TEDBlog November, 2011 Archive
13 November 2011
Open science now! Michael Nielsen on TED.com
What if every scientist could share their data as easily as they tweet about their lunch? Michael Nielsen calls for scientists to embrace new tools for collaboration that will enable discoveries to happen at the speed of twitter. (Recorded at TEDxWaterloo, March 2011, in Waterloo, Canada. Duration: 16:36.)
Watch Michael Nielsen’s talk on TED.com, where you can rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.
12 November 2011
TEDxWomen: The conversation continues … and you can join
Cross-posted from the TEDx Tumblr: Last year’s TEDWomen conference has inspired an ambitious TEDx event: TEDxWomen, a one-day bi-coastal event held in NY and LA on December 1, independently organized and hosted by Pat Mitchell and The Paley Center for Media.
Speakers including Barbara Walters, singer-songwriter Morley, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem and documentarion Jennifer Siebel Newsom will convene under the theme “The Conversation Continues.”
You can bring this global conversation local by hosting a TEDx viewing event around TEDxWomen in your own community.
Last year, 117 TEDx events in 46 countries — including the United States, Colombia, Singapore, South Africa and Brazil — were planned around the TEDWomen webcast. Speakers at these local events included a pair of Dutch opera singers, an Olympic silver medalist and a Disney-trained animator from the UAE.
This year, be a part of this ongoing conversation around the future of women and girls — host a TEDx event around TEDxWomen. Learn more >>
Keep up with the latest TEDxWomen news on the TEDxWomen website, Facebook page and Twitter.
Photo from TEDxOttawa, Ottawa, Canada
12 November 2011
6 ways to save the internet: Roger McNamee on TED.com
The next big shift is now, and it’s not what you think. Facebook is the new Windows; Google must be sacrificed. At TEDxSantaCruz, tech investor Roger McNamee presents 6 bold ways to prepare for the next internet. (Recorded at TEDxSantaCruz, March 2011, in Santa Cruz, California. Duration: 15:30.)
Watch Roger McNamee’s talk on TED.com, where you can rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.
11 November 2011
The shared experience of absurdity: Charlie Todd on TED.com
Charlie Todd causes bizarre, hilarious, and unexpected public scenes: Seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows, “ghostbusters” running through the New York Public Library, and the annual no-pants subway ride. At TEDxBloomington he shows how his group, Improv Everywhere, uses these scenes to bring people together. (Recorded at TEDxBloomington, May 2011, in Bloomington, Indiana. Duration: 12:04.)
Watch Charlie Todd’s talk on TED.com, where you can rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.
11 November 2011
Fellows Friday with James Patten
Join the conversation by answering Fellows’ weekly questions via TED Conversations. This week, James asks:
If you could give computers one magical power, what would it be and why?
Respond here!
Your studio explores new ways physical objects relate to digital information. Why is that mission important to you?
The way the human body and human mind are set up, we’re incredibly good at using physical objects and interacting with them. That physical world is so rich, yet it’s often neglected in the traditional ways we interact with computers — such as a keyboard and mouse, or even a touch screen. Whatever you’re doing, it feels the same, whether you’re writing a spreadsheet or a love letter. There’s no extra texture, or smell, or any other sensation, besides the visual element. It would be a shame to just totally ignore those other aspects of the physical world.
That’s why I use new technologies to bring back some of that physicality into the digital world. Sometimes the goal is purely functional, like helping somebody in an office do something faster — the sense of touch gives them this feedback that helps them do things more quickly. Sometimes the outcome is simply to be more fun — a richer experience. I try to integrate ways one can interact with computers that are faster, easier to understand, more social, and more fun. That’s something that’s been pretty difficult to do with computers in the past.
What are the kinds of projects you work on at your Patten Studio?
One of my earlier projects, the “Sensetable,” I talk about in my TEDTalk. The Sensetable has a circuit built into the tabletop surface, which tracks the movement of objects on the table. My favorite application of it is one where the objects on the table represent different atoms. You can bring them together to cause a “chemical reaction.” That project is now an exhibit at the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Another interesting piece was the Gravity Harp for Bjork. Some colleagues here in my co-working space asked me to help them with the harp, because in order to get it to actually play music, they needed some very complex control of the motion of the instrument. The original design had 37 pendulums in a ring. That ring was 50 feet wide, and 25 feet tall.
