TEDBlog January, 2011 Archive
31 January 2011
Ads Worth Spreading: Last call for entries!
With only one week to deadline, we’re making a final call for submissions to the Ads Worth Spreading challenge — TED’s initiative to find, recognize and reward the most innovative campaigns around. To date, there have been incredibly promising entries, but the search isn’t over yet.
Whether you’re a well-heeled creative professional or an indie media whiz, if you’ve created a piece every bit as compelling as your favorite TED talk, submit your entry here by Monday, February 7 at 11:59 PM EST. If you’ve recently seen work that inspires you, nudge its creators to do the same.
What we are looking for can be:
+ a beautifully produced, :60 cinematic TV spot for a top brand
+ a long-form 3-minute video too long for network but perfect for online
+ a spec spot that has a hugely compelling idea or new use of technology
+ an online video of your CEO giving a short, TED-like talk about your company’s idea to change the world
+ a PSA that makes you cry and click Share
The 10 best campaigns will be announced on the main stage at TED2011 in Long Beach, get incredible exposure on YouTube’s home page and spend a week on TED.com as post-roll, with a member of each winning team invited to spend a day at TED2011 in Long Beach and attend an exclusive celebration in March. For more information, visit Ads Worth Spreading on TED.com >>
28 January 2011
Fellows Friday with Evgeny Morozov
Interactive Fellows Friday Feature!
Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via Facebook. This week, Evgeny asks:
What’s one event that made you rethink the political power of the Internet in the last 12 months and why?
Click here to respond!
Tell us how you came to write your book.
The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom came out the first week of 2011. It draws on my work in Eastern Europe and Central Asia — basically the former Soviet space. I used to work for an NGO called Transitions Online, and I was their Director of New Media. I was a very idealistic fellow who thought that he could use blogs, social networks and new media to help promote democracy, human rights and freedom of expression. So I spent two and a half years traveling widely in the region, working with bloggers, activists and journalists, teaching them how to use blogs and wikis and social networks.
Much of our work was funded by various Western foundations and governments. After two and a half or three years of doing that, I began having second thoughts about the usefulness of new media and the usefulness of the Internet. I began seeing how many of the governments that we hoped to oppose with the help of new media, were actually beginning to react to what we were doing with their own online activities.
Some of the governments were beginning to pay bloggers to spread propaganda. Some of them were beginning to use social networking sites to track protesters and to gather information about the opposition. Some of them were beginning to use technologies supplied by Western companies to censor conversations online, or even to censor various text messages exchanged by protesters.
So I decided to take some time off, and spend a year or two examining some of the fundamental assumptions that drove my work in the past. I wanted to see where I may have been wrong, and why it was that the Internet was suddenly powering authoritarian governments as well. The book is really the result of this very hands-on empirical work, some intellectual reflections, and an analysis of some of the efforts that the American government has made in this space.
What is your broader agenda for the book? What are you trying to accomplish?
First of all, my hope for the book is that policymakers will recognize that the Internet is not only a tool of liberation, but that it’s also a tool of oppression. In many contexts, it oppresses more than it liberates.
Secondly, I try to offer a framework for policymakers and decision makers. I call it “cyber-realism,” which can supplement or replace, hopefully, the current ideology. The current ideology, which I dub “cyber-utopianism,” is the belief that the Internet is inherently liberating. I think that this is a very bad way to frame the debate, in particular the policy debate.
26 January 2011
Why TED Books? A Q&A with TED’s curator, Chris Anderson
On today’s launch of the TED Books imprint, TED’s Chris Anderson talks with the TED Blog about the big idea behind it — publishing short, vital nonfiction books to the Kindle platform. Read more about TED Books and our first three titles …
Tell me why the world needs TEDBooks …
The main reading choices we have today are to browse a newspaper or magazine, or to try to dig into a full-length book. TED Books offer a new choice: a powerful idea that can be absorbed in a single read of an hour or so. We think this is going to appeal to large numbers of people who are curious, eager to learn, but also time-constrained. The success of TED Talks has shown there’s a huge global appetite for ideas delivered in succinct form. We think that applies to reading just as much as listening.
What inspired you to start this project?
