19 August 2009

TEDxKibera: From a humble location comes a visionary event

On Saturday August 15, a TEDx event was held in Kibera, the largest squatter city in Africa and home to nearly a million Kenyans. Suraj Sudhakar, an Acumen Fellow, hosted the ambitious event. Sudhakar has begun several projects in low-income communities, from improving housing conditions through financial consolidation to sanitation by promotion of the Eco-toilet concept. His vision for the TEDx conference was to spark discussion on subjects other than HIV/AIDS and poverty, which are commonly associated with Kibera.

Speakers included Tonee Ndungu of the Kenya Wazimba Youth Foundation which uses mobile phones for large-scale networking and communication, Otieno Gomba founder of Ghetto Art, a studio for Kibera's artists, and software developer and tech blogger Wilfred Mworia.

Mworia has an engaging account of the afternoon on his blog, and provides a link to his Flickr account with many photos of this inspirational event. For even more photos, check out Tonee Ndungu's twitpics.

The event in Mworia's words:

I attended TEDxNairobi a week earlier which was a much much bigger event at a bigger venue. But the interesting thing is, even being in this smaller event being held in the middle of a slum, in a shanty church building, surrounding by the dirt and grime of Kibera… there was still great inspiration (if not greater) and great ideas! And I think that’s the beauty of TED, the fact that despite where you are, in whatever circumstances, people (if motivated enough) will always come up with great ‘ideas worth sharing’! And that says something very deep about the human spirit and the dignity of human beings. That whether rich or poor we all have that capacity for creativity.

For more insight on squatter cities like Kibera, watch Stewart Brand's 2006 TED Talk and Robert Neuwirth's 2005 TED Talk.

Photo: Tonee Ndungu at TEDxKibera August 15, 2009, in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: Wilfred Mworia

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31 July 2009

New Edge videos explore the staggering potential of genetics

What is life? Can we create it? Customize it? Edge has just published over six hours of video from their new Master Class on the future of biology, which attempts to answer those and other provocative questions. Featuring geneticists George Church and Craig Venter, the set is a a surprising, challenging look at what science has in store for our world, from the minds of two of the field's most fascinating pioneers.

Summarizes attendee George Dyson,

In this future -- whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already -- life as we know it is transformed [...] by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way.

Visit the Edge Master Class and start watching now >>

You'll notice several familiar faces among the class' pupils, including TED speakers Larry Brilliant, Larry Page, Nathan Wolfe, Nathan Myhrvold and Stewart Brand.

Photo: George Church (left); Craig Venter (right). Credit: Edge.org

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13 July 2009

Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies' on TED.com

The man who helped usher in the environmental movement in the 1960s and '70s has been rethinking his positions on cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering. This talk at the US State Department is a foretaste of his major new book, sure to provoke widespread debate. (Recorded at TED@State, June 2009 at the US State Department in Washington, D.C.. Duration: 16:42)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/1Y

Watch Sophal Ear's 2009 talk on TED.com where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 475+ TEDTalks.

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03 June 2009

TED@State: Stewart Brand says, Squatters are building the urban world

We depend on Stewart Brand to take the long view -- his most recent TEDTalk, in fact, is about the Clock of the Long Now, a timepiece that marks off a period of 10,000 years. He's a rabid thinker and collector of ideas; among his many fascinations, he is especially enamored of cities, and of the new ways they form and grow and function. His short talk from TED2006 made a somewhat shocking assertion: that squatter cities, those ramshackle slums surrounding many major cities, are actually a good thing.

At TED@State, he continues his thinking on cities. "I used to have a very romantic idea of villages," he says. "That’s because I never lived in one."

The following are running notes from Brand's eminently quotable talk:

Subsistence farming is drying up, he says, and people are heading into town. In the bustling squatter cities, they see action, they see opportunity, they see a cash economy that they didn’t have access too. Squatters are building the urban world. They start flimsy and they get substantial as time goes by. In a town like Mumbai which is half slums – that’s 1/6 the GDP. Slums represent social capital. Family is mostly a rural event now.

