History/Intro
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N At i
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NaLs The Next Chapter of Government
In 2013 Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified American National Security Agency documents sparking a global conversation about citizens’ rights to privacy on the Internet.
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ATIONS(?) Edward Snowden on Security and Privacy
Yo u k n o w , everybody who is involved with this debate has been struggling over me and my personality and how to describe me. But when I think about it, this isn’t the question that we should be str uggling with. Who I am really doesn’t matter at all. If I’m the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues.
we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies. And that’s what I’m hoping the debate will move towards, and we’ve seen that increasing over time. If I had to describe myself, I wouldn’t use words like “hero.” I wouldn’t use “patriot,” and I wouldn’t use “traitor.” I’d say I’m an American and I’m a citizen, just like everyone else.
ES: You know, when I was sitting in Hawaii, and the years before, when I was working in the intelligence community, I saw a lot of things that had disturbed me. We do a lot of good things in the intelligence community, things that need to be done, and things that help everyone. But there are also things that go too far. There are things that shouldn’t be done, and decisions that were being made in secret without the public’s awareness, without the public’s consent, and without even our representatives in government having knowledge of these programs. When I really came to struggle with these issues, I thought to myself, how can I do this in the most responsible way, that maximizes the public benefit while minimizing the risks? And out of all the solutions that I could come up with, out of going to Congress, when there were no laws, there were no legal protections for a private employee, a contractor in intelligence like myself, there was a risk that I would be buried along with the information and the public would never find out. But the First Amendment of the
CA: This is a slide of the PRISM program, and maybe you could tell the audience what that was that was revealed. ES: The best way to understand PRISM, because there’s been a little bit of controversy, is to first talk about what PRISM isn’t. Much of the debate in the U.S. has been about metadata. They’ve said it’s just metadata, it’s just metadata, and they’re talking about a specific legal authority called Section 215 of the Patriot Act. That allows sort of a warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of the entire country’s phone records, things like that -- who you’re talking to, when you’re talking to them, where you traveled. These are all metadata events. PRISM is about content. It’s a program through which the government could compel corporate America, it could deputize corporate America to do its dirty work for the NSA. And even though some of these companies did resist, even though some of them -- I believe Yahoo was one of them — challenged them in court, they all lost, because it was never tried by an open court. They were only tried by a secret court. And something that we’ve seen, something about the PRISM program that’s very
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CA: So just to give some context for those who don’t know the whole story -- (Applause) — this time a year ago, you were stationed in Hawaii working as a consultant to the NSA. As a sysadmin, you had access to their systems, and you began revealing certain classified documents to some handpicked journalists leading the way to June’s revelations. Now, what propelled you to do this?
United States Constitution guarantees us a free press for a reason, and that’s to enable an adversarial press, to challenge the government, but also to work together with the government, to have a dialogue and debate about how we can inform the public about matters of vital importance without putting our national security at risk. And by working with journalists, by giving all of my information back to the American people, rather than trusting myself to make the decisions about publication, we’ve had a robust debate with a deep investment by the government that I think has resulted in a benefit for everyone. And the risks that have been threatened, the risks that have been played up by the government have never materialized. We’ve never seen any evidence of even a single instance of specific harm, and because of that, I’m comfortable with the decisions that I made.
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What really matters here is the kind of government
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“I wouldn’t use ‘patriot’ and I wouldn’t use ‘traitor’. I’d say I’m an American.”
concerning to me is, there’s been a talking point in the U.S. government where they’ve said 15 federal judges have reviewed these programs and found them to be lawful, but what they don’t tell you is those are secret judges in a secret court based on secret interpretations of law that’s considered 34,000 warrant requests over 33 years, and in 33 years only rejected 11 government requests. These aren’t the people that we want deciding what the role of corporate America in a free and open Internet should be. CA: Now, they have denied collaborating with the NSA. How was that data collected by the NSA? ES: Right. So the NSA’s own slides refer to it as direct access. What that means to an actual NSA analyst, someone like me who was working as an intelligence analyst targeting, Chinese cyber-hackers, things like that, in Hawaii, is the provenance of that data is directly from their servers. It doesn’t mean that there’s a group of company representatives sitting in a smoky room
with the NSA palling around and making back-room deals about how they’re going to give this stuff away. Now each company handles it different ways. Some are responsible. Some are somewhat less responsible. But the bottom line is, when we talk about how this information is given, it’s coming from the companies themselves. It’s not stolen from the lines. But there’s an important thing to remember here: even though companies pushed back, even though companies demanded, hey, let’s do this through a warrant process, let’s do this where we actually have some sort of legal review, some sort of basis for handing over these users’ data, we saw stories in the Washington Post last year that weren’t as well reported as the PRISM story that said the NSA broke in to the data center communications between Google to itself and Yahoo to itself. So even these companies that are cooperating in at least a compelled but hopefully lawful manner with the NSA, the NSA isn’t satisfied with that, and because of that, we need our companies to work very hard to guarantee that they’re going to
represent the interests of the user, and also advocate for the rights of the users. And I think over the last year, we’ve seen the companies that are named on the PRISM slides take great strides to do that, and I encourage them to continue.
