TEDBlog July, 2010 Archive
16 July 2010
The politics of fiction: Elif Shafak on TED.com
Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2010, July 2010 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 19:46)
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
Watch Elif Shafak’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 700+ TEDTalks.
16 July 2010
Scenes from the first global TEDxLive event
The TEDx blog has a charming report on the TEDxLive events happening around the world during TEDGlobal:
For this year’s TEDGlobal, TEDx organizers were offered the chance to host a TEDxLive — a gathering around a live webcast of the conference.
Among them was TEDxDubaiLive, who enjoyed TEDGlobal talks from Jamil Abu Wardeh and Naif Al-Mutawa, who both spoke at TEDxDubai.
At Boom Chicago, a comedy club in Amsterdam, TEDxAmsterdamLive hosted independant programming during TEDGlobal breaks, with local speakers and performers including Pim Betist of Africa Unsigned and composer Merlijin Twaalfhoven.
At TEDxChennaiLive, talks were interspersed with conversation and — when the power failed at TEDGlobal — they showed Richard John’s TEDTalk on “8 Secrets of Success” …
Read the TED’x blog’s full report on the first TEDxLive global event >>
16 July 2010
Report from TEDGlobal Session 12: Waging Peace
Founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange talks to Chris Anderson about the controversial nature of his website’s practice of finding and releasing classified documents to the public.
Stefan Wolff says that ethnic conflict and civil war have been in overall decline in recent years. But, we need leaders who are willing and able to make peace, civil society and honest institutions to end conflict.
Eric Berlow wants us to recognize the difference between complexity and complication. If you step back, embrace complexity and take in the whole picture, you may find patterns that will lead you to simple solutions.
William Perrin lived in the rough neighborhood of King’s Cross, London. He explains that instead of moving he set up a website to help with local campaigning and drive community action, and people took notice.
Malika Sarabhai uses dance to express the voices of women everywhere.
Zainab Salbi says that we are missing the critical stories of women who keep everyday life going while wars are happening. She says these voices must be heard at the negotiating table and we must invest in women and girls to build peace.
16 July 2010
Report from TEDGlobal Session 11: The Tiny Blue Dot
Johan Rockstroem calls for transformative change in the way we treat the environment. He says we’re putting a quadruple squeeze on the planet: Population growth, climate agenda, ecosystem decline and the element of surprise.
Vice-president of WWF, Jason Clay is not just encouraging consumers to buy sustainable products, but leveraging companies to create a future where all that exists is sustainable product.
Photographer Rachel Sussman shows her long-ranging project to document the oldest organisms in the world, all over 2,000 years old, from baobab trees to brain corals.
Senior TED Fellow Rachel Armstrong wants to create technologies that could make a positive impact on the environment, like solar panels that can make biofuels and buildings that can fix carbon dioxide.
Ze Frank talks about his endearing web projects, from the portait series Project YoungMeNowMe to the volunteer remixes he collected of a song written by a dad for a frustrated daughter. Ultimately, he says, what we’re trying to do is connect with other people, and it’s happening — virtually.
Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov reveals the Kepler telescope findings. He says planets like Earth are out there and we may be able to determine which are habitable.
16 July 2010
TEDGlobal mashup: "Sweet Hurdy Gurdy Dreams"
From Sylvain Zimmer’s liveblog of TEDGlobal … a musical moment.
16 July 2010
Download: Hurdy-gurdy from Caroline Phillips and Bidaia
Earlier this week, Californian-born, French-resident entrepreneur and musician Caroline Phillips told the TED University participants at TEDGlobal about the hurdy-gurdy, a polyphonic instrument that is over 1,000 years old and was played throughout Europe — while only a handful of people play it today, including Phillips. Her short performance captivated the audience, which asked for an encore.
Caroline has created a link for TEDsters to freely download the album she recorded together with Mixel Ducau, her partner in the duo Bidaia. The album is called Oihan, which in the Basque language is a first name meaning “Forest.”
Download Oihan, from Bidaia >>
16 July 2010
TEDGlobal snapshot: Taping "The Forum" for BBC World Service
After Session 10 wrapped, TEDGlobal hosted a taping of the BBC World Service program “The Forum,” a weekly radio show about that brings three very different thinkers together to share and debate new ideas. Host Bridget Kendall, at right, laughs with her panel of TEDsters, from left: Ethan Zuckerman (watch his TEDTalk from this conference), comedian Maz Jobrani, and Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
The show will be available as a podcast on Sunday, July 18.
15 July 2010
Report from TEDGlobal Session 10: Who's the Teacher?
Sugata Mitra shares his amazing experiences with self-organized, self-directed learning by kids. He drops off a computer and a task, to come back to children working together to learn new and complex information.
Conrad Wolfram wants to revolutionize math education by recognizing the role of computers in calculation. Why are we teaching kids how to solve long, difficult problems by hand when we could be teaching them how to solve more complex problems through computer programming?
Ralph Simon asks, “What makes a really good song?” In response, he tell the stories behind the hits “My Sharona” and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
Game designer Tom Chatfield thinks that we can learn a lot about engaging both crowds and individuals in real life from virtual reality.
Chris Anderson proposes that the rise of online video has given birth to a new concept — crowd-accelerated innovation. He notes that cycles of improvement, from better TEDTalks to better breakdance, have been driven by people watching videos on the web.
15 July 2010
Group photo: TED Translators, TEDx hosts
More than 3,000 people have volunteered to translate TEDTalks into (at last count) 77 languages. Above are some of those dedicated volunteers, on the plaza of the Ashmolean Museum after Session 9 for a breezy group portrait.
The group below, clearly bursting with energy, are TEDx hosts — people who run independent TED-like events in their home communities. In the year since the program began, there have been almost 60 TEDx events worldwide, from Washington, DC, to Kibera, to Beijing. Find out more about TEDx — including events near you:
Photos: TED / Robert Leslie
15 July 2010
Report from TEDGlobal Session 9: The Unknown Brains
TED Senior Fellow Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo performs one of her poems, on identity and pride, a favorite of her mother’s.
Gero Miesenboeck says that if we can learn to control the activities of neurons, we can begin to truly understand the brain. He shows the advances he’s made in manipulating the brains of flies, even through genetic engineering.
According to Heribert Watzke, cooking is a more important technology than we might think — it allowed us to eat otherwise inedible foods and feed our big brains. He also says that so much nervous tissue has been found in the gut, you might say we have a “big brain” and a “gut brain.” How we can cook to stimulate it?
Gina Rudan is redefining genius as practical genius. We’ve all got soft personal assets and hard professional assets, and it’s at that intersection of the two that our genius zone lies. We all possess practical genius, it’s up to us to share it responsibly.
Stefano Mancuso thinks we underestimate plants. Plants do move, play, respond to gravity, sleep and communicate. But, how do they do this without a brain? He says that plants, in fact, do have brains.
Sebastian Seung asks “Are we more than our genes?” He thinks we are our connectomes — the combination of our neural connections. He wants to capture a microscopic image of every neuron and synpapse in a vast database and hopefully, someday, map an entire human connectome.
Find stories on the TED Blog about:
Become a Fan of TED
on Facebook
Follow TED on Twitter:
@TEDNews | @TEDTalks
Subscribe to TED RSS feeds:
TED Blog | More RSS Options
