Mingyuan Dialogue Ted founder: from "Big Data" to "big understanding"

One is one of the youngest executives of China's internet giants, one of the most watched new technology leaders at the moment, and the creator of more than 60 books, the famous TED conference. What kind of communication and collision are these two brains that span over half a century? A few days ago, under the organization of the Baidu Delta Club, Baidu vice president Mingyuan and Ted founder Richard Woman (Richard Saul Wurman) launched a dialogue on cities, individuals and technology.

In the process of communication, both Mingyuan and Wurman believe that we are in an era that is most advantageous to the individual-we are able to connect with the world conveniently, our insights transcend physical limitations, and the information we acquire is never more symmetrical. Next, we will realize the evolution from "Big Data" to "big understanding". By then, every ordinary person will have a new understanding of himself and society. It would be a powerful force that would bring great changes to the world.

The following is a live transcript of the dialogue between Mingyuan and Wurman:

Wurman: Let's start with cloud computing and big data. What we are talking about is not the big data itself, but the people's understanding of the data. We hope to design such a language for the city so that we can communicate and understand each other. There is a medical language in the medical field and a scientific language in the field of science. So should the city. If two countries, two provinces or two cities are unable to record, encode, and display their information in the same language, they will not be able to compare and communicate well through data, thus contributing to development. At present, 50% of the world's population live in cities, the future figure will reach 70%. The cloud and the Internet are one of the ways in which we understand each other. In the process of building mutual understanding, companies like Baidu are a very important part, you will realize my idea.

Mingyuan: I agree with you. Clouds are vital to our lives. In fact, the concept of cloud is ancient. In ancient Chinese poetry, it talks about the concept of "drinking a river, sharing a bright moon". People at that time had a vision of how to make my experience more than physical limitations. I think the cloud did this and let us see beyond the limitations of physics.

Wurman: I'm not religious, but there's a saying in the Old Testament: "What happens now, has happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future." That's what you mean. After the advent of printing in Europe, the Bible began to print. However, it was not until A.D. 99 that people appeared in the Bible to add page numbers in order to find relevant content. Most of the time, something as simple as this is overlooked from our side. I just mentioned the idea of using the same language to describe the whole city, which is simple, but no one has done that before. Now that technology has developed, we can achieve it. Cloud allows us to share information, let each of us understand, and see what is happening in the world, let the world become a museum in the clouds, so that we can enjoy its scenery.

Mingyuan: From the point of view of Baidu is also so. To make things understood, the first thing is to connect them together. If you can't connect with each other, then a lot of things don't make sense. I think in many cities in China today, convenient connection is not a problem. At this point, the cloud can really create great value. We have actually done a lot of interesting things, although not making money, but the impact on people's lives is enormous. For example, Baidu has a camera called small I eyes and ears, we will cloud camera deployment in many interesting places, such as the Forbidden City, the zoo. Many children in the field can see the classical side of the modern city even if they have no chance to come to Beijing, and can see the animal living and growing process in the zoo, and turn the knowledge of the books into vivid things. In the course of this connection, Baidu realized that let people understand what they can not touch.

In today's era of technological innovation, through the great inventions of the past and the current technological development, we are not only connected with the past, but also with the people of our time, with the people of every corner of the world. This is a very big change. In the past, people may have to be 30 years old to accumulate considerable experience. But today teens are already very smart because they get information at a very fast rate. People derive benefits from the development of information. However, I am also concerned about the constant expansion of information.

Wurman: I have different views on the expansion of information. In fact, a lot of information we do not fully understand. So, from this point of view, information does not swell, but useless information expands. What we need is a deeper understanding of the information. I have a desire to make these complex things simple. Today, we hope to use the tools of technology to enhance people's understanding of themselves and the world. If Michelangelo had no hammer, no chisel, there would be no way to make a sculpture like David. Although the tools and technology themselves cannot complete a sculpture, without these tools and techniques, artists cannot create great works. What we are doing is using technology and making tools to help people understand themselves and the world.

Mingyuan: Indeed, technology can help people live smarter and simpler, with more information and more choices before making a decision. To achieve a deeper understanding, I feel that first through the cloud, storage, sharing and connectivity. Then it is easier to understand information processing.

In addition to the previously mentioned, cloud can connect, let our insight transcend physical limitations, and the cloud as a tool can also help us solve many practical problems. Today, we are using a variety of technologies to make it easier for people to use their phones. We found that children can easily use mobile phones, do not have to teach, they start very quickly. However, many middle-aged, elderly people use it is very inconvenient. For example, I spent a lot of time teaching my parents how to use their mobile phones to pass pictures to me. We now have Baidu Cloud disk, I told my parents, put photos in this folder on the line. They used a PC to understand the concept of a folder. They don't need to know the cloud or the concept of sharing. We are in fact based on the user's past experience and even life experience to design, develop mobile end products.

