TEDx is now 4 years old! This past Saturday, March 23, TEDx celebrated this milestone with a global birthday party, convened by TEDx organizers, volunteers and fans worldwide. There were cakes, candles, wishes and even a kite or two — all paired with enough enthusiasm to last another four years and beyond. With 6,417 events […]
Eric Whitacre has spent most of his career conducting traditional choirs. Then, in 2009, a fan video posted to YouTube sparked a crazy idea: could he take singers from across the globe, have them sing the same piece on video, and edit it together into a virtual choir? The results of this experiment quickly went […]
TED Conversations is a unique space where any member of the TED.com community can get feedback on an idea, pose an interesting question, or start a fascinating debate with fellow TEDizens from around the globe. We’ve seen participants from Columbia to Palestine, Sudan to Nepal—a total of 114 countries in just the past 30 days. See […]
How would it feel to walk across a sunny meadow, through a quiet forest, or up a beautiful ridge, knowing all the while there might be active land mines just beneath your feet? In Minescape: Waging War Against Land Mines, Brett Van Ort—artist and photojournalist—shares photographs that document just this experience. Through his pastoral, haunting […]
TEDGlobal has been held in Oxford, England; Arusha, Tanzania; Mysore, India; and Edinburgh, Scotland — with speakers from a wide range of other countries. In other words, it’s a global affair. As we prepare for TEDGlobal 2013: “Think Again,” kicking off on June 10, we thought we’d take a closer look. Here, go around the […]
In today’s talk, Bono — U2 frontman, founder of the anti-poverty organization ONE, and 2005 TED Prize winner — reflects on the past decade’s dramatic reduction in extreme poverty worldwide. “Exit the rockstar, enter the evidence-based activist, the factivist,” he says. Since 2000, according to Bono’s data, eight million more AIDS patients are getting antiretroviral drugs; eight […]
After his 6-year-old son taught himself to use a computer, 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra wanted to test the idea that kids can learn on their own, by discovery rather than formal training. So Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in the wall near a slum in New Delhi, set up an Internet-connected […]
Last week, education researcher Sugata Mitra won the first-ever $1 million TED Prize to build his School in the Cloud. Prior to his TED Prize win, Mitra was known for his “Hole in the Wall” experiment. In 1999, Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall near an urban slum in New Delhi, […]
A haunting black-and-white video screened during the TED Fellows talks depicted people speaking into a device and then walking — at first taking halting steps, then more confident strides. As the video unfolds, the camera zooms in on the faces of the walkers — revealing that they are blind. With his team, TED Senior Fellow […]
At TED2013, Sugata Mitra accepted the TED Prize for 2013 with a striking talk. His wish: for children to learn about any variety of subjects through self-organized learning. While this bold project will take form with a “School in the Cloud” in India, Mitra encourages members of our community to help with a global paradigm change […]
Once, Lakshmi Pratury says, she was deeply troubled by the public lives of young people on the Internet, but now she has hope — because the same kids who post their party pics online are also posting their political outrage. Her talk turns to a sad and shocking recent event: the gang-rape and torture of […]
Shhh … it’s time for Secret Voices, the 10th session of TED2013. Get ready to hear stories of the forgotten, marginalized, stigmatized and hidden. Our first speaker will make quite an entrance while the last will give a stirring finish, in spoken word. In between, thoughts on interspecies communication. Here, the speakers who appeared in […]
A trip to a public bathroom stall several years ago inspired journalist Rose George to think. “I asked myself the question: Where does this stuff go?” George remembers. “With this question, I found myself plunged into the world of sanitation, toilets and poop. And I have yet to emerge.” Many people don’t think much about toilets. As […]
Hailing from the Talent Search salon in Bangalore, Ajit Narayanan is here to tell us about his work helping autistic children to communicate. One of the challenges that faces those working in this field: People with autism can sometimes find it difficult to understand abstraction or symbolism–and therefore they struggle with language. Much contemporary therapy involves the use […]
Last night at TED2013, the Motion Picture Association of America hosted a nighttime discussion on the topic of how film has shaped some of modern day’s most cutting-edge technology. The prime example: John Underkoffler’s user interface inspired by his work on Minority Report. We were joined by Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects division of […]
Where does education go from here? On Tuesday, Sugata Mitra accepted the 2013 TED Prize and offered a bold wish for the world: that we encourage children to explore questions about our world in self-organized learning environments. He proposed the founding of a School in the Cloud based in India, and encouraged TED community members, […]