Sebastian Wernicke: 1000 TEDTalks, 6 words

Sebastian Wernicke: 1000 TEDTalks, 6 palabras

Traductor: Sebastian Betti Revisor: Lidia Cámara de la Fuente

There's currently over a thousand TED Talks on the TED website.

Actualmente hay más de 1000 TEDTalks en el sitio de TED.

And I guess many of you here think that this is quite fantastic,

Y supongo que muchos de Uds.

pensarán que es estupendo...

except for me, I don't agree with this.

salvo yo. Yo no estoy de acuerdo.

I think we have a situation here.

Creo que aquí hay un problema.

Because if you think about it, 1,000 TED Talks,

Porque, si lo piensan, 1000 TEDTalks

that's over 1,000 ideas worth spreading.

son más de 1000 ideas que vale la pena divulgar.

¿Cómo diablos

How on earth are you going to spread a thousand ideas?

se pueden divulgar 1000 ideas?

Even if you just try to get all of those ideas into your head

Incluso si intentáramos meternos esas ideas en la cabeza

mirando esos 1000 videos de TED,

by watching all those thousand TED videos,

sólo hacer eso nos llevaría

it would actually currently take you over 250 hours to do so.

más de 250 horas.

And I did a little calculation of this.

E hice un cálculo simple.

El daño a la economía por cada persona que lo haga

The damage to the economy for each one who does this is around $15,000.

es de unos 15 000 dólares.

So having seen this danger to the economy,

Dado este problema para la economía

pensé que debíamos encontrar una solución.

I thought, we need to find a solution to this problem.

Este es mi enfoque al tema.

Here's my approach to it all.

Si vemos la situación actual

If you look at the current situation, you have a thousand TED Talks.

tenemos 1000 TEDTalks.

Each of those TED Talks has an average length of about 2,300 words.

La longitud media de cada TEDTalk

es de unas 2300 palabras.

Juntemos ambas cosas

Now take this together, and you end up with 2.3 million words of TED Talks,

y tendremos 2,3 millones de palabras en las TEDTalks;

el tamaño de unas tres Biblias.

which is about three Bibles-worth of content.

(Laughter)

La pregunta obvia es:

The obvious question here is, does a TED Talk really need 2,300 words?

¿Una TEDTalk necesita 2300 palabras?

¿No se puede acortar?

Isn't there something shorter?

I mean, if you have an idea worth spreading,

Digo, si tenemos una idea que vale la pena divulgar,

seguramente se puede expresar más brevemente

surely you can put it into something shorter than 2,300 words.

que con 2300 palabras.

The only question is, how short can you get?

La pregunta es: ¿cuánto puede acortarse?

¿Cuál es la mínima cantidad de palabras

What's the minimum amount of words you would need to do a TED Talk?

necesarias para hacer una TEDTalk?

Mientras pensaba en esta cuestión

While I was pondering this question,

I came across this urban legend about Ernest Hemingway,

encontré una leyenda urbana sobre Ernest Hemingway,

que supuestamente dijo que estas seis palabras:

who allegedly said that these six words here:

"A la venta zapatitos sin usar",

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn,"

era la mejor novela de su obra.

were the best novel he had ever written.

And I also encountered a project called Six-Word Memoirs

Y encontré un proyecto llamado "Recuerdos en seis palabras"

donde se pidió a las personas

where people were asked, take your whole life

resumir la vida entera en seis palabras, como éstas:

and please sum this up into six words, such as these here:

"Amor verdadero... en otro matrimonio."

"Found true love, married someone else."

O, "Vivir en el vacío existencial apesta".

Or "Living in existential vacuum; it sucks."

I actually like that one.

Me gusta esa última.

So if a novel can be put into six words

Entonces, si con seis palabras se escribe

and a whole memoir can be put into six words,

una novela y todo un recuerdo,

you don't need more than six words for a TED Talk.

no hace falta más de seis palabras para una TEDTalk.

We could have been done by lunch here.

Podríamos haber terminado para el almuerzo.

Digo...

(Laughter)

And if you did this for all thousand TED Talks,

Y si hiciéramos lo mismo con las 1000 TEDTalks

you would get from 2.3 million words down to 6,000.

bajaríamos de los 2,3 millones de palabras a 6000.

Por eso pensé que esto valía la pena.

So I thought this was quite worthwhile.

Empecé a pedirle a mis amigos

So I started asking all my friends,

please take your favorite TED Talk and put that into six words.

que expresaran su TEDTalk favorita en seis palabras.

So here are some of the results that I received.

Estos son algunos resultados que recibí. Creo que son bastante buenos.

Por ejemplo, la charla de Dan Pink sobre la motivación

I think they're quite nice.