10 November 2011
A map of the brain: Allan Jones on TED.com
How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region, and how it all connects up. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 15:22.)
Watch Allan Jones’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 1,000+ TEDTalks.
09 November 2011
Do you have a lesson to teach? Seeking nominations for TED2012: The Classroom
For the upcoming TED conference — TED2012: Full Spectrum — we’re looking for 10 of the world’s best teachers to take the TED stage during a special session we’re calling The Classroom. We’re accepting video nominations to help track these people down. You can nominate yourself or a remarkable educator we should know about — who doesn’t have to be a teacher in the traditional sense.
If you’re interested: Make a video or point us to an existing video, read the details below, and then nominate yourself or another person >>
After TED, these talks will have a life online as part of TED-Ed, a new initiative we’re launching in 2012. With TED-Ed, we are creating a library of videos sepcifically for educators and students. The videos will be arranged using teacher-centric/learner-centric categories and tags, designed to help teachers quickly discover the perfect video for the lesson at hand. The videos will also be arranged into playlists to give students a multidisciplinary, immersive insight into a learning concept.
The talks we’re looking for will each:
+ be shorter than 10 minutes
+ contain informative material, not just inspiring messages
+ be delivered with a huge amount of passion for the topic
+ engage an audience from age 14 to adult
+ be something you might imagine a teacher using in the classroom as video to supplement a lesson.
We’re especially keen to include brilliant EXPLANATIONS, meaningful A-HA moments, powerful STORIES, indelible IMAGES.
Here are a few links to talks that fit the bill:
Vilayanur Ramachandran on mirror neurons
David Gallo shares underwater astonishments
This explanation of special relativity
Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?
Now, a couple of notes about what we’re not looking for. For this session, we do not want talks about teaching methods, education reform or education in general. We are not looking for an inspiring, “go forth,” commencement-style talk. We do love those sometimes, but they’re not a fit for this session.
The deadline for nominations is November 30, 2011, at midnight Eastern, and we’ll contact the speakers we’ve chosen with invitations (or more questions) by December 12, 2011.
TED2012 takes place February 27-March 2, 2012, in Long Beach, California. The Classroom session will take place on March 2. We’ll cover coach travel, good accommodations, and a pass to TED for those 10 amazing teachers who take the stage.
We hope you’ll share your best lessons (or teachers) with us. Good luck!
Nominate yourself or another person >>
09 November 2011
Celebrating the 10,000th TEDx talk video with the TEDxTalks Index
Amazing news from the TEDx Tumblr: The TEDx program is not yet three years old, but we are already celebrating a major milestone: the 10,000th TEDxTalk video posted to our channel. These talks come from more than 2,600 independently organized events held in 115 different countries and 39 different languages. They have been viewed over 18 million times, with many more events happening each day. We can’t capture the full range of these talks, but this “TEDxTalks index” highlights some interesting stats from this incredible archive:
Number of technology talks: 934
Number of entertainment talks: 1,213
Number of music performances: 744
Number of talks by magicians and hypnotists: 9
Number of didgeridoo performances: 3
Number of loop artists using a didgeridoo: 1
Number of talks by Dan Ariely: 5
Number of talks by Dan Ariely while wearing a cape: 1
09 November 2011
High-tech art (with a sense of humor): Aparna Rao on TED.com
Artist and TED Fellow Aparna Rao re-imagines the familiar in surprising, often humorous ways. With her collaborator Soren Pors, Rao creates high-tech art installations — a typewriter that sends emails, a camera that tracks you through the room only to make you invisible on screen — that put a playful spin on ordinary objects and interactions. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 7:50.)
Watch Aparna Rao’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 1,000+ TEDTalks.
07 November 2011
The line between life and not-life: Martin Hanczyc on TED.com
In his lab, Martin Hanczyc makes “protocells,” experimental blobs of chemicals that behave like living cells. His work demonstrates how life might have first occurred on Earth … and perhaps elsewhere too. (Recorded at TEDSalon Spring 2011, “Beauty/Complexity,” May 2011, in London, UK. Duration: 14:38)
Watch Martin Hanczyc’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 1,000+ TEDTalks.
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