For several years, we’ve been pondering whether TED should be doing books. Books have of course long been the prime way in which “ideas worth spreading” are circulated. But we couldn’t quite come up with a publishing concept that could be made available to large numbers of our speakers and to other potential idea generators. However, seeing the explosive growth of e-book platforms like Kindle and iPad got us thinking. And the question that wouldn’t go away was: why are books the length they are? Is it because it inherently takes 300 pages to explain an idea? Or is it more to do with the traditions of book publishing in print? Was it possible that in today’s fast-moving world with so many demands on people’s time that there was an opportunity for a shorter type of book? One that could be absorbed in a single reading session, one that could allow many brilliant people who would have no chance of taking off a year to write a traditional book to nonetheless become authors? We had seen from our experience of TED Talks that by constraining speakers to 18 minutes, it was often the case that “less is more.” And as we shared the idea with trusted advisers in the TED community, we saw real excitement, and the sense that this was an idea whose time has come.
What’s next?
We plan to continue regular releases of new TED Books. Many will come from existing TED speakers who will dig deeper into the topics initiated in their talks. Others will come from new authors with ideas the world needs to know about. We view this as a thrilling new part of our “ideas worth spreading” platform and look forward to letting it reach its full potential. We will be exploring plans under which people can subscribe to every new release as it comes along. And for ways of hosting conversations around each book. Watch this space!
26 January 2011
Introducing TED Books
Today, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of TED Books, an imprint of short nonfiction works designed for digital distribution. Shorter than traditional books, TED Books run less than 20,000 words each — long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting. Books are available on the Kindle and Kindle Reader apps, and cost $2.99 each.
We launch with three titles from TEDTalks stars:
Nic Marks: The Happiness Manifesto: How Nations and People Can Nurture Well-Being
Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans: Homo Evolutis: Please Meet the Next Human Species
Gever Tulley: Beware Dangerism! Why We Worry About the Wrong Things, and What It’s Doing to Our Kids
“The success of TEDTalks has demonstrated that millions of people around the world are hungry to absorb new ideas,” said TED curator Chris Anderson. “But not everyone has the time to go out and read an entire book on an interesting subject. TED Books fill that gap. Their shorter format allows someone to see an idea fleshed out in a satisfying way — without having to set aside a week of reading time.” Read more of Chris Anderson’s thought on TED Books >>
TED Books are launching as part of Amazon’s brand-new Kindle Singles imprint. (Read their press release.) As Amazon told us: “Our goal with Singles is to allow compelling ideas to be expressed at their natural length. TEDBooks fit nicely within that mission,” said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content. “TED has a great history of bringing important ideas to a wider audience, and we expect TEDB ooks will add to that legacy.”
Read the full TED Books press release >>
Watch TEDTalks from these TED Books authors >>
26 January 2011
Drawing upon humor for change: Liza Donnelly on TED.com
New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly shares a portfolio of her wise and funny cartoons about modern life — and talks about how humor can empower women to change the rules. (Recorded at TEDWomen, December 2010, in Washington, DC. Duration: 6:43)
Watch Liza Donnelly’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 800+ TEDTalks.
22 January 2011
“I couldn’t turn away”: Part 2 of our Q&A with Deborah Rhodes
In the second part of our conversation with Dr. Deborah Rhodes (read Part One), we talk about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and her partnership with the Panzi Hospital, which serves victims of sexual violence there. She tells the incredibly disturbing story that got her involved, and discusses what can be done to help American doctors contribute in a lasting way.
I also understand you recently returned from a trip to the Panzi Hospital in the Congo.
Yes, and that visit was also inspired by a patient story. A patient said to me, “Well, of course you know what’s going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” I didn’t. She knew of this hospital that served girls and women that had been raped as a result of this ongoing war, where rape has become one of the primary weapons of war. She described these women making their way, sometimes taking days walking, to try to get to this hospital, this place of refuge, where they could go because they had been raped so badly that they had incontinence as a result. She told me one specific story of a baby that was so haunting that I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
Several days later, a friend approached me and said, “I think you’d really enjoy meeting this woman, who is the UN special assistant for women and children affected by global warfare.” My jaw just dropped. “You’re kidding me.” She came in my office, and I said, “I feel like I’m sitting outside Dachau reading that sign that says ‘never again,’ and here it is, and we’re all looking the other way.”
I thought she was going to say, “We’re the professionals, we’re aware of the situation, we’re handling it, and there’s nothing you can do.” Instead, she said, “The situation in DRC is far worse than you can possibly imagine. I think the best thing you can do is get a group of doctors together and go over there, not only to help, but to bring attention to this problem.”
