When my wife was pregnant with our first son and we began considering what to name him, I proposed Strad. To violinists (a group of which I at least once counted myself a member), Stradivarius is the epitome of perfection. While cries of horror from certain members of the family resulted in my son being […]
At TED2006, former MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas Negroponte outlined the challenges of producing the $100 laptop, which will be designed for — and only available to — children in the developing world. The key, he suggested, is scale. The economics will work when countries begin ordering them by the millions. Well, according to the […]
TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who presided over the last case of Smallpox on the planet. He also founded the Seva Foundation, which works to reverse cases of blindness, and co-founded several technology start-ups, including the legendary online community, The Well. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation. In this […]
TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair is founder of Architecture for Humanity, and author of Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. In this presentation, he demonstrates the need for a design response to natural disasters, and unveils his TEDPrize wish: to create a community that actively embraces open-source design to generate innovative […]
TEDPrize winner Jehane Noujaim is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, responsible for Startup.com and the gutsy, controversial documentary Control Room. Two weeks before the U.S. invasion in Iraq, Jehane went to Qatar, gained access to both Al Jazeera and the U.S. military’s Central Command offices, and caught the onset and outbreak of the Iraqi war on […]
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the death of electric cars, but gearheads ’round the world are eagerly awaiting the July 20 arrival of a new electric sports car from a startup by the name of Tesla Motors. Yes, an electric sports car. Actually, when you think about a sports car as a […]
Pastor Rick Warren has become one of the most influential Christian voices worldwide, following the runaway success of his book The Purpose-Driven Life, which has sold more than 30 million copies. His Saddleback Church, which began as a small group in his home, now hosts more than 20,000 congregants. In this talk, he describes his […]
Dan Dennett is a Tufts philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, renowned for his books, Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). His most recent book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon calls for a rational examination of religion as a cultural phenomenon that co-evolved with humans to meet social needs. In this […]
“I think I speak for all writers, when I say that I am delighted by marketing efforts of any sort.” — Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, commenting in The Guardian on film-style trailers for books, being released online by publishers to build demand for new titles
Re-watching Majora Carter reminded me of another project committed to green spaces in the inner city; Guerrilla Gardening, people who go and garden in neglected public spaces, without permission but with generosity and humour. They find abandoned, unregarded bits of urban environment, sneak in at night and do some planting, some maintenance and eventually some […]
(From The Guardian)
The Long Tail By Chris Anderson Published by Hyperion 256 pages | List price: $24.95 This month’s TED Book Club mailing included a pre-publication copy of the book that’s been generating so much buzz for the past year, The Long Tail. (It was published this week by Hyperion.) Several important things to say. First of […]
Stumbling on Happiness By Dan Gilbert Published by Knopf 304 pages | List price: $24.95 Harvard professor Dan Gilbert gave a stunning talk at TED2004, outlining research that showed how terrible we are at understanding our own emotional responses to countless everyday situations and choices. He’s now fleshed this out into one of the most […]
Design Like You Give A Damn By Cameron Sinclair Published by Metropolis Books 336 pages | List price: $35.00 I’m delighted to share with you the book created by one of this year’s TEDPrize winners, Cameron Sinclair. Design Like You Give A Damn is just bursting with intriguing and often beautiful examples of how designers […]
Aubrey de Grey‘s claims that aging can be defeated, which he voiced at TEDGLOBAL last year and at TED2006, "exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification". While they "don’t compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists", they’re also "not demonstrably wrong". That’s the overall (in)conclusion […]
Joshua Prince-Ramus is architect of the Seattle Public Library and principal of REX (Ramus-Ella Architects). Previously, he was U.S. Director of Rem Koolhaas’s Office of Metropolitan Architecture. Through a series of beautiful visualizations, he deconstructs the collaborative process of building the Seattle Public Library, and also offers a sneak preview of his works in progress […]