CA: What more should they do? ES: The biggest thing that an Internet company in America can do today, right now, without consulting with lawyers, to protect the rights of users worldwide, is to enable SSL web encryption on every page you visit. The reason this matters is today, if you go to look at a copy of “1984” on Amazon.com, the NSA can see a record of that, the Russian intelligence service can see a record of that, the Chinese service can see a record of that, the French service, the German service, the services of Andorra. They can all see it because it’s unencrypted. The world’s library is Amazon.com, but not only do they not support encryption by default, you cannot choose to use encryption when browsing through books. This is something that we need to change, not just for Amazon, I don’t mean to single them out, but they’re a great example. CA: Ed, come with me to this part of the stage. This is a program called Boundless Informant. What is that?
CA: Why should we care about ES: So, I’ve got to give credit to ES: We also heard in Congresall this surveillance? I mean, look, the NSA for using appropriate sional testimony last year, it was if you’ve done nothing wrong, names on this. This is one of an amazing thing for someone you’ve got nothing to worry my favorite NSA cryptonyms. like me who came from the about. What’s wrong with that Boundless Informant is a NSA and who’s seen the acpoint of view? program that the NSA hid from tual internal documents, knows Congress. The NSA was previwhat’s in them, to see officials ES: Well, so the first thing is, ously asked by Congress, was testifying under oath that there you’re giving up your rights. there any ability that they had had been no abuses, that there You’re saying hey, you know, I to even give a rough ballpark had been no violations of the don’t think I’m going to need estimate of the amount of NSA’s rules, when we knew this them, so I’m just going to trust American communications that story was coming. But what’s that, you know, let’s get rid of were being intercepted. They especially interesting about this, them, it doesn’t really matter, said no. They said, we don’t about the fact that the NSA has these guys are going to do the track those stats, and we can’t violated their own rules, their right thing. Your rights matter track those stats. We can’t because you W h a t d o e s t h a t s a y a b o u t t h e s t a t e o f never know tell you how many commuoversight in American intelligence nications we’re intercepting when you’re around the world, because going to to tell you that would be need them. when the chairman of the SIC has no to invade your privacy. Now, Beyond that, idea that the rules are being I really appreciate that it’s a part of sentiment from them, our cultural but the reality, when you identity, not broken thousands of times every year? look at this slide is, not just in America, only do they have the but in Western capability, the capability already own laws thousands of times societies and in democratic soexists. It’s already in place. The in a single year, including one cieties around the world. People NSA has its own internal data event by itself, one event out of should be able to pick up the format that tracks both ends of those 2,776, that affected more phone and to call their family, a communication, and if it says, than 3,000 people. In another people should be able to send this communication came from event, they intercepted all the a text message to their loved America, they can tell Congress calls in Washington, D.C., by ones, people should be able to how many of those communicaaccident. What’s amazing about buy a book online, they should tions they have today, right now. this, this report, that didn’t get be able to travel by train, they And what Boundless Informant that much attention, is the fact should be able to buy an airline tells us is more communications that not only were there 2,776 ticket without wondering about are being intercepted in America abuses, the chairman of the how these events are going to about Americans than there are Senate Intelligence Committee, look to the government, in Russia about Russians. Dianne Feinstein, had not seen possibly not even your government this report until the Washington years in the future, how they’re CA: Ed, there was a story Post contacted her asking for going to be misinterpreted and broken in the Washington Post, comment on the report. And what they’re going to think your again from your data. The headshe then requested a copy from intentions were. line says, “NSA broke privacy the NSA and received it, but had rules thousands of times per never seen this before that. CA: Some people are furious year.” Tell us about that. at what you’ve done. I heard
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Zak Ebrahim, peace activist, is refusing to follow in the footsteps of his terrorist father
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N T O NOT NOT NOT
On November 5th, 1990, a man named ElSayyid Nosair walked into a hotel in Manhattan and assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense League. Nosair was initially found not guilty of the murder, but while serving time on lesser charges, he and other men began planning attacks on a dozen New York City landmarks, including tunnels, synagogues and the United Nations headquarters. Thankfully, those plans were foiled by an FBI informant. Sadly, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was not. Nosair would eventually be convicted for his involvement in the plot. ElSayyid Nosair is my father.
