TED Talk Review

For this journal post, I decided to watch "Science can answer moral questions" by Sam Harris along with another TED Talk entitled "The future of voice technologies" by Umesh Sachdev. The latter of these two strongly relates to my own project in that it is not only about speech recognition, which is a topic I understand but also details greater impacts that advancing speech recognition technologies which I had not considered. Across both of the TED Talks, I realized that the speakers chose to tell stories that appealed to the emotions of the audience. In his talk, Harris spoke of corporal punishment in America and the mistreatment of women in Muslim communities which got a reaction from his audience along with a deeper investment in what he had to say. Similarly, in Sachdev's talk, he began with a story of Radha, a mother living in an untoward part of the state of Bihar who wanted to send her daughter Rs. 500 for Diwali. Both of these stories achieved the same goal with entirely different audiences because the stories they chose were tailored to invoke certain emotions from their audience. However, these talks also differed in their rhetorical devices. Harris presented various rhetorical questions to his audience throughout his talk along with brief moments of levity. On the other hand, Sachdev spoke relatively briefly overall and focused more on his work and the ideology behind it. Speaking more about the technical aspects bolstered his own credibility as an expert on the topic. In tandem with speaking about the technology, he also spoke at large about the impact of his work. This is something that is majorly stressed here in EMC which is the "So what?". By demonstrating his understanding and effort in this field, Sachdev has shown that this work is important to him, however, talking about the large scale impact is what makes the work important to members of his audience. The two largest takeaways I got from this activity were in regards to engaging the audience. Using techniques like telling stories and jokes along with asking rhetorical questions as Harris did in his talk helps keep the audience engaged throughout. Emphasizing the importance and the "So what?" of your work helps your audience become invested in your project like you are.