For example, Dan Pink's talk on motivation, which was pretty good,

que es bastante buena, si no la han visto:

"Sin garrote, ni zanahoria: aporte sentido".

if you haven't seen it: "Drop carrot. Drop stick. Bring meaning."

De eso habla en los 18 minutos y pico.

It's what he's basically talking about in those 18,5 minutes.

Otros mencionan características oratorias

Or some even included references to the speakers,

como el estilo de Nathan Myhrvold

o el de Tim Ferriss,

such as Nathan Myhrvold's speaking style, or the one of Tim Ferriss,

que a veces pueden considerarse un poco extenuantes.

which might be considered a bit strenuous at times.

El desafío de hacerlo de manera sistemática

The challenge here is, if I try to systematically do this,

es que quizá termine con muchos resúmenes

I would probably end up with a lot of summaries,

pero con no tantos amigos.

but not with many friends in the end.

Por eso tuve que encontrar un método diferente,

So I had to find a different method, preferably involving total strangers.

preferiblemente involucrando a extraños.

Por suerte hay un sitio llamado Mechanical Turk

And luckily, there's a website for that, called Mechanical Turk,

donde se pueden publicar tareas

which is a website where you can post tasks

que uno no quiere hacer

that you don't want to do yourself,

como "Por favor, resuman este texto en seis palabras".

such as "Please summarize this text for me in six words."

No permití que la tarea se realizara en países de bajo costo

And I didn't allow any low-cost countries to work on this,

pero descubrí resúmenes de seis palabras por solo 10 centavos

but I found out I could get a six-word summary for just 10 cents,

que creo es un precio bastante bueno.

which I think is a pretty good price.

Aún así, por desgracia,

Even then, unfortunately,

no es posible resumir cada TEDTalk de forma individual.

it's not possible to summarize each TED Talk individually.

Because if you do the math, you have a thousand TED Talks,

Si hacen la cuenta, hay 1000 TEDTalks,

se paga 10 centavos cada una;

you pay 10 cents each;

you have to do more than one summary for each of those talks,

uno tiene que hacer más de un resumen por cada charla

because some of them will probably be, or are, really bad.

porque alguna quizá sea, o son, muy malas.

So I would end up paying hundreds of dollars.

Terminaría pagando cientos de dólares.

So I thought of a different way,

Por eso pensé algo diferente;

by thinking, well, the talks revolve around certain themes.

bien, las charlas tratan ciertos temas.

So what if I don't let people summarize individual TED Talks to six words,

Y si, en vez de pedirle a las personas

que resuman las TEDTalks en seis palabras,

les damos 10 TEDTalks al mismo tiempo y les

but give them 10 TED Talks at the same time

pedimos: "Por favor, resuman esto en seis palabras".

and say, "Please do a six-word summary for that one."

Recortaría los costos en un 90%.

I would cut my costs by 90 percent.

Por 60 dólares

So for $60,

I could summarize a thousand TED Talks into just 600 summaries,

podría resumir 1000 TEDTalks

en 600 resúmenes

which would actually be quite nice.

algo que no estaría mal.

Some of you might actually right now be thinking,

Alguno de Uds. podría estar pensando

que francamente es una locura resumir 10 TEDTalks en seis palabras.

it's downright crazy to have 10 TED Talks summarized into just six words.

Pero no lo es

But it's actually not,

because there's an example by statistics professor Hans Rosling.

porque hay un ejemplo del profesor de estadística, Hans Rosling.

Supongo que muchos de Uds. han visto alguna charla suya.

I guess many of you have seen one or more of his talks.

Tiene ocho charlas en línea

He's got eight talks online,

que pueden resumirse en sólo cuatro palabras

and those can basically be summed up into just four words,

because that's all he's basically showing us, our intuition is really bad.

porque es eso lo que nos está mostrando:

"nuestra intuición es pésima".

Siempre muestra que nos equivocamos.

He always proves us wrong.

So people on the Internet, some didn't do so well.

En Internet algunas personas no lo hicieron bien.

And when I asked them to summarize the 10 TED Talks at the same time,

Cuando les pedí que resumieran 10 TEDTalks al mismo tiempo

algunos tomaron el camino fácil.

some took the easy route out.

Ponían algún comentario general.

They just had some general comment.

There were others -- and I found this quite cheeky --

Había otros que, y esto me pareció bastante descarado,

They used their six words to talk back to me

usaban las seis palabras para responderme

si había pasado mucho tiempo en Google últimamente.

and ask me if I'd been too much on Google lately.

(Laughter)

And finally also, I never understood this,

Y finalmente, nunca entendí esto,

some people really came up with their own version of the truth.

algunas personas salieron con una versión propia de la verdad.

No conozco ninguna TEDTalk que diga eso.

I don't know any TED Talk that contains this.

But, oh well.

