These three fascinating videos made by TED and IBM show how technology is helping solve problems in three case studies across Africa, filmed on location in Nairobi, Kenya; Cape Town, South Africa; and Lagos, Nigeria. They showcase three innovative projects that use technology for everyday problem-solving in local conditions.
Environmental engineer Francis de los Reyes works with cutting-edge microbiological techniques to create solutions in the fields of environmental biotechnology and engineering. But his big passion, both professionally and personally, is finding ways to improve the plight of the world’s 2.5 billion people living without adequate sanitation. In this conversation, he tells the TED Blog […]
New York is slowly but surely coming back to life after being battered by Hurricane Sandy. Nearly all of Manhattan has electricity, and subway lines are being restored. But not every area of the city is faring so well. As The New York Times noted on Saturday, many of the city’s public housing facilities — […]
In 2009, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published the book The Spirit Level, making a bold case that economic inequality within a society, the size of the gap between rich and poor, has corrosive effects from the bottom of society right up to the top. Wilkinson spoke about their book and research this summer […]
We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. […]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/30656539 w=525&h=294] TEDx in a Box is a toolkit with all the gear needed to host a TEDx event in the developing world — projector, speakers and more, packed in a shippable box. The TEDx in a Box program launched last year with 10 boxes, powering events in India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Brazil and […]
Imagine it’s late 1990, and you’ve just met a nice young man named Tim Berners-Lee, who starts telling you about his proposed system called the World Wide Web. Ian Ritchie was there. And … he didn’t buy it. A short story about information, connectivity and learning from mistakes. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in […]
How do we search for alien life if it’s nothing like the life that we know? At TEDxUIUC Christoph Adami shows how he uses his research into artificial life — self-replicating computer programs — to find a signature, a ‘biomarker,’ that is free of our preconceptions of what life is. (Recorded at TEDxUIUC, July 2011, in […]
Yang Lan, a journalist and entrepreneur who’s been called “the Oprah of China,” offers insight into the next generation of young Chinese citizens — urban, connected (via microblogs) and alert to injustice. (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duration: 17:14.) [ted id=1236] Watch Yang Lan’s talk on TED.com, where you can download […]
HIV is a serious problem in the DR Congo, and aid agencies have flooded the country with free and cheap condoms. But few people are using them. Why? “Reformed marketer” Amy Lockwood offers a surprising answer that upends a traditional model of philanthropy. (Some NSFW images.) (Recorded at TEDGlobal 2011, July 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland. […]
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000). (Recorded at TED2011, March […]
Today, infectious diseases race across the world, and one country’s health problem can affect the entire global economy. For these and other reasons, Alanna Shaikh says global health is a matter of “mutual survival.” While working her day job at an international aid organization, Alanna moonlights as a (refreshingly frank) blogger on international aid … […]
The Gates Foundation and TEDx are presenting another extraordinary TEDxChange event — this time in New Delhi, India. In partnership with TEDxDelhi, TEDxChange @ TEDxDelhi is about some of the most interesting and creative development work happening in India right now. India is a hub of creative problem-solving for many of the issues that can […]
Water and sanitation are among the most crucial issues facing India today, Sunita Nadhamuni notes in her interview with TED. But while these problems are daunting, Sunita says India’s many innovations in managing water can teach the rest of the world a thing or two. Tell us about your water and sanitation organization. What makes […]
Educating the poor is more than just a numbers game, says Shukla Bose. She tells the story of her groundbreaking Parikrma Humanity Foundation, which brings hope to India’s slums by looking past the daunting statistics and focusing on treating each child as an individual. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 16:24) […]
Stats guru Hans Rosling writes to say the popular search engine, Google, is making 17 of the World Bank’s World Development Indicators available to search queries: Subject: TED helps liberate data!Here is very good news! As of today, the first hole to freedom exists in the data vault of the World Bank — and the […]