TOP 8: Asian TED Talks

Yellowmenace reveals the 8 best Asian TED Talks

   A doctor, engineer, computer musician, actor, model, aid worker, internet guru & artist, I gathered the most interesting talks from various fields to entertain & educate.

   I love TED Talks. I discovered the site in 2007 & it has been blowing my mind ever since. While this may be a slight detour from my usual posts, I wanted to share some of the interesting Asians who are trying to make a big different in our world.

   TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, but it wasn't until 2001, when media entrepreneur Chris Anderson took control from founder Richard Saul Wurman that TED started to become the beacon of idea sharing it is today.

Click below to see The 8 Best Asian TED Talks

1) Geena Rocero - Fashion/Role Model - Filipina
      Gender Proud  -  Twitter

   "Gender has always been considered a fact, immutable, but we now know it's actually more fluid, complex & mysterious."

   When fashion model Geena Rocero first saw a photo of herself in a bikini, 'I thought ... you have arrived!' As she reveals, that’s because she was born with the gender assignment 'boy'. In this moving talk, Rocero tells the story of becoming who she always knew she was.

Photo Source - Cosmopolitan 

   "There's a long tradition in Asian culture that celebrates the fluid mystery of gender."

   Geena Rocero is a professional model for fashion & beauty companies around the world. And she uses her platform to share a powerful story.

2) Liu Bolin - Artist - Chinese
      Web  -  Agent

   The Beijing-based artist is sometimes called “The Invisible Man” because in nearly all his art, Bolin is front & center — & completely unseen. He silently comments on modern sociopolitical conditions by disappearing into his art.

   "By making myself invisible, I try to question the inter-canceling relationship between our civilization & its development."

   "If an artwork is to touch someone, it must be the result of not only technique, but also the artist's thinking & struggle in life. And the repeated struggles in life create artwork, no matter in what form." 

3) Jinha Lee - Interface design engineer - Korean
      Web  -  Twitter

   The border between our physical world & the digital information surrounding us has been getting thinner and thinner. Designer & engineer Jinha Lee wants to dissolve it altogether. As he demonstrates in this short, gasp-inducing talk, his ideas include a pen that penetrates into a screen to draw 3D models & SpaceTop, a computer desktop prototype that lets you reach through the screen to manipulate digital objects.

   Jinha Lee works at the boundary of the physical & digital world. The TED Fellow, designer & engineer is exploring ways to weave digital information into physical space

   "Computer scientist Ivan Sutherland once called a computer display, 'a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland' & I have always aspired to walk in this wonderland to interact with those abstract beings"

4) George Takei - Actor/Activist - Japanese American
      Facebook  -  YouTube

   When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a “security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal definition of patriotism and democracy.

   "I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan who went to America, boldly going to a strange new world, seeking new opportunities."

   The beloved Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek, George Takei is an activist for human rights. Takei is a master of Facebook memes, and has written two books about it: Oh Myyy! - There Goes The Internet and Lions and Tigers and Bears - The Internet Strikes Back. He's also the host of the YouTube series Takei's Take.

   "American citizens of Japanese ancestry, were looked on with suspicion and fear and with outright hatred simply because we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor."

5) Joichi Ito - Internet Grandmaster - Japanese
      Web  -  Twitter

   Want to innovate? Become a "now-ist" - the head of the MIT Media Lab skips the future predictions and instead shares a new approach to creating in the moment: building quickly and improving constantly, without waiting for permission or for proof that you have the right idea.

   "Deploy or die. You have to get the stuff into the real world for it to really count... Permissionless innovation"

   This kind of bottom-up innovation is seen in the most fascinating, futuristic projects emerging today, and it starts, he says, with being open and alert to what's going on around you right now.

   "I did what instinctively felt like the right thing, which was to go onto the Internet and try to figure out if I could take matters into my own hands."

6) Joy Sun - Veteran Aid Worker - Korean American
      Give Directly  -  Twitter

   Technology allows us to give cash directly to the poorest people on the planet. Should we do it? In this thought-provoking talk, veteran aid worker Joy Sun explores two ways to help the poor.

   TED Fellow Joy Sun runs a rare type of charity. She is COO at GiveDirectly, which lets donors transfer money directly into the hands of impoverished people - empowering them to set their own goals and priorities.

   "I held two assumptions: One, that poor people are poor in part because they're uneducated and don't make good choices; two is that we then need people like me to figure out what they need and get it to them."

   She holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business with certificates in Public and Global Management and a B.S. from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service.

   "The more cash we give to the poor, and the more evidence we have that it works, the more we have to reconsider everything else we give."

7) Dr. Leana Wen - Emergency Physician - Chinese American
      Who's My Doctor?  -  Twitter

   Wouldn’t you want to know if your doctor was a paid spokesman for a drug company? Or held personal beliefs incompatible with the treatment you want? Right now, in the US at least, your doctor simply doesn’t have to tell you about that. And when physician Leana Wen asked her fellow doctors to open up, the reaction she got was … unsettling.

   "They told me that I'm a traitor to my own profession, that I should be fired, have my medical license taken away, that I should go back to my own country."

   Dr. Leana Wen founded Who's My Doctor: The Total Transparency Manifesto, a campaign to help patients learn vital information about their own doctors.

   "I am saying that I don’t have anything to hide from you. I know you are vulnerable, but I’ll be vulnerable with you. This is a partnership. We’re in this together."

   Born in Shanghai, she was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a reporter with The New York Times’ and a fellow at the World Health Organization before assuming her current position as Director of Patient-Centered Care Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University. Inspired by struggles during her mother’s long illness, she wrote When Doctors Don't Listen, a book about empowering patients to avoid misdiagnoses and unnecessary tests.

   "We're scared of patients finding out who we are and what medicine is all about. And so what do we do? We put on our white coats and we hide behind them."

8) Ge Wang - Music Technologist - Chinese American
      Bio  -  Twitter

   Ge Wang makes computer music, but it isn’t all about coded bleeps and blips. With the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, he creates new instruments out of unexpected materials—like an Ikea bowl—that allow musicians to play music that’s both beautiful and expressive.

   "ChucK is a programming language for music, and it's open-source, it's freely available, and I like to think that it crashes equally well on all modern operating systems."

   Ge is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), and researches programming languages and interactive software design for computer music, mobile and social music, laptop orchestras, and education at the intersection of computer science and music.

   "Computer music isn't really about computers. It's about how we can use technology to change the way we think & make music, & maybe even add to how we can connect with each other through music."

Honorable Mentions:
 - Shaolan Hsueh
 - Dong Woo Jang

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