21 January 2011
Games that launch companies, games that heal: Q&A with Jane McGonigal
Jane McGonigal is a game designer with an apparently simple idea: some of the billions of hours we spend playing games can be used to solve real world problems, and it can be done by playing games. Her new book, Reality Is Broken, explores the power of games to change people’s lives. It’s just out this week. The TED Blog caught up with her in the middle of the release to talk about games, saving the world, and the simple power of Angry Birds.
Since your TEDTalk, you’ve managed a full run of Evoke, you social entrepreneurship game.
It was really exciting! We were just formally announcing Evoke at TED. That was our first glimpse to see if people would be interested in it, excited about it. We were able to run the game a few months later, a ten-week crash course in changing the world. Our original goals were to try to enroll a thousand students in the game, and we wound up enrolling just under 20,000. We had them from over a 130 countries, all playing the same game and collaborating with each other, which was really amazing.
The most eye-opening outcomes were how many real-world businesses, real-world social enterprises were founded by players of the game over the course of the ten weeks, and then actually launched in the summer following the game. We have more than fifty social enterprises started by gamers. Companies that were designed to deal locally with issues like food security, clean water access, women’s education. That was pretty much a first; the idea that you could come play a game and ten weeks later wind up with a real social enterprise.
One example is this great project called Libraries Across Africa. The idea is basically, what if there were a McDonalds of libraries? What if you could have a franchise for libraries and that the people who would implement and start a library in a village, or anywhere, that it would be a money-making venture, a self-supporting venture, and that other enterprises could pop up around the act of lending books to people: selling them food, selling them phone service or internet access. What a super-creative, novel idea to try to franchise libraries. That came out of the game, and it’s actually in development now. They have their first library prototype in the field.
21 January 2011
Silicon-based comedy: Heather Knight on TED.com
In this first-of-its-kind demo, Heather Knight introduces Data, a robotic stand-up comedian that does much more than rattle off one-liners — it gathers audience feedback (using software co-developed with Scott Satkin and Varun Ramakrishna at CMU) and tunes its act as the crowd responds. Is this thing on? (Recorded at TEDWomen, December 2010, in Washington, DC. Duration: 6:05)
Watch Heather Knight‘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 800+ TEDTalks.
21 January 2011
Fellows Friday with Ben Gulak
Interactive Fellows Friday Feature!
Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via Facebook. This week, Ben asks:
In your everyday life, what have you seen that could be redesigned to better the world?
Click here to respond!
Tell us about your inventions. What was your inspiration to create them?
The Shredder is a new kind of all-terrain vehicle. In a recession it doesn’t make sense to have to buy an expensive snowmobile that you can ride for three months of the year and an ATV that you can ride for four months of the year. I wanted to make something small enough that you could fit it in the back of any car. And I wanted it to be something you’d be able to ride all year, whether in snow, sand, or mud. Something that would be really all-terrain, all year.
With that in mind, my partner Ryan Ferris and I came up with this cool stand-up power sport vehicle. It’s almost like a skateboard that you ride. It’s really a crossover between extreme and power sport. That’s where the idea started. It turns out that it’s this really compact modular platform that the military is interested in, for a whole bunch of other applications, as well.
The Uno started off as a high school science project. I got the idea when my dad had a business trip to China and my mom and I went along. This was at a time when global warming was really taking front and center in the news. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had just come out, and they were talking about pollution almost every day. I was at more or less the epicenter where all this bad stuff was happening. I remember reading in the paper that everyday 20,000 new cars were hitting Chinese roadways. I thought for my next science fair project I wanted to do something green.
20 January 2011
Visualizing the medical data explosion: Anders Ynnerman on TED.com
Today medical scans produce thousands of images and terabytes of data for a single patient in mere seconds, but how do doctors parse this information and determine what’s useful? At TEDxGöteborg, scientific visualization expert Anders Ynnerman shows us sophisticated new tools — like virtual autopsies — for analyzing this myriad data, and a glimpse at some sci-fi-sounding medical technologies in development. This talk contains some graphic medical imagery. (Recorded at TEDxGöteborg, November 2010, in Göteborg, Sweden. Duration: 16:37)
Watch Anders Ynnerman‘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 800+ TEDTalks.
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