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I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1983 to him, an Egyptian engineer, and a loving American mother and grade school teacher, who together tried their best to create a happy childhood for me. It wasn’t until I
FBI. When it was my turn to shoot, my father helped me hold the rifle to my shoulder and explained how to aim at the target about 30 yards off. That day, the last bullet I shot hit the small orange light that sat on top of the target and to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, the entire target burst into flames. My uncle turned to the other men, and in Arabic said, “Ibn abuh.” Like father, like son. They all seemed to get a really big laugh out of that comment, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I fully
DESTRUCTION
was seven years old that our family dynamic started to change. My father exposed me to a side of Islam that few people, including the majority of Muslims, get to see. It’s been my experience that when people take the time to interact with one another, it doesn’t take
new face in class, I was frequently the target of bullies. I kept my identity a secret from my classmates to avoid being targeted, but as it turns out, being the quiet, chubby new kid in class was more than enough ammunition. So for the most part, I spent my time at home reading books and watching TV or playing video games. For those reasons, my social skills were lacking, to say the least, and growing up in a bigoted household, I wasn’t prepared for the real world. I’d been raised to judge people based on arbitrary measurements, like a person’s race or religion. Growing up in a bigoted
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DESTRUCTION DESTRUCTION D E S T R U C TDI EO SN T R U C T I O N DE D E V A S T A T I DO ENV A D long to realize that for the most part, we all want the same things out of life. However, in every religion, in every population, you’ll find a small percentage of people who hold so fervently to their beliefs that they feel they must use any means necessary to make others live as they do.
A few months prior to his arrest, he sat me down and explained that for the past few weekends, he and some friends had been going to a shooting range on Long Island for target practice. He told me I’d be going with him the next morning. We arrived at Calverton Shooting Range, which unbeknownst to our group was being watched by the
understood what they thought was so funny. They thought they saw in me the same destruction my father was capable of. Those men would eventually be convicted of placing a van filled with 1,500 pounds of explosives into the sub-level parking lot of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, causing an explosion that killed six people and injured over 1,000. These were the men I looked up to. These were the men I called ammu, which means uncle. By the time I turned 19, I had already moved 20 times in my life. Each time I would begin to feel comfortable around someone, it was time to pack up and move to the next town. Being the perpetual
household, I wasn’t prepared for the real world. I’d been raised to judge people based on arbitrary measurements, like a person’s race or religion.
So what opened my eyes? One of my first experiences that challenged this way of thinking was during the 2000 presidential elections. Through a college prep program, I was able to take part in the National Youth Convention in Philadelphia. My particular group’s focus was on youth violence, and having been the victim of bullying for most of my life, this was a subject in which I felt particularly passionate. The members of our group came from many different walks of
life. One day toward the end of the convention, I found out that one of the kids I had befriended was Jewish. Now, it had taken several days for this detail to come to light, and I realized that there was no natural animosity between the two of us. I had never had a Jewish friend before, and frankly I felt a sense of pride in having been able to overcome a barrier that for most of my life I had been led to believe was insurmountable. Another major turning point came when I found
TERRORISM
of others, and it comes very unnaturally to me to treat people who are kind in any other way than how I would want to be treated. Because of that feeling, I was able to contrast the stereotypes I’d been taught as a child with real life experience and interaction. I don’t know what it’s like to be gay, but I’m well acquainted with being judged for something that’s beyond my control. Then there was “The Daily Show.” On a nightly basis, Jon Stewart forced me to be intellectually honest with myself about my own bigotry and helped me to
will hold dear to my heart for as long as I live. She looked at me with the weary eyes of someone who had experienced enough dogmatism to last a lifetime, and said, “I’m tired of hating people.” In that instant, I realized how much negative energy it takes to hold that hatred inside of you. Zak Ebrahim is not my real name. I changed it when my family decided to end our connection with my father and start a new life. So why would I out myself and potentially put myself in danger? Well, that’s simple. I do it in the hopes that perhaps someone someday who
DEATH TERROR T E R R O R I S M E R R O RT IESRMR O RTD EE RA RT O HDRE A H R TR HO R DT ETE A DEATH
EVAS T A T I O N DEVASTATION ASTATION DEVASTATION a summer job at Busch Gardens, an amusement park. There, I was exposed to people from all sorts of faiths and cultures. Most of my life, I had been taught that homosexuality was a sin, and by extension, that gay people were a negative influence. and that experience proved to be fundamental to the development of my character. As chance would have it, I had the opportunity to work with some of the gay performers at a show there, and soon found that many were the kindest, least judgmental people I had ever met. Being bullied as a kid created a sense of empathy in me toward the suffering
realize that a person’s race, religion or sexual orientation had nothing to do with the quality of one’s character. He was in many ways a father figure to me when I was in desperate
is compelled to use violence may hear my story and realize that there is a better way, that although I had been subjected to this violent, intolerant ideology, that I did not become fanaticized. Instead, I
DEVASTATION need of one. Inspiration can often come from an unexpected place, and the fact that a Jewish comedian had done more to positively influence my worldview than my own extremist father is not lost on me. One day, I had a conversation with my mother about how my worldview was starting to change, and she said something to me that I
choose to use my experience to fight back against terrorism, against the bigotry. I do it for the victims of terrorism and their loved ones, for the terrible pain and loss that terrorism has forced upon their lives. For the victims of terrorism, I will speak out against these senseless acts and condemn my father’s actions. And with that simple fact,
TiNK
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MMOOTTI IOONN BBLLUURR Hugh Herr takes the dynamic leap to put bionic technology on a human level.
