TEDBlog September, 2009 Archive
30 September 2009
Short film contest: Great short commercials welcome
Enter your short film (30 sec to 3 mins) in our first-ever contest — with winners to be shown at TEDIndia this November, to an audience of interesting people from around the world. We’re looking for all kinds of short film: brief narratives, commercials, demos, data visualization, music videos, animations … Deadline for entry: Oct. 12, 2009.
Get details and the brief entry form >>
Every day this week on the TED Blog, we’re featuring a short film that played live at TED; today’s is a beautiful commercial for … something. “Caterpillar” was directed by Filip Engström, with post-production by The Mill. Amazed by the detail? There’s a making-of video too. “Caterpillar” screened at TED2009 in Long Beach and Palm Springs.
Enter TED’s short-film contest >>
30 September 2009
Lewis Pugh’s next cold-water swim: Everest
Lewis Pugh, the epic cold-water swimmer and climate-change activist, has announced his next swim: a kilometer-long lap across a glacial lake at the top of Everest, in a pond of meltwater 17,000 feet up. He told me the swim will highlight climate-change issues in two massive countries bordering Everest, China and India. With their large populations and messy industries, the two giants have long been called on to act (see our Q&A with Parag Khanna for Khanna’s take on this). Realizing the effects of climate change on the pristine environment of Everest shocked him, Pugh said. The lake he’ll swim in, atop Khumbu Glacier, “shouldn’t even be there.”
The swim is set for April 2010. Get more details >>
Watch Lewis Pugh’s TEDTalk from Oxford this summer >>
30 September 2009
Let's revive the Golden Rule: Karen Armstrong on TED.com
Weeks from the Charter for Compassion launch, Karen Armstrong looks at religion’s role in the 21st century: Will its dogmas divide us? Or will it unite us for common good? She reviews the catalysts that can drive the world’s faiths to rediscover the Golden Rule. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK.Duration: 09:55)
Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/3W
Watch Karen Armstrong’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 500+ TEDTalks.
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29 September 2009
Short film contest: Deadline extended to Oct. 12
Enter your short film (30 sec to 3 mins) in our first-ever short film contest — with winners to be shown at the TEDIndia conference this November, to an audience of creative and influential people from around the world. NEW: Extended deadline for entry: Oct. 12, 2009.
Get details and the brief entry form >>
TED’s always been a showcase for great short film. Every day this week on the TED Blog, we’ll feature a short film that played live at TED; today’s is a hypnotic exploration of data called “Flight Patterns,” by Aaron Koblin. The 3-minute film uses FAA flight data to create shimmering animations of flight traffic patterns and density. Find a high-res version of this film at Aaron Koblin’s website. “Flight Patterns” screened at TED2007 in Monterey.
Enter TED’s short-film contest >>
29 September 2009
TED Fellows on CNN: Darius Weems and Logan Smalley
TED Fellows Darius Weems and Logan Smalley recently appeared on CNN to talk about their inspiring documentary adventure Darius goes West:
From the TED Fellows Blog:
“On Sunday, Darius turned 20 and was able to watch “Darius Goes West” on MTVU and MTV2. In its first ever TV premier, “Darius Goes West” was broadcast into over 80 million homes around the world!
Darius’ birthday on September 27th marked the end of their yearlong road trip, having raised nearly 2 million dollars for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy research (and counting!).
Congratulations, Darius and Logan!”
Want to learn more about Darius and Logan? Visit the Darius goes West website here >>
29 September 2009
Design thinking about climate change: IDEO's new LivingClimateChange.com
Launching today, the design firm IDEO presents LivingClimateChange.com, a clearinghouse for design thinking about the environment. Watch Tim Brown’s TEDTalk, just posted today, for some inspiring examples of design thinking that solved big problems of the past. In the same spirit, IDEO’s LivingClimateChange.com collects ideas looking forward. From the site:
Living Climate Change is a place where the most defining challenge of our time is explored through design thinking. It’s also a place to show, discuss, and share compelling and provocative thoughts and ideas about the future.
Check out LivingClimateChange.com >>
Also quite interesting: Linda Tischler from FastCompany interviews Tim Brown about how design thinking can improve democracy >>
29 September 2009
A call for "design thinking": Tim Brown on TED.com
Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory “design thinking.” (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK.Duration: 16:50)
Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/3U
Watch Tim Brown’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 500+ TEDTalks.
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28 September 2009
Enter your short film to be shown at TEDIndia
Attention filmmakers: Enter your short film (30 sec to 3 mins) in our first-ever short film contest — with winners to be shown at the TEDIndia conference this November, to an audience of creative and influential people from around the world. Deadline for entry: Oct. 2, 2009. Get details and the brief entry form >>
TED’s always been a showcase for great short film, running shorts between speakers as a palate-cleanser and conversation-starter. Every day this week on the TED Blog, we’ll feature a short film that played live at TED; today’s is the clever “How to Make a Baby,” a short and somewhat educational film from Cassidy Curtis and Raquel Coelho. Find out more about this film on their site, with notes on how they made the film. “How to Make a Baby” screened at TED2009 in Long Beach and Palm Springs.
Enter TED’s short-film contest >>
28 September 2009
Q&A with Parag Khanna: Redrawing the map for a safe, secure world
Last week, Parag Khanna sat with the TED Blog to discuss no less than the political future of the world we live in. He works in the expansive field of geopolitics, and his TEDTalk discusses the history and future of some of the world’s most troubled states and the possibilities of a borderless world. In this interview, he expanded on his theories, delving into the causes of terrorism, the impact of the G20, a solution for Sudan and more.
