| Last year at TED we aimed to try to clarify the overwhelming complexity and richness that we experience at the conference in a project called Big Viz . And the Big Viz is a collection of 650 sketches that were made by two visual artists . David Sibbet from The Grove , and Kevin Richards from Autodesk made 650 sketches that strive to capture the essence of each presenter 's ideas . And the consensus was , it really worked . These sketches brought to life the key ideas , the portraits , the magic moments that we all experienced last year . This year we were thinking , " Why does it work ? " What is it about animation , graphics , illustrations , that create meaning ? And this is an important question to ask and answer because the more we understand how the brain creates meaning , the better we can communicate , and I also think , the better we can think and collaborate together . So this year we 're going to visualize how the brain visualizes . Cognitive psychologists now tell us that the brain does n't actually see the world as it is , but instead , creates a series of mental models through a collection of " Ah-ha moments , " or moments of discovery , through various processes . The processing , of course , begins with the eyes . Light enters , hits the back of the retina , and is circulated , most of which is streamed to the very back of the brain , at the primary visual cortex . And primary visual cortex sees just simple geometry , just the simplest of shapes . But it also acts like a kind of relay station that re-radiates and redirects information to many other parts of the brain . As many as 30 other parts that selectively make more sense , create more meaning through the kind of " Ah-ha " experiences . We 're only going to talk about three of them . So the first one is called the ventral stream . It 's on this side of the brain . And this is the part of the brain that will recognize what something is . It 's the " what " detector . Look at a hand . Look at a remote control . Chair . Book . So that 's the part of the brain that is activated when you give a word to something . A second part of the brain is called the dorsal stream . And what it does is locates the object in physical body space . So if you look around the stage here you 'll create a kind of mental map of the stage . And if you closed your eyes you 'd be able to mentally navigate it . You 'd be activating the dorsal stream if you did that . The third part that I 'd like to talk about is the limbic system . And this is deep inside of the brain . It 's very old , evolutionarily . And it 's the part that feels . It 's the kind of gut center , where you see an image and you go , " Oh ! I have a strong or emotional reaction to whatever I 'm seeing . " So the combination of these processing centers help us make meaning in very different ways . So what can we learn about this ? How can we apply this insight ? Well , again , the schematic view is that the eye visually interrogates what we look at . The brain processes this in parallel , the figments of information asking a whole bunch of questions to create a unified mental model . So , for example , when you look at this image a good graphic invites the eye to dart around , to selectively create a visual logic . So the act of engaging , and looking at the image creates the meaning . It 's the selective logic . Now we 've augmented this and spatialized this information . Many of you may remember the magic wall that we built in conjunction with Perceptive Pixel where we quite literally create an infinite wall . And so we can compare and contrast the big ideas . So the act of engaging and creating interactive imagery enriches meaning . It activates a different part of the brain . And then the limbic system is activated when we see motion , when we see color . and there are primary shapes and pattern detectors that we 've heard about before . So the point of this is what ? We make meaning by seeing , by an act of visual interrogation . The lessons for us are three-fold . First , use images to clarify what we 're trying to communicate . Secondly make those images interactive so that we engage much more fully . And the third is to augment memory by creating a visual persistence . These are techniques that can be used to be -- that can be applied in a wide range of problem solving . So the low-tech version looks like this . And , by the way , this is the way in which we develop and formulate strategy within Autodesk , in some of our organizations and some of our divisions . What we literally do is have the teams draw out the entire strategic plan on one giant wall . And it 's very powerful because everyone gets to see everything else . There 's always a room , always a place to be able to make sense of all of the components in the strategic plan . This is a time-lapse view of it . You can ask the question , " Who 's the boss ? " You 'll be able to figure that out . So the act of collectively and collaboratively building the image transforms the collaboration . No Powerpoint is used in two days. But instead the entire team creates a shared mental model that they can all agree on and move forward on . And this can be enhanced and augmented with some emerging digital technology . And this is our great unveiling for today . And this is an emerging set of technologies that use large-screen displays with intelligent calculation in the background to make the invisible visible . Here what we can do is look at sustainability , quite literally . So a team can actually look at all the key components that heat the structure and make choices and then see the end result that is visualized on this screen . So making images meaningful has three components . The first again , is making ideas clear by visualizing them . Secondly , making them interactive . And then thirdly , making them persistent . And I believe that these three principles can be applied to solving some of the very tough problems that we face in the world today . Thanks so much . ( Applause ) |