Ayah Bdeir: Building blocks that blink, beep and teach

200,412 views ・ 2012-03-29

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
This may sound strange,
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but I'm a big fan of the concrete block.
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The first concrete blocks were manufactured in 1868
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with a very simple idea:
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modules made of cement of a fixed measurement
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that fit together.
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Very quickly concrete blocks became
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the most-used construction unit in the world.
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They enabled us to to build things that were larger than us,
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buildings, bridges,
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one brick at a time.
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Essentially concrete blocks had become
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the building block of our time.
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Almost a hundred years later in 1947,
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LEGO came up with this.
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It was called the Automatic Binding Brick.
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And in a few short years,
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LEGO bricks took place in every household.
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It's estimated that over 400 billion bricks have been produced --
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or 75 bricks for every person on the planet.
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You don't have to be an engineer
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to make beautiful houses, beautiful bridges, beautiful buildings.
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LEGO made it accessible.
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LEGO has essentially taken the concrete block, the building block of the world,
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and made it into the building block
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01:15
of our imagination.
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Meanwhile the exact same year,
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at Bell Labs the next revolution was about to be announced,
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the next building block.
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The transistor was a small plastic unit
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that would take us from a world
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of static bricks piled on top of each other
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to a world where everything was interactive.
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Like the concrete block,
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the transistor allows you to build
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much larger, more complex circuits, one brick at a time.
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But there's a main difference:
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The transistor was only for experts.
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I personally don't accept this,
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that the building block of our time
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is reserved for experts,
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so I decided to change that.
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Eight years ago when I was at the Media Lab,
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I started exploring this idea
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of how to put the power of engineers
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in the hands of artists and designers.
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A few years ago I started developing littleBits.
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Let me show you how they work.
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LittleBits are electronic modules
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with each one specific function.
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They're pre-engineered
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to be light, sound,
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motors and sensors.
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And the best part about it
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is they snap together with magnets.
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So you can't put them the wrong way.
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The bricks are color-coded.
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Green is output, blue is power,
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pink is input and orange is wire.
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So all you need to do is snap a blue to a green
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and very quickly you can start making larger circuits.
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You put a blue to a green,
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you can make light.
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You can put a knob in between
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and now you've made a little dimmer.
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Switch out the knob
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for a pulse module,
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which is here,
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and now you've made a little blinker.
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Add this buzzer
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for some extra punch
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and you've created a noise machine.
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I'm going to stop that.
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So beyond simple play,
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littleBits are actually pretty powerful.
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Instead of having to program, to wire, to solder,
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littleBits allow you to program
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using very simple intuitive gestures.
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So to make this blink faster or slower,
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you would just turn this knob
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and basically make it pulse faster or slower.
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The idea behind littleBits
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is that it's a growing library.
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We want to make every single interaction in the world
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into a ready-to-use brick.
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Lights, sounds, solar panels, motors --
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everything should be accessible.
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We've been giving littleBits to kids and seeing them play with them.
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And it's been an incredible experience.
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The nicest thing is how they start to understand
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the electronics around them from everyday
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that they don't learn at schools.
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For example, how a nightlight works,
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or why an elevator door stays open,
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or how an iPod responds to touch.
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We've also been taking littleBits to design schools.
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So for example, we've had designers
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with no experience with electronics whatsoever
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start to play with littleBits as a material.
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Here you see, with felt and paper water bottles,
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we have Geordie making ...
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(Clanging)
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(Buzzing)
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A few weeks ago we took littleBits to RISD
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and gave them to some designers
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with no experience in engineering whatsoever --
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just cardboard, wood and paper -- and told them "Make something."
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Here's an example of a project they made,
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a motion-activated confetti canon ball.
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(Laughter)
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But wait, this is actually my favorite project.
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It's a lobster made of playdough
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that's afraid of the dark.
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(Laughter)
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04:52
To these non-engineers, littleBits became another material,
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electronics became just another material.
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And we want to make this material accessible to everyone.
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05:00
So littleBits is open-source.
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You can go on the website, download all the design files, make them yourself.
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05:05
We want to encourage a world
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of creators, of inventors, of contributors,
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05:10
because this world that we live in,
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this interactive world, is ours.
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05:14
So go ahead and start inventing.
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05:16
Thank you.
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05:18
(Applause)
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