Stories for "Culture"
Indian novelist Abha Dawesar explores the self and technology’s — ahem — impact on the self in the penultimate session of TEDGlobal, “Tech Impact.” Dawesar reflects on how time-warping technology, like social media and mobile devices, has changed our perception of our own personal narratives and perception. We live, instead, in what she calls the […]
Pico Iyer is a man without a land. He is 100 percent Indian in blood and ancestry, but he was born and grew up in England; he has lived the last 48 years in the U.S., where he sees his doctor and dentist, but for the last 25 years he’s spent as much time as […]
In the wilds of planet Earth, there exists a species so creative that it not only uses tools but is constantly rewriting the rules of what a tool can be, so cooperative that they build wildly complex systems to support each other and so consternating that its inconsistent behavior would make even the most seasoned […]
“What would be a good end of life?” Judy MacDonald Johnston asks in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Her answer — based on her own experience of helping two friends face death in a way that respected the incredible life they’d built — involves five practices, all of which can help maintain a high quality […]
Monday’s TED Talk, “Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20,” has been a runaway hit: five days later, it has nearly 600,000 views and almost 200 comments on TED.com alone. Commenters of all ages have offered personal anecdotes, helpful resources and a fair dose of criticism, many writing about the hope and/or confusion […]
Liu Bolin’s images invite a game akin to Where’s Waldo?. In some of the Chinese artist’s incredible photos, it’s clear where he is standing; in others, like the one above, it’s much harder to spot the outline of his body at all. It’s for this that Bolin has been called “The Invisible Man.” In today’s […]
In today’s talk, Intel engineer Maria Bezaitis brings up a fascinating point: why is the phrase “don’t talk to strangers” such a part of our cultural zeitgeist? “When we’re at our best, we reach out to people who are not like us because when we do that, we learn,” says Bezaitis, in this talk given […]
TED Talks are available in 100 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our translators. So far, more than 9,400 volunteers have created the upwards of 40,000 translated talks. To celebrate this huge accomplishment, every week the TED Blog will be bringing you a Q&A with one of our most prolific […]
“Once upon a time, there was a place called Lesterland,” Lawrence Lessig begins today’s talk. “Of its 311 million people, it turns out 144,000 are called Lester,” Lessig says. In Lesterland, this .05% of the population is granted extraordinary power. Each election cycle, there’s a general election, in which the people get to vote, and […]
Before we can tackle climate change, financial reform, education reform or, well, anything, there is a single issue that we in the United States must confront. As legal activist Lawrence Lessig says in today’s talk, before we can bring about change on any of the thousands of issues that matter to us, we must change […]
Through visual art, composition and performance, deaf artist Christine Sun Kim explores ways of transmuting sound and silence to come to terms with her relationship with it. In the process, she challenges the ways in which the hearing take sound for granted. Here, she talks about her work and career path. Did you always know […]
North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world. So it’s exceptionally rare to hear a first-hand account of life there — in English, no less. In today’s brave talk, given at TED2013, Hyenseo Lee gives a riveting account of what it was like to grow up in North Korea. “I thought […]
When Daniel Ogilvie was a child, he often imagined what would it be like to be dead. (“I think that’s why I was so popular.”) He’d imagine himself in a coffin, cold and lonely. So he asked his Sunday school teacher what heaven was like. What he heard: Heaven is like a picnic that goes on […]
Yesterday, during the session “Create!,” 15-year-old Dong Woo Jang delighted us with his tale of bow-making. I caught up with him after to discuss. Why did you choose bows? I just stumbled upon it. When I was a boy, I wasn’t allowed to play computer games, so I just went around looking for something to […]
The Korean education system is famed for its high levels of scholastic achievement, but as 15-year-old Seoul native Dong Woo Jang professes, not everyone responds to this kind of “pressure cooking” in the same way. His response to the high-pressure environment was an unusual one: to make wooden bows. Why? He’s not sure. Perhaps all […]
The dangers of the digital now: Abha Dawesar at TEDGlobal 2013
