“Dream me. Build me. Make me real.” This is the driving philosophy behind TEDCity2.0, happening Friday, Sept. 20. To visually represent the event, curators Courtney Martin and John Cary turned to the design firm Kiss Me I’m Polish, who created a set of posters keyed into the idea of collective creation. See, these posters are customizable, […]Read more
We spend about a third of our lives asleep — a figure that may make all that time spent in bed seem like a waste. But according to neuroscientist Russell Foster, it is quite the opposite. In today’s talk, given at TEDGlobal 2013, Foster explores why we sleep, a question which no one has been […]
With more and more regular Joes snapping photos in the street, live tweeting breaking news from the ground, and acting as free sources of political, economic and cultural analysis, not everyone is confident about the future of professional journalism. But according to TED speaker Paul Lewis, who shared two dramatic examples of citizen journalism at […]
When TED began in 1984, it was simply a conference. But in the 30 years since, we’ve grown into an international organization with a constellation of departments and initiatives — TED.com, two annual classes of TED Fellows, the million dollar TED Prize, the student-friendly TED-Ed, the business-focused TED Institute. To help you keep it all […]
Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of fascinating TED-related news items. Here, some highlights. Yesterday, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder announced a major relaxing of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug possession. He asked prosecutors to use their discretion when charging nonviolent, low-level offenders and opt not to list the quantities of drugs involved […]
Architect Shigeru Ban uses paper tubes to build temporary, ecologically sustainable structures. These geometrically complex structures can be big and impressive — like a concave complex built for Expo 2000 in Germany — or small and functional, like the half-pipe office Ban built for himself atop the Pompadou Center in Paris. No matter their size […]
“I was disappointed in my profession,” says architect Shigeru Ban in today’s talk, which he gave at TEDxTokyo in May. As far as he’s concerned, architecture has lost its way. “We are working for privileged people, for rich people, for government and developers. They have money and power, and those are invisible, so they hire […]
In his TED2013 talk, Robert Gordon points out that in 1900, human beings could only travel as fast as a horse could pull them in a buggy, but by 1960, we could travel at 80% of the speed of sound, thanks to the Boeing 707. Since 1960, though, the needle on how fast we can […]
TED Talks are available in 102 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese, thanks to the tireless work of our volunteer translators. So far, more than 10,000 volunteers have created nearly 45,000 talk translations — and today, the TED Blog brings you a Q&A with one of them. Here, meet French and Urdu translator Shadia Ramsahye. 1. Where […]
Margaret Heffernan thinks deeply about what makes businesses work, and her answers are often surprising. At TEDGlobal 2012, she shared why disagreement is vital for innovation. In today’s talk, given at TEDxDanubia, Heffernan turns her eye to willful blindness — the fact that people are primed to ignore evidence that something is amiss in their […]
[ted id=310] Hypnosis is a source of both debate and fear. It’s an intimidating thought that the subconscious mind can listen and react to outside sources. But there are still many questions to be answered: Does the subconscious work independently of the conscious mind? Is it programmed by experiences or instructions? These are questions posed […]
A round-up of what’s interesting on the interwebs this week: Gary Shteyngart tries Google Glass. Hilarity ensues. [The New Yorker] To everyone’s surprise, a malaria vaccine has been 100 percent effective in clinical trials. [Nature] For writers, adopting a second language is more than gaining a new skill set. It’s a rebirth. [The Stone Blog, […]
This week’s TED Radio Hour examines the hacker, a term often associated with computer crime. But, as host Guy Raz tells us, “All of our TED speakers today are hacking for good — hacking into our brains, into the environment, even into the DNA of extinct animals — hackers trying to save the world.” First […]