When it comes to the future, we all have a big headache-data is tied to the device and the device is corrupted and lost. We hope that the future of the equipment, in the hardware is lightweight, green enough. Data is stored in the cloud. You can even share hardware without distinguishing each other. For the user, the device is only the difference between the screen size, only the difference in the size of the functional differences. Through such methods as face recognition, the terminal obtains personal data from the cloud. In this way, we hope that we can more easily get along with the equipment, easy to use. In fact, we now have this "face" technology.

Wurman: You mentioned a gradual change. I really want to know some very big changes in the future. For example, what will happen if the Northwest waterway is fully opened? The changes that technology brings to society and people's lives will be enormous, so how will the world cope with these changes and what unexpected results will the society bring?

Mingyuan: I think the biggest impact on people will come from the data. Many people don't realize what the real big data is. In the past our understanding of the data was narrower, and we thought that the records were data. In my opinion, really valuable data is not being dug up and recorded, this kind of thing to our life changes very much. Many people will see the value of real big data in the wave of cloud computing and wearable devices. For example, someone claims to be a very safe driver. How do you prove you're safe? He would say I haven't had a car accident in the last two years and he's been able to prove his safety by driving a record. In fact, this data is meaningless. Pilots may not have driving safety problems during their lifetime, but there have been third-party professionals watching his behavior, seeing things he can't see, telling him that although you didn't have an accident, you had a sign of an accident. Ordinary people do not have the opportunity to better perceive themselves and see the implied data. However, this data will enter everyone's daily life in the next five years. In China, there are often such things, a person, has been very healthy, keep a regular exercise, never to physical examination, but suddenly a heart attack, is not. This is a great tragedy. There was no solution in the past. Today, by the laws of big data, you know if you're a good driver, what your body might get, and what you might not get sick of. We'll have more sensors to help us know what might happen the next second. There will be a lot of change when individuals get to know themselves again. The whole society will change greatly in the allocation of resources. Baidu recently made a prediction about epidemiology. Through past data collection, analysis, and comparison, we can know the tipping point of the outbreak, and the trend behind, so as to reconfigure medical resources.

Wurman: Yes, we need to turn big data into a big understanding. Only a true understanding of the data can reach the person itself. We are working with the government on technical cooperation to make the city's data more human-understood. Because the city's population is very dense, such as transportation, food and so on, are in the city. The urban population will occupy 70% of the world's population in the future. So the city is very important.

We do not want to simply judge whether the city is developing well or not, but we want to find out the reason by contrasting the data trends. I'm working on a project to ask 50 questions about 50 countries, and the problem is that health insurance, such as maternity leave in the United States is 12 weeks, no salary, 46 weeks in Norway, and salary, which is a very big difference. We are not saying which system is better, and we want to know what the price of the system is, and what the input and output ratios are. Health care accounts for 20% of the world's GNP, and it's worth thinking about it, which is what I call a contrastive analysis.

Mingyuan: I think everyone has it, but it takes us to think about which place to start. As I mentioned earlier, everything can be connected, and after the connection, this thing makes sense. For today's China, how can the infrastructure and service agencies scattered across the country be aggregated from an independent function into an ecosystem? To do this, it is far from enough to rely on Baidu alone. In this process, the technology that Baidu provides is like the catalyst general, let everybody feel here the benefit of the head, generate interest, thus participate in.

Wurman: We know that IBM has been driving the idea of smarter cities. Their ideas are obtained from us. I think a company like Baidu is a bit of a thrill to judge trends and predict the future-imagine what the world would look like and then be prepared for it.

Wurman: My goal in life is very selfish-I just want to know the world. Understanding, the world will change me. In fact, I did not want to affect others, I just want to understand some of the trends, and find fun. I do not serve in business or government, all I have is curiosity. I know the city is the most important place for people to live. The complexity of the city is not comparable to all things, we invented the city later found that not everyone can do all the work, I do not think I can create this table or watch, many things I can not do alone. Each of us has a lot of limitations, but if we work together, we can actually make great achievements.

Mingyuan: I think there will be a big change in today's era-information unprecedented symmetry, people's lives are more and more equal, this equality may not be material equality, but information and knowledge equality. In the past, information was enjoyed by a few well-educated people who had a certain amount of material accumulation. I think in the future, everyone will be a part of the benefit of information. A person's needs inspire another person's curiosity, and then inspire the next person to solve the problem of the ability, this interaction makes the society more and more beautiful. What Baidu does is provide the platform and the tool, lets the people use the tool on the platform to make some past unexpected results. The needs of the ordinary people will inspire the innovation of this era, when the innovation experience quantitative accumulation, will form an outbreak. Our generation will witness this eruption.

Wurman: This is a good ending. For many things, we think we have understood, but we do not understand at all. So it's a huge force to really make everything understandable. There is still a great opportunity in this matter, and people now have a strong desire for it. You have the ability to change the status quo, so that people to understand the ego and society, even if the impact of a little bit every moment, will bring great changes to the world.