Op-Ed: Moving beyond dropout statistics and toward solutionsBy Patricia Harrison When I attended the taping of TED Talks Education last month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, I knew I was witnessing an innovative collaboration with the potential to make a difference in the lives of many young people. This milestone collaboration between TED, WNET, PBS, and the CPB American Graduate “Let’s […]
The story behind my new TED Talk: Giving teachers what they deserveBy Bill Gates I spend a lot of my time working to help improve America’s schools. I’m also a big fan of TED Talks. So when TED’s Chris Anderson asked me to give a talk as part of a special TED session on education, I jumped at the chance. The show premieres on PBS this […]
Does documenting your life online keep you from actually living it?: An excerpt from the new TED Book, Our Virtual ShadowBy Damon Brown The morning of our wedding, my wife and I only had one major discussion: Should we bring our cell phones? She loved Facebook as much as I loved Twitter, and since we’ve lived and made friends all across the country, the social networks made it easier to stay connected to our loved […]
My Year of TED: How 54 talks changed a lifeBy Kylie Dunn What do you get when you cross a 39-year-old perfectionist with 54 TED Talks and far more honesty than any person probably needs to experience? You get my Year of TED. I’ve been inspired by TED Talks for years, and felt the urge to do something noteworthy and challenging to ring in […]
Putting the public back in public interest design: The making of an exhibit at TED2013By Courtney E. Martin and John Cary Editor’s note: designer John Cary and journalist Courtney E. Martin are the curatorial brains behind the show, “Public Interest Design: Places, Products, & Processes,” which opened at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco last October. The entire exhibit has been reinstalled at TED in Long Beach, and we invited the duo to give […]
Saving for a rainy day: Keith Chen on language that forecasts weather — and behaviorBy Keith Chen How are China, Estonia and Germany different from India, Greece and the UK? To an economist, one answer is obvious: savings rates. Germans save 10 percentage points more than the British do (as a fraction of GDP), while Estonians and Chinese save a whopping 20 percentage points more than Greeks and Indians. […]
The Wild West of the Internet: Reflections on The New York Times hackBy Shyam Sankar and Gabe Rosen The Internet is the new Wild West, a frontier big enough for every pioneer and outlaw to roam free. Today, The New York Times revealed that hackers in China had spent the last four months infiltrating its computer systems and pilfering employee passwords. As in the old West, it’s […]
How Malawi is improving a terrible maternal mortality rate through good designBy Courtney E. Martin & John Cary Pregnancy is supposed to be about life. And yet, every day, 800 women across the globe die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In Malawi, which has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, a shocking 1 in 36 pregnant women die rather […]
Gallery: iO Tillett Wright examines the 50+ shades of gayiO Tillett Wright remembers the moment she decided to start living as a boy — age 6 when the kids at school barked at her that girls weren’t allowed to play basketball. As a teenager and adult, Tillett Wright went on to fall in love with a woman, and then to fall in love with […]
And the countdown to Armageddon continues…By Stephen Petranek So, the world hasn’t come to an end yet. But the insecurities and fears about the so-called Mayan Calendar prediction that Earth as we know it will cease to exist today has created such a ruckus that Michigan officials closed 33 schools in preparation and NASA has devoted many web pages to […]
On nature versus nature: A neuroscientist knee-deep in diapers reflectsBy Daniel Colón-Ramos I could not have designed a better experiment if I had tried. I am a neuroscientist and I am the father of two-year old triplets—two identical and one fraternal. As a professor at Yale University, I spend most of my time designing experiments, researching or teaching about the brain and the nervous […]
Finding the meaning in video games: Yes, they have value beyond entertainment and self-improvementBy Andy Robertson New art forms are polarizing. We love or hate Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde animals or Tracey Emin’s unmade bed but roundly understand that avant garde art has value, the artist trying to challenge us and make us think something. Video games draw similar fire. Detractors hem and haw that they’re all about shooting […]
They feel like they can fly: The first wheelchair basketball tournament in Afghanistan, seeded in a TED wishClose your eyes and listen to the grunts and jostling, the smack of rubber on cement and triumphant high-fives. You could be listening to a pickup basketball game anywhere. But you’re in Afghanistan and this is much more than just a game. It is the country’s very first wheelchair basketball tournament and the players are […]
A boy and his camera: A Q&A with photography powerhouse Rick SmolanTeen reporters Sadie Cruz and Nia Ashley conducted lots of interviews with speakers at the TEDYouth conference on November 17. Their Q&As will run on the TED Blog over the next few weeks. Here, a interview conducted by Sadie. Photographer Rick Smolan brought the flavor of homes across the United States to life, helped 25,000 photographers capture […]
Remix the Session 10 titles: Download CC-licensed footage for “Reframing”Download the rushes used for the session titles created by Circus Family for Session 10: Reframing. These images were created by projecting motion graphics onto a tabletop installation — breaking the visuals and recording them again. Feel free to re-use under the Creative Commons Licence (Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike). Use this compact 600MB zip file […]