To d a y I w i l l t e l l h u m a n s t o r i e s o f b i o n i c integration, how electromechanics are beginning to bridge the gap between disability and ability Bionics has defined my physicality. In 1982, both of my legs were amputated due to tissue damage from frostbite incurred during a mountain climbing accident. At that time, I didn’t view my body as broken. I reasoned that a human being can never be broken. Technology is broken. Technology is inadequate. This simple but powerful idea was a call to arms to advance technology for the elimination of my own disability and ultimately the disability of others. I began by developing specialized limbs that allowed me to return to the vertical world of rock and ice climbing. I quickly realized that the artificial part of my body is malleable, able to take on any form, any function, a blank slate through which to create perhaps structures that could extend beyond biological capability. I made my height adjustable. I could be as short as five feet or as tall as I’d like. (Laughter) So when I was feeling badly about myself, insecure, I would jack my height up, but when I was feeling confident and suave, I would knock my height down a notch just to give the competition a chance. (Laughter) (Applause) Narrow, wedged feet allowed me
to climb steep rock fissures where the human foot cannot penetrate, and spiked feet enabled me to climb vertical ice walls without ever experiencing muscle leg fatigue. Through technological innovation, I returned to my sport stronger and better. Technology had eliminated my disability and allowed me a new climbing prowess. As a young man, I imagined a future world where technology so advanced could rid the world of disability, a world in which neural implants would allow the visually impaired to see, a world in which the paralyzed could walk via body exoskeletons. Sadly, because of deficiencies in technology, disability is rampant in the world. This gentleman is missing three limbs. As a testimony to current technology, he is out of the wheelchair, but we need to do a better job in bionics to allow one day full rehabilitation for a person with this level of injury. At the MIT Media Lab, we’ve established the Center for Extreme Bionics. The mission of the center is to put forth fundamental science and technological capability that will allow the
biomechatronic and regenerative repair of humans across a broad range of brain and body disabilities. In the area of design, we still do not understand how to attach devices to the body mechanically. It’s extraordinary to me that in this day and age, one of the most mature, oldest technologies in the human timeline, the shoe, still gives us blisters. How can this be? We have no idea how to attach things to our bodies. This is the beautifully lyrical design work of Professor Neri Oxman at the MIT Media Lab, showing spatially varying exoskeletal impedances, shown here by color variation in this 3D-printed model. Imagine a future where clothing is stiff and soft where you need it, when you need it, for optimal support and flexibility, without ever causing discomfort. My bionic limbs are attached to my biological body via synthetic skins with stiffness variations that mirror my underlying tissue biomechanics. To achieve that mirroring, we first developed a mathematical model of my biological limb. To that end, we used imaging tools such
as MRI to look inside my body to figure out the geometries and locations of various tissues. We also took robotic tools. Here’s a 14-actuator circle that goes around the biological limb. The actuators come in, find the surface of the limb, measure its unloaded shape, and then they push on the tissues to measure tissue compliances at each anatomical point. We combine these imaging and robotic data to build a mathematical description of my biological limb, shown on the left. You see a bunch of points, or nodes. At each node, there’s a color that represents tissue compliance. We then do a mathematical transformation to the design of the synthetic skin shown on the right, and we’ve discovered optimality is where the body is stiff, the synthetic skin should be soft, where the body is soft, the synthetic skin is stiff, and this mirroring occurs across all tissue compliances. With this framework, we produced bionic limbs that are the most comfortable limbs I’ve ever worn. Clearly in the future, our clothing, our shoes, our braces, our prostheses, will no longer be designed and manufactured using artisan strategies, but rather data-driven quantitative frameworks. In that future, our shoes will no longer give us blisters.
