So much of our lives are gut reactions; they drive our newsfeeds, and they make our minds smaller. At TED2017, we decided to step back from the frenzy of the news media cycle to take an in-depth and nuanced look at three topics of particular interest — the forward march of machine learning with Sebastian […]
By Liz Jacobs and Kate Torgovnick Are we on the brink of a resource crisis? All signs point to yes. As the human population grows, the planet is buckling under the pressure of our needs. In this inaugural All-Stars session, 11 classic TED speakers return to the stage to share their deep concern for preserving […]
Here, some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week. First, happy (late) World Poetry Day! Celebrate the occasion with 8 talks from spoken-word poets. Just when you thought Vijay Kumar’s robots that fly and cooperate were creepy enough, he and his team have developed a drone that can […]
How amazing would it be to see a wooly mammoth, raised from the dead, walking the permafrost of the North again? Or to look up at the sky and see a flock of passenger pigeons fly by? Or to witness a gastric-brooding frog hiccup tadpoles out the mouth from an embryo located in its stomach? […]
Stewart Brand begins today’s TED Talk with an elegy for Martha of Cincinnati, who died in 1914. No, Martha is not a person. She was the very last passenger pigeon. “Extinction is a different kind of death — it’s bigger,” says Brand in this talk, given at TED2013. “This had been the most abundant bird […]
Last time we saw Stewart Brand on the TED stage was in 2010, in his debate with Mark Z. Jacobson over whether the world needs nuclear energy. Brand, perhaps surprisingly, gave a passionate pro argument. But today he’s here for a very different — and potentially very controversial — purpose. Extinction is not just death, […]
Before you can create a new world, you have to imagine new possibilities. The speakers in this session are the visionaries who propose that which couldn’t be seen before, and suggest new paths that not only haven’t been traveled yet — but haven’t been thought of. Here are the speakers in this session. Click their […]
Nuclear power: the energy crisis has even die-hard environmentalists reconsidering it. In this first-ever TED debate, Stewart Brand and Mark Z. Jacobson square off over the pros and cons. A discussion that’ll make you think — and might even change your mind. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 23:00) Watch Stewart […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]