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12 talks about the future of cars, planes and rockets

Kate Torgovnick — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:44:29 +0000

On March 1 — just two days after Elon Musk appeared on the TED2013 stage — a SpaceX CRS-2 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on a resupply mission for the International Space Station. Two days later, after the righting of a glitch, its Dragon capsule delivered a half-ton of supplies for the astronauts on board. And four days after that, the SpaceX Grasshopper had its most successful test to date. This reusable rocket launched 80 feet in the air, hovered for about 34 seconds and returned once again to the center of its launch pad.

Elon Musk: The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ...So how did Musk, the cofounder of PayPal, get involved in space travel?

“It was from the standpoint of: What are the things that need to happen in order for the future to be exciting and inspiring? There’s a fundamental difference between a humanity that’s a space-faring civilization — that is out there exploring the stars and on multiple planets — compared to one where we are forever confined to Earth,” Musk says in today’s TED Talk, a conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson. “The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology, and in particular to crack a problem that I think is vital for humanity to become a space-faring civilization: to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket.”

Musk’s company has slashed the cost of rockets by, they say, up to 75 percent, nudging us toward the idea of human life being multiplanetary. But this isn’t his only endeavor that could change our relationship to travel. Musk is also the mind behind Tesla Motors, which builds electric cars, and SolarCity, a solar-power firm.

“I think it’s extremely important that we have sustainable transport and sustainable energy production. The overall sustainable energy problem is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century,” Musk says in today’s talk. “You have to come up with a really energy-efficient car, which means you have to make it incredibly light … We actually applied rocket design techniques to make the car light, despite the large battery pack.”

To hear more about Musk’s vision for the electric car, solar energy and commercial space travel, as well as his thoughts on how his divergent companies actually make sense together, watch this intriguing conversation. And here, more talks from visionaries in the field of transportation on what we might see in the not-too-distant future.

Watch the TED playlist “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” »

And see 5 fascinating cars of the future »

New playlist: What does the future look like?

Thu-Huong Ha — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:00:14 +0000

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, a new playlist is available: What does the future look like?

It’s the question none of us is sure how to answer: What will the world look like in 20 years? And in a hundred years, will our lives be recognizable? Is the future going to be so bright we gotta wear shades, or will we descend into dystopia? In this selection of talks, hear 11 visions for the future — on everything from cars to the Internet to the human species.

Watch this playlist, which includes talks by Juan Enriquez, Nicholas Negroponte and Danny Hillis.»

10 talks on predicting the future

Liz Jacobs — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:00:32 +0000

We’re just a week into 2013, and the year seems filled with possibility. The turn of the New Year is generally an occasion to look back and reflect on the year that’s passed — the victories and defeats, the lives lost and the experiences found. But after we look back, we inevitably turn forward. We make resolutions and predictions for the year to come, taking educated guesses as we gaze into the abyss of the unknown. Here,10 TED Talks that offer visions for the future.

Ian Goldin: Navigating our global future
“This could be our best century ever, or it could be our worst,” says Ian Goldin. In this absorbing talk from TEDGlobal 2009, Goldin argues that the accelerating impact of globalization has the potential for miraculous human achievements, but also presents immense challenges — specifically in inequality. We may see incredible advances in technology, science and the quality of life, but will only the rich have access? Offering predictions for life in 2030, Goldin reminds us that “the rest of our lives will be in the future, so we need to prepare for it now.”

Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web
At EG 2007, Keven Kelly noted that we had 5,000 days of the World Wide Web behind us. In this talk, he looks at what’s to come next. He foresees a smarter, more personalized and more ubiquitous web in the next 10 years, with the digital cloud forming the underpinnings of our physical environment. As the web doubles in power every two years, he shares why it’s expected to exceed human power by 2040.

Kirk Citron: And now, the real news
Projecting a “Long News” perspective onto the present, Kirk Citron analyzes the headlines at TED2010, trying to predict what will still be relevant in 10, 100 and 10,000 years. It’s not Michael Jackson’s death or the miraculous landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson River that will matter, he says, but innovations in science. Why? Because research in 2010 paved the way for genetically modified food to feed the planet, for people to drink water on the moon, and for nanobees to enter the brain and zap tumors with bee venom. In the long run, Citron points out that some news stories are just more important than others.

Rob Hopkins: Transition to a world without oil
Rob Hopkins wants to tell a different story about the future. Not one of apocalypse or salvation but of transition — specifically, transition from our dependence on oil. As the founder of the Transition movement, he advocates for petroleum-free communities stripped of modern-day luxuries, but also free from the trappings of oil. Sustainability isn’t the solution, Hopkins says at TEDGlobal 2009, because we can’t simply invent our way out of oil dependence.