bed this material into the synthetic skin that attaches my bionic limb to my biological body. When I walk here, it’s no voltage. My interface is soft and compliant. The button’s pushed, voltage is applied, and it stiffens, offering me a greater maneuverability of the bionic limb. How does it work? At heel strike, under computer control, the system controls stiffness to attenuate the shock of the limb hitting the ground. Then at mid-stance, the bionic limb outputs high torques and powers to lift the person into
ics also allows for extraordinary athletic feats. Here’s a gentleman running up a rocky pathway. This is Steve Martin, not the comedian, who lost his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan. We’re also building exoskeletal structures using these same principles that wrap around a biological limb. This gentleman does not have any leg condition, any disability. He has a normal physiology, so these exoskeletons are applying musclelike torques and powers so that his own muscles need not apply those
B O M B B L A S T S
In 3.5
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torques and powers. This is the first exoskeleton in history
the criminals and cowards took Adrienne off the dance floor
We’re also embedding sensing and smart materials into the synthetic skins. This is a material developed by SRI International, California. Under electrostatic effect, it changes stiffness. So under zero voltage, the material is compliant. It’s floppy like paper. Then the button’s pushed, a voltage is applied, and it becomes stiff as a board. We em-
the walking stride, comparable to how muscles work in the calf region. This bionic propulsion is very important clinically to patients. So, on the left you see the bionic device worn by a lady -- on the right a passive device worn by the same lady that fails to emulate normal muscle function -- enabling her to do something everyone should be able to do, go up and down their steps at home. Bion-
that actually augments human walking. It significantly reduces metabolic cost. It’s so profound in its augmentation that when a normal, healthy person wears the device for 40 minutes and then takes it off, their own biological legs feel ridiculously heavy and awkward. We’re beginning the age in which machines attached to our bodies will make us stronger and faster and more efficient.
have synthetic limbs that move like flesh and bone, but actually feel like flesh and bone. I’d like to finish up with one more story, a beautiful story, the story of Adrianne Haslet-Davis. Adrianne lost her left leg in the Boston terrorist attack. I met Adrianne when this photo was taken at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. Adrianne is a dancer, a ballroom dancer. Adrianne breathes and lives dance. It is her expression. It is her art form. Naturally, when she lost her limb in the Boston terrorist attack, she wanted to return to the dance floor. After meeting her and driving home in my car, I thought, I’m an MIT professor. I have resources. Let’s build her a bionic limb to enable her to go back to her life of dance. I brought in MIT scientists with expertise in prosthetics, robotics, machine learning and biomechanics, and over a 200day research period, we studied dance. We brought in dancers with biological limbs, and we studied how do they move, what forces do they apply on the dance floor, and we took those data and we put forth fundamental principles of dance, reflexive dance capability, and we embedded that intelligence into the bionic limb. Bionics is not only about making people stronger and faster. Our expression, our humanity can be embedded into electromechanics. It was 3.5 seconds between the bomb blasts in the Boston terrorist attack. In 3.5 seconds, the criminals and cowards took Adrianne off the dance floor. In 200 days, we put her back. We will not be intimidated, brought down, diminished, conquered or stopped by acts of
L e t ’s b u i l d h e r a b i o n i c l i m b t o e n a b l e h e r to go back to her life of dance
Nicholas Negrop
ponte
W D
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The Next Chapter of Environment
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“Philosophically, does the constant supply of information steal our ability to imagine or replace our dreams of achieving? After all, if it is being done somewhere by someone, and we can participate virtually, then why bother leaving the house?�
UTSIDE Ben Saunders, Polar Explorer
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that responds to the E N G E of this
there is something in man
M O U N T A I N I’m usually introduced as a polar explorer. I’m not sure that’s the most progressive or 21st-century of job titles, but I’ve spent more than two percent now of my entire life living in a tent inside the Arctic Circle, so I get out of the house a fair bit. And in my nature, I guess, I am a doer of things more than I am a spectator or a contemplator of things, and it’s that dichotomy, the gulf between ideas and action that I’m going to try and explore briefly. The pithiest answer to the question “why?” that’s been dogging me for the last 12 years was credited certainly to this chap, the rakishlooking gentleman standing at the back, second from the left, George Lee Mallory. Many of you will know his name. In 1924 he was last seen disappearing into the clouds near the summit of Mt. Everest. He may or may not have been the first person to climb Everest, more than 30 years before Edmund Hillary. No one knows if he got to the top. It’s still a mystery. But he was credited with coining the phrase, “Because it’s there.” Now I’m not actually sure that he did say that. There’s very little evidence to suggest it, but what he did say is actually far nicer, and again, I’ve printed this. I’m going to read it out. “The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this: What is the use of climbing Mt. Everest? And my answer must at once be, it is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may
turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation, but otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, and not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. So it is no use. If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy, and joy, after all, is the end of life. We don’t live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for.” Mallory’s argument that leaving the house, embarking on these grand adventures is joyful and fun, however, doesn’t tally that neatly with my own experience. The furthest I’ve ever got away from my front door was in the spring of 2004. I still don’t know exactly what came over me, but my plan was to make a solo and unsupported crossing of the Arctic Ocean. I planned essentially to walk from the north coast of Russia to the North Pole, and then to carry on to the north coast of Canada. No one had ever done this. I was 26 at the time. A lot of experts were saying it was impossible, and my mum certainly wasn’t very keen on the idea. The journey from a small weather station on the north coast of Siberia up to my final starting point,
the edge of the pack ice, the coast of the Arctic Ocean, took about five hours, and if anyone watched fearless Felix Baumgartner going up, rather than just coming down, you’ll appreciate the sense of apprehension, as I sat in a helicopter thundering north, and the sense, I think if anything, of impending doom. I sat there wondering what on Earth I had gotten myself into. There was a bit of fun, a bit of joy. I was 26. I remember sitting there looking down at my sledge. I had my skis ready to go, I had a satellite phone, a pump-action shotgun in case I was attacked by a polar bear. I remember looking out of the window and seeing the second helicopter. We were both thundering through this incredible Siberian dawn, and part of me felt a bit like a cross between Jason Bourne and Wilfred Thesiger. Part of me felt quite proud of myself, but mostly I was just utterly terrified. And that journey lasted 10 weeks, 72 days. I didn’t see anyone else. We took this photo next to the helicopter. Beyond that, I didn’t see anyone for 10 weeks. The North Pole is slap bang in the middle of
the sea, so I’m traveling over the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean. NASA described conditions that year as the worst since records began. I was dragging 180 kilos of food and fuel and supplies, about 400 pounds. The average temperature for the 10 weeks was minus 35. Minus 50 was the coldest. So again, there wasn’t an awful lot of joy or fun to be had. One of the magical things about this journey, however, is that because I’m walking over the sea, over this floating, drifting, shifting crust of ice that’s floating on top of the Arctic Ocean is it’s an environment that’s in a constant state of flux. The ice is always moving, breaking up, drifting around, refreezing, so the scenery that I saw for nearly 3 months was unique to me. No one else will ever, could ever, possibly see the views, the vistas, that I saw for 10 weeks. And that, I guess, is probably the
finest argument for leaving the house. I can try to tell you what it was like, but you’ll never know what it was like, and the more I try to explain that I felt lonely, I was the only human being in 5.4 million square-miles, it was cold, nearly minus 75 with windchill on a bad day, the more words fall short, and I’m unable to do it justice. And it seems to me, therefore, that the doing, you know, to try to experience, to engage, to endeavor, rather than to watch and to wonder, that’s where the real meat of life is to be found, the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days.
MAk THE
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The Next Chapter of Design
LOUIE SCHWARTZBERG
film maker
CAPTURING THE UNSEEN
MYSTERIES
of the
WORLD
MAKERS
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L O U I E S C H WA R T Z B E R G
There is
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which is too for our eyes to detect
S L O W
and time lapse makes us discover and broaden our perspective of life. We can see how organisms emerge and grow, how a vine survives by creeping from the forest floor to look at the sunlight. And at the grand scale, time lapse allows us to see our planet in motion. We can view not only the vast sweep of nature, but the restless movement of humanity.
What is the intersection between technology, art and science? Curiosity and wonder, because it drives us to explore, because we’re surrounded by things we can’t see. And I love to use film to take us on a journey through portals of time and space, to make the invisible visible, because what that does, it expands our horizons, it transforms our perception, it opens our minds and it touches our heart. So here are some scenes from my 3D IMAX film, “Mysteries of the Unseen World.” There is movement which is too slow
for our eyes to detect, and time lapse makes us discover and broaden our perspective of life. We can see how organisms emerge and grow, how a vine survives by creeping from the forest floor to look at the sunlight. And at the grand scale, time lapse allows us to see our planet in motion. We can view not only the vast sweep of nature, but the restless movement of humanity. Each streaking dot represents a passenger plane, and by turning air traffic data into time-lapse imagery, we can see something that’s above
us constantly but invisible: the vast network of air travel over the United States. We can do the same thing with ships at sea. We can turn data into a time-lapse view of a global economy in motion. And decades of data give us the view of our entire planet as a single organism sustained by currents circulating throughout the oceans and by clouds swirling through the atmosphere, pulsing with lightning, crowned by the aurora borealis. It may be the ultimate time-lapse image: the anatomy of Earth brought to life.