These are not people crushed by the economy. These are people getting out of poverty as fast as they can, while taking part in an outlaw prank: the informal economy. it’s like dark energy in physics –- we don’t understand it and it’s huge.

Cities are places where things slam up against each other. (Brand shows the amazing footage of a train that runs through a Bangkok street market.) That’s the value of cities.

We’re going to keep being surprised by climate – which means an increase in urban climate refugees and resources wars. We need to look carefully at geoengineering, and acknowledge the challenge of getting any two countries to agree on how to do it. And we need to think about nuclear power. Did you know 10% of the power coming to this room is nuclear, coming from spent warheads, mainly Russian?

Discuss these and other ideas in the comments area below:

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03 June 2009

TED goes to Washington: Today is TED@State

TED is in Washington, DC, today, helping to throw a first-of-its-kind conference: TED@State, bringing great ideas from TEDTalks to Washington. This afternoon at the State Department, five TEDTalks stars -- Clay Shirky, Paul Collier, Jacqueline Novogratz, Stewart Brand, and Hans Rosling -- will share insight and new ideas; music will come from the legendary Zap Mama.

Our partner in this event is the Global Partnership Initiative, based at the State Department. This initiative was launched in April to establish public-private partnerships with foundations, businesses and NGOs ... and TED@State is the first major event under this initiative. The Special Representative for Global Partnerships, Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, is proud to welcome TED and these visionary speakers to the Department of State (read her remarks to the audience).

You can follow TED@State on our Twitter feed @TEDNews -- or look for the hashtag #TEDState. Look for TED@State onstage and backstage photos on Flickr. And we'll be reporting on each speaker here on the TEDBlog, and hosting the post-event Q&As right here.

Watch CNN's report on TED@State >>

Above: TEDTalks star Hans Rosling meets with TED's Director of Film + Video, Jason Wishnow. Photo: TED / Mike Femia.

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17 November 2008

The Clock of the Long Now, and where to put it: Stewart Brand on TED.com

Futurist Stewart Brand works on the Clock of the Long Now, a timepiece that counts down the next 10,000 years. It's a beautiful project that asks us to think about the far, far future. Here, he discusses a tricky side problem with the Clock: Where can we put it? (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, California. Duration: 23:23.)

Watch Stewart Brand's talk about the Clock of the Long Now on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 300+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about the future.

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15 July 2008

"Engineers' Dreams": A short story by George Dyson

Today, Edge 250 publishes a new short story by science historian George Dyson. A born storyteller (watch his TEDTalks on Project Orion and the earliest digital computers), he uses the short story as a persuasive tool -- or so Stewart Brand suggests in his foreword:

How does one come to a new understanding? The standard essay or paper makes a discursive argument, decorated with analogies, to persuade the reader to arrive at the new insight.

The same thing can be accomplished -- perhaps more agreeably, perhaps more persuasively -- with a piece of fiction that shows what would drive a character to come to the new understanding.

It gives nothing away to share this eye-opening line from the story:

Are we searching Google, or is Google searching us?

Read George Dyson's short story, "Engineers' Dreams," on Edge.com >>

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02 January 2008

Edge question 2008: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Many TEDTalks speakers have answered the 2008 Edge Foundation question: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Among the more than 160 essays from leading thinkers -- scientists, philosophers, artists -- look for Wired's Chris Anderson, Nick Bostrom, Stewart Brand, Richard Dawkins, Aubrey de Grey, Juan Enriquez, Helen Fisher, Neil Gershenfeld, Daniel Gilbert, Daniel Goleman, Kevin Kelly, Steven Pinker, Carolyn Porco, Martin Rees, Michael Shermer and Craig Venter. Block out some time to sample these -- it's an addictive read.

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17 May 2007

Stewart Brand's 3-minute TEDTalk on cities

Rural villages worldwide are being deserted, as billions of people flock to cities, to live in teeming squatter camps and slums. And Stewart Brand says this is a good thing. Why? It'll take you 3 minutes to find out. Music: Brian Eno, "Just Another Day on Earth," from his 2005 album Another Day on Earth (Hannibal). (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 3:17) Read Stewart Brand's profile on TED.com

Watch this talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.

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