The 2013 Webby winners are in, and we are thoroughly humbled by the number of times we see the word “TED” in the list. For each Webby category, there are two big winners: the Webby Winner, the site picked by judges, and the People’s Voice winner, the site that won the popular vote online. In […]
Photographer Camille Seaman sees the personality in elements of nature. The TED Fellow thrilled us at TED2011 with her haunting photos of polar ice — some glaciers timid, others proud and defiant — and, at TED2013, shared stunning images of supercell clouds, which she characterizes as “lovely monsters.” We are very excited that Seaman has […]
[ted id=484] “I wanted to reframe the way we use information, the way we work together.” Such was the kernel of an idea from one Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer working at CERN back in the 1980s. Working on this idea was a side project for Berners-Lee, one dubbed “vague but exciting” by his boss […]
[ted id=1727] Taylor Wilson has been called “The Boy Who Played With Fusion” by Popular Science magazine. At age 9, Wilson stunned tour guides at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with his complex understanding of rocket science. At 12, he set out to make a “star in a jar.” By 14, Wilson […]
Last week, TED speakers Robert Gordon and Erik Brynjolfsson joined us for a live, one-hour debate on the future of the US economy. It was a furious hour of typing, with both speakers contributing just over 1,500 words in response to a wide variety of user questions. A few highlights: Ryan Zeigler asks: Mr. Brynjolfsson, […]
In today’s talk, Nilofer Merchant gives a startling statistic: we’re sitting, on average, for 9.3 hours per day—far more than the 7.7 hours we spend sleeping. “Sitting is so incredibly prevalent, we don’t even question how much we’re doing it,” Merchant says. “In that way, sitting has become the smoking of our generation.” But there […]
Language is at the heart of all our interactions — whether you’re texting, emailing, talking, singing or heatedly debating. So of course, quite a few TED Talks are about the art of language. That’s why we created the new TED playlist, “Words, words, words.” Included in this playlist: Mark Pagel reveals how language transformed humanity, […]
Completely paralyzed except for his eyes, graffiti artist Tony “TEMPT” Quan could no longer create his art, let alone communicate with his family. When entrepreneur Mick Ebeling met Quan, he was determined to help the artist accomplish both of these things. Thus, the EyeWriter was born — a pair of glasses with hardware that allows […]
A weekly round-up of interesting, weird and useful reads from around the interwebs. In “The wrong kind of Caucasian,” Sarah Kendzior critiques the media for its tendency to demonize an entire country based on the violent acts of a few individuals. [Al Jazeera] “The Internet: A Warning from History,” or how the Internet ruined everything. […]
Designs for rethinking the toilet, how to transcend tragedy and a look at “soft,” flexible robotics — these topics are all covered in featured TEDx Talks this week. Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community and its diverse constellation of ideas worth […]
On an unseasonably chilly Monday evening in Manhattan, hundreds stood in line in Times Square for up to two hours. As a city-dweller for seven years, I’ve seen queues this long for big Broadway openings or on New Year’s Eve. But this line was formed for a very different purpose — for people to have […]
Conceptual artist Alicia Eggert uses words as found objects in her sculptural art — a body of work that serves as an ongoing investigation of time. Here, she tells us about taking her neon piece “You are (on) an island” to various locations in the world, shares how childhood experiences in South Africa sparked her […]
David Pogue is a member of a very select club. As of today, he’s one of the few people with four talks featured on TED.com. (Two others who’ve reached this mark: Julian Treasure and Juan Enriquez.) Yes, we’ve shown you his talks on simplicity in tech design, cool phone tricks and the downloading wars. But […]
The TED office is abuzz about two high-profile mentions this week. First, we were excited to see ourselves included in The New York Times crossword puzzle for the third time on Thursday. The clue for 12 down: “______ talks, offerers of ‘ideas worth spreading.’” We were also amused to see TEDx referenced in The New […]
Last night in the TED office, we held a salon all about spring cleaning — for your life. Themed “A Better You,” the event featured four speakers with ideas on how to make a better, happier, more productive self. First to speak was The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg, a reporter for The New York Times who […]
A year ago today, the TED-Ed website launched. Since then, the site has published 175 original animated lessons, ranging from “How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries” to “Insults by Shakespeare,” with visits from more than 2,750,000 people. Teachers have used the site to create roughly 2,000 lessons per month around YouTube videos. (Here’s how.) For […]