Here’s another quick roundup of recent, interesting talks.

Saul Griffith: Inventing a super-kite to tap the energy of high-altitude wind

This is a short update on what Makani Power is up to. Some inspiring videos of their efforts to harness high-altitude wind power (the second most-plentiful renewable energy source, after solar.) It looks like they have the autonomous kite-flying control systems working; impressive!

P.W. Singer: Military robots and the future of war

“In this powerful talk, P.W. Singer shows how the widespread use of robots in war is changing the realities of combat.” Singer discusses the reality of automated warfare currently in play in the Middle East. There are many complicated, troubling implications of this shift in warfare. For example, remote killing distances our soldiers from the physical violence that they inflict. The violence is put at a remove, and the resulting recorded media loses its context. A lot of clips of drone strikes are online. Soldiers will often to refer to them as “war porn” and set them to music. On the other hand, the availability of this systematic video and data collection provides opportunities for public oversight.

Another point: automated warfare may lose for us the war of ideas that we are waging against insurgent groups. Here’s the contrast between the message intended and the perception on the ground:

Bush administration official: “It plays to our strength. The thing that scares people is our technology.”

Lebanese news editor: “This is just another sign of the cold-hearted, cruel Israelis and Americans who are cowards because they send out machines to fight us. They don’t want to fight us like real men. They are afraid to fight. We just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them.”

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?

“Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions.”

Ariely gives a quick summary of several studies that show clearly how the presentation of various options can affect the choices we make. There are clear implications on user interface design, here.

One of Amos’ new efforts at DiscoverMagazine.com is a new “journalistic mashup” blog call 80beats, which reports on scientific topics of popular interest. Here’s a screen snip of the text from an entry about new solar panels that use internal reflection to collect sunlight:

As you can see, the body of the post is made up of quotes from other news sources, colored in blue. This is a format that I really like; mashed up news from many sources. Some blogs like this are even explicit about reporting on biases; the sources themselves are sometimes a part of the story.

What 80beats is doing well is to start developing a UI around the mashup text, allowing a very natural flow of the prose. Using blue text and the occasional editorial brackets means the reader can easily ignore the sources completely and read the post as an uninterrupted piece of content. The references are there, though, for anyone who desires more context.

Some more notes:

Sarah Deborah Scranton: Scenes from “The War Tapes”

Filmer of the war tapes, a personal look into the lives of soldiers in Iraq. The presentation achieves this intimacy not only through clips of the documentary, but also through the personal stories of Scranton herself. Wouldn’t it be cool if every polarized political debate be given this context, first?

Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict

Moral development, History has a direction. “Non-zero-sum-ness” as the driver for these trends, but also as the thing that links us in negative outcomes as well.

Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?

Contrary to popular belief, ant colonies don’t have any central intelligence. The queen doesn’t control the behavior of the colony through chemical signals. In a series of experiments over the last 20 years, Gordon has demonstrated that colony behavior is fully emergent. Each ant, operating on a small set of rules (e.g. rate of contact with other ants), contributes a tiny part to colony-wide phenomena that ensure the survival of the whole. The experiments she describes are very cool, as are her descriptions of colony life. Ants seem to blur the line around what we designate an individual organism of a species.

Ben Dunlap: The story of a passionate life

In a talk that is more stage performance than lecture, Dunlap weaves a tightly knit story of his mentors. The experiences of all these men (coincidentally, all Hungarian) draw a picture of life well lived, an emergence from suffering with an unshakeable faith in people and a insatiable desire to learn and create.