1
00:00:00,949 --> 00:00:07,497
(Rainforest noises)

2
00:00:09,680 --> 00:00:13,167
In the summer of 2011,
as a tourist,

3
00:00:13,167 --> 00:00:17,593
I visited the rainforests of Borneo
for the very first time,

4
00:00:17,593 --> 00:00:19,641
and as you might imagine,

5
00:00:19,641 --> 00:00:24,911
it was the overwhelming sounds
of the forest that struck me the most.

6
00:00:24,911 --> 00:00:27,721
There's this constant cacophony of noise.

7
00:00:27,721 --> 00:00:30,136
Some things actually do stick out.

8
00:00:30,136 --> 00:00:34,562
For example, this here is a big bird,
a rhinoceros hornbill.

9
00:00:34,562 --> 00:00:38,734
This buzzing is a cicada.

10
00:00:39,434 --> 00:00:42,047
This is a family of gibbons.

11
00:00:42,047 --> 00:00:46,161
It's actually singing to each other
over a great distance.

12
00:00:47,341 --> 00:00:50,334
The place where this was recorded
was in fact a gibbon reserve,

13
00:00:50,334 --> 00:00:52,371
which is why you can hear so many of them,

14
00:00:52,372 --> 00:00:57,302
but in fact the most important noise that 
was coming out of the forest that time

15
00:00:57,302 --> 00:00:58,834
was one that I didn't notice,

16
00:00:58,834 --> 00:01:01,943
and in fact nobody there
had actually noticed it.

17
00:01:02,373 --> 00:01:04,361
So, as I said, this was a gibbon reserve.

18
00:01:04,361 --> 00:01:07,170
They spend most of their time
rehabilitating gibbons,

19
00:01:07,170 --> 00:01:09,731
but they also have
to spend a lot of their time

20
00:01:09,731 --> 00:01:13,423
protecting their area from illegal logging
that takes place on the side.

21
00:01:13,423 --> 00:01:15,466
And so if we take the sound of the forest

22
00:01:15,466 --> 00:01:19,023
and we actually turn down the gibbons,
the insects, and the rest,

23
00:01:19,023 --> 00:01:22,689
in the background, the entire time,
in recordings you heard,

24
00:01:22,689 --> 00:01:26,403
was the sound of a chainsaw
at great distance.

25
00:01:26,403 --> 00:01:30,397
They had three full-time guards
who were posted around this sanctuary

26
00:01:30,397 --> 00:01:34,599
whose job was in fact
to guard against illegal logging,

27
00:01:34,599 --> 00:01:38,058
and one day, we went walking,
again as tourists, out into the forest,

28
00:01:38,058 --> 00:01:40,311
and within five minutes' walk,

29
00:01:40,311 --> 00:01:43,690
we stumbled upon somebody
who was just sawing a tree down,

30
00:01:43,690 --> 00:01:46,951
five minutes' walk, a few hundred meters
from the ranger station.

31
00:01:46,951 --> 00:01:49,009
They hadn't been able
to hear the chainsaws,

32
00:01:49,009 --> 00:01:52,826
because as you heard,
the forest is very, very loud.

33
00:01:52,826 --> 00:01:56,745
It struck me as quite unacceptable
that in this modern time,

34
00:01:56,745 --> 00:02:01,217
just a few hundred meters away 
from a ranger station in a sanctuary,

35
00:02:01,217 --> 00:02:05,022
that in fact nobody could hear it when
someone who has a chainsaw gets fired up.

36
00:02:05,022 --> 00:02:09,687
It sounds impossible,
but in fact, it was quite true.

37
00:02:09,689 --> 00:02:11,523
So how do we stop illegal logging?

38
00:02:11,523 --> 00:02:14,952
It's really tempting, as an engineer,
always to come up with a high-tech,

39
00:02:14,952 --> 00:02:16,713
super-crazy high-tech solution,

40
00:02:16,713 --> 00:02:18,663
but in fact, you're in the rainforest.

41
00:02:18,663 --> 00:02:21,040
It has to be simple,
it has to be scalable,

42
00:02:21,040 --> 00:02:24,048
and so what we also noticed
while were there was that

43
00:02:24,048 --> 00:02:26,374
everything we needed was already there.

44
00:02:26,374 --> 00:02:29,125
We could build a system
that would allow us to stop this

45
00:02:29,125 --> 00:02:31,407
using what's already there.

46
00:02:31,407 --> 00:02:33,639
Who was there? What was 
already in the forest?

47
00:02:33,639 --> 00:02:34,787
Well, we had people.

