Art

Talk to Strangers: Session 8 at TEDGlobal2012

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Click to watch the session-opening animation

The promise of a globalized world is that we can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world. But how do we engage with people we’ve never met in person? Can you talk to strangers? Should you? Session 8 at TEDGlobal 2012 delves into one of the hardest problems of human interaction.

In this session:

Rachel Botsman writes and speaks on the power of collaboration and sharing through network technologies, and on how it will transform business, consumerism and the way we live. She is the founder of The Collaborative Lab, an innovation incubator that works with startups, big businesses and local governments to deliver innovative solutions. Her talk shows how collaborative consumption, the subject of her last TEDTalk, is becoming ubiquitous and is opening vast markets where none existed before.

With Zipcar, Robin Chase introduced car-crazy America to the concept of non-ownership. Now she’s flipping that model with Buzzcar, which lets you rent your own auto to your neighbors. She’ll show us how it works, and how the idea is far bigger than car sharing.

Reality is broken, says Jane McGonigal, and we need to make it work more like a game. At TED2010, she showed how games can create social change in the real world. Now, she’ll talk about how games can change lives on an intensely personal level.

Jason McCue litigates against terrorists, dictators and others who seem above the law, using the legal and judicial system in innovative ways. He will talk about his novel way of prosecuting dictators for torture.

Marco Tempest will perform a new piece of technomagic, for which he has become a TED staple. Watch his previous TEDTalks, here, here, here and here.

Amy Cuddy is professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, who studies nonverbal behavior and snap judgments. Her talk will be about her amazing research on body language, research that reveals that we can change other people’s perceptions—and even our own body chemistry—simply by changing body positions.