The Cassini mission to Saturn (see Carolyn Porco’s stunning TEDTalk on this mission) today makes its closest flyby yet of Enceladus, a geologically active moon. With its frozen surface and plumes of ice, Enceladus is a fascinating body, and the Cassini probe will be imaging the moon in several areas with many different instruments. From […]
[Updated 3/12, 10am] Crusading journalist Andrew Mwenda and think tank leader James Shikwati — both stars of TEDGlobal Africa last summer — as well as TEDGlobal Fellow Paul Van Zyl and architect Cameron Sinclair, winner of the 2006 TED Prize, have all been named Young Global Leaders for 2008 by the World Economic Forum. Each […]
The wonderful Jill Sobule is playing at Largo tonight in LA, then swings back to NY to play at Ethel‘s 10th birthday party on March 20, along with Rives. But honestly, we were mainly looking for an excuse to share this great photo of Jill (left), taken 10 days ago at TED@Aspen…
Today we’re throwing open the door to our back archive, beginning with Nicholas Negroponte’s talk from TED 1. Yes, TED 1. 1984. TED’s co-founders, Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks, had the foresight to record every conference he held. And I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to see the full archive for the first […]
Speaking at the first TED Conference, in 1984, Nicholas Negroponte talks about the converging fields of technology, entertainment and design. Years before anyone was using the word “convergence,” Negroponte was thinking about TV screens as the “electronic books of the future,” and computers as the future of education. In excerpts from his 2-hour talk (this […]
“Can we create new life out of our digital universe?” asks Craig Venter. And his answer is, yes, and pretty soon. He walks the TED2008 audience through his latest research into “fourth-generation fuels” — biologically created fuels with CO2 as their feedstock. His talk covers the details of creating brand-new chromosomes using digital technology, the […]
Pangea Day‘s Saralena Weinfield writes: With two months until May 10, planning for Pangea Day is in full swing. And we are still glowing from the wonderful reception we received at TED! We hope you’ll get involved by hosting a viewing party on Pangea Day. You’ll be in good company: People all around the world […]
Two Johns Hopkins researchers have isolated the part of the brain that is most active during improv — the part that Jennifer Lin accesses during her TEDTalk performance, and that Robin Williams used the other night during the BBC debate at TED in Monterey. Setting up six right-handed jazz pianists inside an fMRI, researchers Charles […]
With all the intensity and brilliance he is known for, Alan Kay gives TEDsters a lesson in lessons. Kay has spent years envisioning better techniques for teaching kids, and in this talk, after reminding us that “the world is not what it seems,” he shows us how good programming can sharpen our picture. His unique […]
Photo: Andrew Heavens/TED As Megan Barnett writes on > + The “Ode to Joy” comes from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Though Zander’s own recording of Beethoven’s 9th, with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, is out of print, it is fascinating to read his thoughts on the way the 9th should be played >> + You can find […]
You can now read journalist Andrew Mwenda‘s newspaper, The Independent, online. Based in Kampala, Uganda, the paper promises “uncensored news, views and analysis” — a promise that has already led to government threats against the paper’s printer. Mwenda spoke at TEDGlobal 2007 and was a panelist on the BBC debate hosted last week at TED […]
Photo: David Geller/whatcounts Memeticist Susan Blackmore uses the hotel-bathroom toilet-paper fold as an example of a useless meme — a meme that has spread throughout the world, even though there is no human reason for it to exist. The persistence of this meme easily disproves the comfortable notion that we humans only spread ideas that […]
Photos: Andrew Heavens “Imagine Martin Luther King saying, ‘I have a dream … But I don’t know if the others will buy it.’” – Boston Philharmonic conductor Ben Zander, on the importance of persuasive leadership “Human progress depends on unreasonable people. Reasonable people accept the world as they meet it; unreasonable people persist in trying […]
Photos: Michael Brands/Aspen Institute For the final sessions of TED@Aspen, we packed into the main hall of Doerr-Hosier for the Kids’ Table Collective — Rives, Jill Sobule, Ze Frank and the Raspyni Brothers (special appearance by Jennifer O’Donnell). Thrilling stunts and comedy and a standing ovation from the kids in Monterey capped off a week […]
(Unedited running notes from the TED2008 conference in Monterey, California. Session twelve – closing session.) The session opens with the projection of will.i.am’s "Yes We Can" viral video based on Barack Obama’s speech. The two producers are in the audience. The video has been seen millions of times, a demonstration of the power of individuals […]
(Unedited running notes from the TED2008 conference in Monterey, California. Session eleven.) Ben Kaufman, founder of Kluster, goes on stage to tell what he and his team have been doing — with the help of TED attendees and 1200 people around the world — since the beginning of the conference. Kluster is an online collaboration […]