48
00:02:34,787 --> 00:02:38,072
We had this group there that was 
dedicated, three full-time guards,

49
00:02:38,072 --> 00:02:39,846
that was dedicated to go and stop it,

50
00:02:39,846 --> 00:02:42,960
but they just needed to know
what was happening out in the forest.

51
00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:44,853
The real surprise, this is the big one,

52
00:02:44,853 --> 00:02:47,236
was that there was connectivity
out in the forest.

53
00:02:47,236 --> 00:02:50,150
There was cell phone service
way out in the middle of nowhere.

54
00:02:50,150 --> 00:02:53,081
We're talking hundreds of kilometers
from the nearest road,

55
00:02:53,081 --> 00:02:56,653
there's certainly no electricity,
but they had very good cell phone service,

56
00:02:56,653 --> 00:02:59,276
these people in the towns
were on Facebook all the time,

57
00:02:59,276 --> 00:03:01,226
they're surfing the web on their phones,

58
00:03:01,226 --> 00:03:04,335
and this sort of got me thinking
that in fact it would be possible

59
00:03:04,335 --> 00:03:06,494
to use the sounds of the forest,

60
00:03:06,494 --> 00:03:08,886
pick up the sounds 
of chainsaws programmatically,

61
00:03:08,886 --> 00:03:10,534
because people can't hear them,

62
00:03:10,534 --> 00:03:12,221
and send an alert.

63
00:03:12,221 --> 00:03:14,803
But you have to have a device
to go up in the trees.

64
00:03:14,803 --> 00:03:18,454
So if we can use some device
to listen to the sounds of the forest,

65
00:03:18,454 --> 00:03:20,687
connect to the cell phone
network that's there,

66
00:03:20,687 --> 00:03:22,721
and send an alert to people on the ground,

67
00:03:22,721 --> 00:03:26,271
perhaps we could have a solution
to this issue for them.

68
00:03:26,271 --> 00:03:29,551
But let's take a moment
to talk about saving the rainforest,

69
00:03:29,551 --> 00:03:33,393
because it's something that we've
definitely all heard about forever.

70
00:03:33,393 --> 00:03:36,312
People in my generation
have heard about saving the rainforest

71
00:03:36,312 --> 00:03:38,212
since we were kids,

72
00:03:38,212 --> 00:03:40,460
and it seems that the message
has never changed:

73
00:03:40,460 --> 00:03:42,982
We've got to save the rainforest,
it's super urgent,

74
00:03:42,982 --> 00:03:45,688
this many football fields
have been destroyed yesterday.

75
00:03:45,688 --> 00:03:48,992
and yet here we are today,
about half of the rainforest remains,

76
00:03:48,992 --> 00:03:53,319
and we have potentially more urgent 
problems like climate change.

77
00:03:53,319 --> 00:03:57,228
But in fact, this is the little-known fact
that I didn't realize at the time:

78
00:03:57,228 --> 00:04:00,189
Deforestation accounts 
for more greenhouse gas

79
00:04:00,189 --> 00:04:04,229
than all of the world's planes,
trains, cars, trucks and ships combined.

80
00:04:04,229 --> 00:04:06,945
It's the second highest contributor
to climate change.

81
00:04:06,945 --> 00:04:09,778
Also, according to Interpol,

82
00:04:09,778 --> 00:04:13,307
as much as 90 percent of the logging
that takes place in the rainforest

83
00:04:13,307 --> 00:04:17,088
is illegal logging,
like the illegal logging that we saw.

84
00:04:17,088 --> 00:04:21,132
So if we can help people in the forest
enforce the rules that are there,

85
00:04:21,132 --> 00:04:25,056
then in fact we could eat heavily
into this 17 percent

86
00:04:25,056 --> 00:04:27,667
and potentially have a major impact
in the short term.

87
00:04:27,667 --> 00:04:32,832
It might just be the cheapest,
fastest way to fight climate change.

88
00:04:32,832 --> 00:04:34,830
And so here's the system that we imagine.

89
00:04:34,830 --> 00:04:36,024
It looks super high tech.

90
00:04:36,024 --> 00:04:38,657
The moment a sound of a chainsaw
is heard in the forest,

91
00:04:38,657 --> 00:04:40,829
the device picks up the sound
of the chainsaw,

92
00:04:40,829 --> 00:04:44,436
it sends an alert through the standard
GSM network that's already there

93
00:04:44,436 --> 00:04:46,523
to a ranger in the field

94
00:04:46,523 --> 00:04:49,340
who can in fact show up in real time
and stop the logging.

95
00:04:49,340 --> 00:04:53,249
It's no more about going out
and finding a tree that's been cut.

