new stories are published, based on what the folks at Upworthy deem to be worthy of sharing. One of the featured stories right now is about why play is important for adults. That’s quite ironic as we’ll soon see.

Eli likes to talk about what he calls ‘the internet filter bubble’. He explains that the information we receive from the Internet is filtered before it gets to us. By algorithms. He is against algorithms deciding on what we see in our search feeds. Here is his TED talk from 2011. Over 3,400,000 views so far. He received a standing ovation. Apparently lots of people are against algorithms determining what they see and don’t see on the internet.

Another distinguished speaker whom I met at Stream was Beau Lotto. He is just like his name, very good looking and lucky to have his combination of brilliance and charm. I attended his talk and initially was worried. He talks about how our senses fool us and that we cannot believe anything. That reminds me of Karl Popper. But on the other hand he was very confident about his conclusions.

As scientists often are.

But then we met after his talk over a long lunch and had a wonderful conversation. I realized that he is extremely clever and open-minded, but everyone expects him to give the same talk that he gave at TED. I guess that is what happens when your talk is phenomenal.  I should add that I have seen some of his optical illusions before and shared them with my students, so it was great putting a face to the guy who had developed them.

Beau talks about the meaninglessness of external stimuli, in the absence of context. According to him, experience is the filter that gives meaning to light, sound and other human perceptions.  Contrast this with Eli’s analogous take that our internet stimuli are being filtered by machines.

At one stage Beau shared the pulpit with his colleague Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, a primatologist (first time I’ve heard that word) who is an expert on bonobos (social apes). Beau and Isabel talked about the importance of play. Playfully.

So, you might ask, what is my conclusion following meeting these three luminaries? Here it is:

Bonobos like to party and get it on. They are superior to humans who wouldn’t mind behaving like them but have this idiotic thing called civilization to cope with. Bonobos also have a more objective understanding of the world, as compared to humans. That is because they don’t spend time searching on Google and reading worthy news articles.