Deb Roy: The birth of a word

http://www.ted.com MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

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  Science & Technology

[myassishappy]

Someone should call a doctor... I believe he's having a seizure...

[greengrendel]

OH. my god. this is beautiful.

See the difference here? I wouldn't let the government touch this data, but scientists, that's prefectly cool.

[Elvyne963]

I still don't get what the lesson in there, and how it can help us understand better how language is learnt. This is not a c.ritique, but an honest question.

[avedic]

The subtitles aren't made by anyone. they analyze raw audio data and convert it to text. pretty fucking powerful if you think about it. yes, it is quite buggy and no where near perfect. But, in 5 years, it will be perfect. And 5 years ago, wasn't even a possibility. So...quit complaining. :P

[avedic]

One of the coolest talks I've ever seen. Wow indeed...

[avedic]

8:15 jesus christ! how cool is that? they sure went all out in analyzing all this data. that 3d flythrough is so cool...

[David Reid]

You don't really have any privacy now. Your every move in public is recorded. Every time you use the Internet it's recorded. Your ATM transactions, phone calls, emails, faxes... all recorded. It's nice to believe that you have privacy but the reality is, you don't.

Is that OK? No. I hate that I have no privacy but that's the reality.

[Bam Boo]

There are serious moral questions involved, did anyone notice them? :-) This entire research is completely useless if only those people can be included who approve of having their lives or conversations recorded. Deducting about 99.999999% of mankind who (quite normally and justly) would not allow "researchers" to spy on their private (or public) lives would (and hence does) make this research an interesting thought experiment, nothing else. As such, it is... hm, interesting. :-)

[Agnieszka Gorońska]

I personally stood up and clapped in front of my computer. Chapeau bas, Mr. Roy!

[Julien Horvath]

just amazing, take a moment to look at your life now.. i can't put a word on this feeling i have from this talk.. big step in evolution taking place right now!!

[Dustin Nunyo]

in 100 years I would hope we have advanced far enough with technology that a 4 petabyte hard drive would come standard with the latest Iphone lol...

[Luis Jimenez]

I thought i was having a seizure lol