96
00:04:53,249 --> 00:04:55,425
It's not about seeing 
a tree from a satellite

97
00:04:55,425 --> 00:04:57,061
in an area that's been clear cut,

98
00:04:57,061 --> 00:04:59,259
it's about real-time intervention.

99
00:04:59,669 --> 00:05:02,390
So I said it was the cheapest
and fastest way to do it,

100
00:05:02,390 --> 00:05:05,315
but in fact, actually, as you saw,
they weren't able to do it,

101
00:05:05,315 --> 00:05:07,199
so it may not be so cheap and fast.

102
00:05:07,199 --> 00:05:10,635
But if the devices in the trees
were actually cell phones,

103
00:05:10,635 --> 00:05:12,191
it could be pretty cheap.

104
00:05:12,191 --> 00:05:16,478
Cell phones are thrown away
by the hundreds of millions every year,

105
00:05:16,478 --> 00:05:18,599
hundreds of millions in the U.S. alone,

106
00:05:18,599 --> 00:05:21,780
not counting the rest of the world,
which of course we should do,

107
00:05:21,780 --> 00:05:24,311
but in fact, cell phones are great.

108
00:05:24,311 --> 00:05:25,644
They're full of sensors.

109
00:05:25,644 --> 00:05:27,796
They can listen
to the sounds of the forest.

110
00:05:27,796 --> 00:05:29,178
We do have to protect them.

111
00:05:29,178 --> 00:05:31,585
We have to put them in this box
that you see here,

112
00:05:31,585 --> 00:05:33,152
and we do have to power them.

113
00:05:33,152 --> 00:05:35,915
Powering them is one of the greater
engineering challenges

114
00:05:35,915 --> 00:05:37,215
that we had to deal with,

115
00:05:37,215 --> 00:05:39,967
because powering a cell phone
under a tree canopy,

116
00:05:39,967 --> 00:05:42,219
any sort of solar power
under a tree canopy,

117
00:05:42,219 --> 00:05:44,029
was an as-yet-unsolved problem,

118
00:05:44,029 --> 00:05:46,886
and that's this unique
solar panel design that you see here,

119
00:05:46,886 --> 00:05:51,205
which in fact is built also from recycled
byproducts of an industrial process.

120
00:05:51,205 --> 00:05:53,829
These are strips that are cut down.

121
00:05:53,829 --> 00:05:57,335
So this is me putting it all together

122
00:05:57,335 --> 00:05:59,216
in my parents' garage, actually.

123
00:05:59,216 --> 00:06:01,793
Thanks very much to them
for allowing me to do that.

124
00:06:01,793 --> 00:06:06,149
As you can see,
this is a device up in a tree.

125
00:06:06,149 --> 00:06:09,734
What you can see from here, perhaps,
is that they are pretty well obscured

126
00:06:09,734 --> 00:06:11,536
up in the tree canopy at a distance.

127
00:06:11,536 --> 00:06:15,013
That's important, because although
they are able to hear chainsaw noises

128
00:06:15,013 --> 00:06:16,783
up to a kilometer in the distance,

129
00:06:16,783 --> 00:06:19,303
allowing them to cover
about three square kilometers,

130
00:06:19,303 --> 00:06:22,481
if someone were to take them,
it would make the area unprotected.

131
00:06:23,281 --> 00:06:26,034
So does it actually work?

132
00:06:26,034 --> 00:06:29,006
Well, to test it,
we took it back to Indonesia,

133
00:06:29,006 --> 00:06:31,119
not the same place, but another place,

134
00:06:31,119 --> 00:06:32,790
to another gibbon reserve

135
00:06:32,790 --> 00:06:35,635
that was threatened daily
by illegal logging.

136
00:06:36,505 --> 00:06:40,424
On the very second day, it picked up
illegal chainsaw noises.

137
00:06:40,424 --> 00:06:42,623
We were able to get a real-time alert.

138
00:06:42,623 --> 00:06:43,970
I got an email on my phone.

139
00:06:43,970 --> 00:06:47,686
Actually, we had just climbed the tree.
Everyone had just gotten back down.

140
00:06:47,686 --> 00:06:49,926
All these guys are smoking cigarettes,

141
00:06:49,926 --> 00:06:52,783
and then I get an email,
and they all quiet down,

142
00:06:52,783 --> 00:06:54,887
and in fact you can hear the chainsaw

143
00:06:54,887 --> 00:06:56,816
really, really faint in the background,

144
00:06:56,816 --> 00:06:59,121
but no one had noticed it 
until that moment.

