In a corner of the Vancouver Convention Center — set against a beautiful backdrop of Vancouver Harbour and the mountains of the North Shore, and right between a comfy simulcast lounge and a pop-up coffee and espresso shop — it’s hard to miss an eye-catching vintage red car. It’s the anchor of Altair’s exhibit gallery, showing […]Read more
“The ultimate sitting machine.” Please be kind — this is only my first attempt at a tagline for the BMW autonomous vehicle which I just went for a test drive, er, test ride in. Yes, I can proudly say that I’ve gone for a ride in the future — and it’s smooth enough to eat […]
TED2018 hit its stride on day 3, with talks from explorers of space and oceans, builders of cities and bridges, engineers of the future and many more. Here are some of the themes we heard echoing through the opening day, as well as some highlights from around the conference venue in Vancouver. Are we alone […]
What we need sometimes is a little awe, a little wonder. This session of TED Talks was designed to provoke an exquisite human emotion: the sense that the world is bigger and stranger than you’d known. Without further ado, wow. A blueprint for how humans and machines can coexist. American researchers are leading AI discoveries, […]
This beautiful blue marble, our shared earth: On a sunny morning in Vancouver, we pack into the darkened TED theater to learn more about its mysteries, its challenges, and how we might help it thrive. There’s no shiny “nature porn” here (well, maybe a little bit) but a clear-eyed look at what’s going right and […]
Linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker’s talk at the end of TED2018 Session 1 argued enthusiastically that humanity has, as a whole, made remarkable progress toward prosperity, peace and happiness — backing up his assertions with charts that showed an optimistic trajectory. But is that the whole story? A roundtable of TED Fellows — including scientists […]
There’s a particular occupational hazard associated with covering TED conferences: having your mind blown. University of Pennsylvania physicist and applied engineer Aaswath Raman does just that with his rethinking of air-conditioning. Now, as anyone who’s ever escaped to the movies on a scorching day can attest, sitting in a room that has been artificially chilled […]
Session 5, hosted by TED Curator Chris Anderson and astrophysicist and TED Fellow Jedidah Isler, is called “space to dream.” As Isler points out, we’re not just talking about outer space — it’s also about “the right to take up space, to dream, to do.” Seven dreamers, doers and designers offer a variety of ways […]
Three stellar main stage sessions of talks — including the launch of the Audacious Project — plus workshops, exhibits and TED Unplugged, a session of talks given by audience members, made for a jam-packed day 2 at TED2018. Here are some of the themes we heard echoing through the opening day, as well as some […]
The lights go down. A voice emerges — strong and hopeful. It’s Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of philanthropic powerhouse Emerson Collective. “Among the many things I love about TED is the simplicity and clarity of its mission — to spread ideas,” she says. “But in order to create lasting change at scale, we need […]
“This is a little different than the mainstage at TED, in a sense that this is a little more relaxed,” says our host, the poet and TED speaker Clint Smith. “These are speakers who have not been selected specifically for the mainstage, but they’re just as talented, just as brilliant, and just as important.” A […]
For the Session 3 of the conference, TED Head of Curation Helen Walters says, “We’re throwing off all pretense of cool.” Seven speakers are queued up to discuss the latest advances in their fields of technology. And while the gadgets do all different things, they share one crucial function: the power to make jaws drop. […]
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, says TED Curator Chris Anderson as he opens Session 2, “we used to think that democratically-powered capitalism was supposed to take over the world.” Political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously called it the “end of history.” So now what happens? Five TED speakers come to the stage to talk […]