The meaning of memes: An Xiao Mina at TEDGlobal 2013“This is what happens when you take the addictive power of an LOLcat and apply it in a ceonsorship state,” says An Xiao Mina, a writer, technologist and researcher who studies Chinese memes. On the TEDGlobal 2013 stage, she shares the moment that led her to this unusual specialty. Two years ago, China’s government imposed a […]
Last night at TED headquarters: a salon on life hacksLast 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 […]
Your weekend reading: Simple secure passwords, an invisible brainSome staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week: Super-duper useful mandatory homework: Get a secure password now. As xkcd explains, most people’s approach to secure passwords (a word bastardized with “random” capital letters and punctuation that’s difficult to remember) is wrong. Now go get yourself a good password. […]
From TEDGlobal speakers: 11 websites and links you didn’t know you needed in your lifeWe’ve spent the past year researching the lineup for TEDGlobal 2013 — and bookmarking some amazing websites and pages along the way. Here are 11 you really didn’t know you needed. But you do. 1. BioNumbers An addictive database of useful biological numbers. Just go and start looking around, and try to stop — you can […]
Vint Cerf: Actually, the Internet’s going to be just fineOne of the greatest privileges of co-curating TED isn’t just getting to work with incredible speakers, but also talking with those in the audience. Danny Hillis gave a sobering presentation, “The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B,” at TED2013, detailing his concern at the exponential growth of the Internet, and the need for […]
What the internet looked like in 1982: A closer look at Danny Hillis’ vintage directory of usersDanny Hillis registered the third domain name on the internet. You read that correctly — the third. In today’s talk, given at TED2013, he shares what a different world the online community felt like at that point in time. To underscore the point, Hillis brought a book onstage with him. It’s the ARPANET Directory, a […]
The interspecies internet: Diana Reiss, Peter Gabriel, Neil Gershenfeld and Vint Cerf at TED2013The internet connects people all over the world. But could the internet also connect us with dolphins, apes, elephants and other highly intelligent species? In a bold talk in Session 10 of TED2013, four incredible thinkers come together to launch the idea of the interspecies internet. Each takes four minutes to talk, then passes the […]
Remembering internet activist Aaron SwartzOn Friday, Aaron Swartz — the 26-year-old internet innovator who helped create RSS and had a hand in the building of Reddit — was found dead in his apartment in an apparent suicide. Swartz, who suffered from depression, had reportedly found out just days before that a plea bargain deal with federal prosecutors had fallen […]
3 moments in 2012 that show YouTube may soon overtake traditional news sourcesWhen an earthquake shook Costa Rica in September of 2012, it took 60 seconds for the tremors to travel 250 kilometers north to Managua, Nicaragua. And yet just 30 seconds later, the first message about the earthquake appeared on Twitter. In today’s talk, filmed at TEDSalon London 2012, Markham Nolan of Storyful.com shares why this […]
Does the internet have a brain? Highlights from our chat with TED Book author Tiffany ShlainNew parents talk to their babies constantly — not because the babies will understand, but because they want to encourage brain development. Tiffany Shlain offers a fascinating idea in the TED Book Brain Power: does the global brain of the internet need similar prodding? In the book, which is accompanied by this short film, Shlain […]
A taxonomy of TED on TwitterSharing is caring, and here at TED we do a lot of both — especially on social media. You can like our Facebook page, catch us on Instagram and follow us on 19 active Twitter handles. That’s a lot, we know, but sometimes good sharing means not oversharing. In other words, we want to make sure you get the information […]
While many wonder what the pervasive use of technology is doing to our overloaded mental circuits, the new TED Book Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks ponders that question in another way: can cutting-edge neurological research into child brain development teach us anything about how we shape the global “brain” of the Internet? As author Tiffany Shlain […]
There are some questions an Internet search just isn’t so good at answering: What do I want for dinner tonight? How can I make a career change? Who is my ideal romantic partner? Asking a search engine any of these things will most likely result in a deluge of useless data rather than an excited […]
How does the Internet work? See how a continent gets plugged inThis image of a mysterious person emerging from the ocean looks like a shot from a James Bond movie. But as journalist Andrew Blum explains in today’s fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012, the photo actually reveals how the World Wide Web can stretch across continents—through a series of cables running for thousands of miles under […]
Why SOPA is a bad idea: Clay Shirky on TED.comWhat does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume. (Recorded at the TED offices, January 2012, in New York. Duration: 13:59) Watch Clay Shirky’s talk on […]
