TEDBlog February, 2009 Archive
10 February 2009
How I caught the mosquito
We had two great editorial photographers at TED2009 in Long Beach — the brilliant Asa Mathat and James Duncan Davidson. As luck would have it, Duncan was the shooter who happened to be in the right place to catch Bill Gates’ now-famous mosquito release. Read how Duncan got the shot. In the enlargement above, it’s clear that, yes, they were real.
Photo (enlargement): James Duncan Davidson
10 February 2009
MoMA Atlantic Pacific: Art on rails
New York’s Museum of Modern Art takes over a subway station this month, papering Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street stop with 50 images of classic modern art from MoMA. They write:
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, walk through the station to see images of works by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Charles Eames, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and many other great artists, filmmakers, and designers.
We love it because, first of all, some of us go through that station. And because to spend 30 days seeing so much art, on your way to somewhere else, might open your eyes and do something good to your soul, unveiling connections between you, the city and your own creative genius.
Photo: Jeff Baxter / MoMA
09 February 2009
A cure for post-TED blahs: Google Ocean demo
Your humble TED bloggers were deep into TED2009 prep when this demo dropped last week — so let’s catch up. Watch Sylvia Earle, a winner of the 2009 TED Prize, as she narrates this demo of Google Ocean, an extension of Google Earth:
09 February 2009
Unveiling: TED's plans for subtitles, transcripts, translations
Last week at TED2009, we unveiled the next phase of TED.com, which will bring TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world. The new features — slated to launch next month — will bring subtitles and interactive transcripts to all the talks, and will allow anyone, anywhere, to translate any talk into any language.
Rather than simply translate talks into a handful of major languages, we’re developing an open, crowd-sourced solution that puts translation tools in the hands of users. This approach is scalable, and — importantly — allows speakers of less-dominant languages an equal opportunity to spread ideas within their communities and in their native tongues.
To seed the site, a number of talks will be professionally translated into a few dozen languages — including Pashto, Persian, Swahili, Hausa, Thai, Tamil … From there, we’ll tap into the energy and skills of TED viewers worldwide to help us translate the talks. Note: It must be said that this open approach to translation is new, unproven and not entirely easy to implement! But we believe in the power of open-source solutions, and have confidence that the community of passionate TED users worldwide will help us move this program forward.
Along with subtitles, we’ll also provide interactive transcripts for each talk, which allow you to select any sentence in the talk, and be taken directly to the appropriate moment in the video. The transcripts will be fully indexable by search engines, revealing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, someone searching on Google for “green roof” would find the moment in architect William McDonough‘s talk when he discusses Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter‘s talk when she spoke of her green roof project in the South Bronx.
If you’re interested in joining our budding community of translators, we’d love to hear from you at subtitles@ted.com. TED translators won’t be paid for their translation work (just as TED speakers aren’t paid to present), but they will be credited by name on TED.com and also receive some other perks.
We’re so thrilled by the possibility presented by these new features, and grateful to our sponsor, Nokia, for underwriting the translation program and amplifying our efforts to spread ideas.
09 February 2009
A different way to think about creative genius: Elizabeth Gilbert on TED.com
Fresh from TED2009, Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk. (Recorded February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 19:29.)
Watch Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 360+ TEDTalks — including more talks about creativity.
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07 February 2009
Thanks to our TED2009 live bloggers
Thanks to the amazing Ethan Zuckerman (right) and Erik Hersman (left) for their coverage this week, live from Blogger’s Alley at TED2009 in Palm Springs. Dive into their blog posts from TED2009 — and their other fascinations — here:
Ethan Zuckerman’s … My Heart’s in Accra >>
Erik Hersman at White African >>
Photo: TED / James Duncan Davidson
07 February 2009
TED2009 minutes from Ethan Zuckerman: Engaging minds
Ethan Zuckerman is blogging live from TED2009, and has the latest from the very last session of the conference, “Engage.” In one entry, he shares his memory of being a student at Bennington College when Liz Coleman was appointed president, while she speaks on educational reform. Here’s an excerpt:
“In 1993, Coleman eliminated presumptive tenure from Bennington and fired a third of the professors. That helped cement her reputation as a radical reformer in higher education and an expert on the importance of the liberal arts. (It also means that some of us remember her as a very controversial and divisive figure.)”
Also from this session, Ethan writes on Jay Walker‘s observations on the global English language craze, Gever Tully and his Tinkering School where kids play with power tools and Jamie Cullum‘s charismatic performance. There’s also a post about the moving talk by Barry Schwartz on practical wisdom.
Ethan has done a remarkable job, posting about talks almost as they are happening and including all the relevant details. He’s got everything you need to know about TED2009.
07 February 2009
Twitter Snapshot: Dan Ariely on testing our intuition
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely gave a thought-provoking presentation on human irrationality and intuition in this morning’s first session at TED2009. Here are some attendees’ reactions via Twitter:
Dan Ariely became intersted in behavioral science while in hospital & thinking abt what hurts more: rip off bandage fast or slow — brainpicker
Dan Ariely: “A lot of people cheat a little bit regardless of incentive or risk.” — heartnsoul
“Signing an honor code reduced cheating significantly.” — heartnsoul
Dan Ariely shares a lesson from behavioral economics “We have many intuitions in life, and many of those intuitions are wrong.” — brainpicker
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely at #ted gives great talk on cheating/intuition. “Unless we test our intuitions we won’t do better” — HelenWalters
Ariely is killer awesome. He shows the nuances for predictability instead of painting a b&w picture of economics and stats. — missrogue
Our intuition says that TED really liked Dan. Is Twitter snapshot a viable test?
07 February 2009
TED2009 minutes from Ethan Zuckerman: Optimistic predictions
Ethan Zuckerman is liveblogging TED2009, and has posted his notes from the morning session, “Predict.” Despite current troubles, speakers were decidedly optimistic for the future. Here’s an excerpt from Ethan’s article on Alex Tabarrok:
“Tabarrok sees growth coming from new ideas. He believes that future growth comes from ideas that have high R&D costs, but low production costs. He quotes Jefferson, with the wonderful maxim about knowledge, that he who lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening me. As he phrases it, ‘One apple feeds one man, one idea can feed the world.’ “
Of course, there’s much more to see on Ethan’s blog. He has notes on statistician Nate Silver‘s discussion of the presidential elections and race, as well as political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita with predictions on Iran. There’s also an update from Nicholas Negroponte on his One Laptop per Child program and a discussion about Dan Ariely and asking questions.
A positive outlook on the future may be what we all need now.
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