Martin Rees asks: Is this our final century?
Zooming in on the “tiny sliver of earth’s history” that has involved humans, and zooming out again to the full past, present and future of the universe, astronomer Sir Martin Rees explores the future of our planet. Highlighting the immense changes that will occur, he reminds the audience at TEDGlobal 2005 that when the sun extinguishes in 6 billion years, the creatures living on this earth will be as different from us as we are from bacteria.

Nicholas Negroponte, in 1984, makes 5 predictions
Danny Hills: Back to the future (of 1994)
This pair of talks from the TED archives highlights the challenges and successes of predicting the future. Nicholas Negroponte’s talk from TED1984 offers five eerily on-point predictions, ranging from touchscreen phones to the future of CD-ROMS. Ten years later, Danny Hills offers a timeless theory of technological evolution that mirrors our own biological trajectory.

Larry Burns on the future of cars
Computer-enhanced cars — that run on clean hydrogen and contribute to the energy grid — are just around the corner, says Larry Burns. You’ll even refuel your hydrogen-fueled car at home, he shares. At TED2005, GM vice president for research and design Larry Burns details his exciting task of reinventing the automobile.

Aubrey de Grey: A roadmap to end aging
You could live to see the next millennium, suggests researcher Aubrey de Grey. Arguing that we could live to be 1,000 years old, de Grey explains that if we simply extend our lives by 30 years right now, we can reach the “longevity escape velocity,” with the rate of life-extending discoveries outpacing our 30-year life extension. And, he says at TEDGlobal 2005, the tools to start this process exist right now.

Stewart Brand on the Long Now
“It would be helpful if humanity got into the habit of thinking of the now not just as next week or next quarter but the next 10,000 years,” notes Stewart Brand in this talk from TED2004. Disrupting our conception of time and space, Brand describes his current project to build a 10,000 year clock that would be able to withstand the wear and tear of deep time.

11 talks that freaked us out in 2012

tedstaff — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:00:55 +0000

Vicki Arroyo’s hometown is New Orleans, and after Hurricane Katrina struck, she knew firsthand the looming threat of climate change. In this eye-opening talk from TEDGlobal 2012, “Let’s prepare for our new climate,” Arroyo reveals the startling truths about droughts, rising water levels and natural disasters — that they may only get worse.

In 2012, we have seen the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and the ravaging floods and monsoons of the Philippines, as well as the Sahel Drought that spanned across eight African nations and affected 18 million people. But we may find, in the coming years, that these disasters become more common than ever before – and Arroyo tells us just how we can prepare.

While many TED Talks are hopeful for the future, some take hard looks at sobering realities. And so the TED staff was asked: What talk from 2012 made you feel just a little gulp about the future?

“Marc Goodman’s vision on crimes for the future. I mean, 3D printed guns? Scary!” —Jennifer Gilhooley, Partnership Development

“I’ve been so excited this year thinking about the potential for personalized medicine. But Marc Goodman popped that bubble, pointing out that if medicine can be targeted to an individual, so could a biological attack. Still, his talk is so important. Just because new technology can be used for evil doesn’t mean we should change course. We just have to think about how to weight it toward use for good.” —Kate Torgovnick, Writer

“Frank Warren’s ‘Half a million secrets.’ It’s a gorgeous talk, one of my all-time favorites. But there’s something about the intensity of the secrets people share on his website that freaked me out. One was ‘everyone who knew me before 9/11 thinks I’m dead.’” —Ben Lillie, Writer/Editor

“Generally speaking, I exhibit a positively optimistic demeanor. However, I think it’s important to be reminded that the world is not always an ideal place. Lisa Kristine’s ‘Photos that bear witness to modern slavery’ alerted me to some injustices that exist, and apart from freaking me out, it made me thankful for where I am and what I have. It also challenged me to give myself to causes that are making a good change.” —Jordan Reeves, TED-Ed Program Facilitator

“If I had any remaining hopes that anything I said or did was private, they were gone by the end of this talk by Malte Spitz. I feel grateful that Verizon doesn’t (yet) seem to be selling my secrets to the highest bidder, but I’m hoping we can agree on some new laws and social practices that address our surveillance vulnerability in meaningful ways.” —Morton Bast, editorial assistant

“Malte Spitz completely scared me. He talked about the data that our mobile phone company keeps, and how very much it conveys about our lives and habits. I worry about the end of privacy, and specifically about how that might compromise activists around the world.” —Shanna Carpenter, Community Engagement Manager

“Sherry Turkle’s talk, about how technology is changing the way we relate to other people. She quotes one young boy who says: ‘Someday, I want to learn how to have conversations.’ The idea that people could one day forget to have a normal conversation? That’s disconcerting.” —Becky Chung, Customer Support Specialist

