On the evening of April 6, the Carleton community gathered together to discuss and listen to fellow students’ ideas around how to innovate for the future.
John Mesman and Tanvir Janmohamed, the president and vice-president (academic) respectively of the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG), along with a team planned the 2015 Carleton TEDx conference centred around the theme “Future World.”
TEDx Carleton is a part of the popular TED Talk series, but organized independently—as indicated by the “x” in the name—of the TED conference series. The aim of Carleton’s event, according to Mesman, was to bring people together for a TED-like experience to discuss ideas that will “make an impact on what matters—the future.”
Mesman said his goal was to “bring students, staff and faculty together so that they can have the opportunity to be inspired, to learn something, and for everyone to be able to take a step back and think about what the future world means to them.”
The process of bringing TEDx to Carleton was lengthy, Mesman said. He and Janmohamed applied for a license for the event about a year ago.
Funding for the event came from CASG and the Carleton University Students’ Association.
Humna Shaikh, the lead curator and volunteer co-ordinator for the event, said the biggest challenge was choosing the speakers for the event.
She said there were 70 people who applied to speak, of which the organizers chose 12. Each one had to submit a 60-second video and 300-word proposal to be considered.
The organizers said they were happy with the diversity of the speakers.
“We tried to encompass all the faculties [at Carleton] within the presentations that we had today,” Janmohamed said.
The speakers:
Celine Fitzgerald, a third-year psychology student, was the first speaker of the night and discussed interpersonal communication in the future.
“The future online is lonely,” she said.
Fitzgerald centred her talk around online and face-to-face communication and explained how social media is a paradigm—while it connects us virtually, it disconnects us from the real world.
Chris Tomalty discussed the role of the individual information revolution in our society and how we should deal with the challenges it creates in his talk, entitled “Data and You in the Information Age.” He said he believes the future lies with health data as “data is a powerful force for improving our lives everyday.”
Claudia Buttera, lab co-ordinator for Carleton’s Department of Biology, gave a talk about “Educating for the future when all of our knowledge is based off the past.” She believes that the future lies with students.
Her talk reflected on her personal experiences with students and how labs are no longer focused on result but instead exploration.
“Movement into the future is not about what they [students] know, but it’s about what they dare to do with what they know.”
Pramodh Yapa, a fourth-year theoretical physics student, attempted to teach quantum physics in his talk “Fundamental Physics as a Torchlight to the Unknown.”
Yapa said he believes society should focus on answering questions about the 95 per cent of the world we don’t know through quantum physics as it provides “an intrinsic value.”
Phill Motuzas, a professor at Algonquin College who teaches Interactive Multimedia and Design, discussed “Next Generation Experiences” and explained how interactive digital interfaces are the key to the future.
“Imagine if we could physically experience the interface with our technology,” he said.
As an example, users could feel the fruit being cut in Fruit Ninja. He said this technology will open up the key to the future.
Isaac Wurmann said he believes the future lies in prison libraries. In his talk “Building Bigger Libraries, Not Bigger Prisons,” the first-year journalism student discussed prison libraries and their impact on recidivism rates among high risk groups.
“I see a place where knowledge is ubiquitous. Now I want you to imagine a place where knowledge is under lock and key,” he said.
Paul Donaldson’s “Teaching to Talk: A Future for Public Speakers” lecture reflected on why public speaking is is essential learning.
In the talk, he asks what skills we are passing on to future generations if we are not truly teaching them how to speak. He said he believes the future lies not only in education, but critical thinking about issues about how we teach.
“Why should we be expected to have a voice when we haven’t been taught to have one?” he said.
Christopher Dieni explored the issue of anti-vaccination mentality, comparing it to drug abuse, and our willingness to explore new, potentially hazardous therapeutic treatments in his talk “Therapeutics, Toxins, and Public Understanding in the 21st Century.”
He said “before we can change the future, we need to change our mentality.”
He questioned whether or not society should implement a statute for mandatory proof of vaccination records and asks us whether this way of thinking is “fluid” or “static,” much like our mentality towards vaccines.
Todd Julie, a masters student in public policy and administration, talked about his current research on virtual economies and online incentive structures.
He has also worked on a paper titled The Promise and Potential of Gamification for Open Dialogue, which explores a gamified solution to the federal government’s citizen engagement efforts.
Yannick D’Mello’s “Move Beyond your Muscles” outlined a new medical technology to help people with arthritis and other musculoskeletal disorders using an exoskeleton band.
“It stupefies me that we have the technology to send a man to space, but we don’t have the same technology to help him move,” D’Mello said.
This technology can be used much like an iTunes library by downloading and sharing “movement” files, which could help users’ physical learning.
Christian Robillard, executive director of the Student Philanthropy Council, discussed “The Future of Charity” in his talk. He said charities need to focus on the impact they make on the community rather than their size.
“Charities do great work, but they’re starting to run into problems now that seems to affect the entire sector,” he said.
Jim Davies, an associate professor of cognitive science, concluded the evening by discussing how audience members can change the future in his talk “Future Thinking: the systematic mistakes we make when we imagine the future”.
“We tend to have an ingrained bias when we think about things in the future,” he said.
Davies said that, in order to become more future-oriented, we need to think about where the world will be in 20 years and how we could get there.