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At the other extreme, there are things that move too fast for our eyes, but we have technology that can look into that world as well. With high-speed cameras, we can do the opposite of time lapse. We can shoot images that are thousands of times faster than our vision. And we can see how nature’s ingenious devices work, and perhaps we can even imitate them. When a dragonfly flutters by, you may not realize, but it’s the greatest flier in nature. It can hover, fly backwards, even upside down. And by tracking markers on an insect’s wings, we can visualize the air flow that they produce. Nobody knew the secret, but high speed shows that a dragonfly can move all four wings in different directions at the same time. And what we learn can lead us to new kinds of robotic flyers that can expand our vision of important and remote places. We’re giants, and we’re unaware of things that are too small for us to see. The electron microscope fires electrons which creates images which can magnify things by as much as a million times. This is the egg of a butterfly. And there are unseen creatures living all over your body, including mites that spend
their entire lives dwelling on your eyelashes, crawling over your skin at night. Can you guess what this is? Shark skin. A caterpillar’s mouth. The eye of a fruit fly. An eggshell. A flea. A snail’s tongue. We think we know most of the animal kingdom, but there may be millions of tiny species waiting to be discovered. A spider also has great secrets, because spider’s silk thread is pound for pound stronger than steel but completely elastic. This journey will take us all the way down to the nano world. The silk is 100 times thinner than human hair. On there is bacteria, and near that bacteria, 10 times smaller, a virus. Inside of that, 10 times smaller, three strands of DNA, and nearing the limit of our most powerful microscopes, single carbon atoms. With the tip of a powerful and we’re microscope, we can actually move atoms and begin to create amazing nano devices. Some could one day patrol our body for all kinds of diseases and clean out
clogged arteries along the way. Tiny chemical machines of the future can one day, perhaps, repair DNA. We are on the threshold of extraordinary advances, born of our drive to unveil the mysteries of life. So under an endless rain of cosmic dust, the air is full of pollen, microdiamonds and jewels from other planets, and supernova explosions. People go about their lives surrounded by the unseeable. Knowing that there’s so much around us we can see forever changes our understanding of the world, and by looking at unseen worlds, we recognize that we exist in the living universe, and this new perspective creates wonder and inspires us to become explorers in our own backyards.
we’re G I A N T S unaware of the things
that are too small for us to see.
THE
u L L M
I
iN
a NtORS
The Next Chapter of Education
WE
N O T
WILL
BE
S I
Z i a u d d i n Yo u s t a f z a i
L E N C E D In many patriarchal societies and tribal societies, fathers are usually known by their sons, but I’m one of the few fathers w h o i s k n o w n b y h i s d a u g h t e r, a n d I a m proud of it.
the story of women is the story of
I N J U S T I C E , I N E Q U A L I T Y
VIOLENCE and her e x p l o i t a t i o n brothers
Malala started her campaign for education and stood for her rights in 2007, and when her efforts were honored in 2011, and she was given the national youth peace prize, and she became a very famous, very popular young girl of her country. Before that, she was my daughter, but now I am her father. Ladies and gentlemen, if we glance to human history, the story of women is the story of injustice, inequality, violence and exploitation. It is one that cannot be overlooked by the world, it needs tending to. You see, in patriarchal societies, right from the very beginning, when a girl is born, her birth is not celebrated. She is not welcomed, neither by father nor by mother. The neighborhood comes and commiserates with the mother, and nobody congratulates the father. And a mother is very uncomfortable for having a girl child. When she gives birth to the first girl child, first daughter, she is sad. When she gives birth to the second daughter, she is shocked, and in the expectation of a son, when she gives birth to a third daughter, she feels guilty like a criminal. Not only the mother suffers, but the daughter, the newly born daughter, when she grows old, she suffers too. At the age of five, while she should be going to school, she stays at home and
are admitted in a school. Until the age of 12, somehow, she has a good life. She can have fun. She can play with her friends in the streets, and she can move around in the streets like a butterfly. But when she enters her teens, when she becomes 13 years old, she is forbidden to go out of her home without a male escort. She is confined under the four walls of her home. She is no more a free individual. She becomes the so-called honor of her father and of her brothers and of her family, and if she transgresses the code of that so-called honor, she could even be killed. And it is also interesting that this socalled code of honor, it does not only affect the life of a girl, it also affects the life of the male members of the family. I know a family of seven sisters and one brother, and that one brother, he has migrated to the Gulf countries, to earn a living for his seven sisters and parents, because he thinks that it will be humiliating if his seven sisters learn a skill and they go out of the home and earn some livelihood. So this brother, he sacrifices the joys of his life and the happiness of his sisters at the altar of so-called honor.