Pero, bueno. Al final, no obstante,

In the end, however, and this is really amazing,

esto es lo realmente increíble,

for each of those 10 TED Talk clusters that I submitted,

para cada grupo de 10 TEDTalks que envié

recibí resúmenes significativos.

I actually received meaningful summaries.

Estos son algunos de mis favoritos.

Here are some of my favorites.

Por ejemplo, para las TEDTalks sobre alimentos,

For example, for the TED Talks about food,

alguien lo resumió así: "La comida es cuerpo, mente, ambiente",

someone summed this up into: "Food shaping body, brains and environment,"

que no está tan mal.

which I think is pretty good.

O la felicidad: "Forzar felicidad es

Or happiness: "Striving toward happiness = moving toward unhappiness."

desembocar en infelicidad".

En eso estaba.

So here I was.

I had started out with a thousand TED Talks

Comencé con 1000 TEDTalks

and I had 600 six-word summaries for those.

y tenía 600 resúmenes de seis palabras.

Al principio sonaba bien

Actually, it sounded nice in the beginning,

pero luego 600 resúmenes es demasiado.

but when you look at 600 summaries, it's quite a lot, it's a huge list.

Es una lista enorme.

(Laughter)

Entonces pensé en dar un paso adelante

So I thought, I probably have to take this one step further here

and create summaries of the summaries, and this is exactly what I did.

y crear resúmenes de los resúmenes... y así hice.

Tomé los 600 resúmenes que tenía,

So I took the 600 summaries that I had, put them into nine groups

los dividí en nueve grupos,

according to the ratings that the talks had originally received on TED.com

de acuerdo a las valoraciones de las charlas en TED.com

and asked people to do summaries of those.

y le pedí a las personas que las resumieran.

Otra vez, hubo algunos malentendidos.

Again, there were some misunderstandings.

Por ejemplo, en el grupo de las charlas hermosas,

For example, when I had a cluster of all the "Beautiful" talks,

alguno pensó que trataba de encontrar la frase suprema.

someone thought I was just trying to find the ultimate pick-up line.

Pero al final, sorprendentemente,

But in the end, amazingly,

nuevamente lo lograron.

again, people were able to do it.

Por ejemplo, las TEDTalks valientes:

For example, all the courageous TED Talks:

"personas moribundas" o "personas sufriendo" eran una:

"People dying" or "People suffering" was also one,

"rodeadas de soluciones fáciles".

"with easy solutions around."

O la receta de la TEDTalk más pasmosa:

Or the recipe for the ultimate jaw-dropping TED Talk:

"Foto-Flickr de compositor clásico intergaláctico".

"Flickr photos of intergalactic classical composer."

Digo, es la esencia de todas ellas.

I mean that's the essence of it all.

Now I had my nine groups, but, I mean, it's already quite a reduction.

Ahora tenía mis grupos de nueve,

eso en sí ya es una gran reducción.

But of course, once you are that far, you're not really satisfied.

Pero claro, si ya hemos llegado tan lejos, queremos más.

Yo quería ir al final, llegar al fondo de la destilación,

I wanted to go all the way, all the way down the distillery,

a partir de 1000 TEDTalks.

starting out with a thousand TED Talks.

Quería llegar a resumir las 1000 TEDTalks en seis palabras

I wanted to have a thousand TED Talks summarized into just six words --

una reducción de contenido del 99,9997%.

which would be a 99.9997 percent reduction in content.

Y sólo pagaría 99,50 dólares

And I would only pay $99.50 --

estaría así por debajo de los 100 dólares.

so stay even below $100 for it.

Ya tenía 50 resúmenes generales.

So I had 50 overall summaries done.

Esta vez pagué 25 centavos

This time I paid 25 cents

porque pensé que la tarea era más difícil.

because I thought the task was a bit harder.

And unfortunately, when I first received the answers --

Lamentablemente, cuando recibí las respuestas

-aquí verán seis de ellas-

and here, you'll see six of the answers -- I was a bit disappointed.

quedé un poco decepcionado.

Because I think you'll agree, they all summarize some aspect of TED,

Porque creo que estarán de acuerdo, todas resumen aspectos de TED,

pero son un poco sosas

but to me, they felt a bit bland,

o captan sólo un aspecto de TED.

or they just had a certain aspect of TED in them.

Estaba a punto de darme por vencido

So I was almost ready to give up

when one night, I played around with these sentences

hasta que una noche, jugando con estas oraciones,

hallé que contienen una solución hermosa.

and found out that there's actually a beautiful solution in here.

Y es ésta,

So here it is,

a crowd-sourced, six-word summary of a thousand TED Talks

un resumen colectivo de seis palabras para 1000 TEDTalks

at the value of $99.50:

por US$ 99,50:

"Why the worry? I'd rather wonder."

"¿Por qué preocuparme si puedo maravillarme?"

Muchas gracias.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

(Aplausos)