Can you explain exactly what it is that you do? Your title is Director of the Global Governance Initiative of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, and I’m not sure that we all know precisely what that means.
It’s essentially designed to be misleading so that no one will ever actually know what I truly do. (Laughter) And most of the ambiguity rests in the fact that what people struggle to grasp is that at think tanks a lot of people, like me, actually get paid to do whatever we want. So that explains it, partially.
But let me start at the top level — the New America Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, and it’s one of the youngest and definitely the hottest think tank in Washington. And it has, as in other places, a mix of domestic and foreign policy experts, and it’s run by Steve Coll, the former Washington Post editor, and the chairman of the board is Eric Schmidt of Google, and it’s a very dynamic and lively place.
The American Strategy Program is the foreign-policy wing of the think tank, and it has people like Peter Bergen from CNN and myself and others. And the Global Governance Initiative is my particular program, in which I’m exploring the future of diplomacy, not just from the perspective of what happens to intergovernmental relations and the United Nations and standing institutions like the World Bank, but rather how do all of the important actors in the world today, like News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Initiative, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the US government — all of these players exist in a very complicated diplomatic knit. And my project is intended to clarify what the new patterns of diplomacy are among them: How are they cooperating? What issues are they cooperating on? What’s their purpose? Diplomacy is the future of understanding how we run the world, basically.
That’s a very interesting position to be in. Have you seen any of your work creating any influence or ripples in the world around you?
Should I speak for myself or New America Foundation as a whole?
Both, if you can.
Well, what I do is I tend to go to countries and interview the leaders, but I don’t interview them like a journalist. I talk to their leaders as someone who’s developed a certain knowledge or expertise on emerging markets or rising powers. And I don’t so much interview people as I debate with them, and I argue with them, and I get them to say what they really believe, not what they want to see in the newspaper tomorrow. And that’s how I gathered the material for my book, in addition to reading a hell of a lot and traveling around countries and talking to all sorts of people.
I can’t take responsibility for the policies that other countries develop, but I’ve built up a substantial network of young and current leaders in a lot of countries and I have regular interactions with them on important issues. With the US government, I’ve worked with the Department of Defense advising on the US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. I can’t actually talk about the specific things that went on there. As with many people who’ve been involved in the conflicts over there, I’ve tried to assert a certain way in which things should go, but influence is a very complicated landscape. We keep on pushing and pushing on certain issues, in the hope of seeing some kind of change.
New America Foundation has had a lot of success in areas like education policy, tax policy, climate policy as well — it’s a very progressive place. But the question of influence is very interesting, and I think people should ask themselves more seriously — whether they’re journalists or think tank people or academics — “What’s the measure of my influence?” Is someone influential because millions of people read his column, or does anything actually ever change according to what he suggested or recommended? We tend to conflate the two measurements of visibility versus a change. I, for one, I like to set the bar very high and say, “Did something change?”
That’s very inspiring. I’d like to delve some more into application and talk about relatively current events. Obama’s been in office for a little over half a year, and when he was elected the global attitude toward him was much friendlier. Do you think that this friendlier global climate really will prove advantageous to the United States in diplomacy and foreign relations?
I think when people are struggling to understand public opinion toward the United States between the Bush administration and the Obama administration, there’s a very simple explanation that I never hear people give, which is that when Obama was running for President, he didn’t represent America, he represented the anti-Bush and a different America. But now that he’s President and represents America, he’s conflated again, so that Obama equals America. If American policy is still bad, now Obama takes the blame rather than Bush taking the blame. So if you want to explain the fall-off or drop-off in popularity or approval for Obama, that is how you’d explain it. Because people want or expect change instantaneously, and obviously they’re not going to get that because the power of inertia is so great.
Not only is the power of inertia great, in the case of the war in Iraq — where in fact he’s been very fast, he’s been pulling troops out — but it still takes time. In Afghanistan, his very controversial decision is that he’s trying to increase the number of troops there. In many people’s eyes that means deepening an occupation, digging in deeper, and that obviously also isn’t necessarily popular.
Now, I do believe he was quite revolutionary in his early diplomacy. He reached out within the first 100 days to the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and a whole host of countries that the Bush administration considered rogue states. And he said, “Look, it’s time to start anew, it’s time to work on pragmatic interests.” He canceled this whole missile defense plan that had no strategic defense whatsoever and that had been hampering American relations with Russia for years and years. And overnight, he just changed it. So I think he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for quickstarting a process in the first 100 days. And, of course, people will be disappointed if they don’t see reciprocal results right away. But they’re just not going to. That’s not the way it works. I still have a lot of faith in the process that he has initiated.
READ MORE: Parag Khanna discusses the G20, a solution for Sudan, terrorism and borders, explains who’s really going to address climate change and how we may yet come to live in a borderless world. (more…)
28 September 2009
Mapping the future of countries: Parag Khanna on TED.com
Many people think the lines on the map no longer matter, but Parag Khanna says they do. Using maps of the past and present, he explains the root causes of border conflicts worldwide and proposes simple yet cunning solutions for each.(Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK.Duration: 18:53)
Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/3S
Watch Parag Khanna’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 500+ TEDTalks.
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