And there is one more norm of the patriarchal societies that is called obedience. A good girl is supposed to be very quiet, very humble and very submissive. It is the criteria. The role model good girl should be very quiet. She is supposed to be silent and she is supposed to accept the decisions of her father and mother and the decisions of elders, even if she does not like them. If she is married to a man she doesn’t like or if she is married to an old man, she has to accept, because she does not want to be dubbed as disobedient. If she is married very early, she has to accept. Otherwise, she will be called disobedient. And what happens at the end? In the words of a poetess, she is wedded, bedded, and then she gives birth to more sons and daughters. And it is the irony of the situation that this mother, she teaches the same lesson of obedience to her daughter and the same lesson of honor to her sons. And this vicious cycle goes on, goes on. Dear brothers and sisters, when Malala was born, and for the first time, believe me, I don’t like newborn children, to be honest, but when I went and I looked into her eyes, believe me, I got extremely honored. And long before she was born, I thought about her name, and I was fascinated with a heroic legendary freedom fighter in Afghanistan. Her name was Malalai of Maiwand, and I named my daughter after her. A few days after Malala was born, my daughter was born, my cousin came -- and it was a coincidence -- he came to my home and he brought a family tree, a family tree of the Yousafzai family, and when I looked at the family tree, it traced back to 300 years of our ancestors. But when I
looked, all were men, and I picked my pen, drew a line from my name, and wrote, “Malala.” And when she grow old, when she was four and a half years old, I admitted her in my school. You will be asking, then, why should I mention about the admission of a girl in a school? Yes, I must mention it. It may be taken for granted in Canada, in America, in many developed countries, but in poor countries, in patriarchal societies, in tribal societies, it’s a big event for the life of girl. Enrollment in a school means recognition of her identity and her name. Admission in a school means that she has entered the world of dreams and aspirations where she can explore her potentials for her future life. I have five sisters, and none of them could go to school, and you will be astonished, two weeks before, when I was filling out the Canadian visa form, and I was filling out the family part of the form, I could not recall the surnames of some of my sisters. And the reason was that I have never, never seen the names of my sisters written on any document. That was the reason that I valued my daughter. What my father could not give to my sisters and to his daughters, I thought I must change it. Dear brothers and sisters, we were striving for more rights for women, and we were struggling to have more, more and more space for the women in society. But we came across a new phenomenon. It was lethal to human rights and particularly to women’s rights. It was called Talibanization. It means a complete negation of women’s participation in all political, economical and social activities. Hundreds of schools were lost. Girls were prohibited from going to school. Women were forced to wear
veils and they were stopped from going to the markets. Musicians were silenced, girls were flogged and singers were killed. Millions were suffering, but few spoke, and it was the most scary thing when you have all around such people who kill and who flog, and you speak for your rights. It’s really the most scary thing. At the age of 10, Malala stood, and she stood for the right of education. She wrote a diary for the BBC blog, she volunteered herself for the New York Times documentaries, and she spoke from every platform she could. And her voice was the most powerful voice. It spread like a crescendo all around the world. And that was the reason the Taliban could not tolerate her campaign, and on October 9 2012, she was shot in the head at point blank range. It was a doomsday for my family and for me. The world turned into a big black hole. While my daughter was on the verge of life and death, I whispered into the ears of my wife, “Should I be blamed for what happened to my daughter and your daughter?”
When Malala was in the hospital, and she was going through the severe pains and she had had severe headaches because her facial nerve was cut down, I used to see a dark shadow spreading on the face of my wife. But my daughter never complained. She used to tell us, “I’m fine with my crooked smile and with my numbness in my face. I’ll be okay. Please don’t worry.” She was a solace for us, and she consoled us. People ask me, what special is in my mentorship which has made Malala so bold and so courageous and so vocal and poised? I tell them, don’t ask me what I did. Ask me what I did not do. I did not clip her wings, and that’s all.
I DID NOT CLIP HER
WINGS
And she abruptly told me, “Please don’t blame yourself. You stood for the right cause. You put your life at stake for the cause of truth, for the cause of peace, and for the cause of education, and your daughter in inspired from you and she joined you. You both were on the right path and God will protect her.”