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“In a talk given earlier this year, meteorologist Jeff Masters presented the nine most devastating natural disasters likely to happen in the United States in the next 30 years. I didn’t discover this talk until right after Hurricane Sandy — which is number six on his list. Number four is happening too, right this second.” —David Webber, TEDxTalks Manager

“Jason McCue’s ‘Terrorism is a failed brand.’ Because he tried to (fake) blow us up.” —Emily McManus, TED.com Editor

“Todd Humphreys’ talk, ‘How to fool a GPS.’ At the end, he didn’t have much in the way of solutions. He basically said, the police can’t stop it and neither can you or I.” –Thu-Huong Ha, Editorial Projects Specialist

“David Pizarro’s ‘The strange politics of disgust’ freaked me out for an unusual reason: We had his name as ‘Dave’ in the titles until basically the last minute.” —Gwen Schroeder, Media Production Coordinator

“Carl Zimmer’s talk from TEDYouth about zombie cockroaches completely fascinated and horrified me. It’s not out yet, but I am actually shivering right now just thinking about it!” —Susan Zimmerman, Executive Assistant to the Curator

Carl Zimmer’s zombie cockroach. Photo: Ryan Lash

6 TEDxTalks envisioning the city of the future

Hailey Reissman — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 14:00:56 +0000

According to the United Nations, by the year of 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So what will the city of the future look like? These are some of the questions that dominate our conception of “The City 2.0”: How will we transport ourselves? Where will we grow our food? How will we power our homes, our offices, our grids? What will happen to the natural world?

Today — October 13, 2012 — communities across the globe will be offering answers to these questions as part of TEDxCity2.0 Day, when nearly 70 TEDx events will be held in conjunction to dream about the city of the future. Events will be taking place from Antananarivo, Madagascar, to Daejeon, South Korea. In fact, so many events are happening today that the TEDx program is celebrating an exciting milestone — the 5,000th event since its launch in 2009.

To celebrate the City 2.0 and the spirit of urban inspiration, here are 6 great TEDxTalks about the future of cities.

On dismantling urban highways in cities: Diana Lind at TEDxPhiily Across the United States, cities are re-purposing their streets. In this talk at TEDxPhilly, Diana Lind describes many of the ways urban spaces can benefit from rejecting “car culture” and reconstructing the grid, from adding bike lanes, to creating greenspaces, to turning streets into people-friendly social spaces.

Urban farming: Roman Gaus at TEDxZurich Roman Gaus never thought he’d be a farmer. Now part of an urban farming collective in his city of Zurich, Switzerland, he harvests his own fish and produce on a regular basis. In this talk at TEDxZurich, he explains aquaponics: self-contained agriculture that relies on a symbiotic relationship between plants and fish — the fish provide nutrients for plants while the plants filter water for fish — all within portable containers made from recycled materials.

Use our cities’ untapped talent: Eyvette Jones-Johnson at TEDxSkidRow
What makes a city: a structure or its inhabitants? Eyvette Jones-Johnson’s believes you can change a place just by changing a person. In her talk at TEDxSkidRow, she describes how empowering citizens can create a ripple effect, empowering communities, services, and businesses to work better. She gives special attention to the homeless and working poor, whose potential as catalysts for change, she says, is often ignored.

Turn cities into human power plants: Laurence Kemball-Cook at TEDxBerlin
Laurence Kemball-Cook, an industrial design engineer, is the inventor of the Pavegen, a paving tile made of recycled car tires that converts the kinetic energy of footsteps into electrical power. In his talk at TEDxBerlin, he imagines a city where kinetic energy powers the electronic staples of the city, from streetlights to safety installations.

Architecture is a language: Daniel Libeskind at TEDxDublin
Renowned architect Daniel Libeskind sees his profession as more than just building and design. For him, architecture is art, music, a language by which a city can communicate its culture, future, ambitions, and energy. In this talk at TEDxDublin, we see how Daniel’s innovative designs and forward-thinking mindset easily put him in the league of great architects ready to design cities for the future.

Brilliant design to fit more people in every city: Kent Larson at TEDxBoston Kent Larson and his colleagues at the MIT Media Lab City Science Initiative are hard at work designing the homes, vehicles and products that will make up future cities — from personalizable sunlight for dark apartments to cars that communicate with pedestrians. In this talk from TEDxBoston, Larson reveals why he believes that the cities of the future will look a lot more like cities of the past. .

As TEDx celebrates its 5,000th event — as well as the 20,000th TEDxTalk — stay tuned to the TED Blog for more content about the global program all week. And why not check out the TEDx blog, where this post originally ran?