145
00:06:59,121 --> 00:07:02,395
And so then we took off
to actually stop these loggers.

146
00:07:02,395 --> 00:07:03,904
I was pretty nervous.

147
00:07:03,904 --> 00:07:08,130
This is the moment where we've actually
arrived close to where the loggers are.

148
00:07:08,130 --> 00:07:11,244
This is the moment where you can see
where I'm actually regretting

149
00:07:11,244 --> 00:07:13,245
perhaps the entire endeavor.

150
00:07:13,245 --> 00:07:15,988
I'm not really sure what's on
the other side of this hill.

151
00:07:15,988 --> 00:07:17,951
That guy's much braver than I am.

152
00:07:17,951 --> 00:07:22,131
But he went, so I had to go, walking up,

153
00:07:22,131 --> 00:07:24,290
and in fact, he made it over the hill,

154
00:07:24,290 --> 00:07:27,527
and interrupted the loggers in the act.

155
00:07:27,527 --> 00:07:29,189
For them, it was such a surprise --

156
00:07:29,189 --> 00:07:31,569
they had never, ever
been interrupted before --

157
00:07:31,569 --> 00:07:33,734
that it was such an impressive
event for them,

158
00:07:33,734 --> 00:07:36,850
that we've heard from our partners
they have not been back since.

159
00:07:36,850 --> 00:07:38,342
They were, in fact, great guys.

160
00:07:38,342 --> 00:07:40,522
They showed us how
the entire operation works,

161
00:07:40,522 --> 00:07:43,096
and what they really convinced us
on the spot was that

162
00:07:43,096 --> 00:07:45,341
if you can show up
in real time and stop people,

163
00:07:45,341 --> 00:07:49,523
it's enough of a deterrent
they won't come back.

164
00:07:49,529 --> 00:07:51,085
So --

165
00:07:51,085 --> 00:07:56,076
Thank you. (Applause)

166
00:07:57,586 --> 00:08:01,440
Word of this spread, possibly
because we told a lot of people,

167
00:08:01,440 --> 00:08:04,877
and in fact, then some really
amazing stuff started to happen.

168
00:08:04,877 --> 00:08:08,546
People from around the world
started to send us emails, phone calls.

169
00:08:08,546 --> 00:08:10,635
What we saw was that people
throughout Asia,

170
00:08:10,635 --> 00:08:13,377
people throughout Africa,
people throughout South America,

171
00:08:13,377 --> 00:08:15,288
they told us that they could use it too,

172
00:08:15,288 --> 00:08:16,568
and what's most important,

173
00:08:16,568 --> 00:08:19,066
what we'd found that
we thought might be exceptional,

174
00:08:19,066 --> 00:08:21,648
in the forest there was
pretty good cell phone service.

175
00:08:21,648 --> 00:08:23,525
That was not exceptional, we were told,

176
00:08:23,525 --> 00:08:27,468
and that particularly is on the periphery
of the forests that are most under threat.

177
00:08:27,468 --> 00:08:29,768
And then something 
really amazing happened,

178
00:08:29,768 --> 00:08:33,251
which was that people started sending us
their own old cell phones.

179
00:08:33,251 --> 00:08:35,201
So in fact what we have now is a system

180
00:08:35,201 --> 00:08:38,544
where we can use people on the ground,
people who are already there,

181
00:08:38,544 --> 00:08:41,609
who can both improve
and use the existing connectivity,

182
00:08:41,609 --> 00:08:44,286
and we're using old cell phones
that are being sent to us

183
00:08:44,286 --> 00:08:45,779
by people from around the world

184
00:08:45,779 --> 00:08:49,072
that want their phones to be doing 
something else in their afterlife,

185
00:08:49,072 --> 00:08:49,826
so to speak.

186
00:08:49,826 --> 00:08:52,755
And if the rest of the device
can be completely recycled,

187
00:08:52,755 --> 00:08:55,471
then we believe it's
an entirely upcycled device.

188
00:08:55,471 --> 00:08:59,125
So again, this didn't come
because of any sort of high-tech solution.

189
00:08:59,125 --> 00:09:01,438
It just came from using
what's already there,

190
00:09:01,438 --> 00:09:04,294
and I'm thoroughly convinced
that if it's not phones,

191
00:09:04,294 --> 00:09:06,663
that there's always
going to be enough there

192
00:09:06,663 --> 00:09:08,474
that you can build similar solutions

193
00:09:08,474 --> 00:09:10,540
that can be very effective
in new contexts.

194
00:09:10,540 --> 00:09:12,676
Thank you very much.

195
00:09:12,676 --> 00:09:17,204
(Applause)